World War IV: Alliances- Book 0 (12 page)

Lance rushed back to Danny and the rest of the committee, seizing Danny by the collar. “You send a gunner ship out to the rest of your fleet abroad about the Chinese. You tell them to trust no one unless they bear your official seal.” Lance loosened his grip on Danny’s collar as Danny’s jaw dropped at the sight of the first dozen Chinese warships turning the corner of the harbor. He smacked Danny’s cheek, forcing the man to focus on him. “If we’re lucky, they split up their fleet, with half attacking the northern coast. We’ll need every ship that can hold cannons fitted immediately.”

Danny glanced back out at the seemingly endless line of ships that continued to flood the harbor. “It’s too many. Too many.” He repeated the words softly.

Lance felt the man break out in a cold sweat, and he shook Danny’s shoulders. “We can bottleneck them at the harbor’s entrance and keep pummeling them until reinforcements arrive.” Lance turned to the others. “We need a line of supply ships feeding us ammo and provisions. We can’t let our defensive line break. The moment we let one slip through, we’ll have too much on our hands to deal with. And get what mounted army you can to line the perimeter of the town. You can bet the Chinese already have landed ships farther north, and maybe even south, to come and flank us while our attention is at sea.”

The committee stood there, still gaping at the line of ships on the horizon. Finally, it was Cameron who broke them out of the stupor. “Do as the captain says. Send word to your subordinates, and bring the war provisions out of storage.”

The committee scattered, and Lance sprinted past the remaining ships at the docks, their crew members rushing to get their vessels ready, and hurried up the ramp to the
Sani
, where his ship was already prepared to depart. He thrust the engines into reverse just as the last mooring lines were flung from the deck.

The crew moved along the ship without the need for orders. They knew what was coming. The howl of wind brought with it the booming of the Chinese cannons growing louder and the massive pieces of lead growing closer.

The
Sani
cut through the bay chop with a sense of purpose, and Lance felt his hands mold onto the ship’s wheel. He looked down to Canice, the crew ready to strike. Salt spray splashed the deck and rolled to the walls, where it funneled out of the small portholes and back into the ocean.

It seemed like an endless cycle, one that Lance couldn’t find it in himself to break. This loop of war went on without end, and for a moment he wondered what fate the future held. The beating in his chest offered its opinion of immortality, but his mind gave a different vision, one that ended in black, and in that darkness he was left to roam in blindness, searching for anything to touch and feel against the tips of his fingers.

“Captain!”

Canice’s voice was cut short by the rippling cannon fire from the Chinese ships, now only a few hundred yards off the bow. Two shots grazed the port hull, and Lance felt the vibrations from the hits ripple through his grip on the wheel. “Fire bow cannons!”

Two black cylinder shafts thrust from the front of the
Sani’s
hull and returned a volley that connected against the lead Chinese ship, forcing its captain to maneuver into another lane that was already occupied by one of its comrades.

Lance watched the ripple effect of the ships turning and ordered another volley from the bow before he turned the
Sani
to its left, revealing the starboard cannons, which catapulted more metal into the advancing fleet. “They’re clustering!” But Canice had already noticed, ordering the crew to concentrate fire on the flanks.

The Chinese may have had numbers, but not the experience. With the number of ships, it was no doubt they were forced to promote green sailors up the ranks, and the inexperience of war festered a fear of it. It was small but something they could use to their advantage.

Two of the Chinese ships collided, the massive sheets of steel scraping against each other, and the ships desperately tried to prevent each other from sinking. A few ships tried sneaking close to the harbor’s rocky shoreline but ended up running aground in the unfamiliar shallow waters.

While Lance continued the barrage on the left flank of the approaching fleet, two of the Aussie ships finally joined him in the bay and focused their cannons on the right side, hammering the Chinese with a relentless barrage.

Lines of smoke from the cannon blasts covered the harbor like a morning fog, but instead of the sweet smell of salt air, it was filled with the harsh scent of metal, combined with the hot burst of steam. Sweat rolled down Lance’s forehead and cheeks, a few drops landing on his lips, tasting of salt and dirt.

Two ships set a dead heading course right for the
Sani
, and Lance adjusted to their movements, positioning his ship to intercept. The way the two Chinese vessels kept their distance in a constant parallel path told Lance one thing. “To arms! To arms!” They meant to board him.

Canice echoed the orders down the deck of the ship as the crew grabbed swords, pistols, clubs, and knives, anything and everything that they could use to defend themselves. Lance lined up the ship, keeping a dead heading to the Chinese vessel on the left. If he could maneuver close enough to the coastline, he knew he could get one of them to run aground.

Lance felt the waters shallowing, and twice the very bottom of the hull scraped against the top of the rocks below, but the strategy was working. In an attempt to surround him, the captain of the Chinese vessel closest to the coast moved farther toward the shallows, and Lance smiled as the ship came to a halt, taking on water.

Amid the shouts and cheers of his crew, with one of the vessels now distressed, Lance turned the
Sani
hard to starboard to flank the remaining Chinese ship. “Load the forward cannons!” Canice relayed Lance’s message with a hard shove into one of the crew members and marched them toward the bow.

Lance studied the stranded Chinese vessel on his port side, taking into account the number of cannons, men aboard, size of the ship, and materials. The ship had thick walls high on the hull, but it grew lighter toward the bottom. The cannons numbered twelve across on the port side, which fired in a feeble attempt to reach the Sani before it had completely passed by, and assumingly just as many on the starboard.

The Chinese captain still in pursuit made the mistake of slowing, and Lance used the opportunity to maneuver himself into a better position to have the enemy vessel on his port side. “At the ready! Aim for below the hull!” His crew crouched behind the cover of the armored siding that surrounded the entire deck. The grind of the cannons lowering coincided with Lance’s slowing speed.

The two ships coasted toward one another, although the
Sani
was distinctively quicker. Lance kept his hand raised, waiting for the moment just before the Chinese guns were within range.

The air around the ship seemed frozen, and the battle raging to their right with the gathering Chinese and Australian vessels felt a million miles away. Here in this moment, with his crew and his ship, there was only one enemy that needed to be dealt with. Then, when they won, they’d move on to the next, then the next, and the next. That was war, a grinding, bloody, truculent disease that spread through the world like a cancer, and the only way to beat it was one portion at a time, and keeping it from spreading to the rest of the body.

“Fire!” Lance dropped his arm, and the crew echoed his throaty order with the thunder of the guns on deck, blasting low into the Chinese hull and tearing the metal apart with each hit. The Chinese reciprocated, but the blasts were disjointed and uncoordinated as Lance’s crew boarded the ship and focused their steel on the flesh of the crew.

Harpoons thrust from both sides as the two vessels interlocked each other in a battle to the last man. Pistols were fired only in the beginning, and the sound of gunfire was quickly replaced with the clang of swords. With both ships locked in place, Lance descended from the wheel, joining Canice and the rest of the crew jumping back and forth over the narrow barrier between the vessels.

Splashes of blood laced the foaming salt water on the decks of both ships as men dropped to the hard metal surfaces, clutching their wounds and begging for whatever gods they prayed to for mercy.

Lance jumped onto the enemy ship just as one of its crew members thrust his sword forward, slicing the fabric of Lance’s shirt but missing his stomach. Lance parried back, nearly knocking the blade from the sailor’s hand. The young sailor barely kept his footing on the boat, still searching for his sea legs, sliding across the slick deck.

Lance’s right shoulder and arm burned with each smack of steel, his joints shaking off the rust a decade without war had crusted onto him. But with each slash, thrust, and block, Lance felt the familiarity of combat return, which was cemented with a quick stab into the young sailor’s belly, ending the dance and the boy’s life.

Red foam crusted the corner of the Chinese sailor’s mouth as he collapsed to the deck. Lance watched the young man stare up at him, his eyes glazed over with the wetness of tears and opened wide, taking in the last images of life he had left.

The front half of Lance’s blade dripped with blood, and before he could wipe it clean, another sailor was on him, and the war continued, as he killed another man, then another, and another. His crew cleared the deck of the Chinese vessel until the seawater dripping from the port holes was replaced with blood.

Canice stepped over a cluster of the bodies, her clothes wet and stained red along with most of her right arm, which held a firm grasp of the sword in her hand, a thick crimson substance oozing from the tip of her blade. Her breathing was labored, and her hair frizzled from the salty wind.

“Take what provisions we can back aboard the ship.” Lance looked around to get a grasp of their casualties. “And make sure our dead return with us.” Lance sheathed his sword, and Canice simply nodded. He made his way to the ship’s wheelhouse, which was supported by steel walls, nearly as thick as the hull itself.

Lance pulled the handle but was met with resistance. He frisked a few of the dead Chinese until he found a ring of keys that unlocked the wheelhouse door. The inside was dark, with the exception of the light coming through the front windshield, which was incredibly narrow. “How the hell are they even able to see out here?”

The wheel was centered in the middle of a control board, complete with gauges and maps strewn across the top. Lance snatched one of the maps and looked at the circled ports along the Australian coast, no doubt landing points for different members of their fleet.
But why would they risk breaking up their fleet like that?
It would take days to communicate back and forth to shift their strategies and battle plans.

The voices caused a spasm that made Lance draw his pistol and aim it in the corner of the wheelhouse, where Chinese dialect crackled through a speaker. He kept the pistol aimed, walking slowly toward the corner, where the voices grew louder. The words came in between loud, high-pitched whines and pops.

One of the maps concealed the noise, and when Lance pulled the piece of paper back, the pistol fell from his hand and crashed onto the floor. “That’s impossible.” Lance reached his hand out like he was touching a ghost, but he knew what he was seeing and hearing was real.

There were stories his grandfather used to tell him when he was just a boy, stories of what the world was like before the Great War that leveled his home and killed billions of lives in a matter of minutes. Stories of technology that let you watch an event happening thousands of miles away, in real time. Technology that allowed you to speak with someone halfway around the world, and hear them as though they were standing right next to you.

“Captain, we’re—” Canice stopped, frozen at the doorway, watching Lance listen to the words coming out of the small speaker in the console. Her jaw dropped, and she slowly made her way inside. “What the hell is that?” She hovered her palm over the speaker, as if she were trying to grasp the words in her hands.

“It’s the Chinese captains from the other ships in their fleet,” Lance answered. “Maybe even some of their command in China.” Even as the words left his mouth, Lance couldn’t believe it.

Canice shook her head. “How could they do that?”

Lance picked up the receiver next to the speaker, clutching it gently between his fingers. “Because they have radio.”

Chapter 10