Reed shook his head. “I underestimated poor Billingsley! He may have been an apostate with no idea what the true stakes were, but it seems he served me quite well, at any rate. The irony is, he would have been utterly horrified to learn who I serve!”
“The Dominion,” Gray spat.
“Don Hernan,” Reed corrected, “and the True Church.” He twitched the pistol. “Don’t mistake me; I love my country-this land-but no power on earth can hope to oppose the Dominion for long, nor should it.” He smiled. “You see, oddly enough, I’ve become a Believer. In any event, I decided it was better to join the Dominion Church and serve from within, than to be conquered and suffer the devastating consequences. I’m a patriot, working to secure New Britain’s proper place within the Dominion, as a partner-not a possession!”
“You’re a traitorous son of a bitch, serving a sick, perverted, cartoon church full of freaks!” the Bosun stated simply.
Reed’s eyes flared. “You may sing a different tune when this day is done!”
“Perhaps you refer to the Dominion fleet coming from the south?” Courtney asked. “Of course you do. In that case, I propose it is you who will be dreadfully disappointed. We discovered its advance quite early this morning and… um… sufficient fleet elements have sortied to intercept it. All of Home Fleet and the harbor defenses have been alerted as well. No fleet can pass those forts, sir! We once nearly stopped a much larger fleet with much less!”
For the first time Reed’s expression showed uncertainty. “That’s a lie!” he snarled.
“What?” Matt asked. “That we know about the fleet? Or that it’ll be stopped? Obviously we know about it, and that’s enough to stop it. Courtney’s right about those forts. Besides, where is Don Hernan? You don’t really believe he’s off leading a charge. My God, you stupid bastard. Why’d he kill that poor girl? The bastard bolted, leaving you with the bag!”
Harrison Reed seemed to sag. “Very well,” he said. “Perhaps you’re right.” He straightened and his aim steadied. Gray tensed, ready to spray him down. “I won’t hang,” he said simply. “You surprised me today, Captain Reddy. You killed one of my very best.” He snorted. “Not exactly sporting, your ploy at the end, but you did hold your own and manage to get the job done.” He took a breath and slowly lowered his pistol to the chair beside him. “I’m no Lemuel Truelove,” he confessed, “but I challenge you to kill me man to man. You will have your revenge, and I will have paradise.”
Matt hesitated only a moment, then inverted the Springfield and drove the bayonet hard into the wooden floor.
“Skipper!” objected Gray, but Matt ignored him while Reed smiled and drew the ornate rapier at his side. Before anyone could say another word, Matt’s hand went to his belt and came away with his 1911 Colt. 45. Flipping the safety off with his thumb, he shot Harrison Reed four times in the center of his chest.
“The hell with you, you murdering bastard,” Matt said as Reed gasped and dropped to his knees. “I hope that didn’t hurt much. I’d hate for you to even Think you were going to paradise!”
Stites giggled. “ Damn, Skipper!”
Matt looked at him, then glared at Gray. “C’mon,” he said, “we’ve still got work to do.”
Commander Frankie Steele was actually secretly a little surprised at how well his first independent action was going. Walker was battling virtual behemoths, but all their massive power was no match for the old destroyer’s speed and maneuverability. The enemy battle line had broken, immediately sensing Frankie’s main objective and trying to put their ships between Walker and the remaining transports. The troop-filled transports were the key. Without them, the whole Dominion operation was pointless. Massive red-sailed ships of the line, or “liners,” veered to defend the steamers and bring their guns to bear. In so doing, they lost cohesion, massed firepower, their advantageous wind-and all semblance of organized control.
Ponderously, the mighty ships turned, thrashing the sea with their heavy guns, as many as fifty to a side, mostly in Walker ’s churning wake. They’d scored a few hits with what had to be twenty-four-pounders or better, but the damage had been minimal. Smoke streamed from new holes in a couple of Walker ’s stacks, and she had a new hole the size of a porthole in the guinea pullman. Other than that, things had all gone the old destroyer’s way.
The new exploding shells she employed for only the second time came as a rude surprise to the Dominion Navy. They weren’t much, still just hollow copper bolts filled with a gunpowder bursting charge, detonated with a contact fuse. They didn’t penetrate worth a damn. They had the math to put them right where they wanted them now, however, even propelled by black powder, and any bursting charge going off on a crowded gun deck covered with guns being loaded with fabric powder bags could be cataclysmic. One Dominion ship of the line had simply blown up, and another was burning fiercely. For penetration of hulls and destruction of masts, Walker still had an ample supply of solid bolts. Euripides and Tacitus were close to joining the action now as well. They didn’t carry as many guns as the liners, but theirs were newer-bigger even than Achilles ’-throwing thirty-pound balls. Frankie estimated that the enemy had wasted more metal shooting at Walker than the old ship weighed.
Ahead, in a gap cleared by the explosion of one of the liners, four of the transports lay helpless before Walker, seeming almost to cringe like rabbits as the greyhound saw them and turned to give chase. She’d have to steam directly between two liners to get at them, but one had lost its foremast and the other actually seemed to be turning away. Defying his own strategy to remain at a distance, Frankie sensed an opportunity to end the fight with a swift, bold stroke.
Answering bells for “ahead flank,” the blower roared, and Walker made her lunge for the sheep.
“Concentrate all fire port and starboard with explosive shells at the enemy warships until we pass between them, then hammer those transports!” Frankie ordered. Smoke belched from the transport’s stacks as they poured on the coal and tried to turn away even as Walker swept down upon them, streaming gunsmoke. She pounded the disabled ship to port with the number two and number four guns, and the one apparently trying to flee to starboard with numbers one and three. The heavy “antiaircraft” guns, mounted in tubs where the aft torpedo tubes had been, raked both ships as well, and their pounding roar was joined by the staccato bursts of the. 50s on the amidships deckhouse. Exploding shells penetrated deeply into the relatively unprotected bows of the liner to port and detonated within, spewing shards of copper aft that savaged gun carriages and hewed bodies. One round finally passed nearly the length of the deck before exploding and gouts of white smoke whooshed sporadically out her gunports as exposed powder bags lit. The ship shuddered from almost continuous secondary detonations, and smoldering gunners actually crawled out the gunports and flung themselves into the sea. A greasy black ball of smoke roiled into the sky amidships as something flammable, lamp oil perhaps, ignited and spread burning liquid on the deck. The red main course caught fire and the flames spread quickly upward, devouring the sails above. The ship didn’t explode, but she was fully engulfed in flames as Walker sped past her.
The ship to starboard had received a severe beating as well, and her ornate, garishly decorated stern galleries were a shattered shambles, gaping wide like an open mouth with broken teeth. Many of the aft guns on the two main gun decks were probably dismounted or crewless, but the ship had turned almost directly into the wind and for a few moments Walker was steaming parallel to her, less than five hundred yards off her port beam-and the remaining thirty-odd guns of that broadside. Almost too late, Frankie realized the mistake he’d made. The ship hadn’t been fleeing; it had been turning to do exactly this: voluntarily taking the punishment Walker meted out, just to bring its own guns around.