Ganymede (The Clockwork Century 3)

“But either way, they’re headed for us?”

“Looks like it. ”

“To blazes with the lot of them, then. Troost!” Cly yelled. “Get in here! Deaderick, can you show him around the top ball turret and get him situated?”

“If he makes it fast!”

“Fast is our only speed right now. We don’t have time for anything else,” he noted, swinging the chair around and seeing Troost come tearing through the rounded charge bay door.

“Right here, Captain. Early, set me up and I’ll start shooting. We’ll hit ’em from above and below, both. ”

The captain said, “Good man,” and then flashed Fang a worried look. Those Texian ships … he could see the underside of one approaching, and before he had time to ask where the rest of them were, Houjin cleared it up for them.

“Captain, I see three Texas boats, all incoming. The fourth has headed back around the far side of the island. It looks like one of them doesn’t have an antiaircraft gun and it’s moving a lot faster. It’ll be on us before the others. ”

“Ladies, get us another charge loaded and ready!”

It wouldn’t be shootable until Deaderick returned, because God knew nobody else on board had the faintest idea how to calibrate the weaponry, but better to have it ready for firing than add to the delay of setup. In the back of the craft, Cly could hear footsteps and scrambling, and then the squeal of metal being drawn down a track unwillingly—followed by a ratcheting sound that meant something was either going up or coming down, with gritty, forced precision.

Muffled conversation occurred, and then, without warning, a spray of bullets bucked from the top of Ganymede’s hull, giving the whole vehicle an excuse to shake—and nearly giving the occupants their death of fright, even though everyone knew it was coming. The suddenness of it, and the volume of it … and then the quivering of the compartment … it was too much, too fast. Bullets strafed across the water and clomped against hulls or battered guns and sank through the torsos and limbs of men on deck.

All these things hit the water, and some of them sank. Some of them floated.

Deaderick hustled back into the main cabin, and into the engineer’s seat. “He’s got it,” he announced, and immediately began to configure the charge bays for firing. “What’s our next target—what’s … what’s closest? Which one?” he amended, realizing that there were now two more boats within their immediate view. Never mind the darkness; the small suns of burning hydrogen, rockets, and artillery fire gave the sky a peculiar glow that offset the bottoms of the Texian boats, making them easier to see from down below.

Cly didn’t care which one went down first, and he almost said so. Then he changed his mind. “Huey, which one doesn’t have the antiaircraft?”

“The one to the

left. To the south, I mean. The one that was moving fastest. ”

“I didn’t see which one was fastest,” the captain confessed. “Got distracted. Left craft, Early. Ready, aim, and tell the ladies when to fire. ”

He fixed a switch and called, “Fire!”

With a pounding sound and a protracted swish, the shell barreled across the bay and collided with the leftmost Texian patrol boat—which was bowled nearly over by the impact, and then came utterly apart when the charge caught, and blew, and sent fragments of the boat in a million directions at once. It sank almost immediately, without the stuttering hesitation of the first boat—and without the dignified fractures of the second. This boat was in bits before it went under, more kindling than craft.

Several corpses plunged in with it, lacerated and bleeding from thick slivers of timber or the charge itself. A stray limb went spinning by, slapping against the window and leaving a streak of gore that washed away quickly, swiped aside by the plant life of the bay and the pace of the Ganymede, which churned forward toward the remaining boat.

“Huey, does this last one have antiaircraft?”

“It looks like a support cruiser, but I don’t see any signs that it’s firing from the deck. It’s turned the wrong direction. I can’t see it clearly enough to tell for sure. ”

But from their own deck equivalent, Troost was shooting like a maniac—threading the bullets into the automatic firing machine with the unmitigated joy of a man who finally has something to do. He swept the water as well as he could, for the range wasn’t as good as true antiaircraft, but he picked a line of men off the support cruiser’s deck, or so Houjin narrated above the din of the Gatling clone above.

“He’s just about blown the pilothouse clear off the cruiser!” Houjin cried. “It’s falling down. The whole roof is collapsing—he hit a support, and cut right through it. That boat won’t do anyone any good, not for a good long time! But, oh! Captain!”

“What is it, Huey?”

“The last boat, the one I lost before—I see it again. Coming up around the west side of the island, and it’s got an antiaircraft mount, and … and … they see us, sir. They see us!” He swallowed, looked around the visor, and asked, “Sir, what do we do?”

“Where are Little and Mumler?”

“Can’t locate them, sir. Wait—I see one of them, making for the south-southwest. ”

Deaderick said, “He’s headed for the islands, the bottleneck. He thinks you’ve done enough damage, and he’ll meet us out there. Goddamn, I pray it’s the both of them. ”

“Can’t tell, Mr. Early. I’m real sorry. But this other boat, it’s coming in—not as fast as the other one, but fast. And they’re dropping the antiaircraft, sir—it’s pivoting on the deck. They’re going to shoot us!”