Running down upon the surviving ships of the devastated High Seas Fleet in the comforting embrace of the gigantic wave, the exaltation Forte experienced was headier than sex, sweeter than love: it was the exaltation of victory.
The keels of capsized ships, the bobbing bodies of their crews, the hordes of Texans converging on the carnage in the hope that some Russians remained alive to nourish their vengeance, and especially the disarray of the remaining men-of-war were evidence that the battle was won and that he and the Texas were triumphant. No matter that the combined fire power of the enemy ships would now be concentrated against them, or that they could not possibly survive the assault- they had struck a blow from which Russian prestige could never recover. The Washington Protocols, which would have ensnared the United States in Russia’s diplomatic web, was a dead letter, as dead as Admiral Grell and Gwillam Forte and the U.S.S. Texas soon would be.
For a moment, while the Texas’s Elbows had raked the Dzerzhinsky without drawing answering fire, Forte experienced a wild rush of hope: perhaps by some miracle the Russian fleet’s guns had all been stilled and he would yet sink them every one. That hope drowned under the collapsing wave, which buried Forte and his flying fortress in a cataract of foam and spray.
Sputtering, half-blinded, and bruised by the force of the water, Forte was saved from being flung against the bulkhead and crushed only by his shoulder harness. The bridge was knee-deep in water that had poured through the open portholes during the inundation. It sloshed about the chair as the ship wallowed in the trough, where it had almost disappeared for good. The ship itself was out of control. It careened crazily from the opposing forces of gravity dragging its saturated hull down, buoyancy pulling it back up, jet thrusters propelling it around in a tight circle. Forte was riding a bucking bronco with a burr under its saddle.
“Why the hell are we circling?” Forte demanded through his mike. The radio circuits, at least, had survived, for Ed Curry’s voice came crackling back.
“We’re checking, Will. Stand by.”
“The ship’s spinning like a top.”
“I know-something’s gone haywire. Hold on.”
“What the hell do you think I’m doing?” Forte growled, his left hand white-knuckled from his grip on the chair arms.
“Port-side stern thruster valves are inoperative- jammed shut,” Curry reported after a moment. “The starboard thrusters are on full power, spinning the ship.”
“Well, shut ’em down!”
“Can’t. We’ve tried,” Curry said unhappily. “They’re jammed open. The impact must have knocked the control jet out of line or displaced the splitter.”
“Well, do something! If the ship can’t maneuver before the Russians get steam up and close in, I’m a sitting duck.”
“We’re doing the best we can. But-”
But already through the spray and mist that still separated the Texas from its enemies, the Russian proton guns had found the target and were hammering away at the ancient ship.
The Russian weapons had high-capacity but old-fashioned cryogenic storage rings, which could deliver pulses with energy outputs of up to 175 kilojoules. Pulses at that level were as destructive as medium-size lightning bolts. But the ships’ generators had been put on stand-by when they anchored. For the moment, the PGs scarcely pitted the armor plate of the old battleship. For the moment, the Texas was safe.
Still, power would build fast, and Forte knew that salvation lay either in flight or in sinking his three enemies before they could bring their combined power to bear. Fight or flight . . .
Flight was impossible-the jammed stern thrusters ruled out that possibility.
The crackle of proton streams striking the superstructure was a symphony of riveting guns as the power of the Russian weapons slowly built up. Hot metallic chips rained down on the flag bridge overhead, and the air was filled with the stench of burning paint. Somewhere nearby a stanchion was severed from its base, and tumbled to the deck with an ear-splitting clang. Another tremendous thud on the flag bridge as part of the mast fell indicated that the decoy transmission from the foretop was working, that the Russians were concentrating their fire on what they mistakenly considered the Texas’s nerve center. Sooner or later, though, despite the protection of its magnetic deflectors, it would be pounded into melted rubble.
Meanwhile, his own guns were exacting a toll from the enemy. As his ship swept around in circles, Forte blasted each enemy in succession. But with sinking heart he realized that the Russian fire power was increasing faster than he could destroy it, even though he zeroed in on the enemy’s PG mounts rather than the ships themselves. At this rate, they would sink the Texas before he could put a single one of them out of action.
One more-that was all he asked. Just let him sink one.
And he would, if only his guns had more power. If only the damned ship would come to rest, rather than waste its …
Power.
“Ed!” he cried, “switch the power-”
“No can do,” Curry interrupted. “The valves are stuck, and we-”
“Stick the valves! Switch the power from steam to electrical generation. Shift it from the propulsion units to the Elbows accumulators. Can you do it?”
“Why-why I guess-of course we can do it.”
“How soon?”
“A few seconds.” He turned away from the mike in SD-1 to issue a stream of orders. He came back on. “Listen, Will-there’s one thing: those accumulators can store only so much juice without blowing up. Once the switch is made, you’ve got to keep those Elbows firing.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“Because if you stop for a second, the accumulators will overload, and you’ll blow up the Texas.”
“Got it-now give me the power, boy!”
“It’s going on-line now.”
The number-two reactor, generating power for the Elbows, was joined by the other three, as Ed Curry’s technicians switched them one by one on-line.
The effect was, well-electrifying. The ship slowed, as the water jets and stern thrusters shut down, and the destructive force of the Elbows leapt to unprecedented, untested levels. Before, the electron beam had drilled holes in the enemy superstructures, cut through splinter shields surrounding enemy PG mounts, and creased the armor-plated command centers. Now the beam sliced through armor plate like a knife through water. Up to this moment, Forte’s battle plan had been the methodical attrition of the enemy’s fire power, since there was relatively little of it. With the tremendous power now at his fingertip, he could go after the ships themselves.
The shorter the distance the electron beams had to travel, the less energy was dissipated boring holes through the atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen molecules. That meant that the Yezhov, the closest of the enemy ships, was most vulnerable. By the same token, its PG weapons were inflicting the most damage on the Texas.
Forte focused his eyes on the Yezhov’s bridge, the command center. A blaze of white light obliterated it, and the vaporization of the boiling metal cast its own yellow incandescence over the ship. Its support cut away, the Yezhov’s foremast collapsed, toppling like a giant of the forest onto the forecastle. The Russian ship’s proton weapons fell silent.
Forte’s gaze fell to the Yezhov’s water line. Instantly a hole appeared in the hull of the ship, and channel water heated to the boil by the beam-heated hull surged into the ship. Forte’s eyes moved fifty yards aft, and another hole appeared in the water-line armor. From within the ship came a brilliant flash as the Elbows beam penetrated the after magazine, igniting the missiles stored there in a chain of explosions that tore off the whole portside of the helicopter carrier, spewing fragments of its hundred aircraft broadcast down the channel. Belching fire to the last, the Yezhov settled on its side, the oily channel waters closing in over it like a pall.
The vastly increased fire power of the Texas was as yet unmatched by that of the two remaining Russian ships, but the gap was beginning to close. Furthermore, while the Texas lay dead in the water, the speed and maneuverability of the missile carrier Rykov and the superbattleship Karl Marx were rapidly increasing. Worse yet for Forte, to achieve maximum performance from their PG weapons, Admiral Grell had ordered his ships to steer straight for the Texas where they could fire at point-blank range, reducing the advantage of the Texas’s beefed-up electron guns.
The Rykov was now off the Texas’s port bow, a floating shambles that somehow kept coming despite the fire Forte was pouring into it. Its masts had been sheared off, its boats were cinders in their cradles, its stack and armored sides perforated with a thousand holes. Still, it didn’t sink. He had knocked out at least 80 percent of its guns, but those PGs still operating blinked back at him with ever brighter eyes. Their aim, too, had been diverted from the foretop decoy to the bridge and superstructure. So far, magnetic deflection had turned aside the streams of protons directed toward the flag bridge, but the Russian crews were hammering away at the base of the mast now. Any minute it could begin to buckle; if the mast fell, Forte would fall with it.