Rising Tides (46 page)

“Lookout sees smokes on horizon,” called Min-Sakir, or “Minnie” the talker, so named for her size and voice. “Much smokes!” she stressed. “Nancy is pounding craap out of traan-sports!” she chortled.

“Belay sportscaster comments on the bridge!” Frankie scolded, a little more harshly than he’d intended.

“Aye, aye, sir,” replied a chastened Minnie.

Far outstripping her Imperial “allies,” USS
Walker
sent her own battle flag racing up her foremast and steamed into battle with a new, unknown foe.

The slick-haired man immediately went on the attack. Matt found himself fighting for his life once again with swishing, crashing blades and a blinding-fast sword point that dissolved into a blur before his eyes. The difference was, this time he really was fighting for his life and there was no padding or blunted tips. He was giving ground—he had no choice—and still he suspected his opponent was merely toying with him, showing off. The guy was incredibly quick, even faster than Jenks, and Matt knew with complete certainty that he stood no chance in this kind of fight. He’d improved tremendously—his daily exercises had seen to that—but he still felt stiff, fighting in this formal, almost ritualized style. He stuck with it, though, even after his unnamed adversary pinked him on the left shoulder, cut the back of his left hand when it inadvertently strayed from behind his back, and opened a shallow gash on the inside of his right forearm.

He had no idea how Jenks was doing; he didn’t dare take his eyes off that cobralike blade before him. He heard grunting and stomping and the incessant rattle of blades, so he knew his friend was still alive at least. Beyond that, he didn’t have a clue. His own fight had backed him up and around, until Jenks’s battle continued at his back. The crowd, almost completely on the Imperial side now, occasionally groaned or cheered, and he suspected the groans were mostly for him. He fought on, gasping, sweat soaking his bandanna and blood streaming down to his wrist. Soon his hand would get slippery and he’d be dead. Seeing this, his opponent disengaged and took a few steps back.

“Wipe your arm,” he said harshly. At least he was breathing hard as well. “I’m enjoying this, and I want it to last!” He turned his back and walked in a circle, slashing at the air while Matt pulled the bandanna from his neck and wiped the blood away. He held the cloth against his face, soaking up the sweat, then wrapped it around his bleeding left hand, clasping the ends in his palm. There was polite applause from the stands. He looked over and saw that Jenks and his adversary were still going at it.

“Thanks,” Matt said. “Sorry, I don’t know your name, so I hope ‘shithead’ is okay?”

The slick-haired man snarled and came at him. As quick as that, the battle was rejoined with the same intensity as before, maybe even more. Matt kept at it, still a little awkward in the stiff form he’d practiced. The other man had a number of advantages besides his vastly greater experience. He was smaller, faster, in much better condition, and his blade wasn’t as heavy. On Matt’s side was his reach, his thus far almost entirely defensive strategy—and his mind-set. Unknown to his opponent, Matt wasn’t fighting a duel, he was battling a rabid animal, a Grik, a creature bent on killing him so he couldn’t perform his greater duty of protecting the people he’d brought here. The man had been right about one thing—his name meant nothing to Matt.

There was a thunderous cheer, a cheer Matt had been waiting for, praying for, as his arm began to tire. He’d been counting on it, but it drew his opponent’s attention just the slightest bit. With a roar, Matt dropped all pretense of form and style and lunged forward, plowing his opponent’s sword aside with his own, then grasping the blade with his “bandaged” left hand. Bringing his guard up, he smashed the man in the face again, drew back, and drove his Academy sword into the slick-haired man’s chest, all the way to the hilt.

The crowd went almost silent, then erupted once again. Chances were, a few might scoff at his tactics, but they weren’t against the rules. Besides, most likely, hardly anyone saw what he did. Attention had probably been focused on Jenks. Matt took the slick-haired man’s sword from his loosening fingers and let his body slide off his own blade onto the ground. The crowd was ecstatic. He looked at Jenks and grinned, gasping for every breath. A squad of marshals, muskets on their shoulders, were trotting toward the opposing box where Reed leaned on the rail beside Don Hernan, his face set in stone. Matt watched, perplexed again as to why Reed would so publicly associate himself with the weird foreign priest—or whatever he was. Obviously, the Governor-Emperor also considered it tantamount to treason. Everyone would think so, even the Company. Reed just stood there, waiting for the marshals to come. It didn’t make sense.

Something stirred near the bottom of the stands and Matt looked down. About four feet off the ground, the blue bunting parted and exposed five, six, eight! dark, ominous muzzles. Matt spun and sprinted toward Jenks. Just as he performed a classic open-field tackle on his friend, eight medium-weight cannons erupted with breath-snatching force and spewed their double loads of canister into the “Imperial” bleachers.

“My God, it
is
here!” Jenks coughed as the white smoke billowed over them. The cheers in the stands had turned to screams. “No wonder Reed went to that side!”

“Not so much a political statement as self-preservation,” Matt agreed, coughing too. He heaved Jenks to his feet. “Cannons! How the hell did they get
Those
here without anybody seeing? Didn’t anybody think to check?”

“For
cannons
on the ground level under the viewing stands? Be serious. They may have been sneaking them in for months, in carts or wagons....” Jenks seemed disoriented. “The Governor-Emperor!”

“C’mon!” Matt said. “We gotta get out of here before they reload!”

“I must go to Gerald!”

“Jenks, he’s either dead, well protected by now, or too busy to notice you!” Matt said sharply. “Let’s go!” He sprinted back in the direction they’d previously walked, dragging Jenks by the arm. Stites, Juan, and a puffing Gray met them in the smoke. Stites had a BAR and Gray carried his Thompson. Juan had two 1903 Springfields and he handed one to Matt, along with his other belt with his scabbard and Colt.

“Did you shoot the flare?” Matt demanded. The air was still thick with the white haze of gunsmoke. Muskets began to pop, stabbing orange flame in all directions, but most was aimed at the Imperial stands.

“Aye, sir, as if I needed to,” Stites replied. “Goddamn cannons! If Chack didn’t hear that, he’s ... well, been around cannons too long!”

Men in yellow and red uniforms were becoming visible at the base of the “visitors’ ” stands, loading the heavy guns.

“Hose ’em!” Matt ordered. Juan fired the first shot and a man with a rammer staff crumpled to the ground. Gray stitched the blue bunting around each gun, while Stites unleashed several clips horizontally along the base of the stands. Matt held his fire, looking for Reed, Don Hernan, or any of the bigwigs, but the viewing box was suddenly empty. Musket balls
vrooped
through the air around them, and they were driven to cover. All the while, the screaming in the stands to Matt’s right continued unabated. They scrambled over a hasty barricade that Courtney had erected around the reinforced crate. He’d added some heavy benches and other odds and ends he’d managed to gather before he drew the enemy’s attention.

“Bloody good show, Captain Reddy!” he exclaimed, when they dropped behind the meager protection. A stack of helmets awaited them, and everyone discarded their hats and put one on, pulling the straps under their chins. “If I didn’t know better, I’d have bet against you myself. I almost believed you were outclassed there for a moment. Bravo!”

Stites heaved one of the ship’s .30-caliber Brownings up onto the crate. Juan banged open a box of belted ammunition.

“Yeah,” said Matt. “Me too.” He peeked over the crate. “Damn!” he said. “Where are they all
coming
from? There must be a company of infantry out there, maybe more. Hurry up, Stites!”

“I suppose if the marshals had been attentive enough to discover cannons, they might have found that as well,” Jenks said wryly, referring to the Browning. He seemed to have gathered his wits. “Bringing weapons to a duel ... It just isn’t done!” He crouched beside Matt, fiddling with the chin strap of the unfamiliar helmet. “They must have staged the infantry in the woods before dawn, perhaps keeping people out with men posing as marshals.”

“Or they had real ones helping,” Matt said. Three cannons fired into the opposite stands again, raising another chorus of screams.

“Filthy murderers!” Jenks cried. “They’re deliberately killing unarmed civilians!” he exclaimed to Matt. “Give me a weapon, I beg you!”

“Welcome to the kind of war we’re used to, Jenks,” Matt said grimly. He handed over the Springfield Juan had given him and picked up the BAR, checking the magazine. “You remember how to use that?” he asked.

Jenks looked doubtfully at the ’03. “You showed me once.”

“You’re going to love it,” Matt assured him, opening fire with the BAR. Stites joined him with the .30-cal.

Against Kari’s adamant warnings, Reynolds took the Nancy into a final dive. The strangers on the ships below were starting to shoot back now, and being mainly infantry, they had a lot to shoot back with. The speed of the plane made individual accuracy from smoothbore muskets poor at best, but with so many firing, even accidental hits were likely. The last dive had resulted in seven or eight brand-new holes in the little ship, one of which was causing a little trouble with the starboard aileron.

Fred Reynolds and Kari-Faask had left three ships burning already, though, and they still had one bomb left.

“Hold on to your hat!” Fred cried. “Just one more run, and we beat feet back to Scapa Flow! We’re almost out of fuel anyway.” He pushed the stick forward and Kari reluctantly finished cranking the wing floats back down. She was panting from raising and lowering the contraptions and cursed herself for the idea. She’d popped off that they needed to “slow down” in their dives so she could get a better feel for her release point. Fred said they needed more drag and she suggested the floats. Since then, they’d discovered the things made pretty good dive brakes, but improved mechanical advantage over the prototype or not, it was a hell of a lot of work.

Kari finished cranking just as the Nancy lined up on an undamaged transport, and she reached into the nearly empty crate of bombs. Fred was staring at the ship, imagining a set of sights was mounted on the nose of the plane—across the large “NO” painted there. The target was a weird-looking thing, as were all the “enemy” ships. It was a steam-sail hybrid like the Imperial frigates, but the lines remained more classical. There really wasn’t much difference between the American and Imperial steamers except that the Americans used screw propellers and the “Brits” used paddle wheels. The Dominion steamers might almost have been galleons, or Grik Indiamen, and their paddle wheels were exposed. As far as Fred could tell, the Dominion warships—and a couple were real monsters—still relied on sail power alone. He knew that could be an advantage as well as a disadvantage, depending on the wind, and their sides seemed to be pierced for an awful lot of guns. “Get ready!” he shouted.

The transport below was trying to maneuver, something the others hadn’t done, and he kicked the rudder back and forth, trying to keep the target in his imaginary sights. Human shapes grew visible below, hundreds of them, all seemingly armed with muskets pointed at his nose. Some started flashing amid white puffs of smoke. He bored in, almost until it looked like the Nancy would clip the enemy masthead, and he yanked back on the stick just as the plane shuddered from a number of hits and the air around him thrummed with a hundred more balls as he roared down, almost to the sea, and leveled off into a gentle, distancegaining climb.

Risking a quick look back to see where the bomb fell, he didn’t see a detonation or even a splash. “What the—!” he started to shout into the voice tube, but then saw Kari lolling back and forth with the motion of the plane. “Kari!” he yelled. “Kari, answer me! Are you hit?”

The ’Cat managed to straighten slightly, and shifted her face toward the voice tube. “I hit,” she confirmed, barely audible. “Motor hit too.” Fred saw she was quickly being covered by atomized oil spraying through the prop. “I tell you we ask for it that time!” Kari mumbled.

“No, Kari!” Fred shouted, “
I
asked for it! I’m
so
sorry! Where are you hit? Put pressure on it, stop the bleeding!”

Kari didn’t answer. Instead, she flopped to one side of her cockpit and slumped down in her seat.

“No!” Fred screamed. “You hang on, do you hear? Damn it, don’t you ... Just hang on!” Frantically he looked around. The oil pressure gauge was dropping fast, and the various temperature gauges were beginning to rise. Ahead, toward the mouth of Scapa Flow, he just made out a gray shape, a bone in her teeth and hot gasses shimmering above her stacks. A couple of other ships were underway as well, far behind. “Just hang on,” he repeated, aiming his battered plane for the old destroyer, and pushing the throttle to its stop.