Battle Hymn

by William R. Forstchen

  “Hans?"

  Ketswana was looking at him anxiously.

  “Nothing. The bastard said nothing at all."

  Chapter Nine

  "Ease off helm, steady now! Steady, damn you!"

  Admiral Bullfinch stood on the bridge, cursing under his breath, as the flyer hovered thirty feet above him, matching the speed of his own ship. Having to turn into the wind was wasting valuable time, taking him back from the direction he had been steaming, just under eleven knots.

  "Mr. Ivanovich, get a couple of men, hustle below, and bring up half a dozen tins of coal oil. They might want some fuel."

  The midshipman saluted and dashed below while Bullfinch resumed watching the airship. Petersburg had not been designed with this type of docking in mind. The twin smokestacks projecting up amidships were twenty-five feet above the waterline. If the airship even brushed against them, a disaster might result.

  A line snaked out from the airship cabin, and to his astonishment he saw someone extend his legs over the side and then slip out of the cab, dangling with the rope wrapped around his waist. The figure started to descend.

  "Mr. Andreovich!" Bullfinch roared. "Pipers and marine detachment topside!"

  With a sigh of relief Andrew finally felt his feet touch the deck and two deckhands helped him untie the bowline wrapped around his waist. Bullfinch rushed forward from the bridge, marines and pipers following, fumbling into position to present arms. The pipers started to trill a salute.

  "Fine, Mr. Bullfinch, enough of that now," Andrew said, quickly saluting the colors and returning Bullfinch's salute. "Do you have any coal oil on board?"

  "About thirty gallons. They're bringing it up now, sir." Even as he spoke Ivanovich appeared topside lugging two of the five gallon tins, two of the crew followed, dragging four more. A deckhand tied three tins to the line, and they were hoisted aloft. A minute later the rope came down, three more tins were tied on, and before they were even halfway up, Petracci had already put his helm over and was heading back to the southeast. Bullfinch shouted for the helmsman to put Petersburg back on her heading and motioned for Andrew to follow him aft.

  "You should sight land within the half hour," Andrew told him. "Jack said heading south, southeast, half a point south, will put you straight for the entry to the bay."

  Bullfinch nodded, and when they reached the open topside bridge he checked the compass, altered the course slightly, and passed the word for his orderly to bring tea and hardtack.

  "I'd almost venture to say, sir, that I'm surprised you dropped in like this," Bullfinch finally said, handing the cup of tea to Andrew.

  "Surprised myself. I swore yesterday I'd never ride in that damn thing again, but it was the only way to get there."

  "Do you have any kind of chart of the river, sir?"

  Andrew fished in his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Bullfinch studied it and shook his head.

  "No indication of channels, depth, navigational hazards?"

  "Just what we think are the fortresses sketched in there at the entryway to the bay and the mouth of the river, then along those bluffs about ten miles below where we're heading."

  "And Franklin?"

  "Coming up at full steam, but it won't arrive off here until sometime early in the morning two days from now."

  "Well, with luck we should be in and back out by then. Just as long as she meets us—our bunkers will be empty by then."

  Andrew sipped the tea, trying to calm his nerves from the ride out.

  "So Hans is really alive then, sir?"

  "As of yesterday," Andrew said quietly.

  "How many are we trying to get out?"

  "Seven hundred to a thousand."

  Bullfinch looked at him, incredulous. "Sir, we haven't the room."

  "Make room. Put them in the coal bunkers, engine rooms, I don't, care how, but make the room. We are leaving no one behind."

  "Land ho!"

  Andrew saw the lookout on the narrow walkway between the smokestacks pointing directly forward.

  "This time no one gets left behind."

  Blood streaming into his eyes, Hans peeked over the side of the parapet, ducking instinctively when a rifle bullet cracked up a puff of dirt inches from his cheek. He slid back down, lying back against the bastion wall. A Chin woman, crawling low, came to his side, demanding to look at the bayonet gash that had cut a jagged line from his forehead across his cheek. The Bantag who had delivered the blow lay dead by his side.

  She said something unintelligible. He tried to wave her off, but she insistently pushed him back and began to wrap a bandage around his head.

  Ketswana crawled up. "Building up again along the south wall. Looks like they're shifting a regiment."

  "They'll try another rush on the gate, then throw the second punch straight over the south wall."

  The Chin woman finished and pantomimed that he should go back into the town and lie down. He smiled and waved her away. Shaking her head, she continued to crawl down the battlement.

  "Make sure all wounded are pulled back into the town. We can't stand another rush like the last one. Let's hit them hard as they come across, but when I give the word we break and fall back."

  Ketswana, mimicking the salutes he had seen Gregory and Alexi give, crawled back to his bastion.

  "Gregory?"

  "Here, sir."

  Hans saw him standing upright next to the thirty-pound gun, supervising the reloading with canister.

  "We're going to pull back when the next charge hits."

  The air seemed to be alive with artillery rounds screaming in from the batteries setting up an infilading fire to sweep the walls. The Bantag guns had found their range. Few shots were skimming clear over the fort now; most were either impacting on the wall, dropping in to sweep the parade ground, or striking inside the northern wall, making that position all but untenable. Why the Bantag didn't have mortars was a mystery, but he was thankful. A dozen of those weapons zeroed in on the fort would have been insurmountable.

  Hans looked back toward the gate in the brick wall. Alexi was waiting, barely visible in the smoke from the fires that were consuming the town.

  A narga sounded from across the field, and Hans stuck his head up over the battlement to look. A line of infantry stood up and rushed forward, staying low. The skirmishers who were deployed across the field, using the bodies of the fallen for cover, redoubled their fire. Smoke obscured the field, and he could sense, more than actually see, a column of assault troops moving to the right of the railroad embankment. The skirmishers stood up, joining the advancing line, moving closer, pausing for a moment to fire, reloading as they dodged back and forth. Running low along the battered walkway over the gate, Hans dashed into the southeast bastion. He had guessed right. A second column of nearly a thousand Bantag was charging at the double straight toward the bastion, anchoring the middle of the line just forward of the brick wall.

  He kept shifting his gaze back and forth, judging the distance as the two columns continued to close. A steady patter of rifle fire from his defenders tore into the columns, dropping dozens of Bantag, but still the columns moved forward. It was obvious that they were fresh troops and well disciplined. He raised his hand as the signal for the heavy guns to get ready to fire.

  Ha'ark snarled angrily as he watched the charge go in. This was costing too much, far too much. Nearly half of his five regiments of elite troops were dead or wounded, the survivors broken, incredulous that cattle should offer such fanatical resistance.

  Bursts of canister swept down from the two bastions guarding the gate and at that instant the flanking column from the south leapt forward at the run, shifting its angle of attack.

  "Get my horse," Ha'ark shouted. "Let's finish this thing."

  Hans slowed as he approached the open gate, urging the last defenders into the town. He could see that some of the wounded had been left on the wall … he hoped that death would come swiftly for them.

  A dark head
appeared atop the southeast bastion, followed seconds later by dozens more and a red flag coming up and over. A flurry of rifle fire erupted, bullets smacking the brick wall on either side of him. Along the wall above him, the new reserve line was waiting, fortunately still holding fire.

  The last of the survivors staggered through the gate as scores of Bantag swarmed down into the parade ground and raced to sweep either side of the fortress wall. He stepped back through the gate and into the narrow street of the town, holding his hand up to block the intense heat from the fires. He continued to wait, letting the numbers build, listening to the fire from the south bastion anchored on the brick wall, which swept the approaches up to the town.

  A steady stream of bullets was penetrating the still opened gate, and he could hear the triumphal shouts of the Bantag rushing forward.

  He turned and pounded the butt of his rifle against the iron-sided monster beside him.

  “Now, Alexi!"

  A plume of smoke billowed up from the iron-plated smokestack, and he heard the rushing of steam. The machine remained still and Hans waited, tense with fear. He could hear the drive wheel turning inside and then the sound of the leather drive belts being engaged. The machine seemed to groan from the strain, great gouts of smoke thumping out, and then ever so slowly it lurched forward, its heavy iron wheels crunching on the graveled street. The pilot in the forward section of the iron monster turned the front wheels as the machine inched down the street, almost imperceptibly picking up speed. The machine swung ponderously around as it approached the gate. Hans stepped behind it, feeling the heat that radiated from the boiler at the rear. It slowly straightened, its smokestack barely clearing the arched entryway, and at that moment he heard the triumphant screams of the Bantag die away.

  “Now. On the wall! Now!"

  A ragged volley erupted from overhead as more than a hundred defenders stood up and delivered at close range. At nearly the same instant the ten-pound gun in the forward half of the land cruiser let loose with its deadly load of canister, sweeping the parade ground. The machine slowly clinked out from the gate, moving at top speed, which was not much better than a slow walk. The breech-loading gun fired again. The first of the two side ports was now exposed, and the gunners within joined in with their one-pounders, firing their oversized shotgun loads into the Bantag who had been rushing down along the inside walls of the fort.

  Still behind the land cruiser, Hans could imagine the panic breaking out in the parade ground at the sight of the mechanical monster lurching toward them. Turning, the enemy forces ran for the smashed gate, exactly what he had hoped for. The compressed mass was torn to shreds by two more blasts of canister. The few survivors still on the parade ground who were not caught in the melee around the gate streamed up over the north and south walls, only to be swept by fire from the central bastions jutting out from the brick wall.

  He could hear the hollow sound of bullets clanging against the land cruiser, almost like the sound of hail drumming on a tin roof. Alexi guided the machine into the center of the parade ground so that all four of the gunners manning the one-pounders arrayed two to each side had clear fields of fire on the insides of the bastions, while the ten-pounder fired a final blast of canister through the gate.

  Hans, who had stopped inside the shadow of the gate into the town, shook his head in wonder. He saw a porthole on the back of the machine open.

  Alexi grinned through it, waved, then slammed it shut.

  Bantag riflemen continued to hold the outside slope of the east wall, but everywhere else the attack had been stopped cold.

  "So now what are you going to do?" Hans laughed.

  Standing against the outside wall, Ha'ark could not help but feel admiration. No one had told him that the second train they had taken was carrying a land cruiser, and somehow they had figured out how to bolt it together and use it. Typical of these damn humans, he thought. Adaptable in a crisis. He wondered if an equal number of his own race, caught in such a situation, would be able to think and act as creatively.

  He could see his staff standing around him, their heads bowed, waiting for his explosion of rage.

  "To be expected," Ha'ark finally announced. "This is not an exercise like those we practice on the Chin cities. This is real, and he did the unexpected."

  "Shall we renew the assault?" Jamul asked quietly.

  Ha'ark angrily shook his head. "We might carry it by a massed rush but it's a hundred yards across that parade ground, then to the bottom of a wall that has to be scaled. If we try flanking assaults they'll be funneled in and swept by artillery before they even reach the outside walls. Masterful. By pulling back and holding the center of the fort, he has left us no way of bringing artillery up to smash our way through. He got his forces out in time, so he must have three, maybe four hundred rifles."

  "Our nearest land cruisers?"

  "They just finished loading two of them in X'ian," Jamul replied. "It will be hours, though, before they're brought up, unloaded, and reassembled. Another report came in as well. The telegraph line to the coast is down. The last report was of a flyer and then smoke, most likely from an approaching ship, on the horizon."

  "They'll try and run a ship up," Ha'ark replied. "Can we send anything down?"

  Jamul shook his head. "None of our iron ships is ready yet."

  "Send down anything that can float. They might not have any iron ships. Also, I want a report from a flyer."

  "We've heard nothing. Three flyers are coming up, but they will not be here until just before sunset."

  Ha'ark said nothing. Though they had learned to build the machines of war, he could see the glaring weakness of logistical inflexibility. The system was too rigid, unable to adapt to rapid changes. They had yet to master the art of organizing, and as a result precious equipment was scattered in all the wrong places, rather than concentrated where it was needed. Another valuable lesson, he thought, showing us more things that we will have to change. He looked back at the moat and then up at the railroad drawbridge.

  "I want the following done immediately. First, find several large tarps and bring them up here. Second, locate the nearest armored train and order it forward immediately. Finally, the flyers are to be diverted here."

  He smiled.

  "This shall be an interesting challenge."

  "Prepare to repel boarders!"

  Andrew pulled out his revolver and clumsily checked the load. His head was ringing from the explosive roar of the guns and the sensation that he was trapped inside a kettledrum with giants pounding on the outside. Another shot struck the ship, on the port side just forward of the number two gun. The oak beam backing cracked, sending splinters spraying across the deck.

  "Don't these people ever give up?" Bullfinch snarled, looking out tire forward gun port as another galley swung about in front of them, oar blades flashing in the afternoon sunlight. The ram sprinted forward, coming straight at them. Bullfinch stepped away from the gun.

  "Clear!"

  Andrew backed away from the gun, and Bullfinch gave a curt nod.

  The gun recoiled and in the swirling smoke Andrew felt as if Bullfinch, with his black eye patch and the devilish grin lighting his features, looked like a pirate of old. Moving back behind the gun, Andrew saw a geyser of water subsiding, the bow of the ram shattered by the blow of the hundred-pound rifled bolt. He could hear the screams of the human rowers as the galley skidded off course and its bow went down. Petersburg plowed forward, smashing into the galley, pushing it under. Surviving Bantag jumped free of the wreckage, some of them gaining the bow of Petersburg. One of them crouched, rifle raised, aiming at the port. Bullfinch pulled out his revolver, fired, and the Bantag crumpled.

  Bullfinch could hear fighting topside as the marine contingent, exposed on the deck, fired down on boarders who had scrambled up on the starboard side from a galley that had managed to swing alongside for an instant before a shot from one of the five-inch guns smashed it.

  Another kettledrum bo
om ran through the ship and Andrew struggled to keep his balance. Bullfinch looked up and then started back down the gun deck with Andrew behind him. A head appeared in the hatchway leading below.

  "Another hit on the waterline, sir. Couple more cracks. We're still taking water."

  "Can the pumps handle it?"

  “We might have to break out auxiliary hand pumps, sir."

  “I can't spare anyone now, but pass the word if it gets any worse."

  "Aye, sir."

  Bullfinch continued down the length of the gun deck, the scrambled up the ladder to the armored bridge. Andrew followed, ducking low to fit into the cramped quarters now occupied by the helmsman, the first officer, the assistant engineer, and a midshipman rapidly sketching in details on a map.

  "Sir, one of the shots breached the armor around the port side paddle wheel," the first officer said. "Several staves are broken. I suggest dropping the speed a bit on the starboard wheel to balance it. Otherwise we'll be wasting fuel by having to counter it with the helm."

  Bullfinch looked at his first officer and reluctantly gave the word.

  "But she feels shaky, sir," the engineer continued.

  "What do you mean, 'shaky'?"

  "Just that. I'd like to shut her down and check to see if the drive shaft was bent at all or cracked by the blow. The frame for the wheel might even be going."

  Bullfinch looked at Andrew, and then shook his head.

  "Sir, if the wheel seizes up, or the frame lets go, you'll only be running on one engine and any turn to starboard will be damn near impossible."

  "We've got to get there before dark," Andrew snapped. "I promised him that."

  "Sir, the promise won't matter if we lose a wheel," the engineer pressed.

  "Son, you're doing your job by telling me that. But once it's dark we'll have to crawl up this river and that will mean we won't get there till dawn. They might hold out till the end of the day, but I doubt if they'll make it through a second night."