Reed’s eyes flared. “You may sing a different tune when this day is done!”
“Perhaps you refer to the Dominion fleet coming from the south?” Courtney asked. “Of course you do. In that case, I propose it is
you
who will be dreadfully disappointed. We discovered its advance quite early this morning and . . . um . . . sufficient fleet elements have sortied to intercept it. All of Home Fleet and the harbor defenses have been alerted as well. No fleet can pass those forts, sir! We once nearly stopped a much larger fleet with much less!”
For the first time Reed’s expression showed uncertainty. “That’s a lie!” he snarled.
“What?” Matt asked. “That we know about the fleet? Or that it’ll be stopped? Obviously we know about it, and that’s enough to stop it. Courtney’s right about those forts. Besides, where
is
Don Hernan? You don’t really believe he’s off leading a charge. My God, you stupid bastard. Why’d he
kill that poor girl
? The bastard bolted, leaving you with the bag!”
Harrison Reed seemed to sag. “Very well,” he said. “Perhaps you’re right.” He straightened and his aim steadied. Gray tensed, ready to spray him down. “I won’t hang,” he said simply. “You surprised me today, Captain Reddy. You killed one of my very best.” He snorted. “Not exactly sporting, your ploy at the end, but you did hold your own and manage to get the job done.” He took a breath and slowly lowered his pistol to the chair beside him. “I’m no Lemuel Truelove,” he confessed, “but I challenge you to kill me man to man. You will have your revenge, and I will have paradise.”
Matt hesitated only a moment, then inverted the Springfield and drove the bayonet hard into the wooden floor.
“Skipper!” objected Gray, but Matt ignored him while Reed smiled and drew the ornate rapier at his side. Before anyone could say another word, Matt’s hand went to his belt and came away with his 1911 Colt .45. Flipping the safety off with his thumb, he shot Harrison Reed four times in the center of his chest.
“The hell with you, you murdering bastard,” Matt said as Reed gasped and dropped to his knees. “I hope that didn’t hurt much. I’d hate for you to even
Think
you were going to paradise!”
Stites giggled. “
Damn
, Skipper!”
Matt looked at him, then glared at Gray. “C’mon,” he said, “we’ve still got work to do.”
Commander Frankie Steele was actually secretly a little surprised at how well his first independent action was going.
Walker
was battling virtual behemoths, but all their massive power was no match for the old destroyer’s speed and maneuverability. The enemy battle line had broken, immediately sensing Frankie’s main objective and trying to put their ships between
Walker
and the remaining transports. The troop-filled transports were the key. Without them, the whole Dominion operation was pointless. Massive red-sailed ships of the line, or “liners,” veered to defend the steamers and bring their guns to bear. In so doing, they lost cohesion, massed firepower, their advantageous wind—and all semblance of organized control.
Ponderously, the mighty ships turned, thrashing the sea with their heavy guns, as many as fifty to a side, mostly in
Walker
’s churning wake. They’d scored a few hits with what had to be twenty-four-pounders or better, but the damage had been minimal. Smoke streamed from new holes in a couple of
Walker
’s stacks, and she had a new hole the size of a porthole in the guinea pullman. Other than that, things had all gone the old destroyer’s way.
The new exploding shells she employed for only the second time came as a rude surprise to the Dominion Navy. They weren’t much, still just hollow copper bolts filled with a gunpowder bursting charge, detonated with a contact fuse. They didn’t penetrate worth a damn. They had the math to put them right where they wanted them now, however, even propelled by black powder, and
any
bursting charge going off on a crowded gun deck covered with guns being loaded with fabric powder bags could be cataclysmic. One Dominion ship of the line had simply blown up, and another was burning fiercely. For penetration of hulls and destruction of masts,
Walker
still had an ample supply of solid bolts.
Euripides
and
Tacitus
were close to joining the action now as well. They didn’t carry as many guns as the liners, but theirs were newer—bigger even than
Achilles
’—throwing thirty-pound balls. Frankie estimated that the enemy had wasted more metal shooting at
Walker
than the old ship weighed.
Ahead, in a gap cleared by the explosion of one of the liners, four of the transports lay helpless before
Walker
, seeming almost to cringe like rabbits as the greyhound saw them and turned to give chase. She’d have to steam directly between two liners to get at them, but one had lost its foremast and the other actually seemed to be turning away. Defying his own strategy to remain at a distance, Frankie sensed an opportunity to end the fight with a swift, bold stroke.
Answering bells for “ahead flank,” the blower roared, and
Walker
made her lunge for the sheep.
“Concentrate all fire port and starboard with explosive shells at the enemy warships until we pass between them, then hammer those transports!” Frankie ordered. Smoke belched from the transport’s stacks as they poured on the coal and tried to turn away even as
Walker
swept down upon them, streaming gunsmoke. She pounded the disabled ship to port with the number two and number four guns, and the one apparently trying to flee to starboard with numbers one and three. The heavy “antiaircraft” guns, mounted in tubs where the aft torpedo tubes had been, raked both ships as well, and their pounding roar was joined by the staccato bursts of the .50s on the amidships deckhouse. Exploding shells penetrated deeply into the relatively unprotected bows of the liner to port and detonated within, spewing shards of copper aft that savaged gun carriages and hewed bodies. One round finally passed nearly the length of the deck before exploding and gouts of white smoke whooshed sporadically out her gunports as exposed powder bags lit. The ship shuddered from almost continuous secondary detonations, and smoldering gunners actually crawled out the gunports and flung themselves into the sea. A greasy black ball of smoke roiled into the sky amidships as something flammable, lamp oil perhaps, ignited and spread burning liquid on the deck. The red main course caught fire and the flames spread quickly upward, devouring the sails above. The ship didn’t explode, but she was fully engulfed in flames as
Walker
sped past her.
The ship to starboard had received a severe beating as well, and her ornate, garishly decorated stern galleries were a shattered shambles, gaping wide like an open mouth with broken teeth. Many of the aft guns on the two main gun decks were probably dismounted or crewless, but the ship had turned almost directly into the wind and for a few moments
Walker
was steaming parallel to her, less than five hundred yards off her port beam—and the remaining thirty-odd guns of that broadside. Almost too late, Frankie realized the mistake he’d made. The ship hadn’t been fleeing; it had been turning to do exactly this: voluntarily taking the punishment
Walker
meted out, just to bring its own guns around.
“All guns! Surface action starboard!” he shouted, just as the side of the enemy ship vanished behind a dense, white cloud of smoke, lit by dozens of flashes of yellow lightning.
Spanky McFarlane was half deafened by the thunderous blows that hammered his ship. Something had gone insanely wrong. A moment before, he’d been standing there, near the throttle station with Miami Tindal and a centrally located damage-control party. He’d been drinking coffee from his favorite remaining mug—the one with the Chevy emblem, the hula girl, and, ironically, the aerial view of Oahu. In the next instant, he got the blurred impression of roundshot punching a hole in the hull beside him, bowling through the party of Lemurians gathered there, along with a spray of splintered steel and rivets. The shot rebounded off the bulkhead, the hull, and finally came to rest somewhere in the bilge. Miami had been talking and now he was just . . . gone. Spanky blinked and wiped his face with his sleeve. For some reason, he couldn’t see very well. That was better. He noticed then that his sleeve was soaked with blood, and all that remained of his sacred cup was the porcelain handle in his hand.
He blinked again and saw the ’Cats at the throttle staring at him, blinking horror. He did a quick inventory of himself and as far as he could tell, he wasn’t injured. Looking down, he realized the same wasn’t the case for three of the four members of the damage-control party. At least two were dead. One might be, and the fourth was sitting on the deck plates, stunned. Miami ... Well, he was dead. Spanky shook his head, clearing the fuzz, and realized the turbines were winding down.
“Shit!” He lurched to the speaking tube. They didn’t rely much on electronics in battle anymore. “This is McFarlane in the forward engine room. What’s going on up there?”
“Commaander McFaarlane!” came a relieved cry. It was Minnie. “You come to bridge quick! You needed on the bridge!”
Spanky paused, looking at the air lock to the aft fireroom. “Uh, what’s the story on the boilers? Why’re we losing steam back here?”
“I don’t know!” came the panicked but strangely distant reply.
“Well, put somebody on that does!” he bellowed.
“I can’t!” the girl—he always thought of them as girls now—practically screeched back at him.
“Well . . . who’s got the conn?”
“I
DO!
”
“
Jeez!
” That’s why the voice sounded so distant. “Okay, okay, pull yourself together! I’ll pass the conn off to auxiliary from here, then I’m on my way! Get, uh, Finny! You got Finny on the horn?”
“I got Finny and Tabby in the forward fireroom! Everything fine in there!”
Thank God
. “Tell Tabby to bypass the aft fireroom and route steam back to the turbines! Finny needs to take his party topside and get their asses in through the deck access to check on numbers three and four! Warn him to vent the space before they go in. I’m on my way!”
He opened the cover of the tube to the auxiliary conn on the aft deckhouse and was further deafened by the heavy bark of the Japanese 4.7-inch gun. “Bashear!”
“This is Bashear.”
“Listen, you got the conn until further notice. We got the talker steerin’ the ship! What the hell’s goin’ on up there?”
“I don’t know, Spanky. We just got clobbered, and there’s steam and smoke gushin’ everywhere. I can’t see forward of the searchlight tower! It looks to me like one o’ those big bastards suckered Frankie in close and then shotgunned us!” Bashear sounded harried.
“Okay, stay loose. You should have number two back on line directly. Try to get us the hell away from whatever’s poundin’ on us. You still got Campeti on the horn?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell him to pour everything he’s got at the closest target. Use the HE in the Jap gun.
Blow
the bastards off us if you have to! I’m gonna try an’ get to the pilothouse!”
“Aye, Spanky!”
Spanky glanced at the blood and gore around him, then looked at the throttlemen. Other ’Cats were beginning to arrive from aft. “Listen,” he said to Bashear once more. “We got wounded down here. Call around. See if you can round up a corpsman.”
“I’ll try, but most are ashore with Chack and there’s a lot of wounded up here too.”
“Right.” Spanky directed one of the newcomers to the apparent corpses. “Check them fellas and do what you can for the hurt.” He paused and caught the eye of the steadiest-looking throttleman. “I gotta scram, so you’re in charge for now. Keep these guys cool down here,” he admonished, then launched himself up the ladder to the main deck above. If the aft fireroom was full of steam, he didn’t dare open the air lock and let it in.
On deck, he was greeted by a hellish scene, grown all too familiar. Steam and smoke swirled up from the starboard side, filling the deck.’Cats ran back and forth, some hauling hoses, others just running, screaming, their fur scorched black. The Japanese antiaircraft guns hammered his ears and the number three gun added its smoke to the mix even though its crew couldn’t see and had to be suffering in the choking air. That was Pack Rat’s gun now, and he knew the Lemurian gunner’s mate would never leave it. The Dominion liner lay to starboard, a little aft now, and even through the heavy haze caused by burning wooden ships, he saw it had been riddled with holes. Another comparatively feeble broadside blossomed from its side, punishing
Walker
further with a few more hits. Spanky felt the shot strikes pound through his shoes like trip-hammer blows, but he also noted several small splashes in the sea alongside. Not all the enemy shot was penetrating, he realized. Maybe not even most. Thank God. If it was, after the blows he’d felt, they’d already be sinking. The ship
had
slowed almost to a stop, however, and was beginning to wallow in the swells.
He ran into Jeek, directing his division in throwing a curtain of water on the smoke, trying to get it to lay. Reynolds was probably still in the wardroom with Kari. Jeek yelled that he had no idea whether there was fire under all that smoke, but he wasn’t letting it anywhere near the aft deckhouse where the last plane and all the aviation fuel was stored. Spanky repeated what he’d said to Bashear about corpsmen, but Jeek just looked around and shrugged. Spanky raced on, under the amidships gun platform on the port side of the galley, headed for the bridge, but was brought up short by Earl Lanier, calmly sitting on his precious Coke machine and eating a sandwich.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Guardin’ my machine!” the fat cook snarled. “What’s it look like? All my mess attendants is on report! Bastards didn’t stow my baby below before this fracas, they just hauled ass to their battle stations! I had to drag it around here from the other side by myself!”