Seas of Venus(67)

Ensign Stocker looked up from the plot again. This time a guarded expression had replaced the earlier pleasure. "Ah, well, I'm to carry you to the cruiser Clinton," he said. "She's the command ship for the rear screen. Plenty of room aboard her and, you know, first-rate medical facilities."

Stocker nodded toward the hydrofoil's electronics bay. One of the wounded raiders sat in the open hatchway, babbling to himself while a gunboat crewman tried to comfort him.

"Admiral Bergstrom is aboard the Semiramis?" Dan asked.

Stocker nodded cautiously. "Yes . . . ," he said. "Sir."

"Take us to the Semiramis, Ensign," Dan said.

The cockpit was cramped. Commander Cooke and the two ensigns were within arms' length of one another, but for an instant there was a cold crystal wall between Stocker and the others.

"Sir, Captain Haynes specifically ordered . . . ," the gunboat officer began.

Dan grinned at him.

Stocker braced to attention. "Aye aye sir!" he said crisply. He turned to the plotting table, then began snapping orders to his helmsman over an intra-ship push.

There was a pair of jumpseats against the back wall of the cockpit. Dan pulled one down for Johnnie, then sat in the other himself.

D1528 came about in a wide arc, banking on her outriggers. The only certain marker in the sea, the flaming pyre that had been the Holy Trinity, began to slide back across the western horizon as gunboat reversed course to pursue the battle line.

"Unc—ah . . . ," Johnnie said. "I mean, sir?"

Uncle Dan put an arm around the younger man's shoulders and squeezed him.

"Uncle Dan, was it worth it? Was it worth—"

Johnnie closed his eyes, but he couldn't close out the crowding memories.

"Ask me when it's over, John," his uncle said. He leaned his head close to Johnnie's so that they could speak without using their helmet radios.

The dreadnoughts were coming in sight again. Rather, the combing bow-waves kicked up by huge vessels moving at speed reflected the sky glow on the horizon.

"You mean, after we've beat the Warcocks and Flotilla Blanche?" Johnnie said. "If we beat them."

"Oh, we'll beat them," Dan said. "This war's as good as won; or will be as soon as I'm on the bridge of the Semiramis to make sure Haynes and the Admiral don't throw it away from too much caution.

"But what I meant," he continued, "is we won't know if it's worthwhile until there's a united government on Venus and Mankind is at peace."

Johnnie turned from the horizon beyond the cockpit windscreen and stared at his uncle. "We won't live to see that," he said. "Will we?"

Dan shook his head. He smiled. His face was as gentle as Johnnie had ever seen it, but the expression was without humor.

"They won't—Man won't—win in our lifetime," he said. "But we might live long enough to see us all lose. Long enough to see Venus turned into a fireball, and the last tomb of Mankind in the universe."

Johnnie nodded, but his mind was too tired to visualize Mankind as an entity.

Besides, his last glimpses of Sergeant Britten and Sal Grumio kept getting in the way.





25


From a find to a check, from a check to a view,

From a view to a death in the morning.

—John Woodcock Graves





The hydrofoil strained forward like a horse whirling a sulky down the home stretch.

The jumpseats weren't fitted with terminals, but there were data feeds in the flimsy bulkhead behind them. Johnnie uncoiled one against the tension of its take-up spring and plugged it into the input jack of his helmet. After his AI sorted through the options, he settled on viewing the forward gunsight image on the left side of his visor.

The dreadnought filling that magnified picture had her port secondary batteries and at least forty small-caliber Gatling guns trained on D1528. Any one of the Gatlings—much less a single shell from the 6-inch secondaries—could reduce the gunboat to pieces small enough to fit in a matchbox.

"We're being queried by Semiramis," said Ensign Stocker.

"I'll take it," said Uncle Dan. He rose, then slid into the command console as Stocker vacated it.

"Kinda hoped you might, sir," the ensign said with a grin.

Johnnie shook his head in wonder at the other young officer. Stocker had decided he was going to have fun with the situation—even though he knew he was being used as a pawn in a high-stakes game between his superiors.

Courage wasn't limited to the willingness to ride a flimsy hydrofoil into battle.

Dan entered his personal code, then authenticated it with his brainwave patterns transmitted by his helmet. "Blackhorse Six," he said, "this is Blackhorse Three aboard the D1528. I need to come aboard the flagship."