"They report what?" she said.
"Sir, the entire Santander Navy Northern Fleet is steaming down the Gut towards us at flank speed, better than fifteen knots. Distance is less than forty miles."
Eberdorf blinked again, staring blindly out the narrow armored windows of the Grossvolk.
"Sixteen battleships, twenty-two fast protected cruisers, auxiliaries in proportion," the man read on. "Approaching-"
That is the entire Northern Fleet, she thought. Less the Constitution, which was downlined with a warped main drive shaft according to the latest intelligence. They were approaching through the southern strait around Trois; they must have left their base last night and made maximum speed all night, ignoring the chance of grounding or mines. Which meant. .
She looked out at the chaos that covered the waters before Barclon. The Land's gold sunburst on black was flying over most of the city's higher buildings, those still standing. The fires were still burning out of control in some districts, and the forts guarding the harbor mouth were ruins full of rotting flesh. The water was speckled with half the Land's merchant fleet and about a third of its navy, many of them working shore-support and punching out enemy bunkers for the army.
Two-thirds of the Republic's navy was heading this way, and the Republic had a bigger navy to start with.
Fools, she thought with cold anger. I told them that we should concentrate on building battleships.
Enough. Duty was duty; and her duty here was clear.
"Signals," she said crisply. They had waited motionless, but she could sense the slight relief when she began to rap out orders. "To all transports in waves A and B." Those closest to the dock. "Enemy fleet approaching. Beach yourselves upriver."
That way the crews and troops could get off the ships, at least.
"All transports drawing less than five feet are to proceed upriver."
Where they'd be safe from the shells of Santander battlewagons, at least. The animals still held parts of the river not far inland, but that was a lesser risk.
"Waves C through F are to make maximum speed northward." With luck, most of them would have enough time to get under the protection of the guns of the fortresses that marked the seaward junction of the old Sierran border. Imperial forts, but adequately manned and upgunned since the conquest.
"Order to the fleet," she said. Sixty miles. . just time enough. "Captains to report on board the flagship, with the following exceptions. Battleships Adelreich and Eisenrede are to make all speed north and rendezvous at Corona." Sending them out of harm's way; the navy would need every heavy ship it had to keep control of the vital passage.
"Mine-laying vessels are to proceed to the harbor channels and dump their cargos overboard. Maximum speed; ignore spacing, just do it. End. Oh, and transmit to Naval HQ."
"Sir."
Her chief of staff stepped up beside her, speaking quietly into her ear. "Sir, the enemy will have seven times our weight of broadside. What do you intend to do?"
Eberdorf's face was skull-like at the best of times, thin weathered skin lying right on the harsh bones. It looked even more like a death's-head as she smiled.
"Do, Helmut?" she said. "We're going to buy some time. And then we're all going to die, I think."
* * *
"Watch it!" someone said on the bridge.
Maurice Farr didn't look around. He also didn't flinch as the Land twin-engine swept overhead, not fifty feet above the tripod mast of the Great Republic. He was looking through the slide-mounted binoculars of the combat bridge as the bombs dropped. One hit squarely on A turret, the forward double twelve-inch gun mount. The ship groaned and twisted, but when the smoke cleared he could see only a star-shaped scar on the hardened surface of the thick rolled and cast armor. Behind him a voice murmured:
"A turret reports one casualty, sir." That was to the Great Republic's captain. "Turret ready for action."
"Give me the ranges," Farr said.
"Eleven thousand, sir. Closing."
Farr nodded. They were slanting in towards the Land ships, like not-quite-parallel lines, but there was shoal water between the fleets, far too shallow for his heavy ships, or even for most cruisers.
"Admiral," the captain of the Great Republic said, "at maximum elevation, I could be making some hits by now with my twelve-inchers."
"As you were, Gridley," Farr said emotionlessly.
"Yes, sir."
Two more Land aircraft were making runs at the Santander flagship, both twin-engine models. One was carrying a torpedo clamped underneath it; the other carried more of the sixty-pound bombs. He stiffened ever so slightly; the torpedo was a real menace, and he hadn't know that aircraft could be rigged for-
The torpedo splashed into the shallow green water. Seconds later it detonated in a huge shower of mud. The Land biplane flew through the column of spray, its engines stuttering. Just then one of the four-barrel pom-poms on the side of the central superstructure cut loose. It was loud even in comparison to the general racket of battle, and the glowing globes of the one-pound shells seemed to flick out and then float, slowing, as they approached it. That was an optical illusion. The explosion when the aircraft flew into a dozen of the little shells was very real; it vanished in a fireball from which bits of smoking debris fell seaward.
The stick of bombs from the next aircraft fell in a neat bracket over the Santander battleship, raising gouts of spray that fell back on the deck. Tentacled things floated limply on the water, or landed on the deck and lashed their barbed organic whips at the riveted steel.
Thud. Flash. Thud. Flash. The eight-inch guns of the Land cruisers on the other side of the shoal were opening up on him. He smiled thinly, observing the fall of shot. Water gouted up, just short of the leading elements of his seventeen battleships-the eighteenth, the President Cummings, was aground on a mudbank back half a kilometer and working frantically to it. The shell splashes were colored, green and orange and bright blue, dye injected into the bursting charges to let observers spot the point of impact. All were just a little short, although the foremost Santander battleship had probably been splashed. Another flotilla of four-stacker destroyers was darting out from behind the Land heavy ships, surging forward over the shoal water impassable to the deeper keels.
For a moment, he abstractly admired their courage. Then he spoke:
"Secondary batteries only, if you please."
"Yes, sir. Admiral, there may be mines in the channel ahead."
"I don't think so; we rushed them. In any case, damn the mines, continue course ahead."
"Yes, sir."
The Great Republic had her weapons arranged as most modern warships did: two heavy turrets fore and aft, in this case twin twelve-inch rifles, and four turrets for the secondary armament, two on either side just forward and abaft the central superstructure. That meant each of the battleships could fire a broadside of four eight-inch secondaries. They bellowed, the muzzle blasts enough to rock every man on the bridge and remind them to keep their mouths open to avoid pressure-flux damage to the eardrums. Shells fell among the Land destroyers, sixty-eight at a time. Four destroyers were hit in the first salvo, disappearing in fire and black smoke and spray as the heavy armor-piercing shells tore into their fragile plate structures.
One destroyer came close enough to the Great Republic to begin to heel aside, the center-mounted three-tube torpedo launcher swinging on its center pivot. Every pom-pom on the battleship cut loose at it, hundreds of one-pounder shells striking from stem to stern of the destroyer's long slender hull. So did the six five-inch quick-firers in sponson mounts along the armored side. Afterwards, Farr decided that it had probably been a pom-pom shell hitting a torpedo warhead that started the explosions, but it might have been a five-incher penetrating into a magazine. The light was blinding, but when he blinked back his sight and threw up a hand against the radiant heat there was still a crater in the water, shrinking as the liquid rushed back into the giant bubble the shock wave had created. Of the destroyer there was very little to see.