“Aye. Oh, aye, indeed, sir.” There was nothing but steely determination in those brown eyes. If anyone could pull this off, it would be his master gunner.
Now Mr. Barlet and a few hand-picked crews stood ready to fire the guns that would come to bear in the coming battle. The rest of his gunners stood by with pistol, boarding ax, and the straight swords of two-space sailors, waiting beside the medics below the for’ard hatch on the upper side, or concealed on the upper maindeck with the boarding party.
Mr. Hans (no longer “Chief” Hans, much to his dismay), hung in the upper rigging beside Valandil, the Sylvan ranger. Each of them had a rifle cradled in one arm. When Melville gave Valandil the opportunity to remain below on Broadax’s world, the ranger’s answer was yet another literary quote, said with the barest twitch of a smile, ” ‘Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.’ ”
Hans’ monkey scampered and frolicked next to him, apparently untroubled by the chill, and completely delighted by the quarter gravity of the upper rigging. Like the monkey, Valandil exulted in the dizzying heights and low gravity of this realm. The Sylvan race lived high in the huge trees of low-gee worlds. The ranger’s skill in battle was superb in any terrain, but here he was a supernatural fighter, and the sailors were heartened by his presence.
“I need a crack crew in the rigging, and your best quartermaster teams on duty at the wheel, above and below,” Lieutenant Melville had told Hans. “They need to respond quickly, and bring us to a gentle stop right at the enemy’s bow. The crew in the upper rigging has a special job. I want all of them to stay up high where the gravity is light. Swarm into the enemy’s rigging as fast as you can, stay high, head to the enemy’s stern, and drop down on their quarterdeck. Have sailors hidden in the crow’s nests to reinforce this action. Cut through or bypass any pockets of Goblan resistance in the rigging. Meanwhile, all the crew in the lower rigging will come up as fast as they can and reinforce the boarding party.”
Newly commissioned “Lootenant” Broadax stood with a quarter of her marines in the bow of the lower maindeck, smiling, caressing her ax, and humming to herself. She wasn’t sure about this “ossifer” business. Ossifers had to do a lot of talking and directing of folks, and she’d never been good with words. She always found it easier to hit people with something. But this battle now. This was something she could handle. Her monkey clung tightly to her back, making little squeaks of concern and protest.
“You will be in charge of the defense of our lower decks,” their new captain had told her. “Except I don’t want the lower decks defended. I want you to lure them in. Take the bare minimum force you need for the job. We will be in contact with the enemy only at the bow, so the space they can come across is fairly small. Detach the rest of your marines to support the boarding party on the upper deck.” Broadax nodded placidly and sucked in on her cigar as he continued.
“Hold at the bow just long enough for the crew in the rigging to escape through the hatches. Stand for a minute at the for’ard hatch, then give them the gundeck, taking all the gunners down with you. Drop down into the hold and dog the hatch. I want to give them full run of the lower-side maindeck and gundeck, but not the hold. Then immediately evacuate Mr. Tibbits and your whole crew to the upper maindeck and reinforce our boarding party.” Again she nodded, exhaling a cloud of noxious smoke that formed a small, low-lying fog bank.
“Do not let them into the hold. If you run the curs will chase. Their instinct, their ‘honor,’ and their doctrine demand it. But if they get into the hold and see the condition the Keel is in, they’ll run back to their Ship like their tails were on fire.” Still Broadax said nothing, only pulling in a drag from her cigar and rolling it to a corner in reply.
“Lieutenant Broadax,” Melville continued, looking down into her beady, bloodshot eyes, “I want you to try very hard to avoid getting yourself killed. That’s an order. I need you and your marines to reinforce the main boarding effort. Is that all understood?”
“Yes, sir!” the Dwarrowdelf replied, fondling her ax and exhaling deeply, adding fresh reinforcements to the toxic fog bank at her feet. “Minimum force below ta draw the curs in. The rest’ll be under Corporal Kobbsven up here. Down below we’ll let the blueboys in the rigging git out, then give the curs the maindeck. Then we git the gunners out, an’ give ’em the gundeck. Dog the hatches shut, an’ don’ let ’em in the hold. Git back ta the upper deck an’ come join the party.” She added with a saucy wink and a gap-toothed grin, “An’ don’ git me ossifer ass bit by no mutt.”
Old Hans shot a stream of tobacco overboard and laughed admiringly at this little joke at their new captain’s expense. Broadax seemed truly delighted with her role in this caper. You’d never know that she’d just been given the most dangerous mission in what was already a forlorn hope. Kind of a suicide mission within a suicide mission. And she loved it.
* * *
Tibbits sat in the hold with a hand on the Keel of the Ship. The old carpenter was sobbing unashamedly.
“Mr. Tibbits,” the captain had told him gently, “you stay in the hold and keep the Ship company. Once Lieutenant Broadax has cleared out, ask the Ship to hold for just another few seconds. Then immediately join the boarding party. Chips?” Melville continued, looking the old carpenter in the eye. “Resist the temptation to go down with the Ship. That’s an order. Your skills may be vital to convincing this new Ship to accept us. The survival of everyone on this Ship may depend on your being with us.”
Melville lowered his voice to a rasping whisper, husky with unshed tears, “Just tell her good-bye for us. Let her know we love her, and we will avenge her if she can hold on for a little while longer. If we do this right, old Kestrel herself will personally kill half of the enemy for us. Okay?”
The old man raised a tear-streaked face to his new captain. Not caring what the young lieutenant saw. He replied softly, almost inaudibly. “Aye, sir. Aye.”
Lieutenant Fielder was in a black funk as he stood in the upper stern of Fatty Lumpkin, which usually served as the captain’s barge. The other three cutters, Sharp-ears, Wise-nose and White-socks were sailing slowly along beside him, making an intentionally poor job of getting away from the coming battle.
“Put a skeleton crew in each cutter,” Melville had said. “Move away as though you were trying to escape, but make a poor job of it and stay reasonably close. Come around to the far side of our boarding, and take the curs in the rear, on the green-side of their upper maindeck. You’ll kick them in the tail, while we hold their noses!”
” ‘Kick them in the tail,’ ” Fielder muttered to himself. He was too depressed to respond with anything more than a scowl. Their little handful of crewmen couldn’t conceivably have any impact on the battle. To add injury to insult, Melville had loaded each cutter down so that they couldn’t possibly make any speed. “We should be able to put three 12-pounders in each cutter, if we lift the cannons from their carriages and store them separately. The curs may have killed our Ship, so we’ll take theirs, but we’ll save the cutters and as many of our cannon as we can.”
Like the rest of the Ship’s crew, they’d scrambled madly to prepare for Melville’s insane scheme. That was the problem with the navy. Put an idiot in charge, and you had a Ship full of idiots. Following a deranged dreamer’s daft scheme to the letter.
There was a very good chance that the Kestrel would die long before they boarded, in which case everyone on board would die. Or she might die during the boarding, in which case most of the crew would die with the Ship, and the rest would be butchered by the Guldur. The only ones with a chance of surviving were those in the cutters. Maybe, if they split up, some of them could escape the Guldur Ship. But loaded down like this, even that was a remote possibility. They were gonna die. . . .
Theoretically, you should be able to see forever across the vast, flat plain of Flatland. However, it seemed that the gravitational pull of the entire galaxy was so great that it actually pulled the light waves “down” toward the plain of Flatland within a fairly short distance. Or at least that was the dominant theory. Whatever the reason, the enemy Ship had been out of sight for several hours. Now its topsails were in sight, and it bore down on them relentlessly. The crew of the Kestrel could have used a little more time camouflaging their positions in the upper bow, but when the enemy drew into sight they were about as ready as they were ever going to be.