Seas of Venus

by David Drake

  Of course, the most immediate bad luck if the raiders were discovered would be that of the Angel crewman, smashed into a bulkhead by Johnnie's burst of explosive bullets.

  The armored curve of A Turret barbette bulged into the corridor. Visible beyond it was the barbette supporting B Turret. Johnnie broke stride, trying to remember the layout of a dreadnought from schematics studied at leisure and the brief glimpse he'd had of the Holy Trinity's armored reality as he followed Sal Grumio.

  "Sir, should we—"

  —enter the barbette and go up to the shelter deck through the turret? he would have concluded if Uncle Dan, a rifleman faceless behind his reflective visor, had not broken in with, "No, the next compartment forward should be the lower conning room. We'll take the access ladder straight from there to the bridge."

  "And take it easy when we're in the ladderway," Sergeant Britten added in a low-voiced snarl. "Remember, even if they're all half asleep, they're going to wonder if it sounds like there's a soccer crowd stampeding toward the bridge."

  The lower conn was well within the main armor belt, so the compartment's bulkheads were thin, barely splinter-proof. Even so, the hatch cycled slowly and unwillingly, a minor mechanical fault that Maintenance hadn't gotten around to correcting.

  Johnnie took a deep breath in the enforced pause. His body shivered with reaction.

  "Let's go," Dan said, leading through the hatchway.

  Lights went on as soon as the presence of humans tripped a circuit. Johnnie crouched to spray the first movement, but the lower conn was empty save for the Blackhorse raiders. The hatch to the ladderway was open, for ventilation or from the sheer lazy disinterest of the last man through.

  "Sorry, sir," Johnnie muttered to his uncle.

  "Nothing to be sorry about," Dan said as he entered the armored staircase behind the muzzle of his rifle.

  The helical treads of the ladderway were barely wide enough for men to pass in opposite directions, and there was no way that ten booted humans could climb them without sending a mass of vibrant echoes through the narrow confines. Johnnie reminded himself that the constant flexing of the dreadnought's whole tens of thousands of tons was loud enough to conceal the ringing footsteps from the bridge watch, but there was no emotional comfort in what he knew intellectually was true.

  Dan paused briefly on the landing outside the conning tower, directly below the bridge. Again the hatch was open and the compartment empty. Vision slits, presently unshuttered, gave a shadowy view forward over B Turret.

  "Force Prime," muttered the command channel in Sergeant Britten's voice, "I ought to be leading."

  "No sir," Johnnie gasped. Because of the weight of his pack and the monotony of the steps, he'd had to make a conscious effort to keep his eyes lifted above the next tread. "I should."

  "Both of you, shut—" Commander Cooke snarled.

  The tak-tak-tak of gunfire, not loud but penetrating because it was the sound they all feared, cut him off.

  A fuzzy voice over the intra-ship channel crackled, ". . . at the accommodation la . . ." and blurred off as the sound of another burst rattled the night. It was impossible to pinpoint the direction of the echoing sound; from the words, the stern team had run into guards at the accommodation ladder raised along the dreadnought's aft rail.

  Johnnie plucked the transmitter cup from his helmet.

  "Forget that!" bellowed Uncle Dan. "Come on!"

  The massive bridge hatch was opening. An enlisted man, slinging a sub-machine gun and looking back over his shoulder to hear a shouted order, was halfway through the opening when Dan's rifle blew him back in a sparkle of explosive bullets. Muzzle blasts in the confined space stung Johnnie's bare hands and chin.

  Dan jumped through the hatchway, firing. The hatch staggered, then began to close. Johnnie brushed both the hatch and its jamb as he followed his uncle into the bright-lit interior.

  A junior lieutenant lay against a bulkhead painted with his blood. He'd been reaching for his pistol, but his outstretched left hand had already thrown the master switch that closed and dogged all the bridge hatches.

  Dan fired. His shots blasted a console and the bulkhead beyond the ducking officer of the day.

  Johnnie killed three techs still at their consoles, two of them scrabbling for pistols and the third—the dangerous one—shouting into his communicator.

  Training held. A pair of explosive bullets hit each man in the head. One of the techs leaped to his feet and sprang across the bridge, caroming between consoles and bulkheads and spraying blood in a fountain. The officer of the day jumped up, screaming in horror at the sight.

  This time Dan's bullets stitched him across the chest.

  Somebody fired a pistol from the far wing of the bridge. The bullet was a solid which ricocheted off the armored roof, as dangerous to surviving Angels as it was to the attacking force.

  "Get the hatch control!" Johnnie shouted to his uncle as he charged the gunman.

  The muzzle of the pistol poked cautiously up from behind a console. Johnnie jumped to the top of the unit, surrounded by a flare of holographic movement triggered by his boot soles.

  A pair of Angel technicians huddled on the other side. One had his hands folded over his head and his face against the decking; the other held his pistol as though it were a crucifix and Johnnie was Satan himself.

  Not Satan but Death. The explosive bullets splashed bits of the man's terrified face in a three-foot circle.

  "Get up!" Johnnie shouted to the remaining technician, the only survivor of the bridge watch.

  The man moaned. Johnnie jumped down and kicked the fellow. "Get up!" he repeated. He continued prodding the prisoner with his boot until the man obeyed, still hiding his face with his hands.

  The air-conditioning made Johnnie shiver. His pack was suddenly an unbearable weight. He'd meant to take it off just before the attack, but there hadn't been time. . . .

  He shrugged off the load of equipment and ammunition—a dead man's load replacing the one he'd lost in the jungle—and let it thump to the bloody deck. He turned.

  Uncle Dan was bent over an undamaged console. He snapped switches with his hands while he spoke through the intra-ship transmitter flexed to his helmet. Muted queries rasped through the Holy Trinity's own intercom.

  The bridge hatch hadn't closed completely because of the corpse slumped in it, but it had only cycled a body's width open by the time Johnnie looked around. Sergeant Britten rushed through with his rifle poised—locked onto the two figures standing at the far wing of the bridge—

  "Don't!" Johnnie screamed as he flattened.

  Britten's rifle slammed the prisoner into the armored bulkhead and held him there in an explosive dazzle until the magazine was empty. When the Angel technician finally fell, there was almost nothing left of his body from the beltline to collar.

  "Don't shoot!" Johnnie called. He lifted the butt of his sub-machine gun a hand's breadth above the console. "Don't shoot!"

  "Omigodsir!"

  Johnnie raised his head. Sergeant Britten had frozen with the empty rifle still at his shoulder. Now he flung it down as though it had bitten him. Its barrel glowed white from the long burst. The rest of the assault team had stopped behind the sergeant.

  "Omigodsir!"

  "Fayette," ordered Uncle Dan without looking up from what he was doing. "Take over here while I try to raise Team Two. Benns and Forrest, reinforce Team Three. They've captured the engine room, but they're a couple of men short because of things breaking early."

  Nobody moved.

  Uncle Dan raised his head. "For God's sake!" he shouted. "Did you think this was going to be a picnic? Get moving, you men!"

  The Blackhorse raiders shuddered back into action. Two men disappeared back down the ladderway to replace casualties from the attack on the engine room. A tech slid into the seat the commander vacated to finish locking a selection of the dreadnought's watertight doors. The console's holographic display showed that the crucial hatches, to the b
attle center and to the crew's quarters forward, were already sealed beyond the capacity of those within to countermand.

  A pair of men, unordered, began shifting the corpses of the bridge watch to a corner where they would be out of the way and not particularly visible.

  Uncle Dan looked around somberly. "Believe me," he said, "you're going to see worse before this is over."

  20

  "Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate bolts undrew;

  "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through. . . .

  —Robert Browning

  Johnnie took a deep breath. He was one of several members of the raiding party who were gawking like spectators, and there wasn't time for that now.

  "U—ah, sir?" he said. "I'll bring up the weapon systems. I can do that."

  Dan gestured brusquely toward a console. He touched the mute on the helmet through which he'd been talking to the survivor of Team Two. That sailor was now waiting to blow the cable of the bow anchor. "Get to it, then, Gordon," he said.

  He looked up almost at once. "Ignore the eighteens—and whatever you do, don't switch the railguns live until you're ordered to. The overload will shut down the power boards and then we're screwed for good 'n' all."

  Having delivered the necessary information with the same crisp skill he would have spent on a computer keypad, Uncle Dan went back to his business.

  Johnnie lowered himself halfway into the seat, then grimaced and shifted to the console next to that one. There was a pool of congealing blood and brains on the first.

  The layout of the Holy Trinity's bridge consoles differed from those in the training program Johnnie had used—but as a practical matter, every ship differed from the next, even those laid down as sisters in the same stocks. Bridge consoles did the same job, and an ensign who couldn't figure out the idiosyncrasies of a new layout had no business in the Blackhorse.

  The system was already live. An Angel tech had spent the last moments of his life checking the vessel's fresh-water supply. Johnnie switched screens blindly twice, then got hold of himself and found a menu. He cut quickly to the armament-status panel.

  "Engine room secured," said a voice over the Holy Trinity's own communications system. "We've unlocked all the boards." The man speaking wasn't Freisner, the warrant officer who'd led Team Three before the shooting started.

  "Acknowledged," Dan responded as his fingers whisked across the control panel. "Send two men forward and check the status of the battle center, will you? I want to make sure that they stay sealed up until all this is over."

  "Ah, Force Prime . . . ," said the man in the engine room.

  "Team Three?" Dan said sharply. "Are you too shorthanded? Shall I—?"

  "Negative, negative. We'll take care of it, you just get us the hell outa here."

  Johnnie began opening circuits to the Holy Trinity's profusion of weapon systems. Uncle Dan lit the three engines, cold while the dreadnought was at anchor, and brought up the fourth to full drive capacity. Fayette closed watertight doors, both as protection against Angels who might be loose in the ship and because the Holy Trinity was likely to need all the buoyancy she could get. Another technician busied himself with the cameras of the ship's damage assessment/internal security system.

  There was a distant ringing sound from forward as the crewmen sealed into their sleeping quarters hammered on bulkheads. The internal divisions of the ship weren't comparable to the thirty-two-inch main belt—but even so, the two-inch bulkheads would hold despite anything unarmed personnel could bring against them in the next century.

  The huge vessel sighed as she came to life. Multiple levels of vibration quivered through her fabric; but the change, so evident to those aboard her, was lost in the sounds of human pleasure and the jungle, so far as the residents of Paradise Base were concerned.

  The top overlay on the armament board was the 18-inch turrets, but Johnnie knew to ignore them even if Uncle Dan hadn't made that a direct order. The minuscule Blackhorse crew was barely able to operate one of the big turrets, quite apart from the more important tasks involved in getting the Holy Trinity out of Paradise Base. He touched a key and shifted to the secondary turrets.

  There were manual interlocks on the 5.25-inch guns, but the legend for Turrets II and IV—those nearest the bow on the starboard side—said READY on Johnnie's display. Those were the guns which had been firing in support of the base perimeter. Though they should have been locked down again when firing was complete, nobody had bothered to do so.

  Johnnie powered up the turrets one by one, so as not to overload the boards with a surge before the main drives were operating at full capacity. That was a once-in-a-million event to occur from just the power requirements of the secondary batteries—but it only had to happen once to scuttle the mission.

  As the 5.25s came up in sequence, Johnnie checked the railguns. The four domed batteries, one on each corner of the superstructure, were on yellow, STANDBY, status. That meant that although they were shut down, the permanent self-testing procedure indicated that they would operate normally as soon as the correct switches were thrown.

  Which would not be until Commander Cooke personally was sure that generator output was sufficient to the load.

  "Fayette," said Uncle Dan, "take the helm. Can we turn without backing?"

  "Going to be close, sir," muttered the technician. He split his screen, a holographic chart of the harbor on the right and a display of figures and arcs, the Holy Trinity's turning circles under various conditions, on the left. "Gonna be damn close."

  Besides the secondaries and railguns, the Holy Trinity's decks carried scores of multi-barrelled automatic weapons to suppress skimmers and torpedo craft at short range. The guns could be aimed and fired either from the weapon installations, like L7521's gun tub, or from consoles on the bridge and in the battle center.

  "We can make it," Dan muttered, though it sounded as if he were stating a hope rather than a conclusion. "Rudder full starboard, and port screws alone."

  Then, almost under his breath, "We've had it if we back and fill. Why in hell couldn't they line her up with the harbor mouth before they anchored?"

  Johnnie aimed his light-pen at the icon which would switch on all the automatic weapons—then paused. Not yet.

  The multiple installations' sleet of explosive bullets could be useful in a few minutes; but with guns of that sort, there was always the possibility that the charging command would fire a round.

  Small arms firing within the dreadnought's armored sanctuary hadn't alerted the shore defenses, but a 1-inch slug screaming over the barracks sure as hell would. There would be time enough to ready the light weapons after the alarm was given.

  "I dunno," Fayette said. "Sir. Maybe if you back one of the starboard screws, that might do it. Might."

  "Ah. Secondary batteries ready, sir," Johnnie said. "Turrets Eye-Eye and Eye-Vee are unlocked and prepared for loading."

  "Which are those, Gordon?" Dan demanded. "I don't know the layout of this ship."

  "Forward starboard, sir," Johnnie said, swallowing. Being treated as just another member of the team had advantages. It gave him the feeling of being a cog, rather than the person on whom the whole operation would stand or fail.

  Dan nodded. "Reiss and Mertoh," he said to the man who, bloody-handed, had finished moving the corpses behind a shattered console. "Go unlock the secondary guns on the port side. When you're done, stay in the forward turret and crew it if needs be."

  The sailors trotted off the bridge, obviously pleased to have a job within their competence. As they disappeared, the voice of one of the men drifted back, saying, "But we can't keep 'em firing, just the two of us, can we?"

  "Team Two," Uncle Dan said, using the intra-ship communicator from his helmet to reach the man waiting at the bow. "Report."

  "Ready. Ready, ready," buzzed the answer in Johnnie's earphones.

  Fayette touched a control. A combination of hum and high-pitched whine from the dreadnought's stern m
ade her quiver.

  "Team Three, report."

  "Engine room ready, sir," replied the unfamiliar voice over the ship's intercom. "All four powerplants are at eighty percent or better."

  "Team Four, report."

  Johnnie wondered if his own face was as set and strained as those of everyone he could see on the bridge. His light-pen poised, ready to click the automatic weapons live.

  "Ready t' go, sir. I see movement on the shore."

  Of course there was movement on the shore: this was a busy naval base. But it was lonely enough on the bridge with a group of other men; what must it be like to crouch on the stern of a hostile warship, unsure whether the next sound would be an order from your distant leader—or the challenge of a party of heavily-armed Angels?

  "Full starboard rudder, sir," said Fayette before he was asked.

  "All right, gentlemen," Dan said. "Then let's do it." He slid a control forward. "Teams Two and Four, fire your charges."

  Johnnie looked forward, out the unshuttered viewslit. There was a bright white flash as the ribbon charge which was coiled around the anchor cable went off. The noise was sharp but, for the men on the bridge, almost hidden by vibration from the drive shafts Dan had just engaged.

  The Holy Trinity gave a double lurch as both the bow and stern lines parted.

  The raiders could have hoisted the anchors easily, but that process was both time-consuming and extremely noisy. The quick and dirty method was the only way this operation was going to work.

  Johnnie thought of the Angels' bridge watch, bit his tongue; and thought about the crisp holographic display in front of him instead.

  "Base to Holy Trinity," said the ship-to-shore link in a voice which combined boredom and petulance. "Report your status. Did you have an explosion aboard? Over."

  "Holy Trinity to Base," Dan answered calmly. "Everything here is nominal. Over."

  Lights on the shore were moving noticeably through the viewslit. The two engaged drive shafts were turning at only a handful of rpm, but the torque of the huge screws was enough to swing the dreadnought even at that slow speed.