Rising Tides (48 page)

“Bow guns—‘chasers,’ from the Doms,” announced Minnie. “Big ones, say the lookout. The first one prob’ly lucky close.”

“Range?”

“Four t’ousand.”

Frankie glanced back at the sea to port and saw with relief that the whaleboat had reached the aviators. “The main battery will commence firing,” he said grimly. “And pass the word: ‘lucky close’ ain’t an option today. We have to keep the range on those bastids an’ tear ’em up from a distance.” He gestured back toward Scapa Flow. “Our job is to hold ’em back until the cavalry gets here. Like Reynolds, we’ll concentrate on the transports if we can, and stay away from the heavies. As many guns as those things have, they don’t have to be good to shred us, just ‘lucky close,’ see?”

The new salvo bell clattered on the bulkhead behind him.

Matt and the others were running, breathing hard. They’d managed to stay together, however, and even Bradford was keeping up. The streets were eerily quiet and vacant. Matt wondered if the inhabitants were sitting things out, or if they’d already responded to the Governor-Emperor’s call to arms. For some reason, he didn’t think that was the case in this district. He worried about snipers. They turned onto the street dominated by the embassy of the Holy Dominion and were met by a scattered volley that felled one of their Marines and shattered masonry at the corner behind them. Gray emptied a twenty-round stick into the group, sending all but one of the six men sprawling. The other man stood there, stunned, until Matt shot him with his Springfield as they trotted past. Stites had the BAR again, but he was low on magazines for it too. They reached the iron-bound door, and Matt immediately inverted his rifle and drove the butt hard against it. The door didn’t budge.

“God
damn
it!” he raged.

“Stay cool, Skipper,” Gray said. “I got a treatment for this.” He reached in a satchel and pulled out a grenade, a “real” one, made in the USA.

“I didn’t know you had those,” Matt said accusingly. “We could have used them!”

“I was savin’ ’em for if things got serious,” Gray explained innocently. “Bash in the peephole!”

Matt redirected the butt of his rifle and Gray pulled the pin on the grenade and dropped it inside the door. There was a muffled
ba-rump
inside, followed by screams.

“What good did that do?” Stites demanded. “We still can’t get in!”

“After the day I’ve had, it was pretty fun,” Gray said. “Otherwise ...” He fished in his pocket. “... Spanky gave me this really swell rubber band! Just look at this thing!” he said, displaying the gift. “Don’t know where he got it, but it’s a peach. I was gonna make me a slingshot for ... Anyway, everybody get back!”

He took another grenade, and looping the rubber band around it, hung the little bomb from the top left hinge on the big door. Making sure everyone was clear, he yanked the pin and ran. The spoon flew and the grenade bounced up and down a couple of times.

Blam!

Grenades make poor breaching charges, but the high-explosive inside made short work of the brittle iron hinge. The door trembled, then fell diagonally outward onto the street.

“C’mon!” Matt yelled.

In the grand scheme of such things, compared to other fights Chack had participated in, the Battle of the Imperial Dueling Grounds was a relatively small affair. It was big by Imperial standards, at least as far as land battles were concerned, but it wasn’t even close to something like Aryaal, Singapore, and certainly not Baalkpan in terms of scope. The Dominion had landed and secreted away perhaps a thousand troops in warehouses and an abandoned barracks outside of Leith, and the conspirators had considered that number more than sufficient to overwhelm New Scotland’s small, dispersed, Marine garrison from behind Scapa Flow’s defenses, especially when coupled with the overwhelming surprise that Reed and Don Hernan had achieved. It didn’t work that way.

The Lemurian shields made a big difference. For a while. The Dominion front ranks were decimated by those first volleys, but they had greater numbers to start with. Chack and Blair’s experiments with the shields paid off, teaching them that the dense hardwood-backed bronze implements would turn a musket ball if held at an angle, and the shields were battered and streaked with smears of lead, while the rear ranks delivered a withering fire. The front ranks suffered terribly from the beating they were taking, painfully flayed by spattered fragments of balls, stunned by incessant impacts, and even struck by balls that skated in or found a gap. The shields could take only so much, however, and they began to be pierced or fall apart under the hammering.

“Second rank! Take shields where you can,” Lieutenant Blair ordered, knowing Chack would never do it. “First rank, fall back to the rear!”

Chack spared him a thankful glance. Less than thirty Lemurian Marines were able to obey.

O’Casey appeared, unfired pistols still dangling around his neck. He was covered with blood, caused by dozens of splinter wounds. “This is the damnedest thing there ever was,” he gasped.

“It is quite like a duel itself, is it not?” Blair asked. His hat was gone now, replaced by a bloody rag. “A most appropriate setting, I suppose.”

“It is
stupid
,” Chack growled. “General Alden would
not
approve.” He shrugged. “But I don’t know what else to do. We cannot maneuver here, and there is no cover other than the stands—and we can’t reach them without exposing ourselves. Stupid! All we can do is stand here, trading blows like fools.”

“Where’s Captain Reddy, an’ Jenks?” O’Casey asked.

A ball caromed off Chack’s steel American helmet, almost knocking him down. He shook his head and resumed his erect pose. “Stupid,” he repeated, looking almost desperately around for some inspiration. “If only we had a single gun!”

“Just be glad theirs are silent,” Blair said. He looked at O’Casey. “Captain Reddy has gone for Mr. Reed. Jenks seeks the Governor-Emperor!”

“Then I must assist one or the other,” O’Casey said. “I’m of no further use here.”

“Nooo, Mr. O’Casey,” Chack said. “Untrue. Your collection of pistols might soon be of great use. I weary of this mutual mauling! I ask myself what I would do if those ... people were Grik, and I see only one course that will decide this before both sides are annihilated! Lieutenant Blair? I see the enemy has not fixed bayonets. Why is that?”

“Why ...” Blair paused. “Well, they can’t.”

“They
do
have them?”

“Yes, but they’re a different style. A type of plug bayonet. They insert them into their muzzles and they are quite effective, but their shooting is over then. They usually have to drive them out. If they’d affixed them before now, they’d have had to charge, or stand and be shot to pieces.”

“Like we are doing?” Chack practically roared. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I—” Blair was confused.

“Listen to me, Lieutenant Blair. You must trust me. We are about to lose a lot of troops, your men mostly, but then we will shortly end this fight. Do you believe me?”

“I ... uh ...” Blair suddenly remembered the last time he’d disregarded the advice of a Lemurian commander. Safir Maraan had tried to warn him at Singapore that his tactics simply didn’t apply. His command had been virtually eradicated that day, and he’d miserably blamed himself ever since. He’d also come to realize that these ... creatures, these Lemurians, knew a lot more about pitched battles on land than he did. “Yes, I do, Captain Sab-At,” he said finally, formally. “What are your orders?”

“The discipline and execution must be flawless,” Chack warned.

Another grenade preceded Matt, Gray, Stites, and the ten surviving Marines through the shattered door of the Dominion embassy. A second Imperial had been killed by a sniper from a second-floor window. The grenade burst amid another chorus of screams, and the group charged in, Gray’s Thompson spitting at a trio of men in uniforms crawling on the floor.

The entry hall looked different this time. The lanterns were askew and fresh blood pooled beneath bodies on the tile. The red walls didn’t seem any different, but they glistened where fresh color had splashed. The golden tapestries and accents ran with glittering purple-red. There must have been at least twenty men near the door when Gray’s first grenade dropped among them, and many had been killed outright. The rest, probably still stunned, had fallen to the second. A few more shots finished the survivors.

“Upstairs!” Courtney Bradford shouted. “Check upstairs! The buggers will likely be there!”

Matt pointed around at darkened alcoves. “You men,” he said to the Marines, “check those spaces! Make sure there’s not another way out of this joint!”

“Where’ll they be?” Gray asked, puffing.

“Upstairs, like Courtney said. I hope.”

They thundered up the spiral staircase. A pair of musket shots, fired wildly from above, shattered the banister just a few feet from Bradford, and his enthusiasm ebbed just a little. Stites hosed his BAR upward, stitching back and forth, and they were rewarded by a scream and a thud. As a group, with Bradford lagging slightly, they arrived at the top of the stairs. A man in the uniform of a Blood Drinker, probably one of those who’d fired, lunged at Matt with a bayonet inserted into the muzzle of his musket. Matt knocked it aside with the Springfield and drove his own bayonet into the man’s chest with a shout, pushing him back until he’d virtually pinned him to the wall. The dim, orangish light in the room reflected off the glazing eyes that stared back into his.

“Bravo!” came a voice from the far side of the chamber, standing before the garish golden cross on the wall. “You have me, it seems.”

Matt turned, yanking the bayonet clear, and saw Harrison Reed dimly illuminated, sinister shadows around his eyes and mouth. He stood with his arms crossed before him, a pistol loosely in his hand. The naked servant girl lay sprawled on the hardwood floor in the center of a spreading pool of blood.

“You will face the very fires of hell for storming this place,” he said conversationally. “This is not just an embassy—bad enough, I assure you—but a blessed house of God.”

“Where you just murdered a little girl!” Matt said, bringing the Springfield up. “I ought to kill you where you stand!”

Reed pointed the pistol at Matt in a classic style that showed he was proficient. “I did not kill the child. I presume Don Hernan sent her to paradise himself, before he left. He was quite taken with her.” He shrugged slightly. “I found her like this, and before you ask, I don’t know where Don Hernan is. Directing the completion of our plan, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Sumbitch has skipped!” Stites snarled disgustedly.

Reed ignored him, but wiggled the pistol slightly. “Perhaps, Captain Reddy, you would care to exchange my life for yours? You are here, so I assume the fighting went poorly at the dueling grounds?”

“Things were looking up when we left,” Gray said harshly. “We got reinforcements.”

Reed smirked. “Pity. Regardless, I remain optimistic.”

“You wouldn’t be if you’d stayed for more of the show,” Matt promised. “Is that why you hid here? I wouldn’t be ‘optimistic’ about anything right now, if I were you. Listen.” Even through the solid, windowless walls, a crescendo of distant musketry rattled incessantly. “Besides, you’re basically the reason we’re here.”

Reed looked genuinely surprised. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Your Commander Billingsley attacked our Alliance, abducted Princess Rebecca, and ... took some other people who mean a lot to us,” Matt ground out. “That’s all on you. We came here looking for Billingsley—and whoever it was who put him up to it.”

Reed slapped his forehead. “Oh, dear!” he said. “It seems I was most dreadfully mistaken! You had me quite convinced the princess is safe and you had abundant proof of the conspiracy arriving with
Achilles
!”

“We do have proof. Plenty. We know you sent
Agamemnon
back to kill the girl, along with three other ships. We destroyed
Agamemnon
and captured the others, but Billingsley already had Rebecca and our people on
Ajax
. We came looking for him . . . and you.”

Reed shook his head. “I underestimated poor Billingsley! He may have been an apostate with no idea what the true stakes were, but it seems he served
me
quite well, at any rate. The irony is, he would have been utterly horrified to learn who
I
serve!”

“The Dominion,” Gray spat.

“Don Hernan,” Reed corrected, “and the True Church.” He twitched the pistol. “Don’t mistake me; I love my country—this land—but no power on earth can hope to oppose the Dominion for long, nor should it.” He smiled. “You see, oddly enough, I’ve become a Believer. In any event, I decided it was better to join the Dominion Church and serve from within, than to be conquered and suffer the devastating consequences. I’m a patriot, working to secure New Britain’s proper place
within
the Dominion, as a partner—not a possession!”

“You’re a traitorous son of a bitch, serving a sick, perverted, cartoon church full of freaks!” the Bosun stated simply.