by Eric Flint
“Okay. Send the runner back to Gallagher to tell him—”
“No need, sir; part of Gallagher’s message was that he didn’t need the runner to return. So I sent him forward to evacuate.”
“And Gallagher?”
“He said he’ll be down here in two minutes. Or less.”
As if to emphasize the probability that it would be less than two minutes, they heard a rattle of muskets on the weather deck above.
“Not ours,” Terrell grumbled.
The muskets were answered by a rapid fusillade of weapons with higher, sharper reports.
Terrell patted the Winchester .40-72 cradled in his arms. “That was ours. And way too close. Time to go, gentlemen. No need to be at home when the boyos with the pointy steel hats come knocking.”
Off the southern coast, St. Maarten
Dirck watched the first shells from both mounts miss, but each by less than forty yards.
“Reacquire and adjust. Advise when ready.”
The orders were passed on. Dirck raised his spyglass again, heard the mounts report ready, did not wait for Svantner to convey their status. “Fire,” he said.
Again, the eight-inch rifles roared within moments of each other. Mount One missed Target Two, the shell’s plume rising up only fifteen yards short of her bow. From one thousand two hundred yards.
More amazing still, Mount Two’s shell hit Target Three’s quarterdeck, the source of the smoke she was putting out. As expected, this evidently involved quite a volume of flammables, judging from the column of twisting flame that leaped high and caught up the mizzen’s canvas in a bright, writhing death dance.
The flying bridge was silent as Dirck ordered, “Mount One and Mount Two, load explosive shell. Acquire and fire when ready.”
The gun crews, perhaps because of all their training, or perhaps determined to make up for Resolve’s initially shaky gunnery off Dominica just a little over half a year ago, loaded and fired in just over thirty seconds.
Dirck waited calmly through the long moment of flight time . . . and was rewarded by a massive explosion on both ships. For the first time in his life, he did not meticulously catalog the effects. He had a generalized impression of masts falling, planks flying, fires catching, a secondary explosion on Target Two, and a set of them on Target Three as the battery just beneath her port quarter’s weather deck ripple-blasted outwards like a string of firecrackers.
Tromp’s smile was small, almost sad. Svantner’s Adam’s apple worked mightily before he asked, “Orders for Mounts One and Two, sir?”
“Yes, one more round on each target. Then move on to the other two galleons. Let’s see if they have the stomach for it.”
Chapter 64
Inlet to Simpson’s Lagoon, St. Maarten
Gallagher came sliding down the companionway from the starboard forward hatch, landing into the first long-legged stride of a full-out sprint across to the gundeck toward where Eddie stood, waiting beside the open gunport on the opposite side. “Fire the feckin’ piece!” the Irish lieutenant shouted.
Terrell made sure that Eddie and Rik were clear and fired the weapon which, being fired for smoke, had no shell in it. Eddie thought he might have lost his hearing for a moment, but then clearly heard Terrell say, “Move it, yeh great gobdaws!” He pushed Rik to the ladder, who couldn’t object to being first without delaying the other three men who, along with him, were the last persons aboard Resolve. The Norwegian’s grumbles threatened to become snarls as he went down.
Eddie jumped to the ladder, pivoted to swing his good foot over the gunport’s sill . . . and discovered he was poised over at least two dozen dead crewmen, sprawled in the grotesque poses of nerveless death, their blood staining the now gray water red. Immediately beneath him they were stacked so high upon the barely submerged rocks that the pile of death crested above the waterline. For a moment, it looked like a mound of infinite corpses, rising up from the deep. Rising up to claim them all.
“Well, go, yeh eejit!”
Terrell’s walrus-roar reassured Eddie that he had not lost the smallest bit of hearing. He swung his prosthetic foot out, started down, began to slip, realized it was because he couldn’t gauge how slippery the now blood-coated ladder was. Without a real foot inside the boot, he just didn’t have the necessary sensory precision to compensate.
He tried descending another rung, almost slid off sideways, stopped himself by clutching the ladder’s rope for dear life, and was suddenly swinging back and forth like a pendulum. He saw hands reaching for him, voices crying his name . . . and then had a thought as sharp and bitter as his sudden fury over putting other peoples’ lives at risk: Oh . . . fuck it!
Eddie flung himself off the ladder. No way he was going to let the two Wild Geese be shot to pieces while they waited for him to get down a simple ladder.
Eddie landed on bodies, mostly. Which wasn’t pleasant and sure as hell wasn’t soft. His left leg had bumped down on rock at a bad angle, but since he didn’t have a real foot there, he didn’t get a real sprain or fracture, either. He tried to get up and immediately realized that the footing was treacherous even for someone with two intact feet. So, on his hands and knees he crawled beyond the bodies, toward the far margin of the rockfall where his longboat had originally deposited him. A handful of other crewmen, two wounded, was still there, waving to the oncoming tugs while huddling close against Resolve’s shattered bow.
What happened next was more a collage than anything like a clear sequence of events. Suddenly, there was a lot of musket fire coming off Billy Folly Hill. Eddie heard the lead balls zipping and occasionally thumping around them. Then two of the Spanish cannons fired. Terrell had already reached the ground, was shouting instructions at Rik while he brought his Winchester up and started levering rounds up the hill. Gallagher almost flew out the gunport and managed a midair grab of the ladder that allowed him to slide down in one unbroken movement. He landed awkwardly, but immediately started pushing rounds into his own empty Winchester.
That was when the grapeshot from the two cannons came down. One pattern hit mostly struck Resolve’s weather deck, raising a few curses in Spanish. But the other gun had evidently tried to aim for the pile of bodies and overshot . . . and so hit the closer of the two approaching tugs instead.
One of its three crewmen flailed as a ball almost removed his left leg. Another punched a hole up near the bow, and a third must have creased the boiler or a pipe because a sudden shrill steam-whistle whine cut the air, like an audio marker saying, “Here we are!” The tug lost way until one of the other two crewmen got it under control and, while it still had some steam, made back for open water, out of the range of the guns.
Eddie had just reached the water when a thin but strong hand got him under the right armpit and hauled him upright. It was Rik, smiling at him, his back toward the island. But over his shoulder, Eddie saw movement up on Resolve’s deck.
Somehow, long familiarity and practice with how to keep upright if his good leg was slipping put the correct muscle memory in motion. Eddie kicked his prosthesis to the rear, planting it hard while he turned out of Rik’s grasp to pull his HP-35. He got it up into a two-handed grip and put as many rounds as he could in the general area where he’d seen movement.
He doubted he hit anything, but the sharp, distinctive reports of the up-time pistol pulled Gallagher’s and Terrell’s heads around—not toward him, but to where his shots were going. Terrell cranked three fast rounds out of his Winchester, Gallagher two. Between all of them, they earned one pained howl and several curses in Spanish.
The last of the evacuees were getting on the second tug, which now had to take all the others that should have gone on the first. Terrell shoved forward, ordered the boat’s master to make room for the commodore.
Eddie’s shout was louder than that of the Irish bull walrus. “Belay that. Shove off. Best speed.”
Thomas Terrell came around to stare at him. “You are an eejit! And now how do you get out of here
?”
Eddie smiled. “Same way you do,” he said, and pointed. His longboat, bow high and stern low where the outboard was churning the water, came sweeping in. As Terrell turned back to face him, surprised, Eddie shouted at him, nose to nose: “Now reload your guns and mind your tongue, mister!”
About the time they were finally settling in, more of the Spanish on Resolve’s weather deck tried to get in a few shots over the bow and the sides. Eddie had a fresh magazine in the HP-35 and emptied half of it, while the two Wild Geese showed admirable precision marksmanship, which resulted in one cry of agony and one body that fell, lifeless, over the side of the crippled ship.
As the Spanish flinched back, and Eddie and the other three men were ready to motor out, the up-timer suddenly realized there was something he had to—had to—do. Making sure he still had one foot on the rocks just beneath the water, he shouted as quickly as one of those old-time radio ad announcers, “I-claim-this-island-for-King-Christian-IV-of Denmark! Now let’s get out of here!”
Off the southern coast, St. Maarten
Tromp looked at the sagging, smoking wrecks of the four galleons. One of them, Target Four, had also been hit well back in the stern. While it resulted in a less spectacular fire—none of her sails caught—it must have run down into the lower decks and hit the magazine. Surprisingly, that did not blow the ship to pieces . . . probably, Tromp reasoned, because the enemy admiral had considered it unlikely any of the smoke ships would survive to reach cannon range. Still, there was a huge flaring hole in her side, and she was clearly taking water. If she did not roll within the next fifteen minutes, he would be quite surprised.
Behind the galleons, and now starting to break out of the smoke, were just what Tromp and the other officers had expected to see: galleoncetes without provisions for oars and fragatas whose lines showed the same trends of naval thought that were evident in the allied frigates now facing them.
Simonszoon saw the oncoming ships, sighed, then shrugged. “Mr. Svantner, build a target list. Until you have completed it, we will engage the galleoncetes by choice; they look slightly slower. Mount One, target: galleoncete, one point off starboard bow, range approximately eight hundred yards. When acquired, fire explosive round. Mount Two . . . ”
Svantner leaned over toward Tromp, putting his finger on the western edge of the tactical plot. “Sir, may I point out that the enemy’s other formation of galleons has now come around Gunner’s Point in the west? They are facing Admiral Banckert’s squadron.”
“Yes, they are right where I want them.”
“Sir? Granted our ships have the wind gauge, but they are outnumbered two to one.”
Tromp smiled. “Are they?” He leaned toward the speaking tube for the wireless room. “Send this message in the clear at frequency reserved for Contingency: Class Reunion. To Major L. Quinn, aboard Courser. Confirm receipt of activation code for Contingency: Class Reunion. Code is: Start the Dance.”
* * *
Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo had assumed, when his smoke-making galleons had been taking so many direct hits so early, that the up-time steamships had run in at full speed to close the range. It was a tactic he’d considered but deemed unlikely. Yes, it would allow them to eliminate the smoke screen as quickly as possible, but it meant either pulling their entire formation closer to his—yes, please do!—or sending the steamships forward unsupported to attain effective range and then steaming back to their main formation, which was almost as welcome.
But when the middle two smoke galleons lost way and he moved beyond their smoke, he witnessed the unthinkable: both the large and small steamships were still precisely where they had been first sighted. Which meant that one or both had begun engaging his smoke ships at a range of thirteen hundred fifty yards and had begun hitting them after one or two ranging shots.
Álvarez prided himself on being a practical-minded man who accepted both good and bad conditions. He’d never read, and had only encountered one brief précis of, the work of an up-time French-Algerian philosopher named Camus, but he readily understood the man’s concept of “existential detachment.” But this? For a moment, the admiral was not able to reshape his mind, and most specifically his tactical suppositions, around the inescapable facts of what had transpired.
The first coherent thought which came to him was eminently practical: We cannot sustain this engagement. We must make a pass at their conventional frigates to the south, then sheer off. Or we will be ruined and unable to defend the ports where we build our ships. He didn’t need to summon or make any explanation to Irarraga, who was standing beside him. The captain’s face was as pale and stunned as he imagined his own to be. He called for de Orbea, to whom he relayed the changed orders, including instructions for each ship that received them to confirm receipt and to immediately resend to others.
But he then wondered: would his captains see those signals as they moved through the smoke? As they worked their sails to maintain every possible iota of speed? As they tried to formulate tactics to simply survive what should have been an effective attack with the full advantage of the wind gauge? Oh, for a radio now . . .
His misgivings were becoming reality before his eyes. Many of his ships had either not received any or all of the signals; too many raced forward through the thinning smoke as the last of the galleons, now shattered, fell behind. It was the logical course of action; if they lost the smoke early, they had to close as rapidly as possible.
But closing as rapidly as possible was just a more dramatic form of suicide. At what used to be its maximum range, the large up-time cruiser now hit with its second, or sometimes even its first, shot. One of the leading galleoncetes ran straight in and took a plunging hit straight down her centerline. It was like watching a knife gutting a fish. Starting in the foc’sle and running back along half its length, the deck planking and the supports beneath them flew up in a straight line, as if being cut by a plow. After also severing the foremast, the round still had enough force to so weaken the mainmast that the impact from the falling foretop brought it down, as well.
Another galleoncete approached the enemy, weaving slightly, and that did seem to ruin the aim of their first shot. But between the inevitable reduction in speed every time her bow crossed through the wind and the larger target she presented when turning across the axis of enemy fire, the second round hit her hard, staggering her. By the time she straightened and found her way again, an explosive shell hit her foc’sle, leaving a gaping, smoking hole that reached almost down to the waterline.
Álvarez swallowed, seemed to have a rock jammed in his throat. He had known he would lose ships this day, maybe many. And it was a worthwhile trade if they closed and did equal damage to the enemy’s conventional men-of-war. The allies were unable to replace losses as swiftly as he could, and so, for them, an equal exchange of ships meant the surety of eventual defeat by attrition. But now, the speed and maneuverability which had been the admiral’s tool to achieve that end was no longer sufficient. It seemed unlikely that the up-time guns had always possessed this accuracy, but it hardly mattered whether its sudden appearance signified long-standing suppression to effect this surprise or was the result of continuing up-time innovation. The brutal fact was that the tactics for which Fadrique had successfully orchestrated this scenario no longer held out the promise of success but, rather, the likelihood of complete disaster.
But at least half of his fleet had either received his orders or had come to the same realizations and were fashioning the same response independently. And leading them all was the fragata of Eugenio de Covilla.
The unusually swift Espada Santa had swung close around the southernmost of the galleons, whose destruction produced so much southwest leading smoke that it concealed his ship until it was only five hundred yards from one of the new enemy frigates. The smaller steamship attempted to take de Covilla’s ship under fire, but after two misses, the allied frigate obstructed her aim and the two conventional warships closed to range.
Both captains were skilled, but the allied ship, not having the wind gauge, had to put her bows south to get the wind over her beam and so get speed. It was also a shrewd maneuver because, if Espada Santa decided to keep running in and rake her while crossing her stern, that put her closer to the smaller steamship, which would presumably fire as soon as the two conventional ships drew apart.
De Covilla evidently saw that, refused to sail to his own doom, and altered course to keep the frigate between him and the enemy’s lethal guns. That also fulfilled another, more strategic purpose. As Espada Santa closed to trade broadsides with the enemy ship, he was also steering in a consistently more southerly direction. And just before he drew abreast of the enemy, he sent up a puzzling signal flag: FOLLOW ME.
Álvarez frowned, was momentarily distracted by the quick exchange between the ships. At fifty yards, they each scored hits. Planks flew and smoke rose from both. Then Espada Santa heeled over into a decided south-by-southwest heading.
“Where is he going? Toward St. Eustatia?” de Orbea wondered aloud.
“No,” Álvarez realized, “he is keeping much of the wind and moving away from their guns.”
“And giving them his stern!”
The voice that answered de Orbea was Irarraga’s. “Yes, which means de Covilla is giving that smaller steamship the narrowest possible target. He’s also sending more signals, it appears.” He paused. “He indicates there is a threat further to the west. Beyond the Dutch men-of-war facing our galleons off Gunner’s Point.”
Puzzled, they all turned their spyglasses in that direction. Two ships were just coming over the horizon, perhaps three miles southwest of the galleons.
And they were both sending up smoke.
No one spoke for several seconds as they strained to confirm what they had seen, and while doing so, discerned that these were not merely tugs. No, they were ships of the same size and shape as the smaller steamship that even now was firing after the fleeing Espada Santa.
