Two Space War
Page 11
"You will be in charge of the defense of our lower decks," their new captain had told her. "Except I don't want the lower decks defended. I want you to lure them in. Take the bare minimum force you need for the job. We will be in contact with the enemy only at the bow, so the space they can come across is fairly small. Detach the rest of your marines to support the boarding party on the upper deck." Broadax nodded placidly and sucked in on her cigar as he continued.
"Hold at the bow just long enough for the crew in the rigging to escape through the hatches. Stand for a minute at the for'ard hatch, then give them the gundeck, taking all the gunners down with you. Drop down into the hold and dog the hatch. I want to give them full run of the lower-side maindeck and gundeck, but not the hold. Then immediately evacuate Mr. Tibbits and your whole crew to the upper maindeck and reinforce our boarding party." Again she nodded, exhaling a cloud of noxious smoke that formed a small, low-lying fog bank.
"Do not let them into the hold. If you run the curs will chase. Their instinct, their 'honor,' and their doctrine demand it. But if they get into the hold and see the condition the Keel is in, they'll run back to their Ship like their tails were on fire." Still Broadax said nothing, only pulling in a drag from her cigar and rolling it to a corner in reply.
"Lieutenant Broadax," Melville continued, looking down into her beady, bloodshot eyes, "I want you to try very hard to avoid getting yourself killed. That's an order. I need you and your marines to reinforce the main boarding effort. Is that all understood?"
"Yes, sir!" the Dwarrowdelf replied, fondling her ax and exhaling deeply, adding fresh reinforcements to the toxic fog bank at her feet. "Minimum force below ta draw the curs in. The rest'll be under Corporal Kobbsven up here. Down below we'll let the blueboys in the rigging git out, then give the curs the maindeck. Then we git the gunners out, an' give 'em the gundeck. Dog the hatches shut, an' don' let 'em in the hold. Git back ta the upper deck an' come join the party." She added with a saucy wink and a gap-toothed grin, "An' don' git me ossifer ass bit by no mutt."
Old Hans shot a stream of tobacco overboard and laughed admiringly at this little joke at their new captain's expense. Broadax seemed truly delighted with her role in this caper. You'd never know that she'd just been given the most dangerous mission in what was already a forlorn hope. Kind of a suicide mission within a suicide mission. And she loved it.
* * *
Tibbits sat in the hold with a hand on the Keel of the Ship. The old carpenter was sobbing unashamedly.
"Mr. Tibbits," the captain had told him gently, "you stay in the hold and keep the Ship company. Once Lieutenant Broadax has cleared out, ask the Ship to hold for just another few seconds. Then immediately join the boarding party. Chips?" Melville continued, looking the old carpenter in the eye. "Resist the temptation to go down with the Ship. That's an order. Your skills may be vital to convincing this new Ship to accept us. The survival of everyone on this Ship may depend on your being with us."
Melville lowered his voice to a rasping whisper, husky with unshed tears, "Just tell her good-bye for us. Let her know we love her, and we will avenge her if she can hold on for a little while longer. If we do this right, old Kestrel herself will personally kill half of the enemy for us. Okay?"
The old man raised a tear-streaked face to his new captain. Not caring what the young lieutenant saw. He replied softly, almost inaudibly. "Aye, sir. Aye."
Lieutenant Fielder was in a black funk as he stood in the upper stern of Fatty Lumpkin, which usually served as the captain's barge. The other three cutters, Sharp-ears, Wise-nose and White-socks were sailing slowly along beside him, making an intentionally poor job of getting away from the coming battle.
"Put a skeleton crew in each cutter," Melville had said. "Move away as though you were trying to escape, but make a poor job of it and stay reasonably close. Come around to the far side of our boarding, and take the curs in the rear, on the green-side of their upper maindeck. You'll kick them in the tail, while we hold their noses!"
" 'Kick them in the tail,' " Fielder muttered to himself. He was too depressed to respond with anything more than a scowl. Their little handful of crewmen couldn't conceivably have any impact on the battle. To add injury to insult, Melville had loaded each cutter down so that they couldn't possibly make any speed. "We should be able to put three 12-pounders in each cutter, if we lift the cannons from their carriages and store them separately. The curs may have killed our Ship, so we'll take theirs, but we'll save the cutters and as many of our cannon as we can."
Like the rest of the Ship's crew, they'd scrambled madly to prepare for Melville's insane scheme. That was the problem with the navy. Put an idiot in charge, and you had a Ship full of idiots. Following a deranged dreamer's daft scheme to the letter.
There was a very good chance that the Kestrel would die long before they boarded, in which case everyone on board would die. Or she might die during the boarding, in which case most of the crew would die with the Ship, and the rest would be butchered by the Guldur. The only ones with a chance of surviving were those in the cutters. Maybe, if they split up, some of them could escape the Guldur Ship. But loaded down like this, even that was a remote possibility. They were gonna die. . . .
Theoretically, you should be able to see forever across the vast, flat plain of Flatland. However, it seemed that the gravitational pull of the entire galaxy was so great that it actually pulled the light waves "down" toward the plain of Flatland within a fairly short distance. Or at least that was the dominant theory. Whatever the reason, the enemy Ship had been out of sight for several hours. Now its topsails were in sight, and it bore down on them relentlessly. The crew of the Kestrel could have used a little more time camouflaging their positions in the upper bow, but when the enemy drew into sight they were about as ready as they were ever going to be.
The Guldur grapeshot had chewed most of the way through their mainmast on the Kestrel's upper side. Melville had the carpenter's mates pull away the spars and tightly wound rope that had been put in place to reinforce the mast around this damage. Then they chopped at the damaged section until their mainmast was completely severed. Now the severed butt-end of the mast was resting on the deck. The mast and topmast were still united at the cap and the trestle-trees, suspended by the shrouds. When the enemy saw this they assumed that the mainmast had finally broken and their elusive foe had turned to fight a weak, desperate delaying action. While her cutters, filled with much of the crew, tried to escape.
Both Ships slowed down for a boarding action, coming at each other head on.
The bow chaser in the Guldur's lower section fired one shot, which went high and cut through the rigging.
* * *
Down in the lower gundeck, Mr. Barlet looked at the Guldur marksmanship with disgust. The curs loved to board and didn't pay much attention to long-range gunnery. He yearned to get his hands on one of those huge guns. He would show them how to use it to its full potential.
The forwardmost 12-pounders, on the red- and green-sides, above and below, could be swung around as a bow chaser. Thus a total of four guns could be brought to bear toward the front. Now it was time for these guns to start paying the bastards back.
The bow chasers were all loaded with canister, which was like grapeshot but held together so that it didn't spread as fast. The Guldur liked their gunnery close. "Go for the throat" was the curs' motto. Their usual, preferred method of combat was one quick blast and then board the enemy, continuing to bang away with the guns while the boarding action was in progress. None of this dancing around and playing with long-range gunnery for them. It was just "wham-bam, thankee ma'am" for the curs.
It was a little surprising that they even took the one long shot. But the range of the Guldur guns, combined with the slow speed as the two Ships approached each other, would give the curs ample time to reload. Under ordinary circumstances.
The curs clearly planned to get one more shot with the bow chaser on their green-side below, at close
range. Once they met bow-to-bow on the red-side, they'd have a point-blank shot with the two guns on the red-side below.
Usually the goal in a Ship-to-Ship battle like this was to damage the other guy, with minimal regard for the damage he does to you. In this case Melville had to do everything humanly possible to reduce the chance of taking a hit that might cut the circuit on Kestrel's Keel. This meant that below the plain of Flatland, where the enemy had a bow chaser in position, they would use their guns to fire at the enemy's guns.
Mr. Barlet hunched over the lower green-side bow chaser. The two lower bow chasers should each be able to fire three times before the huge Guldur gun was reloaded. He wanted to use every shot to put canister balls through the huge gun hatch before the Guldur could fire again.
Barlet was hunched over in the odd, contorted position of a "sniper." The gun would recoil violently upon firing, so he had to stand to the side of the carriage. But he needed to look down the barrel to aim. That meant he must face the gun from the side, bend over, turn his head to the left, and rest his cheek on the gun barrel as he sighted down it. His left hand was above him, grasping a handhold in a support beam, while he shouted commands to the crew and used his right hand to signal fine adjustments.
Gunpowder didn't work in two-space. Flatland operated by its own laws, its own logic. If you wanted to propel something from a pistol, rifle, or a cannon in two-space, it had to be from a muzzle-loader with a Keel charge set in its base.
When the gun was ready to fire Barlet lifted his cheek up off the gun barrel and touched the Keel charge which stuck out from the cannon's end, like a nipple protruding from the end of a baby bottle. It always grew a layer of Lady Elbereth Moss, and it was somewhat sentient. When his hand touched the Keel charge it initiated the force, the energy that sent the cannonball flying. Touching the keel charge was almost like patting a dog. He "felt" the gun speak to him and he tried to "talk" back, telling it exactly where to fire.
<
With the gun recoiled all the way back, all Barlet had to do was to stride forward, stepping over the taut restraining ropes, to the red-side where the other bow chaser waited. He leaned forward again and put his cheek against this gun, repeating the aiming and firing process. <
The green chaser's crew of four gunners had their 12-pounder loaded and run back up to the gun port. Barlet ran around the back of it to assume his original position. The Ships were approaching each other rapidly, and now the range was better. Again he fired the green chaser. <
The enemy gun port was chewed into an irregular opening, and there was no movement to get their huge bow chaser back into position. This gun was silenced. The enemy bow chaser on the lower green-side had done no harm. Now, as they approached the Guldur Ship, the goal was to put the same kind of pressure on the guns on the enemy's lower red-side. Those guns couldn't bear on them yet, but as they approached bow-to-bow for boarding, they might be able to get off a shot.
Guns couldn't fire through the plane of Flatland. What Mr. Barlet was doing on the lower gundeck had limited impact on the upper half of the Guldur Ship.
On the upper side they were moving into the enemy's dead space. No enemy guns could hit them here, so the goal of the upper bow chasers was to kill as many of the enemy as possible, in support of the boarding operation. Like the guns below, these bow chasers had time to get off three shots each before the two ships met. They each fired one canister followed by two of grape. Each shot sent another twelve pounds of half-inch balls sweeping through the enemy rigging.
A veritable sleet of shot swept the enemy's masts and rigging, killing swarms of the Goblan "ticks." These "allies" were actually more like vassals or slaves. They lived and worked high up in the Guldur Ships where the "curs" didn't like to go. Clearing the Goblan out of the enemy's upper rigging helped clear the way for Hans, Valandil, and the sailors who would "take the high ground" and sweep down on the enemy's upper quarterdeck.
A hail of shot rattled the enemy rigging, and a rain of black Goblan came down. Like decayed fruit falling from a dying tree, they landed with a wet, crunching "thud!" on the deck, or they fell into the sea. Into Flatland. Those who hit Flatland bounced through once, bobbed partially back out again, and then disappeared into the vacuum of interstellar space.
The battle wasn't all one-sided. The Guldur in the bow of the upper and lower sides fired volley after volley of muskets at the approaching Westerness Ship. The Goblan in the rigging were savaged by the Kestrel's cannon fire, but they too sent down a hail of musket balls directed at the marines who were visible and exposed as they crouched in the upper and lower bows.
The marines' job was to draw the enemy's attention away from the hidden boarding party waiting behind them . . . and to stay alive. So most of them weren't invested in exposing themselves to return fire. They simply crouched behind the railing, praying or swearing, as was their individual inclination.
Private Jarvis had been mauled by an ape in the last battle. He'd recovered enough to be released for duty. Now here he was again, with musket balls bouncing around him and wood splinters flying into his exposed flesh. Sergeant (oops, Lieutenant) Broadax might enjoy this stuff, but he'd never been so miserable in his life. At least the apes didn't shoot at you. Once again his bladder control was failing and "leg sweat" was darkening his trousers. He felt his bowels loosen and it was all he could do to maintain control of his sphincter.
In training they'd been told about a survey of combat veterans in World War II, back on Old Earth in the twentieth century. About half the veterans who saw intense frontline action admitted to wetting themselves in combat. In the same survey almost a quarter of these combat veterans admitted to messing themselves. Jarvis was one of many combatants since then whose cynical response to that data was, "Hell, all that proves is that the rest were liars."
Up in the rigging, it was important not to look too strong. To accomplish this, many of the Westerness sailors were hiding, packed in the crow's nests. The rest were firing rifles. In two-space, loading and firing was much easier. No need for powder here. A little Keel charge plugged the breech of each barrel. Insert two minié balls into the double-barreled muzzle, drive them home with the double ramrod, re-set the ramrod beneath the barrel, touch the Keel charge at the base of the barrels with your thumb, and "Crack!" the minié ball slammed forward.
The white, Elbereth Moss–coated Keel charges of the muskets and pistols were much smaller than those of the cannon. When you touched them off there was a small sense of sentience, like a purring cat.
On the upper quarterdeck Melville's job was made much easier by the effect of Kestrel's grapeshot on the Goblan in the upper rigging. The enemy was having trouble fine-tuning their sails, so they simply dropped all sails and let the Westerness Ship board, just as she pleased. Just where he wanted. If the Kestrel wasn't so obviously crippled, with her mainmast shattered, the Guldur might have feared that she would try to trick them with some maneuver. But under the present circumstances it was obvious that they could only be coming to board. And tha
t was just fine with the curs.
As they drew near, it became obvious that the boarding would come off as planned. Melville called a final command, "Let fly the sheets!" Once upon a time, in the old, wet navy, that meant to release the bottom half of the sails. Then the sails could "fly" in the wind, without providing any more forward momentum. While sailing the endless seas of Flatland this command still meant to release the bottom half of the sails, but now the result was that the constant downward "wind" of two-space made the sails hang loose, straight down, so that forward momentum ceased.
The quartermaster's mate echoed the command through the voice tube to the lower quarterdeck so that the sails would be equally trimmed on both sides. This prevented any chance of "tipping" which could lead to "sinking." In the rigging, above and below, the sailors released the sails that were giving forward thrust. Their headway quickly dropped off, and the quartermaster used the rudder to fine tune the final approach.
Melville left control to the quartermaster, grabbed a double-barreled pistol in each hand and ran to the bow to lead the boarding party. Both his monkey and the eery calm still clung to him. Sweet as kiss-my-hand, the two Ships moved toward a gentle meeting, right where Melville wanted.
Lieutenant Fielder sat out in Fatty Lumpkin, watching the Ships pull together. "The bastard," he muttered to himself. "The goofy, gonzo, poetry-prating, prat bastard. He might actually pull this off. He might just do it. Come on, you bastard."
Fielder moved down to where the deck was close to the plain of Flatland. He lay on his side and stuck his head in, like you might dip your head into a pool of water. He held one eye above and one below Flatland, which permitted him to see both the upper and lower portions of each Ship. Anyone other than a sailor would be driven to distraction, if not insanity, by the operation. But for someone who had spent his childhood and teen years as a midshipman it was a normal procedure.