The Heirs of Babylon by Glen Cook

Lappus's voice rose above the others. "We need
    practice steaming in formation. We'll do it. What station,
    Ranke?"

    "Station six, sir, at eighteen hundred meters."
    "Circular screen?"

    "Yes sir." Signal traffic having fallen off, Kurt climbed down to the open bridge. General quarters was secured.
    "Just in time to change the watch," Hans grumbled.
    Kurt laughed. "I told you we always get the shaft."
    The formation lumbered south at a slow five knots, the
    best the stores ship could manage. The journey down the
    Portuguese coast to Spain again was uneventful until, four
    and a half days later, they reached Trafalgar.

    During that time, with little else to do, Kurt concentrat-
    ed on scratching names off his list of murder suspects. One way or another, he learned where men had been at the
    time of Kapp's death. By Trafalgar he had eliminated a
    hundred possibilities. But it was slow work. He had to be
    careful not to attract attention. And the task went slower
    and slower as evidence grew harder to find.

    Then Trafalgar, site of Nelson's victory, that grim head-
    land so important to Napoleon's fall. Kurt was one of two
    men aboard who knew the battle had been fought. To
    everyone else, this was just another milestone along the
    sea road to Gibraltar, and whatever lay beyond.

    Idly, he wondered if Jager and this Gathering would
    be remembered by even one man four centuries in the
    future, if anyone would then care. Trafalgar had shaped
    all subsequent European history—though Jager's sailing
    could hardly be as significant—yet no one today remem-
    bered or was much interested. Only he and Hans, lonely
    men out of their times, put any value on that ancient
    battle. ... A wave of sadness swept him. He did not want
    to go for nothing, to be quickly forgotten.

    Trafalgar, the unremembered headland. Sad, Kurt
    thought, that so many should have died and had such little
    effect beyond their own time. A tear or two in Dover, a
    French woman weeping in Nice, and forgotten. Just an-
    other landmark on the seapath to an ocean of skulls....

72
    Until the carrier launched her aircraft. Then Trafalgar
    became memorable as the place where Germans first saw
    men take to the sky. The launch was almost laughable,
    certainly pitiful. There were just six planes, all sputtering, prop-driven monsters cobbled together from cannibalized
    parts, all as old and weary as the ship carrying them, and
    not a designed warplane in the lot.

    The fourth plane dropped like a stone off the end of the
    flight deck. It hit water in a fine splash, disintegrated, and was plowed under by the carrier. Wreckage appeared in
    her boiling wake.

    The other planes circled and climbed, coughing with a
    sort of half-life, got into a ragged formation, and stag-
    gered off toward Gibraltar. Drunkenly, Kurt thought, or
    like tired old men.

    Jager's crew watched from launch to departure, daz-
    zled. They had heard stories, had seen wreckage, but
    flying men remained unreal as kobolds till seen.

    The planes returned after dark. Kurt was off watch, but
    he had stayed up to see their recovery. Sitting alone on
    the signal bridge, he stared at the carrier's brilliantly
    lighted flight deck. One by one, the ancient aircraft
    dropped from the night and squealed to a halt.

    The third down missed the arresting cables with her tail
    hook. Kurt expected another fall into the sea, but the pilot hit full throttle, roared off the angle deck, and came
    around again, successfully.

    "Really something, isn't it?" someone asked. Kurt turned, nodding. Behind him was Erich Hippke, who had
    the watch.

    "Right. Tremendous. Think what it was like in the old
    days, with the American supercarriers and jets. Instead of
    five grumbly old prop jobs, a hundred jets. What an
    uproar they must've made."

    Hippke had an imagination as vivid as Kurt's. He ex-
    panded the picture. "Think what the Battle of the Kattegat must've been like. Hundreds of ships and thousands of
    planes." He shook his