But then again, it didn’t need the Danes. It had its own howling engines, and those engines were its executioners. A three-and-a-half-ton sledgehammer loaded with over a hundred gallons of gasoline and twenty-four eight-inch rockets smashed into an eight-hundred-ton, fifty-eight-gun warship at something in excess of seventy miles an hour.
Vadgaard felt his elation turn to horror as the American ship collided with the Johannes Ingvardt. He’d realized at once that his desperate broadside had managed somehow to score a hit, despite his target’s incredible speed. He’d also realized that only blind luck had made that possible, and he’d watched in disbelief as the American’s wake twisted and knotted like a berserk serpent writhing in its death agony, obviously with a dead man at the helm.
But then it turned one last time and hurled itself into the very center of his squadron like some arrowhead of vengeance upon its killers. Johannes Ingvardt’s frantic effort to repeat Christiania’s lucky hit failed, and then both ships vanished in yet another explosion that sent fresh wreckage arcing into the smoke-sick heavens.
The explosion seemed to rip Hans’ heart from his body. He stared down at the rising smoke cloud where two of the up-time brothers who had saved his life—and his family’s—had ended their own lives, and something snarled inside him.
There. That was the ship. The one whose fire had first crippled the Outlaw and sent it into the weaving dance to its own death.
He banked around, then dropped the nose and lined it up on his brothers’ killer.
Vadgaard never knew what prompted him to tear his eyes from Johannes Ingvardt’s death. Perhaps it was no more than instinct. Or perhaps it was something else. It didn’t really matter.
He looked up to see the flying machine headed directly toward Christiania. There was something about it, about the straight, unwavering line of its course, that suddenly told him he’d been wrong about how harmless it might be.
There was no way he could possibly elevate Christiania’s guns high enough to engage a flying target, but his ship, too, was loaded with infantry destined for Wismar, and he bellowed frantic orders.
Hans’ target grew rapidly as he peered through his improvised sight. There was movement on the ship’s deck, but he paid it no attention. His entire being was focused on stick and rudder pedals, on keeping that ship pinned at the heart of his fury, and he reached out for the firing switches. Given their crude accuracy, Hans was determined not to release the missiles until the last possible moment, at point-blank range. With the plane armed with only four rockets, at stations 3, 4, 5 and 6, he could fire all of them with one flip of his fingers.
Fresh flame spouted from the flying machine, and Vadgaard heard someone screaming. It might have been curses, or it might have been prayers. Either would have worked as well . . . or as poorly.
Three more missiles came scorching down out of the heavens, and this time there was no question about where they were aimed. One of them missed. A second slammed into and through the main deck, but miraculously failed to explode. And the third hit squarely in the center of the foredeck and exploded on contact. Blast and splinters plucked men away like angry hands, the foremast swayed drunkenly and collapsed, and smoke poured up out of the wreckage. Orders warred with panic as officers and petty officers fought to impose order and extinguish the flames before Christiania followed Anthonette and Johannes Ingvardt into destruction.
Vadgaard screamed for the musketeers he had assembled amidships to fire as the flying machine continued directly toward them. Their volley crashed out, discipline overcoming fear.
The flying machine flashed by very low, crossing Christiania in a stuttering buzz of sound. Vadgaard couldn’t tell if they had hit it, though he prayed fervently that they had.
The hammer hit Hans in the abdomen, and for a moment, he was back on a bloody field outside Badenburg.
It was the second time a bullet had hit him there, but this time he didn’t lose consciousness. Not that it mattered.
He looked down, then covered the hole in his jacket with his left palm. It scarcely slowed the pulsing flood of scalding blood, and then the pain hit, and he knew.