Fred stared out at the double column. Twenty-five heavy frigates, all leaning slightly in the stiffening westerly wind, their bright sails and bronze guns gleaming even at this distance. “COFO Reddy’ll be back, whittle ’em down some more. Sorry we couldn’t lend a bigger hand earlier, but things are a little different in the air these days.”
Ruik waved around, and for the first time Fred realized just how battered Simms and her people already were. Some damage had apparently come from Grikbird bombs, but the shot holes in her sails and funnel, spliced cordage, and brightly splintered wood beneath the black-painted rails indicated she’d been in the running surface action as well. Then there was her crew, almost all Lemurians, many lounging tiredly on her dirty fifty-pounders. Most wore peacoats, which surprised Fred. He was used to ’Cats wearing as little as they possibly could, but the wind had a bite to it and the ’Cats, sweat-foamed from battle, had probably been cold. The muzzles of the guns themselves and the normally bright deck and carriage wood were spattered black with fouled water from sponges and buckets, and the area around the vents was a dingy gray. “So we have noted,” Ruik agreed.
Fred waved out at the Doms. “So, you trying to get past those guys? Join the rest of the fleet?”
Ruik shook his head. “No, Lieutenant Reynolds. We will soon engage them, as a matter of fact. We must keep them back while Mars, Centurion, and their remaining escorts ‘get past’ them. Once they do, we will proceed along behind them, if we can.”
Kari had managed to stand, and was looking at Ruik with wide eyes. “But what about this ship, and those other three behind?”
“They are all DDs, and we are destroyermen,” Ruik said simply, but the pride in his voice was unmistakable. “We do our job. Mars and Centurion are sound in their machinery, but both have been the focus of a great deal of fire. In addition to just their two crews being as large as those aboard all my ships combined, they also bear a great many wounded transferred from other ships we were forced to leave behind.” He shrugged. “We must clear the way.”
Down in the moaning, bloody charnel house of the wardroom, seated on a bench near the hatchway, Fred began to fidget. “Right out of the frying pan,” he murmured, staring at Kari to avoid looking at the suffering ’Cats around them. “Maybe we should’ve run off when we could, looking for Captain Anson.”
“No,” Kari said firmly. “There’s a baattle. Runnin’ off then would’ve really been ‘runnin’ off.’ Can’t do that. If we go, we go after the fight.”
Fred nodded. “Yeah. If we make it.” Still squirming uncomfortably on the bench, he flinched at the muffled sound of shouted orders from above. A sudden, creaking rumble of the guns being shifted made it clear that the action was about to commence. He finally stood up. “And I can’t stay down here.”
“Cap’n Ruik said to get us looked at,” Kari objected without much conviction, glancing guiltily at the harried surgeon, pharmacist’s mates, and SBAs going about their grisly work. None had attended them when they arrived. They’d brought themselves down, after all, and obviously weren’t emergency cases.
“I’m fine, and I’m not staying down here,” Fred stated sharply.
Kari’s gaze fell on a ’Cat, seeped to unconsciousness, lying peacefully while his ruined arm was taken off, and she slowly stood beside her friend. She was no stranger to suffering. She’d endured a great deal herself. And the memories of what she’d been through, now flooding sympathetically back, made her short of breath. “I’m fine too,” she gasped. “Let’s get outa here.”
Together, they climbed the companionway ladder and peeked up over the coaming. The gun’s crews along the starboard side were poised by their pieces, waiting for commands, electric igniters ready to be inserted into vents. Shot garlands stood like three-sided pyramids, stacked with seven-inch solid shot. The exploding case shot was dangerous to leave lying about and would be brought up by youngling “powder monkeys” when called for. It was lighter and shorter ranged, even atop the ten-pound charge of powder the big guns gulped, and generally reserved for more confident ranges in any case. Through the closest gunports, they saw that the Doms were a lot closer now, and Simms and her tiny battle line, now steaming almost due west with all square sails furled, had won the race to cross the Doms’ “T.” Fred stepped up on the deck and looked northeast. Admiral Hibbs’s two wagons and pair of DDs hadn’t quite made it clear, but they’d formed a battle line of their own and should be able to keep the Doms at arm’s reach with their heavier guns while Ruik’s little squadron punched them in the nose. If Hibbs’s strategy failed, however, his whole force was in danger of being caught between Malpelo and the whole Dom fleet, still rushing up behind, before the rest of Second Fleet could come to its aid.
“Taagit range, one t’ousand. Speed, ten. Elevation two deg’ees!” cried the ’Cat in the main top. They didn’t have even the rudimentary fire control system now in use in the West, but they’d come up with a few expedients of their own out here. Electric igniters had arrived that could be activated by the gunnery officer who watched a swinging plumb bob in place of a gyro. This most ancient of instruments would indicate to him the approximate instant when Simms found an even keel amid her constant motion. In this way, Simms and her consorts could fire true salvos, of a sort, and correct their elevation at least. Gunners quickly proceeded to do just that, turning a heavy screw handle beneath the breeches of their guns, until an inscribed line corresponded to a numeral “2” engraved on the plate beside it. At a nod from the gunner, another ’Cat pricked the vent with a long brass rod with a ring on the end and inserted the priming wire.
“Primed and clear!” cried the first gun captain, stepping back. He was quickly echoed by nine others. “All clear!” trilled the chief gunner’s mate.
“Commence firing,” Ruik said, his tone amazingly calm as he stared through an Imperial telescope.
“Firing!” shouted the gunnery officer, intently staring at the plumb bob. But for an instant, he didn’t fire and the tension grew. Finally catching the exact instant he liked the most, when the plumb tip was pointed directly at a mark on his apparatus, he closed the circuit.
Fire blowtorched skyward from ten vents as the great guns fired, visibly shivering the stout ship as the monstrous weapons trundled inboard amid yellow-orange blooms of flame and a roiling fog bank of white smoke. Fred shook his head and worked his jaw to pop his ears. The first thing he heard was the diminishing, tearing canvas shoosh of the outbound shot. “C’mon!” he said to Kari, grabbing her arm and stepping to the rail beside Ruik. The gun smoke was quickly whisked away by the stiff wind and Simms’s own speed. He never saw the shot in flight as he might if he’d been able to watch its rise from the muzzles of the guns, but he viewed its fall. The “salvo” raised a curtain of splashes about two hundred yards wide, just short of the closest enemy ship, but the range was amazingly consistent.
“Reload!” the gunnery officer roared, and the gun’s crews, already working to clear and service their pieces, now knew to continue their evolution to the end.
“Achilles still has her lighter guns. Just as well, because as stout as she is by Imperial standards, I doubt she could hold up to firing sustained salvos, or ‘broadsides’ like this, with the weight of metal we’re throwing,” Ruik said conversationally. “But her guns are as big as anything on those Dom DDs, and they’ll reach.” Fred was surprised Ruik had noticed his and Kari’s presence. “Icarus will have to wait until they get closer, but Tindal is armed the same as us,” Ruik continued, taking the glass away from his eye and using it as a pointer toward the top of the main mast. “Signal flags show the range we estimated, and the other ships will adjust.” Achilles chose that moment to unleash her own broadside, followed almost immediately by Tindal. Splashes rose all around the leading ships in the advancing column, and distant sails shook with impacts. “See?” Ruik said.
“Very impressive,” Fred granted, sincerely ama
zed by how successful such crude expedients could be—but then, the principles were essentially the same as those USS Walker had brought to this world. Even without the sophistication of her gyro and wildly complicated clockwork gun director, the fundamentals they were based upon had revolutionized naval warfare on this world and given the Allies an enormous advantage—at least until the Doms figured it out.
“Same range! No change!” yelled the gunnery officer, quickly followed by a chorus of “Primed and clear!”
“All clear!”
“Firing!” Fred barely had time to cover his ears before the ship shook again, and this time he watched the heavy balls arc up and away. He lost them as they reached the tops of their trajectories, but the cluster looked much tighter this time as they disappeared, now falling toward the enemy.
“Why no change?” Kari asked, and Ruik looked at her. “The enemy is closer this time. The gunnery officer will have calculated how much closer based on the enemy’s apparent speed, and timed his firing accordingly.”
He must’ve timed it very well. Another cluster of splashes rose around the lead Dom frigate, but at least half the fifty-pound cannonballs staggered the ship. The foremast toppled, dragging the maintop down with it to lie atop the smoking funnel. Almost immediately, flames caught the flailing red canvas, sparked by the funnel itself, and the wind fanned the fire up the mast. A cheer rose even as the gunnery officer called for the reload.
“Another one down,” Ruik said softly. “She was doomed already, even without the fire.” He looked at Fred. “One thing we’ve learned over the last few days, and the only reason we’re still alive; use our range advantage. Once the Doms close, the only advantage we have left are exploding shells.”
“Why? I mean, why was she already done for, so far away?”
“Because of what Mr. Caam-peeti once told me is called ‘plunging fire.’ Look, range is key because their shot’s not as heavy, at least on their DDs, and no matter how many more they fire from their ‘wagons,’ they can’t get near as many on target unless they get close. Then it doesn’t make much difference,” he confessed, “because we’re both just shooting through each other.” He waved. The burning Dom frigate, wallowing now, erupted in a white cloud of steam and smoke, spraying the sea with a sprawling pattern of falling debris. “Could’ve been the magazine, but I bet it was the boiler. Water coming in, fast. See, even at just two degrees of elevation, we get ‘plunging fire’ at this range, when our shot ‘runs outa gas’ and just drops. Makes it harder to hit a taagit, the old-fashioned way, but as you’ve just seen, we can do it.”
“Great. So?”
“These new Dom ships are stout; the sides, uh, ‘scaant-lings,’ are really heavy. A fifty-pound shot will still blow through both sides at close range.” He managed a predatory grin. “But at long range, they drop on the ship, tear through the decks and right out the bottom!”
“Oh! So then we’re okay? We just keep shooting long range and knock ’em off one by one!”
“Normally we could,” Ruik agreed, “and we have been. Most of the crippling damage suffered by TF Eleven has occurred in the night when the enemy was able to close the range in spite of our illumination flares and rockets. And, of course, we’ve been on a necessarily fixed course to keep them from overwhelming us. As you can see, they’ve had the numbers to absorb great loss while they attempt that.”
Hibbs’s small battle line had commenced firing now as the range between it and the closing Dom column decreased, with great thunderclap salvos from Mars and Centurion, which mounted fifty 20- and 30-pounders to a side. Likely glad to have targets of their own, and unable to return Ruik’s fire with more than a few bow chasers, the seven frigates in the closest line fired back, the sound reaching them as a sustained, stuttering roar. Achilles and Tindal punctuated it with salvos of their own.
“Unfortunately, we will soon have to wear our line, coming about across the enemy’s path once more to prevent it from closing with Ahd-mi-raal Hibbs.”
“I remember the plan,” Fred protested. “Then we tack onto the back of his line as he passes that big-assed rock, and we’re all in the clear.”
“Indeed,” Ruik agreed. “But this squadron will first have to sail very close to the enemy, perhaps even slowing to prolong the engagement. . . .”
“Oh.”
CHAPTER 25
////// USS Maaka-Kakja (CV-3)
Admiral Lelaa-Tal-Cleraan paced her bridge and stared out at the developing battle in the distance. “Degenerating” battle, more correctly, she thought grimly, since all semblance of order had disintegrated after High Admiral Harvey Jenks, his flag now flying from the Imperial first-rater Mithra, slammed his battle line into the bulk of the enemy fleet. What ensued, according to excited wireless reports and the few planes remaining above the action, was a jumbled melee of ships of all sizes, pounding away at one another at point-blank range. That wasn’t what they’d planned, but she assumed Jenks had seen some pressing need. Or had the pressing need to come to close grips with the Doms resided mainly in Harvey Jenks’s heart, after all this time? Lela wondered. She also wondered what had become of Simms, her consorts—and Fred and Kari.
She knew Simms had picked them up, of course. Orrin Reddy, now teetering slightly with exhaustion and watching her pace, had reported that himself. But wireless contact with all four DDs had been lost when they got tangled in tight with the Dom frigates, and only Achilles had managed to join Hibbs’s escape. The rest had been engulfed by the chaotic battle that erupted around them. At the very least, all had taken damage to their masts and wireless aerials. They’d done their job, though; flailing at the Doms until Hibbs could squeak past. His battered force had eventually joined Maaka-Kakja, where it was currently transferring wounded to the trailing replenishment ships—the only auxiliaries left—and cutting and splicing and making what repairs they could before . . . Before what? She paced again, glancing at the bridge watch standing at their posts—and keenly aware of Orrin Reddy’s scrutiny. Can I do it? she asked herself, remembering what Governor-Empress Rebecca McDonald had decreed, what Saan-Kakja agreed. Should I?
“You know, this may well be the last great battle between purely wooden ships on this world. And even now, ‘purely’ isn’t exactly right,” she began softly. “All our Amer-i-caan Navy DDs have armor belts amidships to protect their engineering plants. And though both the Doms and Impies still use paddlewheels, the Imperial Navy has applied some armor to its paddle boxes. That’s probably the only reason Mars and Centurion made it back to us, and the beleaguered Task Force Eleven was able to leave so many powerless Dom hulks in its wake. All new Impie ships under construction are being built with screw propellers, just like ours.” She paused, sensing Orrin’s impatience. He wanted back out there and wasn’t in the mood for what he must think were her pointless technical ramblings. But she did have a point. “Also,” she continued, “just as in Baalkpan and Maa-ni-la, riveted iron hulls are in the works in the Empire as well, now that sufficient quantities of steel required for the transition are starting to arrive from the West, or the Imperial colonies in North America.” She waved at the battle. “And of course, every ship now engaged is a steamer.”
“So?” Orrin sighed, aware he was being disrespectful, but too tired to care.
“So, technology marches, for us and the Doms. Even the Grik. Governor-Empress Rebecca’s initial strategy may have been . . . flawed, but she’s correct that this action must be decisive. I hope—I pray—that our technology may be enough to balance the enemy numbers today, but even with victory, we will be in poor condition to pursue a beaten enemy to destruction—and every Dom ship we do not destroy we will likely face again, improved to match our own at the very least.”
“What now, then?” Orrin asked, suspecting what was to come. Instead of a direct answer, Lelaa stared ahead. “How many Naancys remain?” she asked.
“Uh, just nine that I’d
consider airworthy. We were short to start with, as you know, even with the ones Saan-Kakja brought. Too many got spread around,” he added, returning to an earlier argument. He let it drop. He couldn’t begrudge the ones sent with the transports to Puerto Viejo. Shinya would need them. But how long before they could even arrive, be assembled, and join the fight? It would’ve been better to put them together here and fly them ashore—but they’d been too far out. Particularly for brand-new, untried machines. “The, uh, ‘rescue’ of TF Eleven cost the wing more than twenty planes, not counting all the ones assigned to other ships that’ve been lost as well—mostly to recovery accidents,” he added harshly. The speed of the advance and the choppy sea had made recovering the little floatplanes extremely difficult. “Fortunately, we haven’t lost quite that many aircrews, although it’s been bad. The simple fact is that the guys and gals have flat flown their planes to death over the last few days, and beyond the nine I reported, any others will take at least a few days to get back in the air—or even patched well enough to float.” He considered. “We do still have eight of the dozen Fleashooters they sent us. They’ve been going out with bombs. The Doms can’t have many Grikbirds left. Haven’t seen hardly any today. Maybe it’s just all the smoke over the battle—they don’t like it—but they’re all either dead or grounded.”
Lelaa turned to him, blinking decisively. “The Fleashooters will stand down,” she said. “They can only recover aboard Maaka-Kakja, and that will soon be impossible. You will lead our last Naancys in a final bombing sortie. Instruct your aircrews to focus on Dom baattle-waagons, preferably those engaging any of our ships that seem particularly hard-pressed. I know that may be difficult to discern. . . .”
“Where will we recover?” Orrin demanded, “And why will it be ‘impossible’ here?”
Lelaa blinked at the wild, sprawling battle that seemed to lap against the high, lonely, rocky island ahead. “Unlike the carriers in the West, Maaka-Kakja remains heavily armed for surface actions, with fifty of the fifty-pounder smoothbores just like Simms and her sisters carry. Even more significantly, she retains four of Amagi’s five-point-five-inch secondaries tied into a fully functional gun director also salvaged from the Japanese battle cruiser. We shall use those as we close.”
Straits of Hell Page 30