“Signal to the Flagship,” he said, turning towards the signalman standing by the stubby mast which had been rigged solely as a way to pass signals. “Hoist Number Nineteen.”
“Aye, aye, Sir!” the youthful signalman replied with a smile. According to the signal book vocabulary, Number 19 meant “I have mail on board.”
* * *
“Signal from Commander Sympsyn, relayed from Gairmyn,” Zhones said jubilantly. “Number Nineteen, My Lord!”
“Good, Ahrlee! Excellent!” Sarmouth said, as if he hadn’t already known exactly how Sympsyn’s efforts were proceeding.
And it truly was good tidings. But there were bad ones to go with it, including the fact that the new 12-inch Fultyn Rifles were, indeed, capable of punching through a City-class ironclad’s armor. So far, two had penetrated Eraystor and one had penetrated Riverbend. The good news—such as it was—was that the Dohlaran armor piercing shells were thicker walled and contained far less powder than their Charisian counterparts and their fuses were less reliable. A Dohlaran 12-inch shell was actually only a little more destructive than a Charisian 6-inch shell.
Not that enough six-inch shells won’t rip the guts right out of any ship, the admiral thought grimly.
Eraystor had twenty casualties already, nine of them fatal, and Riverbend had three dead and seven wounded. Zhaztro’s flagship had lost two guns on her engaged side, as well, and the damage control parties had had a difficult time extinguishing the fire one of the hits had started in her paint stores.
Gwylym Manthyr’s much heavier guns had taken Wreckers’ Island under fire as well, but Mahntayl’s guns were even more deeply dug-in than the Cape Toe batteries had been. It was going to take time to neutralize them, and—
* * *
The first 12-inch shell hit the water almost five hundred yards from its intended target. The next three were at least equally wide of the mark.
Number five hit Bombsweeper Three almost directly amidships.
The converted barge was too lightly built to activate the shell’s unsophisticated fuse, so Bombsweeper Three wasn’t simply blown out of the water. But the shell that slammed completely in one side and out the other side of the bombsweeper also punched straight through its boiler.
The explosion of steam killed two of the bombsweeper’s crew outright. Three more were savagely scalded—one of them fatally—and only the fact that the boiler was on an open deck, with no overhead to trap any of the explosion’s fury, prevented it from blowing the converted barge apart.
The reprieve, unfortunately, was brief.
Without power, the bombsweeper slowed quickly, and as it lost speed, its kites began angling back inward rather than spreading broadly. Half of Bombsweeper Three’s assigned riflemen were dead or dying, but the survivors fired desperately at the sea-bomb trapped by the starboard kite as it glided steadily closer. It took almost thirty shots to score a hit, and the sea-bomb was barely forty yards clear when it detonated.
The explosion shook Bombsweeper Three like a spider-rat in a cat-lizard’s jaws. Another dozen seams started, sending fresh streams of water spurting into the slowly settling vessel.
And then the sea-bomb which hadn’t been caught on a kite’s cable slammed directly into Bombsweeper Three’s hull and the sweeper—and every man aboard it—disintegrated in a white column of death.
* * *
“Yes!” Ezeekyl Mahntayl shouted. The heretics’ guns had hurt his battery badly and he knew the damage was only beginning, but he wheeled to Kortez. “Put the eight-inchers onto them, too, and tell the lads to pour it on! Sink those frigging pissants!”
* * *
“Shan-wei take them!” Sir Hainz Zhaztro snarled.
He’d had ample proof the Dohlarans had finally found a gun Eraystor’s armor couldn’t simply shrug off. He didn’t know how many of his flagship’s crew had been killed already, but he knew there were more than he’d ever find it easy to live with. And he knew there’d be more of them if he continued the engagement. But he also knew her armor offered better protection than anything the bombsweepers had. For that matter, it had defeated everything lighter than a 12-inch shell to come her way. She could be hurt badly, possibly even killed, but she was immeasurably more survivable than any of the bombsweepers, and unless the sweepers could clear a path through the sea-bombs, the entire attack on Gorath would ultimately fail.
“Take us closer,” he told Alyk Cahnyrs grimly. “Make the bastards concentrate on us, instead.”
* * *
“That’s odd,” Lieutenant Makadoo muttered.
“What’s odd, Sir?” Bryntyn Hahlys demanded.
The petty officer couldn’t think of anything “odd’ enough to distract him from what had just happened to Bombsweeper Three—especially since shell splashes had begun rising like loathsome, poisonous fungus around two more of the sweepers. The three leading ironclads were moving to interpose between the remaining sweepers and the Dohlaran gunners, and their new course angled perilously close to the sea-bomb field boundaries on the charts the seijins’ spies had provided. It also took them entirely too close to the battery’s guns for Hahlys’ piece of mind, and the fury of the artillery duel had redoubled.
“Well, I sure as Shan-wei wouldn’t be running out into the open with shells falling all around my ears,” Makadoo replied.
“Excuse me, Sir? Running out?” Hahlys shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense!”
“What I thought, too,” Makadoo agreed, staring through his double-glass. “But looks like there’s at least a hundred of them.”
“Where do they think they’re going to go?” Hahlys wondered out loud. Wreckers’ Island was over eight miles from the mainland coast. That struck him as one hell of a swim!
“Looks like they’re climbing onto those construction barges.” Makadoo sounded as if he couldn’t quite believe his own words as he watched the fleeing Dohlarans and Gwylym Manthyr’s 10-inch and 8-inch shells began walking back and forth across the battery’s parade ground. “They must be out of their minds! If I was going to panic and run, I’d look for the deepest hole I could find, not head for—”
He broke off and stiffened, leaning forward as if that would somehow help him see better.
“Oh … my … God!” he whispered and whipped around, showing Hahlys a bloodless face.
“Signal—quick!” he snapped, and the startled petty officer jerked the pad out of his pocket.
“‘Urgent,’” Makadoo barked, beginning to dictate even before Hahlys had his pencil ready. “‘Six barges behind Wreckers’ Island loaded with rockets!’ Get that the hell down to the ship!”
“Yes, Sir!”
While Hahlys grabbed the signal cylinder and stuffed the sheet of paper into it, Makadoo turned back around, watching sickly through his double-glass as the Dohlaran seamen swarmed across the barges. Even now, the lieutenant felt a surge of respect for the courage it took for those men to charge out into the open in the midst of such a furious bombardment, but that respect was swamped by a much stronger sense of dread as they stripped away the earth-colored tarpaulins which had covered the squat, vertical cylinders of the defensive rockets.
* * *
“Message from Lieutenant Makadoo, Admiral!”
Sarmouth turned quickly to the midshipman. He already knew what Makadoo’s message said, and a part of him wanted to scream curses at the lieutenant for not mentioning those “construction barges” sooner.