"God damn," Farr said slowly and distinctly. I never liked the magazine protection on those City-class cruisers, he thought. They'd skimped on internal bulkheads to strengthen the main belt. .
"Sir." This time the yeoman's voice quavered a bit, just for an instant. "Desmines reports the Iway. . she's gone, sir. Just gone. The stern section was all that's left and it sank like a rock."
"There's something wrong with our bloody cruisers today," Farr said, and lit a cigarette, looking at the map again and calculating distances and times. The captain of the Great Republic was the center of a flurry of activity; searchlights went on all over the superstructure.
"Here they come," he said, speaking loudly over the squeal of turrets training. Only the quick-firers and secondary armament; nobody was going to fire twelve-inch guns into the dark with dozens of Santander Navy ships around.
Long lean shapes were coming in, weaving between the cruiser squadrons, heading for the capital ships. Red-gold balls of light began to zip through the night, shells arching out to meet the enemy. The Chosen destroyers were throwing plumes back from their bows as high as their forward turrets, thirty knots and better.
"Here they come," repeated the captain. The battleship heeled sharply as it came about, presenting its bow to the destroyers and the smallest possible target to their torpedo sprays. "For what we are about to receive-"
"— may the Lord make us truly thankful," the bridge muttered with blasphemous piety.
* * *
Heinrich Hosten blinked. "He has said what?"
"Sir. Libert has announced that the Union is, ah, affirmatively neutral, as of one hundred hours today. Unionaise forces will not attempt to engage either Santander or Land forces except in direct self-defense. Sir, a number of our posts report that the Unionaise here in the Sierra are laagering and refusing contact. Shall I order activation of Plan Coat, sir?"
Heinrich stood stock-still for a full forty seconds. Sweat broke out on his expressionless face. "Not at the moment," he said very quietly. Plan Coat was the standing emergency option for the takeover of the Union.
Well, it looks like you were wrong for once, Gerta, he thought. Leaving Libert alive had been a mistake. . although justified at the time.
"No, I don't think we'll distract ourselves just yet. Libert has two hundred and fifty thousand men. The Santies first, I'm afraid, tempting as it is. Attention, please."
His chief of staff bent forward. Heinrich looked down at the map. "Pending clarification from central HQ, the forces on the Confrontation Line are to stand in place." Selling their lives as dearly as they could. "All other forces in the Union are to retreat northward, destroying communications links behind them as far as possible, and catch us if they can."
"Catch us, sir?"
Heinrich tapped one thick finger on the center of the Sierra. "We're the only concentrated force the Land has left on the mainland. It's obvious what the Santies are doing: they've taken Corona, they're shipping their First Corps there as fast as they can, and they're going for our Home Fleet in the Passage."
His hand moved to the western shores of the Republic, and then swept up towards the Chosen homeland.
"Bold. Daring. It all turns on us, and on the Navy. If we can break their fleet and destroy their First Corps, then even losing the Union and the Sierra will be meaningless. We can retake them at our leisure and crush Santander next year."
And if we lose, or the Navy loses, the Chosen are doomed, he knew. By their faces, so did everyone else in the room.
"Sir, the communications grid is in very poor shape," the logistics chief warned.
Heinrich nodded. "Which means trains moving north are likely to go just as fast as the handcarts traveling ahead of the locomotives," he said. "That's still faster than oxcarts," he said. "Priorities: all light- and medium-armored fighting vehicles, then fuel, then artillery and artillery ammunition, and other supplies directly in tandem."
"What about the heavy armor?"
"Blow it in place."
"Sir!"
Heinrich tapped the map again. "Those monsters would be priceless if we could get them there. We can't. They take up too much space and effort. Better to have what we can in the right spot rather than what we can't halfway there at the crucial moment. Blow them."
"Zum behfel, Herr General."
"Aircraft, sir?"
"Coenraad, you and your staff get me an appreciation of how many we can shuttle back into the New Territories and refuel on the way. Blow the rest in place and assign the personnel to infantry units short of their quota of Chosen." Of which there were quite a few.
"Now, get me New Territories HQ."
"Sir. . they haven't responded to signals, for the past half hour. Last report was that insurgents had. . emerged somehow. . from Fourth Bureau headquarters and were attacking the administrative compound from within in conjunction with a general uprising of the animals."
Heinrich closed his eyes for a second, then shrugged. "All right, then let's do what we can with what we have. Next-"
The planning session went on. It was still going on when the vanguard of the last Chosen army moved north less than two hours later.
* * *
The last of her wingmates vanished in an orange globe of fire. Erika Hosten held the twin-engine biplane bomber straight and level until the last instant, then jerked on the stick. Wings screaming protest, the plane rose over the destroyer, clearing the stacks by less than six feet. Smoke and rising air buffeted at her for an instant, and then she was back on the surface, wheels almost touching the water.
A shape ahead of her. A long, flat, island superstructure to one side. Planes above it, a swarm of them-planes over the whole bowl of fire and smoke and ships that stretched to the horizon on either side, the others from the Land aircraft carriers, hundreds more on one-way trips from the Land itself. Pom-poms in gun tubs all the way along the edge of the carrier, and firing at her from behind, from the destroyer screen. Her gunner was slumped in the rear seat, and blood ran along the bottom of the cockpit and sloshed over the edges of her boots. Fabric was peeling off the wings.
"Just a little longer," she crooned to the aircraft. "Just a little."
Closer. Closer. Now.
She jerked the release toggle beside her seat. The biplane lurched as the torpedo released, and then again as something struck it. She yanked at the stick again, and-
Blackness.
* * *
"Welcome aboard, Admiral," the commander of the Empire of Liberty said. "We've notified the fleet you're transferring your flag."
Maurice Farr nodded as he moved to the front of the battleship's bridge. Forward, one of the eight-inch gun turrets was twisted wreckage. More twisted wreckage was being levered overside, the remains of a Land aircraft that had come aboard with its bombs still under the wings. That had caused surprisingly little damage, although the open-tub pom-poms on that side were silent, their barrels like surrealist sculpture.
"Status," he said crisply, despite the oil and water stains that soaked his uniform.
"Sir. Sixteen units of BatDivOne report full or nearly full operational status."
Two battleships lost last night to the torpedo attack and three cruisers. Three more this morning, running the gauntlet of Chosen air attacks from both sides of the Passage. That left him with an advantage of four, twice that in heavy cruisers, most of his destroyer screen still intact-less than a third of the enemy flotilla from Pillars had made it out-and with one crucial advantage. .
"Air?"