The moment the two ships were separated, the men turned and added their firepower against the first Corsair ship, leaving it a lifeless bloody shell. It sailed on without anyone at the wheel, and Mike kept the Harbinger on its left side, using it to mask them as they came up on another ship. It was already riddled and floating helplessly.
There were two men on board trying to replace the forestay that had been shot away. The entire mast was canted precariously back and the next gust of wind could tear it from the deck. For some unknown reason, the two men were trying to tie the rope with the sail still sheeted home.
“Kill them,” Mike ordered, feeling greasy deep in the pit of his stomach. “Then the ship.” He was ordering the execution of all three. His Guardians didn’t jump at the chance to kill two unsuspecting men; it flew in the face of their code of honor. Mike knew that in this battle, honor was a luxury they couldn’t afford. “Get the boat at least,” he said, bending to pick up his rifle. He would kill the men and hope that after he would find a way to forget that he had.
His hand closed on the grip of the rifle when he felt a searing pain across his back. Looking up, he saw the big catamaran eighty feet off to their left, moving to cut them off. Its captain had his rifle out and was gunning for Mike. “All the way over to starboard! Watch the boom. We’re coming about!” The Harbinger seemed to turn on a dime as it cut under the two boats on their right side.
Almost without losing speed, he then turned back south so that there were four boats racing along. The chance to kill the two men who’d been working on the forestay was gone. They’d fled below as the Corsairs on the Cat shot across their deck to get at Mike’s crew. Two were down and bleeding. There was no need to call for return fire. His men were dishing it out, trading bullet for bullet.
They had better aim and had armor, but these advantages were nullified by the number of Corsairs, and their willingness to expend ammo as if they had an endless supply.
The four-boat formation couldn’t possibly last. They came up on a ship that was burning and belching huge clouds of smoke. It was one of Mike’s and as they streaked past, they could see three men at the stern working at the wheel. They were trying to send the ship off to port to sew more confusion. Their efforts were ruined as the boat with the canted mast struck them at full speed.
When the two struck, there was a scream and an explosion of flame and smoke that left everyone blind. When the Harbinger was past, Mike looked up to see that the Cat had disappeared. “Where is it? Anyone see that catamaran?”
No one could see anything through the smoke, which had grown even more dense.
As Mike was peering through the clouds, one of the Guardians tapped him on the shoulder. “We have to go back. There might be survivors.”
“And there might be twenty Corsair ships waiting for us. No, we stick to the plan. We all knew the dangers involved and…” Just then the Harbinger shuddered as it passed through the debris field of a recent battle. At least two ships had gone down and another was half-submerged. There were bodies, but none of them were moving.
“We keep going,” Mike said. “Let’s get the wounded below.”
The wounded would not go below. One man with an arm dangling by a scrap of bone and skin demanded that it be cut away right there on deck. Including the one-armed man and two others with slightly lesser wounds, there were only eight of them left alive. They were in no shape to go back.
“We need a new lantern up here. It’s time to get out of here while we can.” Mike regretted the words as soon as he spoke them. Compared to the Guardians’ desire to go back for their friends, what Mike had said smacked of cowardice. “What I mean is that we have to be with the rest of the fleet when we break through the smoke. That was the plan.”
But where was the fleet? Other than the one burning ship, they hadn’t seen a single Guardian ship. Had the Harbinger been left behind? It seemed impossible since the smoke couldn’t have been spread over the bay for more than a mile or two.
“Maybe they’re already out. Maybe they turned out early.” Maybe they’re all destroyed. The thought didn’t sit well with Mike and he squinted through the smoke for any sign of the rest of his fleet. There were plenty of signs in the form of bodies and slicks of oil that glinted like rainbows from the newly lit lantern. “Hood that, will you? I don’t want to give away our position.”
But it was too late for that. Glimpses of the light had been seen and now half a dozen ships were angling towards them. Their sails could be heard through the smoke, snapping like whips as if demons were driving them on. “Oh boy,” Mike whispered to himself. He raised his voice only slightly louder to say to one of his men, “I want that torpedo in the water ten seconds after we break free of the smoke.”
As much as Mike hated the feeling of being blind and hunted while in the smoke, leaving it was far worse. He felt naked. They burst out into the open with such suddenness that it was like waking from a dark dream. And what he saw off his starboard bow was something of a nightmare. There were only five of the black Guardian ships ahead of him.
“What the hell?” He rushed to the rail and stood on the second rung, staring back into the smoke, searching for any sign of the rest of his fleet. He stared in vain. They had lost half their number and only God knew how many good men, and for what? A couple of Corsair boats?
Mike was thinking about puking over the side of the ship when one of the Guardians whispered, “Here they come!”
A heavy ponderous drum had begun to beat in the dark cloud. The thrumming sound was soon taken up by dozens more until the smoke pulsed with each hammering blow. The sound built up until even the Guardians looked stricken with fear. Then the entire Corsair fleet emerged from the smoke and the fear took root and delved deep.
Not only did it look like there were more ships than before, they seemed to have grown, as if they fed on darkness and death.
The Harbinger seemed alone on the water. Seventeen white sails were a quarter mile away, while closer were the five black-sailed vessels, fleeing as fast as they could. “Hard to starboard,” Mike ordered. The command was slow to be followed. It sent them to the right, so they were heading due north across the face of the Corsair fleet. The crews of forty black ships stared at them, each wanting to be the crew to sink him.
“This wasn’t a part of any plan,” one of the Guardians remarked, straining to keep his voice calm. He was almost standing on Ren’s cold hand.
Mike pulled him away. “There was no plan. The Queen said to fight them ship to ship and man to man, and that’s what we’re doing.”
“Us against all of them? When you take courage too far, it becomes insanity. And this is what it looks like.”
Laughter welled up in Mike’s chest. “I hope this doesn’t wreck my reputation for being ‘dashing,’ but I’ve been scared for weeks now. Every minute of every day. It gets so bad I can hardly breathe. But I know I have a job to do and we have one right now. So, let’s get our heads on right and get the torpedo away.”
It was almost all they had left to fight the might of the Corsairs with: one slapped together bomb and a handful of bullets. But they didn’t have a choice.
Chapter 38
San Francisco Bay
Thirty seconds after the entire Corsair fleet erupted from the smoke, hellbent on revenge, the Harbinger let its one torpedo go, dropping it overboard on the windward rail so it wouldn’t be seen.
To mask its presence, Mike had his men send up a spinnaker made from their reserve mainsail. It was a great splash of white on a black background and could be seen for miles. It was also a disaster from the start.
Rylan Adams, a Guardian with years of experience on tightly run ships, felt the groan beneath his hand as the ship’s mast began to bow. “Two more knots ain’t worth this,” he muttered.
“It is if it keeps us away from them Corsairs,” his friend Chet answered, pulling down on the neck of his armored vest. Beneath his uniform, he was rail thin and secretly felt like a
turtle in a shell. He whispered a prayer, which ended when a metal cleat gave way under the strain.
“What did I tell you?” Rylan snarled. “Main’s ain’t nothing but a main. It ain’t no spinnaker. And crap! It’s all tangled with the jib. Captain! We need to cut her away.”
Mike glanced to where the Corsairs were coming together just beyond the smoke. Were they thinking that he was putting on a show to fool them? He hoped not. He needed them to come on as fast as they could, but not so fast that they caught the Harbinger, which had already slowed to four knots because of the spun-together sails. “Cut away the lower shrouds,” he ordered.
“And our heading?” the man at the wheel asked. They were on a northward course, aiming right for Angel Island where five hundred pissed off Corsairs were ready to shred the ship to pieces.
“Continue on this heading for now. Do we have eyes on our torpedo?”
Before the soldier with the controls could answer, a loud slapping sound had everyone looking up. Embarrassingly, the would-be spinnaker was uselessly flapping at the top of the mast like a sundress on a clothesline in a heavy wind. “Jeeze,” Mike whispered. “What’s next?” He half expected the anchor to suddenly drop.
“I got the torpedo dead on,” one of the wounded men said. He pointed. “You can see the bubbles.”
Mike could, and so could the Corsairs. By then the black fleet was racing through the waters at them. They picked out the torpedo and a hundred bullets ripped into it. There wasn’t enough left over for the soldier to even detonate it for show and the bomb was wasted. It meant their margin of victory had shrunk that much more.
“Damn,” Mike cursed under his breath. Aloud, he ordered, “Light the forward lantern,”
“The sail isn’t obvious enough?” Chet whispered to Rylan.
The light would make them even more of a target for the Corsairs, who were only two hundred yards away and coming on hand over fist. Chet’s whisper was a touch too loud and reached Mike’s ear. “Light it!” he snapped. Then, in a gentler voice, he added, “And make our turn west.” As much as the sailors hated the light that made them the focus of every eye on the water, they were only too happy to make the turn. The relative safety of their own fleet was half a mile away. They were down to twenty-three ships, while the Corsairs had a comfortable advantage with forty.
Mike had hoped to sink more with his last attack, but he wasn’t done. He had prepared a trap that would have made Jillybean proud.
“Torpedoes!” the lookout at the bow hissed in a high voice. Mike hurried to the rail and what he saw in the dark sent goosebumps rising along his arms. Half a dozen torpedoes snaked through the water on either side of his ship, anyone of which could have sent them straight to the bottom of the bay. Instinctively, he leaned back from the rail as his eyes picked out another one slightly further out. There would be more. Four minutes before, his fleet had sent every torpedo they had left buzzing for the smoke, praying that their timing would be right.
If the Corsairs had come out of the smoke too late, the bombs would have been wasted. As it was, they had come out thirty seconds too soon. There was a chance they would be seen. It was why Mike had been cavorting the Harbinger back and forth.
“Ready about!” Mike cried. He had to keep the focus on him and not the bombs.
Rylan pushed Chet aside and ran to the jib, while another went to a rope called the Boom Vang and eased the tension on it. The moment the last torpedo slipped by, Mike ordered the turn. The wheel turned, the boom pivoted and the boat swung up into the wind, paused for just a second and then turned hard around so that they were now heading due south.
Every sailor on board looked from the sail to the Corsairs. They were closer now, and cutting the distance with every second. Mike picked up an M16 and checked the magazine, saying, “We have to keep them focused on us for a little longer. Fire everything we have at that lead ship.”
The Guardians grimly took up their rifles. Eight against four hundred and they didn’t hesitate.
A hundred and fifty yards was an easy shot at a flat range in the daytime with a properly sighted gun and factory manufactured bullets. At night on a rolling deck, with substandard ammo and guns that had been passed around willynilly, Mike figured they’d be lucky to hit the ship.
They were better shots than he gave them credit for and they scored enough hits to get the Corsairs’ attention. The ship heaved to and began returning fire. Three other ships followed suit and soon water was being kicked up all around the Harbinger. Bullets began to thud into her hull and the sail began whistling from the holes sprouting in it.
Mike was at the stern and the first indication that the big catamaran had joined the fight was the yellow streak of light that zipped an inch from his ear, making him jump. It was a tracer round, which were extremely rare. It could only mean one thing: once more he was being personally targeted. The goosebumps were back and along with them came a clammy cold sweat trickling down his back.
As much as he wanted to go diving down onto the deck, he refused to budge. It wasn’t just a point of honor. He knew that the moment the captain began cringing in fear, his authority went out the window. And besides, stray bullets were whipping everywhere. Knowing his luck, he would duck right into one. “Prepare to turn us about,” he told Rylan, the closest Guardian to the wheel. “The second…” Another yellow streak. This one tore a hole in the side of his jacket. He swallowed loudly. “I want us heading straight west as soon as the first torpedo goes off.”
Eighteen seconds later the first explosion rocked the night, hurling flaming debris hundreds of feet into the air. True to his order, Rylan heeled the Harbinger hard over. It was such an abrupt move that Mike lost his footing and sat down hard in the padded captain’s chair.
The bullets stopped flying at them, and in their place came explosion after explosion, lighting up the night like a mad strobe. The booming thunder of their echoes rolled around the bay as the Corsairs began flying wildly in every direction, frantic to get away from the bombs. They juked and spun and turned so hard that men were flung into the water. They changed direction so many times that they frequently passed into the paths of torpedoes they didn’t even see coming. And if one missed, there was always another target.
Soon the bay was on fire and on Alcatraz people were going crazy, jumping up and down, cheering with all their might. A minute before they had been cursing Mike’s name, calling him every sort of fool. From their point of view, the attacks had seemed suicidal, based on desperation instead of planning. Now, they saw that they had been building up to this one terrible trap.
No one had suspected the long-range torpedo attack, least of all the Corsairs. Within minutes, seventeen of their ships were burning out of control or sinking beneath the waves.
On the prison roof, Jenn finally took her eyes from the telescope. She was weak with relief and exhausted from the stress. She sat in the chair that Shaina had brought up for her and smiled softly as the celebration around her went on and on. People were chanting: “We did it! We did it!”
“Has he done it, do you think?” she asked Bishop Wojdan, who was bent over the telescope. “Has he won?”
For a long minute, it seemed so. The Corsair ships that hadn’t been destroyed looked stricken. They were floating in an oily sea, each off by themselves. “Maybe. It’s hard to tell.” He did a quick count. “The two sides are now even in numbers, so that’s a tremendous victory in itself. Perhaps they’ll finally leave.” He straightened and sighed.
Donna Polston was quick to take his place. Through the lens she saw Mike as a dim figure with light hair. He was still sitting in the captain’s chair. “Why is he just sitting there? They should be attacking now, while the Corsairs are scattered.” Everyone gazed out and saw the Harbinger slowly beating into the wind to join the other ships. Its mast was lit from below so that the flags being run up the forestay could be seen. “Does anyone know what all those flags mean?”
“Without knowing which code
they’re using, it’s impossible to tell exactly,” Knights Reserve Commander Jennifer Edgerton answered. Her eyes flicked nervously toward the Queen. “I think I know why they’re not attacking. They’re probably extremely low on ammo. They’re out of torpedoes, that’s for sure.”
Once more, she bent and squinted down the telescope, moving it back and forth, her frown deepening. “Yeah, the Revenge is passing over magazines to the Harbinger, and to the Mary Magdalene. They all are. Oh, Lord above. They only have seven. Is that right? Is that all they have?” The roof top was silent as she scanned each boat. “It looks like every soldier has only one magazine. That means maybe two hundred rounds per boat.”
“Is that enough?” Bishop Wojdan asked. “Can they fight a battle with so little ammunition?”
Edgerton held her tongue and Jenn had no idea. The crowd waited in silence on the roof, their elation dying by degrees.
The fact that Mike kept his fleet upwind of the Corsairs and did not come flying down at them was answer enough for Jenn. It was also answer enough for the Corsair Commander. He crept west, fearing an ambush, but suspecting that the Queen’s fleet had shot its load.
When Mike only retreated further northwest, the captain knew he faced a toothless opponent. Still he didn’t rush in. He figured that his best hope to salvage his position as fleet commander and keep his head on his shoulders was to take the Queen’s fleet intact. It would make all of his past reverses less damning. All he had to do was keep their fleet from getting back to Alcatraz, where he supposed they had more ammunition.
To further trap his opponent, the Corsair captain sent men from the bridge running along the coast opposite the Marin Headlands all the way to Sausalito. It basically ensnared Mike in a shrinking square with the bridge on one side, the coast leading to a rocky cove on another, Angel Island on the third and finally the Corsair fleet holding the entrance.
Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained Page 45
