The Guns of Two-Space
Page 11
Lt. Archer was on the lower gun deck, getting the cutters over the greenside. Archer had picked Petty Officer Bernard Hommer to serve as his senior NCO in this attack, and the two of them were giving out commands and instructions to their boarding party faster than young Midshipman Hayl could understand them.
Nothing seemed to make sense to Hayl. He just stood, gobsmacked by events and distracted by details. It was as though he were looking at a fantastically detailed painting. Hayl was struck by Archer's elegant red goatee and sideburns. And he observed that, unlike most sailors, Petty Officer Hommer kept his curly blond hair long and his locks were like a golden helmet as the two young warriors laughed together. The little middie was strangely touched by the beauty, the vigor, and the vitality of these two young men as they prepared for battle.
Finally Archer looked over his shoulder at Hayl, who was obediently staying right behind the lieutenant, and asked, "Are you ready?"
Suddenly a memory from a childhood book came back to him. "Help, Mr. Wizzurd!" said Hayl with a weak grin and a feeble attempt at bravado, "I don't want to be a navy midshipman any more!"
"Haha! That's the spirit," replied Archer with a wink. "Come on a-long!" he sang as he scrambled down into the cutter, "Come on a-long, with Ell Tee Archer's rag-tag band! Come on a-long! Come on a-long! We're the finest band in the land!"
It all seemed like a bad dream. Just a few hours ago they were sailing peacefully through such incredible beauty, enjoying a pleasant pistol match on the lower quarterdeck, and now his world was filled with death and fear. Like so many young boys across so many centuries, Hayl found himself thinking of his mother, his family and his home, wondering how he got here, and wondering if he would ever see home again.
* * *
I remember the gleams and glooms that dart
Across the school-boy's brain;
The song and the silence in the heart,
That in part are prophecies, and in part
Are longings wild and vain.
And the voice of that fitful song
Sings on, and is never still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."
"My Lost Youth"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
CHAPTER THE 5TH
Boarding Action:
"Out Cutlasses and Board!"
"Captain, they cry, the fight is done,
"They bid you send your sword."
And he answered, "Grapple her stern and bow,
"They have asked for steel they shall have it now;
"Out cutlasses and board!"
They cleared the cruiser end to end
From conning-tower to hold.
They fought as they fought in Nelson's fleet;
They were stripped to the waist, they were bare to the feet,
As it was in the days of old.
...On a cruiser won from an ancient foe,
As it was in the days of long ago,
And as it still shall be!
"Ballad of the Clampherdown"
Rudyard Kipling.
The Fangs all waited, each in his own way, for the two Ships to close.
The upper and lower bow guns mercilessly battered the enemy with huge shotgun blasts of grapeshot. In the upper bow Melville crouched with his boarding party. On the upper quarterdeck Lt. Fielder had the conn. In the lower bow, Broadax waited with her marines, twirling her ax and puffing her cigar contentedly. They tried not to think about the horrors that awaited them, but everyone who could do so had changed into clean clothing to help prevent infecting wounds.
Trailing behind the Fang, staying where the enemy couldn't see them, the two cutters from the lower deck followed closely. Their uppersides were packed to the gunwales with handpicked sailors, each one armed to the teeth. One of the Ships' two jollyboats also rode beside them.
These two miniature, one-masted, two-space Ships were named White-socks and Fatty Lumpkin. Along with Sharp-ears and Wise-nose, the two cutters stored on the upperside, the cutters were a remnant of their dear, beloved Kestrel, the mortally wounded Ship who had died to help them capture the Fang.
Once the cutters were separated from the Fang they took on an intelligence of their own, and the two young commanders could feel the child-like eagerness radiating from their boats. Lt. Archer was in the upper bow of White-socks and his friend, Lt. Crater, in Fatty Lumpkin. The two young lieutenants looked across at each other and grinned. The lowerside jollyboat, which had come with the Fang and had been named Rip, carried old Hans and Ulrich in it, along with a small, crack crew of sailors.
"I wanted to be a marine but I couldn't pass the physical. I couldn't get my head in the jar," said Lt. Fielder to Asquith.
The little earthling was still crouched in malodorous misery and fear on the upper quarterdeck. A sporadic spray of Guldur small-arms fire was keeping his head down. Fielder stood beside him at the rail, keeping a watchful eye on the tactical situation and maintaining a generally one-sided conversation with Asquith. In the midst of his own fear and anxiety, Fielder continued to draw comfort from the earthworm's abject terror.
Their conversation had turned to the subject of marines, and Fielder was waxing eloquent upon one of his favorite topics. "You have to think of marines as big, dumb dogs. You even have to talk to them like dogs. 'Hey, boy! How ya doing! You wanta play? Huh? Huh? Fetch, boy, fetch! Go get the Ship! Get the Ship! Come on, boy! You can do it!'"
"Except'n fer Dwakins," added the quartermaster at the wheel, happily contributing his two bits to a popular subject. "I do believe 'e's too dumb ta git the ideer."
"I do believe you're right," said Fielder with a nod. "In Dwakins' case you just have to level with him. I can hear Broadax right about now. I've heard it a hundred times: 'Dwakins, yer too dumb to live!'" he said, in a fair imitation of Lt. Broadax's gravelly voice, causing the quarterdeck crew to break into laughter. "'Jist try ta keep up with the other doggies, an' do what they do. If ye die first, we're splitting up yer gear!'"
The baffled earthling shook his head in confusion, disgust and dismay. These people truly were insane. Of that there could be no doubt. But then a line occurred to him, and he found it comforting to say, "Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground."
"Ha!" said Fielder in surprise. "Behold the earthling. Wonder of the ages. Prick him and he bleeds Shakespeare. That's The Tempest, I believe?"
"Yes," replied Asquith, finding that he relished the intellectual distraction. "There's been nothing else to do here except read. It's been kind of lonely, so, 'My Library, was dukedom enough.'"
"Well then," said Fielder, gesturing expansively at the Ship, "what do you think of our little universe? The Bard says, 'Here is everything advantageous to life.'"
"'True; save means to live,'" replied Asquith on cue.
"'Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,'" replied Fielder with a sincere grin and a shake of his head. "As for me...
"My only books
Were woman's looks—
And folly's all they've taught me."
Then, tentatively, Asquith reached up his hand to Fielder. "Here's my hand." His gesture of friendship was under the cover of the quoting game they were playing, but it was nonetheless heartfelt, as he opened himself up to be snubbed by the sardonic first officer.
But Fielder replied in kind, and on cue, with apparent sincerity and kindness, as he reached down his hand, "'And mine, with my heart in 't.'"
Fielder and Asquith remained in companionable silence as the battle raged about them, the first officer gripping the railing and standing ramrod straight in spite of his fears, the earthling still nestled in his corner. Then the enemy added injury to all the insult that had been heaped on poor Asquith's plate. The Guldur Ship managed to put their upperside bow gun back into battery and sent one double-shotted cannon blast into the Fang's quarterdeck before they were hammered by counterfire from the Fang. One of the
Guldur cannonballs hit the mizzenmast and sent a shower of wood splinters amongst the quarterdeck crew.
"Damn," said Fielder sadly, looking down at the wounded and unconscious earthling. "This has been a real 'bad hair day' for you my friend. Now sleep, for,
"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
* * *
"Dwakins, ye doorknob, yer too damned dumb ta live!" roared Broadax. "Jist shoot when I tell ye to, an' stab the first Guldur ye see. Then try ta keep up with the udders, and do wat they do. If ye die first, we're splitting up yer gear."
"Uh, okay, sir. Er, mah-yam," Dwakins replied. "Ah guess Ah won't be needin' it then." His baby monkey cringed and managed to mirror Dwakins confused helplessness.
Dwakins did have a very thick crust on his pudding. Life had been so much simpler when he was an apprentice mole-catcher back on his home world, Fforde, but his boss had told him he should "go join da damned marines an' see da galaxy."
So he was thick, but he was also new and he had to learn everything the hard way in the midst of a veteran crew. In this case his sin was a continued failure to keep his loaded musket and its razor-sharp bayonet pointed away from his comrades. With an "Eek!" of outrage, Lance Corporal Jarvis' monkey had barely managed to deflect Dwakins' bayonet as it was about to slice open the back of Jarvis's head.
There was just too much going on, and Dwakins kept getting distracted. In exasperation Broadax had put the young private in the very front of the formation, where he was less likely to shoot or stab one of his comrades in the back. However, he was also in the most perilous position, with the least combat experience and survival skills, so he was very likely to die. Bringing a certain sad truth to Broadax's claim that he was too dumb to live.
The job of the combat rifleman truly was one of the most mentally challenging tasks anyone could ever face. The fluid, ever-changing realm of combat, the variety of weapons and circumstances, and the unforgiving nature of the environment, all meant that putting stupid men in the infantry was tantamount to murder.
In the twentieth century one U.S. Secretary of Defense had ordered that 100,000 low-IQ individuals be drafted into the U.S. Army. These were popularly known as "MacNamara's 100,000," named after the politician and military dilettante who had made that decision.
These draftees—also known as "MacNamara's Morons"—would probably have been rejected even at the height of World War II due to their scores on military entrance tests. The politician who made this decision declared that the reason these men had performed so poorly on their entrance exams was because they had been socially deprived, and the military was going to be used as an instrument of social mobility for all these poor, misunderstood individuals.
Instead, the military became the death of many of them, because at that time the U.S. was participating in a nasty little war in Southeast Asia. In combat these "socially deprived" draftees died at a rate four times greater than soldiers in the top two intelligence brackets. And you have to ask yourself, how many of their comrades did they manage to kill or get killed along the way?
Combat is a nasty, brutish, unforgiving realm that has no mercy for the physically or mentally inferior. It is the ultimate Darwinian sieve: it filters out all but the deadly, intelligent, and lucky. And Lt. Broadax knew that as she put poor Dwakins in the front line. But, what the hell, thought Broadax. He knew the job wus dangerous when 'e took it. Besides, maybe the poor dumb son-of-a-bitch'll be lucky enough to live long enough to git deadly!
Broadax positioned Lance Corporal Jarvis to Dwakins' left. Then with a disgusted shake of her head she looked at the broad-shouldered veteran of past battles and said, "Do yer best ta keep this poor bastard alive, Jarvis."
Jarvis looked like he was already overwhelmed with his own concerns, thankyewverymuch, but he said, "Yes, ma'am," and looked across the bows with a nod and a gulp.
"So, Dwakins," Jarvis said, patting the private on the shoulder reassuringly. "Are you ready?"
"Um, yah, Corp'ral," replied the terrified private in a confused attempt at bravado. "We's gonna wreckdum, right?"
"You know," Jarvis muttered to his monkey, "I think I'm actually dumber than Dwakins. He doesn't know any better, but I reenlisted for this! When I get home, first thing I'm gonna do is beat up my high school guidance counselor."
"Eep!" replied his monkey.
As the two Ships approached, Fielder expertly reduced sail so that they came quickly into contact, the Fang's redside bow up against the enemy's redside bow, as gentle as a kiss.
At that moment, as the two sentient Ships gently scraped together, there was an exchange of Moss. Along with the Moss came a transfer, almost an invasion of ideas, concepts, and history surging from Fang into the enemy Ship.
Fang had made similar contact with the venerable old Westerness Ship Kestrel during the boarding operation that led to the Fang's capture and Kestrel's death. During that contact Fang had learned of an ancient Ship that loved its crew with a deep and abiding affection, built over centuries of contact and exploration. During that battle Kestrel willingly gave her life for her crew, taking most of the Guldur boarding party down with her, and in doing so she taught the young Fang about love, affection, sacrifice, partnership, and trust.
A sliver of the Kestrel's shattered Keel had been lovingly wedged in beside the Fang's Keel. The exchange of information and cells between these two alien life-forms was a complex concept that could only be partly understood. It would be truthful to say that Kestrel lived on in Fang. It would also be correct to say that Kestrel had invaded, conquered, and even replaced the young, unformed personality of Fang. Or you could say that the two Ships now lived in symbiosis, two souls melding into one.
Whatever it was that had happened to Fang was now happening to the enemy Ship. Fang told of a new race that did not abuse or torture its own. A new relationship based on trust and love, not fear and hate.
Fang told of these things, via a communication system that could not lie, to an entity that could not doubt. Fang spoke of these things and the enemy Ship listened, with awe and wonder.
Melville and Boye crouched with the boarding party in the upperside bow as the Ships began to touch. Once again he felt a moment of great visual clarity. It was as if he were an observer in an art gallery looking at a classic masterpiece full of stunning, detailed color and breathtaking beauty. He held his sword out in front of him and watched the brilliant stars run along the blade like molten gemstones.
It was a brief instant of stillness and quiet, a moment of bated breath. Melville's knack for poetry brought a verse to mind.
There was silence deep as death,
And the boldest held his breath
For a time.
If the contact between the Ships was gentle, the surge of troops who flooded over the railing was not. As they closed to within a few feet Melville gave the command for his boarding party to, "Fire!" just as the bow gun gave one last, 24-pound shotgun blast of grapeshot at point-blank range. <
Melville was sickened as he briefly glimpsed Guldur defenders fall screaming into the inexorably closing gap between the two hulls, to be ground into a tormented mass of offal, fur, and broken weapons.
On the lowerside, at the same instant, Broadax was doing the same thing. The bow guns above and below belched out their terrible load of death, scattering the Guldur defenders who tried to make a stand at the rail. Then the gun crews left their reeking charges, grabbed the loaded, double-barreled muskets standing in ready-racks beside their guns, and threw themselves into the fray.
The huge blast of grapeshot from the cannons was devastating, painting the deck red and sending a grisly fountain of blood and limbs into the air. But the real harm was done by the volley of individually aimed fire from the marines' double-barreled, rifled muskets. The grapeshot was junk mail, addresse
d to "occupant." The musket balls were first-class mail, hand delivered and personally addressed to each individual defender. This kind of precision rifle fire was a much better method of getting the message out, and the message was: "Your breathing privileges have now been revoked."
After the initial volley the Fangs stormed aboard the Guldur Ship in a wave of cold steel.
On the lowerside Broadax led the way as her marines slammed into the enemy with an audible crash. The clang of steel on steel sounded like a cartload of scrap iron being dumped into a pit. This was accompanied by a roar of terror, anger, and desperation from both sides, then the awful slaughterhouse thud of steel on flesh, and the groans and piercing screams of the wounded and dying.
Broadax clenched her cigar in her teeth. Her ax sliced through the enemy in great swaths of blood and gore, and her monkey gibbered with joy. Dwakins was on her left, and she did her best to keep the young marine alive.
Dwakins was dazed and confused by the noise and the violent movement all around him. There was a loose liquid feeling in his guts, and his testicles were crawling up to meet it. In ordinary life there was usually too much going on for him to keep track of it all. In the midst of this din and confusion he didn't have a chance. He had fired both barrels of his musket when the lieutenant told him to, then he leapt across with the others and now there was a big, yellow dog in front of him, about to stab him with a bayonet.
Suddenly Dwakins' vision narrows and nothing else in the universe matters except for the one creature in front of him. His sense of sound goes away and the world becomes deathly quiet.
Dwakins was dumb, but his body was of ancient lineage and wise in the ways of survival. When you are profoundly frightened your brain will normally shut out all senses except one, and you will only receive data from whatever sense the brain thinks is most important for survival. Usually the one sense that is most essential is vision, and that is often further limited by tunnel vision, cutting out all distracting, peripheral sights.