by Eric Flint
Svantner frowned. “Admiral, Commodore . . . doesn’t Captain Simonszoon mean ‘scuttle’?”
“That,” replied Tromp, setting the flimsy down, “is precisely what we are going to determine now. And we have about two minutes to do it.” He folded his hands and looked at Eddie.
Who realized he was chewing on the end of his thumb, which he hadn’t done since he was thirteen. He yanked the offending finger away from his teeth. “Look. I’m gonna talk fast and without formalities. First, Dirck wouldn’t say ‘destroy’ if he meant ‘scuttle.’ He’s been a mariner and speaking that language since he could walk. Even if he was rattled, that’s not a slip he’d make. Which means he’s given us an assessment: that Resolve is lost.”
Tromp nodded. “The damage is severe, clearly. But his hull is mostly intact, his engines are functioning, helm is responding, and has lost less than ten percent of his crew. He’s lost two masts, but that doesn’t mean a ship should be destroyed.”
Eddie glanced at Tromp. “With all due respect, sir, do we really have time for you to play devil’s advocate?”
The admiral’s eyes opened a bit wider, his mouth grew stiff, but he nodded. “No, and you are right: it is not just the condition of the ship that is motivating him. After reading his first description of the channel, the nature of the ambush, and the restricted flooding despite multiple breaches, I believe he has concluded that Resolve is caught fast.”
Eddie nodded. “And he reports a dozen boats with boarders approaching, and now infantry making their way eastward along the barrier bank. Put it all together, and it’s only a matter of time until Resolve is in enemy hands.” And he and his crew are dead.
Svantner looked from one to the other. “But—but, if we were to turn now, with our guns, and ship’s troops, we would—”
“—we would make matters worse.” Eddie didn’t look at Svantner; he simply pointed east. “If Intrepid moves to conduct rescue operations, who and what is left to deal with what’s coming toward us right now?”
“Well, sir, Relentless is—”
“Arne: Relentless is one untested steam destroyer. Its supporting ships? Three equally untested frigates that started their lives as prototypes, a thirty-two-gun bark, and two jachts. Because we sent our other two jachts to help the tugs with rescue and retrieval.”
Now he did look at Svantner. “Lieutenant, look at the size of that smoke screen, and think like a Spanish commander. Is it worth going to all that trouble, and to surely lose the four galleons that are making it possible, to conceal ten ships? Fifteen? Twenty? Maybe twenty, but only if they are fast enough to hit us and live to tell the tale. But what we do know is that they intend to hide their biggest hammer until they swing it.
“So here’s my question, Lieutenant: if either Intrepid or Relentless leave the fight that’s going to occur right here, do you believe that any of our other ships will survive to tell us what happened?”
Svantner’s eyes were as round as cannon muzzles and looked just as hollow inside. “No, sir. So then . . . what do we do?”
Eddie sighed. “We take a look, see if there’s a chance we could pull her free. But I see two problems with that. First problem: she sounds as stuck as any ship has ever been. Maybe pinned in place by that landslide that came halfway across the channel. Second problem: the Spanish aren’t just going to let us traipse in there and set up salvage and towing operations. They’ve still got thirty-two-pounders higher up Billy Folly Hill and boarders approaching Resolve from aft and starboard. I think we’ll be lucky just to get the crew off in time.”
“They are sailors and soldiers, sir,” Croll said quietly. “They know that even the best commander cannot be sure of getting them all to safety.”
Tromp sighed. “Unfortunately, Signalman Croll, the commodore’s words are not simply motivated by loyalty and compassion. Many of those crewmen are like you in another way; they have been trained in the operation and repair of the technology that makes these ships so feared. If they fall into Spanish hands, it accelerates our enemy’s acquisition of all this.” He gestured to Intrepid around him.
Eddie nodded. “That’s why Dirck was volunteering to stay behind to destroy her.”
Tromp’s face looked like it might crumble inward. “To lose Resolve is tragedy enough. To lose Captain Simonszoon is . . . well, I cannot even contemplate it.”
Eddie shrugged. “You don’t have to. I’ll get him out.” The room suddenly became very quiet and he realized that all three men were staring at him. “What?” he asked eloquently.
Tromp put a fist on the table. “Commodore Cantrell, if I must lose one fine commander and friend this day, that is more than enough. Two is unthinkable. Furthermore, your duty is to this ship.”
Eddie shook his head. “Again, there’s no time so I’ve gotta be blunt. Look: I know that ship. Maybe better than the people who built her. If anyone can assess her salvageability, it’s me. And I can get Dirck off. So long as he’s not being pigheaded.” Yeah, sure; that’s totally likely. “Besides, who else can do the job? Again, time’s wasting.”
It was Croll who spoke. “Commodore, your pardon, but . . . well, many of us crew on these fine ships may learn our jobs well, but we don’t really understand how it all works, how it all fits together. So what I’m getting at is this: you up-time people have spent years teaching us how to use all these devices, but we still couldn’t build them ourselves. So, do you really think the Spanish will be able to do so on their own?”
Eddie nodded. “Signalman Croll, I am completely certain that they would. And here’s why: it was people just like them who built these ships. They were made by down-timers who, like you, were fascinated by machinery, but doubted they’d live to see half of what they imagined become reality. But then Grantville shows up, and poof!: you’re the ones making and operating the very devices you dreamed of.
“Spain has plenty of people just like that. And every time we forget that, every time we start thinking we’re smarter than the other guy, we get into trouble. Just like we did today. Because that’s one of the major reasons that Resolve is aground on an enemy island with Spanish troops ready to capture and interrogate its highly trained crew. Because we forgot that sometimes the Spanish are way smarter than we are.
“So if we just hand them steam engines, and radios and all the rest, one day soon they’ll be fielding their own versions. And we can’t afford that day to come any sooner than it has to. So no, we can’t leave Resolve behind.”
Tromp opened his fist and lifted it from the table, held it hovering there. “Eddie, I am afraid I am much like Signalman Croll in that my understanding of your technology is woefully incomplete. So I doubt you have enough time to explain how you mean to destroy Resolve without sacrificing either yourself or Dirck.”
Eddie smiled. “That’s probably true, Admiral.”
“Then I shall reside my trust in you. What do you require of me?”
“That you send an update to Captain Simonszoon and that you fight my ship.” Eddie did not stop to acknowledge Tromp’s wide-eyed surprise. “Mr. Svantner is a fine XO and will be able to acquaint you with any unfamiliar procedures or mechanisms. But you might want to turn the con over to Dirck, once he gets here.”
“You think you will be able to send Dirck back here? So soon?”
“He’s worth waiting for, sir, if you can. Captain Simonszoon will double the effectiveness of this ship against whatever is coming its way. Now, I’ve got to get a few things before I leave. Lieutenant Svantner, have Lieutenant Gallagher pick two of the Wild Geese. They are to report to me with full special tactics load-out. Make ready the captain’s longboat, complete with the outboard motor. I want the same coxswain who put me ashore on Guadeloupe. Have him pick one assistant who’s also qualified on the motor and handy with a rifle.”
“Yes, sir!” Svantner almost shouted, and ran from the room, calling for Gallagher.
Croll bowed slightly. “Since you called for me, sir, I presume you wish som
ething from me as well?”
Eddie nodded. “Indeed I do, Signalman Croll. I need you aboard Resolve.”
Croll’s eyes bulged. “Me, sir?” Eddie just smiled at him. “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. Is . . . is that all?”
“Just one more thing. I saw that you’re qualified on all Intrepid’s electrical systems. I’m presuming you know where we’ve stowed the spares for the eight-inchers’ electric ignition systems?”
“Yes, sir. I inventoried that crate myself.”
“Good. I need you to pull a few parts from it . . . ”
Chapter 62
Inlet to Simpson’s Lagoon, St. Maarten
The bow of the motorboat rose slightly as they sped closer to Pelican Point. Eddie adjusted the buff coat that Gallagher had insisted he wear. It was a pretty good fit, as was the barbuta-style helmet, which had surprisingly good visibility. But sound didn’t fare quite so well.
Ahead, one of the two jachts that were hovering in the area swept past the end of the barrier bank, which was burning fiercely, now. The Dutch ship twitched sharply to port. As if responding to that as a taunt, one of the thirty-two-pounders on Billy Folly Hill thundered, sending a ball on a long, descending arc toward it. Eddie half rose to watch, which was every bit as illogical as jumping up to cheer on the home team.
But the ball landed almost forty yards off the nimble ship’s port quarter, kicking up a white flume of impressive height. Exhaling in relief, Eddie was about to sit when he saw more white, but in a place he didn’t expect: the water reaching out from the inlet in which Resolve was stuck. Beyond the turbulence of where the sea crashed against Pelican Point and the swells abated, the water was more murky than he had ever seen in the Caribbean, especially on a sunny day. Closer to the channel itself, the water became a sickly white, like powdered milk mixed with quarry dust. That opaque stream pointed back toward its source where, visible despite the smoke, Resolve was pinned.
And she really was pinned. Resolve, which looked to be hogging slightly, was gripped like a bone in a bulldog’s jaws. Barrier-bank mud and silt held her starboard-listing hull like brown glue; the rockfall from Billy Folly sloped down into the water from the other side, almost touching her sky-canted strakes near the waterline. They had all heard the cataclysmic explosion that ended two minutes of reverberating thunder from the western side of the hill, but no one had anticipated that half of the channel would be obstructed by boulders and stones from the now altered slopes behind Pelican Point.
Eddie wasn’t a fan of defeatists. Although Captain Kirk could kinda be a jerk sometimes, he was all for the lesson of the Kobayashi Maru: no such thing as a no-win situation. But seeing Resolve, he shook his head. Ascertaining her seaworthiness was moot: she wasn’t going anywhere. Not without about a dozen steam shovels and a couple of the big tugs that worked the heaviest loads in up-time harbors.
As they got closer, it also became obvious why Dirck and his crew hadn’t been able to report just how hopeless the situation was. Eddie could now hear occasional musket fire from high up on the hill. And just as the coxswain gunned the outboard motor to close the remaining distance at best speed, one of the Spanish thirty-two-pounders roared and grape whined down and stippled the water in a wide pattern that overlapped Resolve. No way he would have given—or obeyed—an order to venture out on deck into that, not just to get a better look at how hopelessly stuck the ship was. And the view out the gunports wouldn’t have been much help either, given her list.
However, right as they began running in toward the mouth of the inlet, Eddie saw a hand waving out one of those same gunports. As it drew back inside, muskets coughed higher up the slopes: one round blippt! into the swells about five yards behind them. A few others spoke from a heap of smouldering thatch almost fifty yards down the barrier bank, quickly answered by one of the patrolling jachts as it swooped close and discharged three petereroes into the brush. Where the Spanish musket balls went, and whether the jacht’s gunners hit anything, was a complete mystery.
Just when they were close enough that he expected the coxswain to race in, the gray-eyed German let the motor idle. “Why are we—?”
“Waiting for the sign,” the boatman said tightly. “It has been arranged. One of the tugs sent word over the wireless.”
“About a sign?”
“Yes, Commodore.” He smiled. “You’ll know it when you see it.”
Eddie was readying another question when, from the same gunport where he’d seen the waving hand, the muzzle of a carronade appeared and discharged. He flinched away—
—right as the coxswain gunned the motor; the sudden acceleration made everyone sway backward.
Eddie looked back at the coxswain. “What are you—?”
“The smoke from the discharge,” the German shouted forward. “Doesn’t cover you for long. Go on! Stones are supposed to be only two feet down. There will be a Jacob’s ladder out that port. Go now!”
The longboat swerved to run alongside the ragged apron of ruined stones near Resolve. Gallagher made sure Eddie didn’t fall on the loose rocks underfoot as they scrambled over the side and waded into the smoke. As the longboard swung tightly about and powered off at high speed, Eddie and his team were guided forward by voices, then reaching hands which first helped them clamber quickly up the ladder and then pulled them through the gunport into Resolve’s portside gundeck.
Or at least, what was left of it.
* * *
When Eddie ascended the companionway into the armored pilothouse, only Rik Bjelke was there. “Commodore!” he exclaimed, a big smile suddenly shining out of his powder-grimed face. “I did not know you were coming! This is wonderful!” Then he frowned. “But . . . this is terrible! You must get away from here!”
Eddie sighed. “Let me guess; they hit the radio?”
Rik shook his head. “No, but it has failed. We are uncertain why. Our backup antenna was destroyed when a thirty-two-pound ball destroyed our mizzenmast. Or it could be a malfunction in the set. Either way, we did not receive any messages regarding your arrival.” He frowned again. “Why are you here?”
“Yes,” came another familiar voice, “why are you here?”
Eddie turned as Dirck emerged from the other companionway. Looking at him, he had a brief flashback to a Halloween costume he’d once seen: a postapocalyptic survivor turned crazed killer. Simonszoon’s face was spattered with blood, his cheeks and brow soot-covered, his bright eyes staring out of a raccoon mask of pale skin that he had repeatedly wiped clear. His hair was wild and singed, his clothes rent and frayed, his breath horrible, and his mouth uncommonly red. Or maybe that was just the effect of the contrast.
Eddie made sure his voice was very level and calm. “Captain Simonszoon, I am here to get the crew off Resolve.”
Simonszoon’s blue eyes seemed to get gray and his thin lips seemed to be resisting something like a tic. “Commodore . . . Eddie, I—”
“Report your condition, Captain.” Eddie let his tone become a little more conversational, if still firm. “And by the way, your day isn’t over. Not by a long shot. Now, status report: smartly!”
“Taking water from four breaches. Sir. One is negligible. The other three, given placement, should be leaking more. I fear we are grounded so firmly that the holes are hard against the bottom.”
Eddie nodded at each item of the report. The routine was bringing Dirck back around to a more normal voice and clearer eyes, so Eddie kept asking questions, even though he pretty much knew the answers. “Are you taking water faster than your pumps are handling?”
“Not so long as we keep up steam, sir.”
“Hull condition?”
“You’ve seen her exterior, sir; I haven’t. But I gather it’s ugly.”
“Captain Simonszoon, it’s well beyond ugly; it’s hopeless. There is no chance of getting Resolve to open water. And I am uncertain that her structural integrity would be up to the stresses.”
He nodded. “As I expected. When those final explos
ions occurred, it . . . it felt like we were being crushed in a vise. First pinned when the rocks slid down to port and then cinched hard and tight-clamped when mines went off to starboard. Although I’m not sure that those mines were there to damage us, Commodore. I believe that was just another part of the Spanish plan to collapse the inlet and trap us in the lagoon.”
He straightened. “Sir, I appreciate you coming to get the crew off Resolve. I shall see to her scutt . . . disposal. I have readied fuses and warheads from explosive rounds to—”
“You will belay those activities immediately. They are unnecessary. Besides, you’d be disobeying orders.”
“Whose?”
“Mine. Specifically, the ones I’m about to give.” He turned to Rik. “Lieutenant Bjelke, I brought an electrical specialist with me, as well as Lieutenant Gallagher. Please pair each of them with their equivalents aboard Resolve so that they may coordinate efforts. I also need your chief engineer, senior radio operator, and senior munitions specialists to become my shadows. Immediately. And you and I will need some assistants as we proceed with terminal operations. Deckhands and sail handlers will do.” A blast high overhead, followed by the rain of grape on the deck. Eddie discovered he’d ducked; the other two officers were just looking at him.
As he straightened up, Rik nodded, snapped a salute, uttered a clipped, “Yes, Commodore!” and scuttled down the companionway.
Eddie heard Dirck pull in a long breath, the way one does before launching into a long or difficult explanation. The up-timer spoke before the Dutchman could. “Here are your orders, Captain. Your work here is done, but this fleet needs you alive and ready for duty. Are you?”
“Yes, sir. But my duty is here, with my ship. Even if you do not require me to—”
“Dirck, shut up. There’s a tug approaching. It’s about ten minutes behind us. Bring every man that will fit. And stop with the allusions to a captain going down with his ship. In addition to that being an absolutely imbecilic tradition, you are the one other person in this fleet who really knows how to fight a cruiser.”
