The Guns of Two-Space (7 page)

"Do you really think your two little 12-pounder popguns will do us any good?" asked Asquith.

"Hmmm. That's an excellent question," replied Archer. "It's been a subject of considerable debate among the crew. It was pretty well established in the early age of dreadnoughts, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on Old Earth, that mixing shorter-range weapons together with longer meant that the shorter weapons never got fired, i.e., that when push came to shove they might as well not be there. Thus if one gun had a range of eight miles and another a range of ten miles there was a two-mile edge that ships had to penetrate under fire, and generally the ships in question would be sunk before they had got within eight miles. For this reason World War One ships generally had uniform batteries. So you see this is a question that has been debated for centuries, and I assume that's what you're asking about?"

"Umm, yes, well..." replied Asquith, who was a little surprised to have his cynical, sarcastic question taken seriously."

"I'd say that the 'single type gun' school was, indeed, a prevailing theory, but in reality it was only dominant for a historically brief period of time. The old sailing ships of Lord Hornblower's and Captain Aubrey's era had a variety of guns, often in double- and triple-deckers, with big guns in the bottom deck, getting smaller as they went up. Even frigates often had long-range guns for bow chasers, and short-range carronades where they could fit on the quarterdeck."

""Umm. You don't say," said Asquith, who was now totally lost, as Archer continued, happily oblivious to his companion's ignorance and confusion.

"World War II battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and frigates had the biggest main guns they could fit on the ship, but they also bristled with secondaries: 5-inch, 3-inch, 40mm, .50 cal, etcetera, wherever they could fit. Of course many of those were for antiaircraft, but they also were used for close-in defense, especially against kamakazi-boats and submarines, and for shore support.

"I remember reading about John F. Kennedy, who was the commander of a small patrol boat in World War II, and later became an American president. He was always scrounging extra cannon or machine guns, and one of his crew joked that Kennedy would strap a 105mm howitzer onto his PT boat if he could get one. I think that's the way our captain sees the situation, and I fully agree with the sentiment. 'Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.' That's my motto."

"Uh huh...?"

"Still your point is absolutely valid," concluded Archer, "and if the captain could, there is no doubt he'd have 24-pounders everywhere they could fit!
But
, Ship's cannon are one of the most expensive and precious commodities in the galaxy, after Ship's Keels and Piers. We simply can't get them, so we make due with whatever is available. I really like talking and thinking about this kind of thing, and I'm glad you do too. Any other questions?"

"No, thank you. Not right now..." muttered Asquith as he wandered off after the captain and his entourage.

Melville was intimately aware of the fact that they could all be killed. The slightest error or misjudgment on his part could mean that his friends and his Ship—all the people who looked to him for survival and existence—would die. They were all,
all
his responsibility. Not just them, but their families and their nation depended upon him. And that responsibility weighed heavily upon his soul at moments like this, for he had learned to love his crew with a deep devotion of a type and intensity that few men could ever comprehend.

Was there love once? I have forgotten her.
Was there grief once? Grief yet is mine.
Other loves I have, men rough, but men who stir
More grief, more joy, than love of thee and thine.
 

At moments like this the sentiment that a man has for a woman, even for his wife, paled in comparison to this love.

Faces cheerful, full of whimsical mirth,
Lined by the wind, burned by the sun;
Bodies enraptured by the abounding earth,
As whose children we are brethren: one.
 

They were a family that had been forged in blood and flames, in tears and death, in victory and sorrow. Shakespeare had said it well, "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers." And sisters. His job was to protect his brothers and sisters, his family.

And any moment may descend hot death
To shatter limbs! Pulp, tear, blast
Beloved friends who love rough life and breath
Not less for dying faithful to the last.
 

He had seen them die. He had led them to their deaths and they had trusted and obeyed him to the end. He had held them in his arms as they died...

O the fading eyes, the grimed face turned bony,
Opened mouth gushing, fallen head,
Lessening pressure of a hand, shrunk, clammed and stony!
O sudden spasm, release of the dead!
 

The desire to protect them, prepare them, lead them, and equip them, to the
utmost
of his ability, was a burning need within him. A lust, a yearning.

Was there love once? I have forgotten her.
Was there grief once? Grief yet is mine.
O loved, living, dying, heroic comrade,
All, all my joy, my grief, my love, are thine.
 

As the battle approached Melville ached for the resources that would help them to survive in battle, like a drowning man craves air. He would fight and struggle and do absolutely anything, up to the limits of his honor and his duty to his higher authority, in order to get the resources that his Ship and his people needed to survive. And that meant more of those damned, deadly, rabid, magnificent, vicious, wonderful, savage 24-pounders.

So Melville heaved a sigh as he looked at the spots where a 24-pounder could go, and then he stepped into the captain's cabin, where all of his possessions had been neatly stowed and two 12-pounders were pointed out of the
Fang
's stern. Both the upper and lower stern cabins had been stripped of internal partitions and furniture so that the two 12-pounders in each cabin could be manned without obstruction. These two guns had been named Mike and Ike by their crews, who stood proudly by as their captain greeted and spoke with each of them. For administrative purposes they were considered to be part of Lt. Archer's battery, but their position here made it difficult for Archer to properly supervise the guns. So McAndrews, the captain's steward, assumed supervisory responsibility for these two guns and their crews.

Under ordinary circumstances the gun crews slept and ate around their guns. The guns were their home, their turf,
their
little piece of the Ship. But the upper stern cabin was the captain's sleeping room and office, and the lower cabin was taken up by their hospital. So these crews could only be with their guns when the Ship was cleared for action. Normally the captain's steward kept the cannons neatly covered with tidy drop cloths, using them as a kind of combination sideboard and credenza. Thus it was McAndrews who spent the most time with these guns and it was only proper that he should have some degree of responsibility for them.

Throughout his inspection tour Melville was like a mother duck followed by a row of ducklings. His dog, Boye, stayed beside him at all times, with the dog's monkey riding astride Boye's shoulders like a hussar at a parade. Immediately behind him was Mr. Barlet, the Ship's master gunner. As they came to each battery, the battery commander fell in behind Mr. Barlet. And then behind them came Melville's coxswain, Ulrich, and his Sylvan bodyguard, Grenoble, subtly jostling each other for position.

This was a line of deadly, dangerous ducklings indeed, and when it came to laying and firing the big guns, Mr. Barlet was the deadliest of them all. The crafty warrant officer was as black as a gun barrel and just as hard, with a true genius for long-range gunnery. When Melville first met the man he had been ramrod stiff. But since then Barlet had learned to relax with his captain, confident in his position and his mastery of the guns. And now he had a relaxed attitude that belied his deadly competence.

Finishing his tour of the upper gun deck, Melville moved to the hatch and went down the ladder to the hold with Barlet, Ulrich and Grenoble following along behind him. (On land this inclined ladder would have been called a staircase, but no such creature existed aboard a Ship.) As he went below decks the pull of gravity was greater with each step downward, and the sweet crisp air of two-space was replaced with the stuffy warm smell of confined humanity. At the bottom he was on the deck just inches above the plane of Flatland, where the gravity was approximately one and a half times that of Earth. The 1.5 gees pulled at him as he moved toward the hatch to the "lower" half of the Ship.

On his way he stopped, dropped to one knee, and placed a hand on the Keel that ran the length of the Ship, like a large, glowing white log extending down the center of the deck from bow to stern. Through this physical contact he asked his Ship, <>

<> As always, the telepathic response filled him with deep kinship, as you would feel when you patted a large, powerful, and much beloved dog. The feeling filled to overflowing the gap in his soul that mankind has always reserved for his dog companions. This was combined with a faintly alien undertone of eagerness and battle lust that thrilled him to his soul.

<> he replied, <>

<

>

Then Melville told
Fang
the plan. The plan was good, but his past successes had lead Melville to expect
more
of himself. Most men would do what they could and say it was "good enough." But he was not satisfied with that. The question that he always asked himself—and his officers and his Ship—was, "Could anything more
be
done? What more
can
we do?" So Melville and
Fang
worked and gamed out the coming battle, refining bits and pieces of strategy and tactics between them, communicating in a realm beyond words

<> concluded
Fang
afterward with wolf-like joy. <>

Melville gave one last pat to the Keel—to his Ship, his friend. Then he stood up and (with tiny eeps of joy from their monkeys) the captain and his dog dove headfirst into the open hatchway beside the Keel. As his body cleared the plane of two-space what was "up" became "down" and he was upright and pulling himself out of the hatch, on the other side of the galaxy, with 1.5 gees tugging at him. Melville helped his dog clamber up onto the deck. Then they moved up the ladder to the one standard gravity of the lowerside gun deck.

As he came onto the deck Gunny Von Rito fell in beside Mr. Barlet, with Ulrich and Grenoble again filling in the rear. This part of the Ship was almost an exact replica of the one he had just left. In fact, it would have been easy to get mixed up as to whether you were on the upper or lower side (which could be confusing and even deadly during combat or precision maneuvers) except that the sailors of two-space had two things helping to keep them oriented. One was the fact that the constellations were completely different, with the Netted Stars hanging above the upperside in stunning splendor, and the magnificent pinwheel of Andromedia floating above the lowerside. But this was not always easy to spot through the array of yards, spars, and canvas sails that were usually spread above the Ship.

The other way to tell that this was the "lower" side of the Ship was the railing. On the upper deck the redside was on the right, or starboard side of the Ship, and the greenside was on the left or port. The railing on both sides was painted the appropriate color, one of the few places on the entire Ship where the wood was covered with paint rather than the vital, life-giving Moss. On the lower deck this was reversed. Thus, in two-space, you never talked about turning the Ship to the left or right, or port or starboard. You always turned to the green- or redside.

Stepping up out of the hatch on the lower gun deck, Melville turned aft to the nearest guns, located on the greenside, and moved around the deck counterclockwise. Bald, bullet-headed Gunny Von Rito, and black, whipcord lean Mr. Barlet were a mismatched set of old friends and shipmates who had weathered many battles together with their captain, but they were still like mother hens in their concern that something might be amiss with their gun crews. Melville was not out to play "gotcha" with his seasoned old master gunner and his gunnery sergeant, but it was his job to spot anything that might be even remotely awry with their preparation for the coming battle. In the end, though, he found only a competent, eager group of warriors, in a state of splendid readiness.

The aftmost gun on the greenside was a 24-pounder nicknamed simply, Rabid, which could have applied to any of those big brass guns. Then came three 12-pounders, Larry, Moe, and Curly. These four guns were the lower greenside battery, under the command of Lt. Jarad Crater.

At the bow gunport was a 24-pounder named Cuddles, a particularly nasty piece of work, even for
these
guns. Naming this gun "Cuddles" might have seemed incongruous, or perhaps an attempt at reverse or understated humor, until you understood that Cuddles was the name of the
Fang
's alpha male cat. Cuddles (the cat) was the most malignant, vicious, feral creature on the Ship. He was the alpha male in a long line of raping, incestuous, violent creatures. Many sailors liked cats, and some scorned them, but everyone
feared
Cuddles. And Cuddles' namesake, jutting out the lower bow gunport like a great brass phallus, lived up to that spirit.

Moving on around, Melville and the inspection party came to two 12-pounders named Hugs and Kisses, then the gap where Cuddles went when it was part of the broadside, followed by their last 24-Pounder, Prudence. Prudence was named after the wife of that crew's gun captain, McGowly, and the entire crew swore that Prudence (the wife) was to wives what Cuddles (the cat) was to cats. These four guns were under the command of Midshipman Abdyl Faisal.