////// Battle off Malpelo
September 14, 1944
“Oh no you don’t, you furry, flyin’ freak!” Lieutenant (jg) Fred Reynolds shrieked as he banked hard left in a half roll and yanked back on the stick, pulling his now-inverted PB-1B “Nancy” plummeting straight down at the sea.
“Daamn!” squealed Ensign Kari-Faask through the voice tube near his ear. “You said you don’t do that no more!”
“And I won’t!” Fred grated, still pulling on the stick. They weren’t that high, and the sea—and the Dom battle line—was coming up awful fast. “Not until the next time I have to! Why aren’t you shooting at that damn thing?” Fred had barely missed colliding with a Grikbird arrowing in out of the late-morning sun above his right wing. He’d never even seen it until it was almost too late, and if it had still been carrying one of those damn net things, they’d be falling all the way to the water right now no matter what Fred did.
“It ain’t chasin’ us! It go away!” she shouted in reply from the seat behind the motor. Fred had the nose up now, turning away from the Doms. The Nancy still had two “light” general purpose (GP) bombs slung under each of its wings on this, their second sortie of the day. The “GPs” weighed roughly fifty pounds apiece and were basically the same “common” projectiles fired by Walker’s 4"-50 main battery, and all the copies being made that would become the standard light breech-loading naval rifle in the Alliance. The only difference was that GPs had tapered tails and fins attached, which made them respectable little aerial bombs against even lightly armored targets. Dom warships had no armor at all beyond their heavy wooden decks and scantlings, and a single GP was often enough to do them in. But the Grikbird had spoiled Fred’s run. Now, close to the deck, he and Kari were the target of a lot of Dom guns as two frigates fired entire broadsides at their tiny plane, hoping for a lucky hit. The scary part was, with more than thirty cannon firing grapeshot in their wake, a hit wouldn’t be all luck, and Fred and Kari had seen more than one squadron mate swatted from the sky in such a way. They’d been knocked down like that before, off Scapa Flow. Fred concentrated on gaining distance and altitude as fast as he could, and tried to ignore the itch between his shoulder blades.
“Aact-ooly,” Kari added a moment later when the splashes of small shot no longer rose in their path, “I never seen it, ’cept right when you flopped us over.”
“Then keep a sharper eye out! That’s your main job right now.”
“Wil-co, Ahd-mi-raal Fred!” Kari snapped sourly. “Sorry, but I was gettin’ ready for my right then main job o’ droppin’ bombs, right after I did my other main job o’ answerin’ COFO Reddy’s order to taagit DDs instead o’ waagons. Which came right after my other main job o’ hosin’ them first two Grikbirds that jumped us, and got the ‘Two’ ship. Oh, an’ my shoulder’s still sore from my main job o’ crankin’ up the wing floats after we took off. Still think that’s dumb; takin’ off from the ship with them floats down.”
“That’s so we’ll float if we lose power and go in the drink. You know that.”
“An’ get smushed by the whole daamn ship, just bobbin’ there in front of her. Seen that too.”
“Are you finished?” Fred demanded, glancing in the little mirror that let him see behind. Despite her bantering complaints, Kari’s head was in constant motion, scanning for threats.
“Nope. I’m back at my main, main job, o’ watchin’ your tail-less aass, so why don’t you do your only one main job o’ flyin’ us back up in the air high enough to take another whaack at our taagit!”
Fred grinned in spite of himself, but it would never do to let her hear it in his voice. “There’s that creepy-looking island again,” he observed, staring far out to starboard as he guided his plane in a spiraling climb. The island, called Malpelo, or something like that on their charts, had been the waypoint for their first attack that morning, and it had looked to Fred like a freaky huge mountain fish in the gloom. Now the battle below had progressed closer to it and he could see that it was basically a single, giant rock sticking up out of the sea all by itself, maybe a mile long and half a mile wide. Damn near as tall as it is long too. Weird. It didn’t look like anybody lived there, or even could, but as the only speck for as far as the eye could see, he was willing to bet the whole damn battle would wind up named after it. Lucky, stupid island hasn’t done anything for a million years but sit there, and now it’ll be in the history books. He sobered, his view now on the beleaguered survivors of TF-11. One way or another.
Only two battlewagons remained, Mars and Centurion. Six frigates, or DDs, still paced them, but every other auxiliary, including the transports, thank God, had been sent east, then south, under cover of darkness, escorted by the antiair DEs. The rest had all died, gaining this tattered remnant a final chance to reach the embrace of the rest of the onrushing fleet. Looking south-southwest, Fred knew it would be close. Second Fleet was on the horizon, making full steam and closing as fast as it could. The Dom fleet, still bigger than the whole Allied force combined, had been slowed by the latest sacrificial rear guard, but the fleet was cracking on to catch its prey and finish it before help could arrive. Barring a miracle, they would, and there wasn’t much Fred or anyone else could do about it. The Grikbirds were bad news, and had prevented anything like the “turkey shoots” that First Fleet had enjoyed against the Grik in the West. Now, though most of the Grikbirds seemed to be out of it, Maaka-Kakja’s 3rd Air Wing had been butchered too. Only the few new P-1 Mosquito Hawks, or “Fleashooters,” she’d just received seemed immune to Grikbird attack, being much faster and just as nimble, but they couldn’t carry bombs and ammunition for their wheel-pant mounted SMGs at the same time and still have the speed and agility that kept them alive. Fully loaded, they could barely even fly. They’d been tasked with clearing the sky. Even so, they’d lost several to collisions with Grikbirds or one another. What a mess. Nobody out here had any real time in the hot little planes, and that had cost them.
“COFO Reddy’s comin’ out with the last six o’ our Nancys. The other four o’ our flight that made it is headed back to the barn to rearm. Reddy wants to know if we still alive an’ got our bombs . . . since I didn’t report back after we started our last attack. Don’t know why he ask that,” she added brightly, “since I heard the ‘Fifteen’ ship tell ’im we’re okay!”
Fred groaned. He didn’t like formation flying and hadn’t done very much. He considered himself a good pilot, but ever since he started, flying Walker’s only observation plane, he preferred not having to worry about running into his own people. “He wants to know if we’ll join his attack?” he prodded.
“Oh yeah. That. Yes.”
“Then send ‘yes’!”
Fred kept climbing until he saw the incoming flight. When it passed him, he fastened on to Reddy’s plane, easily distinguishable by the bright yellow streamer trailing a few feet behind his wing. Directly alongside, Fred waved at his nominal commander. Orrin pointed at him and then made a spiraling gesture beside his right ear before pointing down at the Dom fleet. Fred looked. The enemy frigates, maybe twenty of them in two lines, were sprinting ahead, trying to stay beyond the reach of TF-11’s guns while racing to get between the two Allied forces. The Dom “battlewagons,” or ships of the line, were shaking out into a battle line of their own, poising to range up and administer the coup de grace when TF-11 was inevitably slowed by the blocking frigates. Fred craned his neck around. It wouldn’t be long after that before the rest of Second Fleet arrived, and he realized that the Doms were trying to bring on a decisive, general fleet action in the shadow of that big stupid rock. They’d have to name it Malpelo, he thought grimly.
Now on the far right of the formation, Fred would attack the seventh ship back with two bombs on his first run. Reddy would designate the targets for the next—probably the leading ships in the second line.
“Taall-ee ho!” Kari called, receiving the order, and the formation dove, each ship diverging toward its designated prey. Nancys had proven themselves to be pretty good little dive bombers, as long as the angle of attack wasn’t too great. And angles always varied somewhat from pilot to pilot based on their skill level and experience. Fred was the first to admit he wasn’t much of a dive-bomber yet, and kept his own angle at about forty-five degrees. Not the most accurate, he supposed, but easier to get out of without hitting a tall mast—or the water. And it wasn’t like Dom ships could easily evade. . . . He concentrated on the growing form below. Another side-wheeler, of course, kind of nicely built. Looks more like an Impie DD than the older, galleon-like ships the Doms started the war with. Course now folks figure they already had these for a while. . . . Men grew more distinct on the bright wooden deck, some scrambling for cover, others still. Some were firing muskets up at him. He bored in.
“Ready!” he shouted.
“Ready!” Kari cried back.
“Drop!” he yelled, and almost instantly, the Nancy bounded upward as a hundred pounds fell clear and he pulled back on the stick. There was a thwack . . . thwack-thwack as musket balls hit the plane, more felt than heard, and he shouted back at Kari, always mindful of the time she’d been hit from below.
“I’m fine!” she shouted back, scolding. “Near miss long! Near miss long!” she reported. He frowned, but nodded. Orders were not to automatically retarget a near miss since an explosion close alongside might do as much or more damage than a direct hit, but he still preferred a hit. All seven planes made it through and were climbing now, passing over the second line. More musket fire flared below, but they were out of range. The flight tightened up, still climbing, and Reddy ordered a turn. Finally, Fred could clearly see the effect of their strike. Two Dom ships were dead in the water, burning, and several more were bunched up, black smoke piling high from their stacks. He couldn’t tell whether they were damaged or if the shattered line was just the result of the confusion they’d sown. Either way, they’d slowed the advance.
“Near line!” Kari called, relaying the order to attack the second line of ships they’d passed over. Fred’s target this time would be the lead enemy vessel and they’d be diving from a lower altitude, but that was fine with Fred. He could still make his forty-five-degree approach. The flight continued its careful, somewhat leisurely turn, and aimed back at the enemy.
“Taall-ee ho!” Kari shouted, her voice high-pitched and tinny.
“Roger that!” Fred replied, waiting a moment longer to get his angle before pushing forward on the stick. “Stand by!”
The ship below looked identical to the first; three tall masts with taut red and gold sails drawing nicely. A tall funnel between the main and foremast belched black smoke. High, thin geysers marched toward the ship just aft of his target, and he remembered that Orrin’s plane had a .50-caliber machine gun in its nose, just as a great cloud of splinters exploded from the side of the Dom frigate. Wish I had one of those! Course, he doesn’t have any more bombs. . . . Refocusing his attention on the top of the mast before him, he mentally adjusted when to call for Kari to drop. They’d be shooting now, he knew, even if he couldn’t see them. Most of their shots would go wide, or pass beneath and behind, but he and Kari were doubtless rushing right toward a few that were rising to meet them. “Drop!” he yelled.
“Bombs away!” Kari shouted, and the plane leaped again, just as a sustained thwack-thwack-thwack shivered through its frame.
“Near miss short hit!” Kari cried, just as Fred began to realize the sound and vibration he heard and felt hadn’t gone away. “Big hit!” Kari crowed. “Maybe got the boiler!”
“I think we’re hit too!” he shouted through clenched teeth, the stick between his legs starting to rattle violently in his hand.
“Yeah? Oh!”
“What’s ‘oh’?”
“We fixin’ to lose the starboard ale-eron!”
Fred risked a quick glance and saw that it was true. They’d taken a lot of hits, more than he’d have thought possible. Must’ve packed the best shots in the whole damn Dominion on that ship, he realized sickeningly when he saw that several balls had struck amazingly close together and shattered an area around the inboard hinge pin. The aileron, though still attached and still operating, was definitely loose and banging around. Instinctively, he reduced power and pulled the nose up a bit to slow the plane, then applied a little right rudder to throw it into a slip. The vibration eased slightly, and only then did he notice how fast and hard his heart was pounding. He took a deep breath. “Send that we’re all shot up and gonna try to make it back to Maaka-Kakja!” he instructed.
“Okay,” Kari said. “We gonna make it?”
Fred hesitated only an instant. “Sure, kid. Get the wing floats down, wilya?”
“Sure,” came the uncertain reply. “But I’m getting oily. I turn around an’ my goggles got all fuzzed. I think they get us in the oil pan.”
Fred swore, then looked at the oil pressure gauge. Sure enough, the needle was starting to bounce—and drop.
“Shit!”
“Why shit?”
“Because we’ve just been shot down. Again!” He looked at distant Maaka-Kakja, looming large on the horizon and a good five miles beyond the advancing battle line, or about fifteen miles away. Then he looked around at the sea, barely a thousand feet below. They were getting close to TF-11 now, its eight battered ships doggedly churning to meet their friends. “Look, I’m still gonna try to make the Makky-Kat,” he said. “We could set down forward of TF Eleven and hope they pick us up as they pass—before we sink. But even if they do, we’ll be stuck in the same boat as them, with the whole Dom navy roarin’ down. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather do my fighting in the air from now on.”
“Maybe they could pick us up an’ patch us up; then we go to Makky-Kat,” Kari suggested doubtfully.
“No way. They won’t stop that long, and I don’t blame them. We’d be lucky if they picked us up.”
“What about the battle line?”
Fred judged the distance, then glanced back at the Dom frigate column. Their last attack had hit it hard, but all the planes were headed back now, to rearm, and the two lines, minus five ships, were already shaking back out and pouring on the coal. They were faster than TF-11 and would likely get ahead of it—which meant they might be the first ones close enough to pick up Fred and Kari, if they went down short of the Second Fleet battle line. Fred would rather die than be back in the hands of the Doms, and he knew Kari would too.
Suddenly, all their options evaporated when the starboard aileron tore away. Still attached by the outboard cable, it nearly jerked the stick out of Fred’s hand, slamming his knuckles painfully against his thigh. The Nancy rolled hard to the right even as Fred fought against it, the aileron banging and flapping and tearing itself into fluttering streamers of shredded fabric. With a heroic effort, knowing he was probably straining against a damaged cable pulley now as well, Fred managed to right the plane and keep it somewhat level, but he didn’t know how long he could. “Send the Mayday! Tell TF Eleven we’re gonna set this thing down on their nose after all. They can pick us up or run over us, their choice. But when that cable parts completely, I’m liable to lose horizontal control!”
“I’m already sendin’!” Kari shouted.
USS Simms
“We’re about to have more guests,” Lieutenant Ruik-Sor-Raa told his executive officer, Lieutenant (jg) Gaal-Etkaa, when the latter joined him by the rail. USS Simms had already picked up the crews of two planes that day, a total of three battered aviators. One pilot had been lost when her plane sank before she could be hoisted clear, but she might’ve been dead already. Ruik hoped so. The rest were in the wardroom/sick bay being treated for injuries alongside Simms’s other wounded from the last two days. Currently, she was leading a “forlorn hope” squadron of four of the remaining TF-11 DDs, including Icarus, Achilles, and Tindal, in an effort to cut off the Dom frigates before they could squeeze Hibbs’s last liners and the two most heavily damaged DDs against the bleak, rocky monolith of Malpelo. The geometry of the chase was such that if Hibbs turned east to round the island, his pursuers would catch him more quickly. If the fifteen or so Dom frigates achieved their goal, the chase would end with the same result. Simms, Achilles, Icarus, and Tindal had to keep the choke point clear.
“Yes,” Gaal said, “if they make it.” The Nancy fluttering down to the sea in Simms’s path was clearly in trouble, having difficulty staying level, and gray smoke was beginning to cough from her exhaust. As the plane drew closer, all could hear that its engine was laboring as well.
Gaal gauged the double line of Dom frigates, edging up and closer to starboard, then glanced back at the Nancy. “We can’t stop for them,” he warned. “Even if they don’t wipe out.”
“No,” Ruik agreed. “But we will recover those people. That’s Lieutenant Reynolds and Ensign Faask out there.”
Gaal didn’t reply. He hadn’t met the two aviators himself, but they were well-known to all of Second Fleet by reputation, and few ’Cats or men, on land or sea, wouldn’t risk everything for them.
“Send for them to try to land ahead of us, then match our speed as we come alongside. We’ll do our best to snag them. Signal Achilles and the others behind us to try the same if we cannot.”
“Ay, ay, sur,” Gaal said, pacing to the voice tube cluster by the helm, but Ruik eased farther forward as the battered plane clawed at the sky, trying to stay aloft long enough to meet his request. The smoke was thicker now, and he could hear the engine dying. “Quickly, Bosun!” he called. “Assemble line handlers with grappling hooks along the starboard rail. Stand by to pull that plane alongside, secure, and get its people out!”
“Ay, sur!” Simms’s chief bosun turned and blew several blasts on his whistle, followed by bellowed commands.
Close, close, Ruik thought. Even as Fred and Kari’s plane struggled to achieve just a few hundred more tails of flight, the battle line of Dom frigates was beginning to close. Without the waagons to slow us, we will reach position first, so they mean to slow us themselves. All but Icarus had heavier guns than the Doms, and the enemy would soon be in range to receive some serious discouragement—if they could be discouraged. He doubted it. Simms had survived heavier immediate odds at the battle off Saint Francis—but she’d been fresh then, and when that engagement ended, the battle had been over. Now she was battered, leaking, and her engine was beginning to wheeze after thirty-odd hard hours of sporadic combat and high-speed steaming. And even if she survived the coming action, she’d quickly face an even larger battle.
Not far ahead, the Nancy dipped abruptly toward the freshening sea; then its nose came up and it stalled, dropping maybe three tails before pancaking down on top of a swell. Ruik held his breath for the instant that it seemed a wing would catch and flip the little plane over, but then it settled, bobbing upright, with gray-white smoke boiling up and away from the still-whirling prop. Even over the machinery sounds of his ship and the crash of the sea against her side, Ruik heard the death rattle of the Nancy’s engine.
“Two points to port!” he called to the quartermaster at the wheel. “Steady as she goes!”
“Our bow wave will push it away,” Gaal counselled.
“The crew has done this twice already today,” Ruik replied. “They will succeed, whether Lieutenant Reynolds can control his plane or not.”
Gaal grunted skeptically when they saw the smoldering plane crest the bow wave and quickly dip low, beginning to spin as helplessly as a leaf. With a stunningly loud, clattering roar, the Nancy’s prop raced, and the rudder nearly banged against the port elevator. Its spin arrested and the nose pointed at the ship, Reynolds practically aimed to ram—just as his abused engine finally seized and his prop slammed to a jarring stop. Almost instantly, the oil-streaked, superheated engine caught fire with a rush of orange flames.
“Hey!” Fred cried. “Hey! Get us outa here!”
“Heads up!” roared the bosun. “Now!” he added. Half a dozen grapnels arced into the air, trailing lines behind them. Three slammed through the fabric of the port wing, catching in the spars, and one splashed into the water just beyond Fred, narrowly missing him. Flames were licking greedily up around the fuel tank forward of the engine, and if there’d been a leak in that, it would already be too late. Still, they obviously couldn’t pull the burning plane toward the ship.
“Cut a rope and grab on!” Ruik yelled. “We’ll pull you up!”
“What about the damn flashies?” Fred demanded, his voice high.
“Do it!”
Kari didn’t wait. She was covered with oil and coughing uncontrollably, but with a seemingly effortless leap, she hopped up on the wing, cut a line attached to a grapnel with a knife in her hand, and dove into the sea.
“Pull her in!” the bosun roared. “Lively now!” In seconds, Kari torpedoed through the water and came bumping and slapping up the side of the ship like an oily otter. Seeing his friend hadn’t been eaten, Fred snatched the rope draped behind his cockpit—but paused. He didn’t have a knife. Quickly, he pulled the grapnel up from the depths, snagging it momentarily on the hull of his plane. With a shouted curse, he yanked it clear. Then, with a final glance at the burning engine just behind him, he clutched the grapnel in both hands, closed his eyes, and plunged into the sea.
He was coughing water when Simms’s ’Cat destroyermen laid him gently beside Kari, who’d gagged on the smoky, oily phlegm in her throat and vomited on the deck. Fred shook off restraining hands and jumped to his feet. “Gotta sink my plane!” he shouted.
“No need, Lieuten-aant,” Ruik told him, gesturing aft. The Nancy was burning fiercely now, sinking already. Fred gulped water from a cup a ’Cat handed him, then nodded aft. “Good riddance. Piece o’ crap plane.” He appeared to gather himself and looked at Ruik, who seemed to be deciding whether to grab his arm and support him. “I didn’t mean that. Got us here, even shot to hell.” He looked at Kari. “How’d you know there wasn’t any flashies? I thought they’re always drawn to ships.”
“We didn’t, not for sure,” Gaal supplied. “But we’re going fast, and they’re rarely in the bow wave.”
Fred turned pale beneath the black smudges on his face, but then shrugged and managed a salute and a sheepish grin. “Oh well. I’ve been in the water before. Maybe flashies don’t like how I taste. And your ship was a fine sight bearing down, even when she almost ran over us! Request permission to come aboard, sir.”
Ruik grinned back. “Delighted to have you both. Let’s get you down to the wardroom and checked out.” He nodded to starboard. “The Dom frigates are closing, and things will shortly get hot, I imagine.”
Fred stared out at the double column. Twenty-five heavy frigates, all leaning slightly in the stiffening westerly wind, their bright sails and bronze guns gleaming even at this distance. “COFO Reddy’ll be back, whittle ’em down some more. Sorry we couldn’t lend a bigger hand earlier, but things are a little different in the air these days.”
Ruik waved around, and for the first time Fred realized just how battered Simms and her people already were. Some damage had apparently come from Grikbird bombs, but the shot holes in her sails and funnel, spliced cordage, and brightly splintered wood beneath the black-painted rails indicated she’d been in the running surface action as well. Then there was her crew, almost all Lemurians, many lounging tiredly on her dirty fifty-pounders. Most wore peacoats, which surprised Fred. He was used to ’Cats wearing as little as they possibly could, but the wind had a bite to it and the ’Cats, sweat-foamed from battle, had probably been cold. The muzzles of the guns themselves and the normally bright deck and carriage wood were spattered black with fouled water from sponges and buckets, and the area around the vents was a dingy gray. “So we have noted,” Ruik agreed.
Fred waved out at the Doms. “So, you trying to get past those guys? Join the rest of the fleet?”
Ruik shook his head. “No, Lieutenant Reynolds. We will soon engage them, as a matter of fact. We must keep them back while Mars, Centurion, and their remaining escorts ‘get past’ them. Once they do, we will proceed along behind them, if we can.”
Kari had managed to stand, and was looking at Ruik with wide eyes. “But what about this ship, and those other three behind?”
“They are all DDs, and we are destroyermen,” Ruik said simply, but the pride in his voice was unmistakable. “We do our job. Mars and Centurion are sound in their machinery, but both have been the focus of a great deal of fire. In addition to just their two crews being as large as those aboard all my ships combined, they also bear a great many wounded transferred from other ships we were forced to leave behind.” He shrugged. “We must clear the way.”
Down in the moaning, bloody charnel house of the wardroom, seated on a bench near the hatchway, Fred began to fidget. “Right out of the frying pan,” he murmured, staring at Kari to avoid looking at the suffering ’Cats around them. “Maybe we should’ve run off when we could, looking for Captain Anson.”
“No,” Kari said firmly. “There’s a baattle. Runnin’ off then would’ve really been ‘runnin’ off.’ Can’t do that. If we go, we go after the fight.”
Fred nodded. “Yeah. If we make it.” Still squirming uncomfortably on the bench, he flinched at the muffled sound of shouted orders from above. A sudden, creaking rumble of the guns being shifted made it clear that the action was about to commence. He finally stood up. “And I can’t stay down here.”
“Cap’n Ruik said to get us looked at,” Kari objected without much conviction, glancing guiltily at the harried surgeon, pharmacist’s mates, and SBAs going about their grisly work. None had attended them when they arrived. They’d brought themselves down, after all, and obviously weren’t emergency cases.
“I’m fine, and I’m not staying down here,” Fred stated sharply.
Kari’s gaze fell on a ’Cat, seeped to unconsciousness, lying peacefully while his ruined arm was taken off, and she slowly stood beside her friend. She was no stranger to suffering. She’d endured a great deal herself. And the memories of what she’d been through, now flooding sympathetically back, made her short of breath. “I’m fine too,” she gasped. “Let’s get outa here.”
Together, they climbed the companionway ladder and peeked up over the coaming. The gun’s crews along the starboard side were poised by their pieces, waiting for commands, electric igniters ready to be inserted into vents. Shot garlands stood like three-sided pyramids, stacked with seven-inch solid shot. The exploding case shot was dangerous to leave lying about and would be brought up by youngling “powder monkeys” when called for. It was lighter and shorter ranged, even atop the ten-pound charge of powder the big guns gulped, and generally reserved for more confident ranges in any case. Through the closest gunports, they saw that the Doms were a lot closer now, and Simms and her tiny battle line, now steaming almost due west with all square sails furled, had won the race to cross the Doms’ “T.” Fred stepped up on the deck and looked northeast. Admiral Hibbs’s two wagons and pair of DDs hadn’t quite made it clear, but they’d formed a battle line of their own and should be able to keep the Doms at arm’s reach with their heavier guns while Ruik’s little squadron punched them in the nose. If Hibbs’s strategy failed, however, his whole force was in danger of being caught between Malpelo and the whole Dom fleet, still rushing up behind, before the rest of Second Fleet could come to its aid.
“Taagit range, one t’ousand. Speed, ten. Elevation two deg’ees!” cried the ’Cat in the main top. They didn’t have even the rudimentary fire control system now in use in the West, but they’d come up with a few expedients of their own out here. Electric igniters had arrived that could be activated by the gunnery officer who watched a swinging plumb bob in place of a gyro. This most ancient of instruments would indicate to him the approximate instant when Simms found an even keel amid her constant motion. In this way, Simms and her consorts could fire true salvos, of a sort, and correct their elevation at least. Gunners quickly proceeded to do just that, turning a heavy screw handle beneath the breeches of their guns, until an inscribed line corresponded to a numeral “2” engraved on the plate beside it. At a nod from the gunner, another ’Cat pricked the vent with a long brass rod with a ring on the end and inserted the priming wire.
“Primed and clear!” cried the first gun captain, stepping back. He was quickly echoed by nine others. “All clear!” trilled the chief gunner’s mate.
“Commence firing,” Ruik said, his tone amazingly calm as he stared through an Imperial telescope.
“Firing!” shouted the gunnery officer, intently staring at the plumb bob. But for an instant, he didn’t fire and the tension grew. Finally catching the exact instant he liked the most, when the plumb tip was pointed directly at a mark on his apparatus, he closed the circuit.
Fire blowtorched skyward from ten vents as the great guns fired, visibly shivering the stout ship as the monstrous weapons trundled inboard amid yellow-orange blooms of flame and a roiling fog bank of white smoke. Fred shook his head and worked his jaw to pop his ears. The first thing he heard was the diminishing, tearing canvas shoosh of the outbound shot. “C’mon!” he said to Kari, grabbing her arm and stepping to the rail beside Ruik. The gun smoke was quickly whisked away by the stiff wind and Simms’s own speed. He never saw the shot in flight as he might if he’d been able to watch its rise from the muzzles of the guns, but he viewed its fall. The “salvo” raised a curtain of splashes about two hundred yards wide, just short of the closest enemy ship, but the range was amazingly consistent.
“Reload!” the gunnery officer roared, and the gun’s crews, already working to clear and service their pieces, now knew to continue their evolution to the end.
“Achilles still has her lighter guns. Just as well, because as stout as she is by Imperial standards, I doubt she could hold up to firing sustained salvos, or ‘broadsides’ like this, with the weight of metal we’re throwing,” Ruik said conversationally. “But her guns are as big as anything on those Dom DDs, and they’ll reach.” Fred was surprised Ruik had noticed his and Kari’s presence. “Icarus will have to wait until they get closer, but Tindal is armed the same as us,” Ruik continued, taking the glass away from his eye and using it as a pointer toward the top of the main mast. “Signal flags show the range we estimated, and the other ships will adjust.” Achilles chose that moment to unleash her own broadside, followed almost immediately by Tindal. Splashes rose all around the leading ships in the advancing column, and distant sails shook with impacts. “See?” Ruik said.
“Very impressive,” Fred granted, sincerely amazed by how successful such crude expedients could be—but then, the principles were essentially the same as those USS Walker had brought to this world. Even without the sophistication of her gyro and wildly complicated clockwork gun director, the fundamentals they were based upon had revolutionized naval warfare on this world and given the Allies an enormous advantage—at least until the Doms figured it out.
“Same range! No change!” yelled the gunnery officer, quickly followed by a chorus of “Primed and clear!”
“All clear!”
“Firing!” Fred barely had time to cover his ears before the ship shook again, and this time he watched the heavy balls arc up and away. He lost them as they reached the tops of their trajectories, but the cluster looked much tighter this time as they disappeared, now falling toward the enemy.
“Why no change?” Kari asked, and Ruik looked at her. “The enemy is closer this time. The gunnery officer will have calculated how much closer based on the enemy’s apparent speed, and timed his firing accordingly.”
He must’ve timed it very well. Another cluster of splashes rose around the lead Dom frigate, but at least half the fifty-pound cannonballs staggered the ship. The foremast toppled, dragging the maintop down with it to lie atop the smoking funnel. Almost immediately, flames caught the flailing red canvas, sparked by the funnel itself, and the wind fanned the fire up the mast. A cheer rose even as the gunnery officer called for the reload.
“Another one down,” Ruik said softly. “She was doomed already, even without the fire.” He looked at Fred. “One thing we’ve learned over the last few days, and the only reason we’re still alive; use our range advantage. Once the Doms close, the only advantage we have left are exploding shells.”
“Why? I mean, why was she already done for, so far away?”
“Because of what Mr. Caam-peeti once told me is called ‘plunging fire.’ Look, range is key because their shot’s not as heavy, at least on their DDs, and no matter how many more they fire from their ‘wagons,’ they can’t get near as many on target unless they get close. Then it doesn’t make much difference,” he confessed, “because we’re both just shooting through each other.” He waved. The burning Dom frigate, wallowing now, erupted in a white cloud of steam and smoke, spraying the sea with a sprawling pattern of falling debris. “Could’ve been the magazine, but I bet it was the boiler. Water coming in, fast. See, even at just two degrees of elevation, we get ‘plunging fire’ at this range, when our shot ‘runs outa gas’ and just drops. Makes it harder to hit a taagit, the old-fashioned way, but as you’ve just seen, we can do it.”
“Great. So?”
“These new Dom ships are stout; the sides, uh, ‘scaant-lings,’ are really heavy. A fifty-pound shot will still blow through both sides at close range.” He managed a predatory grin. “But at long range, they drop on the ship, tear through the decks and right out the bottom!”
“Oh! So then we’re okay? We just keep shooting long range and knock ’em off one by one!”
“Normally we could,” Ruik agreed, “and we have been. Most of the crippling damage suffered by TF Eleven has occurred in the night when the enemy was able to close the range in spite of our illumination flares and rockets. And, of course, we’ve been on a necessarily fixed course to keep them from overwhelming us. As you can see, they’ve had the numbers to absorb great loss while they attempt that.”
Hibbs’s small battle line had commenced firing now as the range between it and the closing Dom column decreased, with great thunderclap salvos from Mars and Centurion, which mounted fifty 20- and 30-pounders to a side. Likely glad to have targets of their own, and unable to return Ruik’s fire with more than a few bow chasers, the seven frigates in the closest line fired back, the sound reaching them as a sustained, stuttering roar. Achilles and Tindal punctuated it with salvos of their own.
“Unfortunately, we will soon have to wear our line, coming about across the enemy’s path once more to prevent it from closing with Ahd-mi-raal Hibbs.”
“I remember the plan,” Fred protested. “Then we tack onto the back of his line as he passes that big-assed rock, and we’re all in the clear.”
“Indeed,” Ruik agreed. “But this squadron will first have to sail very close to the enemy, perhaps even slowing to prolong the engagement. . . .”
“Oh.”