Jenks looked doubtfully at the ’03. “You showed me once.”
“You’re going to love it,” Matt assured him, opening fire with the BAR. Stites joined him with the. 30- cal.
Against Kari’s adamant warnings, Reynolds took the Nancy into a final dive. The strangers on the ships below were starting to shoot back now, and being mainly infantry, they had a lot to shoot back with. The speed of the plane made individual accuracy from smoothbore muskets poor at best, but with so many firing, even accidental hits were likely. The last dive had resulted in seven or eight brand-new holes in the little ship, one of which was causing a little trouble with the starboard aileron.
Fred Reynolds and Kari-Faask had left three ships burning already, though, and they still had one bomb left.
“Hold on to your hat!” Fred cried. “Just one more run, and we beat feet back to Scapa Flow! We’re almost out of fuel anyway.” He pushed the stick forward and Kari reluctantly finished cranking the wing floats back down. She was panting from raising and lowering the contraptions and cursed herself for the idea. She’d popped off that they needed to “slow down” in their dives so she could get a better feel for her release point. Fred said they needed more drag and she suggested the floats. Since then, they’d discovered the things made pretty good dive brakes, but improved mechanical advantage over the prototype or not, it was a hell of a lot of work.
Kari finished cranking just as the Nancy lined up on an undamaged transport, and she reached into the nearly empty crate of bombs. Fred was staring at the ship, imagining a set of sights was mounted on the nose of the plane-across the large “NO” painted there. The target was a weird-looking thing, as were all the “enemy” ships. It was a steam-sail hybrid like the Imperial frigates, but the lines remained more classical. There really wasn’t much difference between the American and Imperial steamers except that the Americans used screw propellers and the “Brits” used paddle wheels. The Dominion steamers might almost have been galleons, or Grik Indiamen, and their paddle wheels were exposed. As far as Fred could tell, the Dominion warships-and a couple were real monsters-still relied on sail power alone. He knew that could be an advantage as well as a disadvantage, depending on the wind, and their sides seemed to be pierced for an awful lot of guns. “Get ready!” he shouted.
The transport below was trying to maneuver, something the others hadn’t done, and he kicked the rudder back and forth, trying to keep the target in his imaginary sights. Human shapes grew visible below, hundreds of them, all seemingly armed with muskets pointed at his nose. Some started flashing amid white puffs of smoke. He bored in, almost until it looked like the Nancy would clip the enemy masthead, and he yanked back on the stick just as the plane shuddered from a number of hits and the air around him thrummed with a hundred more balls as he roared down, almost to the sea, and leveled off into a gentle, distancegaining climb.
Risking a quick look back to see where the bomb fell, he didn’t see a detonation or even a splash. “What the-!” he started to shout into the voice tube, but then saw Kari lolling back and forth with the motion of the plane. “Kari!” he yelled. “Kari, answer me! Are you hit?”
The ’Cat managed to straighten slightly, and shifted her face toward the voice tube. “I hit,” she confirmed, barely audible. “Motor hit too.” Fred saw she was quickly being covered by atomized oil spraying through the prop. “I tell you we ask for it that time!” Kari mumbled.
“No, Kari!” Fred shouted, “ I asked for it! I’m so sorry! Where are you hit? Put pressure on it, stop the bleeding!”
Kari didn’t answer. Instead, she flopped to one side of her cockpit and slumped down in her seat.
“No!” Fred screamed. “You hang on, do you hear? Damn it, don’t you
… Just hang on!” Frantically he looked around. The oil pressure gauge was dropping fast, and the various temperature gauges were beginning to rise. Ahead, toward the mouth of Scapa Flow, he just made out a gray shape, a bone in her teeth and hot gasses shimmering above her stacks. A couple of other ships were underway as well, far behind. “Just hang on,” he repeated, aiming his battered plane for the old destroyer, and pushing the throttle to its stop.
With an audible Thwack! followed by a diminishing, low-pitched whawha-wha sound, Juan’s leg jerked from under him and he fell against the crate and slid down, flat on his face. He’d been kneeling on his right knee and his left leg had strayed from behind cover. Gray quickly dragged him back and inspected the wreckage of his lower leg.
“Shit. Smack in the middle of the shin,” he said, tearing his T-shirt and tying the strips tightly just under the knee. Juan hadn’t made a peep. He didn’t seem sure what had happened. Gray caught Matt’s eye and jerked his head significantly from side to side, mouthing, “It’s gone.” Juan tried to get back up, but Gray held him down. “No, goddamn it, you stay put! You wanna bleed out?” With that, the Bosun replaced the magazine in his Thompson and fired a long, smoky burst over the top of the crate.
They were nearly out of ammunition for the. 30-cal. The tiny cart they’d hired the day before simply hadn’t been able to carry much beyond the weight of the large, inconspicuously armored crate-not to mention the heavy weapons inside. Of course, they hadn’t expected to fight a pitched battle all alone, and that’s basically what they had on their hands. The crate was riddled with holes, but few balls had passed all the way through, courtesy of the two Marine shields inside. Stites had been grazed along the ribs, but otherwise, besides a few splinters, they were unhurt. Until Juan was hit.
They’d drawn most of the enemy fire on themselves, giving the bleachers a chance to empty, and Matt concentrated on the cannons when he could, keeping them from firing at them now. The guns were effectively silenced, but enemy troops continued to pour forward to take the place of the countless slain. They’d been preparing to pull back straightaway behind the crate, and then sprint for the protection of the wall that funneled spectators into the bleachers. With Juan hurt, that was out. They couldn’t leave him, and any man who tried to carry him was doomed. All they could do now was hold their ground and hope Chack got there in time.
The machine gun had done the most damage, and Matt was constantly revising upward the number of enemies they faced. He’d never seen human troops take such punishment and just keep pushing, especially into the mouth of something like the Browning, which they’d never encountered before. It was nuts. Twice, the “Doms” tried to cross the open ground on their left flank and come at them from that direction, but Stites literally butchered the attempts. Since then, it was pretty straight up: five men (including Courtney’s occasional shot) with modern weapons against an army. Jenks finally figured out how stripper clips worked, and fired away with his ’03, with telling effect. Still, they wouldn’t last long when the. 30-cal ran dry.
“What is it with those people?” Matt demanded. “Why don’t they break?”
“They are ‘Blood Drinkers,’ ” Jenks snarled. “Elite troops. See their red neckcloths? They are the very ‘Swords of the Pope.’ ” He looked at Gray, almost apologetically. “I’m sorry-that’s what they call the fiend. That, or ‘His Supreme Holiness.’ ”
“No sweat,” Gray replied. “I ain’t much of a Catholic these days.” He nodded at Juan, who’d managed to rise, regardless. His left leg was relatively straight now, except for where it bent a little at the shattered bone. He’d grasped his Springfield again and took careful aim with gritted teeth. “He is, though, and he’s pissed.”
Juan nailed another yellow-and-red-clad man. “Pissed,” he agreed harshly, almost moaning with the agony that had finally come.
“Their pope ain’t our pope, so don’t worry about it. We’ve even had a few doozies of our own, but this beats me. Do they really drink blood?”
“I’ve heard so. They believe death in battle, for ‘God,’ brings them instant paradise. Retreat brings eternal damnation.”
“Empty,” Stites announced, crouching down. The balls whizzing by the crate or slapping into it became a blizzard. “Whoa, boy!” he yelped, clenching his eyes shut when a ball snatched at his hair. “Sumbitches is gonna drink my blood!”
“Shut up, you nitwit!” Gray said, also taking cover. “Maybe they will, and it’ll poison the lot of ’em!”
Finally even Juan fell back down when a cascade of splinters left his face bloody. Remaining exposed now was suicide. The Filipino’s bloody fingers groped inside his shirt for a small golden cross and he closed his eyes. “You must leave me, Cap-tan,” he said hoarsely.
“Not a chance,” Matt said severely. “Who’ll cut my hair?”
After an intense fusillade that left them all cringing together behind the disintegrating crate, the firing abruptly ceased, and Matt risked a quick glance. Yellow-and-red-uniformed men had begun to form up on the
