"Yes, sir," he said.
Grosclaud was vaguely aware of the same thunderous voice he'd heard earlier. He had other things on his mind at the moment, though, and he concentrated on the effort to coordinate the battle against the flames.
It was one he was losing.
There'd been no time for Railleuse to clear for action properly. The canvas screens and flimsy partitions, the bedding and clothing, the spirit stores, the lamps hanging from the overhead-and their oil… All those highly flammable items that should have been struck safely below crackled and fumed and smoked, and the ship's seasoned, painted timbers were already well alight, as well.
And then, suddenly, something loomed across the ship's stern like an iron-plated cliff, cutting off the smoky daylight. He turned, eyes widening, just in time to see the seamen standing on top of Constitution's armored casement with the canvas hoses open the valves on the bronze nozzles wide.
The pumps driving the fire mains Simpson had thoughtfully provided were powerful enough to empty the ironclad's trim tanks completely in less than fifteen minutes. The pressure they could generate was sufficient to require at least two men, and preferably three, to control one of the hoses. Jean-Marie Grosclaud-and over a dozen of his men-went down, bowled head over heels, in a torrent of icy cold saltwater. Railleuse's captain could scarcely believe the tidal bore force of that freezing cataract, but he didn't really care. All he cared about was the instantly quenching effect it had on the flames threatening to consume his ship.
"Well, that was certainly exciting," John Simpson said mildly a couple of hours later. Captain Halberstat gave him a rather speaking glance, and the admiral chuckled.
"I don't blame you, Franz," he said, speaking with unusual informality.
"Blame me, sir?" Halberstat inquired politely.
"Blame you for wondering if I'd lost my mind," Simpson amplified. Halberstat started to shake his head, but Simpson snorted.
"Of course you did. Oh, the risk might not have been all that great, but we didn't know-I didn't know-how close all that smoke was to their powder store. Railleuse could have gone up any moment."
"I suppose she could have," Halberstat agreed. "On the other hand, the force of the explosion would mostly have gone straight up. I doubt it could have done significant damage to Constitution, even if it had gone off, sir. Not right up to the last minute, when we went hard alongside, at least."
"Well, there would have been that little matter of the exposed firefighting party," Simpson said dryly. "And, now that I think about it, that other little matter of the flag officer and captain standing out there on the bridge wing with their asses hanging out. That could have been rather… unpleasant."
"Perhaps, sir." Halberstat smiled. "On the other hand, if it had been, we wouldn't be the ones having to worry about explaining it to the emperor or Prime Minister Stearns, now would we?"
"That thought did cross my mind," Simpson admitted, and it was Halberstat's turn to chuckle. Then his expression sobered.
"Excuse me, Admiral, but I've come to know you, to some extent, at least. I don't think you would have broached the subject if you hadn't intended me to ask you exactly why we did it."
"No, I don't suppose I would have."
Simpson looked toward the north, where Railleuse had been left behind, limping steadily farther north under her mizzenmast and what remained of her mainmast. There'd really been no particular point in keeping her, and he'd needed somewhere to put her surrendered personnel, anyway, so he'd accepted Captain Grosclaud's parole with the proviso that he sail his ship directly to Copenhagen and agree to take no part in any naval actions until he and all his men had been properly exchanged for Swedish prisoners. It got them safely out of the way, and if they happened to get there before he did (unlikely, actually, in light of the ship's damages), he had absolutely no objection to their spreading all the terrifying rumors they could among Copenhagen's defenders.
On the other hand…
"Things are going to get messy when we reach Luebeck, Franz," he said after moment, still gazing into the north. "You saw what we did to Railleuse with only two hits. Well, it's going to be a lot worse than that when we engage Admiral Overgaard's squadron in the Bay of Luebeck. What happened to Railleuse isn't going to have much effect on what happens at Luebeck, but after this is all over, the word will get around."
" 'The word,' sir."
"The word that we blew the piss out of her with only two hits-and that as soon as we did, we went alongside and helped put out her fires. We're about to teach the world a new kind of sea warfare, Captain, one with weapons that are going to be more destructive than anything anyone's ever seen before. So, when we teach that to everyone else, I intend to teach them something about the Navy of the United States of Europe."
"What, sir?" Halberstat asked, when the admiral paused.
"Something Winston Churchill once said. I always did admire that old dinosaur. It went, 'In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity.' We may have to knock them down and stomp on them, from time to time, but when it's finished, it's finished, and it's time to remember that they're human beings, too."
He watched Halberstat's lips move as the flagship's captain repeated the phrases to himself. Then Halberstat nodded in approval.
"I like that, sir," he said simply.
"Good. Because that's the navy we're going to build, Franz. That's the kind of navy we're going to build."
Chapter 49
The Wietze oil fields A few miles northwest of Hannover
Like everyone at the Wietze oil facility since Quentin Underwood had arrived on an inspection tour three days earlier, the site manager was walking around on figurative tiptoes. Underwood was a hard taskmaster at any time. When he was in a bad mood because he felt production wasn't going as well as it should be, his treatment of subordinates was caustic and abrasive.
"What does he expect?" complained one of the refinery workers to the manager. "With the equipment we've got?"
The manager didn't bother to respond. By now, that was an old refrain whenever Underwood wasn't around to hear. There was no point saying it to him directly-again-because that would just elicit another hot-tempered tirade on the subject of "making do with what we've got." A tirade that was every bit as pointless, because the workers at the refinery were making do with what they had.
The manager straightened up from the schlaemmbock they'd been examining. The extraction pipe was so badly corroded there was no longer any point in repairing it. "We'll have to-"
A shout in the distance made him break off. Looking up, he saw that one of the soldiers in the nearest watch-tower on the guard perimeter was pointing at something in the distance. The manager couldn't tell what it what was, but the guard seemed quite agitated.
There was a separating pot nearby, much closer than the watch-tower. The manager hurried over and climbed up the metal rungs welded to the side of the pot. From the top, he'd have a good view.
Two seconds after he got that view, he started shouting himself.
"All right, all right, everybody calm down," said Quentin Underwood. "They're just cavalrymen. They can't possibly do more than harass us, armed with nothing more than lances and wheel-lock pistols. We've got five hundred men in the garrison here. Plenty to drive them off if they try anything really aggressive."
A babble rose in the refinery's operations center.
"Calm down, I said!" Underwood bellowed. "Friedrich, stop prattling about 'thousands of them.' That's bullshit. How would the Ostenders get thousands of men this far south of Luebeck? The air force maintains regular reconnaissance all around the area."
Actually, that wasn't true, but Underwood figured he had to settle everyone's nerves. The USE's air force had been concentrating lately on getting a new airfield in place near Hamburg, using the planes to shuttle equipment and supplies instead of doing what they should be doing, which was protecting the nation's assets. Not to Underwood's surprise, those in Mike Stearns' regime had proven to be every bit as shortsighted and reckless when it came to war as they were with regard to everything else.