The Protector's War Read online

  "I think we'd best acquaint ourselves with our duties on this ship," Nigel said. "And leave the matter of pursuit to the evil day."

  Because there's damn all we can do about it, he thought.

  John Hordle sucked at a barked knuckle as they slid down the ropes to the waiting longboats. Above them the side of the Kobayashi Maru reared in a rust-streaked iron wall. The big tanker had been listing hard to port when the Pride's lookout spotted it, with an oil slick behind it a hundred miles long. Even as the boarding party left you could see how she'd begun to settle as water flooded into her spaces from the open scuttlin-cocks. For a moment he wondered idly where the crew had ended up. According to the log they'd rigged the ship's lifeboats with improvised masts and sails ten days after the Change, meaning to try for the coast of Argentina and then come back with help.

  Must 'ave been a bit of a shocker if they made land, and found out the truth, he thought. Then he shrugged—if they'd survived at all, they'd done better than most of the human race.

  It was a hot late-August day on the Atlantic; they were standing off the Portuguese coast, with land out of sight on the eastern horizon. The water stretched like hammered blue-green metal around them, riffled by a mild breeze and a long low swell out of the west. Like many of the crew, he had a bandana tied about his head; like all of them he wore loose blue trousers and bloused shirt, belt with a sailor's knife, and bare feet. Most of them were Tasmanians, with Kiwis second and Aussies from the mainland third; a few were wildly varied, picked up all over the world on the Pride's great survey voyage.

  Sir Nigel and his son wore the same outfit as Hordle, but with shoes and peaked caps—officer's garb. That had caused a few minor problems—the elder Loring was no martinet, but the Ozlander conception of rank was still a little too casual for someone who'd started in the Blues and Royals. Also, he didn't regard "She'll be right, mate" as an appropriate attitude to problems.

  "That was a proper job of work," Hordle said; the supertanker's manual scuttling-cocks had been awkwardly placed in dark narrow spaces and rusted solid to boot. "Why bother? It was going to sink soon anyway. Hull must be like a lace tea cozy beneath the waterline."

  "British ships have the same regulation. Sergeant," Sir Nigel said, taking the tiller with an expert's hand. "Hulks are a navigation hazard. Besides that, tankers do less damage if they sink in deep water rather than break up on a coast, and we're over the Iberian Abyssal Plain here."

  "Ah," Hordle said; that made sense. Eventually the black goo decayed naturally, but it could foul a shoreline for years, and there had been a lot of tankers at sea eight years ago. The only thing crude oil's good for now is killing fish. "Funny how everyone wanted the stuff before the Change, and now we want to get rid of it."

  There was a murmur of agreement as the longboat's crew ran out their oars and sculled for the Pride where she lay hove-to half a mile away. Some ships had cargoes that were still valuable even after all this time—medicines and luxury goods mainly, though even intact toilet paper was worth a fair bit. He knew men who worked full time at salvage, although merchantmen still afloat were growing rarer and rarer as time and tide and storms had their way with them.

  Hordle stood in the bow of the longboat, ready with the boathook.The Lorings and he had fitted easily enough into the Pride's crew, since their small-boat skills were readily transferable; they'd all gone together on expeditions up the Seine and Loire, and once overland to the Rhone, down it and out through the Med in a ship that met them there. The Tasmanians also struck him as being a little less belligerently Aussie than most Ozlanders he'd met before the Change, which was pleasant; he'd worked with the Down Under SAS on his single deployment east of Suez.

  Good-enough blokes, good fighting men, but always putting on the Digger and trying to show up the whingeing

  Poms, he thought. You'd think they'd all landed at Gallipoli last week, with a jolly jumbuck under each arm, straight up.

  The ship grew from a bobbing toy to its respectable two-hundred-foot length. Hordle looked down the length of the longboat, to where his opposite number was ready to hook on at the stern; she was named Sheila Winston, a pleasantly shaped brunette of twenty-two with snapping eyes whose usual job was in the galley. He'd had his eye on her, and he suspected vice versa. Being on a ship with a mixed crew did make things a little less dull, although he'd have liked it better if the mix had been more even, instead of three men per woman, or the regulations less strict. Still, he had the advantage of not being in the Pride's chain of command—formally, that was.

  "Oars… up!" Sir Nigel called.

  The long wood shafts went up in bristling unison; where it counted, the Tasmanians were perfectly capable of doing what they were told, quick and neat. Hordle reached out deftly and caught the boathook in the rope that ran along the scuppers. A petty officer on deck made a polite request that the boat not scuff the ship's paint, and added more obscene embellishments as the boat crew went up the Jacob's ladder and the smaller craft rocked and swayed; two stayed for an instant to hook on the hosting tackle. Then the cry of "Haul away" came, and a dozen deckhands tallied on to the gear. The boat rose dripping from the water, with Hordle and Sheila Winston fending off still as it was swung inboard and hung from the davits.

  Think I'll go bother the cook, Hordle thought as he stepped down to the deck, the worn huon pine smooth under the skin of his feet.

  The Pride's chief of galley was a genial Fijian who'd been in Nelson on the South Island at the time of the Change, and who outweighed Hordle though he was six inches shorter. It smelled like the midday meal was under way, and the fresh provisions loaded in Britain hadn't quite run out yet, plus overside fishing had yielded fairly, well. They weren't quite down to salt pork and ship's biscuit yet.

  You know, there's a good deal to be said for not having anyone on your trail, he thought happily.

  Alleyne Loring turned at a nod from Captain Nobbes: "Set all plain sail," he barked.

  The crew sprang to the ropes at a cascade of orders from the bosun and mast-captains; Hordle tallied on to the nearest. The Pride's sails unfolded as the gaffs rose up the masts, the free outer edges shaking and thuttering as they swung, then cracking taut. The schooner's nose turned south as she fell off the wind and the staysails up forward bit, and the movement grew swifter as steerage way came on her and the wheel turned. Water began to chuckle down the sides, and the bowsprit tracked a long slow corkscrew, a rise-swoop-and-fall motion instead of the short hard pitching she'd made with her nose into the swell.

  A voice rang out from the topmast: "On deck there! Sail ho!"

  "Where away?" Captain Nobbes called upward through his megaphone.

  Good-enough sailor, Hordle thought. Not that I'm any great judge. Thinks he's Horatio sodding Hornblower, that's the problem. Or that other one, in the books Sir Nigel likes, written by the Irishman.

  "A bit north of leeward, Skipper. Nor' nor'east."

  "What rig? What colors?"

  "Ship rig; three masts; all sail set. Flying the White Ensign. A bloody big drongo of a ship, Skipper! Coming on fast."

  Well, stone the crows. I shouldn't have tempted fate like that, not even on the quiet. He ducked into the forecastle. The crew racked their personal weapons under their bunks.

  Nigel Loring adjusted easily as the Pride heeled, and watched the crew at work. They totaled forty-five, more than were necessary to work the schooner—this rig was economical of labor—but on an exploratory voyage these days you could expect to fight, and to lose some before you returned. Right now the booms of the big fore-and-aft sails were swung out over the water to port, and the schooner's sharp bow cut across the swell directly southward, at ninety degrees to the wind. Then that died down, stuttered back, shifted and backed, coming more from the north. The sky was cloudless save in that direction, an arch of perfect blue turning paler where shadows fell towards the west. In the north clouds piled like thick beaten cream, shading to gold and black where they towered high.
r />   "Set gaff topsails!" the captain called. Then: "Lay aloft and loose main and fore't'gallants and square topsails!"

  A topsail schooner carried square sails as well as fore-and-aft; in the Pride's case, two each on the upper mainmast and foremast. They helped considerably when you weren't working into the teeth of the wind, but they required more work: someone had to climb out the yards and let them loose, whereas the fore-and-aft sails on their booms could be worked from the deck. Crew rushed up the ratlines and out along the slender-seeming spars, their feet on the manropes, bending to wrench at the hard knots that held the sails bundled. Canvas thuttered and cracked a hundred and twenty feet up, like distant gunfire, and taut beige shapes of New Zealand flax bellied out in the wind. The ship heeled further as the wind caught in the four square sails and levered down through the masts and keel. Nobbes kept a careful eye aloft, wincing at loud creaks.

  "That's the disadvantage with wooden topmasts," he said. "They're just not as strong as steel."

  "But more replaceable," Nigel pointed out. It's all very well to love your ship, he thought. But Nobbes takes it to an extreme.

  Of course, it was Nobbes's ship in a very special sense; before the Change he'd owned it, and run it around the South Pacific on excursions for people who wanted a taste of life in the old days. He'd been in St. Helens on the east coast of Tasmania when the Change struck, and ended up in the Tasmanian navy fairly quickly, albeit mostly running cargo and passengers. Some of his old attitude remained.

  "Well, there is that," he said. "They're building a new class much like this back in Tassie, but wooden-hulled with steel diagonal bracing on the ribs. I'm supposed to get one—compensation for the government taking the Pride, and all the years I sailed her for 'em. I've some cobbers who'll help me find cargoes, then it's up to Malaysia for rubber, and over to Burma for teak and rice, Ceylon for tea and coffee and cinnamon and back again. I could use a good man or two to help with that—it gets bloody lively, what with the pirates and all. Couple of years and I'd go partners on a new ship."

  "I'd rather thought I'd take up land," Sir Nigel said. "I understand there's a good deal available, and it's what I know, allowing for differences in the climate."

  "Plenty of room on the mainland, sport, right enough, or on North Island," Nobbes said absently; his eyes were still on the rigging. "But the land's cheap for a reason; things can get pretty rough there. Tassie and South Island are full up, what with all the people out of the towns and on the farms and stations—there's agitation to break up the bigger ones. Fancy themselves as bunyip barons, some of the stationholders do; and over on the mainland, a lot of them are bloody barons. Accent on the bloody, too."

  Nigel nodded. From what he'd heard, the big cities of mainland Australia and New Zealand's more densely populated North Island had collapsed as thoroughly as any in Europe or Asia or America, and they'd taken circles of countryside two hundred miles across with them. Of course, that left a lot of Australia untouched—the circles hadn't overlapped as they had in more densely peopled lands.

  Still, Alleyne and Hordle and I could handle any roughness where we wanted to set up, I suppose…

  The sound of the water slapping its way along the Pride's hull changed, becoming a little louder, a little faster, like palms beating out a choppy rhythm on a drum. The motion altered as well, turning longer and smoother, a rocking-horse surge that spoke of sea miles gone away.

  "With the wind on our beam like this, that'll give us an extra knot, setting the't'gallants," Nobbes said with satisfaction. He turned to the binnacle just forward of the wheel. "Eleven… eleven and a half knots."

  Then he looked back over the fan-shaped rail at his ship's stern, over the tarpaulin-clad shape of the catapult crouching on its turntable.

  "Odd running into another ship here," he said meditatively.

  "Not so odd as all that. Southampton-Gibraltar is the busiest shipping route we have now—that Britain has now. Which isn't saying much, I grant you."

  Nobbes grunted. "Bloody odd Gibraltar made it," he said.

  "A combination of luck and geography," Sir Nigel said. "Though it took considerable ability to organize it all."

  Nobbes brought up the heavy binoculars that hung around his neck.

  "She's just hull-up now," he said. "Sailing with the wind abeam is the best point for a square-rigger, but even so she's very fast… she'll pass us in a day or two on this heading. There's not many ships could come up from behind on the Pride, if I do say so myself. They're cracking on, though. I wonder what their hurry is?"

  A suspicion coiled in Nigel's stomach. "Hordle, step up here if you please," he said. The big man did. Nigel went on: "You were stationed in Southampton for a while, weren't you? At the dockyard, while I was off on that diplomatic mission to the Principality."

  "That I was. Didn't envy you a trip to Ian's Rump, either, sir."

  Nigel frowned slightly; in fact, he shared the opinion. The Principality of Ulster might loudly proclaim its loyalty to the king, and to his brother Prince Andrew-chance had stranded the latter there when the Change came—but he didn't particularly like the bloody-minded military-Orange Order-cum-Free Presbyterian junta that had ended up ruling the northeastern quarter of Britain's sister island—or what was left of it, between starvation and mutual pogrom.

  "Take a look," he said, handing over his own binoculars. "Tell me if you recognize that ship."

  Hordle looked for a moment, and pursed his lips. "No doubt about it, sir. Cutty Sark. I saw her in for repairs, after she shuttled in her last load of Icelanders, back in CY3."

  Nigel whistled silently, and Nobbes went slightly pale. Partly, Nigel thought, because that might mean the king had decided to give chase regardless, and to hell with offending far-off Tasmania; the Cutty Sark was a Royal Navy vessel now. And partly because the ship was legendary, the last and greatest of the China tea clippers, brought back to sit in glory in drydock on the Thames after a career that had included record-breaking runs on every route she sailed.

  "But sir?" Hordle went on. "They had us doing fetch-and-carry work there, and from what I heard of the dockyard maties talking, she wasn't what you'd call sound even then. Even for something a hundred and thirty years old."

  Alleyne's regular-featured face was thoughtful as he nodded. "I read the report, Father. Her keel—the wooden keel—is waterlogged, and the corrosion on her frame…" He turned to Nobbes. "Captain, you know she's iron-framed, with plank sheathing?"

  Nobbes snorted. "Yes," he said, in a tone that also meant And the sun comes up in the east too, my gracious Pommie-lad.

  "Sorry, sir. Well, the frame's been corroding—not just weakening it, they could cure that with riveted patches, but the rust is pushing the stringers away. She needed to be stripped bare in drydock, chipped down to solid metal, and rebuilt from the keel up. Instead they just did what they could from the outside, pounded in more caulking, and kept putting the basic work off. Perhaps they thought it would be easier simply eventually to scrap her and build new."

  "She's still almighty fast," Nobbes said thoughtfully.

  "Not as fast as she was once," Alleyne said. "They also cut down her sail plan, to lessen the strain on the hull and the working of the planks. Not so many studding sails and such."

  "What have they been doing with her?"

  "Refugees at first, starting in March of 'ninety-nine. Then cargo on the Gibraltar run," Alleyne said. "Manufactured goods and settlers out, food and fiber back—sugar, cotton, wine, citrus, olive oil."

  Nobbes grinned in a lopsided way. "England has an empire again, eh?"

  "In a way," Nigel said; the irony of it had struck him too. "Interesting to see how that turns out…"

  "It'll be interesting to see if the Sark's loaded with troops and out to see us knackered," Hordle said bluntly, jerking his head northward. "Sir."

  Nigel winced slightly, but there was no point in delaying further. "Perhaps it's rude of me to ask, but what will you do, Captain, if it is?"r />
  Nobbes looked embarrassed, and spoke reluctantly: "I'll run like buggery, Sir Nigel. If they catch us up and it's just a matter of dodging, or trading catapult bolts at long range, I'll do that. But if it means saving my ship and crew, I'll have to hand you over, and that's the dinkie die."

  "I appreciate your honesty, Captain Nobbes," Nigel said courteously.

  And Hordle looks like he's thinking of ripping your head off in that event, and I think you're beginning to notice. Best defuse matters and change the subject.

  He relaxed and smiled. "Let's hope we can avoid such a choice, eh? And that ship could just be running down to the Rock. We're… they're… resettling the choice bits of southern Spain and northern Morocco—the Gibraltarians and immigrants get farms, the realm gets trade, everyone's happy. Though the ghosts must be raining curses on us in Spanish and Arabic."

  "Thought of moving there meself, sir, and taking up land," Hordle said, glad of a chance to break the momentary chill. "Nice climate and the brambles aren't as thick about the edges as back in old Blighty."

  "Maybe God is an Englishman," Nobbes said. "The world drops dead, and the Poms get the whole of Western Europe out of it."

  "Only if we breed very enthusiastically," Alleyne said. "Killing off all but one in every two hundred of us seems an odd way for the Supreme Being to show family-feeling, even if it does make many corners of foreign fields forever England in times to come. Though I think it's definite that He isn't French, what?"

  Nigel nodded. "On the evidence, my boy, He seems to be Tasmanian."

  "I thought Australia was bad, until I saw Europe," Nobbes said, with a gesture of half agreement. "And America's worse if anything…"

  "Most of the parts we can reach are bones," Nigel said judiciously. "Some islands did well and we don't know anything about the interior or the western portion."

  Alleyne put in: "There's quite a few Italians left, though—ten thousand in the Alps, fifty thousand in that clump in Umbria, two hundred thousand on Sicily. A fair number of Greeks farther east on Crete and Cyprus, and of course as you get east of central Poland… It will be interesting to see how things shape in the next couple of generations."