“Bring us up along the enemy’s port at pointblank range!”
The pilot looked wide-eyed at his captain, but he said, “Aye, aye, sir.”
John spoke to Strubewell and Tordenskjold then, telling them to ready the crew for broadsides first and then for boarding.
Burton hoped that he would be ordered to join his marines. They had been sitting deep within the hurricane deck, behind locked doors, waiting. During the entire battle, they had not been informed of anything. All they knew was that the boat had rocked and shaken from time to time, and thunder had roared outside their room. Doubtless, they were all keyed up, nervous, sweating, wondering when they would see action.
The Rex plowed The River in a furrow angling in toward the stricken vessel. The gap between the two swiftly shortened.
“Batteries B2, C2, and D2 will aim for the pilothouse top deck,” John said.
Strubewell relayed the orders. Then he said, “Battery C2 doesn’t reply, sir. Either the communication’s cut or it’s out of action.”
“Tell C3 to aim for the pilothouse control room.”
“You forget, sir. C3’s definitely out of action. The last salvo got it, sir.”
“B2 can do it then,” John said.
He turned to Burton. His face looked purplish in the night-light. “Get to your men now, Captain,” he said. “Be prepared to lead a boarding party from the midport side.”
Burton saluted and sped down the spiral ladder. He got off at the hurricane deck and hurried down a corridor. His men and women were inside a large chamber outside the armory. Lieutenant Gaius Flaminius was outside the hatch with two guards. His face lit up when he saw Burton.
“We’re going into action?”
“Yes,” Burton said. “Very quickly. Get them out here into the corridor.”
While Flaminius bawled orders, Burton stood at the corner of the two corridors. He would have to lead his force down the corridor going to the outside. They would have to wait there until the command came down to board the Not For Hire. Or, if the communication system wasn’t working, he would have to judge for himself when to order the attack.
It was while the marines were being lined up in the corridor that the broadside from the Not For Hire struck. The explosions were deafening; they made Burton’s ears ring. A bulkhead down the corridor bulged in. Smoke poured in from somewhere, setting everybody to coughing. There was another roar that shook the decks and deadened their ears even more.
Up on the bridge, John hung on to the railing and shuddered as the boat vibrated. At a range of only thirty feet, the portside rocket batteries of four decks of the Rex and the starboard rocket and cannon and steam gun batteries—those still in force—of the Not For Hire had poured fire into each other. Great pieces of the hull had flown spinning into the air. Entire batteries of rockets and their crews had disintegrated in flame and smoke. The two remaining cannons on Clemens’ boat had been torn from their mounts as the shell supplies behind them were touched off by rockets. Two steam machine-gun turrets, one on each vessel, had caved in, opened as a can opens to a metal punch, then had been peeled apart as rockets or shells came in through the tears in the metal.
The great boats were wounded beasts, cut open, their insides exposed, bleeding heavily.
In addition, certain batteries on each craft had aimed volleys at the control rooms, the brains of the beasts. A number of missiles had shot by their marks, either splashing harmlessly into the water or striking elsewhere. A few plumped ashore, starting more fires. None had hit the pilothouses directly. How they could miss at that range was inexplicable, but this often happened in combat. Shots that should have gone astray did not, and dead-certain shots went awry.
The sharp nose of the Not For Hire turned, whether from design or accident, John could not know. Its prow sliced into the giant port wheelguard of the Rex, tearing it off, lifting its many tons up and off and precipitating it into The River. The prow continued on, crushing the paddles, bending the frame of the wheel, and then snapping off the massive wheelshaft. In the midst of the eardrum-shattering explosions, the screech of tearing metal, the screams of men and women, the roar of burning hydrogen, both boats stopped. The impact of the collision hurled everyone who wasn’t strapped in to the deck. The prow crumpled in and up, and water poured in through several rents in the hull.
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