He had come close, however, his sole remaining Spoiled might actually have done the deed if Lethridge’s companion hadn’t intervened. The woman’s face disappeared into instant blackness as the bullet tore through the Spoiled’s brain and Sirus felt a painful howl of frustration filling his mind. The connection to his fellow Spoiled was lost as the howl continued, accompanied by a lacerating fury as Catheline gave full vent to her feelings.
Sink that fucking ship, Admiral, her mind boomed in his head. Whatever the cost. I want that bitch dead!
He had organised his ships into a broad semicircle, the two more lightly armed sloops at either end and heavily armed frigates in the centre. The whole affair would have been over fairly quickly if a sufficient number of Blues had been with them, but it transpired the aquatic drakes were unable to keep pace with steam-powered ships for more than a few hours at a time. Consequently, their accompanying force of two dozen Blues were nowhere in sight when the Protectorate fleet hove into view, obliging Sirus to fight the battle with the forces on hand.
He ordered the two sloops to use their superior speed to dart close to the battleship, loose off a rapid salvo then withdraw so as to divide the enemy’s fire whilst the frigates’ barrage did most of the damage. All the while the Reds conducted harassing dives on the battleship, sweeping her decks with fire. It had been an effective if costly tactic so far, most of the Reds had fallen to the battleship’s deadly repeating guns and a sloop and a frigate had been destroyed thanks to sheer weight of gunnery. But it was working. The big ship could only take so much more, despite her captain’s impressive manoeuvring and the desperate courage of her crew. All they had to do was draw back a mile or so and let her exhaust her reserves of product before closing in for the kill. But with Catheline’s command the time for tactical niceties was over.
Sirus ordered his three remaining ships into a tight formation and launched them head-on at the battleship. The other sloop went down first, striking out in the lead only to be caught by a mixture of heavy and light armament when she drew within four hundred yards of the enemy. Both her paddles were wrecked within minutes and her boiler exploded as she foundered. The Losing Proposition went next, felled by a lucky plunging shot to the magazine, which left the Imminent Demise to face the dying monster alone.
“Midships,” Sirus ordered as the frigate’s bow swung north. He sent a command to the engine room to set both paddles into forward motion but a glance through the side-window told him it wouldn’t be enough.
The battleship loomed over the smaller vessel as the two ships closed, the repeating guns on the Protectorate ship raking the Imminent Demise from stern to bow. Sirus dived to the deck as cannon shells and bullets tore the bridge apart, showering him with shattered glass and timber. He felt the ship heave to port and looked up to see the helmsman lying near by. A cannon shell appeared to have punched clean through the Spoiled and he lay gazing at the smoke rising from the hole in his chest, yellow eyes curious rather than afraid.
Sirus tore his gaze from the sight and scrambled upright, lurching towards the wheel in the vain hope he might correct the ship’s course whilst she could still make headway. He was propelled off his feet before he could reach it, the entire ship wracked by a mighty shudder as the battleship rammed into her port beam at full speed. Ironwork screamed in protest as the huge ship’s prow tore into the guts of the Imminent Demise, steam exploding up through the sundered deck as her boiler burst. For a moment it seemed as if the battleship would slice the frigate clean in two but then her velocity suddenly diminished, Sirus assumed due to her blood-burners finally exhausting their fuel.
He had been thrown clear of the wrecked bridge and found himself clinging to the starboard railing. The sea seemed to be heaving around him and he realised the two ships were now locked together in a mad dance. The frigate’s starboard paddle was still turning and the battleship had brought her auxiliary engines on-line, forcing the two vessels into an erratic pirouette as neither had sufficient power to break free of the other. However, a quick scan of the minds of his remaining crew told Sirus the Imminent Demise would soon live up to its name. The impact had torn a gaping rent in the port hull plating and several tons of water had already deluged the hold and the ballast tanks. She would go under in minutes.
Sink it! Catheline’s voice in his head, shrill and undeniable in its compulsion. Kill her!
Sirus found a pair of Spoiled crewmen attempting to shore up the hull and sent them to the magazine instead. He also found a drowning Spoiled trapped beneath an iron beam in engineering. The man had been an armourer on a Protectorate vessel before his capture and it was an easy matter to pluck the required knowledge from his head before the rising waters claimed his final breath. Sirus instantly shared the knowledge with the two Spoiled in the magazine. They completed the task with the kind of efficiency only the Spoiled could display, pushing the detonators into the sacks of propellant and rigging the fuses in a scant few minutes.
Sirus clambered back onto the listing deck of his short-lived command, gazing up at the prow of the battleship above. The Profitable Venture, he read from the iron-lettered plate behind the great ship’s anchor mounting. Not today, it seems. A bullet ricocheted off the bulkhead a few feet away as a Protectorate marksman tried his luck. Sirus ignored it, instead focusing his gaze on the tallest figure he could see amongst the riflemen assembled along the battleship’s rail. Whether the man was the captain, or even an officer, he couldn’t tell, but Sirus straightened and offered a perfect salute nevertheless. It seemed only polite.
He never knew if the man returned the salute for at that moment Catheline’s thoughts pushed their way into his. Very noble, I’m sure, Admiral. But we still have need of you. Time for a swim.
This command was no more resistible than the others and Sirus turned and sprinted for the starboard rail without pause, chased all the way by Protectorate rifle fire. He leapt over the rail and dived into the sea, plunging deep and staying below the surface as he swam away. The magazine blew when he had covered perhaps twenty yards. The blast wave would probably have killed a non-Spoiled, forcing the remaining air from his lungs and propelling him to the surface, his back arched like a bow.
Air flooded his lungs as he reared up out of the water, floundering for a brief time before his instinctive panic receded. He let the fear linger as he bobbed on the surface, gazing at the final moments of the two warships. The explosion had torn the Imminent Demise free of her ugly embrace with the larger vessel and she foundered quickly, Sirus once again sharing the final agonies of a drowning crew.
The Profitable Venture took longer to die. The explosion had torn away most of her prow, revealing the corridors and compartments of her innards. Smoke and flame gouted from deep within her then died as the decks flooded. Her stern reared up as the forward section became inundated, her massive rudder turning this way and that like the tail of some huge, wounded fish. The battleship emitted a last, forlorn groan as she sank, men dropping from her flanks like flies escaping a submerging corpse. Then the rudder slipped into the patch of frothing sea and she was gone.