Belial shuddered and Alexis knew that meant there was damage to the inertial compensators. The force of the shot vaporizing portions of the hull was enough to knock the ship about.
Alexis staggered and grasped the navigation plot to steady herself.
Please, she thought to Belial, one hand caressing the edge of the darkened plot. I’m sorry, but it’s needful.
She rushed to the hatchway and grasped the handle, pulling it open to face what had become of her gundeck.
Fifty-Seven
Alexis reached the gundeck just as the Hanovese frigate fired again. Bolts of shot flashed through the open space of the deck. New holes appeared in what was left of the hull, most overlapping with damage that was already there.
The shot went straight through the hull facing the frigate, through the center wall that divided the deck, and out the far side. For a wonder, none of Belial’s guns were struck, nor any of the remaining crew, though she saw several men flinch back and slap at their arms or legs as droplets of melted thermoplastic from the hull struck them. Their suits would seal behind such damage, if the droplets made it through, but they’d bear the scars.
Even with so much damage, though, the crews were working diligently at their guns, quickly getting off yet another broadside, ragged though it was with no coherent command to fire — the guns were firing independently now, but Belial’s crews were so well-drilled that they were each loaded and firing again within a second of the others.
That was what had allowed them to last this long, Alexis knew. For whatever reason, whether a lack of training or experience, the frigate’s broadsides were coming slowly and poorly-aimed, while Belial’s crews had been drilled to beyond reason. First aboard Shrewsbury, with Captain Euell’s demands for ever faster broadsides, then aboard Belial herself, with Alexis’ use of drills to alleviate the boredom around Giron, and finally by day after day of feeding the guns as they bombarded the Hanoverese columns.
Belial was sending two, three, and sometimes four broadsides into the frigate for every one in return.
Alexis scanned the gundeck for who was left standing. With so much damage their suit radios weren’t working here either, likely nowhere in the ship — what was left of the gallenium nets that once covered the gunports and kept out the darkspace radiation would have been useless even without the damage to the rest of the hull.
Spacers were still making their way to and from the aft companionway carrying shot, so the magazine was undamaged. They’d certainly fired all of Belial’s ready-shot and would be relying on the magazine to recharge the shot’s capacitors. That in itself was a good sign, as it meant the magazine and the surrounding engineering spaces had not been holed, nor the fusion plant.
Of course if the fusion plant is holed, we’ll, none of us, either know or worry again.
The survivors from the quarterdeck, those she’d not ordered out to the sails, streamed past her to join the guncrews. She spotted Artley, midshipman’s stripes spotted and blackened with burns from splashing hull material, and made her way over to press her helmet against his.
“Sir? You’ve left the quarterdeck?”
“The quarterdeck’s holed, Mister Artley, and we’ve but one particle projector working for the sails. The guns are all we have to work with now.”
Alexis could see Artley’s face blanch at the news of how much damage Belial had taken.
“Shouldn’t we strike, sir?”
“We stand, Mister Artley. So long as there’s a gun to fire, we stand.”
“But —”
Artley was looking around the gundeck, his eyes wide. Alexis knew what he was thinking and why. In the heat of things, when it was just the guncrews to encourage and assist, one paid little heed to the condition of the ship. Now he’d been pulled out of that and could see the holes in the hull and the still figures dragged to the far side of the deck.
Alexis clapped a hand to his shoulder and squeezed hard.
“Mister Artley!” She waited until his eyes returned to her, then held his gaze until it settled. “We stand, Sterlyn,” she said, quieter.
Artley’s eyes scanned the gundeck again, but steadier this time, not panicked.
Belial shuddered as the frigate fired again. No shot flashed through the gundeck, but the lights flickered once, twice, and then went out, leaving the deck lit only with the dim glow of the emergency chemical lights. The fiber optics that brought light to the decks must have been cut, and around her she could feel the men pause in their work, but she kept her eyes on Artley’s. She needed another officer to help her steady the men on the guns.
“The men need you to steady them, Mister Artley. Every moment we fight may mean another transport well away and who knows how many lives.”
Artley swallowed and nodded, his face greenish in the emergency lights.
“A wall, sir.”
Alexis nodded.
“Aye, Mister Artley, New London’s wall, and we will stand.” She gripped his shoulder hard so he’d feel it through the vacsuit. “I need you on the guns, Mister Artley. The men need to see you steady.”
“Aye, sir. I’ll not disappoint you.”
Alexis watched him return to his guns. She felt Belial shudder as she was struck once more, then felt her stomach lurch. Around her on the deck, discarded shot casings rolled and some floated up from the deck as the artificial gravity failed. She grasped a canister of shot from a crewman shuffling his way through the dim light, and turned toward the nearest gun. The quarterdeck, lights, even the gravity generators might be gone, Belial might be all but dead, but so long as the magazine could charge shot and the guns could fire, she wasn’t done.
Alexis’ world narrowed to feeding the guns. There were fewer crewmen making their way up from the magazine, whether dead or fled to hide deep in the hold she didn’t know, but she took to meeting them at the companionway hatch to take the freshly charged shot and hand over spent cartridges. Then she’d shuffle along the deck, careful to keep her feet always on the surface so as not to float away, to one of the guns.
Belial was reduced to three guns, and then to two as the frigate’s shot struck a barrel and splintered into dozens of beams that pierced the gundeck. Men fell and she couldn’t tell their names in the dim light. Still fresh shot came up from the magazine. She thought that it was Dobb bringing it up, which made her wonder at the state of the men on the sails, but couldn’t be sure, and the remaining guns needed to be fed.
Sweat stung in her eyes and rolled across her lips. Her whole world was silent, save for the rasping of her own breath echoing in her helmet.
She caught sight of the frigate through the gaping holes in Belial’s hull and marveled at the damage. The space between the frigates gunports had disappeared, leaving an open space that ran the length of the hull. The main and mizzen masts were gone, barely stumps left of them, and the foremast on the frigate’s far side had but a single sail visible.
For a moment, she thought they might be able to call an end to this nightmare, but frigates carried large crews. Crews that could repair the rigging and step a new mast in little time, then be off again to catch her convoy. Every moment she could delay them meant another of her little ships might reach safety.
More shot poured from the frigate, more men were struck down. Bodies, dead and injured both, floated amongst the discarded shot casings in the sickly green light.
She shoved her way through them with fresh shot, then realized that the small, still figure floating before her was too small for a gunner and its vacsuit arms had the distinctive markings of a midshipman
She screamed in rage, sound echoing in her helmet.
She forced her way past and found no one at the gun. She wondered if they were dead or fled, but threw open the breech herself and slotted the canister. Someone grasped her arm, but she shrugged it off and closed the breech. Peered out through the gunport to check its aim.
The Hanoverese frigate was a dark mass against the black background of darkspace. Only
a few white lights shone here and there on its hull and the stubs of its masts. The sails on its remaining foremast were dark and uncharged. That meant something, she thought, but she couldn’t spare the time to remember. All that mattered was to keep the frigate occupied with Belial, to allow just a few more moments for one of her little ships — a pinnace, a ferry, perhaps a packet — to escape. They’d already sacrificed so much, too much, to allow the frigate to escape them now.
Alexis raised her hand to the button that fired the gun and someone grasped her arm. She shrugged away and reached again for the gun, but strong arms wrapped themselves around her and lifted her from the deck.
She struggled and sound echoed through her helmet. A new sound. Someone was saying something, but she couldn’t understand. Someone was talking and holding her, keeping her from her gun, and in a moment the frigate would sail off. They’d sail off and more of her little ships would fall, more men would die because she hadn’t been strong enough or quick enough or clever enough to save them.
“— struck, sir!”
“We’ll not strike, damn your eyes!” she yelled. “Get back to the guns and fire or I’ll cut you down myself!”
The arms held against her struggles, spun her around, away from the gun.
“Sir!” She recognized Dobb’s voice. “It’s the frigate what’s struck, sir! Not us, the frigate!”
Alexis shook her head.
“You’re mad,” she whispered. “They can’t have …”
Slowly she stopped struggling. The arms around her loosened, tentatively, as though Dobb was unsure of her and prepared to grab her again. She set her feet on the deck, feeling the click as the magnets in her boots met the deck. She turned and peered out.
The Hanoverese frigate lay a bare fifty meters away, gunports dark and silent. The stubs of its masts flashing white in surrender.
Alexis staggered back from the port and stared around her, starting to grin with elation at what Belial and her crew had accomplished. She stopped, blinked, and her grin fell away.
What little she could make out in the dim glow of the emergency chemical lights was a horror. All the guns but one were overturned, their tubes shattered and breeches twisted. Dobb stood beside her, Oakman and Chevis near the one remaining gun, but the deck everywhere was littered with bodies. Some moved feebly, but most were still.
“Dear lord, what have I done …”
Fifty-Eight
Alexis made her way onto Belial’s hull by the simple expedience of stepping through the gaping hole that had once been her ship’s gunports. She pulled a small, still figure along behind her and made her way to Belial’s stern.
She supposed she should leave Artley’s body with the rest being retrieved from throughout the ship and laid out on the gundeck, but couldn’t bear to leave him there alone. She owed him a moment’s time — time she’d not had to spare aboard Shrewsbury or even to keep him safe on Belial, nor to notice the moment of his death.
She settled into place at the stern and attached one of Artley’s lines to the guidewires.
“Damn you, Sterlyn. Why’d you come back? You could have stayed safe at Alchiba. Not … not come back so I could get you killed.”
She settled into place and gazed off past Belial’s rudder and planes.
Dobb and the others still alive were reviewing the damage, but there was little any of them could do. Belial was so holed that Alexis was afraid to try and reach any of the areas that might be undamaged — the magazine was still aired and only portions of the engineering spaces.
Most of the engineering spaces had been holed at the same time Belial’s gravity had failed. It was only by some miracle that Belial had survived, as the casing around the fusion plant was pocked and creased where shot had struck it, though never quite directly enough to breach it.
Her brief tour of the space had left her sick, as none of the civilians she’d sent there had been suited. Three had been shoved into a small compartment by the engineering crew and had miraculously survived, but the rest were dead. As were all of those who’d remained in Belial’s hold.
Other than those three only the seven who’d been able to fit into the ship’s magazine with Oakman had survived, including both Marie and Ferrau. She supposed she should be grateful for that, but it was hard to be grateful for anything when faced with such devastation.
Of her crew, there was only herself and four others, Dobb, Oakman, Chevis, and Hunsley, left alive. With no surgeon aboard to treat them during the action and with no one to be spared from the guns to take them below, most of those injured had been left on the gundeck where they fell, only to be struck again by enemy shot.
A hundred meters away the Hanoverese frigate sat still and silent as well, battered as much or more than Belial herself. A handful of suited figures were out on the hull there, and Alexis had to wonder what their butcher’s bill had been. She should send someone over to take charge of it, but there was hardly anyone to send. It would have to wait until the end of the fleet action and for some ship from whichever side won that to come along.
And if there is any justice, her captain will have survived, that I might see him hang.
She hoped Belial’s logs might be intact, and that the recordings of the Hanoverese firing into helpless, unarmed ships could be put to that purpose.
Alexis left Artley at the stern and crossed under Belial’s keel to the other side of her ship for a moment. Here the hull was largely intact; only a few of the frigate’s shots had managed to burn all the way through the gundeck to exit the far side. That, somehow, didn’t seem right — the horror inside shouldn’t be hidden like that.
In the distance she could see the lights of other ships and wondered what the outcome of the fleet action had been.
Then, a moment later, she supposed her question was answered. She stood and watched as, to leeward, a frigate beat her way against the wind toward Belial, New London’s colors bright against her undamaged hull.
Alexis couldn’t tell what ship — she was flying her number, but Alexis had no way of looking it up and didn’t immediately recognize it — but the frigate’s other signal sent her to her knees. First in manic laughter, then in wracking sobs.
Do you require assistance?
The frigate, HMS Magnanime, hove-to to windward of Belial and the Hanoverese frigate. Both ships were so damaged that there was no way a boarding tube could be attached to either. Magnanime worked her sails to drift and edge broadside downwind until she was close enough for lines to be shot across the void between the ships.
Alexis and Dobb made the lines fast to whatever parts of Belial’s hull seemed least likely to snap off if force were applied.
No sooner had they made the lines fast than Magnanime’s crew began hauling the two ships together, but Alexis watched in surprise as spacers from Magnanime scrambled across the lines as well, risking exposure to darkspace away from the protective influence of the hull.
A suited figure with lieutenant’s insignia on his arms reached her and touched his helmet to hers.
“Lieutenant Whitefield, Magnanime. Is your captain about?”
Alexis had to work her mouth for a moment to be able to respond. Her lips were dry and parched, and she’d finished all of her suit’s water long before.
“Belial’s mine.” She looked around at the damage and shook her head. “Was mine.” She fought down her feelings and tried to focus. “We’ve —” She closed her eyes and cringed at the number. “We’ve seven civilians in the magazine without vacsuits. Will you have some sent over so that they may board your ship?”
“You took refugees into action? Against a frigate?”
Alexis’ temper flared. “And where were you, sir? Behind the lines playing postman, with never a glance this way to see what was happening?”
Her vision seemed to darken as she spoke and her head spun. She grasped Whitefield’s arm to steady herself.
Whitefield looked from her to the Hanoverese frigate and back again.
/>
“Your pardon,” he said. “I should not have spoken so. Come, let me get you across to Magnanime.”
Alexis and the others were taken first aboard Magnanime, where she made her report to the frigate’s captain, Captain Hutchings, and was told the outcome of the fleet action.
Magnanime was not a part of Admiral Chipley’s fleet that had come to Giron, it seemed. She was with a fleet under Admiral Cammack, whose fleet and flagship, HMS Royal Sovereign, a massive, 100 gun three decker, had arrived at Alchiba to reinforce Chipley, only to find that neither Chipley nor the original transports for the invasion force had ever returned to Alchiba, and that a ragtag fleet of little ships had sailed to bring New London’s boys home.
Cammack had set out immediately for Giron, arriving in the midst of the action.
The Hanoverese fleet, now vastly outnumbered, had disengaged and fled.
“Admirals Chipley and Cammack exchanged some signals about the best course of action,” Hutchings said. “Admiral Chipley believed an aggressive pursuit of the Hanoverese was in order, while my Admiral Cammack felt it was best to see these transports safely home.”
Alexis eased herself in her chair and blinked. She was having a bit of trouble focusing on Captain Hutchings’ words. She was dressed in a too-large jumpsuit borrowed from one of Magnanime’s lieutenants. The smallest of them, but still several centimeters taller than she. Her own things were somewhere in the wreck of Belial or in her cabin aboard Shrewsbury, which was off with Admiral Chipley.
She’d barely had time to change out of her vacsuit before Hutchings was asking for her and she felt the dire need for a bit of time in the head to rinse the sweat from her body.
And a bunk. I should dearly like to make the acquaintance of one of Magnanime’s bunks. With the crew on the gundeck, even, just anywhere I might go to sleep.
“Carew?”
Alexis jerked, her eyes springing open. “I’m sorry, sir, I —”
Hutchings waved it away. “No, I wasn’t thinking. After what you … I can’t imagine.” He frowned. “Whitefield!”
Alexis Carew: Books 1, 2, and 3 Page 90