It made him sick to think about and yet The Courageous was a bigger, tougher boat than most. How many others would make it through such an attack? Half? Two-thirds? And what shape would they be in to fight? It would be a given that once in the bay, the survivors would be set upon by the Queen’s fleet. Its size was unknown though the Intel ran the gamut from thirty ships to ninety. Even if it was a mere fifty ships, they’d have the advantage in speed and maneuverability. They’d be able to swarm in and cause further damage and if the rumor of torpedoes were true…Boschee shivered. It would be the end of the fleet and the end of the Corsairs.
This was going through the Black Captain’s mind as well. “But what if that’s what she wants us to think,” he murmured, half under his breath. “What if she’s weaker than we think? What if she’s betting everything that we don’t go blasting straight through?”
“We could send in a recon squad of thirty ships,” Boschee suggested.
“And if they are allowed past the bridge and are immediately attacked?” he asked this as if asking himself. “So many what ifs. Bluff and double bluff. She can’t be strong everywhere, so what does she do? She attempts to appear weak everywhere. And succeeds. She’s practically begging me to attack now, as soon as possible. What was it like when Gaida attacked? She held the bridge, but not in force. She was too weak to hold anything in force. Is now any different? No, it’s not. She’s weaker than she thinks…or does she know her weaknesses with her cobbled-together crew of the unwilling. Am I looking at a lie within a lie or the truth disguised by a lie?”
Boschee didn’t know what to say and was glad he didn’t have to make this particular decision. He couldn’t fault Gaida for how he had attacked. Based on all the Intel they’d had, it made sense to drive home the attack without waiting. Had they done so a month before, when there was no queen, the little disparate groups would have fallen one after another with ease.
But now there was a queen. Supposedly it was the girl doctor from Bainbridge, the same one that the Black Captain had been considering kidnapping. Had it not been for the rumors of her insanity, he would have done it years ago. A doctor and now a queen, Boschee thought. She was more than that if she was causing the Captain to hesitate. He had never seen the Captain hesitate or second guess himself in all the years he had known him.
Or third or fourth guess himself for that matter, as he was doing now, pacing the deck of The Courageous, with his hands behind his back and talking through every possibility. He reminded Boschee of a gambler facing an all-in bet, and in a way, he was. A loss here would doom the Black Captain, and them all as well.
For a long, frustrating, freezing hour he paced back and forth, uncaring that Boschee’s men were shivering in their positions. They were not the only ones suffering from this long wait. The entire Corsair fleet hung back a mile or so from the bridge, sailing in endless loops, struggling to keep in their formations.
Finally, he stopped and scanned the bay area one more time with his binoculars. “There is only one conclusion we can draw: she is weaker than we could have guessed. Still, we can’t move blindly and throw away our advantage.”
“Soooo…” Boschee asked, not at all sure what the Captain had decided.
“So, we wait. We let them stew in their fear as it builds up. We let them freeze in the rain until they won’t be able to move when we bring the fight. We let them think about the storm of pain that will be coming their way and then, when the time is ripe, we strike.”
He had Boschee run that very message up the mast as they tacked laboriously into the wind back to the fleet. It was a long message to send using only colored pendants. It was also the wrong message to send to men who had been living in cold, cramped conditions for the last three days. Waiting was the last thing they wanted to do. They were men of action. They were men who had never dawdled when attacking was an option.
It didn’t sit well with them and, instead of throwing fear into their enemies, it stoked the doubt in their hearts. The aura of invincibility that had always surrounded the Black Captain had not dimmed when someone had dared to steal one of their boats, and nor had it faded when Tony Tibbs failed to take the Hill People in the first battle weeks before. But when Philip Gaida was killed, and half his armada was destroyed, and the other half became traitors, people couldn’t help but look at the Black Captain and wonder if his time was coming to a close.
This doubt festered for three hours. The men grew stiff from the cold and snappish from the tedium of keeping station in one of the worst places possible to do so. They had to deal with the tidal current heading west, the ocean current heading south and the wind and waves that shot due east. The constant undulation made even some of the hardier Corsairs seasick.
The Black Captain was made of sterner stuff. Hard weather didn’t bother him and nor was he hampered by doubt. He knew his men would rebound once they were moving again, while his enemies would quail at the sight of his black sails opening to their fullest. He came up on deck after a refreshing nap and immediately hurled his entire fleet straight at Rodeo Lagoon.
The men let out a great shout as the fell ships swooped down on the empty beach. It looked to everyone as though they were going to make a landing there, but at the last moment the flags were sent up, ordering the fleet to veer away.
As they did, smoke started billowing up in dozens of places behind the first line of hills. The Black Captain nodded at the smoke with a knowing look in his eye, as if he had expected it. Next, he had the fleet curl out to sea. With the heavy, low-hanging clouds they were quickly beyond sight of land and so it should have been a shock when they came shooting back, born on an eight-knot wind.
This time the fleet made straight for the west side of San Francisco. They were not greeted with fires, but rather with the sound of bells ringing in a wild frenzy. They echoed up and down the empty streets. Despite the alarms, no one came running to try to stop a landing. The Black Captain stood on deck with that same knowing smile of his, gleaming white in his dark face.
“I don’t get it,” Boschee said, scanning the approaches to the waterfront. As far as he could tell they could land unopposed if they wanted to. “Where is everyone?” The only “people” he saw were zombies pouring out into the streets, looking for the source of the bells.
The Captain’s smile grew. “Hiding. They are hiding like weasels. The bells suggest weakness. They ring the bells to attract the dead to fight for them. They’ve done it before and this is their reminder to us. On the other hand, the fires to the north suggest strength. But do you really need strength to hold those hills?”
Boschee shrugged. “Maybe not, but you need strength to take them. If you think she’s only got a handful of people up there, I gotta remind you what happened to Gaida. He put nearly three hundred men ashore and they got ripped apart.”
“Trust me, Boschee, I know this, just as I know exactly what their little queen is thinking. So far, we’re just tapping here and there, looking for her weaknesses, of which she has plenty. I doubt she even knows her main weakness. She actually thinks her men…MY men will fight for her when the going gets tough. They’ll cave under pressure and it’s going to be our job to supply that pressure.”
“You have a plan?”
“Of course,” he said, smiling that confident grin of his. When he smiled like that, all doubts were forgotten.
His plan was as simple as it was unexpected. Instead of immediately attacking somewhere along the shoreline of San Francisco or at Rodeo Lagoon, the Black Captain pulled his fleet back a second time and, under the cover of the clouds, they went north to Muir Beach. Once there, he ordered half his forces to disembark.
Anyone with any sense knew that seizing the Golden Gate Bridge was the key to winning any battle for San Francisco. Whoever possessed the bridge could put a stopper in the bay. He or she could dictate the flow of battle. They could decide when to attack and could maneuver freely up and down the coasts. The Captain needed the bridge and his plan was to at
tack the approaches to it from two directions at once: from the north coming through the muck from Muir Beach, and from the west from Rodeo Lagoon.
“Caught between two forces the defenders will be surrounded, hammered mercilessly and destroyed,” the Captain explained to Boschee, smashing a fist into an open palm.
It was a fine plan and might have been a great one if the elements hadn’t been against them. The wind picked up, making the landing at Muir Beach even more dangerous than expected. Because of the crashing waves and the heavy seas, the boats could only come in one at a time and discharge their men in thrashing water, ten feet deep.
After one boat was nearly swamped and six men were drowned, the Captain changed tactics and anchored three boats in a row, stem to stern. A thick rope was strung from the last boat in line through the surf and tied to a tree just above the waterline. Like an endless run of spiders, men went from boat to boat and then along the rope to shore. Although they were weighed down with supplies, no one else died.
It took two hours to get the entire attacking force on the beach. At first the men huddled together against the rain and the cold, but when the Black Captain came ashore to lead in person, no man would cower, especially not a ship’s captain like Chuck Boschee.
He stood tall, hoping to be noticed, hoping to command the second force attacking Rodeo Lagoon. Instead, he and his entire crew found themselves slogging through foul-smelling mud that sucked at their legs in a way that made it feel as though they were stepping down into some sort of toothless mouth with every step.
The mud was annoying when it was only seven or eight inches deep it, but when it came up to their knees, it was a struggle to remain upright, it was a struggle to keep hold of one’s shoes, and more than anything, it was a struggle to keep going. The energy the mud stole from them made the march a torture. To make matters worse, most of the Corsairs were smokers and all of them drank to excess whenever they could.
They reeled and gasped, but no one dared to complain, and no one dared question the judgment of the Black Captain, at least not aloud. Boschee had to wonder why they didn’t find a nice dry port to hole up in for a few days. The Queen wasn’t going anywhere, after all.
As he frequently did, the Captain seemed to read his mind. “She is in a worse state than we are, Bosch. Her men are probably on the verge of mutiny. They’ve been out in this for hours, waiting and waiting, freezing their butts off. And what happens?”
Boschee shrugged, knowing that the Captain would continue once he caught his breath. Currently, he was using the excuse of taking off his working boots to rest.
When they were tied and slung over one broad shoulder, he went on, “We up and disappear. They have no idea where we are. They don’t know what to do. After a few hours, they probably think we are looking for someplace to hole up in. After another hour, they’re grumbling about the rain, and very soon they’re making a stink about leaving. And what can their little queen do, but give in? The fact is, we might come up on those hills and find them empty.”
He made it seem so likely that by the time the rumor of his little speech made its way from mouth to ear to the last man in the long column of dead-tired men, his words had been changed to say that the Queen’s men had fled altogether.
This buoyed them more than any rah-rah speech could have and with the last of their remaining strength, the men pushed on through the miles of muck until they scaled the last of the many hills and saw Rodeo Lagoon below them. In the grey light of the sunset, the little inlet was filled with Corsair boats, off-loading the other half of the Black Captain’s men by the hundreds.
The only opposition to be seen from the Queen was a few dozen black pits that sent up little wisps of smoke. The way to the bridge was open, as promised.
Chapter 18
“Boschee!” the Black Captain called out, loud enough for all seven hundred and fifty men to hear. “You have one order: take the bridge.”
Suddenly, the weariness of the long march fell away from Chuck Boschee. This was a true command, one that could catapult him into a real leadership role. Commanding a ship was great, but the perks of being one of the Captain’s chief lieutenants like Tibbs and Gaida had been, were incalculable.
“Consider it done!” he answered, and quickly snapped off a salute. He gazed over the crowd of men and didn’t see any recognizable faces. All he saw was a sea of blue-green tattoos, grizzled, wet beards and eyes that burned with revenge—the Corsairs had never had such a string of losses and each of them wanted it to end this day.
The problem was that the day itself was ending quickly. So much time had been wasted that Boschee didn’t know whether he’d be able to get to the bridge before the sunset. It was only a mile, but the hills here were just as slick and muddy as the previous ones. He needed to get moving that instant.
He started walking backwards and, as he went, he yelled out: “I want all the crews of the boats that are forty-footers and larger on my right. Everyone else, on my left! Let’s go! We’ll form into teams as we go. Captains, find your men and lead them. I want you out front. Courageous on me.”
At first, it was a mess as men went here and there yelling the names of their ships. Some had to be kicked into place and that was fine with Boschee. All he cared about was that he had sixty captains and sixty crews. When they were in place and marching in an uneven line toward the bridge, he turned to survey the land in front of him. In the fading light, it looked somewhat like a hilly version of the moon: grey and cratered.
Nothing lived and nothing stirred except the smoke rising from the fire pits. Boschee scoffed at them, wondering how this genius queen could be stupid enough to think they would fool the Black Captain. The pits lay in a diagonal line to his right, facing the lagoon where the ships were being off-loaded; the men looking small as they milled about on the beach.
“Lucky bastards,” Captain Shae Larson of the Orca, grumbled. “They got a half mile walk, while we’ve been hoofing it forever.” He was red-faced, his chest heaving.
Boschee wanted to tell the man to shut the hell up, however they were mounting another hill and already he was winded. Climbing its slick surface sapped the strength in seconds. Everyone bent double, using their hands and feet to propel them upwards. It wasn’t a large hill, maybe only seventy feet or so. Still, they were all gasping and wheezing by the time they got to the top.
As much as he wanted to stop to take a breather, there was no time for rest at the summit and Boschee immediately went sliding down the other side. He had been in the lead and was halfway down when he heard a cry from the ridge where the last of his attacking force had paused.
“Damn it!” he seethed, embarrassed that his formation looked more like a bunch of strolling losers bopping about a mall on a Sunday than anything resembling a battalion of men about to go on the attack. They were yelling something about the boats, but the wind had picked up and was snatching their words from the air and drowning them in rushing static. What did come through had an alien tinge of fear to it, something he wasn’t used to hearing.
Everyone turned towards the lagoon, where the ships were moving with stately calm, their black sails shortened because of the wind. A dozen or so were right up on the beach, getting as close as they dared, while another dozen were heading back out to sea after off-loading their men. More were in position, waiting their turn to come in, and behind them was the rest of the fleet.
“What the freak are you morons yelling about?” Boschee demanded, furiously. There wasn’t anything wrong. The ships were exactly where they were supposed to be. The men should have been cheering instead of yelling and pointing.
“They’re saying something about ships,” Captain Larson said. He had an M16A2 with a scope which looked like it was wedged into his eye. “Yeah, they’re ships, so what? Those are our ships, morons. You don’t need to get excited seeing our…wait. What the…”
His last words were filled with such dread that Boschee yanked up his binoculars and finally saw wh
at had his men so frightened. The ships further out to sea were black-hulled, black-sailed and streamed black flags, only on them were shining silver crowns. It was the Queen’s fleet and it was larger than they had expected. Much larger.
And in seconds, the rumors of torpedoes were proven true. They were too small and the waters too rough for them to be seen, however the explosions were hammering blows that sent fire and smoke high into the air. The Corsair fleet was outnumbered and hemmed in from three sides.
They had no room to maneuver and even if they could, the wind was against them. Some tried to tack towards the larger fleet, only to be targeted by three or four torpedoes at a time; none survived. It was a scene of utter mayhem, chaos, and death. Broken bodies and wrecked hulls floated in and out on the tide. Ships burned with such fierceness that the rain could not stem the flames and smoke poured into the skies, turning the evening into a premature twilight.
The smarter captains tried to use the burning ships as cover, hoping the dying ships would protect them from the torpedoes, but the Queen would not be denied her victory. The torpedoes were steered around the wreckage and began to score hit after hit. Her plan had always been for a battle of annihilation and it was just what she was getting, much to the Black Captain’s fury.
“Fight, damn it!” he bellowed.
All the fight had gone out of them. The remaining captains turned their ships to shore and made straight for the beach. From a military standpoint, just about any other action would have been preferable—they could have attacked all at once and at least caused the Queen to use up more of her valuable torpedoes—they could have anchored as close to the beach as possible and tried to find shelter under the guns of the three or four hundred men on shore.
Generation Z (Book 4): The Queen Unthroned Page 17