“Eeeeeek!”
The hatch was propped open above her, and as soon as she fell through onto the canvas (“Thump! Eeekeekeek!”) the prop was pulled out and the hatch slammed down into place. Or almost into place, since there were various bits and pieces of screaming, yelping Guldur and Goblan protruding from the seam, where they’d been trapped as the hatch slammed shut. Bayonets flashed and they quickly became, in a very real sense, dead weight.
Here in the hold the Keel generated around 1.25 gees, and again the weight of Broadax and her entourage of curs and ticks was too much for the sailors holding the tarp. They hit the deck with a thump, “Whumph! Urk . . . urk . . . urkk?”
Broadax bellowed, red faced as she swept the luckless sailors with blazing eyes and a mangled stogie. “Oh ye bastards. Ye damned bluebelly bastards,” she howled, rolling the smashed remains of her cigar in her teeth. “I’ll get ye for this. I swear I will.”
“Eek. Ge-eek-eek-ook!” Her monkey added threateningly.
Together she and her marines quickly dispatched the Guldur that had entered with her. Broadax stood in resplendent, gory red glory. Her red marine jacket and sailcloth trousers had been slashed to a few tattered ribbons. Only her round iron helmet and her coat of fine Dwarrowdelf chain mail remained, but they were again covered with a red jacket. As were her hair, face, head, arms, and legs. A solid layer of red blood coated her from head to toe. Her monkey, too, was like a sticky red wraith, barely discernible from the rest of her body as it moved about. Indeed, the monkey blended in with the rest of her like some bizarre, macabre extension of an alien being. Together they formed a symbiotic fellowship that was a living incarnation of death.
Above them the Guldur were pulling up on the hatch. Several ropes suspended from the hatch. Numerous sailors and marines hung from these ropes, using their weight to keep the hatch down as the ropes were secured to tie-off points on the deck.
Meanwhile a mass of marines flicked their bayonets up at the protruding bits of Guldur. They expertly removed the fragments of organic debris that blocked the hatch from seating firmly, like a surgeon would use a scalpel to remove the debris and decay that stopped a tattered wound from sealing tight.
The hatch finally fell fully into place and was dogged down firmly. They made one last check of all the hatches and flipped a piece of canvas so that it concealed the exposed, shattered Keel. Above them the enemy was already hacking at the hatch covers, but it would take time to cut their way through. They dove through the hatch to the upper hold where they would pick up Mr. Tibbits and make their final departure, posthaste.
Melville leaped joyfully onto the railing and hurled himself into the gap created by the cannon blast, grasping a double-barreled pistol in each hand. His bare feet slipped and skidded on the writhing, moaning, yelping mass of bloody fur as he landed. His monkey clung to his back with six legs and swung its belaying pin around with its top two legs.
To his left were Corporal Kobbsven and Gunny Von Rito. The massive Kobbsven bore a mighty, two-handed claymore, and Von Rito had only an ancient K-bar fighting knife in his hand.
To Melville’s right was the ranger, Josiah, with Valandil’s dog at his side. As soon as he stood up, Josiah threw his rifle to his shoulder and fired two shots. > “Crack-Ack!” He moved as quick as thought, the two shots coming so close together that it was almost impossible to tell them apart. Two officers on the enemy’s distant quarterdeck each took a rifle bullet to the head. The .50 caliber minié balls exploded out the backs of their heads and launched the ticks from their shoulders. The ranger’s dog barked with joy as Josiah moved forward smoothly, dropping his rifle and drawing two pistols from his sash.
Petreckski followed immediately behind Melville, already firing the pistol in his right hand, with more ready in his belt. > “Crack!” The shot was fired over Melville’s shoulder, instantly dropping the first cur who stood in their way. The midshipmen came along behind and beside the monk, each of them with pistols in their hands and more tucked into their sashes.
The majority of the Kestrel’s marines were fanning out to their left and right, followed by wave after wave of her sailors, ship’s boys and ship’s dogs. These were followed by the cook, the medicos, the wounded, and a furry mass of very irate cats.
The goal was to gain and maintain momentum. They couldn’t permit themselves to be trapped in the bow of the enemy’s Ship. They needed to spread out so that their superior numbers could be brought to bear. It was vital that they make a space for the entire crew to escape. Each crewman aboard the enemy Ship was another life saved and another warrior who could hurt the enemy.
Melville ran forward across the dying, writhing, yelping mass and pointed his pistol at the first Guldur to raise up in front of him. The curs stood on their hind legs, and their clawed paws gripped swords and pistols every bit as well as a human could. But their heads were purely canine . . . or lupine. The men of Westerness preferred to think of them as canine. Curs and mutts, not wolves. However, the distinction was moot when one came at you with its fangs bared, a sword in its paw, and a Goblan tick on its back.
The curs’ size varied greatly. Most were slightly smaller than a human. Some were quite a bit smaller. With a gray tick on their shoulders, even the small ones formed a fearsome fusion of species that was taller than a human. The ticks hung on with their legs, while their arms usually held a long knife in each hand.
A few curs were considerably larger than humans and they tended to carry an extra large tick. These were usually Guldur officers and it was just such a creature that rose up in front of Melville as he raced forward.
Melville didn’t hesitate. Muttering “Front sight, front sight!” to himself, he thrust his right pistol forward. The Guldur were still disoriented by the sudden blast of the cannon. The ones who had survived needed just a split second to adjust themselves to what happened. Melville was determined not to give them that split second. Tempo, tempo, tempo. The momentum of the attack was everything.
He superimposed the pistol sight over the enemy’s throat, brought the front sight briefly into focus and thumbed the Keel charge. > “Crack!” Since it was propelled by a small Keel charge instead of gunpowder, the sound of a rifle or pistol in two-space was much smaller. Melville noted that the effect of auditory exclusion, the tendency to shut out noises, was also greatly reduced. He distinctly heard this smaller sound, whereas in his last battle he’d tuned out the larger sound.
Regardless of how it sounded, it placed a high-velocity .50 caliber ball precisely up through the top of the cur’s throat, shattering the base of its skull, traveling on through and slamming into the chest of the tick on its back. Guldur were notoriously hard to kill, but no creature survives a bullet to the base of the brain. The cur crumpled back like a toppled statue. Its tick went down with it, a miniature parody of its Guldur mount, arms spread wide and face turned upward as it fell.
The ease with which he dispatched this huge enemy officer was reassuring to Melville. He continued to take each of his three remaining pistol shots with calm precision as he moved swiftly forward. > “Crack!” > “Crack!” > “Crack!”
He had a vague impression of Corporal Kobbsven’s great sword slashing red havoc among the enemy ranks to his left, and Josiah and the dog weaving an intricate network of red death to his right. What was the dog’s name? Melville thought. How odd to think of that question now!
All around him the sailors and marines of the Kestrel fought in swirls of blue and red jackets. Most of them had fired both barrels of their muskets early on in the battle. They were now little more than pikemen, fighting with their bayonets.
Around their feet the ship’s dogs snapped and bit, confronting the ticks that tried to attack and infiltrate the battle line down low to the deck. Beside them were the ship’s boys, also joyfully gutting ticks, and hamstringing and “neutering” the curs with their razor-sharp knives.
There were even a few ship’s cats mixed into the melee. Greatly distressed, irked, outraged cats. The ship’s cats never participated in boarding parties, and seldom participated in combat at all. Their job was to control the rats, mice, cockroaches, and the other, alien, critters that tried to hitch a ride on the Ship. Now they found themselves mixed into a boarding party and they didn’t like it. Not one bit. The ship’s dogs and boys responded to the battle with their customary boisterous, gleeful spirits.