Devil's Due (Destroyermen #12)(150)
“Thanks, Tabasco. Please tell Mr. Rodriguez that won’t be necessary. I have the conn. Replacements and corps-’Cats to the bridge, on the double. And please tell Mr. Parks to give me as much steam as he can. Maybe he can restore at least one boiler in the forward fireroom. If we can’t maintain speed when we clear the smoke, we’ve had it.”
“We have to clear the smoke, Skipper?” Stites asked.
Perry nodded. “How else are we going to put our starboard fish in the guts of those bastards over there?” ’Cats scrambled up from aft, some taking stations from the wounded and dead, others tending the ones that were replaced. Perry was just beginning to realize that somehow, he and some of the ’Cats around the starboard torpedo director were the only ones in the pilothouse not seriously injured—or killed. The scything fragments had missed them, just as they’d missed the glass. A Lemurian quartermaster’s mate suddenly appeared beside Stites at the wheel. “Return to your post, Mr. Stites. You’ll have plenty to do again shortly. As soon as we clear the smoke, open up on Savoie instead of the cruisers. Concentrate your fire amidships. We can at least raise hell with her secondaries, and they shouldn’t have it all their way. Then, as soon as we fire our torpedoes at the Grik BBs, we’ll make more smoke and go back for the cruisers, clear?”
Stites nodded, for the first time seeing something of Captain Reddy’s damn-all determination on Commander Perry Brister’s boyish face. “Aye, aye, sir,” he said.
USS Walker
“Savoie’s commenced firin’,” Minnie reported. “Lookout says,” she added. Matt only nodded; he’d seen it himself: a great pulse of bright light beyond the smoke. Then he heard it, of course. Walker wasn’t being fired on, probably hadn’t even been seen. Savoie’s targets were James Ellis and the other ships beyond the channel—all in easy range of the battleship’s guns. “Caam-peti estimates range at fifty-five hundreds, but is only a guess until he see better.”
“Very well. We need to get moving,” Matt told Rosen and Laan. “Increase speed to two-thirds. I’d go faster, but it would be pretty stupid if we smacked something in this smoke. We wouldn’t be good for anything then.” Walker’s fantail crouched in her wake and she rapidly accelerated to sixteen, seventeen, eighteen knots. She left the carrier’s smoke at last, but there was more, just a haze, but enough to blur her shape. At least Matt hoped so. Ahead, equally hazy, the Grik ironclad BBs were passing from view around the island into the channel, and Savoie loomed massive and seemingly unstoppable. She was probably only making six or eight knots, to keep from running down her consorts, but her short fo’c’sle and forward-raked fighting top made her seem to lean toward the sea she shouldered aside.
“Taar-get range, forty-eight hundreds!” Minnie called out, repeating Campeti’s new, firm estimate. “Course, two tree seero! Speed, seven knots.” She waited a moment, listening. “Range, forty-five hundreds. Caam-peeti requests can he commence firin’ main baatt-ery.”
“Request denied. Mr. Sandison?”
Bernie was crouching behind his torpedo director, staring through the sights, turning knobs. “Anytime, Skipper!”
Savoie’s forward guns fired again and again at targets beyond their view. So did her forward secondaries. Then flashes lit her port side, amidships, and four tall waterspouts erupted in front of Walker. Three were right in line; the fourth wild. “They’ve seen us,” Matt said, “and were pretty quick on the draw. too. Inform Mr. Campeti he may commence firing after all,” he told Minnie. “Mr. Sandison? Fire the port-side torpedoes.”
“Ay, ay, sir! Number two mount,” he cried into his microphone, making final adjustments, “stand by . . . Fire two! Fire four! Fire six! Fire eight!”
Matt heard the first two impulse charges, punctuated by the report of the numbers one and two 4″-50s firing in salvo. He felt the third and fourth fish leave the ship as he forced his way past Bernie’s “’Catfish” to look over the port rail. Bernie was already scampering to the opposite bridgewing and the torpedo director there. Five splashes straddled the ship and one shell hit just under him, leaving a long furrow and skating off to explode when it hit the water a hundred yards away. “Right full rudder!” he shouted. “All ahead full!” He searched the sea for the torpedo wakes while Walker heeled. There! One was heading for the island, lancing straight away from the tube, but three had dutifully made their turn and were streaming toward Savoie. “Left full rudder!” he said, leaving the rail and returning to his place as the deck leaned again. Six splashes, tightly clustered, fountained where Walker would’ve been without the radical turn. Three of her own guns slashed back, and he watched the tracers arc in and explode, one in front, two behind Savoie’s aft stack. Boats and deck timbers exploded into fragments and a small fire started. Less impressive but more numerous waterspouts started chasing Walker as who knew how many quad-mounted 13.2 mm Hotchkiss machine guns sprayed at her. Hard, clattering sounds told him when they caught her, but they were still too far to do much harm—to anything but Matt’s people. Walker’s own machine guns remained silent, but the port-side twin 25 mms opened up with a quick bamm, bamm, bamm!
“Turn Nat loose,” he told Minnie. The Seven boat had followed Walker’s twists and turns, but there was no point taking her closer to the machine guns. “Tell him to duck back in the smoke and try to work closer along the island shoreline. The enemy’ll probably stay focused on us and he should get a chance to use his fish.”