Thumped them hard, Alston thought, as the enemy's guns answered. This time there was a screaming from the gun deck, dying away quickly. An eighteen-pounder ball clipped the mainmast, gouging a bite out of the white pine as neatly as a giant's teeth.
Again and again. Her eyes combed the Tartessian vessel, looking for hints…
"Brennan," she said to a middie. "To the gun captains; we're going to rake her."
A quick glance backward: the Lincoln was lying in the Chamberlain's wake, trading broadsides with the next Tartessian in line. Back at her own opponent: outer and flying jibs down and a thin stream of blood flowing out of her scuppers.
"And the one behind her; we'll fire both broadsides. Then port guns reload with canister; we'll range in, sweep her decks, then board. Boarders and starbolins ready."
The youngster sprang off. She turned to Jenkins. "Now, Mr. Jenkins, if you please."
"Thus, thus!" he said. And "Haul all port, handsomely port!"
The bosun's calls and pipes repeated the call across the deck. The Chamberlain spun on her heel, taking the wind on her port quarter now, running before it to cut the Tartessian's wake. She held her breath…
"Yes!"
The enemy were too badly damaged to react quickly. The Islander frigate closed the distance with a lunging swiftness, throwing rooster-tails of salt water from her sharp bows. An almighty roar from astern distracted her for an instant; her head whipped around. Fire and a black swelling rising, bits and pieces of timber and probably of people… one of the Tartessian ships had blown up.
Back to her own work. Another grumble-rumble, as the portside guns ran out as well.
"Fire as you bear!"
Thudding reports ran back along both sides of the ship from the bows, smoke overwhelming sight for an instant, then blowing on in a mass ahead southward. The Chamberlain's broadside had swept down the Tartessian's gun deck unopposed for a hundred and twenty feet. Even from here she could hear the screaming and could well imagine what damage had been done in those crowded quarters.
"Ready about!" she called.
"Ready… come about!" Jenkin's voice replied.
The wheels spun, and the deck teams heaved again at their lines. The Chamberlain turned, running east once more. Alston's legs moved automatically to meet the changing slope of the deck, going from horizontal to starboard-down. Close enough to the enemy to toss a ship's biscuit onto their bloody decks-still crowded with men, fighting forward toward the rails, a few even swinging grapnels. Now the Gatling teams spun the clamp-wheels that held their weapons to the starboard rail, lifted the heavy weapons free and rushed them across the deck, set up in a dance of trained hands, and opened fire in a stream that cut men down and sliced lines like a giant's sickle. The port guns ran out again, fired a point-blank wave of grapeshot, crews cheering.
"Boarders!" Alston roared through the smoke. "Boarders!"
The sides of the ships slammed together; grapnels flew, and crew-folk ran out along the spars to lash them together. Armed Guard crew were spilling out of the gun deck, and a column of Marines with their bayonets glittering.
"Boarders away!" Alston shouted. "Follow me!" Then she was on the rail, leaping, the slamming punch of impact through her boot soles as she came down on the lower deck of the Tartessian. A shambles, running with blood, dead and wounded everywhere, but more live ones coming at her. Another thud beside her-Swindapa, stumbling slightly on the slippery planks and going down to one knee. A Tartessian sailor lunged at her with a boarding pike, its long steel head a cold glitter in the rain.
Alston pulled the.40 Python from her right hip and shot him in the face at three pace's distance; he fell backward with a round red hole in the bridge of his nose, the back blown out of his skull. One man down, two, another, a miss, and the weapon clicked empty. She threw it into the face of the next and her hands went over her left shoulder and swept out her katana, cutting down with the same motion. Ruin flopped at her feet.
Swindapa had done likewise, lunging with a shriek. More Chamberlains were all around her, a tangled, tumbling melee for an instant, and then the enemy were down. She walked over to the shattered wheel, cut the line that held the Tartessian colors, and a crewman ran the Stars and Stripes up to the mizzen. A Tartessian lying with one hand pressed over a seeping redness on his stomach was holding out his sword to her in the other.
"Sur-r-ender," he gasped. "Not kill… any more… my people…"
Alston nodded; their eyes met, and for a moment she felt a kindred grief touch hers.
"Surrender!" she called, and the wounded man added his croak, calling loud enough to bring a grimace of pain.
Fighting died down and ceased. Middies and petty officers got the enemy rounded up and below, sent parties to secure the magazine. Alston looked westward, to where the sun was inclining behind the gray scudding wrack of cloud. The next Tartessian ship had struck as well, the flag of the Republic fluttering from the maintop and the Lincoln fast alongside. The one behind was rolling mastless as the Sheridan fired another broadside into her at point-blank range.
She took a deep breath. "Let's go finish this mess up," she said.
"In the name of the Council and People of the Republic of Nantucket, this Town Meeting will now come to order."
Jared Cofflin cleared his throat. Ian and Doreen had talked him into that one, then laughed every time they heard it. So had Martha, and so had Marian. Swindapa and I were the only ones left out of the joke. Eventually they'd looked it up. Senatus Populusquae Roma-SPQR, the letters on the standards of the Roman Republic, "the Senate and the People of Rome." Very funny.
The new Town Meeting hall was a lot bigger than the high school auditorium where they'd met for the first few years after the Event. It needed to be. Besides the increase in the population, attendance was way up. The issues decided here were a lot more important these days.
The new hall was out Madaket Road, west of town, not far from the old animal hospital, which given the occasionally zoo-like features of a Meeting, wasn't entirely out of place. It was a huge, timber-framed, barnlike structure, oak and white pine on a poured-slab foundation; the interior was unadorned save for the lovely curly maple of the bleacher-type seating that surrounded the semicircular stage on three sides.
Behind the speaker's podium were more benches, where councilors and their staffs sat; behind them, covering the wall and as large as a medium-sized topsail, was Old Glory. Martha was sitting beside him on the foremost bench, and Marian Alston on the other, stiffly, with her billed cap on her knees.
Sotto voce she muttered, "We could have had another frigate for the price of this place."
He nodded, more an acknowledgment of what she'd said than agreement. They'd needed a new place for the Town Meeting, too.
Especially today. There were going on three thousand crowded in here, jammed onto benches that normally seated around two-thirds that, and sitting in the aisles as well. The rustle and murmur filled the shadows under the great beams of the roof, and there was a faint tang of animal rage in their scent.
Prelate Gomez walked to the podium and said a brief prayer. That got them quiet, and he went on, "Now we will have a minute of silence for those who fell defending their homes, families, and children."
Silence absolute and complete, except for a quickly hushed baby or two. Ninety-seven people had died during the long day of invasion, heavy losses for a community their size. That over a thousand Tartessians and their mercenaries had also died was very little consolation.