The Guns of Two-Space (9 page)

For Melville it seemed like an age as he layed atop the great gun. It was a long, drawn-out moment of unmoving crystal clarity, almost like a painting. The enemy Ship framed in the gunport, a thing of breathtaking beauty beneath a pyramid of sails. The barebacked sailors crouching beside the gun with handspikes, their gun captain concentrating grim-faced beside them. The white glow of the Ship's exposed wood illuminating everything with sparkling beauty. And above all the beautiful purity of the stars and galaxies that hung above them, contrasted by the deep royal blue of two-space beneath them.

Then they saw the approaching Guldur Ship fire a shot from the lower bow gunport. Above them the ball made a series of popping sounds as it cut a perfect round hole through their spritsailtopsail, foresail, mainsail, and mizzensail, severing some of the rigging on the way.

"No one hit!" cried the bosun from the rigging. "We're already making repairs!"

From the upper quarterdeck a report was called down to Fielder through the voice tubes, and he relayed it to the captain in the bow. "They fired and missed completely on the upperside!"

Melville nodded and looked at his assembled witnesses. "My friends, do we have a consensus that they have fired, and that our response from this point on will be in self defense?"

There was a chorus of ayes, a "Damned right!" from Broadax, a solemn nod from Lady Elphinstone, and a gulp and a nod from Asquith. Then Melville looked down the barrel of his gun and said quietly, "Then you'd all best be off to your duty stations. Oh, and Brother Theo, please ask the first officer to note it in the log: the enemy has fired upon us, and we are returning fire in self defense. Mind the recoil as you leave." His monkey clung to his shoulder and stretched its neck out so that it could also look down the barrel.

Asquith started to wander into the recoil of the gun but the gun captain quickly herded him to the side with a few tut-tuts. "Ol' Cuddles'd smash ya like a bug if ya was to go over there, sir."

The young captain felt his heart pounding against his breastbone like a hammer. Sweat trickled down his back, but his mouth was bone dry. His hands were cold and clammy, as his body shut down the blood flow to the outer layer of muscles in anticipation of taking damage. This was known as vasoconstriction, and it was the body's method of preventing blood loss. But it also caused loss of fine motor control since the muscles weren't getting blood, and Melville began taking deep, controlled breaths to get it under control. He knew from experience that once the battle started he'd be fine, but the anticipation was hell and his combat breathing was the tool to get it under control.

Melville gazed along the barrel. The elevation was right: it had been carefully calculated ahead of time. But to point it true he made tiny jerks of his head to the men with the crow on one side and the handspike on the other. With these tiny, last-minute corrections complete, Melville kept his left hand in contact with the Moss on the platform, let out his breath in a sigh, and reached down lovingly, caressingly with his right hand to stroke the Keel charge of the long brass 24-pounder.

<> Cuddles cried out in his mind and then,
"Cha-DOOM!!"
the gun roared as Cuddles screamed <> in his head and the instantly recoiling gun shot inboard beneath him. A flashing stab came from the gun combined with a concussion, the shriek of the deadly recoil, and a harsh smell of ozone in the air as though they were discharging lightning bolts, all accompanied by a copper taste in the mouth.

Melville and the gun's crew were scarcely aware of the enormous ringing crack, the flash of light, and the stink of ozone. Auditory exclusion shut out the sound of the shot, just as a hunter shuts out the sound of his shot when he drops a deer, and all the other violent manifestations were taken for granted. They rammed home a new ball and wad, and then ran the piece out again with a squeal like some huge hog going to its death and ending with a satisfying thump as the gun came into battery. The crew's motions, though extremely rapid, precise, and powerful, were so automatic that most of them had time to see the flight of their ball and the fountain of wood as it smashed a gaping hole low in the enemy's bow.

Melville paused just long enough to see the ball hit. Then he rolled off the platform, landed like a cat, and departed without a word, accompanied by his dog and a chorus of cheers. With his monkey clinging tightly to his back, he trotted to the hatch, slid down the ladder into the hold, and landed with flexed knees in the 1.5 gees. He and Boye stepped quickly to the hatch that led to the upperside, dove head first into the open hatch, went up the ladder, and in a matter of seconds the captain and his dog (and their monkey riders) had gone from the lowerside bow to the upperside bow, where Sudden Death sat waiting for him.

Again he mounted the platform and took aim, with his monkey craning to look down the barrel as well. Again the huge brass cannon screamed, <>
"Cha-DOOM!!"
<> And again a hole was smashed into the enemy's bow and a cheer rose up from the
Fang
s and their monkeys. And once again auditory exclusion shut out the sound of the shot. But he could not shut out the vicious, savage scream of the gun in his brain. It made his mind ring like a bell. It made his
soul
ring with a fierce, feral, angry,
alien
yearning for death and destruction.

Both above and below, a hole was already smashed in the bow of the enemy's Ship. If he could put one of the 24-pound balls through that hole and into the enemy's Keel, the Ship and everyone aboard her would die almost instantly. Almost. There would be a few seconds as the horrible certainty of their fate sank in.

Of course, the same thing could happen to them. Melville and his crew, his friends, his
family
could also die. He had not asked for this battle. The enemy had sought him. They had hunted him down and they planned to kill him and his brothers. It was kill or be killed, and Melville was determined that it would not be him or his friends who died this day. Not this day.

Almost without thought he found himself back on the lower gundeck, lying atop Cuddles. <>
"Cha-DOOM!!"
<> the gun screamed in his ears and his brain. The gun crew's initial nervousness was gone now, replaced by a sort of wild-eyed joy as they grinned at each other like children. This was not another drill. It was real, and they were firing in earnest at a real enemy. In that brief moment the crew, the Ship, her guns, and her captain became one entity, one creature, focused with absolute, single-minded intensity upon the destruction of their foe.

Because of the delay as her captain went back and forth between her guns, the
Fang
was firing slightly slower than her opponent, and the enemy was beginning to play havoc with their rigging. But ah, the precision, the deadly, exact placement of the
Fang
's shots. As they closed with the enemy Ship its fire was like a shotgun blast in their rigging. But Melville's fire was like the steady blows of an ax, cutting and hacking deep into the enemy's heart.

It was only a matter of time. It was only a question of how much damage the enemy could do to the
Fang
's rigging before they died. For die they must. Die they would. And die they did.

The
Fang
s all cheered as the enemy Ship began to sink. Melville had lost track of where he was and how many shots he had fired, but he
felt
this last, killing blow sink home.

Above and below the plane of two-space the view was the same. First the Guldur Ship's hull sank from view, then her mainsails, her topsails, and finally her topgallants disappeared. In the end there was only a short stub of her mainmast standing up, with a cluster of terrified Guldur and Goblan clinging to it, striving and fighting for a few last seconds of life. Then they too disappeared into the cold depths of interstellar space.

If they could have reached them the
Fang
s might have tried to rescue even the most despised enemy from this fate, but they were too far away. The only boats the Guldur carried were their jollyboats, and there wasn't even time for the enemy to get those off.

Every soul aboard the
Fang
shuddered to see hundreds of sentient creatures die such hideous deaths. Dying in the cold embrace of vacuum was every sailor's fear.
How did Tennyson put it?
Melville thought.
"Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null."
Tennyson was describing a woman, but those words well depicted the frigid, grand, ghastly, awesome nothingness of interstellar space, and men rightfully feared it.

But
Fang
and her guns did not shudder at their enemy's demise, they
exulted
. There was no pity in them, no empathy. And Melville shuddered anew as he felt the cold touch of those alien minds in his soul.

Then Melville rolled off the platform and stood swaying. He put a hand on the shoulder of the man who stood beside him and hung his head, suddenly exhausted and panting with exertion.

"A masterful piece of gunlaying, sir!" said the man with sincere appreciation and admiration, reaching over to slap the captain on the back.

Melville turned to look at him, staring with blank eyes. Then he realized it was
Cuddle's
gun captain. He was Jose Perrera. Li'l Jose. A stocky, bantam dynamo of a man, full of life and humor, with a wife and children waiting at home. Melville felt dazed and confused. Cuddles had fired the killing blow, and this man, this brother, was alive because of Melville. This man, and
all
his friends would survive for a little while longer. They were
alive
! And felt good to be alive!

Like a cleansing flood washing through his soul, Melville looked up at the stars and felt the life of his brother, Jose Perrera, beneath his hand. Melville felt this man's happiness to be alive, to be victorious. He felt the joy of every living creature on his Ship, sent to him, transmitted to him by his Ship (
his
Ship, by God!) through his bare feet. For a brief instant he felt what it was like to be the Ship, in empathic contact with the whole crew. And, in turn, his Ship felt through him what it was like to be human and to rejoice in being alive. Without
Fang
Melville could not have felt the emotions of his crew, and without Melville
Fang
could not have comprehended the emotions.

It is good to be alive,
the captain and his Ship told each other. And, by God, they intended to stay that way.

As Melville stood, shaking with exhaustion and emotion, McAndrews poured him a mug of hot tea as the steward's monkey added sugar and lemon. All around him the gun crew was working feverishly, checking their equipment and refilling the shot garlands in preparation for the next battle. Melville smiled and nodded his thanks to McAndrew as he took a sip of tea, sweet and tart, exactly the way he liked it. The captain's monkey reached out its accordion neck for a drink and he delighted in the little creature's shudder as it sipped the steaming hot fluid. His steward was an unctuous, overbearing albatross around Melville's neck, but, damn it, the man did have his moments.

"Ah, sir, look what you've done to yer best uniform," said McAndrews as the steward—and his monkey—regarded the captain mournfully. Melville looked at the friction burns on his pants from sliding down the ladders, and the rips where his jacket had been snagged as he rolled off the firing platforms of the guns, then he looked at McAndrews with a sigh. His steward didn't really scold, he just slumped his shoulders and shook his head with a woebegone look on his face, as though the weight of the world had been placed on his shoulders due to his captain's irresponsibility.

"Ah, McAndrews. What would you do without me to fuss over?" he murmured as he reached down to pat his dog and took another sip of tea.

She opened fire within the mile—
As ye shoot at the flying duck—
And the great stern gun shot fair and true,
With the heave of the ship, to the stainless blue...

"Ballad of the Clampherdown"
Rudyard Kipling

Five topmen had been killed by the enemy fire during this engagement. One of them was struck by cannonballs and two were thrown out into space when rigging snapped. Two others had tumbled to their deaths, landing with awful thuds upon the deck far below. There were scarlet streaks on the deck planks to mark where they had landed and the fresh spilt blood was still being slowly soaked up by the white Moss. Even now a topman was trying to lower himself to safety with one blood-soaked leg hanging from his body by a muscle.

There were many holes in the sails, and a fair amount of damage in the rigging, but the most telling blows were a 24-pound ball that had snapped the upperside foreyard

clean in two, collapsing their foresail. Another shot had clipped the top quarter off their upper mainmast, taking down their maintopgallant and the royalsail that rode above it. To balance the thrust they immediately slacked the equivalent sails on the lowerside.

Melville estimated that this was about fifteen percent of their overall thrust, combined with another ten percent or so lost from various holes shot through their sails. A new foreyard and topgallant mast were being swayed up, and the holes were being patched, but still this was enough of an advantage for the enemy Ships to close the distance with them. His mind was spinning with calculations.

"A cast of the log, if you please, Mr. Hans," Melville said to the old sailing master.

"Aye, sir," Hans replied with an approving nod.

Melville could see some of the quarterdeck crew looking at him questioningly. They couldn't see why the captain needed a cast of the log while the Ship was in such mortal danger, but Hans understood. They needed to calculate exactly how fast the Ship was going, so the captain could know how the battle would play out. This kind of situational awareness was their young captain's strong suit.
He might not be a master o' the riggin' and sails like the legendary Captain Jack Aubrey,
thought Hans,
but 'ats what I'm 'ere for. And damned if 'e can't see a plan an' call a battle like nobody's business.