Which only leaves twelve of the damned things, he thought grimly, looking down on the vortex of smoke and flame through an overhead SNARC.
* * *
“Sweet Bédard,” Zoshua Makadoo murmured as Gwylym Manthyr opened fire at last.
Unlike anyone else in the squadron—aside, if he’d only known, from its commander—he and Bryntyn Hahlys had an unobstructed view of the incredible vista, and his double-glass was glued to his eyes. He’d never imagined anything like the huge billows of brown Charisian gunsmoke, the equally huge jets of dirty gray-white spurting from the battery’s earthen ramparts as the Dohlarans’ banded rifles returned fire, the black smoke pouring from the squadron’s funnels, and the white smoke of burning barracks rising From Battery Number One’s interior. Even at the kite balloon’s altitude, it quivered and bounced in the shockwaves as the flagship’s main battery spat out an even more enormous mountain of smoke.
Four 10-inch shells howled through six miles of empty space, and seven 8-inch shells came with them.
Twelve seconds later, they struck.
* * *
Kwantryl coughed harshly, despite the water-soaked bandanna across his nose and mouth, and stared into the blinding smoke through red-rimmed, tear-streaming eyes. He and the rest of Lieutenant Bruhstair’s gun crews—his surviving gun crews, at any rate—had only the vaguest notion of their target’s position. The gunsmoke was bad enough; the wood smoke pouring from the blazing barracks, mess hall, sickbay, and what had once been the battery commander’s office was worse.
“Clear!” the gun captain shouted, half-screaming to be heard, and Kwantryl and the other crew members jumped clear of the slides. The captain peered along the barrel while the heat of firing rose from it as if from a stove, looking for the funnels protruding from the impenetrable fog bank of gunsmoke. They were all he could really hope to see, and even then only fleetingly.
“Firing!” he shouted and jerked the lanyard.
The 10-inch rifle thundered like Chihiro’s trump of doom. It recoiled fiercely, and the gun crew swarmed over it, shoving the water-soaked swab down the barrel to quench the last shot’s embers. The barrel was so long it took two men to manage the swab, and the men with the next powder charge waited impatiently.
“Handsomely, boys!” Lieutenant Bruhstair shouted. “Handsomely!”
The lieutenant paced steadily, unhurriedly, up and down the line of his guns. There were only four of them now. One had been buried in its embrasure by an exploding heretic shell, but another had burst four feet in front of the trunnions. Half of that crew had been killed or wounded, and the survivors were distributed among the remaining guns, replacing other men who’d been cut down.
At that, they were lucky only one gun had burst. The cast-iron guns which had been issued to Lieutenant Bruhstair’s section were far more likely to fail than the newer steel rifles. It hadn’t made his gunners feel one bit more confident when he’d gone to the 15-pound bombardment charge rather than the standard 12-pound charge. Not that anyone had been tempted to argue. Given what the heretics’ shells were doing to Battery Number One it struck most of his men as unlikely they’d live long enough to be killed by a bursting cannon.
“Load!” the gun captain bellowed, and the man with the bagged charge reached for the gun’s overheated muzzle and—
* * *
Two tons of steel slammed into Battery Number One as Gwylym Manthyr’s first broadside landed. The 10-inch shells’ effect on the protective berm was devastating, but one of the 8-inch shells drilled straight into the face of the battery’s number two magazine with freakish accuracy.
The explosion was like the end of the world.
* * *
Ahlfraydoh Kwantryl dragged himself to his knees, shaking his head like a punchdrunk fighter. He didn’t remember the explosion that had picked him up and tossed him aside like a child’s doll. He didn’t remember landing, either, and he looked down with a sort of detached bemusement as he realized his left arm was broken in at least three places.
Better off than the rest of the lads, though, a corner of his brain told him.
The entire section was gone. The breeches of two of its guns still protruded from the churned earth which had once been a protective berm. The others were simply gone, dismounted and buried, and two-thirds of the gunners who’d served them had gone with them. A gaping, crescent-shaped bite had been ripped out of the battery’s parapet, and two more rocket wagons exploded even as he came to his feet. At least he thought it was two of them, but his ears didn’t seem to be working very well, and it could easily have been more than that.
He turned in a slow circle, clutching his broken arm, watching as men who’d been wounded or simply stunned began struggling upright, and his jaw tightened as he saw Dyaygo Bruhstair.
The young man’s—the boy’s—left leg ended at mid-thigh, and blood poured from the ragged stump. More blood pulsed from a deep wound in his left shoulder, but he’d fought his way into a sitting position somehow, clutching at the stump of his leg, and his face was paper-white, his eyes glazed with shock.
Kwantryl staggered to his side and went back to his knees. It was harder than hell with only one working arm, but he managed to pull his belt free and looped it around the truncated leg. Another member of the section knelt beside him, helping to tighten the crude tourniquet, but Kwantryl couldn’t have said who it was. It didn’t really matter. They’d just gotten the tourniquet tightened when another 6-inch shell exploded and a white-hot splinter decapitated whoever it had been.
He moved behind Bruhstair, gripped his collar in his good hand, and heaved, dragging the lieutenant towards the nearest supposedly shellproof dugout. After what had just happened to the section, he had his doubts about that “shellproof” guarantee. The engineers who’d made the promise had never seen heretic shells. But it would be better than nothing.
Another salvo tore into the shattered and broken battery. Steel splinters shrieked overhead and screams answered as they drove into men who’d just discovered they were all too mortal.
“Leave me!” Bruhstair’s voice was barely audible through the bedlam, but he reached up, pawing feebly at the hand locked onto his collar. “Leave me!” The words were half-slurred, but their intensity came through. “Get under cover!”
“No, Sir,” Kwantryl panted, staggering like a drunken man as he hauled the lieutenant towards the dugout.
“Damn you, Ahlfraydoh! Just once do what I say!”
“Not happening,” Kwantryl gasped. “’Sides, we’re almost—”
The 10-inch shell landed less than five feet behind them.
* * *
“Repairs completed, Sir. Or as close as we’re getting without Mahndrayn, anyway.”
Lieutenant Anthynee Tahlyvyr’s face and uniform were both filthy. In that respect, he was no different from most of the rest of HMS Eraystor’s crew. In his case, however, a liberal coating of oil and coal dust had been added to the grimy gunpowder residue, and Captain Cahnyrs shook his head with a smile as he regarded his senior engineer.
“How bad is it?”
“We’re not getting that breech block on Number Seven six-inch back anytime soon, Sir,” Tahlyvyr said sourly. “Same thing for the larboard engine room blower, and there’s still a hole in Compartment Sixty-Two we can’t reach to plug. Must be pretty good-sized, too, judging by how much water’s coming in, but the pumps’re holding it. Until I can get the funnel uptakes patched, I can’t give you enough draft for full steam pressure, but she’s still good for thirteen, maybe even fourteen knots.”