“Sir,” Herzer said with a nod of his head.
“Is there some way that you can help with that?”
“Not at this time, sir,” Herzer admitted. “I wasn’t planning on contributing, as noted. I’m here to be Duke Edmund’s eyes and ears. But… sir?”
“Yes?”
“There’s nobody that I know of who is better at wringing an offensive edge from a weapon than Duke Edmund.”
“Perhaps he’ll have some ideas, then.” The skipper shrugged. “By the way, you came up with the same plan that Evan has for feeding the wyverns. Mr. Riadou has some issues with it.”
“Wyverns are pack animals, sir,” the rider said. “I’m afraid that if they spend much time battened down and completely separated they’re going to be pretty unhappy. Depressed. A depressed dragon is a noneating dragon.”
“We’ll cross that problem when we come to it,” Chang said. “And that’s your problem unless there’s something specific that I have to approve.”
“Yes, sir,” the rider said.
“I want you to be thinking along offensive lines,” the skipper continued. “I want you to figure out ways that your dragons can sink ships. Capture them for that matter.”
“Well, we can drop rocks,” Jerry said. “But we have to toss them over the side and hope we both miss the wyvern’s wing and hit the enemy. It’s not very efficient.”
“You and Evan talk it over,” the skipper said. “I’ve spent enough time on this problem. Take Herzer with you. Figure something out.”
“Will do, sir,” the warrant officer replied. He straightened up and saluted, fist to chest. “By your leave, sir.”
“In the Navy we salute to the brim of the cap,” Chang said, tossing him a salute in return. “And not indoors. Gads, classes on basic military courtesy for riders. Add that to the list.”
“Is he in the Army or the Navy?” Herzer asked. “Sir.”
“He’s damned well under my command on this ship, Lieutenant,” the skipper replied tightly. “He can damned well follow Navy protocols.”
Herzer nodded in reply and pushed open the door.
Joel had been assigned a bunk in the transient quarters and the next day hurriedly assigned uniforms and filled out a myriad of forms. The only one that gave him any trouble was the last will and testament. He had no one, at least no one he was in contact with, to leave his belongings to. On the other hand, “Joel Annibale” didn’t exist, anyway. Finally, he left the form blank and when he turned it in the clerk in charge pointed to the empty line.
“You gotta leave it to someone or something,” the clerk said.
“I don’t have anyone,” Joel said, his face hard.
“Most of us don’t,” the clerk replied. She was a young woman and she shook her head, sighing. “You can leave it to the Navy fund. This is my family, now. I guess it’s yours, too.”
Joel filled in the line and signed the form with a strange feeling. He knew he probably wasn’t going to be with the Navy long, but for the time he had a home.
He was sent down to the docks with his ill-fitting uniforms, bulging seabag and new boots that slipped on his feet. He was assigned to a boat and got the first look at his new ship.
The damned thing was huge, a clipper ship if he recalled the design right. But the masts were all screwed up because of the big platform on the back.
There was a working party loading on the starboard side and before the new hands were even assigned quarters they were put to work hauling up the supplies. There were hogsheads of salt beef and pork, steel barrels of ration biscuit, bag after bag marked “Soya” and innumerable other items. Winches had been secured to the crosstrees and the material came over in large cargo nets. Then it had to be hand carried below and stuffed away in the holds. On his first trip down he was surprised to see that the material was only supplementary to what was already on-board; the ship was stuffed tighter than a tick.
As soon as the lighters had pulled away from the ship he was accosted by a female petty officer.
“I’m PO Su Singhisen,” the petty officer said. “You’re Seaman Annibale, right?”
“Right,” Joel said. “Joel Annibale.” The PO was a medium-height blonde with her hair pulled back in a tight bun.
“You looked like you knew what you were doing, there,” she said, waving at him to follow her below.
“I’ve worked ships before,” Joel said. “None this big, but it’s pretty much the same.”
“And they made you a steward?” Singhisen laughed.
“They did?” Joel replied. “Nobody told me what my duty station was going to be.”
“Grand,” the PO chuckled. “The navy finally finds somebody with experience on ships and they make them an officers’ steward.”
“Sounds like any bureaucracy to me,” Joel chuckled.
“What did you do before the Fall?” Singhisen asked as she led him below. The companionway was short and while the PO didn’t have to stoop, Joel did.
“I mostly sailed in the Asur Islands,” Joel replied. “After the Fall I took up fishing for a living.”
“How’d you get here?” she asked. She opened a door on an incredibly cramped room with four tiers of bunks spread across it in six rows. “Home sweet home.”
“Grand,” Joel replied as she led him down the narrow aisle between the bunks.
“You’re the newbie,” she said, pointing to the top bunk. “So you get the worst spot.”
Joel had already seen that the seabags were set at the base of the bunks. He climbed up and lashed his in place.
“What next?”
“Galley and then I get somebody to show you the route to officers’ country. Then we put you to work.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Herzer followed the two far back into the bowels of the ship. The corridors were impossible to figure out, or so it seemed; most of the time he didn’t know if he was facing the rear of the ship or the front. But finally they entered a high, wide corridor that was unmistakable.
“This is where the dragons walk?” he asked.
“We call it Broadway,” Evan replied with a nod. “There’s a ramp for them to walk down. The hatch is a major structural weakness, but we think we’ve shored around it sufficiently.”
“Jerry, how much weight can one of the wyverns carry, over the weight of the rider?” Herzer asked.
“About two hundred kilos depending on the weight of the rider,” Jerry replied.
“So why was I told to fly one alone?” Herzer mused. “I could have doubled up with, oh, Vickie. Or you, for that matter.”
“We’d brought a spare,” Jerry replied with a shrug. “Why overload them?”
“Hmmm…” Herzer followed them down to the stalls and checked out the arrangements. Sure enough, there was a method to slip food through to the permanently installed food troughs as well as spigots for water at each of the pens, feeding into a separate watering trough. The stalls had points to hook up chains in case the wyverns got out of hand as well as ways to close the stall down and press the wyvern up against the back if one got completely out of control.
“I think this will work,” Jerry said, reluctantly. “Actually, it’s better set up than our rookeries. I’ll take some of these ideas back. Where’s the mixing area for the mess?”