“Six, fi, double oh,” came the tinny reply.
Dowden may be older, but like her consorts, and most of the warships in First Fleet, she’d recently been fitted with some relatively simple but fundamental improvements. She had a crude VHF radio telephone, a “TBS” (Talk Between Ships) that, though limited to line of sight, allowed her comm officer to speak directly to his counterparts on other ships. It would come in really handy when they had transmitters small enough for aircraft. More important at the moment, Des-Div 4 also had rudimentary fire control. The guns had to be shifted manually from side to side for windage adjustments, but they could be elevated to fire broadsides-true salvos-at relatively precise ranges determined by the gunnery officer. This was accomplished with new electric primers and a gimbaled switch that would complete the firing circuit when the ship was on an even keel. The new rig wasn’t as good as a gyro, of course, but it was better than nothing. In practice, they could now put nearly every round in a ship-size target at fifteen hundred yards-even with smoothbores.
None of these improvements had made it to Second Fleet yet, due to the distances involved. There are probably some politics involved as well, Jim thought grimly. On one level, he understood. The Grik were still perceived as the immediate threat by most, including Adar, and though he supported the Imperial Alliance, he, like most Lemurians, considered the Doms as primarily an Imperial problem. What made that attitude gall Jim was the fact that there were Lemurian-American-ships, crews, and troops in the east, and they shouldn’t be deprived of better equipment simply because some thought their fight was less important. Or maybe in this instance, politics had a place. The Empire was still racked by security issues, and it had been drummed into everyone that, crude as it was, the new fire-control apparatus must never fall into enemy hands. The Japanese would probably come up with something similar for the Grik, if they hadn’t already. (We’re about to find out, Jim thought.) But it should remain a major advantage over the Doms for a long time to come-if nobody squealed. Jim shook his head and concentrated on the business at hand.
“Forty-five hundreds,” Niaal repeated the latest estimate.
“Very well. Sound general quarters.”
“Generaal quarters! Generaal quarters!” Niaal shouted at the ’Cat standing beside the alarm bell. “Clear for action!” The heavy bell began to ring and drums thundered in the waist. Jim clasped his hands behind his back and fixed a calm expression on his face. This would be his first real surface action since the Battle of Baalkpan. He hoped it wouldn’t be his last. More important, though, he hoped he wouldn’t screw it up.
The Grik dreadnaughts churned inexorably closer, their massive, sloping sides rearing high out of the sea. Des-Div 4 had the advantage of the wind, speed, and position, angling to cross the enemy’s projected course. Its first salvos should take the lead Grik ship dead on the bow in succession, and Jim wondered why Kurokawa- It has to be Kurokawa over there, he thought-would so obligingly let him “cross his T.” Was the maniacal Jap really so supremely confident? Jim felt a chill.
“Three thousands!” Niaal reported. Three huge clouds of smoke blossomed at the forward casemate of the oncoming ship.
“Kind of ambitious,” Jim muttered. A few hundred yards short, widely spaced geysers erupted into the sky. They looked like the splashes of the eight-inch cruiser guns that had dogged Walker so long ago.
“Jeez!” Niaal whispered. “Kind of daamn big! Those must be hundred-pounders, maybe bigger!”
“They’ll never hit us from this range. Grik gunnery has always been crap,” Jim reassured him. Reassured himself. “Keep track of the time between shots.”
“Maybe they don’t hit us from here, but we gotta get closer,” Niaal reminded. “Quartermaster! You timing the shots?”
“Ay, sir.”
“All ships will concentrate fire on that devil up front,” Jim ordered, even as the enemy line began to assume an echelon formation, the dreadnaughts behind starting to ease to the side and increase speed. Soon all the enemy ships would be approaching parallel to one another. Jim suspected they would make a coordinated turn to starboard, exposing their port broadsides when Des-Div 4 entered what the enemy considered his own best range. Niaal saw it too.
“You sure you want to concentrate on just that one?”
“Yeah. If we can’t hurt one of them with everything we’ve got, there’s no hope against them all, and we might as well break off. Send it.”
“Ay, sur.”
Time passed as the fleets drew nearer one another, and the tension rose proportionately.
“Two t’ousands!” came the shout through the voice tube.
“Stand by! We’ll commence firing at fifteen hundred. The gunnery officer will give the command.”
Three more massive puffs of smoke obscured the target before the wind swept them away.
“Eight minutes, twenty seconds!” cried the quartermaster.
“Very well.”
Two great splashes erupted fairly close astern, and one mighty shot moaned by overhead, snapping a single backstay before it plunged into the sea a hundred yards to port.
“Starboard baat-tery, match elevations for fifteen hundreds!” the gunnery officer commanded.
“Elevations matched!” came the replies of the midshipmen, each in charge of a pair of guns.
“Stand clear!”
“All clear!”
Moments later, with only the brief clanging of a bell in the maintop as warning, all twelve of Dowden ’s twenty-four-pounders in the starboard broadside vomited smoke and fire with a precision only Walker ’s guns had ever shown in combat. The smoke drifted downrange, toward the target, but quickly dissipated as Jim watched the impressively tight cluster of roundshot rise and rise, then plummet toward the target.
ArataAmagi
ArataAmagi rattled and shuddered like a tin roof under an impossibly dense onslaught of giant hailstones. Her forward armor was not as sloped as elsewhere on the ship and was therefore the thickest, but shards of shattered iron, from armor and shot, sleeted in through the viewports, killing the helmsman and two others in the pilothouse. Even Kurokawa felt a sting as a sliver of iron clipped his ear.
“Take the helm, fool!” he screamed at Captain Akera, who seemed stunned by the sound and density of the pummeling ArataAmagi just received. Jerking his head as if clearing his senses, he lunged for the spoked, wooden wheel. “Secure all battle shutters but the three directly in front of the helm!” Akera shouted. “Report all damage!” he added into the ship-wide speaking tube.
“One of the forward guns has shattered,” came an immediate, coughing reply. They already knew that the gun deck filled with smoke whenever they fired any of the main battery, and the ventilation was poor. “Its crew is dead. Other gun’s crews were wounded by fragments that ranged the length of the gun deck!”
“Any other damage?” Akera asked.
“None I can see, Captain,” came the voice. “Perhaps a little buckling in the timbers backing the armor.”
“Very well,” Akera said. “Pull in the guns and secure the gunport shutters!”
“Belay that!” Kurokawa screamed. “We must continue firing!”
“General of the Sea,” Akera pleaded. “We must wait until the enemy is closer and we can unmask our entire broadside! Clearly they have devised a fire-control system of some sort. I doubt a quarter of their shots could have missed us. Leaving the forward ports open only invites more damage we have little hope of answering!”
Kurokawa opened his mouth, but before he could speak, ArataAmagi shuddered again under another cacophonous hammering that seemed even heavier than the first. Even through the thick deck beneath their feet they heard the bloodcurdling shrieks of Grik that time.
“A shot came through the starboard bow port that time!” came the excited, coughing cry of the Japanese gunnery officer. “It killed several, and pierced the forward smoke-box uptake! We have exhaust gas on the gun deck!”