The Sea Without a Shore - eARC Read online

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  THE SEA WITHOUT A SHORE - eARC

  David Drake

  Advance Reader Copy

  Unproofed

  BAEN BOOKS

  by DAVID DRAKE

  THE RCN SERIES

  With the Lightnings

  Lt. Leary, Commanding

  The Far Side of the Stars

  The Way to Glory

  Some Golden Harbor

  When the Tide Rises

  In the Stormy Red Sky

  What Distant Deeps

  The Road of Danger

  The Sea Without a Shore

  HAMMER’S SLAMMERS

  The Tank Lords

  Caught in the Crossfire

  The Sharp End

  The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, Vols 1–3

  INDEPENDENT NOVELS AND COLLECTIONS

  All the Way to the Gallows

  Cross the Stars

  Foreign Legions, edited by David Drake

  Grimmer Than Hell

  Loose Cannon

  Night & Demons

  Northworld Trilogy

  Patriots

  The Reaches Trilogy

  Redliners

  Seas of Venus

  Starliner

  Into the Hinterlands with John Lambshead

  THE GENERAL SERIES

  Hope Reborn with S.M. Stirling (omnibus)

  Hope Rearmed with S.M. Stirling (omnibus)

  The Tyrant with Eric Flint

  The Heretic with Tony Daniel

  The Savior with Tony Daniel (forthcoming)

  THE BELISARIUS SERIES with Eric Flint

  An Oblique Approach

  In the Heart of Darkness

  Belisarius I: Thunder Before Dawn (omnibus)

  Destiny’s Shield

  Fortune’s Stroke

  Belisarius II: Storm at Noontide (omnibus)

  The Tide of Victory

  The Dance of Time

  Belisarius III: The Flames of Sunset (omnibus)

  EDITED BY DAVID DRAKE

  The World Turned Upside Down with Jim Baen & Eric Flint

  THE SEA WITHOUT A SHORE

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by David Drake

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4767-3639-6

  Cover art by Stephen Hickman

  First printing, May 2014

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: t/k

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Ramsey and Jenny Campbell

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  How many times have I thanked Dan Breen for being my first reader? This is another time, and believe me, it’s heartfelt this time as well.

  Dan, Dorothy Day, and my webmaster Karen Zimmerman archive my texts in widely separated locations. That way if the asteroid strikes while I’m still working, my publisher will nevertheless have the most nearly complete version of the manuscript. (Well, I suppose it depends on how big the asteroid is.)

  Dorothy, Karen, and Evan Ladouceur provide help with continuity and in their various expertises. For this particular novel, Fred Kiesche and John Lambshead also provided bits of data which I needed. Silly as it may sound, I really will stop work while I search frantically for some point that not one reader in a thousand would notice if I got it wrong. The help I get from my friends is of much more importance than it might seem to a rational person.

  Many people provide help for my writing. My wife Jo makes my comfortable life possible. I get very focused when I’m working, and I’m working just about all the time. That I’m healthy, well-fed, and live in a clean house is almost entirely due to Jo; we even have an active social life.

  My sincere thanks to all those I’ve mentioned and to the many others who are part of my life and therefore of my work.

  Dave Drake

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I’m going to try an abbreviated version of my usual boilerplate here: I translate the words my characters speak into modern English, and also I translate weights and measures into formats in current use.

  It’s been a long time since anybody has complained about me using modern English instead of 19th century fustian as though I were a reincarnation of William Morris (heaven forefend!). I do get more or less polite queries about the weights and measures, though.

  I generally use historical models in which to find plots for novels in the RCN series. In this case I formed the action on two incidents which occurred in the 5th century BC. One of these was the civil war on the island of Corcyra, a colony founded by Corinth. The other was the Egyptian revolt against Persia (during a period of Persian instability) and the Athenian expedition to support the Egyptians when Persia attempted to reassert control.

  Neither of these things sounds very major, does it? Even if you know some classical history, it’s unlikely that you’ll remember either of them. But between them they led to the Peloponnesian War, which plunged the Greek world into a century of large-scale warfare; followed by Macedonian conquest (the Macedonians weren’t Greek by Greek law, any more than the Thracians or the Carians were Greek) and another century of war; and finally by Roman conquest and a peace of tourists and tax gatherers.

  It’s very hard to predict where a present action is going to lead, but it’s a good bet that violent actions are going to lead to violent results; and those results may continue a long way down a very bad road. I suppose it’s fitting that the Roman general who completed the conquest of Greece did so by razing Corinth.

  I used to think it would be nice if present-day leaders knew more ancient history. The reality is that Messrs Cheney and Rumsfeld didn’t seem to know anything about Viet Nam. Of course they hadn’t served in Nam, as I had.

  Finally a note about the dedication. In 1977 Jo and I visited England—my first trip out of the country which didn’t involve me wearing a uniform. Friend and writer Ramsey Campbell and his wife Jenny put us up in Liverpool for two days. Jennie cooked us a full English breakfast (with kippers!) which was delicious, and Ramsey gave us a tour of Liverpool which included Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral (AKA Paddy’s Wigwam).

  The cathedral is a modern structure and has had more than its share of detractors (note the nickname; Liverpool is heavily Irish). That said, the interior gave me a feeling of peace and happiness which I’ve never felt in another building.

  I’m not religious (and was raised to be anti-Catholic), so I didn’t expect to have a positive reaction. That
’s anecdotal evidence, but it was (and remains) my truth. I moved the cathedral into this novel, and I decided this was a good time to thank Ramsey and Jenny for their kindness.

  Dave Drake

  david-drake.com

  And all around the organ there’s a sea without a shore

  Of human joys and wonders and regrets;

  To remember and to recompense the music evermore

  For what the cold machinery forgets.…

  The Barrel Organ

  Alfred Noyes

  CHAPTER 1

  Bantry Estate, Cinnabar

  Daniel Leary, otherwise Captain Daniel Oliver Leary, Republic of Cinnabar Navy—but here merely “Master Daniel” or “Squire”—stood poised in the bow of the skiff with his arms at his sides. The throwing stick was in his right hand with the line nocked in the cleft and the lure dangling. Hogg knelt in the stern, holding the tiller/throttle of the tiny motor that edged the boat toward the floating weed.

  The lure was a streamlined tube about the size of a plump man’s middle finger. Its batteries powered the caged contra-rotating props, but control signals came down the line from the handset now resting on the planks in front of Hogg.

  When the lure hit the water, it would circle until it picked up the pattern of electrical impulses given off by the nerves of the species it was set for, then home on that source. It was set now for floorfish; two or three sprats would fillet into an excellent dinner for Daniel and Miranda, his fiancée, who was waiting in the manor.

  Daniel tensed to make the cast. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, boy,” Hogg said. “Another ten feet, and don’t tell me your arm’s strong enough to cast into the center from here.”

  The skiff continued to creep toward the weed. Hogg spoke quietly so as not to disturb the prey, but his voice was as harsh as a rough-cut file. Here off the coast of the Bantry estate their releationship was the same as it had been twenty years earlier when the old poacher took it on himself to teach the young master how to fish and to hunt, and how to be a man.

  Teaching Daniel to be a man wasn’t part of a plan, but Hogg was a man himself and made assumptions. If he’d been asked, he would have said that Corder Leary wanted a son who would stand up for himself, who would carry out his duties, and who would take responsibility for his own actions.

  Overhead, a trio of Barranca birds sailed southward, following the cold current which had bent toward shore during the volcanic eruption hundreds of miles out in the Western Ocean. The birds were so high that even Daniel’s sharp eyes couldn’t distinguish the two separate pairs of wings on each. The occasional low-frequency grunts of the birds communicating were barely audible, even to ears trained to recognize them.

  Looking back on his childhood, Daniel suspected that his father had been too busy chasing money and power to spare any thoughts for the boy who lived with his mother on the Bantry Estate. Still, Speaker Leary wouldn’t have minded what Daniel was learning, any more than he would have cared about the weather over Bantry while he was comfortable in the Leary townhouse in the capital, Xenos.

  Hogg switched off the motor. It was inaudible even while it was running, but Daniel had felt the vibration through the thin soles of his moccasins. The skiff drifted forward on momentum. Daniel swung his right arm up in parallel with the keel. At the height of its arc, his fingers released the line which he’d clamped to the throwing stick till that moment. The lure sailed off in a flat curve that plopped it into the center of the large patch of weed.

  “A nice cast,” said Hogg softly. “You haven’t forgotten everything I taught you, I guess.”

  “I haven’t forgotten not to draw to an inside straight, either,” Daniel said. He remained upright for a better view, though standing in the small boat would have been dangerous despite the skiff’s broad bottom if the water hadn’t been still and Daniel’s own balance perfect. The skills he’d gained as a boy on Bantry had been sharpened since he’d entered the Naval Academy and begun running along the spars of starships.

  Instead of circling as expected, the lure vanished instantly. “It looks like it just sank,” Daniel said, squinting. He had a pair of multi-function RCN goggles on his forehead, but they wouldn’t help him look through the water. “Do you suppose the motor failed?”

  “The motor’s running fine and the props are free,” Hogg said testily, looking at the readout on his control unit. “It’s just got a bite.

  “Unless—” Hogg’s delay was too short to have allowed Daniel to speak even if he’d intended to. “—that bloody weed has caught it. It’s the deep-sea weed with thicker hair. But the lure seems okay.…”

  He and Daniel were in the channel between Borden’s Cay and the mainland, but recent nor’westers had brought considerable oceanic debris through the inlets, including unfamiliar fish parboiled by the volcano. This patch of weed looked from any distance like the normal inshore variety; but as Hogg had said, it was the open-water species whose clumps were tied together by tendrils sturdy enough to withstand serious storms.

  “Want to haul back the lure and try near the creek mouth?” Daniel said, frowning.

  He was closer to the weed. He could have noticed before Hogg did that it was slightly darker than it should have been, but Hogg had spent most of his sixty years learning the tricks and whims of nature on the Bantry Estate. Missing something that Hogg also had missed wasn’t a good reason to kick himself.

  “It’s still running true,” Hogg said, “so don’t get in front of yourself. Maybe we’re just having fisherman’s luck.”

  Hogg had been concentrating on the holographic read-out hovering above the control unit; his fierceness suggested he was planning to take a bite out of the display. A brief smile turned his unshaven face into something remarkably ugly.

  Daniel smiled also. Like Hogg, he was used to having luck when he was fishing. Most of it was bad.

  The channel wasn’t much over a quarter mile wide here. Similar vegetation grew on both the cay and the mainland; but the trees on the mainland shore were taller, and they were much taller further inland where storms less often drove salt water over the roots.

  Birds shrieked and clucked, but they remained hidden in the foliage. Insect-eaters wouldn’t be out in numbers until nightfall, but Daniel was surprised not to see the fish-eaters which were usually snatching meals from the surface of the water or gorging on carrion on the mud. A skiff with two fishermen wasn’t reason to frighten them under cover.

  “We’ve got one,” Hogg said, adjusting both thumb controls of the handset. “We bloody have got one.”

  The lure was multi-function. When it was attached, the controller sent impulses into the nervous system of the fish. You couldn’t actually control the behavior even of a fish, but a disruption equivalent to an unscratchable itch would eventually bring the prey thrashing to the surface as it tried to rid itself of the irritation.

  Daniel set the throwing stick down on the floorboards. He touched the trident with hooked barbs of spring steel, then thought again. The pole was only six feet long. That was as much as they wanted to carry in so small a boat, but it wasn’t enough to reach the center of the weed from where they now floated.

  “I’ll go in,” he said. He didn’t want to foul the lure’s prop in heavy weed. Hogg grunted agreement, still concentrating on the controller.

  Sitting down, Daniel pulled off his moccasins. He probably ought to take off his baggy trousers also, but sometimes small crustaceans clung to floating weed, and he didn’t want to transfer them to his wedding tackle. As he started to his feet again, the skiff rocked violently.

  “Bloody hell and damnation!” Hogg said, looking up from the display but not dropping the controller.

  Daniel’s first thought was that there had been another sub-sea earthquake, a tremor like those which the volcano had spawned in recent months. The weed lifted in a great swell. Instead of subsiding, it hung in streamers on the dark, twitching mass which floated on the surface of the water.

  “On my sa
inted mother’s soul,” Hogg said in a tone of reverence. “We’ve got an adult. What’s it doing here?”

  Daniel had heard enough stories growing up on Bantry—some of them from Hogg himself—to know that if Hogg’s mother had been a saint, it was only by comparison with Hogg’s father. That aside, there was no doubt that they’d caught an adult floorfish.

  If caught was the right word.

  “The volcano must have brought it up,” Daniel said. Adult floorfish meandered across the bottom at three thousand feet or deeper, though their eggs hatched in marshes and the sprats spent their first two years in coastal waters. “It’s sixty feet long if it’s an inch.”

  “And the flesh is no good for anything but feeding pigs,” Hogg said with a tone of regret. “Even if we could land it.”

  He adjusted his controller again.

  The floorfish continued to quiver, so Daniel didn’t rise from his knees. There wasn’t any real risk. When Hogg released the lure, the fish—it was really a blanket with a mouth at one end and a body filled by the gut which processed ooze that the mouth sucked in—would sink back to the bottom.

  Daniel grinned. The worst danger that the floorfish posed was that if it didn’t find its way back out to sea soon, the warmth and higher oxygen content of the surface waters would probably kill it. In that case, its many tons of rotting flesh and partially digested ooze would make a considerable uninhabitable until the process was complete. Fortunately, nobody except hunters and sport fishermen spent much time in this swampy portion of Bantry.

  The fish continued to wobble like a huge jelly while Hogg stabbed at his controller. “It won’t release!” he snarled. “I don’t know if something’s corroded or the probes are just too deep in that thick hide.”