by David Weber
Less than a minute later one of the other bombsweepers detonated another sea-bomb. Then two more exploded in quick succession, and Mahntayl swore.
“Pull the guns off the frigging ironclads!” he snapped. “Let’s see how one of those little pricks likes a twelve-inch shell up his arse!”
* * *
“Be damned, Sir! It’s actually working!” Lieutenant Rahbyns shouted jubilantly, and Commander Sympsyn nodded.
He hoped like hell that they didn’t lose a kite, but each of his bombsweepers had two additional kites, ready to stream the instant an exploding sea-bomb destroyed one of the ones they’d already deployed. In the meantime, though, Rahbyns was right; it was working almost exactly as Admiral Seamount had predicted.
“Signal to the Flagship,” he said, turning towards the signalman standing by the stubby mast which had been rigged solely as a way to pass signals. “Hoist Number Nineteen.”
“Aye, aye, Sir!” the youthful signalman replied with a smile. According to the signal book vocabulary, Number 19 meant “I have mail on board.”
* * *
“Signal from Commander Sympsyn, relayed from Gairmyn,” Zhones said jubilantly. “Number Nineteen, My Lord!”
“Good, Ahrlee! Excellent!” Sarmouth said, as if he hadn’t already known exactly how Sympsyn’s efforts were proceeding.
And it truly was good tidings. But there were bad ones to go with it, including the fact that the new 12-inch Fultyn Rifles were, indeed, capable of punching through a City-class ironclad’s armor. So far, two had penetrated Eraystor and one had penetrated Riverbend. The good news—such as it was—was that the Dohlaran armor piercing shells were thicker walled and contained far less powder than their Charisian counterparts and their fuses were less reliable. A Dohlaran 12-inch shell was actually only a little more destructive than a Charisian 6-inch shell.
Not that enough six-inch shells won’t rip the guts right out of any ship, the admiral thought grimly.
Eraystor had twenty casualties already, nine of them fatal, and Riverbend had three dead and seven wounded. Zhaztro’s flagship had lost two guns on her engaged side, as well, and the damage control parties had had a difficult time extinguishing the fire one of the hits had started in her paint stores.
Gwylym Manthyr’s much heavier guns had taken Wreckers’ Island under fire as well, but Mahntayl’s guns were even more deeply dug-in than the Cape Toe batteries had been. It was going to take time to neutralize them, and—
* * *
The first 12-inch shell hit the water almost five hundred yards from its intended target. The next three were at least equally wide of the mark.
Number five hit Bombsweeper Three almost directly amidships.
The converted barge was too lightly built to activate the shell’s unsophisticated fuse, so Bombsweeper Three wasn’t simply blown out of the water. But the shell that slammed completely in one side and out the other side of the bombsweeper also punched straight through its boiler.
The explosion of steam killed two of the bombsweeper’s crew outright. Three more were savagely scalded—one of them fatally—and only the fact that the boiler was on an open deck, with no overhead to trap any of the explosion’s fury, prevented it from blowing the converted barge apart.
The reprieve, unfortunately, was brief.
Without power, the bombsweeper slowed quickly, and as it lost speed, its kites began angling back inward rather than spreading broadly. Half of Bombsweeper Three’s assigned riflemen were dead or dying, but the survivors fired desperately at the sea-bomb trapped by the starboard kite as it glided steadily closer. It took almost thirty shots to score a hit, and the sea-bomb was barely forty yards clear when it detonated.
The explosion shook Bombsweeper Three like a spider-rat in a cat-lizard’s jaws. Another dozen seams started, sending fresh streams of water spurting into the slowly settling vessel.
And then the sea-bomb which hadn’t been caught on a kite’s cable slammed directly into Bombsweeper Three’s hull and the sweeper—and every man aboard it—disintegrated in a white column of death.
* * *
“Yes!” Ezeekyl Mahntayl shouted. The heretics’ guns had hurt his battery badly and he knew the damage was only beginning, but he wheeled to Kortez. “Put the eight-inchers onto them, too, and tell the lads to pour it on! Sink those frigging pissants!”
* * *
“Shan-wei take them!” Sir Hainz Zhaztro snarled.
He’d had ample proof the Dohlarans had finally found a gun Eraystor’s armor couldn’t simply shrug off. He didn’t know how many of his flagship’s crew had been killed already, but he knew there were more than he’d ever find it easy to live with. And he knew there’d be more of them if he continued the engagement. But he also knew her armor offered better protection than anything the bombsweepers had. For that matter, it had defeated everything lighter than a 12-inch shell to come her way. She could be hurt badly, possibly even killed, but she was immeasurably more survivable than any of the bombsweepers, and unless the sweepers could clear a path through the sea-bombs, the entire attack on Gorath would ultimately fail.
“Take us closer,” he told Alyk Cahnyrs grimly. “Make the bastards concentrate on us, instead.”
* * *
“That’s odd,” Lieutenant Makadoo muttered.
“What’s odd, Sir?” Bryntyn Hahlys demanded.
The petty officer couldn’t think of anything “odd’ enough to distract him from what had just happened to Bombsweeper Three—especially since shell splashes had begun rising like loathsome, poisonous fungus around two more of the sweepers. The three leading ironclads were moving to interpose between the remaining sweepers and the Dohlaran gunners, and their new course angled perilously close to the sea-bomb field boundaries on the charts the seijins’ spies had provided. It also took them entirely too close to the battery’s guns for Hahlys’ piece of mind, and the fury of the artillery duel had redoubled.
“Well, I sure as Shan-wei wouldn’t be running out into the open with shells falling all around my ears,” Makadoo replied.
“Excuse me, Sir? Running out?” Hahlys shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense!”
“What I thought, too,” Makadoo agreed, staring through his double-glass. “But looks like there’s at least a hundred of them.”
“Where do they think they’re going to go?” Hahlys wondered out loud. Wreckers’ Island was over eight miles from the mainland coast. That struck him as one hell of a swim!
“Looks like they’re climbing onto those construction barges.” Makadoo sounded as if he couldn’t quite believe his own words as he watched the fleeing Dohlarans and Gwylym Manthyr’s 10-inch and 8-inch shells began walking back and forth across the battery’s parade ground. “They must be out of their minds! If I was going to panic and run, I’d look for the deepest hole I could find, not head for—”
He broke off and stiffened, leaning forward as if that would somehow help him see better.
“Oh … my … God!” he whispered and whipped around, showing Hahlys a bloodless face.
“Signal—quick!” he snapped, and the startled petty officer jerked the pad out of his pocket.
“‘Urgent,’” Makadoo barked, beginning to dictate even before Hahlys had his pencil ready. “‘Six barges behind Wreckers’ Island loaded with rockets!’ Get that the hell down to the ship!”
“Yes, Sir!”
While Hahlys grabbed the signal cylinder and stuffed the sheet of paper into it, Makadoo turned back around, watching sickly through his double-glass as the Dohlaran seamen swarmed across the barges. Even now, the lieutenant felt a surge of respect for the courage it took for those men to charge out into the open in the midst of such a furious bombardment, but that respect was swamped by a much stronger sense of dread as they stripped away the earth-colored tarpaulins which had covered the squat, vertical cylinders of the defensive rockets.
* * *
“Message from Lieutenant Makadoo, Admiral!”
/> Sarmouth turned quickly to the midshipman. He already knew what Makadoo’s message said, and a part of him wanted to scream curses at the lieutenant for not mentioning those “construction barges” sooner.
“What?” he demanded harshly, impatiently, resenting the lost time while Zhones told him something he already knew.
“‘Urgent,’” Zhones read. “‘Six barges behind Wreckers’ Island loaded with rockets!’” The young man looked up from the note and his eyes were dark. “What barges, My Lord?” he demanded.
“Immediate signal to Admiral Zhastro!” Sarmouth snapped. “Execute General Order Six!”
“Yes, Sir!” Zhones jerked his head at a pale-faced signalman, and Sarmouth whipped around to the ladder which connected the flag bridge level of the conning tower to the navigating bridge level. He pressed the inside edges of his boots to the outside of the ladder frame and slid down it like a midshipman down a shroud without ever touching a single tread.
“My Lord?” Halcom Bahrns sounded surprised at his sudden, unceremonious arrival, and Sarmouth didn’t blame him.
“Rocket barges, Halcom!” he said quickly. “Makadoo’s spotted half a dozen of them behind Wreckers’ Island. We have to get Zhaztro and the Cities out of there!”
Bahrns’ eyes flared, but he jerked a nod of almost instant understanding, and Sarmouth swung towards one of the vision slits and stared out of it. No one could possibly have seen the Dohlaran battery through the enormous clouds of smoke, but he didn’t need to. The overhead SNARC saw it just fine, and his jaw clenched as the swarming Dohlaran seamen stripped away the canvas which had been deliberately painted and then rigged over a supporting framework to resemble rounded piles of dirt.
Thirsk’s too damned smart, the baron thought grimly. And he—or, rather, Ahlverez—has gone too far out of his way to establish his own information conduits. That’s how the two of them found out about the frigging Balloon Corps so damned fast! And then Thirsk had to go and move the goddamn barges after we’d sailed! I wonder if he was still strengthening the earthworks just to give him cover to hide the rocket barges. Or did he just realize he could hide them from a balloon that way?
There was no way to answer those questions, but there was still time to avoid the wost consequences of Thirsk’s forethought. The Dohlarans would need several minutes—probably as much as a quarter of an hour—to clear away the launchers and bring them to bear, and those barges were firmly aground now, unable to move or alter their point of aim. That meant they’d have to wait until Zhaztro moved into their coverage zone. He’d have to come close enough for them to reach and sail into the immobile barges’ fixed field of fire, so if he only reversed course quickly enough.…
“Shift your fire, Halcom,” he said, turning back from the view slit. “Forget about the battery for now. Put everything you can on the channel between it and the mainland.” He bared his teeth. “No frigging barge full of rockets will like a hit from a ten-inch shell!”
* * *
“Any response from Eraystor?” Captain Gahryth Shumayt demanded.
He stood on HMS Gairmyn’s open bridge wing, heedless of the heavy Dohlaran fire. He’d suffered from claustrophobia all his life, but that wasn’t why he’d eschewed the protection of his ironclad’s conning tower. He simply couldn’t see anything from inside it, so he’d insisted his first lieutenant stay there, where he’d be able to take over if anything untowards happened to Shumayt himself, while he got on with the business of seeing where the hell his ship was going.
Now he glared at the signalman who’d joined him on the bridge wing, and that hapless—and obviously nervous—young man shook his head.
“No, Sir.” The petty officer looked up at the colorful bunting flying from Gairmyn’s yardarm, then ducked instinctively as another Dohlaran shell screamed overhead before it smashed into the water well beyond the ironclad. The fountain rose high as her crosstrees, pattering back across her decks like salty rain, and he climbed cautiously back to his feet and looked sheepishly at his captain, who’d never even flinched. “Nothing so far.”
“Shit,” Shumayt growled.
“It must be the smoke, Sir,” the PO said, and Shumayt swore again.
Of course it was. The Cities’ masts were shorter than those of any galleon, and the billowing gunsmoke—and funnel smoke—could only make their signals even more difficult to see. But surely one of the other ships had to see the signal and relay it to Zhaztro! They couldn’t all be invisible to Eraystor!
* * *
Damn it! Sarmouth snarled mentally as he realized Shumayt’s signalman was exactly right. Zhaztro couldn’t see the signal, and the cushion of time which would have let him withdraw was spinning away with terrifying speed.
The baron ripped open the heavily armored conning tower door and stormed out onto the navigating bridge. Someone shouted his name, but he ignored it, racing to the outer edge of the bridge and raising his double-glass as if he were trying to see Eraystor through the blinding smoke. But that was the farthest thing from his mind at the moment.
“Nahrmahn!” The thunder of Manthyr’s artillery drowned his voice. No one could have heard him from more than three or four feet away, but Nahrmahn Baytz and Owl had far better hearing than any flesh-and-blood human being.
“We’re already deploying them!” Nahrmahn’s voice came sharply over the com plug in his ear, and Sarmouth felt a huge surge of relief. Of course the portly little prince had been monitoring the situation! But Narhmahn wasn’t done speaking.
“The remotes are on their way, but it’s going to take time, Dunkyn. At least another ten minutes. The remotes are stealthy as hell, but they aren’t very fast!”
“I should’ve just gone ahead and blown the damned things up as soon as we came in range! Damn it! We’re throwing enough frigging shells their way to explain just about anything’s blowing up over there now!”
“But you didn’t know this was going to happen,” Nahrmahn pointed out. “If Sir Hainz could just see the signal, you’d’ve gotten him out of the field of fire in plenty of time.”
“And if I were God, we wouldn’t need to worry about goddamned Clyntahn!” Sarmouth snarled. “But I’m not and he can’t! And don’t remind me about the ‘political consequences’! None of them mean squat until after the frigging battle, and unless we win the damned thing, no one’ll be able to do a single thin—”
* * *
“Signal from Admiral Sarmouth, Sir!” Lywys Pharsaygyn’s voice was sharp as he threaded his way across the crowded conning tower with the message slip in hand. “Relayed from Gairmyn. ‘Urgent. Number Eighty. Numeral Six.’”
“What?” Zhaztro stared at his chief of staff in disbelief.
Number 80 was “Execute previous orders,” and Number Six was the order to break off the attack and withdraw immediately. He’d thought Sarmouth was taking caution to the extreme by arranging that sort of order in advance, and he wondered what in Shan-wei’s name had triggered it now, of all possible times! Eraystor and Riverbend were barely six thousand yards from Wreckers’ Island. They’d taken several more hits to get there, and Riverbend was on fire aft, but Captain Whytmyn had just signaled that his damage control parties were on top of it. They were finally in close enough for the deadly rapidity of their 6-inch guns—coupled with the more deliberate, longer ranged fire from Gwylym Manthyr—to beat down the battery’s fire. They could simply pour in far more shells than the slow-firing muzzleloaders could send back, and barring some sort of catastrophic hit in a magazine or something equally severe, they were winning. So why—?
Doesn’t matter, Hainz, he told himself harshly. Dunkyn’s not the kind to jump at shadows, and even if he was, he’s your commanding officer.
“I don’t know what it’s about, Alyk,” he said, turning to his flag captain, “but turn her around and signal the bombsweepers to follow us back out to—”
* * *
“Fire!” Lieutenant Fhrancysko Dyahz barked.
He’d lost thirty
men clearing away the concealing canvas. And, he admitted, he’d thought the idea of “camouflaging” the barges when they were already hidden behind the island was ridiculous. But then he’d seen the balloon floating above the heretic flagship and realized Admiral Thirsk must have already known the heretics had it.
Now he yanked the friction primer that ignited the fuse and turned to follow the last of his men back into the protection of the battery’s shellproof dugouts. He was twenty feet from the entrance when one of Gwylym Manthyr’s 8-inch shells exploded seventy yards away from him and a steel splinter four inches long hit him in the back like a hyper-velocity buzz saw.
He was dead by the time he hit the ground.
Ten seconds after that, the rockets began to fire.
* * *
Each of Lieutenant Dyahz’ four barges contained a hundred and twenty of the squat, ugly rockets Dynnys Zhwaigair had designed for harbor defense. They didn’t all fire simultaneously. Instead they launched in a carefully arranged sequence, roaring heavenward in a fountain of flame on a far slower, far steeper trajectory than the ICN’s high velocity guns could produce. His number two barge had fired only forty-three rockets before one of Gwylym Manthyr’s 10-inch shells exploded eleven feet from it. The explosion ripped the side of the hull to pieces, set off the sympathetic detonation of nineteen more rockets, and blasted the broken and burning barge up onto its side. The sudden upheaval scattered its remaining fifty-eight rockets in a flat, broad arc that came nowhere near any Charisian.
Of the three hundred and sixty rockets aboard the remaining three barges, forty-nine malfunctioned in one fashion or another. Three of them actually snaked around and slammed into the rear face of the battery’s parapet, killing sixteen more of Captain Mahntayl’s men. But the other three hundred and eleven screamed heavenward in an endless avalanche of fire and smoke, then came shrieking back down.