Short bursts, he reminded himself. The H&K had no three-round burst setting; it was single shots or full auto, with nothing in between. Short bursts on auto. Don’t just hold the damned trigger back or you’ll empty the mag in like two seconds. Then where the hell will you be?
He closed his eyes for a moment and drew a deep breath, hoping Ensign Cardinale really understood the plan, then snorted. Of course Cardinale understood! Wasn’t like it was real complicated, was it?
“Get set,” Haskins said softly, and Saxon’s eyes popped open again. The enemy troops were closer, moving cautiously down the street. They seemed to be paying more attention to the windows and balconies above them than they were to street level, but they were obviously scouts, looking for a way to get around the flank of the militia holding the northern bank of the West Channel. And according to Ensign Cardinale, they were between Saxon’s group and the militia’s position in the Palazzo Santa Lucretia.
He shouldered his rifle, looking across its sights at the men who were about to become targets.
Cal’s right. Only way home is through them. God, don’t puke. Don’t puke!
“Now!” Haskins snapped, and squeezed his trigger.
The muzzle flash was unbelievably brilliant in the dimness, and Saxon realized he was firing, too. He felt the recoil, the vibration. His own muzzle flash blinded him, but he knew where the enemy was, and he squeezed the trigger again and again, burning through the thirty-round magazine. He probably wasn’t hitting anything—a part of him hoped to God that he wasn’t!—but as Cal had explained, that wasn’t the real point. The point was to take the other side completely by surprise and panic them the same way they’d panicked the survivors of the first attack.
“Charge!” Haskins bellowed, and Saxon remembered to jerk his index finger out of the trigger guard as Cardinale and the militia stormed past the two riflemen, halberds and spears lowered.
“On your feet, Bart!” A powerful hand dragged him up off his knees. “Gotta stay close behind them boys! Might need us!”
Saxon nodded and lurched to his feet. He took one more second to be sure Mangione and Lucia were close behind him, then started jogging rapidly down the street behind the whooping militiamen.
* * *
Warner was actually starting to feel better. It wasn’t because the weather had improved, though. Darkness was falling, the overcast had turned into boiling dark clouds and lashing rain, and the wind was stronger than ever. Worse, it was shifting farther towards the north.
He held a stay, peering up into the rain and the spray, and damned if lightning wasn’t starting to flicker out there in the storm!
Well, that’s all the hell we needed, he reflected, and glanced across the quarterdeck at Fleetmaster Junius and Captain Pilinius.
From the looks of things, all that airy confidence before they set out had started to wear pretty thin. They were Romans, of course, so they weren’t going to admit it, but it showed in the tautness of their shoulders and their focused expressions. Martins’ British sangfroid had started to fray around the edges a little, too.
Serves the bastards right, Warner thought. Hell! I’ve been scared shitless ever since we started on this!
And despite all that, he really did feel better. Talk about perverse.
Maybe I’ve got my sea legs. More likely it’s the adrenaline and fear kicking in.
The reason for that adrenaline was closing with them rapidly.
The lookouts had spotted the masts of the big ships Mason had told them to find twenty minutes earlier. It was just as well that they had, because one of the quinquireme’s wilder rolls had slammed Warner into the bulwark hard enough he was pretty sure he’d cracked at least one rib. It hurt like hell, even through his flak jacket, but that was the least of it, because his radio had gone dead, too, so no one from the bell tower could have corrected their course if they’d missed their target. Unfortunately, they’d obviously been spotted in return, and a line of galleys was closing on them from starboard, angling towards them on an intercept course while the navibus onerārius angled away.
At least we’re bigger’n any of them, he thought.
They were all galee sottili, although a couple of them looked bigger than any of the Roman triremes. None of them would be able to match Ferox’s size and fighting power. Not individually. But that wouldn’t matter if someone ripped out the quinquireme’s guts on a ram.
The seas were too high for anyone to row, so both sides were under sail, which was unusual for naval combat on Tran, to say the very least. In theory, it ought to favor the longer-ranged riflemen and, especially, the recoilless; in practice, he was less certain it would work out that way. The ship’s motion, even with the wind from almost directly astern, was far more violent than he’d anticipated when he suggested turning Ferox into a battleship. It wasn’t too terrible at the moment, but the navibus onerārius’ course change to evade them meant they’d have to alter their own course across the wind to catch them. They’d be right back to that gut-twisting corkscrew roll when that happened, and even Rudolf Frick would have a hell of a time scoring hits with the Carl Gustav. For that matter, aimed rifle fire was going to be far less accurate. And that assumed they survived what the sea had in store for them.
Damn. Wish I’d spent some time inventing lifejackets! Oh, well. No point worrying about that until I don’t get killed by the galleys.
“Was this the way you envisioned it?” he said in Martins’ ear, raising his voice to be heard over the crashing of wind and wave. The Brit looked at him for a moment, then shook his head.
“No,” he admitted. “From all I’d heard”—his eyes cut briefly in the direction of Junius and Pilinius—“it shouldn’t have been this violent at this time of year. The ship’s motion is far worse than I’d anticipated.”
Well, at least he owned up, Warner thought with grudging respect. Don’t know if he realizes he just pretty much admitted he and Baker were running around behind the Colonel’s back, but that’s for later.
“Yeah, well, my battlecruiser idea doesn’t look like working out all that well, either,” he said, and surprised himself with a grin. Martins smiled back, but then the smile faded.
“What worries me most,” the younger man said, turning his eyes back to the oncoming enemy, “is what happens once we’re past these chaps.”
“Changing course across the wind again?”
“Won’t be quite that bad. We should take the wind almost dead on the starboard quarter again, not from broad abeam. Not too worried that we’ll broach or anything of that sort.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
“Your last report was that the lead elements were assaulting the islands?” Martins asked a bit obliquely.
“Yeah,” Warner replied.
“Well, I’m rather afraid we may be doing the same shortly.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the way this lot”—he waved the hand that wasn’t clutching a safety line at the clouds where fresh lightning had just made an appearance—“is continuing to worsen, I very much doubt we’ll have any choice but to run downwind to Nikeis ourselves.”
“There are at least seventy more galleys out there,” Warner pointed out. “Probably more, from what Mason’s already told us.”
“And I’m fairly certain that almost all of them will have made it at least as far as the outer lagoon by the time we arrive,” Martins replied with a nod. “Sounds a bit dicey, doesn’t it?”
“That’s one way to put it,” Warner growled. He gazed at the oncoming galleys, then shrugged and made his way to the quarterdeck rail and gripped it securely with both hands.
“Frick!” he shouted to the mercs huddled on the main deck at the stairs to the forecastle. No one seemed to notice. “Frick!”
This time one of the Roman seamen heard him and tugged on one of the other mercs’ sleeve. The merc turned, and the seaman pointed to Warner.
“Frick!” Warner bellowed, even l
ouder, and the merc poked the recoilless gunner until he turned and looked in Warner’s direction.
“Time to break out the Carl Gustav and the rifles!” Warner shouted, holding up his own rifle case to reinforce the point. Frick looked at him for a moment, then nodded and began passing orders to the men around him while Warner turned back to Junius.
“Please excuse me, Fleetmaster,” he said. “I’m going forward to join the others.”
“Is that wise?” Martins asked. Warner looked at him, and the young lieutenant shrugged. “My orders were to keep an eye on you. I don’t wish to sound callous, but at the University, you’re worth more than a hundred of those men.”
“We’re not at the University, and those are not only my men, they’re my friends. It was my idea to bring them out here.”
“Ours, actually. And they’re my men, as well.”
“And unlike me, you know your ass from your elbow where ships are concerned.” Warner looked up into the gloom, felt the wind-lashed rain running down his face, then looked back at Martins. “Stay here where you can do some good and might just get us back.”
Martins gazed back at him for a moment, then saluted with the palm of his hand facing forward and the tips of his fingers touching his forehead in the British manner.
“Vade ad Deum.”
Warner returned the salute in the American fashion.
* * *
“What do you think you’re doing here?!” Admiral del Verme demanded.
“Trying to get back to San Marco,” Bart Saxon said wearily.
“You could have been killed!”
“Signorina Michaeli almost was.” Saxon’s tone was as bitter as it was harsh, and del Verme paused in midtirade. Then he shook himself.
“Then we must get all of you out back to Lord Rick,” he said.
For the moment, his men were in firm control of the galleys jammed into the West Channel. They’d actually expanded the obstruction a bit, taking possession of half a dozen more pirate galleys which had rammed into it. Most of those galleys’ previous owners were floating facedown in the wind-lashed channel while their ships buttressed the defenders’ barricade. But del Verme was under no illusions. The lunatic star men and their small party had been forced to fight their way through the enemy strength gathering on Cannaregio. It was only a matter of time—and not much of it—before the militia defending the Palazzo Santa Lucretia at the northern end of his line were overwhelmed. When that happened, when the enemy could come at him from the north, as well as from the sea . . .
“Captain Forcucci, see that Lord Bart and Lord Cal are provided with a guide. Detail another twenty marines to escort them. And find a stretcher for Signorina Michaeli.”
* * *
“I hope you’re ready, Frick,” Warner said as he finished knotting the safety line around his waist.
All of the mercs and their Roman assistants were on individual lines now to free up their hands. For that matter, he’d tied a line through the shoulder sling of his rifle, as well. In fact, all of the star weapons had been similarly secured. Warner didn’t think Colonel Galloway would really rather lose one of his men than that man’s weapons, but he didn’t want to find out the hard way that he was wrong about that.
“Ready as I’m gonna get,” Sergeant Rudolf Frick replied in less than enthusiastic tones.
Even with the wind almost directly astern, the ship pitched hard. It might not be the jarring corkscrew motion they’d experienced earlier, but the bow still rose steeply as Ferox climbed each mountainous wave, then dove like a homesick elevator as the galley tobogganed down into its trough. It was hard to tell which was thicker, the spray or the rain, but all of them were soaked, cold, and miserable.
Frick had taken a knee on the foredeck, resting the barrel of the recoilless rifle on the bulwark of the starboard side. Now he looked over his shoulder and scowled at one of the Roman marines.
“Get down the ladder, damn it!” he snapped. “Unless you like burns, anyway!”
The marine standing halfway down the ladder in question looked surprised, but then he’d never actually seen the Carl Gustav fired. He stood a moment longer, then shrugged and dropped back down to the main deck, and Frick looked around again before he returned his attention to the galleys driving steadily closer.
Warner wondered if part of the sergeant’s ire at the marine had actually been directed at him. Frick was definitely in two minds about firing his beloved weapon from the deck of a wooden ship. The back blast which the marine had never seen was spectacular. The Gustav wasn’t a rocket launcher, like an old-style bazooka. Instead, it was like a conventional artillery piece with a rocket venturi glued to its ass. It ejected enough of its propellant in a rocket-like blast to offset the recoil of firing an 84-millimeter round down range at up to 840 feet per second, and that produced a danger zone thirty meters deep in which any unfortunate would be severely burned. In fact, it was hazardous to be anywhere within seventy-five meters of the recoilless rifle’s venturi, and the US Army had limited a Carl Gustav gunner to only six practice shots a day in order to protect him against the cumulative blast and shock effect of firing what was basically a sawed-off howitzer from his shoulder.
Frick had been less than enthusiastic about the potential incendiary effect of that enormous cloud of superheated gases. Even fired at a ninety-degree angle perpendicular to the galley’s centerline, the backblast would extend clear across the deck and slam into the solid wooden bulkhead on the opposite side. That would probably deflect quite a lot of it back in Frick’s direction, even if it didn’t actually set the ship on fire. And Ferox was less than fifty meters in length. If Frick had to fire at a less acute angle, the blast could blanket almost the entire length of the main deck.
Probably a good thing we’re all so goddamn wet, Warner reflected now. A bucket brigade had been told off to keep the deck around Frick well soaked with water, but mother nature had kindly taken on that responsibility.
“Clear,” Private McQuaid, Frick’s loader, told him. McQuaid knelt beside him, on the opposite side of the weapon. That wasn’t his normal position in combat, but it was the best they could do on the galley’s constricted deck.
“Damn well better keep it that way,” Frick growled, putting his eye back to the recoilless rifle’s sights. The nearest galley was barely eight hundred yards away and the ships were closing at a combined speed of around eight or nine knots, which gave him three or four minutes, at the most. Under normal conditions, the Carl Gustav could fire six rounds in a minute, but a wildly pitching galley in the middle of a rainstorm weren’t exactly normal conditions.
“Fire in the hole!” Frick shouted.
KABOOM!
The volume and violence of the Carl Gustav’s discharge had to be experienced to be believed. It jarred Warner to the marrow of his bones as the 84-millimeter projectile screamed out of the muzzle.
And vanished into the side of the wave barely sixty yards from Ferox.
The white fountain when it exploded was impressive, even under the current sea conditions. It was also completely useless.
“Damn it!” Frick bellowed through the ringing in Warner’s ears. He felt as if someone had just hit him in the back of the head with a huge, hot hammer, and he shook his head to clear it.
“Reloading!” McQuaid yelled as he pulled another round from the waterproof container. He turned the venturi lock to open the hinged breach, slid the new round into the rifle barrel, closed the breach, smacked Frick lightly on the back of the head, and dropped back down beside him.
“Ready!”
“Fire in the hole!”
KABOOM!
Another white fountain announced another miss, and Warner shook his head again, anxiously, as the lead galley swept closer. The rest of the enemy squadron followed behind, and if Ferox collided with any of them, they were probably doomed. Even assuming the gale didn’t simply sink both ships outright, they’d find themselves in a fight for their lives against the enemy’s ma
rines. And if any of the other enemy galleys were able to add their weight to the fray . . .
“Frick,” he said, trying to speak clearly but calmly while McQuaid reloaded again, “you have to fire as the bow starts to come up. Stop and feel the waves flow forward. There’s a rhythm to it. Time your shots as the bow rides up on the wave.”
“Warner, the only wave I’m feeling is a constant one of nausea. So what say you take the shot?”
“We don’t have time, and you’re the best on that thing. Tell you what. You draw a bead on the bastard’s bow and tell me when you’re ready to fire. Then just hold your position. Just wait until I tell you to fire based on our movement. Don’t try to adjust your aim or follow the target, it’s not gonna move all that far before I give you the word.”
“Okay, Zen master. You got it.”
“Ready,” McQuaid said, back beside Frick at the bulwark.
“And . . . I’m set,” Frick announced.
Warner looked aft as a wave overtook the stern. He didn’t look at Frick or the target—only the wave as it lifted the stern up and the bow dipped. The wave swept forward, and the bow rose. For a moment, the ship was almost level again, but then the bow started to rise.
“Fire!”
The recoilless boomed again, battering him with the brutal, fiery shockwave, backflash blindingly bright in the gathering dark, and he wheeled back forward as the round screamed out of the tube.
The oncoming ship’s foredeck exploded. Marines who’d assembled on it were hurled into the air and over the side. The four-pound high-explosive warhead had hit well above the waterline, penetrated the planking, and detonated inside the galley’s forecastle. Warner was disappointed that it hadn’t simply blasted the ship’s bow wide open, but then its foremast buckled as the blast sheared it off between decks. It smashed down across the forecastle with terrible force, driven by the power of its wind-filled sail, and crushed a half dozen marines and seamen who’d survived the shell’s explosion.
That wasn’t all it did. It toppled over the side, still fastened to the ship by the rigging, and the galley staggered, swinging round to the sudden, enormous drag. The next wave crashed across it in a solid sheet of green and white fury, and more men were hurled over the side. The galley rolled in anguish as the saltwater swept over it, and its mainmast followed the foremast over the side.
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