Ironclad

by Daniel Foster

  Garret believed it because, as the two ships rocked the sea with their collision, he heard her give voice. It was the only time he would ever hear it. It was a booming, shrieking, rending sound that rolled out around them as if the whole open sky was only a tiny cavern. Steel screamed and tore, thousands of tons of it. Audacious cried out in pain, and Kearsarge in rage and protectiveness. Her cry was challenging, and tinged with desperation. She cared not that the Audacious was larger and more powerful. Nor did she care that Audacious had attacked her. She cared only that she did not lose her crew to the sea.

  The shock rolled through both ships, making them groan and shudder from one end to the other, and the betrayal of gods was complete.

  Audacious had been atop one of the last gentle swells, and as Kearsarge had closed in, she also rose on the swell. Her bow was still lifting as she ploughed into Audacious’s side, so instead of ramming Audacious straight on, Kearsarge hit her with an uppercut—an uppercut with the weight of a battleship behind it.

  The impact crushed the upper portion of Kearsarge’s bow even as it tore into Audacious’s flank, but beneath the foaming water, Kearsarge’s ram connected with Audacious’s soft underbelly, and steel plates split like china. The blow tore Audacious open. Sea water rushed in, flooding her lower compartments. As Audacious’s bowels flooded, machine oil ran out atop the surging water—the black lifeblood of a battleship.

  Garret and his friends picked themselves up off of the deck. Fishy was rubbing his head from the stanchion he’d been flung into. Theo helped Burl extricate himself from a coil of rope that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

  Across the water, panicked shouts and alarm bells rang out from the Audacious. British sailors ran across the decks. Even so, most of the activity was undoubtedly going on where none of them could see it. Deep in Audacious’s belly, men were drowning by the dozens, fighting with hatches and doors, trying to watertighten the compartments against the in-rushing sea.

  “Did we get her?” Curtis asked, hauling Velvet to his feet.

  He wasn’t asking if they’d collided, obviously, but whether or not they’d done enough damage to sink her. Greely and Twitch were both at Nancy’s port, leaning out and craning their necks to see the damage more clearly.

  “We cut her open pretty bad,” Greely said.

  Twitch didn’t say anything. He was looking at Audacious’s guns. Oddly, Garret was the only one who seemed sure Kearsarge had dealt Audacious a mortal injury. Ships as massive and modern as Audacious could take tremendous damage and still remain afloat. But not this time, he knew.

  Garret knew death. He had been intimate with it. He knew its feel, its touch, and as a wolf, he knew its smell. Death was here, clinging to Audacious’s flanks, pooling on her decks, dripping like molasses from the end of her guns.

  Below decks on the Kearsarge, Garret had no doubt that damage crews were crawling all over the inside of the mangled upper bow, but in the citadel, all was eerily quiet. Quieter than it had been aboard the Kearsarge in days. Moments before, testosterone and bloodlust had infused Garret until he felt like a wolf even though he knew he was fully human. Now no guns were firing. No one was shouting. Water slapped quietly against Kearsarge’s hull. No one moved. Garret felt the gentle rise of the last swell. Then the last vestiges of the storm swirled away to the east.

  Kearsarge’s ram was buried deep in Audacious’s side, and the gentle rocking of the ships on the ocean was twisting it like a knife in a wound. The last swell was just enough to begin the separation. With a jolt that made Garret and the rest stumble, the ships began to drift apart. Metal shrieked, warping and tearing as Kearsarge’s ram bow ripped itself free of Audacious’s wound.

  W

  Andrew clung to the rail with one hand. With the other, he clung to the flying ensign he’d snatched from the air when the ships collided. Shudders ran through the decks as Kearsarge began to drift away from Audacious, extricating her bow from Audacious’s ruined flank. The damage to Audacious was catastrophic. Above the waterline it was bad enough, steel torn and mangled, multi-ton armor plates driven back into to the ship’s guts. Under the water, he could only imagine what she looked like. For centuries, the ram had been regarded as the deadliest weapon in a ship’s arsenal. Despite the advances in technology, perhaps it still was.

  Andrew dragged the ensign to his feet. The young man was pale, and bleeding across the forehead from where he’d hit the railing just as Andrew had grabbed him. The ensign regained his footing and gaped at Audacious, laid out so close in front of them that Andrew could have walked to the bow and laid a hand on her flank.

  Men scrambled everywhere and sirens called on Audacious’s deck, but Kearsarge floated quietly, displaying her crushed upper bow to the world. Kearsarge’s engines kicked back in, following Maxwell’s orders. He turned the wheel, and slowly, Kearsarge realigned herself, coming to broadside again, this time within mere yards of the stricken Audacious.

  Maxwell leaned to the voice tube. It was the first time it had been quiet enough all day to use it.

  “Mr. Sokolov,” the Captain said. “Are you ready?”

  After a moment, the reply came back. “Aye sir.”

  Maxwell paused, turning a wintry gaze on their enemy. The blue had returned to his eyes again. But now it was the blue of Siberian ice, cut from a frozen lake in the dead of winter.

  “Mr. Sokolov,” Maxwell said into the voice tube. “Cut her head off.”

  The world ripped in two. Point blank range, Kearsarge unloaded the power to move continents into Audacious. Both of Kearsarge’s turrets, all four eight’s and all four thirteen’s at the same moment. The initial split second of the combined blast was one of sensory overload, as if Andrew’s ears had never really heard a noise before, and as if his body had never really felt pressure before.

  In the flash before the smoke obscured the view, Andrew saw the concussion of Kearsarge’s guns blow out every porthole on the side of Audacious and clear the deck of men, flinging them like chaff in a hurricane. Smoke billowed from Kearsarge’s powder, rolling and curling around Audacious like grey tentacles.

  Kearsarge unloaded everything she had in one blow, and the impact seemed to rend air and sea in two. In fact it did, dishing the water for a hundred feet in both directions. That was nothing compared to what it did to Audacious herself.

  W

  Beneath Andrew, inside the citadel, dozens of men, including Garret and his friends were staring out the gun ports as the smoke from the thirteen’s billowed away. Fishy, Curtis, and Velvet stared mutely. Burl and Theo were pale. Garret kept tracing the damage with his eyes. It was an image that didn’t make sense. It was destruction on such a scale that he was having trouble processing it.

  Audacious’s conning tower, bridge, wheel house, charthouse, and whatever else had been there, were gone. Tall as a ten story building, completely blown away. Jagged forks and prongs of sizzling metal jutted up to a small fraction of its former height. Every officer who had been in the tower or on the bridge, most likely including the captain, was dead. Nothing had caught fire. In military terms, it was almost surgically clean.

  Captain Maxwell had beheaded the mighty Audacious.

  W

  Andrew took a breath, and another, and another. He’d forgotten to do that for the last while. It felt good. Audacious was gutted and decapitated. She was dying quickly. A muted explosion came from beneath the ocean in her boiler room.

  Against all probability, they had won. Andrew relaxed and took stock of his surroundings, as though seeing the damaged old ship beneath him for the first time. The Predator of the Seas, HMS Audacious, was finished. All that was left to do now was to wait for the white flag so they could begin transferring her crew aboard.

  Maxwell was watching Audacious’s stern intently for the white flag. Seconds ticked past, and Maxwell began to lean out over the helm, staring. Andrew began to tense again, too.

  “Captain…” said th
e ensign whom Andrew had saved from flying off the bridge. “The men aren’t going for the lifeboats.”

  Andrew felt himself beginning to sink, even though neither he nor the Kearsarge were actually moving. Andrew stared hard at Audacious’s stern, willing the white flag to flutter its way up the pole. It didn’t. Andrew continued to sink, down, down towards the crushing darkness at the bottom of the sea.

  The ensign’s voice tightened and rose. “Captain, they aren’t going for the boats! Why aren’t they going for the boats!?”

  Andrew couldn’t fathom what he was seeing. After everything they had done, after everything Maxwell had done—this couldn’t be happening. But it was. That was the moment that Andrew knew all was lost, because he was still counting.

  Eighty-eight. Eighty-nine. Ninety…

  Andrew felt his soul dry up and blow away inside him. How was it possible, he wondered, to do so much, to overcome such odds, yet still lose? Did God himself hate them and damn them to destruction before they cast off? Did he have no mercy within him?

  Perhaps he did, but the Sea did not. She had decided she wanted them all. Audacious was listing dangerously, and bleeding out across the ocean, but before she went, she had time to deal one more blow.

  Audacious was finished. Every living soul aboard her knew it. But she wasn’t going to the bottom without taking Kearsarge with her: the matronly old battleship that had hurt her and killed her crew would lie on the bottom of the deep beside her.

  Maxwell straightened, standing tall. He rested his hands on the wheel, though he had no intention of turning it. Ever again. There was no peace on his face, no anger. Nothing. He did not appear to be surprised or horrified.

  Andrew realized that Maxwell had known, probably since before he made the turn. No matter what Maxwell did from the beginning of the battle, there was one variable over which he would have no influence. The British Captain. It was the one factor that could undo all his carefully laid plans and daring maneuvers.

  Would the captain surrender, or would he not?

  Most would. Some captains would surrender to save their own lives. Far more captains would surrender to save the lives of all the men under their command, but there were a few captains, a determined, dedicated few who would not fail their mission, no matter what came. That was why Captain Maxwell had chosen to decapitate the beast, hoping the decision to surrender would fall to a lesser man. One perhaps more concerned for his own skin than for orders given him by fat admirals in wingback chairs, safe and sound, thousands of miles away.

  Maxwell had bet everything on that person, but that wasn’t who he got. The Audacious’s mission was to stop the Kearsarge, by any means necessary, and that’s what she was going to do. There would be no flag. There would be no lifeboats. There would be no one who survived.

  So at the end of all things, Captain Maxwell was unable to save them.

  The Ensign was losing his mind. Andrew barely heard.

  Ninety-eight. Ninety-nine. One hundred…

  Andrew was not a philosophical man, but in his own simple way, he wondered why the world was allowed to go this way. With all of their deaths, the scales would tip, blood and water would pour from them, and for the first time in history, the entire planet would be plunged into war.

  Then, in the remaining moments, Andrew found that he could no longer care that the world would be plunged into war. He cared about his girl, Ida, and his mother, father, and brothers. He cared about his hero, Captain Maxwell, and every brave young man aboard Kearsarge.

  As Audacious’s turrets continued their slow death march, swinging round to kill them all, Andrew made his last choice. He turned to Maxwell. He wanted to talk to his captain, to communicate with him one more time before they all died. Somewhere below them, Mr. Sokolov’s crews were reloading Kearsarge’s guns as fast as they could go. It would make no difference. So Andrew asked the question to which everyone already knew the answer.

  “She’ll fire first, won’t she, captain.”

  “Yes,” he said. “She will.” Into the voice tube, Maxwell said, “All hands, abandon ship. I repeat, all hands abandon ship.” There wasn’t time for the order to pass, let alone for anyone to do anything about it.

  The ensign behind them was sitting on the deck, leaning against the rail, his face blank.

  “This is my fault Andrew, not yours.”

  Andrew stood at attention and tried to stay strong in front of his captain. “You did more than anyone thought possible sir.”

  One hundred five. One hundred six. One hundred seven…

  The ensign suddenly lost his mind. Maxwell ignored him and focused on his second in command.

  “It’s been an honor to serve with you, Commander,” Maxwell said.

  Pointless words that meant nothing to either of them.

  “The honor has been mine, Captain,” Andrew replied.

  What truly mattered to Andrew could not be put into words. That was why it didn’t need to be.

  Audacious’s turrets swung the last few degrees, training all ten of her thirteen point five’s at the old Kearsarge, who wasn’t going to embarrass herself by making a feeble, pointless run for it. Kearsarge hunkered low on the gently rolling ocean beside the dying Audacious.

  They would die together that day. All of them. Laid to rest in the darkness far below. Two ships, and over a thousand souls with them.

  As Andrew stood at attention beside his captain, he swallowed, wished his eyes were dry, and he realized this was the way it was meant to be.

  Ida, I love you.

  W

  Inside the citadel, Garret and his friends huddled close. They stood in a circle, looking only at each other. Twitch would not let them watch death come for them. He had herded them all away from the port and ordered them all to stand in a circle. So that was what they did, arms around each other’s shoulders. Outside Nancy’s port, the Audacious’s turrets were pivoting the last few degrees into position to kill them all.

  “Look at me Minnow,” Fishy was saying. “Just look at me. Think of Mama.”

  Velvet was a shivering, whimpering wreck. He was trying to stand up, but mainly Garret and Twitch were holding him up. Burl’s pants were soaked with urine. No one said a word about it, of course. Curtis and Theo were supporting him.

  Pun’kin was sober for the first time since Garret had known him. “We’ll see Charlie again soon,” he said.

  Garret was sobbing quietly. Molly and the baby. Oh Christ, what have I done?

  “Will it hurt?” Theo asked his brother with trembling lips.

  “No,” Fishy said unsteadily. “It won’t.”

  Even Twitch was pale. “Guys,” he said slowly. Then he froze. His eyes shot wide open. Despite his own orders, he’d glanced back out the port.

  “Load the gun!” He screamed, tearing the circle apart in his scramble for Nancy.

  They all stumbled as he tore away from them. Burl and Velvet hit the deck in a heap.

  “Twitch, wha—” Fishy began.

  “The plate!” Twitch was beside himself. Veins stood out in his neck and forehead as he spun Nancy’s breechblock open. He was talking so fast and hard that he was spitting on the gun. “The spalled plate! At the right angle, we might get be able to get to her magazine! We’ve got eight seconds before they can fire! Load Nancy right now!”

  Velvet dashed to the porthole and caught sight of whatever it was Twitch was looking at out the porthole. Garret craned his neck to see, but he didn’t catch the sight. “How do you know where the mag—” Fishy began.

  “Twitch, she’s cracked,” Velvet tried. “We can’t fire her or she’ll—”

  “Now!” Twitch ordered.

  Velvet grabbed the ramrod and took his place.

  “You said she can’t—” Curtis began.

  “Load the gun or everyone aboard Kearsarge dies!” Twitch thundered at them. After the briefest hesitation, they scrambled to obey their gun captain, and their
friend. Garret’s chest tightened as they did. Theo already had the breech open, his face white with fear, tight with determination.

  Garret leaped for his station at traverse and started cranking the wheel faster than he’d cranked it before. Velvet was right. They couldn’t fire Nancy again. But they were going to anyway. Twitch never steered them wrong.

  “Right there!” Twitch pointed for Garret as he took his position at the trigger. Twitch was pointing to a huge armor plate at Audacious’s belt line. It was the first place Kearsarge had hit her with a glancing thirteen inch shell. Most of the plate had spalled, sheered away in a huge multi-ton flake of steel.

  Audacious continued to list, creaking, crying out in her death throes. With a series of crypt-like thuds, each of her turrets pivoted into position. All ten barrels were pointed at the Kearsarge now. Ten barrels from which the end of their lives would issue.

  “Two more degrees astern,” Twitch barked at Garret.

  Six seconds remained.

  Garret felt all the blood leaving his head as he cranked the wheel to follow Twitch’s instructions.

  We’re going to die either way. Nancy’s going to explode. But this way, everyone else on Kearsarge might live.

  Fishy and Floyd caught Garret’s eye. Fear. They knew as well as Garret did. They all knew what was going to happen. Fishy shoved in the shell and Velvet slammed it home. Pun’kin shoved in the powder case and Theo closed the breech.

  Garret was still counting down Audacious’s firing cycle.

  Four. Three. Two…

  Theo cranked the last inch of threads and leaped back. For an instant, everything froze. Everyone looked at Twitch, hunched grimly over the trigger, as Audacious’s Achilles’ heel bobbed into his sights.