Straits of Hell (30 page)

“Taagit range, one t'ousand. Speed, ten. Elevation two deg'ees!” cried the 'Cat in the main top. They didn't have even the rudimentary fire control system now in use in the West, but they'd come up with a few expedients of their own out here. Electric igniters had arrived that could be activated by the gunnery officer who watched a swinging plumb bob in place of a gyro. This most ancient of instruments would indicate to him the
approximate
instant when
Simms
found an even keel amid her constant motion. In this way,
Simms
and her consorts could fire true salvos, of a sort, and correct their elevation at least. Gunners quickly proceeded to do just that, turning a heavy screw handle beneath the breeches of their guns, until an inscribed line corresponded to a numeral “2” engraved on the plate beside it. At a nod from the gunner, another 'Cat pricked the vent with a long brass rod with a ring on the end and inserted the priming wire.

“Primed and clear!” cried the first gun captain, stepping back. He was quickly echoed by nine others. “All clear!” trilled the chief gunner's mate.

“Commence firing,” Ruik said, his tone amazingly calm as he stared through an Imperial telescope.

“Firing!” shouted the gunnery officer, intently staring at the plumb bob. But for an instant, he didn't fire and the tension grew. Finally catching the exact instant he liked the most, when the plumb tip was pointed directly at a mark on his apparatus, he closed the circuit.

Fire blowtorched skyward from ten vents as the great guns fired, visibly shivering the stout ship as the monstrous weapons trundled inboard amid yellow-orange blooms of flame and a roiling fog bank of white smoke. Fred shook his head and worked his jaw to pop his ears. The first thing he heard was the diminishing, tearing canvas
shoosh
of the outbound shot. “C'mon!” he said to Kari, grabbing her arm and stepping to the rail beside Ruik. The gun smoke was quickly whisked away by the stiff wind and
Simms
's own speed. He never saw the shot in flight as he might if he'd been able to watch its rise from the muzzles of the guns, but he viewed its fall. The “salvo” raised a curtain of splashes about two hundred yards wide, just short of the closest enemy ship, but the range was amazingly consistent.

“Reload!” the gunnery officer roared, and the gun's crews, already working to clear and service their pieces, now knew to continue their evolution to the end.

“
Achilles
still has her lighter guns. Just as well, because as stout as she is by Imperial standards, I doubt she could hold up to firing sustained salvos, or ‘broadsides' like this, with the weight of metal we're throwing,” Ruik said conversationally. “But her guns are as big as anything on those Dom DDs, and they'll reach.” Fred was surprised Ruik had noticed his and Kari's presence. “
Icarus
will have to wait until they get closer, but
Tindal
is armed the same as us,” Ruik continued, taking the glass away from his eye and using it as a pointer toward the top of the main mast. “Signal flags show the range we estimated, and the other ships will adjust.”
Achilles
chose that moment to unleash her own broadside, followed almost immediately by Tindal. Splashes rose all around the leading ships in the advancing column, and distant sails shook with impacts. “See?” Ruik said.

“Very impressive,” Fred granted, sincerely amazed by how successful such crude expedients could be—but then, the principles were essentially the same as those USS
Walker
had brought to this world. Even without the sophistication of her gyro and wildly complicated clockwork gun director, the fundamentals they were based upon had revolutionized naval warfare on this world and given the Allies an enormous advantage—at least until the Doms figured it out.

“Same range! No change!” yelled the gunnery officer, quickly followed by a chorus of “Primed and clear!”

“All clear!”

“Firing!” Fred barely had time to cover his ears before the ship shook again, and this time he watched the heavy balls arc up and away. He lost them as they reached the tops of their trajectories, but the cluster looked much tighter this time as they disappeared, now falling toward the enemy.

“Why no change?” Kari asked, and Ruik looked at her. “The enemy is closer this time. The gunnery officer will have calculated how much closer based on the enemy's apparent speed, and timed his firing accordingly.”

He must've timed it very well. Another cluster of splashes rose around the lead Dom frigate, but at least half the fifty-pound cannonballs staggered the ship. The foremast toppled, dragging the maintop down with it to lie atop the smoking funnel. Almost immediately, flames caught the flailing red canvas, sparked by the funnel itself, and the wind fanned the fire up the mast. A cheer rose even as the gunnery officer called for the reload.

“Another one down,” Ruik said softly. “She was doomed already, even without the fire.” He looked at Fred. “One thing we've learned over the last few days, and the only reason we're still alive; use our range advantage. Once the Doms close, the only advantage we have left are exploding shells.”

“Why? I mean, why was she already done for, so far away?”

“Because of what Mr. Caam-peeti once told me is called ‘plunging fire.' Look, range is key because their shot's not as heavy, at least on their DDs, and no matter how many more they fire from their ‘wagons,' they can't get near as many on target unless they get close.
Then
it doesn't make much difference,” he confessed, “because we're both just shooting
through each other.” He waved. The burning Dom frigate, wallowing now, erupted in a white cloud of steam and smoke, spraying the sea with a sprawling pattern of falling debris. “Could've been the magazine, but I bet it was the boiler. Water coming in, fast. See, even at just two degrees of elevation, we get ‘plunging fire' at this range, when our shot ‘runs outa gas' and just drops. Makes it harder to hit a taagit, the old-fashioned way, but as you've just seen, we can do it.”

“Great. So?”

“These new Dom ships are stout; the sides, uh, ‘scaant-lings,' are really heavy. A fifty-pound shot will still blow through both sides at close range.” He managed a predatory grin. “But at long range, they drop on the ship, tear through the decks and right out the bottom!”

“Oh! So then we're okay? We just keep shooting long range and knock 'em off one by one!”

“Normally we could,” Ruik agreed, “and we have been. Most of the crippling damage suffered by TF Eleven has occurred in the night when the enemy was able to close the range in spite of our illumination flares and rockets. And, of course, we've been on a necessarily fixed course to keep them from overwhelming us. As you can see, they've had the numbers to absorb great loss while they attempt that.”

Hibbs's small battle line had commenced firing now as the range between it and the closing Dom column decreased, with great thunderclap salvos from
Mars
and
Centurion
, which mounted fifty 20- and 30-pounders to a side. Likely glad to have targets of their own, and unable to return Ruik's fire with more than a few bow chasers, the seven frigates in the closest line fired back, the sound reaching them as a sustained, stuttering roar.
Achilles
and
Tindal
punctuated it with salvos of their own.

“Unfortunately, we will soon have to wear our line, coming about across the enemy's path once more to prevent it from closing with Ahd-mi-raal Hibbs.”

“I remember the plan,” Fred protested. “Then we tack onto the back of his line as he passes that big-assed rock, and we're all in the clear.”

“Indeed,” Ruik agreed. “But this squadron will first have to sail
very
close to the enemy, perhaps even slowing to prolong the engagement. . . .”

“Oh.”

//////
USS
Maaka-Kakja
(CV-3)

A
dmiral Lelaa-Tal-Cleraan paced her bridge and stared out at the developing battle in the distance.
“Degenerating” battle, more correctly,
she thought grimly, since all semblance of order had disintegrated after High Admiral Harvey Jenks, his flag now flying from the Imperial first-rater
Mithra
, slammed his battle line into the bulk of the enemy fleet. What ensued, according to excited wireless reports and the few planes remaining above the action, was a jumbled melee of ships of all sizes, pounding away at one another at point-blank range. That wasn't what they'd planned, but she assumed Jenks had seen some pressing need.
Or had the pressing need to come to close grips with the Doms resided mainly in Harvey Jenks's heart, after all this time?
Lela wondered. She also wondered what had become of
Simms
, her consorts—and Fred and Kari.

She knew
Simms
had picked them up, of course. Orrin Reddy, now
teetering slightly with exhaustion and watching her pace, had reported that himself. But wireless contact with all four DDs had been lost when they got tangled in tight with the Dom frigates, and only
Achilles
had managed to join Hibbs's escape. The rest had been engulfed by the chaotic battle that erupted around them. At the very least, all had taken damage to their masts and wireless aerials. They'd done their job, though; flailing at the Doms until Hibbs could squeak past. His battered force had eventually joined
Maaka-Kakja
, where it was currently transferring wounded to the trailing replenishment ships—the only auxiliaries left—and cutting and splicing and making what repairs they could before . . .
Before what?
She paced again, glancing at the bridge watch standing at their posts—and keenly aware of Orrin Reddy's scrutiny.
Can I do it?
she asked herself, remembering what Governor-Empress Rebecca McDonald had decreed, what Saan-Kakja agreed.
Should I?

“You know, this may well be the last great battle between purely wooden ships on this world. And even now, ‘purely' isn't exactly right,” she began softly. “All our Amer-i-caan Navy DDs have armor belts amidships to protect their engineering plants. And though both the Doms and Impies still use paddlewheels, the Imperial Navy has applied some armor to its paddle boxes. That's probably the only reason
Mars
and
Centurion
made it back to us, and the beleaguered Task Force Eleven was able to leave so many powerless Dom hulks in its wake. All new Impie ships under construction are being built with screw propellers, just like ours.” She paused, sensing Orrin's impatience. He wanted back out there and wasn't in the mood for what he must think were her pointless technical ramblings. But she did have a point. “Also,” she continued, “just as in Baalkpan and Maa-ni-la, riveted iron hulls are in the works in the Empire as well, now that sufficient quantities of steel required for the transition are starting to arrive from the West, or the Imperial colonies in North America.” She waved at the battle. “And of course, every ship now engaged is a steamer.”

“So?” Orrin sighed, aware he was being disrespectful, but too tired to care.

“So, technology marches, for us and the Doms. Even the Grik. Governor-Empress Rebecca's initial strategy may have been . . . flawed, but she's correct that this action must be decisive. I hope—I pray—that our technology may be enough to balance the enemy numbers today, but
even with victory, we will be in poor condition to pursue a beaten enemy to destruction—and every Dom ship we do not destroy we will likely face again, improved to match our own at the very least.”

“What now, then?” Orrin asked, suspecting what was to come. Instead of a direct answer, Lelaa stared ahead. “How many Naancys remain?” she asked.

“Uh, just nine that I'd consider airworthy. We were short to start with, as you know, even with the ones Saan-Kakja brought. Too many got spread around,” he added, returning to an earlier argument. He let it drop. He couldn't begrudge the ones sent with the transports to Puerto Viejo. Shinya would need them. But how long before they could even arrive, be assembled, and join the fight? It would've been better to put them together here and fly them ashore—but they'd been too far out. Particularly for brand-new, untried machines. “The, uh, ‘rescue' of TF Eleven cost the wing more than twenty planes, not counting all the ones assigned to other ships that've been lost as well—mostly to recovery accidents,” he added harshly. The speed of the advance and the choppy sea had made recovering the little floatplanes extremely difficult. “Fortunately, we haven't lost quite that many aircrews, although it's been bad. The simple fact is that the guys and gals have flat flown their planes to death over the last few days, and beyond the nine I reported, any others will take at least a few days to get back in the air—or even patched well enough to float.” He considered. “We do still have eight of the dozen Fleashooters they sent us. They've been going out with bombs. The Doms can't have many Grikbirds left. Haven't seen hardly any today. Maybe it's just all the smoke over the battle—they don't like it—but they're all either dead or grounded.”

Lelaa turned to him, blinking decisively. “The Fleashooters will stand down,” she said. “They can only recover aboard
Maaka-Kakja
, and that will soon be impossible. You will lead our last Naancys in a final bombing sortie. Instruct your aircrews to focus on Dom baattle-waagons, preferably those engaging any of our ships that seem particularly hard-pressed. I know that may be difficult to discern. . . .”

“Where will
we
recover?” Orrin demanded, “And why will it be ‘impossible' here?”

Lelaa blinked at the wild, sprawling battle that seemed to lap against the high, lonely, rocky island ahead. “Unlike the carriers in the West,
Maaka-Kakja
remains heavily armed for surface actions, with fifty of the fifty-pounder smoothbores just like
Simms
and her sisters carry. Even more significantly, she retains four of
Amagi
's five-point-five-inch secondaries tied into a fully functional gun director also salvaged from the Japanese battle cruiser. We shall use those as we close.”

“Close?”

“Indeed, COFO Reddy. I am taking my ship into the fight.”

“Lord,” Orrin muttered, then shrugged. “Oh well. Why not? I can't fault your strategic logic, regarding Dom survivors, and the
Makky-Kat
might not have armor, but she's hell for stout. She can take a lot.” He chuckled. “And just seeing her coming at 'em, like a smaller version of that weird island, ought'a scare the water out of the Doms. She might just turn the tide.”

“That is my hope. We will leave our support ships behind, of course. They will recover your aircraft if . . . no one else can.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Orrin replied, standing as straight as he could. With a lopsided grin, he plopped his battered crush cap on his head and threw her a salute.

Lelaa grinned back. “Really, COFO Reddy. Saluting indoors?”

“Second Lieutenant Orrin Reddy, United States Army Air Corps, ma'am. You keep forgetting I'm not Navy. I just made a report on the state of my air wing.” He shrugged again. “And besides, I felt like it. With your permission, I'll go get my planes off this tub before the Doms start shooting holes in her.”

“By all means. Bring her into the wind,” she ordered the 'Cat at the big wheel. “Make your course three zero zero. As soon as Mr. Reddy's planes are in the air, we will secure from air operations and clear the ship for surfaace action!” She glanced back at Orrin, touching her brow. “May the Heavens protect you, Lieuten-aant Reddy,” she said.

“You too, Admiral.”

•   •   •

“What a screwed-up mess,” Orrin muttered to himself, staring down through his goggles at the vast smoky brawl below.
Looks like somebody set fire to a giant, two- or three-mile-wide amoeba,
he thought with a sick feeling in his gut. There were a number of other ships wallowing helplessly on the periphery, or steaming in impotent circles with one of
their paddlewheels shot away, but the bulk of the massive smoking germ was locked up tight. It was impossible to tell who was who, and all he could see was a hopeless scramble of indeterminate ships wreathed in gun smoke, and crisscrossing jumbles of churned-up wakes. The continuous cannonade was audible even over the dutiful drone of the engine above and behind him, and he could feel the stuttering overpressure of hundreds of guns in his chest. It was late afternoon now, the “main” battle nearly four hours old, and the visibility beyond the steaming, flashing, roiling cauldron below was virtually unlimited, with no trace of land besides that big screwy rock.

It was chilly up there, and he was glad for his peacoat, but it really was a beautiful day. Except for the battle, of course. His eight-ship flight—one plane had immediately been forced to turn back with engine problems—was orbiting the battle at two thousand feet, trying to avoid the smoke and figure out who the good guys were. Usually that was easy, with the Doms' red sails, but not now. The chase was over, and every ship had furled her canvas and was fighting under steam alone. That only aggravated the visibility problem, particularly since the Impies and Doms both still used coal. In addition, a lot of ships were burning, and the smoke slanted roughly eastward in multicolored streaks of black, brown, gray, and near white, all obscuring the ships to varying degrees.
Why didn't Jenks stay back?
he wondered.
Hibbs was clear. He could've pasted 'em from a distance, for a while at least. Maybe he, like Lelaa, figured the only way to keep them from running off was to get stuck in. But that doesn't make sense either
.
Sure, the Doms wanted to pick off TF Eleven after we dropped it in their lap, but they'd obviously come looking for a battle just like this. So why did Jenks turn around and hand it to 'em with a bow wrapped around it?
Realization dawned.
Honor.
Simms
,
Icarus
, and
Tindal
are in that mess somewhere;
were
in it, anyway,
he corrected
, all alone. After all the sacrifices TF Eleven made to get their wounded out, then the final sacrifice of
Simms
's little squadron of DDs, he just couldn't leave them there while it was in his power to provide some relief. His own desire to finally get at the Doms in the same old, instinctive way probably played a part, but when all was said and done, it probably did come down to honor. Kinda stupid,
Orrin grumped, but really, no less than he'd have expected of the man.

He glanced south and sure enough, here came
Maaka-Kakja
,
steaming at full speed, with a giant bone in her teeth. Her 5.5s would already be firing if they could pick out targets any better than he could, and they alone would be a big help. But Lelaa wouldn't hang back either. She'd slam her big fat carrier right into the brawl like a pickup truck through a flock of guineas, spitting fire in all directions. She'd been a destroyerman—gal—'Cat—whatever, before she got
Maaka-Kakja
, and it suddenly dawned on him that her first Navy ship had been a razeed Grik Indiaman named . . .
Simms
. That ship was long gone, destroyed by traitorous Imperials working at least indirectly with the Doms. Could her willingness to go for broke be motivated, at least subconsciously, by something as primal as revenge? The hot fury of an old trauma roused by the name of a lost ship, and rising behind her conscious thoughts? Orrin knew in a flash that he was vulnerable to such things. He was still uncomfortable around Shinya after all, just because he was a Jap. He suspected Matt, his cousin, was just as vulnerable in other ways. Jenks as well. He was a man, after all. But Lemurians were different, weren't they?
Might as well've been Quakers before the war, from what I've heard. Practically pacifists
. He knew they weren't
now
, but did that make them more or less likely to act out of hatred? He had to doubt it;
had
to hope what was happening here today was more . . . rational than that. He grimaced, feeling for the first time that he knew how Cousin Matt must've felt at the battle for Grik City when all the 'Cats, people, whoever it was he was always trying to ride herd on, slipped their leash and just . . . stampeded. He took a breath.
Either way, there's a world-class hair-pulling underway down there. Nothing for it now,
he realized.
Question is
,
what can I do about it?

He looked in the mirror at the goggled 'Cat in the aft cockpit behind the motor, the brown and gray fur on his face plastered back by the propwash. “Seepy,” he said in his voice tube to Sergeant Kuaar-Raan-Taak, who'd been his “backseater” through thick and thin. Even now, Orrin wasn't convinced he and the crusty 'Cat noncom were actually “friends,” but theirs was a familiar, bantering relationship that both were comfortable with. More important, they trusted each other. “Send to all other ships in the flight: attack independently, repeat, attack heavy targets of opportunity independently.” He was suddenly uncomfortably aware that he didn't even know the tail numbers of all the planes. Everything was so jumbled up, they didn't necessarily correspond to their
aircrews anymore. “The two lowest numbered ships'll hunt to the north of the battle, the next lowest, the south. Then east. The highest number . . .” He craned his head around in frustration. His usual plane—with the.50 cal in the nose—was down for a new engine of its own, after the morning sortie. At least that meant he could carry more bombs. “Goddamn it, Seepy, what's our number?”

“Turty-two.”