"Grenadiers to the rigging. Set for delay—I want some penetration on this thing, people," Pahner continued, cutting off a fresh slice of bisti root and slipping it into his mouth. The general outline of this fight had been worked out in advance—as well as it could be, at least, when no one had ever actually seen whatever it was that ate ships in this stretch of ocean. Well, never seen it and lived to report it, at any rate. But, as usual, the enemy wasn't playing by the plans. It had been assumed that they'd at least get a glimpse of the beast before it struck, which should have given them at least some chance of driving it off first. Now, all they could do was fight for the remaining six ships and hope to rescue a few of the survivors.
Sea Skimmer was sinking fast by the stern, but she was going down without a list. If they could finish the fish off in a few shots and send in boats, they might save most of those on her deck. The ones below deck were doomed, unless they could fight their way to the main hatch or swim out. It was still a hell of a way to lose a quarter of a battalion, its commander, and probably a damned fine junior officer with them. But there hadn't been many good places to die on this damned trek.
He glanced at Roger again, and shook his head. The prince had headed for the shrouds and was trying to get a better vantage point. Give him credit for trying, but Pahner doubted the prince's rifle was going to win this round.
As he thought that, the first harpoon gun boomed.
"I doubt that even you can do anything with a pistol, cousin," Honal said with a handclap of grim humor. His cousin, the former crown prince of Therdan, had drawn all four pistols at the first cry and had them trained over the side before the warning's echoes had faded.
"True," Rastar said now, and reholstered three of the percussion revolvers. "But if it comes after us, I'll at least let it know I'm here."
"Best stand clear, whatever else you do," Honal said dryly. "Our fine sailor friends are about to see if a harpoon is better than a pistol!"
"Well, that depends on the harpoon and the pistol," Rastar grunted in laughter. "After all, it's not what you use; it's how you use it!"
"And I intend to use it well!" the chief of the gun crew called. "But if you're in the way of the line as it flies, you'll be a red smear! Clear!"
The gun was fitted with a percussion cap hammer lock. Now the gun captain gave Honal and Rastar a heartbeat to duck to the side, then took a deep breath and yanked the firing lanyard.
The bang wasn't really all that loud, but the smoke cloud covered the entire foredeck, and there was a whippity-thwhip! as the coil of hawser at the base of the pintle reeled out. Then there was a cry from the rigging.
"Target!"
"Rig the line!" the gun captain bellowed, and the crew warped the five-centimeter hawser around a bollard as the rope began to scream and smoke.
"Prepare to come about on the port tack!" Pentzikis' captain shouted.
"Rig the line into the clamps!" the gun crew chief called. "The damn thing is going to go right under the keel! If the captain's not careful, it'll take us right over on our side!"
"Let that line run!" the ship's captain barked. "Come onto it when we're on tack!"
"Haul away!" the gunner cried. "We're getting slack!"
"Hold on!" Rastar shouted. "The Tor Coll is about to run across the rope!"
"Contact!" Sergeant Angell called over the company net from Tor Coll's afterdeck. "Sir, we have solid contact."
"Right," Pahner acknowledged, glancing at the formation. "Have your captain keep falling off to port. I want you to take a heading of nearly due south and try to drag this thing off Sea Skimmer. Sea Foam, take another shot. All units, engage with care. Try to get some rounds on it, but don't hit the other ships."
Hooker 's own harpoon gun boomed behind him as the schooner came around to starboard. It wasn't, strictly speaking, proper. The ship with the prince on it should be sailing out of harm's way, not into it. But with the fish pinned, it was probably safe enough.
Tor Coll passed above the thrashing shadow, and a huge white and green waterspout appeared behind the schooner. The depth charges used a combination of a grenade detonator and local blasting powder. Pahner hadn't been sure they would function as intended, but it turned out that they worked just fine. Bilali's very first drop scored a direct hit, and the monster fish flopped a few more times, then drifted gently to the surface, belly-up. Its underside was apparently covered in chromatospores, since it was flickering through a riot of colors when it broke the waves. It rippled a dozen shades of violet, then through the spectrum until it began flickering green, and finally stopped and slowly turned a cream color.
"Get that target longboat alongside Sea Skimmer. Launch all the ships' boats, and let's start recovering survivors. Warrant Officer Dobrescu!"
"Yes, Captain?" a calm tenor replied. Pahner glanced over his shoulder, and saw the speaker standing beside the mainmast while he gazed at the floating monster with an air of almost detached contemplation.
Chief Warrant Officer Dobrescu had been one of DeGlopper's shuttle pilots. Flying a shuttle was a relatively safe job, although it hadn't quite worked out that was this time around. But in a previous life, he had been a Raider Commando medic, a person trained not only to stabilize a combat casualty, but to repair one if necessary. His accidental inclusion on the trip had been, literally, a lifesaver. A factor he was sometimes at pains to point out, not to mention complain about.
"I want you to prepare to receive casualties. If there are none, or if they're limited, I'll want your input on our little find here."
"Yes, Sir," the medic replied. "Of course, I'm a shuttle pilot, not a xenobiologist, but it looks like a coll fish to me. And that's my professional opinion."
"It's a coll fish," Captain T'Sool said. Ima Hooker's captain rubbed his horns, then clapped his hands. "It's impossible, but may the White Lady damn me if it isn't one."
One of the Hooker's sailor's held up a dripping bag in both true-hands. The oil-filled sac was common to the coll fish, part of its buoyancy system. But in normal-sized ones, the sac was the size of the last joint of a human thumb and filled with what, to Mardukans, was a deadly poison. As it had turned out, that oil was possibly the only substance on the planet that the Marines' nanites packs could convert into the numerous lipid-based vitamins and amino acids the planet's food lacked.
"Well," Kosutic said. "At least we've got plenty of feed for the civan. And that's enough coll oil to keep us for quite a while," she added, gazing at an oil sac that was at least a meter across.
"It's still a net zero," Pahner growled. "We lost an entire ship getting it, along with half of its crew, damned near two full companies of infantry, and three more Marines. I don't like losing troops."
"Neither do I," Kosutic agreed. "And this trip says it all. His Putridness' hand has certainly been over us the whole time."
"What just happened?" Eleanora O'Casey asked, as she climbed up through the main hatch to the deck.