Throne of Stars

by David Weber

  “T’ey going to slow us down sailing upwind to Krat’,” Poertena pointed out. “We migh’ be able to rig some jib sails, but t’ey still ain’t gonna be as fast as us. Not enough keel, for one t’ing.”

  “That’s something to think about quite a bit down the line,” Pahner noted. “Taking these six warships is the significant issue. After that, we contact Kerr again and get his reaction. If it’s favorable, we’ll determine where to get sufficient prize crews, then sail on our way. If we encounter the rest of the prizes, we’ll engage as seems most favorable at the time.”

  “In other words, we’re going to play it by ear,” Roger said with a grin. “Where in hell have I heard that operations order before?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Cred Cies fingered his sword as five of the six ships changed course to windward. The biggest of the strangers held its initial course, heading to intercept—or protect—the fat merchantship Rage of Lemmar had pursued so long.

  “They’re going to engage us,” Cra Vunet said. The mate spat over the side. “Six to five. The odds favor us.”

  Cies looked at the skies and frowned.

  “Yes, they do. But no doubt they can count as well as we can, and they’ve obviously chosen to leave their biggest ship behind. I’m not sure I like the looks of that. Besides, it will be pouring by the time they get here. Only the bombard is sure to fire under those circumstances, and they seem to have nearly as many men aboard as we do. It will be a tough fight.”

  “And after it, we’ll sail back to Lomsvupe with five ships of a new and superior design—six, after we scoop up the one that’s hanging back!” the mate said with a true-hand flick of humor. “That will pay for a thousand nights of pleasure! Better than a single stinking landsman tub.”

  “On the other hand, they clearly think they can take us,” Cies pointed out, still the pessimist. “And we’ll have to wear around to engage, while they’ll have the favor of the wind. If I’d been sure they were going to attack before, I would have changed course to attack them from upwind, and with our bombard bearing. But I didn’t. So, like I say, the fight will be a tough one. Tough.”

  “We’re the Lemmar,” Vunet said with another gesture of humor. “A fight is only worth bragging about if it’s a tough one!”

  “We’ll see,” Cies replied. “Wear ship to port; let’s see if we can’t get to windward of them after all before we engage.”

  “There they go,” Roger said, leaning on the anti-coll bead cannon mounted on Ima Hooker’s afterdeck. “Wearing to port, just like I predicted.”

  “I don’t get it,” Pahner admitted. “Even if they manage to get to windward of us, it still leaves them in a position where we can rake their sterns.”

  “They don’t think that way, Captain,” Roger said. “They fight with fixed frontal guns, which means they don’t have a concept of a broadside. They’re expecting us to do what they’d do: turn to starboard just before we come opposite them, and try to sail straight into their sides. By that time, if they have the respective speeds figured right, they’ll be slightly upwind and in a position to swing down on our flank. The worst that could happen is that we end up with both of us going at each other front-to-front and both broad-on to the wind, which isn’t a bad point of sailing for one of those tubs.

  “Now, the question is whether or not there’s some way we can tap dance around out of range of those bombards while we get into a position to hammer them broadside-to-broadside.”

  “I thought the idea was to cross the enemy’s ‘T,’” Julian interjected as he watched the “tubs” wearing around. It was evident that the pirate vessels had extremely large crews for two reasons—both as fighters and because the squaresail ships just plain required more live bodies on the sheets and braces. “That’s what they’re always talking about in historical romances.”

  Roger turned towards him and lifted first his helmet visor and then an eyebrow.

  “Historical romances?” he repeated, and Julian shrugged with a slightly sheepish expression.

  “What can I say? I’m a man of many parts.”

  “I wouldn’t have expected romance novels to be one of them,” Roger commented, dropping the visor back as he returned his attention to observing the enemy. “But to answer your question, crossing the ‘T’ is an ideal tactic against an enemy who uses broadsides. But except for some swivel guns to discourage boarders, these guys don’t have any broadside fire at all to speak of. Which isn’t quite the case where those big, pocking bombards in the bows are concerned. So we’re going to try very, very hard not to cross their ‘T.’”

  Pahner was uncomfortable. For the first time since hitting Marduk, it was clear that Roger’s expertise, his knowledge, far exceeded the captain’s own. On one level, Pahner was delighted that someone knew his ass from his elbow where the theory of combat under sail was involved. But “Colonel MacClintock” was still, for all practical purposes, a very junior officer. A surprisingly competent one, since he’d gotten over the normal “lieutenant” idiocy, but still very junior. And junior officers tended to overlook important details in combat operations. Often with disastrous consequences.

  “So what plan do you recommend, Your Highness?” the captain asked after a moment.

  Roger turned to look at him. The mottled plastic turned the prince’s face into an unreadable set of shadows, but it was clear that his mind was running hard.

  “I guess you’re serious,” Roger said quietly. He turned back to gaze at the distant ships and thought about it for perhaps thirty seconds. “Are you saying I should take command?” he asked finally, his voice even quieter than before.

  “You’re already in command,” Pahner pointed out. “I’ll be frank, Your Highness. I don’t have a clue about how to fight a sea battle. Since you obviously do, you should run this one. If I see anything I think you’ve overlooked, I’ll point it out. But I think this one is . . . up to you.”

  “Captain,” Kosutic asked over the dedicated private command circuit, “are you sure about this?”

  “Hold on a moment, Your Highness,” Pahner said, turning slightly away from the prince. “Gotta let ’em out of the nest eventually, Sergeant Major,” he replied over the same channel.

  “Okay. If you’re sure,” the noncom said dubiously. “But remember Ran Tai.”

  “I will,” Pahner assured her. “I do.”

  He turned back to the prince, who was pacing back and forth with his hands clasped behind him, looking at the sky.

  “I’m sorry, Your Highness. You were saying?”

  “Actually, I wasn’t.” Roger stopped pacing, pulled out a strand of hair, and played with it as he continued to look at the sky. “I was thinking. And I’m about done.”

  “Are you going to take full command, Colonel?” the captain asked formally.

  “Yes, I am,” Roger replied with matching formality, his expression settling into lines of unwonted seriousness as the weight of responsibility settled on his shoulders. “The first thing we have to do is reef the sails before the squall sinks us more surely than the Lemmar.”

  “They’re reducing sail,” Cra Vunet said. The five other raider ships had completed their own turns before the wind from the storm hit and were following the Rage in line ahead.

  “Yes,” Cies said thoughtfully. “Those edge-on sails probably tend to push them over in a high wind. I imagine we’ll be able to sail with it quite handily, compared to them.”

  “We’ll lose sight of them soon!” Vunet yelled through the sudden tumult as the leading edge of the squall raced across the last few hundred meters of sea towards the Rage. “Here it comes!”

  The squall was of the sort common to any tropical zone—a brief, murderous “gullywasher” that would drop multiple centimeters of rain in less than an hour. The blast of wind in front of the rain—the “gust front”—was usually the strongest of the entire storm, and as it swept down upon them, the placid waves to windward started to tighten up into an angry “chop” cres
ted with white curls of foam.

  The wind hit like a hurricane, and the ships heeled over sharply, even with their square sails taken up to the second reef. But the Lemmar sailors took it with aplomb; such storms hit at least once per day.

  “Well, they’re gone!” Cies shouted back as the strange ships disappeared into a wall of wind, rain, and spray. “We’ll stay on this course. Whether they fall off to windward or hold their own course, we’ll be able to take them from the front. One shot from each ship, then we go alongside.”

  “What if they alter course?” Vunet shouted back.

  “They’re going to find it hard to wear around in this,” Cies replied. “And if they try it, they’ll still be settling onto course when we come on them. And the storm will probably be gone by then!”

  “Come to course three-zero-five!” Roger shouted.

  “I’m having a hard time punching a laser through to Sea Foam!” Julian yelled back over the roaring fury of the sea. “The signal’s getting real attenuated by all this damned water!”

  “Well, make sure you get a confirmation!” Pahner shouted, almost in the NCO’s ear. “And we need a string confirmation on it!”

  “Will do!”

  Roger looked around the heeling ship and nodded his head. The Mardukan seamen were handling the lines well, and the situation, so far, was well in hand. The human-designed schooners had come well up into the wind, steering west-by-northwest, close-hauled on the starboard tack, in a course change which would have been literally impossible for the clumsy Mardukan pirates’ rigs to duplicate. In many ways, the current conditions weren’t that different from other storms they’d sailed through along the way, but they hadn’t tried to maneuver in those. They’d simply held their course and hoped for the best. In this case, however, his entire plan depended upon their ability to maneuver in the storm.

  It wouldn’t be disastrous if they were unable to effect the maneuver he had in mind. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but he was fairly certain that the schooners could take at least one or two shots from the pirates’ bombards, assuming the simplistic weapons could even be fired under these conditions. But if they managed to pull off what he had in mind, they should suffer virtually no casualties. If he had to take losses, he would, but he’d become more and more determined to hold them to the absolute minimum as the trek went on.

  The rain seemed to last forever, but finally he sensed the first signs of slackening in its pounding fury. That usually meant one more hard deluge, then the storm would clear with remarkable speed. Which meant it was almost time to start the next maneuver.

  “Julian! Do you have commo?”

  “Yes, Sir!” the sergeant responded instantly. “I got confirmations of course change from all ships.”

  “Then tell them to prepare to come to course two-seven-zero or thereabouts. And warn the gun crews to prepare for action to port, with a small possibility that it could be to starboard, instead. Tell the captains I want them to close up in line, one hundred meters of separation, as soon as the rain clears. I want them to follow us like beads on a string. Clear?”

  “Clear and sent, Your Highness. And confirmed by all ships.”

  “Do you really have any idea where they are?” Pahner asked Roger over the helmet commo systems.

  “Unless I’m much mistaken, they’re over there,” Roger said, gesturing off the port bow and into the blinding deluge.

  “And what do we do when the other ships follow us ‘like beads on a string’?” the captain asked curiously.

  “Ah,” Roger said, then glanced back at the commo sergeant. “To all ships, Julian. As soon as we clear the rain, send the sharpshooters to the tops.”

  The ship heeled hard to port as a fresh blast of wind from the north caught it, and Roger casually grabbed a stay.

  “It’s clearing,” he observed. “Now to see where our other ships are.”

  “The Foam is right behind us,” Julian said. “But they say some of the others are scattered.”

  The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun, without even the slightest tapering off, and the rest of the K’Vaernian “fleet” was suddenly visible. The Sea Foam was some two hundred meters behind the Hooker, but the rest were scattered to the north and south—mostly south—of the primary course.

  Roger looked the formation over and shrugged.

  “Not bad. Not good, but not bad.”

  Pahner had to turn away to hide his smile. That simple “not bad” was a miracle. It was clear that getting the flotilla back together would take quite a few minutes, and any hope of simply turning and engaging the enemy whenever they appeared, was out of the airlock as a result. But the prince had simply shrugged and accepted that the plan would need revising. That was what a half a year of almost constant battle on Marduk had taught the hopeless young fop who’d first arrived here . . . and that, by itself, was almost worth the bodies scattered along the trail.

  “Captain T’Sool,” Roger said, “come to course two-seven-zero and take in the mainsail. We need to reduce speed until the rest of the fleet can catch up.”

  “Yes, Sir,” the Mardukan acknowledged, and began shouting orders of his own.

  “Julian,” Roger turned back to the sergeant while T’Sool carried out his instructions. “To all ships: make all sail conformable with weather and close up in order. Get back in line; we have pirates to kill.”

  “Kral shit,” Vunet said. Then, “Unbelievable!”

  The rain had finally cleared, and the enemy fleet was once more visible . . . well upwind of their position, jockeying itself back into line. Neither he nor anyone else aboard the raiders’ ships had ever heard of vessels that could do that. They must have tacked almost directly into the wind instead of wearing around before it! But it was clear that however well the individual ships might sail, they weren’t well-trained as a group, and they’d gotten badly scattered by the storm.

  The Lemmar ships, by contrast, were still in a nearly perfect line, and Cred Cies wasn’t about to let the enemy have all day to get his formation back into order.

  “Make a signal for all ships to turn towards the enemy and engage!”

  “We’ll be sailing almost into the teeth of the wind,” Vunet pointed out.

  “I understand that, Cra,” Cies said with rather more patience than he actually felt. They wouldn’t really be sailing into the “teeth of the wind,” of course—it wasn’t as if they were galleys, after all! And it was painfully evident that the strangers could sail far closer to the wind than any of his ships could hope to come. But if he edged as close to it as he could without getting himself taken all aback . . .

  “We can still catch them before they reassemble,” he told his mate. “Maybe.”

  Pahner tried not to laugh again as Roger folded his hands behind his back and assumed a mien of calculated indifference. The expression and posture of composed sang-froid was obviously a close copy of Pahner’s own, and he’d seen more than one junior officer try it on for size. Roger was wearing it better than most, but then the prince smiled suddenly and swung his hands to the front, slamming a closed fist into the palm of his other hand.

  “Yes,” he hissed. “You’re mine!”

  Pahner watched as the pirate ships swung up into the wind. Or, rather, towards the wind. It was obvious that they could come nowhere near as close to it as the schooners could, and the way their square sails shivered indicated even to his landsman’s eye that they were very close to losing way. But for all that, it also brought those big, bow-mounted bombards around to line up on the Ima Hooker.

  “Doesn’t look so good to me,” he opined.

  “Oh, they’re going to get some shots off at us,” Roger admitted. “We may even take a few hits, although I doubt that their gunnery is going to be anything to write home about. But as soon as everyone is back in line, we’re going to turn onto a reciprocal heading to put the wind behind us. We can put on more sail and really race down on them. They’re going to get off one—at the most two—shots a
t us, and most of those are going to miss. If we lose a ship, I’ll be astonished, and I don’t even anticipate very many casualties. Then we’ll be in among them, and we’ll rip them up with both broadsides. They’re about to get corncobbed.”

  “So this is a particularly good situation?” Pahner asked, looking back at the ships assembling behind the Hooker. The flagship was close-reaching on the starboard tack now, sailing about forty-five degrees off the wind. That was nowhere near as high as she had been pointing, but apparently it was still high enough for Roger’s purposes, and Pahner could see that it gave the rest of the flotilla additional time to catch up. Sea Foam had reduced sail dramatically to conform to the flagship’s speed, whereas Prince John had crammed on extra canvas now that the squall had passed and was driving hard to get into position. Pentzikis and Tor Coll were coming up astern of Prince John, and it looked like everyone would be back into formation within perhaps another fifteen minutes.

  “Well, if they’d held to their original course and tried to continue past us, then work their way back up to windward behind us, it would have been a pain,” Roger told the Marine. “They’d have played hell trying to pull it off, but to get this over within any short time frame, we have to sail in between them, where our artillery can hammer them without their bombards being able to shoot back, and their line was spaced a lot more tightly together than I liked. If they’d continued on their easterly heading, we’d have run the risk of getting someone rammed when we went through their line. By turning up towards us, they’ve effectively opened the intervals, because those ships are a lot longer than they are wide, and we’re looking at them end-on now. In addition, at the moment we actually pass them, we’ll be broadside-to-broadside. That means our guns will be able to pound them at minimum range, but that those big-assed bombards are going to be pointing at nothing but empty sea.

  “The other choice would have been to sail around behind them, come up from astern, and pick them off one by one. That would keep us out of the play of their guns, too, but I don’t want to still be fighting this thing come morning. Among other things, there’re those other prize ships to chase down.”