"So what plan do you recommend, Your Highness?" the captain asked after a moment.
Roger turned to look at him. The mottled plastic turned the prince's face into an unreadable set of shadows, but it was clear that his mind was running hard.
"I guess you're serious," Roger said quietly. He turned back to gaze at the distant ships and thought about it for perhaps thirty seconds. "Are you saying I should take command?" he asked finally, his voice even quieter than before.
"You're already in command," Pahner pointed out. "I'll be frank, Your Highness. I don't have a clue about how to fight a sea battle. Since you obviously do, you should run this one. If I see anything I think you've overlooked, I'll point it out. But I think this one is ... up to you."
"Captain," Kosutic asked over the dedicated private command circuit, "are you sure about this?"
"Hold on a moment, Your Highness," Pahner said, turning slightly away from the prince. "Gotta let 'em out of the nest eventually, Sergeant Major," he replied over the same channel.
"Okay. If you're sure," the noncom said dubiously. "But remember Ran Tai."
"I will," Pahner assured her. "I do."
He turned back to the prince, who was pacing back and forth with his hands clasped behind him, looking at the sky.
"I'm sorry, Your Highness. You were saying?"
"Actually, I wasn't." Roger stopped pacing, pulled out a strand of hair, and played with it as he continued to look at the sky. "I was thinking. And I'm about done."
"Are you going to take full command, Colonel?" the captain asked formally.
"Yes, I am," Roger replied with matching formality, his expression settling into lines of unwonted seriousness as the weight of responsibility settled on his shoulders. "The first thing we have to do is reef the sails before the squall sinks us more surely than the Lemmar."
* * *
"They're reducing sail," Cra Vunet said. The five other raider ships had completed their own turns before the wind from the storm hit and were following the Rage in line ahead.
"Yes," Cies said thoughtfully. "Those edge-on sails probably tend to push them over in a high wind. I imagine we'll be able to sail with it quite handily, compared to them."
"We'll lose sight of them soon!" Vunet yelled through the sudden tumult as the leading edge of the squall raced across the last few hundred meters of sea towards the Rage. "Here it comes!"
The squall was of the sort common to any tropical zone—a brief, murderous "gullywasher" that would drop multiple centimeters of rain in less than an hour. The blast of wind in front of the rain—the "gust front"—was usually the strongest of the entire storm, and as it swept down upon them, the placid waves to windward started to tighten up into an angry "chop" crested with white curls of foam.
The wind hit like a hurricane, and the ships heeled over sharply, even with their square sails taken up to the second reef. But the Lemmar sailors took it with aplomb; such storms hit at least once per day.
"Well, they're gone!" Cies shouted back as the strange ships disappeared into a wall of wind, rain, and spray. "We'll stay on this course. Whether they fall off to windward or hold their own course, we'll be able to take them from the front. One shot from each ship, then we go alongside."
"What if they alter course?" Vunet shouted back.
"They're going to find it hard to wear around in this," Cies replied. "And if they try it, they'll still be settling onto course when we come on them. And the storm will probably be gone by then!"
* * *
"Come to course three-zero-five!" Roger shouted.
"I'm having a hard time punching a laser through to Sea Foam!" Julian yelled back over the roaring fury of the sea. "The signal's getting real attenuated by all this damned water!"
"Well, make sure you get a confirmation!" Pahner shouted, almost in the NCO's ear. "And we need a string confirmation on it!"
"Will do!"
Roger looked around the heeling ship and nodded his head. The Mardukan seamen were handling the lines well, and the situation, so far, was well in hand. The human-designed schooners had come well up into the wind, steering west-by-northwest, close-hauled on the starboard tack, in a course change which would have been literally impossible for the clumsy Mardukan pirates' rigs to duplicate. In many ways, the current conditions weren't that different from other storms they'd sailed through along the way, but they hadn't tried to maneuver in those. They'd simply held their course and hoped for the best. In this case, however, his entire plan depended upon their ability to maneuver in the storm.
It wouldn't be disastrous if they were unable to effect the maneuver he had in mind. It wouldn't be pleasant, but he was fairly certain that the schooners could take at least one or two shots from the pirates' bombards, assuming the simplistic weapons could even be fired under these conditions. But if they managed to pull off what he had in mind, they should suffer virtually no casualties. If he had to take losses, he would, but he'd become more and more determined to hold them to the absolute minimum as the trek went on.
The rain seemed to last forever, but finally he sensed the first signs of slackening in its pounding fury. That usually meant one more hard deluge, then the storm would clear with remarkable speed. Which meant it was almost time to start the next maneuver.
"Julian! Do you have commo?"
"Yes, Sir!" the sergeant responded instantly. "I got confirmations of course change from all ships."
"Then tell them to prepare to come to course two-seven-zero or thereabouts. And warn the gun crews to prepare for action to port, with a small possibility that it could be to starboard, instead. Tell the captains I want them to close up in line, one hundred meters of separation, as soon as the rain clears. I want them to follow us like beads on a string. Clear?"
"Clear and sent, Your Highness. And confirmed by all ships."
"Do you really have any idea where they are?" Pahner asked Roger over the helmet commo systems.
"Unless I'm much mistaken, they're over there," Roger said, gesturing off the port bow and into the blinding deluge.
"And what do we do when the other ships follow us 'like beads on a string'?" the captain asked curiously.
"Ah," Roger said, then glanced back at the commo sergeant. "To all ships, Julian. As soon as we clear the rain, send the sharpshooters to the tops."
The ship heeled hard to port as a fresh blast of wind from the north caught it, and Roger casually grabbed a stay.
"It's clearing," he observed. "Now to see where our other ships are."
"The Foam is right behind us," Julian said. "But they say some of the others are scattered."
The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun, without even the slightest tapering off, and the rest of the K'Vaernian "fleet" was suddenly visible. The Sea Foam was some two hundred meters behind the Hooker, but the rest were scattered to the north and south—mostly south—of the primary course.
Roger looked the formation over and shrugged.
"Not bad. Not good, but not bad."
Pahner had to turn away to hide his smile. That simple "not bad" was a miracle. It was clear that getting the flotilla back together would take quite a few minutes, and any hope of simply turning and engaging the enemy whenever they appeared, was out of the airlock as a result. But the prince had simply shrugged and accepted that the plan would need revising. That was what a half a year of almost constant battle on Marduk had taught the hopeless young fop who'd first arrived here ... and that, by itself, was almost worth the bodies scattered along the trail.