Against the Tide of Years (66 page)

“Nothing heavier than five, six hundred tons,” she murmured. “Heavy crews, though. Say a hundred, hundred and fifteen guns on seven keels, and some of the transports, add in another twenty . . . fairly light guns, but. . . . Whatever that god-awful explosion out on the water was, it didn’t sink too many of them.”

Alston cased the binoculars and looked behind her. The thick tubes of the six-inch mortars were going up on their support bipods; the loaders were setting up on the beds of the towing vehicles. That would put them high enough to drop the sixty-pound finned bombs down the waiting muzzles.

“ With your permission? ”

Marina nodded, and Stavrand vaulted over the side of her gun-jeep, back toward his weapons. The motion would have looked more impressive if his
katana
hadn’t caught on the armored coaming, nearly tripping him.

“ I hope the Tartessians give up now,”’ Swindapa said thoughtfully.

Her eyes had narrowed, watching the buzzing confusion of the enemy base area shake itself out; several hundred men were forming lines and trotting toward them.

“ It’s going to be very . . .
a’HiguinaYA’nazka
if they try to come at us here.”

Marian recognized the term; it was untranslatable, meaning something between “repugnant” and “perverted.” That was true enough; the only way the Tartessians could storm the gun-jeeps was head-on into automatic weapons fire.

“ They probably will try,” she said clinically. “ They’re remarkably stubborn. They’re also trying to kill Heather and Lucy.”

Swindapa nodded. “ That’s true,” she said, and slapped the Gatling as if to say,
I’m here, aren’t I?
“ It’s still
a’HiguinaYA’nazka
.”

“ You’re right,” Alston said, and keyed the headset.

“Rapczewicz here,” Sandy’s voice said. “
Farragut
and the rest of the flotilla nearly ready, Commodore.”

Meaning, are you going to get your black ass back where it belongs, or am I going to have to handle it for you?
Marian thought, her mouth turning up at one corner.

“I’ve gotten a good firsthand on the enemy fleet,” Alston said, in half-apology. “ What word from McClintock? ”

“The enemy are pressing him very hard, but they’re not getting through . . . yet,” Rapczewicz said.

“Good.”
Very
good. “I’m—”

The first of the heavy mortars behind her fired, a slap of pressure and hot air at her neck. The shell arched into the sky and moaned away, a falling note, then exploded a mile and three-quarters southward, not far from a stack of boxes under a tarpaulin. Black smoke gouted into the sky.

“ Fire for effect!” Stavrand shouted.

“ Let’s go,” Alston said to her driver. She felt a chill satisfaction as the sand erupted among the enemy. From here they could pound the enemy beachhead into ruin, and there was no way they could strike back. “ Back to town.”

Isketerol underestimated us,
she thought.

He’d seen Nantucket, but only in the immediate aftermath of the Event, when they were still reeling. Since then the Republic had had a decade to find its feet and find out what it could do. Probably Walker could have told his Iberian friend better, but Walker had his own reasons to encourage the enmity.

The gun-jeep swayed as the driver backed, turned, and accelerated smoothly down the beach, taking the firmest sand, just up from the waterline. The rhythmic hammer of the big mortars slapped at her back again, and over that the raw sound of the Gatlings, as if a big sail were ripping under the stress of wind. Only this sound did not stop. . . .

 

The
Farragut
looked unfinished. “Hell, she
is
unfinished,” Marian Alston said softly to herself.

Nevertheless, the war-steamer moved. Her hull form was similar to Marian’s own
Chamberlain
’s, long and slender although not quite so large. The snaky low-lying menace of her was emphasized by the lack of masts; she would have three eventually, but those rested in the shipyard still. A tall black stack fumed from just forward of where the mainmast would stand, sending scuts of woodsmoke backward to her stern, the harsh smell thick in the air on
Chamberlain’s
deck.

The main difference was one hard to see from here: the
Farragut
’s bows didn’t have the elegant clipper rake of the
Chamberlain
’s. Instead they were a single scimitar curve from waterline to forepeak, and low domed swellings showed where the heads of massive bolts held steel plates to beams.

More black-painted steel showed forward of the paddle wheels, sheltering them from fire when the ram was attacking a target. The wheels churned water into white foam that frothed out the rear of the boxes, as she towed the
Chamberlain
. Other steamers likewise towed the Republic’s war fleet out past Brandt Point and through the breakwaters. The north wind would otherwise have pinned them in harbor, perhaps for weeks.

Compromise,
Alston thought. It would be a long time before the Republic could build real oceangoing steamers and the worldwide infrastructure to sustain them. Two, perhaps three generations. In her official capacity she regretted that. Personally, she loved the tall white-winged ships she’d built and was glad that there would be another great age of sail.

Today there could be nothing but a bleak practicality. The weather suited her mood, a steady wet rain cutting visibility and blowing chill into her face. The crowd on the battlements of Fort Brandt were anonymous in rain slickers, but she waved anyway at their cheers. It was due them, and Heather and Lucy would be there to see their mothers off.

The sea was rougher as they passed beyond the breakwaters; the ocean between Nantucket and the mainland was shallow, which made for a harder chop in this sort of wind.

“Good,” she said, cocking an eye at the sky and estimating with the speed of a lifetime at sea. “I’d say it won’t come on to a blow for a while—not today, maybe tomorrow.”

Lieutenant Jenkins shook his head. “Wouldn’t a storm be a help, ma’am? ” he asked. “ Those ships the Tartessians have beached would be pounded to pieces, and the rest would have to slip their cables and run.”

It was part of her duty to see that junior officers learned. Jenkins was a fine sailor, but not quite enough of a fighter yet.

“True enough, Lieutenant,” she said. “But we’re not beating off a pirate raid. This is war. I don’t want to drive the Tartessian fleet away, I want to
crush
them, to wipe this force off the gameboard and then concentrate on doing the same in their home waters.”

“ Yes, ma’am,” he said, nodding thoughtfully.

The ship had an odd, choppy roll under tow and pitched even more as
Farragut
turned east of north, to round Great Point and move south. She licked salt spindrift off her lips and thought:
Everything’s ready.
Full crews—enough to fight both sides on the
Chamberlain,
the
Lincoln,
and the
Sheridan,
plus the smaller ships and schooners. Most of them knew what to do, as well.

“Message to the flotilla,” she said, looking out over a sea of gray-blue, infinitely dappled with the rain. “The Republic expects every citizen to do his or her duty. Cast off, make sail, and take stations.”

“Cast off!” Jenkins echoed her call through his speaking-trumpet.

“Sail stations, sail stations, on the fore, on the main, all hands to stations! Lay aloft and loose all sail!”

Hands took up the lines on deck, and crewfolk swarmed aloft on the wet, swaying ratlines. A sudden thought struck her; when she’d been skipper of the
Eagle,
before the Event, she’d have been gut-anxious right now, afraid that someone would
slip
. The thought brought a slight smile.
How times change when the time changes.

“ Let fall!”

She looked up, squinting against the rain. The yards were studded with figures in yellow oilskins, putting the sails in gear. That had to be done in perfect synchronization with a following wind like this; otherwise the sail could hang up on an unloosed gasket, half on and half off, possibly ripping. Flax canvas just wasn’t as strong as Dacron, no two ways about it. There was a thump above as the sails were pushed forward to hang below the yards.

“Gear manned and ready!” came the call from the decks.

“Sheet home the lower topsail! Belay!”

Order and response across the swimming deck, with the wind blowing streamers of water off the waves and over the rail behind her. Jenkins looked at the wind, and to the starboard at the ships nearer the distant white line of breakers on the beaches.

“Haul around on the weather tack and lee sheet! Tend the lee tack and weather sheet!”

She nodded approval as sail blossomed from the bottoms of the masts toward the tops. The
Chamberlain
heeled sharply to starboard as the wind took her, and her motion became a purposeful swoop diagonally across the waves marching out of the north.

“On deck, there!” The commodore looked up sharply at the lookout’s hail. “Enemy in sight off the starboard bow—many sail!”

“I’m taking a look,” she said. “Lieutenant Commander Swindapa has the deck.”

“Ms. Swindapa has the deck, aye!”

She took the stairs to the main deck in three bounds, then jumped to the rail and grasped the wet, tarred rope of the ratlines in her hands. A quick swarming climb, and she was past the tops, up to the swaying junction of mast and topsail yard. There she braced herself and took out her binoculars one-handed, ignoring the long swoop . . . swoop motion of the mast as it traced a great oval in the sky, putting her over rushing gray water more often than the narrow deck.

The Tartessians. And they were making sail too, putting distance between themselves and the beach. Even with the rain there were fires there; she could see mortar shells bursting amid the wreckage of the beachhead, and further north the bright stab of Gatling fire through the gloom. She cased the binoculars and leaned out, gripped a backstay and braced her feet against the ribbed surface of the line to control her descent, then slid down to the quarterdeck in a long gliding flight.

She landed and caught Swindapa’s quirked eyebrow.
All right, so I enjoy being able to do that,
Alston thought.

“ Lieutenant Commander, message to the fleet. Enemy bearing”—she gave the direction and number. “All ships will follow flagship’s lead en echelon; I intend to force a general engagement.” Which she could, with the weather gauge and the
Farragut
.

Alston stepped over to the wheels and gave the course as Swindapa ducked into the radio shack. The four crewfolk heaved at the double wheels, and the
Chamberlain
lay further over, shipping foam on her starboard rail. Down below, the gun crews would be hanging on in the swaying dark, lit only by the dim glow of the battle lanterns, waiting.

Not long now,
she thought, as the enemy’s sails loomed higher and Nantucket sank astern.
Not long at all.

The
Chamberlain
was leading the flotilla, heading south and east to put herself between the wind and the Tartessians and trap them against a lee shore. The enemy weren’t cooperating, of course, cutting at right angles across the wind and nearly due east. That put the two fleets on an intersecting course, like the two sides of a triangle about to come to a point. As always at sea, after the long waiting the closing came with a sudden rush.

“Signal to the
Farragut,
” she said. “Signal is
You may proceed
.”

The steamer turned out of line, giving a long, melancholy scream from its whistle that cut through the creak and thrum of a sailing ship under way. Its axe-bow butted a huge spray into the air, steel gray and ice white.

It’s fairly rough,
she thought.
Their gun decks are closer to the surface than the ones in these frigates. That will give them problems.

The ram drew away with shocking speed, lunging across the waves. It had picked the fourth in line of the Tartessian vessels, to cut that one and the ships behind off from the foremost division. Alston watched the gunports on the port side of the Tartessian vessel fly open and the muzzles run out. Almost immediately the deep booming of cannon fire cut through the hiss of the rain.

“ Too soon,” she said. “ They should have waited another minute.”

Flying iron threw gouts of spray into the air a hundred yards in front of the
Farragut;
few of the balls skipped along the surface in today’s weather. Thunder rumbled across the waves as well, like a huge series of doors thudding shut.
Ten guns,
she thought.
Twelve-pounders.
She and Swindapa and Jenkins were all looking at their watches. One minute ten seconds later the first cannon of the second broadside fired, and the rest within fifteen seconds more.
Not bad. Not as good as ours, though.
If you limited “ours” to the Guard frigates and schooners; God alone knew about the dozen civilian Reserve ragtag-and-bobtail following behind.

Black smoke was pouring up from the
Farragut
’s stack. One more broadside landed; then the paddle wheels thrashed into reverse, just before the steel-plated bow struck. It hit at a slight angle to the perpendicular, with the momentum of two six-hundred-ton bulks moving together at a combined speed of nearly thirty miles an hour.

The Tartessian ship shivered and pitched, stopping as if it had hit a reef. The foremast whipped forward and then snapped. Sails and mast fell down across the bows of the ship, and the rest of her rigging quivered and shook. And all that was nothing beside the brief glimpse of the damage to her hull as the
Farragut
reversed. Ribs had been smashed and the oak stringers stripped off the side of the ship in a swath fifteen feet long. The Tartessian war craft rolled back to port as the ram released her, and the sea poured in at once. The remaining two masts developed a list, and the open gunports were pointing down toward the sea.