Beyond the breakers, the five Peteys were already moving in a defensive pattern, crossing one another’s wakes and circling back to confuse the enemy gunners. Then the pirate cannons thundered again, one ship a lot louder than the others combined. Splashes announced all misses, except for the ville. Cannonballs brutally impacted the weakening wall, smashing out chunks of masonry, men and debris flying everywhere.
An arm landed on the beach, and a brick shattered on the boiler of the tilting PT 144, putting a deep dent into the metal. Instantly steam whistled out of a tiny hole. Stumbling from the wheelhouse, the engineer walked around a leaking torpedo and shuffled across the bloody deck, trying to take in the sheer scope of the destruction. The rest of the crew was chopped into mincemeat, the hull broken wide open, the keel already resting on the sand at the bottom of the shallows. At least she couldn’t sink any deeper. Then a whistle caught the engineer’s attention, and he bitterly cursed at the fact the 144 didn’t even have engine power anymore. It didn’t make any real difference. The wreck was never going into battle again, but somehow it seemed to finalize her demise. The victor in a hundred fights, the deadly PT 144 had been reduced to a pile of timber in a heartbeat. Glancing around for the sister boat, the engineer saw Brandon and the crew of PT 264 racing away from shore.
“Hey, Lieutenant!” he shouted, waving an arm. “Over here! I’m still alive! Come back, sir!”
In response, a hail of miniballs hit the deck from the flintlocks of the ville sec men, and he dived behind the tattered remnant of the sandbag wall; reaching for his own blaster only to find the holster empty. Nuking hell, he had to have dropped it somewhere. Alone and unarmed, the man knew his chances for survival were zero. In a rush of blind anger, the engineer insanely stood and went to the Firebird nest. The flintlocks fired again, but the ball ammo only tugged his clothing in near misses, but never found flesh.
Bracing a boot on the smashed .50-caliber blaster, he managed to swivel the launch pod so that it faced the pirate ships. Fuck the ville. He wanted revenge on the men who had killed his ship! However, when he released the pod to light a match, it swiveled away, following the pull of gravity.
In the harbor, more harmless splashes dotted the ocean, then a hit slammed the Firebird pod of PT 75 overboard, taking six men with it into the drink. In response, PT 264 launched a lone Firebird that gracefully curved through the sky and punched through the hull of a pirate ship, detonating inside the vessel. Illuminated from within, the windjammer burst into a million pieces, flames licking upward to ignite the mainsail, even as the craft slipped into water.
“One for us!” the engineer cried, a humming miniball ruffling his hair in its passage. Grabbing a mooring line, the man lashed the rope around the pod, looped it over a cleat, then around his own waist. Lighting the main fuse with his match as it burst into sparkling action, he ducked low, holding on to the rope tightly.
He laughed in triumph as the pod jerked to the multiple launches, Firebirds erupting from the pod on a second. But then PT 144 rocked from the impact of another cannonball and the rope slipped from his hands. Fast and furious, the Firebirds continued to launch, now heading randomly for new targets.
“No!” the engineer raged, reaching for the pod, when it swung about, the hot exhaust washing over the deck. He was caught full in the face and promptly burst into flames.
Waving his arms and screaming, the man raced for the water, but tripped over the wreckage and the dead, again and again, until he was completely disoriented and began to crawl blindly for the edge of the ship, his flesh black and peeling away from his bones. The snipers on the ville wall ignored the burning man and turned their attentions to living targets.
Spiraling crazily through the air, the full salvo of rockets from PT 144 went in every possible direction.