“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 pointers . . . 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 heard 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.
“Hurry it up, you pack o’ jackals!” the Bosun berated. He pointed at the continuing distant fight between Achilles and her foe. “We got friends over there dyin’ and more scum like you to kill! You got one minute before I yank these nets and we leave you here!” There were moans and cries from the water, but somehow the men, many still injured, managed to climb or splash along a little faster.
“You are consistent, at least,” Chack remarked softly. He’d appeared beside the Bosun still holding his Krag instead of one of the new Springfield muskets. “You are merciless to everyone.”
“I ain’t merciless,” Gray murmured through clenched teeth. “I actually feel sorta sorry for the bastards. I just want ’em scared of us before they come aboard. Make ’em easier for your boys to handle.”
For a moment, Chack said nothing, possibly digesting the Bosun’s words. “It is . . . strange,” he said at last.
“What?”
“All the hu-maans we have ever really known have been our benefactors. They have helped us. It is very . . . disconcerting now to have fought them, and killed . . . so many.”
“You helped us kill Japs, and they’re sorta human, I guess.”
“True, but these”—he gestured at the last of the survivors climbing the cargo netting—“these are more like you. They speak the same language, and more important, to us at least, they are the very descendants of the original tail-less ones, the ones who came before.” He paused. “It is . . . hard to know they can be bad, and maybe a little hard to know you can kill them without remorse.”
“I said I felt sorry for the bastards, didn’t I?” Gray demanded quietly. He shrugged. “Hell, I felt a little sorry for them Jap destroyermen that got ate—before we met you. But war’s war, and it’s a damn strange world—whichever the hell world you’re from.” It was Gray’s turn to pause. “Just remember, they started this fight here today, and it was friends o’ theirs who took Lieutenant Tucker, the princess, your buddy Silva, and all the rest. Friends o’ theirs who slaughtered Simms and all the ’Cats on board. It’s a strange world, sure, but strange as this fight today may seem to you, it’s crystal clear to me.”
He motioned at the bedraggled survivors, maybe thirty in all, not counting those in the wardroom. “There’ a lot more of ’em than I expected, and that’s a fact.” He turned to Chack. “Take charge of your prisoners, if you please.”
CHAPTER 25
Captain Reddy and Commodore Jenks met that evening aboard HNBC Ulysses, the captured enemy flagship. Except for her starboard paddles, she hadn’t suffered much. Achilles had been badly mauled in her fight with HNBC Caesar, and had suffered over seventy killed and wounded. She’d require significant repairs before she could continue on. Caesar was in worse shape, and once all her wounded were moved to Ulysses and Icarus—the ship that surrendered early on—Caesar would be allowed to sink.
Jenks’s fight was practically over by the time Walker steamed to her aid, but the destroyer’s appearance had ended any further resistance. Matt then turned his ship in pursuit of Ulysses. He’d wondered at the time why she would abandon her consorts so readily, but when she too surrendered as he drew near, and he was forced to endure the sniveling apologies and explanations of the squadron’s admiral, he understood. Chack and his Marines remained aboard Ulysses while Walker towed her back to the other somewhat assembled ships.
Meanwhile, Jenks had gone aboard Caesar and Icarus and gained a little information. To everyone’s complete surprise, the ship Walker had destroyed was Agamemnon herself, the very same ship that Jenks had dispatched home so long ago. He’d also discovered his own loyal Ensign Parr aboard Icarus. Icarus had been another Navy ship “pressed” into Company service, and was considered the least reliable in the squadron. It was to her that most of the known Imperial loyalists had been sequestered. The young ensign had recognized Achilles and risen up with some trusted men, seized the ship, and promptly surrendered her before she could fire a shot. It was Parr who confirmed the terrible news that only the Company had ever learned the results of Jenks’s mission, and more important, that they’d discovered the governoremperor’s daughter alive.
Now Matt and Jenks strode Ulysses’s quarterdeck, talking quietly, while both men’s guards stood watchfully by. From amidships came the cries of the wounded Walker had picked up, as they and the other prisoners were transferred aboard.
“How come you took Achilles in like that?” Matt finally asked. “We could have destroyed all four ships from beyond their range.”
“That’s why I took her in,” Jenks replied. “I’m reliably informed that you have a temper, and I feared you would destroy them all once they’d fired at you. Was I wrong?”
Matt shrugged. “I don’t think I’d have fired on the ship that surrendered,” he said, a little defensively. “I didn’t destroy this ship.”
“Ahh, but by the time you caught her, your passion had faded!”
“Mmm,” Matt said noncommittally. He pointed at the wounded and the prisoners coming aboard. “What’re we going to do with all of them?”
“I suppose we must convene a court-martial,” Jenks replied. “We have many repairs to attend and I understand even your ship was slightly damaged?” Matt nodded, thinking of poor Aubrey. “That shou
ld give us sufficient time,” Jenks added. “If you’ve no objection, I think Imperial forms might be most appropriate. Three officers will preside as judges. I would be indebted if you yourself would sit, as well as two other officers of your choosing. I know you’re not disinterested, but you have no personal knowledge of any of the defendants. I expect you will also assume not all are guilty, as Mr. Parr was not.”
“Why don’t you do it?” Matt asked. “Even some of your loyalists might object to a foreigner.”
“As prosecutor, I cannot preside.”
“Oh. Okay then. I’ll appoint a couple of others. I don’t think taking volunteers would be a good idea just now.”
“Perhaps not.”
For a while, they just walked together and an awkward silence hung about them.
“How’s it feel?” Matt finally asked.
Jenks looked disdainfully at the bloody sling supporting his left arm. “It hurts a bit,” he confessed with a grin, “but that wondrous ooze your medical . . . person applied has dulled the edge.”
“Good. Shouldn’t get infected either. How’s O’Casey?”
“Hmm? Oh, Bates. Ha. Utterly insufferable. He wasn’t hurt at all, but I confess at times I wished for a ball to take off his head.”
“I guess he came up with a number of ways to say, ‘I told you so’ ? ”
Jenks looked blank for a moment before realization dawned. “Oh! Oh, yes. An infinite number of ways, and without pause, I might add.” Jenks shook his head. “He was right all along. I think I even knew it back then, but the politics of New London are considerably less clear at home than they are out here, at the ends of the earth. I hope someday he will forgive me and we might be friends again.” Jenks gestured at his arm. “Now that I know where the true infection lies.”
“So it would seem,” Matt said, and sighed. “And here we are, over a thousand miles from where I ought to be fighting who I ought to be fighting. We still don’t know where Billingsly and my people—and your princess—are, but we do know your governor-emperor never knew we even had the girl. This Honorable New Britain Company did, though, and fired on the ship—my ship!—they suspected she was on. The only explanation for that is that now, they want her dead! Apparently, this Company is pulling a major power grab, and everything and everyone both of us cares about might depend, one way or another, on how that turns out. Jeez, if that doesn’t put us on the exact same side at long last, I don’t know what ever would.”
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