“What good did that do?” Stites demanded. “We still can’t get in!”
“After the day I’ve had, it was pretty fun,” Gray said. “Otherwise
…” He fished in his pocket. “… Spanky gave me this really swell rubber band! Just look at this thing!” he said, displaying the gift. “Don’t know where he got it, but it’s a peach. I was gonna make me a slingshot for… Anyway, everybody get back!”
He took another grenade, and looping the rubber band around it, hung the little bomb from the top left hinge on the big door. Making sure everyone was clear, he yanked the pin and ran. The spoon flew and the grenade bounced up and down a couple of times.
Blam!
Grenades make poor breaching charges, but the high-explosive inside made short work of the brittle iron hinge. The door trembled, then fell diagonally outward onto the street.
“C’mon!” Matt yelled.
In the grand scheme of such things, compared to other fights Chack had participated in, the Battle of the Imperial Dueling Grounds was a relatively small affair. It was big by Imperial standards, at least as far as land battles were concerned, but it wasn’t even close to something like Aryaal, Singapore, and certainly not Baalkpan in terms of scope. The Dominion had landed and secreted away perhaps a thousand troops in warehouses and an abandoned barracks outside of Leith, and the conspirators had considered that number more than sufficient to overwhelm New Scotland’s small, dispersed, Marine garrison from behind Scapa Flow’s defenses, especially when coupled with the overwhelming surprise that Reed and Don Hernan had achieved. It didn’t work that way.
The Lemurian shields made a big difference. For a while. The Dominion front ranks were decimated by those first volleys, but they had greater numbers to start with. Chack and Blair’s experiments with the shields paid off, teaching them that the dense hardwood-backed bronze implements would turn a musket ball if held at an angle, and the shields were battered and streaked with smears of lead, while the rear ranks delivered a withering fire. The front ranks suffered terribly from the beating they were taking, painfully flayed by spattered fragments of balls, stunned by incessant impacts, and even struck by balls that skated in or found a gap. The shields could take only so much, however, and they began to be pierced or fall apart under the hammering.
“Second rank! Take shields where you can,” Lieutenant Blair ordered, knowing Chack would never do it. “First rank, fall back to the rear!”
Chack spared him a thankful glance. Less than thirty Lemurian Marines were able to obey.
O’Casey appeared, unfired pistols still dangling around his neck. He was covered with blood, caused by dozens of splinter wounds. “This is the damnedest thing there ever was,” he gasped.
“It is quite like a duel itself, is it not?” Blair asked. His hat was gone now, replaced by a bloody rag. “A most appropriate setting, I suppose.”
“It is stupid,” Chack growled. “General Alden would not approve.” He shrugged. “But I don’t know what else to do. We cannot maneuver here, and there is no cover other than the stands-and we can’t reach them without exposing ourselves. Stupid! All we can do is stand here, trading blows like fools.”
“Where’s Captain Reddy, an’ Jenks?” O’Casey asked.
A ball caromed off Chack’s steel American helmet, almost knocking him down. He shook his head and resumed his erect pose. “Stupid,” he repeated, looking almost desperately around for some inspiration. “If only we had a single gun!”
“Just be glad theirs are silent,” Blair said. He looked at O’Casey. “Captain Reddy has gone for Mr. Reed. Jenks seeks the Governor-Emperor!”
“Then I must assist one or the other,” O’Casey said. “I’m of no further use here.”
“Nooo, Mr. O’Casey,” Chack said. “Untrue. Your collection of pistols might soon be of great use. I weary of this mutual mauling! I ask myself what I would do if those… people were Grik, and I see only one course that will decide this before both sides are annihilated! Lieutenant Blair? I see the enemy has not fixed bayonets. Why is that?”
“Why…” Blair paused. “Well, they can’t.”
“They do have them?”
“Yes, but they’re a different style. A type of plug bayonet. They insert them into their muzzles and they are quite effective, but their shooting is over then. They usually have to drive them out. If they’d affixed them before now, they’d have had to charge, or stand and be shot to pieces.”
“Like we are doing?” Chack practically roared. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I-” Blair was confused.
“Listen to me, Lieutenant Blair. You must trust me. We are about to lose a lot of troops, your men mostly, but then we will shortly end this fight. Do you believe me?”
“I… uh…” Blair suddenly remembered the last time he’d disregarded the advice of a Lemurian commander. Safir Maraan had tried to warn him at Singapore that his tactics simply didn’t apply. His command had been virtually eradicated that day, and he’d miserably blamed himself ever since. He’d also come to realize that these… creatures, these Lemurians, knew a lot more about pitched battles on land than he did. “Yes, I do, Captain Sab-At,” he said finally, formally. “What are your orders?”
“The discipline and execution must be flawless,” Chack warned.
Another grenade preceded Matt, Gray, Stites, and the ten surviving Marines through the shattered door of the Dominion embassy. A second Imperial had been killed by a sniper from a second-floor window. The grenade burst amid another chorus of screams, and the group charged in, Gray’s Thompson spitting at a trio of men in uniforms crawling on the floor.
The entry hall looked different this time. The lanterns were askew and fresh blood pooled beneath bodies on the tile. The red walls didn’t seem any different, but they glistened where fresh color had splashed. The golden tapestries and accents ran with glittering purple-red. There must have been at least twenty men near the door when Gray’s first grenade dropped among them, and many had been killed outright. The rest, probably still stunned, had fallen to the second. A few more shots finished the survivors.
“Upstairs!” Courtney Bradford shouted. “Check upstairs! The buggers will likely be there!”
Matt pointed around at darkened alcoves. “You men,” he said to the Marines, “check those spaces! Make sure there’s not another way out of this joint!”
“Where’ll they be?” Gray asked, puffing.
“Upstairs, like Courtney said. I hope.”
They thundered up the spiral staircase. A pair of musket shots, fired wildly from above, shattered the banister just a few feet from Bradford, and his enthusiasm ebbed just a little. Stites hosed his BAR upward, stitching back and forth, and they were rewarded by a scream and a thud. As a group, with Bradford lagging slightly, they arrived at the top of the stairs. A man in the uniform of a Blood Drinker, probably one of those who’d fired, lunged at Matt with a bayonet inserted into the muzzle of his musket. Matt knocked it aside with the Springfield and drove his own bayonet into the man’s chest with a shout, pushing him back until he’d virtually pinned him to the wall. The dim, orangish light in the room reflected off the glazing eyes that stared back into his.
“Bravo!” came a voice from the far side of the chamber, standing before the garish golden cross on the wall. “You have me, it seems.”
Matt turned, yanking the bayonet clear, and saw Harrison Reed dimly illuminated, sinister shadows around his eyes and mouth. He stood with his arms crossed before him, a pistol loosely in his hand. The naked servant girl lay sprawled on the hardwood floor in the center of a spreading pool of blood.
“You will face the very fires of hell for storming this place,” he said conversationally. “This is not just an embassy-bad enough, I assure you-but a blessed house of God.”
“Where you just murdered a little girl!” Matt said, bringing the Springfield up. “I ought to kill you where you stand!”
Reed pointed the pistol at
Matt in a classic style that showed he was proficient. “I did not kill the child. I presume Don Hernan sent her to paradise himself, before he left. He was quite taken with her.” He shrugged slightly. “I found her like this, and before you ask, I don’t know where Don Hernan is. Directing the completion of our plan, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Sumbitch has skipped!” Stites snarled disgustedly.
Reed ignored him, but wiggled the pistol slightly. “Perhaps, Captain Reddy, you would care to exchange my life for yours? You are here, so I assume the fighting went poorly at the dueling grounds?”
“Things were looking up when we left,” Gray said harshly. “We got reinforcements.”
Reed smirked. “Pity. Regardless, I remain optimistic.”
“You wouldn’t be if you’d stayed for more of the show,” Matt promised. “Is that why you hid here? I wouldn’t be ‘optimistic’ about anything right now, if I were you. Listen.” Even through the solid, windowless walls, a crescendo of distant musketry rattled incessantly. “Besides, you’re basically the reason we’re here.”
Reed looked genuinely surprised. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Your Commander Billingsley attacked our Alliance, abducted Princess Rebecca, and… took some other people who mean a lot to us,” Matt ground out. “That’s all on you. We came here looking for Billingsley-and whoever it was who put him up to it.”
Reed slapped his forehead. “Oh, dear!” he said. “It seems I was most dreadfully mistaken! You had me quite convinced the princess is safe and you had abundant proof of the conspiracy arriving with Achilles!”
“We do have proof. Plenty. We know you sent Agamemnon back to kill the girl, along with three other ships. We destroyed Agamemnon and captured the others, but Billingsley already had Rebecca and our people on Ajax. We came looking for him… and you.”
Reed shook his head. “I underestimated poor Billingsley! He may have been an apostate with no idea what the true stakes were, but it seems he served me quite well, at any rate. The irony is, he would have been utterly horrified to learn who I serve!”
“The Dominion,” Gray spat.
“Don Hernan,” Reed corrected, “and the True Church.” He twitched the pistol. “Don’t mistake me; I love my country-this land-but no power on earth can hope to oppose the Dominion for long, nor should it.” He smiled. “You see, oddly enough, I’ve become a Believer. In any event, I decided it was better to join the Dominion Church and serve from within, than to be conquered and suffer the devastating consequences. I’m a patriot, working to secure New Britain’s proper place within the Dominion, as a partner-not a possession!”
“You’re a traitorous son of a bitch, serving a sick, perverted, cartoon church full of freaks!” the Bosun stated simply.
Reed’s eyes flared. “You may sing a different tune when this day is done!”
“Perhaps you refer to the Dominion fleet coming from the south?” Courtney asked. “Of course you do. In that case, I propose it is you who will be dreadfully disappointed. We discovered its advance quite early this morning and… um… sufficient fleet elements have sortied to intercept it. All of Home Fleet and the harbor defenses have been alerted as well. No fleet can pass those forts, sir! We once nearly stopped a much larger fleet with much less!”
For the first time Reed’s expression showed uncertainty. “That’s a lie!” he snarled.
“What?” Matt asked. “That we know about the fleet? Or that it’ll be stopped? Obviously we know about it, and that’s enough to stop it. Courtney’s right about those forts. Besides, where is Don Hernan? You don’t really believe he’s off leading a charge. My God, you stupid bastard. Why’d he kill that poor girl? The bastard bolted, leaving you with the bag!”
Harrison Reed seemed to sag. “Very well,” he said. “Perhaps you’re right.” He straightened and his aim steadied. Gray tensed, ready to spray him down. “I won’t hang,” he said simply. “You surprised me today, Captain Reddy. You killed one of my very best.” He snorted. “Not exactly sporting, your ploy at the end, but you did hold your own and manage to get the job done.” He took a breath and slowly lowered his pistol to the chair beside him. “I’m no Lemuel Truelove,” he confessed, “but I challenge you to kill me man to man. You will have your revenge, and I will have paradise.”
Matt hesitated only a moment, then inverted the Springfield and drove the bayonet hard into the wooden floor.
“Skipper!” objected Gray, but Matt ignored him while Reed smiled and drew the ornate rapier at his side. Before anyone could say another word, Matt’s hand went to his belt and came away with his 1911 Colt. 45. Flipping the safety off with his thumb, he shot Harrison Reed four times in the center of his chest.
“The hell with you, you murdering bastard,” Matt said as Reed gasped and dropped to his knees. “I hope that didn’t hurt much. I’d hate for you to even Think you were going to paradise!”
Stites giggled. “ Damn, Skipper!”
Matt looked at him, then glared at Gray. “C’mon,” he said, “we’ve still got work to do.”
Commander Frankie Steele was actually secretly a little surprised at how well his first independent action was going. Walker was battling virtual behemoths, but all their massive power was no match for the old destroyer’s speed and maneuverability. The enemy battle line had broken, immediately sensing Frankie’s main objective and trying to put their ships between Walker and the remaining transports. The troop-filled transports were the key. Without them, the whole Dominion operation was pointless. Massive red-sailed ships of the line, or “liners,” veered to defend the steamers and bring their guns to bear. In so doing, they lost cohesion, massed firepower, their advantageous wind-and all semblance of organized control.
Ponderously, the mighty ships turned, thrashing the sea with their heavy guns, as many as fifty to a side, mostly in Walker ’s churning wake. They’d scored a few hits with what had to be twenty-four-pounders or better, but the damage had been minimal. Smoke streamed from new holes in a couple of Walker ’s stacks, and she had a new hole the size of a porthole in the guinea pullman. Other than that, things had all gone the old destroyer’s way.
The new exploding shells she employed for only the second time came as a rude surprise to the Dominion Navy. They weren’t much, still just hollow copper bolts filled with a gunpowder bursting charge, detonated with a contact fuse. They didn’t penetrate worth a damn. They had the math to put them right where they wanted them now, however, even propelled by black powder, and any bursting charge going off on a crowded gun deck covered with guns being loaded with fabric powder bags could be cataclysmic. One Dominion ship of the line had simply blown up, and another was burning fiercely. For penetration of hulls and destruction of masts, Walker still had an ample supply of solid bolts. Euripides and Tacitus were close to joining the action now as well. They didn’t carry as many guns as the liners, but theirs were newer-bigger even than Achilles ’-throwing thirty-pound balls. Frankie estimated that the enemy had wasted more metal shooting at Walker than the old ship weighed.
Ahead, in a gap cleared by the explosion of one of the liners, four of the transports lay helpless before Walker, seeming almost to cringe like rabbits as the greyhound saw them and turned to give chase. She’d have to steam directly between two liners to get at them, but one had lost its foremast and the other actually seemed to be turning away. Defying his own strategy to remain at a distance, Frankie sensed an opportunity to end the fight with a swift, bold stroke.
Answering bells for “ahead flank,” the blower roared, and Walker made her lunge for the sheep.
“Concentrate all fire port and starboard with explosive shells at the enemy warships until we pass between them, then hammer those transports!” Frankie ordered. Smoke belched from the transport’s stacks as they poured on the coal and tried to turn away even as Walker swept down upon them, streaming gunsmoke. She pounded the disabled ship to port with the number two and number four guns, and the one apparently trying to flee to
starboard with numbers one and three. The heavy “antiaircraft” guns, mounted in tubs where the aft torpedo tubes had been, raked both ships as well, and their pounding roar was joined by the staccato bursts of the. 50s on the amidships deckhouse. Exploding shells penetrated deeply into the relatively unprotected bows of the liner to port and detonated within, spewing shards of copper aft that savaged gun carriages and hewed bodies. One round finally passed nearly the length of the deck before exploding and gouts of white smoke whooshed sporadically out her gunports as exposed powder bags lit. The ship shuddered from almost continuous secondary detonations, and smoldering gunners actually crawled out the gunports and flung themselves into the sea. A greasy black ball of smoke roiled into the sky amidships as something flammable, lamp oil perhaps, ignited and spread burning liquid on the deck. The red main course caught fire and the flames spread quickly upward, devouring the sails above. The ship didn’t explode, but she was fully engulfed in flames as Walker sped past her.
The ship to starboard had received a severe beating as well, and her ornate, garishly decorated stern galleries were a shattered shambles, gaping wide like an open mouth with broken teeth. Many of the aft guns on the two main gun decks were probably dismounted or crewless, but the ship had turned almost directly into the wind and for a few moments Walker was steaming parallel to her, less than five hundred yards off her port beam-and the remaining thirty-odd guns of that broadside. Almost too late, Frankie realized the mistake he’d made. The ship hadn’t been fleeing; it had been turning to do exactly this: voluntarily taking the punishment Walker meted out, just to bring its own guns around.
“All guns! Surface action starboard!” he shouted, just as the side of the enemy ship vanished behind a dense, white cloud of smoke, lit by dozens of flashes of yellow lightning.
Spanky McFarlane was half deafened by the thunderous blows that hammered his ship. Something had gone insanely wrong. A moment before, he’d been standing there, near the throttle station with Miami Tindal and a centrally located damage-control party. He’d been drinking coffee from his favorite remaining mug-the one with the Chevy emblem, the hula girl, and, ironically, the aerial view of Oahu. In the next instant, he got the blurred impression of roundshot punching a hole in the hull beside him, bowling through the party of Lemurians gathered there, along with a spray of splintered steel and rivets. The shot rebounded off the bulkhead, the hull, and finally came to rest somewhere in the bilge. Miami had been talking and now he was just.. . gone. Spanky blinked and wiped his face with his sleeve. For some reason, he couldn’t see very well. That was better. He noticed then that his sleeve was soaked with blood, and all that remained of his sacred cup was the porcelain handle in his hand.
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