Maelstrom

CHAPTER 4

One by one, Donaghey ’s guns replied to the unexpected barrage, as Russ Chapelle raced down the line, exhorting the gun’s crews to do their duty. With each resounding crash it seemed the effect of the enemy surprise lifted a little more. By the time he reached the last gun under the quartepast. All the crew were veterans of fierce fighting, and many, survivors of Nerracca or transferees from Walker, had even been on the receiving end of Amagi ’s mighty salvos. The constant drill and discipline they’d learned also helped them recover, and soon they were firing with the same skill and dedication they showed during the daily exercises. Guardedly satisfied, Russ mopped his brow and left the gun divisions under the direction of the officer trainees, or midshipmen, commanding them and ascended to the quarterdeck. Garrett was standing near the wheel, glassing the results of their fire on the first Grik ship. Chapelle was hard-pressed to see through the smoke, but it looked like they’d done little damage. A few shot holes in her sails, maybe. He shook his head.

“Sorry about that, Skipper,” he said, joining Donaghey ’s commander.

“Nothing to be sorry about. It shook everybody up. Me too. My God … Guns!” He lowered his voice. “Thanks.”

“What for?”

Garrett’s lips formed a small smile; then he gestured at the enemy ships. They were about to cross the second ship’s bow. The starboard battery of the first-they seemed to have only five or six guns to a side-fired another ineffectual broadside that did little more than churn the sea in their wake, but the gun ports were open on the ship they approached.

“At least their gunnery isn’t very good,” Chapelle observed. Just then, a rolling broadside erupted from the next ship in line. Like the first, the angle was poor, but the range was much closer, and they felt an unmistakable shudder beneath their feet when a couple of shots struck home. A high-pitched, keening wail arose from forward.

“They’re learning fast,” said Garrett grimly. He turned to his second in command. “As soon as we rake the third ship, we’ll come about and do it again. Make sure we keep our distance. If we foul one of them, the others will gang up on us and board”-he paused-“and their crews are a lot bigger than ours.” He didn’t need to remind them what would happen if they were overwhelmed. A quick death, at best. He glanced astern at the distant, bobbing barges. “We have to win this, and we have to do it quickly.” He looked at Chapelle. “I want you to hammer those ships if you have to aim every gun yourself.” Russ nodded and raced back down the ladder. Garrett watched him go and then shook his head at Taak-Fas. “A hell of a thing,” he said in frustration.

The cheering in the boats had stopped when it became obvious that all the ships were using cannons-something their queen assured them only the alliance possessed. They watched in quiet awe as the single ship opposed the three, and nimbly maneuvered to cross their vulnerable bows again. The deep, throbbing boom of gunfire reached them from across the water, and white smoke gushed downwind. A small cheer was raised when a Grik mast tottered forward, taking the top of the next one in line. The ship quickly slewed, beam-on to the wind, as the fallen mass of timber and sails dragged it around. As though a preplanned maneuver, the newly presented broadside thundered out and Donaghey visibly shivered from the impact. Splashes from debris and shot fell all around her, but she appeared little damaged, and punished her tormentor in respm. With the Grik guarding the approaches with cannons on their ships, no single ship would dare make the attempt.

Without the explosion that crippled her, she believed Donaghey could have defeated all three Grik vessels armed with cannons. The enemy had clearly not known how best to employ their new weapons. But they were learning, and with their limitless numbers, they were unlikely to be so amateurish and unprepared again. Next time there might be a dozen ships sent to do what three had done today.

Safir sent a prayer to the Sun that Donaghey -and her friend Garrett-could escape or defeat the remaining Grik ship, and quickly mend her wounds. Perhaps then she might return for them before the enemy did. The thought of Garrett sent a chill down her spine, because it reminded her of someone else. If Donaghey survived but couldn’t come back, Safir would be stranded with the rest of the refugees the alliance may no longer have the power to rescue. What would Chack think? What would he do? Chack had accompanied Captain Reddy on the expedition to Manila, but with the magic of the Americans’ radio, he’d know what happened as soon as Donaghey made port. With the sudden thought of her beloved, a shiver of sadness and fear crept deep into her bones.

“To the shore,” she repeated in a voice she didn’t recognize.

An hour after the explosion, the surviving Grik ship was worse off than she’d appeared at first. None of her masts had fallen, but all her sails were rags, and so far no replacements had been sent aloft. Her deck was like an anthill, stirred with a stick, choked with her surviving warriors. They seemed to have no direction, no guidance at all, and all they appeared able to manage was to rush about and roar with frustrated rage as the wind and current swept them ever closer to the breakers. At least Donaghey could still make steerageway, and she’d continued to claw away from the menacing shore until the two ships exchanged their relative positions. The cannonade never completely ceased, but it became sporadic and ineffective. Occasionally the Grik ship commenced a spirited fire, but as often as not the guns weren’t even pointed in Donaghey ’s direction. It was bizarre. The only explanation was perhaps her Hij officers had been killed, and no one remained to tell the Uul warriors what to do. Once it was clear they had little to fear from the enemy, most of Donaghey ’s crew ignored the Grik and focused on saving their ship. The Grik was inshore now, and headed straight for the shoals and booming surf of the protruding point.

Garrett sat on one of the quarterdeck gun carriages, mopping his face with his hat and grimacing with pain while the Lemurian surgeon bound his wound. A large splinter had been imbedded in his thigh, and the waves of agony caused by its removal were only now beginning to subside. All around him was chaos like he’d never known. Shattered timbers and shredded sailcloth festooned the deck, and seemingly thousands of frayed and ragged lines created a nightmare web of destruction. He’d seen his share of naval combat in the last year, first against the Japanese, then against the Grik-and Japanese. But he’d always been on Walker when the fighting took place. He knew war was terrible, terrifying, and bloody-sometimes catastrophically so-and naval warfare could seem particularly overwhelming. Even so, he’d believed he was reavy. He was a good gunnery officer, and managing his new ship’s weaponry wasn’t so different from firing Walker ’s in local control. He could navigate and stand a watch, and he wasn’t afraid to fight. Thanks to the old admiral’s manual, he’d even learned to handle Donaghey in a fairly competent fashion. But this type of warfare-gone for the most part for a hundred years on his own world-was completely different from what he’d been prepared for. The stakes were the same, and so was the objective: destroy the enemy before he could destroy you. The results were apparently the same as well: shredded bodies, blood-splashed decks, and a stunned sense of unreality. But the way it happened and the pace of it all were what so disconcerted him. (He hadn’t suspected splinters would be such a menace, for example.) He knew even the twenty-five-year-old destroyer he was accustomed to was far more complex, but somehow, on a sailing ship the complexity was much more apparent-particularly when it had been so horribly brutalized.

Even now, with a pause in the action, the air was filled with screams and shouts, grinding timbers, and chopping axes. The occasional gun roared, when enough debris was cleared to allow it to fire at the equally battered enemy. But above all the unfamiliar sounds of this new/old type of war, there was a deafening silence. A silence of absence. Instead of the comforting roar of the blower, and the grinding, rasping, high-pitched wheeze of the turbines, there was only the capricious wind. A wind that would drive them onto the deadly shoals as well if they couldn’t quickly bend it to their will.

“Cease firing,” he ground out through clenched teeth, when Chapelle approached to report. The blond torpedoman didn’t seem injured, but his shirt was torn and spattered with blood.

“I just did, Skipper,” he replied. “I figured the little guys had practiced enough for one day.” He shrugged. “Besides, Taak took my crews and put them to work clearing debris.”

Garrett nodded and struggled to rise and gaze over the nearby bulwark. The Grik was beginning to wallow, beam-on to the inshore swells.

“It won’t be long before she strikes. How about the refugee barges?”

“Safely ashore,” Chapelle confirmed. “I almost wish they’d stuck it out. If we get things squared away, we might be back for them in a couple of hours.”

Garrett shook his head. “It was the right call for her to make. It’ll be evening, at least, before we can beat back around the point-if we make it around the point.” Garrett was gauging the angles as he spoke, studying the wind direction and the shore. “As hot as it is, they’d have been really suffering by then.”

“We’ll weather the point,” Chapelle assured him, “but you’re probably right. It sure is hard to get used to not having engines.”

“I was just thinking that myself. It’s tough getting used to a lot of things here,” Garrett muttered.

Chapelle frowned. “Hey, Skipper, don’t beat yourself up. You did okay.” He gestured at the now clearly doomed Grik. It was rolling so violently, the masts must soon fall. With a distant, muted “crack,” the main snapped off at the deck and collapsed into the ck spoke to the surgeon in his own language; then he and Chapelle assisted Garrett down the companionway. Once they reached the wardroom, they eased him into a chair, where he sat and waited while others with more serious wounds were tended. He’d insisted as soon as he saw them. Some of the wounds were utterly ghastly: mangled limbs and terrible gashes-mostly caused by splinters, he again realized. His ship was in capable hands and his leg would keep. He looked at the ball he’d laid in his lap.

The cannons they’d helped the Lemurians create were bronze. There was plenty of copper and tin all over this region that had once been the Dutch East Indies. Iron was harder to come by and harder still to work. They desperately needed iron to make structural repairs to Walker and Mahan, and implement many of their other plans. In the short term, though, it didn’t seem critical. Bronze was actually better than iron for smoothbore cannons. The elongation was better and the quality control not as critical. They made their cannonballs of copper, which flew just fine. But without a steady source of iron, and the ability to smelt and forge it in quantity, there was only so far they could go, industrially speaking. Even with their limitations, Garrett had thought they would enjoy a significant advantage over the enemy for some time to come. At least until today. As he contemplated the projectile in his lap, it suddenly dawned on him with a sickening sense of dread that the Grik had not only caught them technologically, but taken a leaping bound ahead. The ball in his lap was iron. They’re making cannonballs of iron, he thought numbly. His thoughts immediately rearranged themselves. They have so much iron they can waste it on cannonballs!

“My God.”