“Fire starboard torpedoes! All DDs, fire torpedoes!”
The ship lurched as impulse charges sent four shiny brass 21″ Mk-7 Baalkpan Arsenal torpedoes over the side, one by one. All were spewing steam, propellers racing, when they hit the water in great, concave splashes. Another shell hit Walker somewhere aft and exploded with a bright orange blaze. It was almost entirely dark now, so the hit—and the flurry of shells that struck the unfired weapons in USS Araina’s starboard torpedo mount and blew the ship in half—almost blinded Matt.
“Jesus!” Bernie gasped. The new oxygen torpedoes were very good, but also very vulnerable. It was a chance they all were taking.
“Come right, thirty degrees,” Matt told Paddy Rosen. “Stand by portside torpedoes.” Walker was still surging at thirty knots and her rudder quickly answered so the latest hit aft must not’ve wrecked anything. The guns fired again before Rosen announced “steady on zero, four, zero!” quickly followed by the ’Cat on the port torpedo director. “On taarget!”
“Fire port torpedoes!” Matt told him. As soon as they were away, he ordered that both mounts be reloaded with two of the four extra fish they’d stowed in the aft deckhouse.
“It’ll be a few minutes,” Minnie reported. “Commaander Too’s daamage control paarty is put out a fire in the portside aft 25mm mount. Rounds is cookin’ off.” Then she added, “Torpedoes awaay from all ships thaat could fire ’em. Daanis has a casualty on her portside mount.”
“Very well. The destroyer division will reverse course and let the Impie cruisers launch their fish.”
Matt was pleased but not surprised by the alacrity with which all his surviving destroyers briefly turned broadside the enemy—hammering out rapid, scorching salvoes—before dashing to the rear. His eyes lingered on the broken, burning corpse of Araina, still drawing fire as wounded ’Cats struggled to get rafts in the water. They passed the charging cruiser division very quickly, their forward 8″ guns searing the darkness, and Matt was saddened to see only five of the original eight ships still in formation. The whole sea seemed littered with burning ships, in fact, and as soon as Minnie told him each cruiser had emptied its single mount of four torpedoes, Matt ordered his destroyers to come in directly behind them. Just in time.
* * *
* * *
Like other spotters high above in the little flock of Nancys, Fred and Kari were dazzled by the spectacle below. Miles of dark water were flaring with fires and white and red shell tracers crisscrossing as thick as flies. Kari was doing her best on the radio to describe the rough shape and bearing of the islands the battle now raged between (she thought they were called Mustique and Canouan), but even she could hardly see them against the black water anymore. Phosphorescent wakes, shell splashes, and burning ships were still visible, so their spotting remained critical, but Fred was getting impatient just watching. “Shouldn’t we be dropping flares or something? Backlighting the Leaguers for our guys?”
“No. Cap-i-taan Reddy said to lay off thaat durin’ the aaction. They ain’t gonna use spotlights or them new star shells, neither. The thinkin’ is, whoever lights up first is gonna make theirself a taarget. Besides, nearly all our gunners’re ’Caats, an’ we see better thaan humaans in the daark.” She suddenly gasped loud enough that Fred heard it over the voice tube.
“What?” he demanded worriedly, thinking she was hurt. Then, looking down, he saw. There must’ve been a hundred softly glowing lines in the water, racing both directions. “Torpedoes,” Fred called back to his friend. “Report inbound torpedoes. Jesus,” he added worriedly. “The next few minutes are liable to be pure hell down there. Cross your fingers, pal.”
He was right.
* * *
* * *
The first ships to die were the Impie cruisers Nesoi, Hermes, and the already damaged Mars. As much improved as Allied torpedoes were, the League’s—those that functioned properly after hasty maintenance following years of neglect—were still faster, more accurate, and carried deadlier warheads. They completely shredded the cruisers’ bows. Even then, they might not’ve necessarily sunk their victims. Despite being new and utterly unfamiliar types of ships, rushed into production, Impie cruisers were tougher than Matt gave them credit for and their designers had embraced the concept of watertight compartments. Also seizing on an “all or nothing” armor approach, however, they’d protected machinery and magazines against broadside shell strikes—but not underwater torpedo hits forward. All three ships were utterly destroyed within moments of one another when their forward magazines blew up.
Almost as an afterthought, another League torpedo blasted into Mithra’s side at the junction of her aft fireroom and forward engine room as she veered to starboard to avoid heavy, damaging debris raining down from her sisters. She vomited steam and flames and immediately heeled to port. Avoiding a collision astern of her, USS Steele was struck in her aft engine room and sloughed to a stop, her stern nearly severed. USS Maa-ni-la wasn’t hit by a torpedo, but caught an unlucky shotgun blast of eight 15″ shells fired by Francesco Caracciolo. Two hit her. The first armor-piercing shell never struck anything sufficiently robust to set it off until after it angled down through the pilothouse, the forward fireroom, and out the bottom of the hull. Then it exploded, cracking her keel, and flooding the space immediately. A boiler burst, and every ’Cat in the compartment was scalded to death. The second shell exploded against the heavy reduction gear housing in the forward engine room, killing everyone in there as well.
The remaining League torpedoes sped relentlessly on. Long minutes later, Savoie endured a terrific blow directly amidships that blasted a massive hole in her port torpedo blister and caved in hull plates beneath her armor belt. Water rushed into one of her firerooms as well. Already badly battered by at least fourteen major-caliber hits, she slowed slightly and leaned a little to port, but fought gamely on, even steering to close the enemy—after Russ Chappelle and High Admiral Jenks saw what the Allied torpedoes did.
Those torpedoes were slower, less accurate, and comparatively weak, but Matt’s destroyers and the Impie cruisers had put almost seventy of them in the water. One of the remaining League cruisers took two fish aft, scoring simultaneously. Already reeling from hits by Savoie and the Impie cruisers, she heaved to a stop, her stern wrapped in flames. The damaged Lille, struggling to steer on her engines and return to her place in line, was pummeled by no less than six underwater weapons. Roaring with flames from fuel oil blown all over her and wracked by secondary explosions, Lille heeled over to starboard and lay down on her side, sinking quickly by the stern. The big Italian battleship Francesco Caracciolo, probably least damaged so far, absorbed two torpedoes without apparent notice, other than the gigantic plumes of glowing water spouting up alongside. She immediately steered away, however, apparently turning north for the gap between what should’ve been the islands of Bequia and Mustique. Tourville took her licks as well, pounded by another torpedo hit forward, opposite the previous one, that dragged her heavy, blunt bow low. Another fish hit her amidships, causing similar, if slightly less damage than Savoie endured. The only large League ship untouched was the Italian Trento Class cruiser Adige, which began edging north to follow her bigger countryman. In mere moments, both proud fleets, however disparate they might’ve been before, were equalized by the weapons of their smallest ships, and now fire, misery, and inrushing water.
Yet those were trifles compared to what was at stake. Lying on the deck of Tourville’s bridge, Ammiraglio Gherzi had no illusions about who started this conflict, and how. He imagined the enemy was driven as much by a desire for a reckoning as by the threat a rampant League posed to their long-term survival. He did not, could not, question his own motives. His actions, as always, were ruled by orders and his duty to follow them. He had to wonder, however, what drove the architect of this unfolding disaster and decided Victor Gravois had probably hidden that even from God. Gherzi struggled to rise to hi
s painful feet even as the Battle of St. Vincent turned to a melee. As the combatants circled and closed among the cluttered islands, the knives came out.
“Flood the forward magazines!” Sartre roared as an inferno roiled skyward from Tourville’s fo’c’sle, even as shell splashes gathered again, like moths to the flame.
“That will put our forward guns out of action,” Gherzi objected, allowing a bloody sailor to help him up.
“Better that than we explode,” Sartre replied. “What is Adige doing?” he practically screamed at his talker, suddenly catching a flash-lit glimpse of the cruiser turning. “And where is Francesco? Inform them both I’ll fire into them myself if they run away! They’ll return to their places in line at once!”
“Commandant, there is no line!” a sailor on the bridgewing cried desperately. It was true. For the moment, at least, Tourville was all alone. And though Adige responded and came about, Francesco Caracciolo didn’t. All they saw of her were occasional sharp searchlight glares growing steadily farther as she visually checked her bearings among the treacherous islands.
A thought struck Gherzi. “Where’s Leopardo, and Gravois?”
“He hasn’t responded either, but all our destroyers joined the torpedo attack. I assumed Leopardo did as well,” Sartre said. Gherzi looked to starboard. The sea out there was lit by enough fires that it might’ve been an army camp at night—except for all the chaotic movement. And the violence of it all, of course. Even as the battleships dueled at longer, but increasingly—ridiculously—close range, relatively speaking, all the destroyers were intermixed, dashing back and forth and firing at point-blank range. It was like watching a savage, Dantesque brawl to the death between burning and fire-breathing hellhounds. And beyond it all, Savoie’s smoke-shrouded, flickering shape came relentlessly closer.
“Did they all, indeed?” Gherzi wondered aloud, then pointed at Savoie. “Illuminate her with star shells and searchlights. I want all our remaining guns, and Adige’s as well, focused entirely on her.”
USS Savoie
The night lit up with drifting flares and stabbing beams of bright white light. Gunny Horn and his ’Cat assistants on Savoie’s fire control platform, all somewhat dazed by overpressure and bloodied by splinter wounds, were dazzled and blinded by the carbon arc glare. Muzzle flashes blossomed in the night. “Shit,” Horn said, “here it comes.”
USS Walker
“Left full rudder, port engine, full astern!” Matt shouted when the glare of the spotlight revealed a League destroyer almost dead ahead that even his Lemurian lookouts missed. “All guns to local control!” With enemy—and friendly—destroyers all around, the fight was too hot and heavy and close to waste time on salvoes. And gunners had to choose and engage targets or identify friends in a heartbeat. A blast slammed the ship behind the bridge, around the amidships gun platform, spewing a cone of debris to starboard. Matt thought he caught the image of a ’Cat cartwheeling out over the water. “Get me a torpedo solution on that damn BB, Mr. Sandison!” he shouted at Bernie over the supersonic crack of more shells whipping past the pilothouse. The torpedo officer had rushed to take over the portside director when its crew was swept away by near-miss shell fragments.
“I’m trying!” Bernie raged in frustration. “We’re squirming around too much. Give me twenty seconds on a steady course. Ten seconds!”
* * *
* * *
“Holy shit, look at that!” Dennis Silva roared. “No, don’t look, goddammit, just take my word an’ keep shootin at that tin can!” he told his suddenly rubbernecking gun’s crew.
“Keep shootin’!” Petey screeched with more than usual emphasis. He’d been shrieking that with manic intensity throughout the action.
If anyone was truly in their primal element on that fiery, shot-torn sea around the Grenadines that night it was Dennis Silva, but even he almost despaired when Savoie suddenly lit up brighter than if she’d been bathed in sunlight. Not only because she made such a wonderful target, she also looked a wreck. Silva doubted she could take much more, and then where would they be? As if the fates were making up for all Walker’s previous maulings, she’d seemed charmed in this fight. She’d taken some heavy hits, but ugly as they were, they hadn’t slowed her speed or gunnery. On the other hand, only one flame-cloaked Impie cruiser was still fighting with them, and judging by glimpses of hull numbers Silva caught as obvious four-stackers churned past, the eight DDs they started with had been whittled down to Mahan, Sineaa, and Daanis. All looked pretty rough. He thought the enemy had at least three DDs left, but his and the number three gun had taken the specimen they nearly rammed under rapid fire and were giving it hell. But what if the League big boys were free to turn their attention on them?
Then, out of the darkness, from the west, of all places, USS Fitzhugh Gray swept down almost directly alongside the remaining League cruiser, just ahead of the last enemy battleship. Their own lights must’ve blinded them to her approach. Stuttering flashes from all Gray’s remaining guns raked the cruiser from bow to stern, smashing her lights and igniting a string of fireballs, like glittering red glass beads, down her entire length.
“GodDAMN, that’s the style!” Silva bellowed exultantly. “How the hell did ol’ Miyata even get Gray over there?” He grinned. “Who cares! Shit! Don’t shoot that way, dumb-ass, train back to the right an’ stay on that League tin can!” he added as heavy machine-gun fire drummed into the starboard bow, ricocheting off the anchor and bollard in a spray of shrieking fireflies. The gun swiveled as the trainer spun his wheel and stomped the firing pedal. The gun roared and spat a long spear of yellow fire. There was only the briefest whip of a tracer before the shell exploded at the enemy’s waterline, blowing steam from the funnel and out across the water, squealing like a dying hog.
Gray was catching hell now too, from Tourville’s secondaries, as the Allied light cruiser tried to knock her lights out as well. She succeeded and the burning beams were quenched, but Gray was streaming smoke and flames as she galloped into the darkness to the east, astern of the big French battleship.
“This is friggin’ awesome!” Silva roared as his gun’s crew sent another 4″ shell into the floundering destroyer to starboard. An instant later, it sent one back, gouging the port bow just behind the anchor billboard and exploding in the chief’s quarters. Twisted shards of deck plates blew off the fo’c’sle and sharp iron clattered against the gun’s splinter shield. The ’Cats on the bicycle seats were shaken, but not badly injured. The rest were scythed down, most with ragged, bloody leg wounds. Silva was blown back against the bridge structure and found himself lying on the wet deck, throbbing head propped against the hard steel wreckage of a ready locker, good eye filmed with blood. “Friggin’ awesome,” he mumbled, before drifting away amid the crashing tumult of battle.
* * *
* * *
“Rudder amidships, all ahead full. Replacements and stretcher-bearers to the number one gun!” Matt ordered, staring at the League DD they’d nearly run into as it disappeared astern, spewing a final gulp of fire and steam as it went down. They’d only been in contact for seconds, it seemed, but they’d savaged each other brutally. Walker had been maimed, but the enemy destroyer—and probably all its people, in this sea—was dead.
“Fire in the waardroom, spreadin’ aft from the chief’s quaarters,” reported a breathless messenger. “Commaander Toos says his repair party caan deal wit’ it, soon as Lady Sandra gets the wounded out. They’re workin’ on thaat now.”
Matt had to shove concern for his wife back into the leaky compartment he tried to keep it in. “What about the forward magazine?”
“Toos says we don’t haafta flood it if he caan get the fire out quick. He thinks he caan.”
“Pressure’s droppin’ faast in the forwaard fireroom,” Minnie announced, relating what Tabby told her, “but Isaak got it bypassed an’ ever-body’s out. Some’re burnt pretty baad. Pro
b’ly drop us to twenty-five knots. Soon as the steam’s vented out, Lieuten-aant Tabby’ll go in an’ see if she caan get boilers one an’ two baack online.”
“Captain Miyata wants to know should he run alongside the enemy BB again,” asked Corporal Neely, who’d taken the place of the wounded signal-’Cat on the port bridgewing. Behind him, the portside and aft 4″-50s had joined another Allied DD and the Impie cruiser in hammering another target. It suddenly seemed that the air wasn’t quite as full of tracers as it had been, and there definitely weren’t as many muzzle flashes.
“Negative,” Matt replied. “Mr. Sandison?” he added urgently. The enemy cruiser Gray pummeled was dark except for her glowing fires, but the battleship—afire and low by the head, creeping toward a low, dark island through towering shell splashes at barely ten knots—still boomed away at Savoie with a single aft four-gun turret. Savoie looked even worse, virtually wrapped in flames, but Chappelle or Jenks was bringing her on regardless, both forward turrets still booming. It was an awe-inspiring, heartbreaking sight, like two old bulls with mortal wounds still goring each other as their lifeblood puddled around them.
“I haave never seen anything like this, my brother,” Keje said, voice hushed. His blinking in the dimly lit pilothouse was an indecipherable blur. “The Maker help me, in all our baattles, I never even imaagined such violence at sea, on such a scale. Are all the sea baattles on the world you came from like this?”
“Pretty much all the ones I’ve seen,” Matt told his friend dully, then was surprised to see Spanky appear on the bridge. He was scorched, smoke-smudged, wet, and bloody, and his eyes looked a little wild, but his voice was level when he spoke.
“We took a lot of hits aft, mostly small stuff, which killed half the ’Cats on the aft deckhouse, ripped out the voice tubes, an’ knocked the wheel off the auxiliary conn.” That explained his presence on the bridge. “Took some bigger hits too. The searchlight tower’s gone.” He shrugged. “Hell, the whole ship’s a shambles from here to the fantail, but we’ve damn sure had worse. All the damage is above the waterline and the hull’s tight, except for a few sprung plates. Aft gun is okay but it won’t track with the director. All the wiring’s burned out.”
Winds of Wrath Page 56
