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WRITTEN BY
THE WIND
A Story of the Draka
Roland J. Green
I.

Roland Green is a man of letters who dwells in Chicago. He has written fantasy—Wandor's Journey—and alternate history, a continuation of the great H. Beam Piper's work in Great King's War.

Besides writing, Roland reads a great deal, especially in history maritime and military. He really knows the details, and in his hands they're anything but dull and dry; they're the stuff of living, breathing human beings.

In this story, the rising Draka meet the Rising Sun, as two powers of the periphery of the world challenge the older states for room to live.

However bad it was, it could have been worse . . .

Sasebo Naval Airship Base, Empire of Japan 0430, August 18, 1905

A hundred meters aft, one of Satsuma's engines came to life. Horace Jahn felt the vibration through the big dirigible's aluminum structure before the sound reached his ears. Once it did, the diesel sounded like the purring of a cat—a distant cat, the size of an auto steamer.

Probably Engine #3, the Draka calculated. He could not have told a ground gripper how he made the calculation, but after ten years in airships, it took hardly more thought than breathing. (Say, hiding the need to sneeze at a formal banquet.) But even after he saw lights going on, he wondered why they'd started an engine.

Like the rest of the Imperial Japanese Navy's First Air Kokutai, Satsuma was snugged down to her moorings, bow locked to the mobile mast and tail just as firmly gripped by the mooring car. Her internal electrics could run off ground power, saving fuel for her five diesels until she lifted off.

Jahn strode forward, remembering to duck as he stepped off the catwalk and scrambled down the ladder to the control deck. Satsuma and her five sisters were first cousins to the Dominion's Harpy class, but when the Japanese Navy assembled them, they modified them for crews a good ten centimeters shorter than the average male Draka—and Jahn's North German genes ran him up several centimeters beyond that respectable height. The first few weeks aboard Imperial airships had left bruises and scrapes on his forehead, hips, knees, and elbows.

More lights came on. Two crewmen in blue coveralls seemed to sprout from the deck. They bowed to Jahn, then scrambled up the ladder before Jahn could return the bow or take more than two steps forward. He did not believe that the Imperial Navy was really assigning ninja adepts to spy on the gaijin advisers they were letting watch them fight the Russians, but it was undeniably hard for any of the observers to be awake and alone for long.

At least the Draka had found this easier to adapt to than some of the other nationalities, particularly the British and Germans. Omnipresent little brown men in blue or white were not too different from the household serfs that every Citizen took for granted, from the cradle to the deathbed, however un-serflike their behavior.

The brightest lights and the only noise except the distant diesel seemed to come from the radio room. Jahn looked in through the uncurtained doorway, to see Warrant Officer Chiba at the central table, while a pair of long, blue-clad legs thrust out from what seemed to be the bowels of the radio cabinet.

Jahn didn't need rude magnolia-accented mutterings floating out past the legs to know their owner. He had vivid and mostly pleasant memories of all his encounters with Tetrarch Julia Belle Pope of the Women's Auxiliary Service, and some of the most vivid were also the most pleasant.

Repairs on the radio explained the power-up; the Shalamanzar XVI airship sets ate power like a mine serf attacking his dinner. Pope was a qualified radio operator and instructor, land, sea, and air. Was she aboard for maintenance, or—?

It was less than an hour before the Kokutai was supposed to lift out on the biggest airship operation since the Draka burned Odessa. That was slicing time thinly, even with somebody who could work (or play) as fast as Pope.

"Attention!" Jahn called softly.

Scrape, rattle, thump, then:

"Shit in your rice bowel, Horrie!" in excellent Japanese. Warrant Officer Chiba tried not to grin.

Tetrarch Pope scrambled out of the radio housing, managed to combine a salute and wiping oil off her forehead, then finger-combed her dark hair as she looked Jahn up and down. He was familiar with her looks of friendly appraisal; this appraisal was hardly friendly.

"Ah had a feeling it might come tah this, when the Archangels borrowed me for Satsuma," she said in English, using the term for the Arch-Strategos and Rear Admiral who nominally ran the Draka observation mission. "But Chief Yoshiwara's gone in for surgery. Appendix, ah heard. It came down to me joining the crew or Chiba flying solo. Surely y'all wouldn't want to gladden yo' male hearts that badly, now would y'all?"

Chiba shot Jahn a look that combined mild alarm and complete resignation. Any Warrant radio operator had to understand enough English to know what was going on. The Japanese were up there with the fustiest of British cavalry generals, in preferrring women far behind the shooting line. But preferences were one thing; arguing with Julia Belle Pope was something else.

"You getting killed isn't going to gladden my heart at all," Jahn said. "Or anybody else's."

He thought he saw her shifting her feet, to be ready for a fight if things went that far. Then he raised her near hand to his lips, bowed over it, kissed it, clicked his heels in a perfect parody of Leutnant zur See Peter Strasser, and grinned.

"But I suppose you wish to know what happens to me as soon as possible. I take the liberty of assuming that you would miss me—as I would indeed miss you."

He thought his voice had been steady when he said that, as a Citizen's and a soldier's ought to be. Apparently he didn't quite succeed. Pope snatched her hand back, and Jahn could have sworn she was blushing as she dove back into the radio cabinet.

"Yo' ain't good lookin' enough to just stand around lak a prettybuck, Horrie," floated out from the shadows. "So if yo' cain't think of anythin' better to do, check the battery in the Numbah Three worklight and ah'd be evah so grateful."

"Aye aye, ma'am," Jahn said, pointed at Chiba, and switched to Japanese.

"Hard work, Chiba-san, and while we're at it, count the rest of the torch batteries."
* * *

It had been Pope who kissed Jahn first, and that on the first day they met, in the third month of the war. That had been a surprise; most of the rest he'd learned about Julia Belle Pope in the seven months since hadn't been. Frightening, delightful, or outrageous in about equal proportions—and after a while, they could laugh together about even the outrageous parts. . .

He'd been returning to the Draka Mission Compound outside Sasebo after the first airship patrol where the Japanese had allowed him to stand bridge watches alone. Since he'd commanded Fury out of Trincomalee two full years before the war broke out, they hadn't needed to take so long to admit that he was a qualified airship officer.

However, Japan's industrial base was limited. Russian front-line strength was two to one against them, and the Americans were using financial influence and the threat of their Pacific and China Fleets to enforce an arms embargo that hurt the Japanese much more than it did the Russians. Modern weapons to the Japanese were like Citizens to the Draka—capital, not interest, to be expended with the same exquisite caution.

Jahn unpacked his flight gear and took a sponge bath in his quarters. He always preferred to be alone for a few minutes, after days in the echoing crampedness of an airship's quarters. Then he headed for the palestra—the dojo, he corrected himself. Half an hour of exercise or even a few minutes' sparring would unkink the rest of his muscles and make him fit for the company of Citizens, Japanese hosts, or even other nations' observer teams.

The dojo, however, was already occupied. Jahn's first proof of that came as he opened the door and saw a tanned bare foot dart toward Lieutenant Commander Goto's head. Goto saved himself from having the foot shatter his nose and cheekbone by a blurringly fast back roll, then pivoted on his thick arms and scythed down his opponent with both legs. An "Umpff!" and the sound of a body hitting the bamboo mats marked the end of the bout.

Jahn stepped forward and bowed to Goto and the unknown other. He—no, she—was already rolling to her feet, favoring one leg a trifle. She was half a meter narrower and a head taller than Goto, who resembled a pocket-sized sumo wrestler.

Goto and the woman returned the bows. "How was your flight?" Goto said, in Japanese.

The Imperial officer probably already knew more about the patrol than Jahn did. Goto was an accomplished submariner temporarily assigned to the staff job of playing herdboy to the Draka observer mission. He'd abandoned none of his old contacts, even if they hadn't got him the submarine command he transparently wanted.

Jahn looked at the woman, realized that she was not only European but Draka, and decided that the long-rumored Women's Auxiliary Corps detachment must have arrived while he was in the air. He also decided that a little courtesy might put a smile on a very agreeable face. It had vast pools of brown eyes, a wide mouth with dazzling white teeth, a frame of curling dark hair, and only one negative point—a nose so long and sharp that Jahn had a brief mental image both erotic and ludicrous.

He bowed to the woman again. "Lieutenant Commander Horace Jahn, Airship Service of the Navy of the Dominion."

She replied with a salute. "Tetrarch Julia Pope, Women's Auxiliary Corps, at your service." She spoke in fluent Japanese, with a more refined accent than Goto's, or even Jahn's. Then she grinned, and Jahn was not disappointed over what a grin did to her face.

Jahn turned to Goto. "We flew as far as the Bonins—pardon, the Ogasawaras—but sighted little. Yubari is still aground on Iwo Jima, and nothing remains of last week's cruiser battle but wreckage and a few rafts. We saw no signs of life on any of them."

"Ran has taken them to her," Pope said. Even in Japanese, she sounded as if she was praying. Jahn's eyebrows twitched. He'd heard the Norse gods invoked quite a few times since the Old Faith revival started. Usually the invocation was the gods' private parts, and he'd never heard anyone reverently name the goddess of the sea.

"May it be so," Jahn said. Goto also bowed his head and muttered a Shinto prayer too softly for the Draka to catch all of it. "On the way back, we saw an American airship—Shenandoah class, I think—who shadowed us for about eight hours until we shook her off at nightfall. They said they were off their course to the Philippines, but they didn't turn when we gave them the correct heading."

Pope's face now twisted into something that only needed a few snakes to be a perfect mask of Medusa. "Damnyankee snoops!" she snarled in English. "What do they think they're doin', messin' around in this war? Think the Japanese are Confederates in disguise?"

The accent was American—Confederate American. Obviously no relative of the Union General, later Senator, John Pope. Her family would have fought the American Civil War in gray and butternut, with Ferguson rifles that Horace's grandfather William might have run through the blockade.

"I doubt that we shall agree on the rights of the United States to be interested in this war," Goto said. "From their point of view, the total victory of either side would endanger their position in the Philippines and western Pacific, not to mention their hopes that the Tai'pings may turn China into a valuable trading partner."

"The only position ah want tah see Yankees in is on their hands and knees, beggin' the Confederacy to secede again," Pope said briskly. "But ah suppose that's too much to ask for, in anythin' but a what-if novel like that fellah Futrelle writes."

"Most likely," Goto said. "But a word to you, Tetrarch Pope, speaking as one who is for the moment acting as your sensei. You must remember not to strike except when you are completely centered. You are very fast and have a longer reach than many Japanese. . . but striking from the true center gives you the advantage over a non-centered opponent of any size."

Pope nodded, and looked Jahn up and down. He felt like a prize bull being judged at an agricultural fair. "Want tah go a few falls, sir, see if Goto's right?" she asked.

Jahn shook his head. Pope's face hardened again. Jahn almost took a step backward.

"Because I'm a woman?"

He shook his head. "Two good reasons. I've had ten hours of sleep in the last five days. Also, my school didn't teach the pankration style. I wasn't too bad at Graeco-Roman wrestling—"

"Ha!" Goto said. "Jahn-san has five heavyweight wrestling crowns, two from school and three from the Navy. Indeed, I would say that he was not too bad."

"Even mo' interestin' " Pope said. "Ah do think a friendly match might be entertainin'. But some othah time, ah agree—wouldn't do fo' me to have an unfair advantage, now would it?"

She stepped up to Jahn, gave him a not-quite-mocking peck on the cheek, then sauntered over to where her gear bag stood on a bench. The Japanese palestra garment, the white cotton gi, was loose fitting for freedom of movement, but Julia Pope would have looked good in a barley sack, either going away or coming toward you.

Obviously one of the Advanced Women, Jahn thought, and a red-hot Rebel as well. Odd combination—but interesting for more than her physical parts. Not that there's anything likely to be wrong with those . . .
* * *

Lieutenant Commander Goto ignored the water still draining from Number 36's bridge platform, that had already soaked his legs to mid-calf. He braced himself between the railing and the periscope housing and studied the horizon with his binoculars. On the other side of the housing, Sub-Lieutenant Yamamoto did the same. Behind them, one seaman made notes as the two officers identified the Russian ships, while another stood lookout.

The Russians had no operational submarines at Port Arthur, or so said the Naval Staff, but the Naval Staff was not infallible. Nor was it impossible that some of their newer undersea vessels, nearly as powerful as Number 36, could have made the voyage south from Vladivostok to support the Far East Fleet in its biggest operation of the war.

Meanwhile, less than ten thousand meters away, five hundred or more guns paraded by. The smallest of them would be able to keep the submarine from diving with a single hit. Goto focused his binoculars to get a better look at the ships now passing, Petr Veliky and two others of her class of five. Eight 30cm guns, fourteen 150cm, a score of lighter weapons, all cased in 250mm armor and driven by Germania/Danzigwerke turbines at twenty-three knots.

The Germans had an odd taste for supplying a potential enemy, Russia, with so much modern weaponry. But Britain was another potential enemy and Japan a British ally in all but name. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" was doubtless a popular saying among German shipbuilders.

Three torpedo gunboats now, one-twentieth the battleships' tonnage, seven knots faster, no armor and no guns larger than 10cm, but six torpedo tubes. Then a ship with even more freeboard than the battleships and three even taller funnels, belching a plume of smoke that must have had anyone in her wake coughing like a consumptive. Her decks were crowded with gray-clad troops whose uniforms nearly blended into the superstructure. Goto waited until the transport was out of his field of vision, but before she was gone, another (this one had two funnels and a green hull) steamed into view.

Goto and Yamamoto counted twelve troop-laden transports and nine cargo vessels before the Russian fleet vanished behind its own smoke cloud, still headed south. At least thirty-five warships, probably more, convoying at least twenty-one merchant vessels, was Goto's count. As he asked Yamamoto for his estimate, they both heard the distant rumble of guns.

"We did not see them all," the younger officer said. "They have sent a squadron against Wei-hai-wei."

"Much good may that do them," Goto said. The Japanese had not successfully attacked Port Arthur since it fell to the Russians at the beginning of the war, because of its defending gun batteries, mines, torpedo squadrons, and shore-launched torpedoes. The Japanese anchorage at Wei-hai-wei was just as well defended, with five coastal submarines in place of the shore torpedo tubes. It also now held the coastal defense ships Fuso and Haruna, which gave Goto a personal reason for wishing that the Russians were only making a diversion. His brother commanded a main-battery turret aboard Fuso, and the two old ships were the most visible targets in the anchorage if the Russians tried a serious attack.

Unlikely, though. The agents left behind when the Imperial Navy evacuated Port Arthur had taken full advantage of the Russians being unable to tell a Chinese-speaking Japanese from a native Chinese, and gained full details of the Russian plan to strike far to the south, at Hainan Island. The transports would be carrying nearly five thousand Russian soldiers to spearhead the attack on the island, and the cargo vessels thousands of tons of modern weapons and ammunition, to supply the private armies of the Chinese governors of the coastal provinces. Then either Japan's hard-won foothold on the Chinese coast would be attacked, or the Combined Fleet would have to sortie and meet a superior Russian Far East Fleet at a time and place of the Russians' choosing.

Or possibly both together.

Goto studied the horizon again, then nodded to Yamamoto.

"Trim down until only the radio mast is above water. Then we will transmit our report."

Yamamoto's round young face showed confusion. "Are we not going to pursue on the surface and attack by night?"

"After we report, if then," Goto replied. "The courage of the samurai is not in rushing to his death without purpose or gain. It is in serving the Emperor to the best of his abilities, whether by living or by dying."

"As the Emperor commands—"

"—so we are done with sitting about in plain sight," Goto finished. "Clear the bridge and rig for running awash." The soft-voiced command was enough to start the others scrambling through the hatch. Unlike the raucous diving alarm, it could reach no hostile ears.
* * *

The meeting of Jahn and Pope at the dojo was the first of many, at intervals of a few days over the next five months. Acquaintance ripened into friendship as the war settled into a stalemate both on land and at sea, a situation everyone knew that the Russians could endure longer than the Japanese.

The only unfrustrated Japanese either of the Draka knew was Goto. A month after their meeting, he received his orders—command of Number 36, one of the latest Imperial Fleet submarines. His farewell party was memorable, and his relief at getting back into the fighting undisguised.

The Japanese raided across the Yalu River into Russian-occupied Manchuria, and sent occasional airship raids against vulnerable points on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The Russians sent their long-range cruisers south from Petropavlosk, creeping out behind icebreakers during the long nights, to raid Japanese ocean commerce. The Japanese raided the strongholds of pro-Russian Chinese, while similar squadrons of Russian light craft raided the Japanese coast. Each side tried to interrupt the other's oil shipments from Borneo (Number 36 torpedoed a Russian auxiliary cruiser off Sarawak, sending it limping off to internment in Haiphong), until the Americans persuaded the British to join them in establishing a Neutrality Patrol around the oil fields. Rumor had it that they'd threatened to occupy the Sultan of Brunei's territory with a regiment of Marines if the British didn't cooperate.

That rumor moved Julia Pope to eloquent fury. "That's the closest the Yankees have come to really messin' with somebody who could mess them back, since ah was a girl. Then they'all have to go kiss and make up. Ah could spit."

Which she promptly did, startling two British officers passing by. One of them looked ready to take up the challenge of such unladylike conduct, but Jahn now knew Pope well enough to step back and let her deal with the officer on her own.

"Although if he'd said `loose Draka morals' one more time, they'd both have had a quarrel with me," Jahn said, when Pope had finished an explanation that fell somewhat short of an apology. "Would you have left enough of them for me?"

"If ah was feelin' generous, maybe," she said, slipping her arm through his. That was Improper Public Contact under the regulations, but even with the Women's Auxiliary detachment, the Draka observation mission was still less than a hundred strong. That was no more than a couple of tetrarchies or the crew of a torpedo gunboat, even if two flag officers commanded it, and all Citizens. Discipline was therefore easy enough so that Jahn and Pope could indulge themselves in the pleasure of shocking the other observers. It probably amused the Japanese, and what the Archangels didn't know wouldn't hurt anybody.

"Right now, though, ah feel closer to dirty," Pope said. "Mind if we share the fee for the ofuro?"

Jahn started suspecting things when Pope reserved a private bath at a respectable inn. He stopped suspecting and started hoping when she slipped off her uniform and climbed into the tub with him. Nothing he saw disappointed him at all, and his body's reaction to her undraped splendor apparently didn't disappoint her.

"You look glad to see me." He would have sworn that she was purring.

"Well, I might call you—ah, see worthy. Very."

They went eagerly from looking to touching, and it was quite a while before they had free lips or enough breath to say anything.

That wasn't the last such encounter, either. The Japanese grew cautious about letting anybody's observers aboard their dirigibles, claiming that most of them were on patrol against the Petropavlovsk raiding cruisers, in the dangerous weather over the icy seas off Hokkaido and the Kuriles. Nothing to see, or so Goto's dour replacement told Jahn, "And we can hardly ask foreign observers to expose themselves in areas where we send even our own men reluctantly."

Since the Combined Fleet held most of its exercises as far north as possible, to escape those same foreign observers and "strengthen the spirits of the men," Jahn knew that the officer was lying and suspected that the officer knew that Jahn knew. However, implying either of these things would offend Japanese honor, probably leading to Jahn's being shipped home on a slow Portuguese tramp freighter.

Julia listened attentively, almost affectionately, that night, then gently bit the side of his neck and whispered in his ear, "Somethin' that the serf wenches do, that they say is fun for men too." Her mouth moved downward, until she heard him laugh.

"You'd bettah tell me what yo' find so funny, or ah just might bite."

Jahn tried to control his voice, and finally managed it by stroking her hair. With his eyes on the waxed cedar of the ceiling, he said, "Your nose. It's—that long, that I thought—if you ever did this—you would gut me with that—ow!"

The nip was playful, though. After a while, he groaned. "I see I was wrong."

"You cain't see anythin', Horrie. You've got your eyes shut."

"I see Paradise. That's enough."

"Ah thought the Christians say there's no lovin' in Heaven," she murmured, as well as she could with her mouth full.

"They could be wrong."

"Ah most sincerely hope so."

II

Over the Sea of Japan, 0800, August 18, 1905

It was three and a half hours since Jahn saw Pope's legs protruding from under the radio cabinet. It was also three hours and twenty-five minutes into a mystery.

What were the Japanese up to?

He and Pope had still been on the observation platform aft of the radio room when they saw out the windows a convoy rolling by, a long line of the little pneumatic lorries that the Japanese used on major bases. They moved at a walking pace—proof of this: more than a hundred armed sailors marched to either side of the convoy, shouldering bayoneted rifles while their officers marched with drawn swords.

Each lorry towed a bomb cart, with a canvas-shrouded bundle on it. Jahn thought that there were two sizes of bundles, both larger than conventional bombs. As he tried to lean out the window, two of Satsuma's crew came up behind him, politely urged him back, then slid the shutters closed with a fierce rattling and clinking.

A minute later, more metallic noises floated in from outside and from below. Winches and chains were lifting something heavy—something that they did not want him to see—aboard Satsuma and the rest of the airships. This went on for a good twenty minutes, interrupted once by a gonglike bwannnggg and a cacophony of screams and Japanese curses.

Jahn himself had never dropped a bomb in anger, and never seen anything larger than the standard 500-kilo incendiary clusters, direct descendants of the warloads that burned Odessa a generation ago. He knew that several nations had bombs twice that weight. The Draka and the Americans had even used them in combat, on Bushmen in the Sahara and Moro rebels in the Philippines who'd gone to earth too far from roads to allow the peacekeepers to bring up artillery. No doubt the Japanese wanted something even bigger to be a surprise to both friend and foe.

Then trumpets and whistles called Satsuma's crew to quarters for getting underway. Five officers (plus Jahn and Pope) and twenty-eight petty officers and men saluted the Emperor's portrait (or faced toward the shrine holding the portrait, if they were on duty elsewhere), then all five engines came to life. Now the purring sounded more like a pride of lions who had just feasted on fresh livestock (with perhaps a lion dog or two for dessert). . .

Engine exhaust warmed the air in the superheat cell and Satsuma lifted gently into the still morning air, along with five other airships of her lead squadron. Jahn found an unshuttered window and saw that the morning haze was also lifting, except where the ten thousand charcoal fires of any Japanese city created their own murk. Jahn reminded himself that for a country with no local oil supply, burning charcoal was prudent frugality, not primitive filth. . .

His composure didn't survive a good look at the anchorage. Instead of empty water cut only by a few boat trails, he saw at least a squadron of battleships and armored cruisers, flanked by a line of scout cruisers on one side and torpedo cruisers and gunboats on the other. At least they had steam up and the scouts had raised observation balloons, but they amounted to a good third of the already-outgunned Combined Fleet and they were still in harbor.

Also, why the observation balloons, when they would be working with the airships?

Speculation ended then, as Satsuma glided forward, all five aluminum propellers chopping a wake of wind through the sky as the First Air Kokutai headed out to sea. Jahn's speculations only returned two hours later, as the propellers slowed while the engines worked as hard as ever, feeding the superheat so that the dirigibles went on climbing.

At three thousand meters, nearly pressure height, Satsuma broke out of one layer of clouds. Through unshuttered windows, Jahn had a good view of most of the Kokutai. Two-thirds of the Empire's airpower described slow circles between two layers of cloud, like a school of gigantic silver-gray fish in a god-sized aquarium. The flagship Akagi was so close that Jahn felt he could stick a hand out the window and touch the ten-meter square sun-rayed battle ensign flying from her upper fin.

He was raising his binoculars to get a better view of Akagi's bomb racks, when he saw a light blinking from the flagship. Something punched him in the back and someone said, "Yes!" behind him, as he finished reading the signal. Then a soft voice said:

" `The fate of the Empire depends on this day. Let every man do his utmost.' "

Jahn turned to see a grinning Julia Pope. "Ah don't suppose anybody told Admiral Kondo that there's at least one woman who's goin' to do her utmost?"

"He's probably too carried away by being the first admiral to lead an airship fleet into action."

"You think we're goin' after the Russian fleet?"

"Our hosts have to be secretive and ruthless. They can't afford to be crazy."
* * *