Distant Thunders d-4

by Taylor Anderson

  “Goddamn, what a crock!” Gray said.

  “Not a crock,” Matt retorted. “There’s definitely historical precedence, and it makes sense. Can anybody tell if there’s any blue on those flags? If Jenks thinks it’s that important, we’d better find out!”

  “Can’t tell!” shouted Monk. “All their flags are streaming aft and they’re headed right for us! I can see stripes now and then, but that’s it!”

  “What’s on top, red or white?” Matt barked.

  “Two thousand yards!” cried Finny.

  “Very well, left standard rudder. When we’re in position, we’ll heave to and maintain position. Flags?” he prompted again.

  “I can’t tell what’s on top!” Monk yelled.

  “Crow’s nest?” Matt demanded.

  “White!” said Finny. “No, red! Jeez, Skipper, crow’s nest no tell either! Campeti say coming to fifteen hundreds!”

  “Gun number four will prepare to commence firing. One shot only,” Matt said.

  “Fifteen hundreds!” Finny almost squealed.

  “Fire number four!”

  From aft, they heard the bark of the Japanese 4.7-inch dual-purpose gun. Even over the sound of the blower, the hssssshk sound of the projectile in flight was distinctive. A large geyser of spume erupted one hundred yards off the port bow of the largest approaching ship, and spray did indeed collapse upon the fo’c’sle.

  “Pass the word to Stites,” Matt said. “Well-placed.”

  For a long moment, there was no response from the ships. Matt was about to order a second shot when Monk reported that the target (odd how it had suddenly become “the target”) had begun reefing sails. Still, though, the ships continued toward them.

  “I don’t like it,” Gray said.

  “Me either,” agreed Matt. “They’re reducing sail like they’re respecting the warning shot, but they’re still steaming right at us. I don’t like it at all.” He looked to port. “Where’s Jenks?”

  “Coming up hand over fist, but he’s still a couple thousand yards off the port quarter. Sir, he’s hoisted a really big flag!” Matt looked. Sure enough, a much larger than usual Imperial national flag had been run up to the peak of Achilles ’ maintop. It was clearly a battle flag, and Matt had seen something similar done a long time ago. Walker even had her own battle flag now. Meticulously repaired after the Battle of Baalkpan, and with the name of that battle added to the others embroidered upon it, it lay folded in a place of honor in the center of the signal flag locker.

  “Run up our battle flag,” Matt said resignedly. “Obviously they understand what it means. That ought to impress them more than another warning shot!”

  “Skipper! They’re turning!”

  Matt looked back to the front. At about eight hundred yards, the four ships executed a very tight turn to port that only paddle wheels would have allowed. They still had the wind, and for a moment, the flags all streamed forward from aft. They were red-and-white flags, without the slightest touch of blue, and just as that realization dawned, the starboard side of all but one of the ships erupted in a solid bank of white smoke.

  “All ahead flank!” Matt shouted. “Main battery, commence firing! Somebody yank that white rag down and get our own flag up there!”

  Fireman Tab-At, or “Tabby,” felt the ship squat down and lurch forward as the throttlemen poured on the steam. She almost fell against the aft bulkhead of the fireroom. Access plates on the deck popped up out of their grooves and slid toward her like big, rectangular blades, and she hopped as they went by to keep from losing her toes. They clanged against the bulkhead behind her. “Feed ’em!” she shouted. “Open ’em up!” They had to increase the flow of air, water, and fuel to keep up with the sudden enormous dump of steam. An instant later, she felt like somebody had put a bucket on her head and started beating it with a stick. As quickly as it began, the heavy drumming ceased, but Walker kept picking up speed. The air lock cycled and Spanky emerged from the forward engine room. He was covered with dark fuel oil from head to foot, but his eyes were white as they darted around the compartment.

  “Everything okay in here?” he shouted.

  “Yeah…” Tabby started, then amended, “Yes, sir! A few loose plates. What happened?”

  “The bastards fired at us!” Spanky bellowed. “The goddamn sneakin’ bastards!”

  “Who shoot?” Tabby asked, her drawl and English slipping a little.

  “Those goddamn Company Brits. Who else?”

  “How you get so oily? Engines okay?”

  “Yeah. Somethin’ punched a hole through one of the saddle bunkers, somethin’ big. Must be rollin’ around in the bilge, ’cause it didn’t go out the other side, but it blew oil all over the place. Damage control’s on the way. Any of ’em come through here, tell ’em to pump the bilges into one of the two empty bunkers aft. It’ll be full of crap, but we can’t spare the fuel. Maybe we can separate it out some.” He started forward. “Gotta check the forward fireroom!”

  “Commander McFaar-lane?” Tabby asked. “Spanky? You okay?”

  Spanky stopped and looked back at her. “Swell, kid. Just gotta check on the old rice bowl.” He wiped at the oil burning his eyes. “Might be your rice bowl too, now. Chief Aubrey’s dead. Whatever came through just kinda smushed his head.” He wiped his face again. “Chiefs don’t last long down here. Never shoulda picked him. He started out as a torpedoman, for God’s sake! Shoulda left him at home!” Spanky sneezed, still wiping his face on his oil-soaked sleeve, and disappeared forward through the swirling, steamy heat of the fireroom.

  “Damage report!” Matt bellowed over the rapid salvos of the numbers one, two, and four guns.

  “Buncha big dents, three big holes,” Finny replied. “One hole through for’ard engine room, make big leak in fuel bunker. One dead, two injured. ’Nother hole through wardroom, spray Selass with few steel pieces, but she okay. Hole through for’ard berthing space not hurt anybody.”

  “ Damn them! Their flagship better be a wreck by now!” Matt growled. He raised his binoculars and stared hard at the geysers erupting around the distant ship. Actually, as he thought about it, it would be a miracle if they’d hit anything with their first salvo. They had explosive rounds now, using a black-powder bursting charge just like in the Great War. It was a lot better than the solid copper bolts they’d been forced to use before, and way better than nothing. The problem was, Bernie was still working out some issues with his cordite. They had all the formulas, but the organic material they had to work with was different and produced different properties and burn rates. For now, they were still using black-powder propellant charges, and it took time to work out the differential math on the gun director. Their sudden acceleration to flank hadn’t helped. Unconsciously, he opened his mouth, trying to pop his ears. They’d installed one of Amagi ’s alarm bells to replace the dead salvo buzzer, but Campeti had forgotten to push the button. “Cease firing main battery,” he called. “Left full rudder! Come to course one eight five!” He needed to give his fire control crew a break, and the only thing that would allow that was a constant course and speed.

  “Left full rudder, aye!” answered Kutas. “Making my course one eight five!” Another enemy broadside churned the sea behind the ship, skating across the wave tops and looking for all the world like a giant shotgun pattern in a duck pond.

  “They can’t hit a moving target, at least one moving this fast,” Matt observed with satisfaction. “Where’s Jenks?”

  “Starboard quarter. He’ll pass astern of us on this course,” Gray answered. “He’s still headin’ right at ’em!”

  “Course is one eight five degrees!” Kutas exclaimed.

  “Main battery may resume firing as soon as they have a solution,” Matt ordered. He’d opened the range and given his gunners a stable platform. Crrack! Three guns spoke together and smoke gushed aft from number one. Shssssssssh… Splashes rose.

  “Down fifty!” they heard Campeti shout from above. “Match poin
ters

  … Fire!”

  “Good hits, good hits!” cried the lookout in the crow’s nest. New splashes erupted around Walker and she shuddered from a heavy, booming impact forward.

  “Trying to lead us,” Matt observed with grudging admiration. That had taken quick thinking and steady nerves. “What’s the condition of the first target?”

  “She hit pretty bad, it look like. She steam in circle, out of line.”

  “New target, designate far left steamer,” he ordered.

  “Campeetee say we can’t shoot at her,” replied the talker a moment later.

  “Why not?” Matt raised his glasses. Damn, what’s Jenks up to? Achilles was still steaming forward, broad battle flag streaming, and she’d moved almost directly between Walker and her target. Splashes began to rise around Jenks’s ship.

  “Come left to one five zero! Redesignate far right enemy ship!” Matt ordered in frustration.

  “Making my course one five zero, aye!”

  Matt didn’t want to close the range and risk any more serious hits, but he needed to be closer to support whatever it was Jenks was up to. He studied the enemy battle line through the lingering haze of the day and the gun smoke of battle. What was left of the line. The enemy had opened the battle- started it, he fumed-in an extremely disciplined fashion, but in the face of Walker ’s salvos, that discipline had fallen apart. The far left ship he’d meant to engage was rushing headlong for Achilles, just as the far right ship had turned toward Walker. The largest, presumably most powerful, had made a wide, looping turn to port that now had her steaming away, off the starboard beam of the ship Walker was bearing down upon. The only ship that had maintained her position in the original formation seemed to have struck her colors! At that moment, no one was firing at anybody. What a mess.

  “Guns one and three will bear on the advancing ship!” shouted the talker.

  “Commence firing!” An instant later, the two four-inch fifties boomed.

  At a range of only six hundred yards, it was almost like engaging the smaller, slower Grik ships they’d fought; but unlike the Grik, the enemy had at least one heavy gun that would bear forward. Even as Walker fired, smoke bloomed on the enemy fo’c’sle. Matt never knew where the roundshot from the big smoothbore went; it didn’t hit the ship, but Walker ’s two exploding rounds found their mark. The first detonated against the fo’c’sle with a thunderclap they eventually heard. Large splinters flew in every direction and the bowsprit dropped into the sea, pulling the foretop down with it. The second shot must have exploded inside the ship, because gouts of smoke gushed from the gunports. Bernie’s new shells weren’t as devastating as the old high-explosive rounds, Matt decided, but they could still make a mess of a wooden ship. He was about to call, “Cease firing,” when the next salvo streaked toward the target. One round struck a paddle box and spewed smoke and debris far across the water. The other went down the throat again, and again there was little apparent effect.

  At first.

  Suddenly, for an instant, the entire center of the ship seemed to bulge as if her seams were straining against some horrendous inner pressure. In the blink of an eye, the seams burst open like an enormous grenade and the ship blew apart amid an expanding, scalding cloud of sooty steam.

  “Cease firing, cease firing!” Matt yelled. “All ahead, flank! Have the boats swung out and rig netting along the sides! Stand by to rescue survivors!”

  The Bosun started to dash for the stairs. “Uh, Skipper? Maybe we’d better have some of Chack’s Marines handy. If there are any survivors, they might try to pull some kind of fanatical Jap-like shit. Remember that one crazy Jap…”

  “I remember, Boats. By all means, keep a squad of Marines at the ready.” He glassed the floating debris that had once been a ship. There did appear to be survivors. If so, they didn’t have much time to get to them. He looked beyond the wreckage. The bigger ship was still headed away and was piling on sail. With her damaged paddle wheel, she probably hoped to escape with the wind alone. He shook his head. Turning, he saw that the one ship that had apparently “surrendered” was still hove to, and was beginning to drift. Turning still farther, he saw that Jenks and the final enemy combatant would soon pass alongside each other, and they were already going at it hammer and tongs. Gun smoke drifted between them and he could feel the periodic pounding of their guns in his chest. “Signal Ensign Reynolds, if you can get his attention,” he said, referring to the pilot still circling the battle overhead. “Tell him to buzz the enemy ship engaging Achilles, but stay out of musket shot! Maybe he can distract them or something.”

  “Holy cow!” Reynolds yelled when the ship about fifteen hundred feet below suddenly just… blew up. Kari shrieked when debris peppered the plane and a slender, three-foot splinter lodged in the port wing. “Holy cow!” Reynolds shouted again, and then struggled for control when the shock wave hit.

  “I got hole between my feet!” Kari cried over the voice tube. “We leak when we land!”

  “Yeah,” agreed Fred, “I bet that’s not the only one either. Who knows what it was. Maybe a nail.”

  “Big damn nail!”

  “Hey, look! Walker ’s coming up fast. Maybe she’s going to pick up survivors. She’s running up a new signal too. What’s it say?”

  Kari strained to read the flags as they went up the several halyards on the destroyer’s foremast. “Ahh, they spell it. I not so good at spell yet. I know standard message flags good. Not so good with spell flags. They too many!”

  Reynolds pushed forward on the stick and banked slightly left. “I’ll have a look. Just be sure they know we’re full of holes and our gas is half gone. When we set down, they’d better fish us out in a hurry!” He flew closer to the ship, squinting his eyes. “Okay.” He paused. “They’re not all letter flags,” he accused.

  “What they say?”

  “They say, ‘Buzz enemy still fighting. Distract from Jenks. Beware mu… muskets.’ Acknowledge that, will ya?”

  “Okay.”

  Reynolds stood on the rudder and banked right, then began a slow climb. Several minutes later, still gaining altitude, he passed over the ship that wasn’t doing anything and continued toward where Achilles and her enemy were now locked in a deadly, smoke-belching embrace. “Wouldja look at that!” he exclaimed. The ships had apparently damaged each other’s paddle wheels and all they seemed able to do was steam in ever-tightening circles around each other. Both looked shattered, and Achilles ’ foremast was down. The funnel on the enemy ship had been shot away and her deck was choked with smoke.

  “Here we go!” Reynolds shouted, and pushed on the stick. The new planes had altimeters, but they weren’t very accurate or quick to adjust, so he ignored his now. The airspeed indicator worked just fine and his was starting to crowd the red-painted line. A few hundred feet above the enemy masts, he pulled back on the stick and the Nancy swooped up and away. Something smacked the plane and he heard a low, humming vooom! whip past him in the cockpit.

  “Captain say you stay away from muskets!” Kari shouted.

  Fred started to reply that he’d meant to; that he hadn’t really realized how low he’d been. Now he was mad. He spiraled upward, gaining altitude for another pass. Pushing the nose over, he lined up on where he thought he’d have a bow-to-stern approach by the time they got there. Fumbling at his holster with his left hand, he pulled out his Colt. “I’ll teach you to shoot at me, you screwy Brits!” he muttered. He laid the pistol on his lap, then took the stick in his left hand and the pistol in his right. He flipped the safety off.

  “We go too low again!” Kari scolded.

  Grimly, Fred pointed the pistol over the windscreen, in the general direction of the ship he was diving on. With nothing but ship in front of him, he started yanking the trigger. Drowned by the noise of the engine, all the pistol made was popping sounds, but he suspected the men below might hear it better. The ship was coming up fast and he knew he had to pull out. Easing back on the stick, he he
ard several more voooms! but nothing hit the plane-until he accidentally shot it in the nose himself as the target disappeared aft.

  “Crap!”

  He’d shot his own damn airplane! It wasn’t much of a hole, really, although he knew there’d be another one below, where the bullet came out. But with the obvious powder burn on the blue paint in front of the windscreen, there’d be no way he could blame the hole on enemy fire. He was lucky he hadn’t shot his own foot off!

  “Crap, crap, crap!”

  “What you say?” Kari cried from behind.

  “I said ‘crap’! ”

  “Get those men out of the water!” bellowed the Bosun. “I don’t care if they are sneakin’, bushwhackin’, traitorous sons o’ bitches! The more you let the fish get, the fewer we’ll have to hang!”

  The Bosun’s words were meant more for the men they were pulling from the water than the men and ’Cats who were saving them. Oddly, the usual swarm of flasher fish hadn’t yet arrived to tear the survivors apart. He couldn’t account for that. Maybe the explosion of the ship had driven them away, or maybe there just weren’t as many of the damn things in really deep water like this. Regardless, he expected something with an appetite would be along eventually, and judging by the panic with which the Imperial Company survivors were trying to get aboard, they must think so too. They’d made them send the most badly wounded up first and fifteen or twenty horribly burned and scalded men had already been sent to Selass in the wardroom. She’d appeared briefly on deck and seemed fine other than a few glistening spots where she’d applied some polta paste to her “scratches,” as she’d called them. Now the less injured were coming aboard and a handful already squatted, hands behind their heads, clustered around the steam capstan. Some simply stared back at the, to them, ridiculously small but unfathomably destructive maw of the number one gun.