Authors: David Weber,John Ringo
Throne of Stars (13 page)
“
Yes,
” he hissed. “You’re mine!”
Pahner watched as the pirate ships swung up into the wind. Or, rather,
towards
the wind. It was obvious that they could come nowhere near as close to it as the schooners could, and the way their square sails shivered indicated even to his landsman’s eye that they were very close to losing way. But for all that, it also brought those big, bow-mounted bombards around to line up on the
Ima Hooker
.
“Doesn’t look so good to me,” he opined.
“Oh, they’re going to get some shots off at us,” Roger admitted. “We may even take a few hits, although I doubt that their gunnery is going to be anything to write home about. But as soon as everyone is back in line, we’re going to turn onto a reciprocal heading to put the wind behind us. We can put on more sail and really race down on them. They’re going to get off one—at the most two—shots at us, and most of those are going to miss. If we lose a ship, I’ll be astonished, and I don’t even anticipate very many casualties. Then we’ll be in among them, and we’ll rip them up with both broadsides. They’re about to get corncobbed.”
“So this is a particularly good situation?” Pahner asked, looking back at the ships assembling behind the
Hooker
. The flagship was close-reaching on the starboard tack now, sailing about forty-five degrees off the wind. That was nowhere near as high as she had been pointing, but apparently it was still high enough for Roger’s purposes, and Pahner could see that it gave the rest of the flotilla additional time to catch up.
Sea Foam
had reduced sail dramatically to conform to the flagship’s speed, whereas
Prince John
had crammed on extra canvas now that the squall had passed and was driving hard to get into position.
Pentzikis
and
Tor Coll
were coming up astern of
Prince John,
and it looked like everyone would be back into formation within perhaps another fifteen minutes.
“Well, if they’d held to their original course and tried to continue past us, then work their way back up to windward behind us, it would have been a pain,” Roger told the Marine. “They’d have played hell trying to pull it off, but to get this over within any short time frame, we have to sail in between them, where our artillery can hammer them without their bombards being able to shoot back, and their line was spaced a lot more tightly together than I liked. If they’d continued on their easterly heading, we’d have run the risk of getting someone rammed when we went through their line. By turning up towards us, they’ve effectively opened the intervals, because those ships are a lot longer than they are wide, and we’re looking at them end-on now. In addition, at the moment we actually pass them, we’ll be broadside-to-broadside. That means our guns will be able to pound them at minimum range, but that those big-assed bombards are going to be pointing at nothing but empty sea.
“The other choice would have been to sail around behind them, come up from astern, and pick them off one by one. That would keep us out of the play of their guns, too, but I don’t want to still be fighting this thing come morning. Among other things, there’re those other prize ships to chase down.”
“We’ll see,” Pahner commented. “After this fight, and if Kerr’s response is good. I don’t want to do this sort of thing for nothing.”
“What are they thinking?” Cies asked himself.
The lead enemy ship had waited patiently as the Lemmar ships put their helms down and headed up as close into the wind as they could. In fact, the entire enemy formation seemed to have deliberately slowed down, which didn’t make any kind of sense Cies could see. It was painfully obvious to him that those sleek, low-slung vessels were far more weatherly than his own. He was edging as close into the wind as he could come, and by slowing down, the enemy was actually going to allow him to bring his artillery to bear on the last three or four ships in his line. He hadn’t had to let Cies do that, and the raider captain was suspicious whenever an opponent provided opportunities so generously. His own ships would miss the lead enemy vessel by at least two hundred meters, but after they’d hammered the other ships and then boarded them, there would be plenty of time to deal with the leader. If it decided to run away, there wasn’t much the Lemmar could do about it, given its obvious advantages in both speed and maneuverability. But if it tried to come back and do anything to succor its less fortunate consorts, it would have to reenter Cies’ reach.
In which case there definitely
was
something he could do about it.
“Perhaps they’re like the damned priests,” Vunet said. Cies glanced across at him. He hadn’t realized that he’d asked his rhetorical question aloud, but now his mate clapped his hands in a “who knows?” gesture. “Maybe they plan on sailing into our midst and trying to grapple us all together so they can board, like the priests would.”
“If that’s what they’re thinking, they’ll take a pounding,” the captain replied. “We’ll get off several shots as they close, then sweep their decks with the swivel guns as they come alongside.”
“Julian, do we have hard communications in place?” Roger asked.
“Yes, Sir,” the intel NCO answered. “Good fix on the
Foam
and the
Prince John
. We’re all linked, and we’re not emitting worth a damn.”
“Okay, put me on.”
Roger waited a moment, until each of the ship icons on his helmet’s HUD flashed green, then spoke across the tight web of communications lasers to the senior Marine aboard each schooner.
“This needs to be relayed to all the ships’ captains. On my mark, I want them to put their helms up, and we’ll bear away ninety degrees to port. That will let us run directly downwind. Once we’re on course, put on all sail conformable with the weather. I’m designating the enemy vessels one through six, starting from the most westerly.
Hooker
will pass between one and two;
Pentzikis
will pass between two and three;
Sea Foam
will pass between three and four; the
Johnny
will pass between four and five; and
Tor Coll
will pass down the starboard side of number six. If the enemy holds his course, we’ll wear to port after we pass, and rake them from astern. Prepare to bear away on my mark. Flash when ready to execute.”
He raised one arm as he stood beside Captain T’Sool and waited until all the HUD icons flashed green. It only took a moment, and then his arm came slashing down.
“All ships: execute!”
“They’re actually doing it,” Cies said in disbelief.
“I don’t even see a forecastle,” Vunet said in puzzlement. “Where the hell are their bombards?”
“How the hell do I know?” Cies growled back. “Maybe all they’ve got are those overgrown swivels on the sides!” He rubbed his horns, pleased that the enemy was being so stupid but anxious that it still might turn out that it wasn’t stupidity at all, just something the enemy knew . . . and Cies didn’t.
“Get aloft and direct the swivel guns. I don’t want anything unexpected to happen.”
“Right,” Vunet grumped. “Something like losing?”
Roger walked down
Hooker
’s port side, greeting an occasional Mardukan gunner on the way. Most of the flotilla’s gunners had been seconded from the K’Vaernian Navy and had served in the artillery at the Battle of Sindi. Roger had been away from the city for much of the battle, having his own set-to with a barbarian force that had refused to be in a logical place. But he’d arrived towards the end, after successfully protecting the main army’s flank and annihilating the threat to its line of retreat, and he’d spent quite a bit of time around the artillerymen since. Most of them were native K’Vaernians, like the seamen, and figured that kowtowing to princes was for other people. But, like members of republics and democracies throughout the galaxy, they also had a sneaking affection for nobility, and they’d really taken a shine to Roger.
“Kni Rampol, where did you come from?” the prince asked as he reached up to clap one of the gun captains on his back. “I thought you were on the
Prince John
?”
“Captain T’Sool asked me to shift places with Blo Fal because he couldn’t get along with the mate.” The gunner stood up from his piece and caught a backstay to steady himself. The ship was running with the wind coming from astern, and with all sail set, she was swooping up one side of each swell, then charging down the other.
“Well, it’s good to see you,” Roger said with a modified Mardukan gesture of humor. “No playing poker during the battle, though!”
“I don’t think so,” the Mardukan agreed with a grunt of humor. “Before you know it, Poertena would find the game, and then I’d be out a month’s pay!”
“Probably so, at that,” Roger laughed. “In that case, better hang on to your money, keep the muzzle down, and keep firing until you’re told to quit. This will be a solid battle to tell the children about.”
“Good afternoon, Your Highness,” Lieutenant Lod Tak said. The port battery commander was doing the same thing as Roger—walking the gun line, checking and encouraging his gun crews.
“Afternoon, Lod,” Roger acknowledged. “You know the fire plan?”
“Load with grape and ball,” Tak replied promptly. “Hold our fire until we bear, then a coordinated broadside at point blank, and go to individual fire. Grape if we’re close enough; ball, if we’re not. Sound good?”
“Sounds fine,” Roger answered. “I don’t think they’ll know what hit them. The game plan is for us to wear round to the port tack after we pass side to side. That will bring us across their sterns, and we’ll get a chance to give them a good, solid rake at close range that should take most of the fight out of them before we board. Grape shot should do the job just fine . . . and leave the damned ships in one piece as prizes, too!”
“That sounds good to me, Your Highness,” the Mardukan agreed with cheerful bloodthirstiness. K’Vaern’s Cove had always paid excellent prize money for enemy ships captured intact, and every member of
Hooker
’s crew knew exactly how this game was played.
Roger nodded to the lieutenant and continued forward, to where Despreaux stood beside the pivot gun. The bronze carronades along
Hooker
’s side threw eight-kilo shot, and their stubby tubes looked almost ridiculously small beside the towering Mardukans. But the pivot gun was a long gun—with a barrel as long as one of the three-meter natives was tall—and it threw a fifteen-kilo solid shot. Or a fifteen-
centimeter
explosive shell.
Despreaux and Gol Shara,
Hooker
’s chief gunner, had just finished fussing over loading the gun, and Shara’s body language expressed an unmistakable aura of frustration.
“What’s his problem?” Roger asked Despreaux, jabbing his chin at the gunner.
“He wanted to try the shells,” she replied, never taking her eyes from the approaching enemy vessels.
“He did, did he?” Roger gave Shara a quick grin, which the Mardukan returned with complete impassivity, then turned back to admire Despreaux’s aquiline profile. He decided that she would definitely
not
like to be told that she looked like a ship’s warrior maiden figurehead. “The object is to take them as close to intact
as we can get them,” he pointed out mildly, instead.
“Oh, he
understands
; he just doesn’t like it,” Despreaux said, but still she never looked away from the Lemmar, and Roger frowned.
“You don’t look happy,” he said more quietly. He also thought that he would like to wrap her in foam and put her in the hold, where she wouldn’t be exposed to enemy fire. But she was
his
guard, not the other way around, and any suggestion of coddling on his part would undoubtedly meet with a violent response.
“Do you ever wish it could just end, Roger?” she asked quietly. “That we could call over to them and say, ‘Let’s not fight today.’”
It took the prince a moment to think about that. It was a feeling that he’d had before his first major battle, at Voitan, where better than half the company had been lost, but he’d rarely experienced it since then. Rage, yes. Professional fear of failure, yes. But as he considered her question, he realized that the normal and ordinary fear of dying had somehow fallen behind. Even worse, in some ways, the fear of having to kill was doing the same thing.
“No,” he said after the better part of a minute. “Not really. Not since Voitan.”
“I do,” she said still very quietly. “I do every single time.” She turned to look at him at last. “I love you, and I knew even when I was falling in love with you, that you don’t feel that way. But sometimes it worries me that you don’t.”
She looked deep into his eyes for moment, then touched him on the arm, and started back towards the stern.
Roger watched her go, then turned back to watch the oncoming enemy. She had a point, he thought. On Marduk, the only way to survive had been to attack and keep on attacking, but sooner or later, they would make it back to Earth. When they did, he would once again become good old Prince Roger, Number Three Child, and in those conditions, jumping down the throat of the
flar-ke
to kick your way out its ass was not an effective tactic. Nor would Mother appreciate it if he blew some idiotic noble’s brains all over the throne room’s walls, he supposed. Sooner or later, he’d have to learn subtlety.
At that moment, the lead Lemmar ship opened up with its bombard, followed rapidly by all five of its consorts.
Yes, she had a point. He had to admit it. One that bore thinking about. But for now, it
was
time to kick some ass.
CHAPTER NINE
“Prepare to run out!” Roger called, gauging the speed of the oncoming ships. The two formations sliced towards one another, the schooners moving much faster through the water than the clumsier raider vessels, and he frowned slightly. They were going to pass one another on opposite tacks, all right, but considerably more quickly than he had anticipated.
“I want to reduce sail as we pass through them, so we can get in more than one broadside.”
“Agreed,” Captain T’Sool said.
Hooker
’s Mardukan captain stood beside the prince, eyes narrow as he, too, calculated the combined approach speed. “I think taking in the middle and topmast staysails should be enough. If it isn’t, we can always drop the mainsail and the inner jib, as well.”
Despite the tension, Roger smiled faintly. There’d been no terms for those types of sails in any Mardukan language before Poertena had introduced them, so the diminutive armorer had been forced to use the human ones. It had worked—at least it precluded any possibility of confusing Mardukan words—but it was more than a bit humorous to hear a Mardukan make a hash of pronouncing “topmast staysail” . . . especially with a Pinopan accent. But T’Sool was almost certainly correct. What he’d suggested would reduce sail area significantly, and with it,
Hooker
’s speed, but the foresail was the real workhorse of the topsail schooner rig. Even if they did have to drop the mainsail, as well, her agility and handling would be unimpaired.
“I think just the staysails should be enough,” he responded. “Julian, send that to the other ships along with the word that we’ll be engaging shortly.”
“Yes, Sir.” The NCO grinned. “I think we can all figure out that last part on our own, though!”
Another boom echoed from the oncoming ships, and the ball from the nearest bombard was clearly visible as it flew well above the
Hooker
. It was audible, as well, even over the sounds of wind and sea. Roger was almost too intent to notice, but several people flinched as the whimpering ball sliced away several lines overhead. The two sides were little more than two hundred meters apart, with Roger’s vessels swooping down upon the Lemmar.
“I think we’re in range,” Roger observed dryly.
“Indeed?” D’Nal Cord’s tone was even drier. He stood directly behind Roger, leaning on his huge spear while guarding the prince’s back, as any proper
asi
should when battle loomed. “And as Sergeant Julian is so fond of saying, you think this because . . . ?”
Roger turned to smile fiercely up at his
asi,
but other people on
Hooker
’s afterdeck had more pressing details to worry about.
“Srem Kol!” T’Sool shouted, and pointed upward when a Mardukan petty officer looked towards him. “Get a work party aloft and get those lines replaced! Tlar Frum! Stand by to reduce sail!”
Even as shouted acknowledgments came back to him, there was more thunder from the Lemmar line, and Roger heard a rending crash.
“
Prince John
just took a hit,” Pahner said, and Roger looked over to see that the captain’s gift for understatement hadn’t deserted him. The third schooner in his own line had lost her foremast. It had plunged into the water on her starboard side, and the weight of the broken spars and sodden canvas was like an anchor. The ship swung wildly around to the right, exposing her broadside to the oncoming Mardukan raiders.
“Not much we can do about it now,” Roger observed with a mildness which fooled neither Pahner nor himself. “Nothing except smash the shit out of the scummies, anyway. And at least anybody who wants her is going to have to come close enough for her carronades to do a little smashing of their own. Still—” He looked at the Marine standing beside Cord. “Julian, tell the
Johnny
to concentrate on Number Four’s rigging.
Sea Foam
and
Tor Coll
will have to hammer Number Three and Number Five to keep them off her.”
“Got it,” Julian acknowledged. The NCO had switched to a battle schematic on his pad and sent the updated plan to all five ships. “I’ve got a response from everyone except
Prince John,
” he reported after a moment.
“I can see some damage aft.” Pahner had the zoom dialed up on his helmet visor. “It looks like Number Four and Number Five were concentrating fire on her. She looks pretty beat up.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Roger grunted. “Those are dammed big cannonballs.” He shrugged. “But we’ll settle their hash in a few minutes now. It’s about time to open the ball. All ships—run out!”
“What do they think they’re doing now?” Vunet demanded as
Rage of Lemmar
’s bombard thudded again.
“Just at a guess, I’d say they’re finally getting ready to shoot back at us,” Cred Cies said bitingly as the smooth sides of the strange, low-slung ships were suddenly barbed with what certainly looked like stubby bombard muzzles.
“With those tiny things?” the mate made a derisive gesture of contempt.
“With those tiny things,” Cies confirmed.
“My son could hurt us worse with a toy sword,” Vunet scoffed.
Given its angle of approach, the K’Vaernian flotilla could have opened fire with its forward pivot guns even before the Lemmar did. Roger, however, had chosen not to do so. Powerful as the pivot guns were, it was unlikely that they could have incapacitated any of the raider vessels by themselves without using the explosive shells, which would probably have destroyed their targets completely. Wooden ships waterproofed with pitch and covered with tarred rigging were tinderboxes, just waiting for any explosive shell to set them ablaze. And even if that hadn’t been the case, Roger had had no interest in alerting the Mardukan pirates to the power of his vessels’ weapons. The K’Vaernian Navy had been unimpressed by the carronades when they first saw them . . . and with considerably less excuse, since the K’Vaernians had already seen human-designed artillery in action at Sindi. The longer these scummies remained in ignorance about their capabilities, the better.
But the time for ignorance was about over. Especially for
Prince John
. Roger could see axes flashing on her forward deck as her crew frantically chopped away at the rigging holding the wreckage of the foremast against her side. If things worked out the way he planned, the raiders would be too busy to bother with the
Johnny
anytime soon, but if things
didn’t
work out, it was going to be a case of God helping those who helped themselves.
In the meantime . . .
“Fire as you bear!”
Ima Hooker
and her consorts each carried a broadside of twelve guns. Once upon a time, on a planet called Earth, those guns would have been described as eighteen-pounder carronades—short, stubby weapons with a maximum effective range of perhaps three hundred meters. Beside someone the size of a Mardukan, they looked even shorter and stubbier, and perhaps the pirate captains could be excused for failing to grasp the menace they represented. Certainly Roger had done everything he could to keep the Lemmaran crews from doing so . . . until now.
Despite the threat bearing down upon her, the
Prince John
did not fire first. Her guns, like those of every unit of the flotilla, had been loaded for a basically antipersonnel engagement, with a charge of grapeshot atop a single round shot. That was a marvelous combination for smashing hulls and slaughtering personnel at close range, but it left a bit to be desired in terms of long-range gunnery. The other schooners, continuing their race towards the enemy, were going to reach that sort of range far more quickly than any clumsy Lemmaran tub was going to claw far enough up to windward for her to reach. So the
Johnny
held her fire, waiting to see what—if anything—got by her sisters and into her effective range.
Of course, even with their superior weapons, four schooners might find themselves just a bit hard-pressed to stop
six
raiders from getting past them.
Or perhaps not.
Cred Cies watched in disbelief as the side of the nearest enemy vessel disappeared behind a billowing cloud of dirty-white smoke. Those short, silly-looking bombards obviously threw far heavier shot than he had believed possible. The quantity of smoke alone would have made that obvious, but the hurricane of iron slamming into his vessel made it even more obvious.
Painfully
obvious, one might almost have said.
Those low-slung, infernally fast ships slashed down into the Lemmaran formation, and as they did, they showed him exactly why they’d adopted the approach they had. The raiders’ bombards might have gotten off three or four unanswered shots each as the strangers drove in across their effective range, but the accuracy of those shots had left much to be desired. One of the enemy vessels had been crippled, and had clearly taken casualties, as well, but the others were unscathed.
Now they swept into the intervals in his own formation, and his teeth ground together in frustration as he realized that even as they did, they were actually reducing sail. They were slowing down, sacrificing their impossible speed advantage, and the shriek and crash of shot—the dreadful, splintering smash as round shot slammed into and through his own ship’s timbers—was like a hammer blow squarely between the horns as he realized why.
“
All right!
” someone shrieked, and it took Roger a moment to realize that it had been him. Not that he was alone in his jubilation.
The endless hours of drill inflicted upon the K’Vaernian gunners had been worth it. The range to target was little more than fifty meters, and at that range, every shot went home. Jagged holes magically appeared in the stout planking of the raider ships. Grapeshot and splinters of their own hulls went through the massed troops, drawn up on the pirates’ decks in obvious anticipation of a boarding action, like scythes. Bodies and pieces of bodies flew in grisly profusion, and the agonized shrieks of the wounded cut through even the thunder of the guns.
Roger wanted to leap to the rail to help serve one of the guns personally. The strength of the fierce, sudden temptation took him by surprise. It was as if the screams of his enemies, the sudden spray pattern of blood splashed across the lower edges of the square sails as wooden “splinters” two meters and more in length went smashing through the raider crews like ungainly buzz saws, closed some circuit deep inside him. It wasn’t hunger . . . not precisely. But it was a
need
. It was something all too much like a compulsion, and deep inside him a silent, observing corner of his brain realized that Nimashet had been right to worry about him.
But there was no time for such thoughts, and it wasn’t fear of his own inner demons which kept him standing by
Hooker
’s wheel as the artillery thundered and the enemy shrieked. It was responsibility. The awareness that he had accepted command for the duration of this battle and that he could no more abandon or evade that responsibility than Armand Pahner could have. And so he stayed where he was, with Julian poised at one shoulder and D’Nal Cord at the other, while someone else did the killing.
Hooker
’s carronades bellowed again and again. Not in the single, senses-shattering blast of the perfectly synchronized opening broadside but in ones and twos as the faster crews got off their follow-up shots. There was more thunder from overhead as sharpshooters—Marines with their big bolt-action rifles, and Mardukans, with their even bigger breech-loaders—claimed their own toll from the enemy.
The main “broadside” armament of the Lemmaran ships was composed of “swivel guns,” which weren’t much more than built-up arquebuses. They were about fifty millimeters in caliber, and they had the range to carry to the K’Vaernian schooners slicing through the Lemmaran formation, but without rifling, they were grossly inaccurate. On the other hand, the already short range was going to fall to zero when the flotilla finally closed to board the raider ships, and the swivels could still wreak havoc among the infantry who would be doing the boarding. So the sharpshooters were tasked with taking out the gun crews, as well as any obvious officers they could spot.
Even with the much more accurate rifles, the shots weren’t easy to make. The ships were tossing in the long swells of the Mardukan ocean and simultaneously moving on reciprocal headings, so the targets were moving in three dimensions. Since the sharpshooters were perched on the fighting tops at the topmast crosstrees or lashed into the ratlines with safety harnesses, they were not only moving in three dimensions, they were moving
very broadly
in three dimensions, swaying back and forth, up and down, in a manner which, had they not become inured to it already, would have guaranteed seasickness. There were enough Mardukans on the raiders’ decks to give each rifle shot an excellent chance of hitting someone, but despite all of their endless hours of practice, the odds against that someone being the target they’d
aimed
at were much higher. The sharpshooters claimed their own share of victims, but their best efforts were only a sideshow compared to the carnage wreaked by the carronades.
Each of the four undamaged schooners was engaged on both sides as they drove down between the Lemmaran vessels. The thundering guns pounded viciously at the stunned and disbelieving raiders, and Roger shook his head grimly as the first Lemmaran foremast went crashing over the side. A moment later, the hapless ship’s mainmast followed.
“That’s done for that one, Captain,” he observed to Pahner, and the Marine nodded.
“What about supporting
Prince John
?” the captain asked, and Roger glanced at him. The Marine’s tone made it clear that his question was just that—a question, and not a veiled suggestion. But it was a reasonable one, the prince thought, as he looked astern at the cloud of powder smoke rising above the crippled schooner. From the sound of her guns, though, the
Johnny
was firing with steady deliberation, not with the sort of desperation which might have indicated a close action.
“We’ve got time to settle these bastards first,” Roger said, nodding at the incipient melee, and Pahner nodded again.
“You’re in command,” he agreed, and Roger took time to give him a quick, savage smile before he turned his attention back to T’Sool.
