Their actions brought him precious seconds of time, diverting fire from the slower attack planes. He spared a quick glance to starboard again; his remaining three Goliaths were still with him.
Looking to his left, he saw chaos. The aerosteamers from Wilderness and Perryville were boring in on the two battleships astern. Smoke was coiling up from a dozen or more wrecks dotting the sea, while tracers slashed back and forth. The lead Falcon was already over the battleship, soaring past it, his gun still firing.
A jolt snapped his attention forward. Another jolt came as a tracer slashed past his windscreen. A stream of tracers from a gun aft was snaking around, following him. Yet another jolt, and the sound of glass shattering. He was glad he didn’t have a copilot, because the man would have been dead.
Range was half a mile.
An explosion. To his right, the Goliath on his wing was gone.
He focused forward.
Water sprayed up, slashing through the broken window. His ship dropped, as if the spray from the explosions would push him down into the sea. He surged back up, over correcting, losing speed. Pushing throttles to the wall, he nosed over and leveled out, then another jolt shredded the wing just inside from the port engine.
Six hundred yards.
Another round hit the forward windscreen, more glass shattering. Something tore at his right arm.
He reached down, wrapping his hand around the release lever.
More spray, tracers crisscrossing. A Falcon flew directly across his path, nearly colliding.
Four hundred yards.
He touched the rudder in, leaning into the sight, judging the angle. He pulled the lever.
Nothing happened.
He pulled again. And still nothing. The damn safety pin!
Fumbling, he reached around to the side of the lever, found the pin, and yanked it out.
Another jolt. He looked up and realized that he was off alignment, turning out and away. He jammed the rudder back in, realizing he was crabbing, that the torpedo would strike the water at an angle, and not nose straight in. If it didn’t break up, the fuse might not arm.
Stick over, coordinate with rudder, straighten back out.
Three hundred yards.
He grabbed the lever and pulled.
His airship surged up. Now what?
Bank to port, starboard. He had never thought to discuss it, to plan it, he might pull across right in front of someone else. He pointed straight at the enemy ship and pressed in. The seconds passed, fire crisscrossing. He pulled up, skimming over the deck, too terrified to look to either side. Cleared of the ship, he nosed down slightly and raced out for several hundred yards without a shot being fired, then finally several of the guns on the enemy’s port side opened up, tracers splashing the water around him.
He started to jink, still running low across the water. A half mile out he finally began to turn, for the enemy cruisers in close to shore had all come about and were speeding toward the beleaguered battleships.
As he turned, he finally looked back toward his target. The torpedo should have crossed the three hundred yards. A lone Goliath was zooming over the stern, a Falcon directly above it.
And then the bow of the ship seemed to lift, a massive column of water, several hundred feet high, a blinding flash sweeping over the deck, seconds later another explosion farther aft. As he continued to climb, he saw both battleships, sterns blazing, the farthest aft with its bow blown clear off, the ship already settling.
It had worked! By all the saints, it had worked. Now the only question left was how to get his crate home.
Yasim stood in stunned silence. Damage control parties raced past him without ceremony, dragging hoses. Flames swirled up from the foredeck, the ship all but dead in the water.
A thunderclap of fire burst across the western horizon, the battleship Yutana going up. Behind it, Motaka had rolled over, keel pointed heavenward.
“Sire.”
He stirred from his thoughts and dark contemplations. It was Admiral Ullani.
“Sire, I suggest that you transfer your flag.”
Yasim nodded, saying nothing.
“Sire, we can save this ship, but come dawn they might strike again. It would be best if you were on a vessel that can maneuver.”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
He looked back to the burning city. All this to achieve what? He wondered. This contemptible place, for what?
It was time to turn about, to find Hazin, to find out the real reasons for all of this, and then to kill him.
Minutes later a cruiser slowed, lines snaking out to the stricken flagship, swinging in close so that a chair could be run across to bring the emperor over.
Word had flashed through the ship that the emperor was leaving, from his third bodyguard, to a message runner, straight to an ammunition handler in the main magazine.
Twenty years prior he had taken the Oath of the Novitiate of the Third Order, had taken his assigned task and lived it across all the years, in a dozen battles, two hundred feet aft of Yasim and forty feet below him. He had even received, from Yasim’s own hand, a commendation for heroism at Tushiva. And all that time he had waited, never knowing when the order would come or how it would come. It had arrived only the night before and only if the ship had already been hit seriously, otherwise he was to do nothing.
The ship had been hit, the emperor was fleeing, and the word had come.
He silently said the blessing of parting as he walked into the main ammunition locker. Powder bags for the great guns lined the walls, each in its own rack, sealed inside a wooden container. He had done the routine a thousand times, in drill and in battle. Lift the wooden container out of the rack and walk with it out of the powder locker room, the door guard opening and closing the barrier. An assistant loader would take the container and run it into the ammunition hoist; then he would turn, go back, and do it again.
This time he tore the lid off one of the containers, drew a concealed folding knife out from under his shirt and flicked the blade open. The hilt of the knife was cunningly made; a simple twist and a small container popped open, a simple wooden match falling into his open hand.
With the knife he slashed open the powder bag, a cascade of black powder spilling out. He pulled another lid open, did the same, and then a third. The door opened, one of the assistants putting his head in.
“Pava, what…?”
The Novitiate of the Third Order held the match up, and with his thumb flicked it to life. Smiling, he touched it to the stream of black powder pouring out of the torn bag.
Richard Cromwell sat on the beach, drunk from the wine, watching as the fireball soared a thousand feet into the air. The civilians around him had been cheering the spectacle of the air battle and its aftermath as if it had been a chariot race. The explosion sent them into a new frenzy of celebration.
He was disgusted with the whole affair and felt no qualms about relieving them of another sack of wine, which they were more than happy to provide to the hero.
The emperor was dead, and somehow he knew it was Hazin who had done it.
They came just after sunset, five aerosteamers, soaring in from the northwest.
Togo, as always, heard them first. The men around Keane began to stand up, incredulous, several of them laughing, saying it was only a hallucination.
But it was not.
The first aerosteamer, a Falcon, winged over, swooping down on the ravine to the west, stitching it with gatling fire. Men who were so parched that they had not spoken for over a day, cheered hoarsely, pointing, laughing as the tables were turned. The next two were Goliaths, flying straight toward the butte. They came in low, throttling back, and for a second Abe thought that they were going to try some mad landing.