The Shark Boats, page 37
Don’t think about what you can’t see, he told himself. That would ensure he’d never come back. Ahead of them were enemy destroyers and a couple of shark boats, waiting for them perhaps a mile away.
And closing.
Fire began to come down. From the cruisers, the destroyers, the battleships’ secondary weapons. Shells splashed into the water, tore over their heads. Reiner was strangely calm as 144 moved into it.
“Hold your torpedoes for that cruiser!” he shouted. He hoped the torpedomen could hear him. Leaned forwards to the radio.
“Kaye, see that cruiser? We’re gonna sink him. Grey, Schaffer, engage those destroyers.”
A chorus of rogers and yessirs came back from the boat commanders. Reiner barely heard them – the explosions were getting deafening. Calina was zigzagging forwards.
The PNA shark boats began to move. Counterattacking against the USC destroyers and cruisers.
“Take them out,” Reiner ordered into the mike.
We’ll swipe them in passing. Do what damage we can. Orders were clear – don’t fuck around. The cruisers and destroyers can take care of themselves.
Machine-guns. A shell exploded not far from 144, a big one that rocked the boat hard.
Smaller shells going off all around them.
144’s bow cannon fired. That shell, or another one, shattered the aft engines of a PNA shark boat, leaving it dead in the water.
Machine-guns raked another shark boat. The fire wasn’t all one-way. Then the incoming fire ceased abruptly.
144 passed that shark boat. Slumped, riddled corpses everywhere.
Red blazes – cannon and machine-guns – from one of the Nick destroyers. Dead ahead. Moving diagonally, relative to Reiner.
Then a cruiser’s eight-inch shell blasted the destroyer somewhere aft. A fireball erupted from just behind the destroyer’s superstructure. Spread fast. In a few moments, half of the destroyer’s superstructure and its entire aft section was blazing.
Move in, Reiner thought. Passing that destroyer.
Shells still exploding all around. A pair of shark boats moved in to intercept – and were in turn intercepted by another USC squadron of shark boats, moving on a near-collision course with them and driving them away. As one turned, it received a direct hit and lost speed, starting to sink.
Torpedoes slid off 144’s racks. And off Kaye’s boat. A spread aimed at that cruiser.
At least two of them hit. One of them on a weak point or the location of earlier damage. The cruiser broke in half, about a third of the ship’s length from its bow. Men started to bail. Someone fired a shell into the wrecked cruiser’s superstructure. Oil on the water started to burn, men swimming away or desperately ducking under.
144’s torpedomen were winching new torpedoes into the racks. Calina was intent as usual – he was the boat at times like this, he’d once said. Pulli was leaning into his guns, an unlit stogie clenched in his mouth. Reiner wiped his brow and enjoyed the momentary silence.
Only momentary. Huge waterspout ahead of them, as a twelve- or fourteen-inch battleship shell slammed into the water within a hundred yards. White water fountained hundreds of feet into the sky, and Reiner realized that they were now amongst the Nick capital ships.
The massive grey-black ships were moving around. Some faster than others, turning to form a line facing east-northeast. Walls of steel, tens of feet above the water. Enormous turrets swiveling. Firing back at Ruyter’s fleet. Men on secondary weapons, three- and five-inchers, fired south at the escort ships as they broke through.
Only thing we have that can touch these monsters is torpedoes, Reiner thought.
Pulli didn’t seem to think so. He turned his guns, raised them to almost a forty-five degree angle and raked the deck of the nearest battleship. Firing along its length. Bullets sparked off the side of the superstructure,
Three battleship shells came down within a hundred and fifty yards, huge white fountains of water cascading into the sky.
Pieter fired his cannon into the side of the nearest battleship. The shell made a negligible dent in the massive thing’s armor.
Tex turned around, gestured at the torpedoes and gave Reiner a thumbs up. Reiner pounded his fist forwards twice. The gesture for fire when ready.
A moment later he was ready. In the middle of these battleships, it was hard not to be.
This is what the professionals call ‘a target-rich environment’ occurred to Reiner..
The torpedoes slid off their racks at a battlecruiser no more than a hundred yards away.
More of Ruyter’s shells exploded in the water around them. One scored a hit; flames and debris spiralled into the sky from somewhere on the fore of a battleship.
That battleship’s aft guns fired a moment later. Deafening waves of overpressure.
Engines above. Streams of tracers arced up at them. Bombs fell.
A pair of Dunebug fighters came in low, low, no more than a hundred yards above the waves. Their machine-guns blazed at a destroyer.
Waterspouts from bombs as they exploded. One of them hit a battleship.
Turning. Narrowly avoiding collision with a PNA destroyer. The battleships’ maneuvering had been thrown off – not so much out of fear of torpedoes, which at this range were hard to avoid. Because Nick’s own screeners and escorts were in the formation now, chasing down the USC MTBs and destroyers that had gotten in. The capital-ship captains were afraid to run their own destroyers down.
More bombs fell.
An Albatross heavy bomber, three of its four engines trailing fire, came roaring in, perhaps forty feet above the water. Reiner caught a momentary glimpse of pilot and co-pilot through a bullets-shattered screen. The pilot was slumped forward and the co-pilot’s teeth were clenched in a brutal grimace.
The Albatross slammed into the side of a Nick battlecruiser. Tremendous explosion, and when it cleared most of the battlecruiser’s superstructure was gone. The ship began to list hard to starboard. Its aft turret fired once, at a crazy angle. Men scurried like ants, began to bail.
Calina took 144 around, past the stern of a turning battleship, alongside a passing one. More shells landed in the water around them. Shark boats and MTBs and destroyers and wrecks.
Torpedoes being reloaded. A shark boat crossed Reiner’s six.
My God, he thought.
Red eyes glinted from under the boat’s bow.
I should have expected Chavez to be here.
*
We’ve lost guys, thought Chavez, wheeling round onto the tail of another USC MTB. Too many inexperienced crews, sent in too soon against the USC’s best.
Didn’t help that Admiral Ruyter seemed bad even by the standards of upper-class capitalist butchers. He’d sent most of his light ships right into the area his own heavy ships were firing into.
Chavez had seen at least two casualties from that. An MTB capsized by the waterspout of a battleship shell. A destroyer blown to scrap and matchwood by a direct hit from one. There were probably others.
Of course, this volume of incoming fire was a two-way street. He’d also seen one of his shark boats cut in half and ground underwater by a battleship that’d been turning to avoid collision with a destroyer.
They’re fucking up our maneuver. The sooner we take them out the better.
Communication with the rest of his subgroup was essentially impossible in the wheeling brawl amidst the capital ships. He’d switched that radio to rotate through the USC frequencies. Now he caught something interesting.
“Reiner to all Ten units – reload torpedoes and join me on the southwest of the line. We’re going to make another run through.”
A chorus of acknowledgments.
Reiner was in this? He’d gotten new boats?
A nasty grin.
It was time to resolve this thing. Permanently.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“The fleet is almost in position,” said one of Cervantes’ officers. Moving another model on the plotting table.
“Not without losses,” said another officer. He removed a model representing the battleship People's Cause from the table. “Those destroyers and MTBs – they’ve hurt us. Betweeen them and Ruyter’s guns, we’ve lost two battleships and three battlecruisers.”
“We’re about to start inflicting our own losses,” said Cervantes.
“Be glad,” Lugo said. “It could have been a lot worse. If we hadn’t had warning of that trap, they’d have crossed our T and wiped us out.”
A messenger came down, spoke with one of the officers at the plotting table. That officer moved a model.
Cervantes looked at the map. The heavy ships of his fleet were deployed in a rough north-north-west/south-south-east line, now. Facing Centerfield. Redeployment complete.
“What happened to those ships that started to engage us?” somebody asked.
“Looks like they’re still running,” said Lugo.
“We can finish them off later,” Cervantes said. His right hand became a fist. “First, we deal with Ruyter. Properly.”
Something hit the Revolutionary Triumph. A light shell, but enough to shake the battleship and cause the plotting table to jump. A couple of the PNA-fleet models were knocked over onto their sides.
“And we do it,” Cervantes snarled, “before he can inflict any more damage on us.”
*
Ruyter looked out across the water between the two fleets. The Liberty, his flagship, fired its fore guns again – all three sixteen-inchers from the lower turret, then both from the upper turret, one after the other about five seconds apart. From the open deck adjoining the flag bridge, the noise of the rippling blasts was incredible.
The air was filthy with smoke. The nearest PNA battleships were no more than about four miles away from the USC line. It was a distance littered with smoke and wreckage, burning oil and sinking ships and struggling men. Cruisers and a couple of destroyers screened the area, firing at MTBs and their Nick counterparts.
Waterspouts. Ruyter lowered the binoculars and headed back into the flag bridge.
“They’ve redeployed,” he said flatly.
Thompson was circling around on his way back, due to return in about fifteen minutes. When he returned, they’d be equal in strength to the Nick fleet.
He hoped Thompson and his remaining capital ships would hurry, that their ETA would prove unduly pessimistic. Damned coward should have stopped running and started shooting the moment Ruyter’s fleet came out.
With Cervantes’ realignment complete, the tactical situation had devolved to nothing more than a pounding match. Numbers counted on this kind of thing.
But so did technology. His guns were better.
As he watched, a grinning messenger came over from one of the radios. Spoke with a plotting-table officer, who removed a model from the southern end of the PNA line. From its location, it was the Marx, one of Nick’s newest and biggest battleships.
It had been, Ruyter thought.
Not any more.
*
The huge PNA battleship was up-ending, its prow rising almost a hundred yards into the air. Steam boiled into the sky as the ship’s burning superstructure – from the name emblazoned high on her prow, she was the Marx – made contact with the water. Men and debris tumbled from elsewhere on the ship, into water slick and shiny from spilled gasoline. Here and there, patches of the water had been set alight, and those fires seemed to be spreading. Some of the men – there were hundreds in the water – waved at Reiner’s boat as he passed, mistaking 144 for a friendly.
“You want me to open up on `em, boss?” asked Pulli.
“Don’t even think about it,” Reiner growled.
“Yeah, I know. I was just saying. Just in case. You know?”
A couple of heavy-caliber shells came down nearby, to the immediate stern of a PNA battlecruiser perhaps two hundred yards away. Their waterspouts rocked 144 hard.
On the other side of the dead Marx was a capsized destroyer, floating amidst a wide pool of burning gasoline. Making cautious circles around the flames were two USC MTBs. A third was approaching from the north.
“That you, boss?” asked Kaye.
“Yeah,” said Reiner.
“I’m here, too,” said Schaffer.
“On the way in,” said Grey. “You see me?”
“I see you,” came another voice. “And you’re fucked, Reiner.”
“Who the hell is that?” Reiner demanded.
“This is Chavez, chingada. And your time’s come.”
Half a dozen PNA boats, led by one with glittering red eyes at the bow, appeared from around the dying Marx to the north.
Immediately behind Grey.
Five of their bow cannon fired simultaneously. Grey’s 149 swerved, but not fast enough. At least two of the shots struck home, and Grey – run, damn you! – stopped.
Engines gone, Reiner realized absently. As the half-dozen shark boats opened up with heavy and light machine guns. Bullets shredded 149.
“Mayday!” screamed Grey. Pointlessly.
Two lines of heavy tracers ripped into his cockpit. Reiner watched helplessly from two hundred yards as Grey died.
Not helplessly.
He’d known Grey for months. In wartime that was like decades.
“You got the wrong guy, Chavez,” Reiner snarled. He raised his right hand above the cockpit and waved hard at the Isabella. “That was my XO. I’m still here. Come and get me, you motherfucker.”
*
Reiner’s – no, not Reiner’s, dammit – MTB, was a sinking wreck. Bullet-riddled corpses in the cockpit.
“He says to come and get him,” Chavez told the commanders of the five shark boats that were all that was left of his subgroup. Over the squadron frequency, because he’d taken personal command. “Do what he says. Kill them all.”
*
“Run!” Kaye shouted over the radio. 147 was already turning.
You haven’t changed at all, Reiner thought. You’re still a fucking coward.
No. They were outnumbered two to one. Against Chavez, who was as skilled as they came.
“Run,” Reiner agreed. “Follow me!’
*
“You filthy coward!” Chavez snarled over the radio as the Isabella and the other five boats gave chase.
“Come and get me, Chavez,” Reiner growled back. “If you can.”
“I can,” said Chavez. “I’ve got the Isabella back, remember? Fastest boat we had.”
“Then try. Unless you're scared?”
Reiner – from his zigzagging MTB a hundred and fifty yards away, as tracers whipped out from the Isabella through the air all around him – turned and waved.
Chavez returned it with an obscene gesture.
“I’ll kill you,” he snarled into the radio.
*
144, followed closely by Kaye and Schaffer, roared up the semi-dispersed line of PNA battleships. Heavy USC shells landed, throwing waterspouts into the sky. Machine guns blazed up at USC fighters as they streaked in and out on low strafing runs. Massive explosions as the PNA capital ships blasted away at the USC line of battle. A distant but bigger explosion as one of the Nick shells struck home.
Reiner caught a glimpse of that fireball, on the four-miles-distant USC line of battle. Big fireball, which had evidently once been a battleship.
What do I do? How do I fight twice my number of shark boats?
I don’t, Reiner thought. I go for friendly ground.
Doesn’t matter who kills Chavez. If he follows me into a trap, he’ll be just as dead as if I shot him personally.
“Head east,” Reiner said over the radio. Then switched to Spanish: “Chavez, follow me if you have the balls. I don’t think you do.”
*
Boom.
The battleship shell landed ten feet from one of Chavez’s boats, blasting it – in pieces – high into the air. Wreckage flew a hundred feet into the sky. The waterspout and the blast wave capsized another, which had been only about thirty feet away.
Reiner was leading them for the cruisers that were all that remained of Ruyter’s screening force, aside from one or two surviving destroyers and a few MTBs that had been playing cat-and-mouse with their PNA counterparts amidst the PNA line of battle.
They’re four miles away. Got to get him before he makes safety.
One of Chavez’s surviving boats fired his bow cannon. It struck Reiner’s boat – or one of his, Chavez couldn’t tell – in the stern. Fireball. Smoke boiled up from the engine.
“Hold tight, Schaffer!” came Reiner’s voice over his squadron frequency.
The other two boats turned around. As Chavez’s four remaining boats raced to within a hundred yards.
“I was keeping this one in reserve,” came a younger voice over the squadron frequency. “Fire – now!”
A torpedo slid off one of the MTBs. The other one fired its cannon.
The cannon scored a direct hit, right on the waterline of one of Chavez’s boats. That boat stopped moving, started to rapidly sink. Men bailed out.
The other two, and Chavez’s, changed course. To avoid that torpedo. Still bearing in on the damaged – Schaffer?
“You’re dead, Schaffer,” said Chavez over the radio. The Isabella’s bow cannon fired at the stationary, fifty-yards-away, target. Explosion amidst the smoke of the old one. The boat’s machine-gun was silent, and the Isabella poured fire into it.
*
150 was up-ending. Survivors in the water.
The Isabella coming in at a slow coast. Her quad fifties already lowered.
A terrified memory washed over Reiner.
He was not going to let this happen again.
One of the PNA boats drew closer. Machine-gun fire blazed.
Pieter sighted and fired. The shark boat’s whole bow disintegrated. And somehow 144 was slowing, for some reason-
Calina lay slumped over the controls, blood everywhere. A fist-sized exit wound in the back of his skull.
Reiner pushed the corpse aside. There’d be time to mourn later.
