The Guns of Two-Space
Page 52
"Mr. Hans, you have the conn," said Melville. "I'm going forward to talk with Mr. Barlet. Then I'll be manning the bow gun for a while. You keep us on course and send word if you need me."
"Aye, sir," growled the old sailing master.
"One more thing. These Crabs seem to be hitting the rigging as often as the hull of our Ships. I want you to rig netting overhead. Maybe we can keep the debris off our heads. It's gonna be hard enough as it is without various odds-and-ends raining down on us."
Hans looked at him for a moment, and then looked up at the rigging. "Aye, sir, I've read about them in Cap'n Aubrey an' Admiral Hornblower's journals. An' it might jist come in handy soon. I reckon we can git it done."
"Good! Pass the word down for the lowerside to do the same."
"What kind of idiotic plan is this?" Fielder muttered to no one in particular as the command came down the voice tube to the lower quarterdeck. "Rigging nets overhead? Dammit, we've got a battle to fight and we're rigging nets?" The first officer was sinking into his usual pre-battle funk and was just itching to find someone to share his misery with. Everyone on the lower quarterdeck was trying hard to avoid his notice.
"Ah, hell," he said, shaking his head in disgust. "Midshipman Jubal!"
"Aye, sir?" Jubal replied.
"You heard the order. Start rigging nets overhead to catch falling debris. That takes priority over anything except firing the cannon until you're done. Got me?"
"Aye, sir. Rig nets over the main deck and the quarterdeck. The job has priority over anything except firing the guns. It'll be easy, sir. No big deal, really!"
"Well that's just fan-dam-tastic. Now I suggest you get out of here, because you know damned well that I'm going to take our current situation out on somebody."
"Aye, sir!"
"So snap to!" Fielder barked as he turned to watch the Crab gunboats chew up the unresponsive frigates tied to the Pier.
"We might all be dead soon, and Melville's rigging nets!" he muttered to himself. "What an asinine idea. If it was worthwhile it would already be doctrine. Humph."
As the captain came up the redside, he visually checked the 24-pounder, Malicious Intent and the three 12-pounders, Bad Ju-Ju, Sue-Sue and Deep Doo-Doo in the broadside. All were loaded and in battery, ready to fire. Their gun crews were equally prepared, nodding their heads to the captain as he moved to the bow, where Sudden Death had been moved from its greenside battery position.
"How are we set?" Melville inquired.
"Everyone's all dressed up for the dance, Captain!" Barlet replied with a grim smile on his ebon face. "The 24-pounders are double-shotted with grapeshot and roundshot. I figger the double-shot isn't going to reduce range enough to matter here, and the grape'll make their misbegotten lives more... interesting, eh? I wasn't sure the grape would be as effective from the 12-pounders, so I double-shotted them with roundshot. Soon as we get the angle we need to engage the enemy without hitting our own Ships, we can open fire."
Melville laughed and nodded. "Aye, Guns, that it will. Those bastards haven't taken any really effective fire yet. So far it's just been a turkey shoot for them. It's easy to fire accurately when no one is shooting back! I'm betting we can unnerve them with that first whiff of grape. Then double-shot all the guns with roundshot and go for the kill. I want to sink those bastards, and I'm betting our 24-pounders will do that with one good hit."
"Aye, sir!" said Barlet with a grin of feral joy on his face. His guns were going into a target-rich environment like nothing he had ever seen before, and this is what the man lived for.
"I'll be manning the upper bow chaser," the captain continued. "I'll fire as soon as there's a clear shot. Everyone else do the same."
"Aye, sir!"
Melville was in the bow, laying quietly on the platform above Sudden Death, watching the enemy Ship as it circled out on its attack run. The way it was traveling, he would have only a brief window between the Pier and a friendly Ship when he could get a good shot. Boye sat on the deck beside the gun carriage, his head poked through the railing, looking at the enemy and eagerly anticipating his master's kill.
The captain's left hand caressed the white Moss of the platform, feeling the telepathic surge of Fang's ferocity echo back at him, meeting his own bloodthirsty urge to smash these murderous intruders. His lips pulled back over his teeth as he watched the Crab gunboat draw clear of the end of the Pier. Closer, closer, clear!
He touched the Keel charge to fire the big 24-pounder, and felt a momentary <
At this close range the roundshot not only sheared through the hull, it shattered the Keel and the mast as well. The grapeshot also did horrendous damage, sending hundreds of musket balls smashing over the deck. The results were both amazing and horrifying, smashing down almost the entire crew and splashing ichor and splinters through the air like water from a hooked trout. The little Ship twisted and disappeared from two-space as Boye and their two monkeys barked and eeked jubilantly.
Those who weren't killed outright would face either a painful death by explosive decompression and freezing in vacuum, or a more drawn-out demise by falling from the sky to the planet below. In either case, they were no longer Melville's problem.
"Standby the broadsides!" Melville called as he rolled off of Sudden Death's firing platform and trotted over to Malicious Intent. Already the Fang was up to full speed, with every scrap of sail set. They popped through the window where Melville's first victim had disappeared, and were suddenly in the midst of a swarm of enemy gunboats.
Mr. Barlet allocated the other targets to the remaining guns, a job Gunny Von Rito was doing with the cannons on the lowerside.
Melville took the most challenging shot for himself. His target was a Crab gunboat that was curvetting back and forth nearest the frigates, slamming cannonballs deep into the bowels of the helpless Westerness Ships at point-blank range.
Melville focused on the target, feeling the bloodlust: his, and that of his alien symbiotes. He heard the call of the cannon to become one with it, the urge to <
Once again roundshot and grapeshot flailed the target, with spars, huge splinters and chunks of Crabshell and ichor flying high. As the debris settled, the little gunboat turned onto its side and slid out of two-space.
Melville's personal menagerie eeked and barked triumphantly and the crew cheered as their captain scrambled down. The other guns topside, combined with the lower side's 24-pounders and 12-pounders, had taken out four additional Ships. About another dozen of the Crab gunboats were running like hell and had already moved out of range!
"Good work, gentlemen!" said Melville as he looked around the Pier. "Damn! I think that's all of them!"
The Fangs were cheering themselves hoarse as old Hans walked up and spoke to him quietly. "Cap'n, jist got word from the lookout in the crosstrees. Sez we gots a whole mess o' them li'l bastards comin' at us from the north, jist over the horizon. I'd guess these guys wus jist to soften up the harbor defenses, an' mebbee this is their main body comin' in fer the kill?"
"How many of them, Mr. Hans?" Melville asked.
"Sez 'e can't count 'em. A 'real buttload' of 'em, 'e sez." The old salt and his monkey punctuated this by launching twin streams of tobacco juice into two-space.
"That's just real damned helpful, isn't it?" growled Melville. He shook his head and said, "I'm going up to take a look. Assemble the officers on the upper quarterdeck, and make sure we're ready for action again."
Damn, thought Melville, looking out at the approaching enemy Ships. Trouble doesn't come in threes. It gathers passengers as it goes and arrives in mobs and swarms.
Melville looked over at Able-Bod
ied Seaman Kivon Dillsvon, who was serving as the Ship's upperside lookout, high atop the mainmast. "I owe you an apology, Dillsvon. When I got the initial report that the number of Ships approaching was a 'buttload,' I was a bit disgusted." The young captain supressed a shiver. The cold up in the crosstrees, combined with the tactical situation, had chilled him to the bone. Looking again at the mass of glowing white sails filling the northern horizon, he continued, "But I have to admit that 'buttloads' is about as useful a word as 'myriads' or 'hundreds' or any other term indicating too damned many bad guys to count."
"Eep!" agreed his monkey emphatically.
Dillsvon bobbed his head as the wide-eyed monkey on the seaman's shoulder perfectly mimicked the action. "Yah. I knewed it vasn't right fer a report, but damn, sir, der's a buttload o' dem rascals out der!"
Melville replied absently, "Aye, that there is. I guess this time we'll have to let some of the other Ships in the fleet share the fun with us. Never pays to be too greedy," he said as he grabbed hold of the backstay to slide down to the quarterdeck.
Dillsvon looked at his captain sliding back down to the deck, then the old sailor spoke quietly to himself. "Aye, Cap'n, I tink yew be right. Ve might vant ta let the rest o' da fleet help out dis time!" He grinned down at the captain again and then looked out at the tiny, glowing sails, trying to figure out just how many of them there really were.
Melville walked calmly over to the group of officers waiting for him on the upper quarterdeck as McAndrews and his monkey prepared him a mug of tea. With the exception of Lady Elphinstone (who was caring for the few crew members who were wounded in the short engagement) his officers were all there, while Ulrich and Grenoble stood behind him.
The entire Ship had quickly become aware that yet another battle was pending, against an enormous force. (That kind of news could not be kept secret for long in a tiny world consisting of one-hundred-and-fifty feet of closely packed humanity.) And each of the Fang's officers responded to the news in different ways.
Lt. Broadax looked insufferably cheerful and happy, gleefully creating (with the help of her monkey) a cigar-generated toxic cloud that could have won the upcoming battle all by itself if it could have been mass-produced and transported through the airless atmosphere of two-space.
Mr. Hans looked absolutely imperturbable—until you noticed his lingering glances at the rigging and masts, looking at them with the eyes of a lover wondering how many would be ruined beyond repair by the pending battle.
Lt. Fielder simply looked... pissed-off. To him it appeared that the entire incident was concocted by God to make him miserable. Or dead. Which in his mind were almost equal events.
The midshipmen varied between the phlegmatic calm of an experienced warrior, and the frightened anticipation of a rookie. All of them were tried and true warriors. But still, most of them were just boys, with a boy's enthusiasms and emotional volatility.
All in all, Melville couldn't think of a better group of officers to go through this next trial with. But he was the Captain. He was the man who had to decide on the strategy and tactics for a battle against innumerable enemies. It was his responsibility to determine how they could best combat the enemy horde, knowing that he was going to have to spend the lives of these beloved comrades to do it. Spend them frugally, with a miser's touch, but spend them nonetheless. For he knew that with the odds facing them, the chances were slim (hell, damn near nonexistent!) that they would all make it out intact, much less alive.
This is the real world, Melville told himself. It is not some novel, where the characters you really love never die. Sometimes the wrong people die. Like Mr. Tibbits, the gentle, beloved old carpenter.
The loss of Tibbits and the maiming of young Hayl had scarred Melville's soul. He could no longer depend upon denial and ignorance to protect him from the horror of combat.
Maybe it was part of his maturing process as a warrior. Just another hurdle to overcome. But he could no longer pretend that the good guys, the ones you loved, could not die. We Could Die! That was the terrible, unpredictable actuality of real combat. Remember this the next time you think about going into battle, he told himself bitterly.
God above knew it wasn't fair. One Ship against all of these bloody bastards, whoever the hell they were. His men, his Ship, his guns against this bloody fleet that covered the horizon to the north of him.
You expected unfairness in life. Life is hard. Then you die. But this went beyond that. He felt his mortality. He sensed his impending death. They were going to die. They were all going to die! He felt overwhelmed with despair as he looked at these men and prepared to give them the orders that would lead them to their doom.
His knees felt weak and the mug of tea in his hand begin to shake slightly. All was gone. Hope? Gone. Future? Gone.
No!
I am Thomas Melville, Master and Commander of Her Majesty's Ship, the Fang, and I refuse to accept it! He drew a deep combat breath and felt Fang's ferocity seeping into his soul. I am Fang! I am her mighty guns! I am her crew! And we refuse to accept it!
As a wise man once wrote, "Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death."
"Shipmates," he began, taking a calm, steady sip from his tea as his dog sat quietly beside him, "we have a bit of a challenge in front of us. You have heard by now that the Ships we just destroyed were not alone, but rather the vanguard of a vast fleet."
He took a breath, let it out slowly, and took another sip of tea. "To be honest, I haven't a clue how many of them there are. They all seem to be the same type of small Ship with glowing white sails. But there are, as Dillsvon just told me, a 'buttload' of them."
There were a few strained chuckles from the officers as they absorbed his words.
"It appears that the fleet will be delayed in getting underway. They will have to man the surviving Ships, tow the badly damaged ones out of the way, and then form up in line of battle. Our job is obvious. Delay the enemy fleet until Rear Admiral Middlemuss gets the Navy out and can engage and destroy them."
Fielder asked, in a tone that was completely devoid of his usual sarcasm, "Sir, have you any idea how to delay this 'buttload' of Ships without getting the Fang's—and our—butts shot completely off?"
"Actually, Daniel, I do," he said with a small smile. "Or at least a method of giving our fleet time enough to get underway. I hope it will be sufficient to keep us intact, but it's going to be close.
"I had the signalman hoist the flags for 'enemy in sight' and 'Intend to engage,'" Melville continued. "I reported the number of Ships to be 'greater than one hundred.' Which," he added bemusedly, "is the most that our code book had for a signal for enemy fleets. It would appear that the people who made up our signal books suffered from a dearth of imagination.
"My plan is to act like we are damaged and running from the fray here at the Piers. We will appear to be easy prey. Somebody that they will want to gobble up before they continue on to the bottled up, besieged, and thoroughly smashed fleet they expect to find Pierside.
"My only concern is that the Crabs who just got away may know that we're not that hurt. But I'm betting they'll have trouble telling all our Ships apart, or maybe they'll think that the ones we sunk hurt us when they weren't watching. If they don't take the bait, we'll find some way to get their attention.
"Mr. Hans will take charge of strewing debris, spare spars, and other objects about, making it appear as if we have taken serious damage. Furl our sails and hang some old rotten canvas, and tear them up good so that they look battle-damaged. We have cause to believe that they can read our signal flags, so we'll limp along and appear awfully easy to spank while we send deliberately snide, snotty, and nasty flag messages to the enemy. Mr. Fielder can use his imagination for that one, I believe." The officers chuckled briefly and he continued the briefing with a renewed sense of confidence.
This might work. Dammit, it might just work! Keep telling yourself that, Thomas. We don't have to fight them all. We just have to delay them. Give the Crabs a
good bloody nose, and hold out until the rest of the fleet can join us.
"Let us provoke them. They are alien, but I'm betting they are predators, and it is a universal truism that every predator cannot help but be tempted by the wounded-duck routine. I want us to look like a frigate that is barely holding herself together—an easy target—as we go crawling out to escape the destruction that they think is happening here.
"And when they see us, why then we'll do what would come naturally to a Ship so damaged. We'll attempt to run away, at the same crawling pace." He grinned again, but this time it was more a flash of predator's fangs than a true smile. "When we have them trailing us, looking for a prize... Well, then we unfurl our real sails, throw overboard anything that hinders us, and we fight!"
"Eep!" echoed Melville's monkey. The other monkeys and their humans all nodded in agreement.
"It'll be a running fight," continued Melville. "A stern chase. And a stern chase is a long chase, so we'll have lots of time to share things with them. Little things like 24-pound cannonballs to make their lives interesting. Then we'll circle back here and let the rest of the fleet have some of the fun. After all, we wouldn't want them to think that we're too greedy to share now, would we?"
From their duty stations on the upperside gundeck and the rigging, the Fang's sailors and marines were watching the officers on the upper quarterdeck. As they heard the chuckles rising from their leaders they wondered what in the hell could be so damned funny at a time like this.
Melville looked over the greenside railing at the multitude of small Ships approaching the Pier. The enemy fleet had closed enough that the glowing sails could be seen from the main deck now, and they looked like a vast, white wildfire that spread across the horizon.
Six down, and only a thousand or so to go, eh? the captain mused as he stared out at the small craft. Should make for an exciting morning, shouldn't it?
"Damn there's a lot of 'em!" Melville said to the two buckskin-clad rangers who were standing with their rifled muskets at the quarterdeck rail. "How'd that joke of yours go, Josiah? First Captain Bravo had one ship attack him, and then four, and now..."