March To The Stars im-3

by David Weber

  For the first time since the Marines landed on Marduk, their high-tech weapons were almost superfluous. The ten-millimeter, hypervelocity beads were incredibly lethal, but the storm of grapeshot and the flying splinters of the ships themselves spread a stormfront of destruction broader than anything the bead cannon could have produced. The beads were simply icing on the cake.

  "Bring us back up close-hauled on the port tack, Captain T'Sool!" Roger snapped, and Hooker swung even further to port, riding back along a reciprocal of her original course that took her back up between the battered raider ships towards Prince John's position. Both broadsides' carronades continued to belch flame with deadly efficiency, and Roger could clearly see the thick ropes of blood oozing from the Mardukan ships' scuppers.

  The flotilla flagship broke back through the enemy's shattered formation with smoke streaming from her gun ports in a thick fog bank shot through with flame and fury. Another raider's masts went crashing over the side, and Roger sucked in a deep, relieved breath of lung-searing smoke, despite his earlier confident words to Pahner, as he saw Prince John.

  The broken foremast had been cut entirely away; he could see it bobbing astern of her as she got back underway under her mainsail and gaff main topsail alone. It was scarcely an efficient sail combination, but it was enough under the circumstances. Or it should be, anyway. She wasn't moving very quickly yet, and her rigging damage had cost her her headsails, which meant the best she could do was limp along on the wind. But her speed was increasing, and at least she was under command and moving. Which was a good thing, since raider Number Four had somehow managed to claw her way through the melee.

  The Johnny had seen her coming, and her carronades were already pounding at her opponent. The bigger, more heavily built raider vessel's topsides were badly shattered, and her sails seemed to have almost more holes in them than they had intact canvas, but she was still underway, still closing on the damaged schooner, and the big, slow-firing bombard protected by the massive timber "armor" of her forecastle was still in action. Even as Roger watched, it slammed another massive round shot into the much more lightly built schooner, and he swore viciously as splintered planking flew.

  "It would be the Johnny," he heard Pahner say almost philosophically. He looked at the Marine, and the captain shrugged. "Never seems to fail, Your Highness. The place you least want to get hit, is the one you can count on the enemy finding." He shook his head. "She's got quite a few of the Carnan aboard, and they already took a hammering when we lost Sea Skimmer."

  "Don't count your money when it's still sitting on the table," Roger replied, then turned to Julian. "All ships," he said. "Close with the pirates to leeward and board. We'll go to Johnny's assistance ourselves."

  "Your Highness," Pahner began, "considering that our entire mission is to get you home alive, don't you think that perhaps it might be a bit wiser to let someone else go—"

  Roger had just turned back to the Marine to argue the point when Pahner's helmet visor automatically darkened to protect the captain's vision. Roger didn't know whether or not Prince John's Marine detachment had originally set up a plasma cannon for their anti-coll defense system. If they had, he thought with a strange detachment, they were probably going to hear about it—at length—from Pahner and the sergeant major. But it was also possible that they'd switched out the bead cannon at the last minute while the rest of the crew worked on repairs to the schooner's crippled rigging. Not that it mattered. Raider Number Four had managed to get around behind Johnny's stern, where her deadly carronade broadside wouldn't bear. And in achieving that position of advantage, the pirate vessel had put itself exactly where the schooner's crew wanted it.

  The Marines' plasma cannons could take out modern main battle tanks, and if Hooker's bead cannon hadn't seemed to add much to her carronades' carnage, no one would ever say that about Prince John's after armament. The round ripped straight down the center of the target ship, just above main deck level. It sliced away masts, rigging, bulwarks, and the majority of the pirates who had assembled on deck in anticipation of boarding. What was worse, in a way, was the thermal bloom that preceded the round. The searing heat touched the entire surface of the ship to flame in a tiny slice of a second, and the roaring furnace became an instant sliver of Hell, an inferno afloat on an endless sea that offered no succor to its victims. Those unfortunate souls below decks, "shielded" from the instant incineration of the boarding party, had a few, eternal minutes longer to shriek before the bombard's powder magazine exploded and sent the shattered, flaming wreck mercifully into the obliterating depths.

  "I thought we wanted to capture the ships intact," Roger said almost mildly.

  "What would you have done, Your Highness?" Pahner asked. "Yeah, we want to capture the ships, and recapture the convoy, if we can. But Prince John, obviously, would prefer to avoid being boarded herself."

  "And apparently the Lemmar agree with that preference," D'Nal Cord observed. "Look at that."

  He raised an upper arm and pointed. One of the six raider vessels drifted helplessly, completely dismasted while the blood oozing down her side dyed the water around her. Her deck was piled and heaped with the bodies of her crew, and it was obvious that no more than a handful of them could still be alive. Three more raiders each had one of the flotilla's other schooners alongside, and now that Hooker's carronades were no longer bellowing, Roger could hear the crackle of small arms fire as the K'Vaernian boarders stormed up and over them. Prince John's plasma cannon had accounted for a fifth raider, but the sixth and final pirate vessel had somehow managed to come through the brutal melee with its rigging more or less intact, and it was making off downwind just as fast as its shredded canvas would allow.

  "Do we let them go, or close with them?" the prince asked.

  "Close," Pahner said. "We want to capture the ships, and I'm not a great believer in giving a fleeing enemy an even break. They either surrender, or they die."

  * * *

  "They're not letting us go," Vunet said.

  "Would you?" Cies shot back with a grunt of bitter laughter as he looked around the deck.

  The crew was hastily trying to repair some of the damage, but it was a futile task. There was just too much of it. Those damned bombards of theirs were hellishly accurate. Unbelievably accurate. They'd smashed Rage of Lemmar from stem to stern and cut away over half her running rigging, in the process. Coupled with the way they'd shredded the sails themselves, the damage to the ship's lines—and line-handlers—had slowed their escape to a crawl.

  The bombards had done nearly as much damage to the crew, as well. The quarterdeck was awash in blood and bodies, and the crew had put a gang of slaves to work pitching the offal over the side. The enemy's round shot had been bad enough, but the splinters it had ripped from the hull had been even worse. Some of them had been almost two-thirds as long as Cies himself, and one of them had gutted his original helmsman like a filleted fish. Nor was that the only crewman who'd been shredded by bits and pieces of his own ship. Some of that always happened when the bombards got a clear shot, but Cies had never imagined anything like this. Normal bombard balls were much slower than the Hell-forged missiles that had savaged his vessel. Worse, he'd never seen any ship that could pour out fire like water from a pump, and the combination of high-velocity shot and its sheer volume had been devastating beyond his worst nightmares of carnage.

  Now the Rage was trying to limp to the south and away from the vengeful demons behind her. He'd hoped that with one of their own crippled (by what, for all intents and purposes, had been a single lucky shot) the other four might have let his own ship go. But it appeared they had other plans.

  "We could ..." Vunet said, then paused.

  "You were about to suggest that we surrender," Cies said harshly. "Never! No Lemmar ship has ever surrendered to anyone other than Lemmar. Ever. They may take our ship, but not one crewman, not one slave, will be theirs."

  * * *

  "They're not heaving to," Roger
said with a grunt. "Captain Pahner?"

  "Yes, Your Highness?" the Marine replied formally.

  "If we really want that ship intact, this is about to become a boarding action. I think it's about time to let the ground commander take over."

  "You intend to take them on one-on-one?"

  "I think we have to, if we don't want them to get away," Roger replied. Pahner gazed at him, and the prince shrugged. "Pentzikis, Tor Coll, and Sea Foam already have their hands full. Prince John can probably take the fourth pirate—I doubt there's more than a couple dozen of these Lemmar still alive aboard her, and she sure as hell can't get away with no masts at all. But this guy in front of us isn't just lucky. He's smart ... and good. If he weren't, he'd be drifting around back there with his buddies. So if you want him caught, we're the only one with a real shot at him."

  "I see. And when we catch up with him, you'll be where, precisely, Your Highness?" Pahner asked politely.

  "Like I say, Sir," Roger said, "it's time to let the ground commander take over."

  "I see." Pahner gazed at him speculatively for several moments, considering what the prince hadn't said, then nodded with an unseen smile.

  "Very well, Your Highness. Since boarding actions are my job, I'll just go and get the parties for this one assembled."

  CHAPTER TEN

  "Come off the guns and rig the mortars!" Despreaux ordered, pulling gunners off the carronades as she trotted down the line of the starboard battery. "We're going to be boarding from port!"

  The Ima Hooker was slicing through the water once more, rapidly overhauling the fleeing pirate vessel. It would have been difficult to guess, looking at the sergeant's expression, just how unhappy about that she was. Not that she was any more eager than Captain Pahner to see the raiders escape, if not for exactly the same reasons. Nimashet Despreaux had a serious attitude problem where pirates—any pirates—were concerned, but she would have been much happier if at least one of the other schooners had been in position to support Hooker. There were still an awful lot of scummies aboard that ship, however badly shaken they must be from the effects of the carronades. And as good as the K'Vaernians and their Diaspran veterans were, hand-to-hand combat on a heaving deck was what the Lemmar did for a living. There were going to be casualties—probably quite a lot of them—if the raiders ever got within arms' reach, and a Mardukan's arms were very, very long.

  And Despreaux was particularly concerned about one possible casualty which wouldn't have been a problem if any of the other schooners had been in Hooker's place.

  But at least if they had to do it, it looked as if Roger intended to do it as smartly as possible. He was steering almost directly along the Lemmaran ship's wake, safely outside the threat zone of any weapon the raider mounted. Given Hooker's superior speed and maneuverability, Despreaux never doubted that Roger would succeed in laying her right across the other ship's stern. Nor did she doubt that he would succeed in raking the pirate's deck from end to end with grapeshot with relative impunity as he closed. After which, Hooker's crew and Krindi Fain's Diasprans would swarm up and over the shattered stern and swiftly subdue whatever survived from the Lemmaran crew.

  Sure they would.

  And Roger wouldn't be anywhere near the fighting.

  And the tooth fairy would click her heels together three times and return all of them to Old Earth instantly.

  She skidded to a halt beside another device that was new to Marduk. The boarding mortar, one of three carried in each of Hooker's broadsides, was a small, heavy tube designed for a heavily modified grapnel, affixed to a winch and line, to fit neatly into its muzzle. Charged with gunpowder, it should be able to throw the grapnel farther and more accurately than any human or Mardukan. Of course, that assumed it worked at all. The system had been tested before leaving K'Vaern's Cove, but that was different from trying to use it in combat for the very first time.

  Despreaux pulled open the locker beside the mortar, dragged out the grapnel, and affixed the line to the snaphook on its head as one of the gun boys ran down to the magazine for the propelling charge. He was back in less than a minute with a bag of powder, and Despreaux watched one of the Mardukan gunners from the starboard battery slide the charge into the heavy iron tube. A wad of waxed felt followed, and then Despreaux personally inserted the grapnel shaft and used it as its own ramrod to shove the charge home. When she was certain it was fully seated, she stepped back. A hollow quill, made from the Mardukan equivalent of a feather and filled with fulminating powder, went into the touchhole, the firing hammer was cocked, and the mortar was ready.

  All three of the portside weapons had been simultaneously loaded, and Despreaux spent a few seconds inspecting the other two, then activated her communicator.

  "Portside mortars are up."

  "Good," Roger replied. "We're coming up on our final turn."

  Despreaux grabbed a stay and leaned outboard, careful to stay out of the carronade gunners' way as she peered ahead beyond the sails and the tapering bowsprit. Hooker was coming up astern of the Lemmaran ship rapidly, and she heard the rapidfire volley of orders as seamen scampered to the lines. One of the portside gunners rapped her "accidentally" on the knee with a handspike, and she looked up quickly. Mardukan faces might not be anywhere near as expressive as human ones, but she'd learned to read scummy body language in the past, endless months, and she recognized the equivalent of a broad grin in the way his false-hands held the handspike.

  She gave him the human version of the same expression and got the hell out of his way as the gun captain squatted behind the carronade and peered along the stubby barrel. Then he cocked the firing hammer.

  * * *

  "Back all sails!"

  Now that the battle had resolved itself into a series of ship-to-ship actions, Roger found himself an admiral with no commands to give. It was all up to the individual ship captains now, like T'Sool, and Roger decided that the best thing he could do was get out from underfoot.

  And he was planning on sitting out the boarding, as well. Everyone's comments on the stupidity of his putting himself out on a limb were finally starting to hit home. If he took point, the Marines aboard Ima Hooker wouldn't be able to pay attention to taking the ship, or to keeping themselves alive, because they would be trying too hard to protect him. So he'd taken a position in the ratlines, where he could observe the fighting without participating.

  Getting a good look required that elevated position, because the ships could hardly have been more unlike one another. The Lemmaran was a high-sided caravellike vessel, fairly round in relation to its length, whereas the schooner was long, low, and lean. The result was a difference of nearly three meters from the top of the schooner's bulwarks to the top of her opponent's.

  The boarders from Hooker would be led by some of the Diaspran veterans, under the command of Krindi Fain, with the human Marines—led by Gunny Jin—as emergency backup. The Diasprans weren't exactly experienced at this sort of combat, but the K'Vaernian seamen had explained the rudiments of shipboard combat to them before they ever set sail, and they'd practiced for it almost as much as they'd practiced their marksmanship. Given the disparity in the height of the two ships' bulwarks, even the Mardukans were going to find it an awkward scramble to get across the raider's high stern, but at least the savage battering the carronades' grapeshot had delivered upon arrival gave them an opening to make the crossing.

  On the other hand, not even the Mardukans had been able to actually see across to the other ship from deck level. That was one reason Cord had joined Roger, perching precariously in the ratlines, along with his nephew Denat. The other reason was to get them close enough to Roger to let them throw up their outsized shields in the event that the Lemmar decided to hurl their throwing axes at him.

  Roger watched the Marines forming up behind the Mardukan boarders and was just as glad that Despreaux was in charge of the grapnel mortars. For better or worse, he worried more about her than about the other Marines. Managing the grapnels,
and the fast winches they were attached to, she would be in no position to participate. Whether that was simply a happy coincidence or something Pahner and Kosutic had considered with malice aforethought when they detailed her to the job, he didn't know. Nor did he particularly care. Not as long as it kept her out of the firing line.

  The final broadside roared, and Roger nodded in grim approval as the hurricane of grapeshot swept most of the pirate ship's afterdeck clear. It also did a splendid job of cutting away rigging and what was left of the ship's canvas. It looked like the spars themselves were still more or less intact, though. Rerigging this prize would be an all-day task, but one that would be nowhere near as difficult as repairing the ships that had lost entire masts.

  He watched as Despreaux ordered the mortars to fire and the lines flicked out across the enemy ship. The grapnels flew straight and true, arcing over the Lemmar ship's stern rail, and the Mardukan sailors on the fast winches started reeling them back in. The mortars appeared to have been a successful experiment, he observed, and allowed himself a certain smugness as the author of the idea. Trying to do the same thing with hand-thrown grapnels would have been a chancy process, at best.

  * * *

  Pedi Karuse refused to give in to despair. The worst had happened the moment the Krath raiding party hit the village. From there, it was only a matter of how long it took her to die.

  In a way, her capture by the Lemmar had actually stretched out her existence. They were probably going to sell her back to the Fire Priests, eventually. Or she might end up as a bond slave, or in the saltpeter mines. But at least she wasn't on a one-way ticket to Strem. Or already a Handmaiden of the God.

  So she'd been prepared to look upon her current situation with a certain degree of detachment, biding her time and husbanding her strength against the vanishingly slim chance that she might actually find an opportunity to escape. That attitude had undergone a marked change in the past few hours, however.