The Chosen

degrees to horizontal a lot faster than they could get out of their racks and on line.

Something bumped against the hull forward. Bump. . bump. . bump. .

His stomach lurched. Every man on board froze, except for the helm's careful twitch at the wheel. Then the crew of MTB 109 shuddered and relaxed as the sound died astern, and the sudden annihilating blast didn't lift their craft out of the water broken-backed. Another turn ahead. He looked behind. Barely possible to make out MTB 110. Good. This follow-the-leader put his nerves even more on edge; small errors could accumulate and throw the last boats right into the mines. Although God knew they'd practiced often enough at the mockups back at base in Karlton. The base there had never been much, but it rattled empty since the Southern Fleet was wiped out in the opening days of the war.

The ships that slaughtered four thousand Santander sailors were waiting ahead. . and they'd carefully spent half a day shooting or running down the survivors in the water, too. His teeth showed white in his darkened face.

'All right, we're out.' If the map was complete. 'Signal to deploy.'

He brought up his binoculars and squinted. There was just enough background scatter to see the line of Land cruisers silhouetted against the diffuse glow. . he hoped. They were a couple of thousand yards away, smoke visible from one or two stacks on each ship, keeping some steam up; a boom with antitorpedo netting out, floating low, a line across the dead calm of the harbor. And the lights of a patrol boat, low-powered searchlights looking for infiltrators or defectors trying to make it out in rubber dinghies.

The Santander torpedo boats spread out into line abreast. 'Six knots,' Kneally said.

The engines burbled a little louder. How long? Eventually they were going to notice. .

A searchlight speared out at them and an alarm wailed.

'Goose it, Chief! Goose it!'

The helm slammed the throttles forward. Now the engines roared, a shattering noise no muffler could mute. White water peeled back from the bows in two high roostertails of spray, throwing salt across his lips. Lights flicked on along the line of Land cruisers, and starshells blossomed high above.

'Too late, you leather-sucking perverts!' Kneally yelled.

The boom was less than five hundred yards ahead. There was just time enough for the torpedo boats to reach the maximum safe speed. Kneally clamped his hands on the bracket ahead of him and braced himself The smooth strip of reinforcing steel down the torpedo boat's keel slalomed it into the air in an arc that ended in an enormous splash that threw water twice the height of the little vessel's stub signal mast. Then each pair was driving for a cruiser's side, and the big ships loomed like gray steel cliffs. Cliffs speckled with fire, as the first pom- pom crews made it to their stations and began to open fire.

The MTB 109 was skipping forward like a watermelon seed squeezed between thumb and forefinger. One- pound shells pocked the water around it, and the boat's own forward pom-pom was punching out a stream of bright fire-globes itself. They wouldn't harm the cruiser, but they might throw off the crews of the bigger ship's antitorpedo-boat armament. A quick-firer banged from its sponson mount, and a shell threw up a fountain of spray to their left. All the time, Kneally's mind was estimating distances with the skill of endless practice.

'Ready-'

THUD.

MTB 110 blew up in a globe of yellow flame, its breath like the foretaste of hell.

'Hold her steady!' Kneally yelled, helping the CPO wrestle with the wheel as blast knocked the shallow dish- like hull sideways.

They plunged through the flame in a single searing instant, the spray-plumes of their passage helping to keep it from searing them too badly. MTB 109 was travelling as fast as anything on the oceans of Visager now, bounding forward like a porpoise driven by the power of four hundred horses. A thousand yards, maximum range. Nine hundred. The nose of the 109 was trained precisely on the cruiser's stern, lined up on the winking light of the pom- pom tub there. The shells drifted out towards him and then snapped by overhead.

'Fire one! Turn her, Chief!'

With a flat bang the launching charge slammed the first torpedo out of its tube. The frail fabric of the torpedo boat shuddered as the silver cylinder arched into the water, its contrarotating propellers already spinning. The boat was heeling to the right, its bow tracing an arc that carried it along the whole length of the enemy warship.

'Fire two! Fire three! Fire four! Get us the fuck out of here!'

The night was a chaos of flickering shapes and blinding lights, tracers and searchlights and explosions. Kneally twisted in the coaming to look over his shoulder. White water cataracted up from the side of the cruiser that had been their target-from others, too. He howled a catamount screech, until his teeth clicked painfully shut. This time they had hit the boom much harder, and there was an ominous crackle from the framework of the MTB 109.

But it only had to hold together a little longer. Another light was blinking to port, the guerilla pickup who would smuggle them out through the mountains, if they could reach shore and then avoid the Land patrols. Kneally's head swiveled, trying to see everything at once. It was still too dark, too tangled with lines and bars of light that bounced across his eyes. If one of the cruiser's magazines had not exploded behind them he would never have seen the destroyer coming. The actinic light showed it all too clearly: the turtleback forward deck and four billowing smokestacks, and the waves curling back from the cruel knife bows looming over his boat.

Kneally threw himself backward with a yell. A huge impact threw him pinwheeling into the air, and the water hit him like concrete. Somehow he pushed the whirling darkness away and fought his way to the surface, aided by the buoyancy of the cork vest he wore. Prop-wash sucked at him, and he bobbed in the destroyer's wake. Oily water slopped into his mouth.

'Jesus,' he grunted, almost giggling with incredulous relief at rinding himself alive. 'And Dad wanted me to be a hero.'

His viewpoint was too low to see much, but several of the cruisers that had been his squadron's targets were burning, and he could see a stern rising into the sky with its huge twin bronze screws glinting in the light of fires and searchlights.

That sobered him, and he turned towards the beach and began to swim doggedly. If they didn't kill him, he'd live. . and there would be other battles.

He almost missed a stroke. The adrenaline was wearing off, and he was remembering the look on the chief's face as the destroyer's bows loomed over them. He might be the only survivor of the dozen crew who'd manned MTB 109.

Kneally shuddered. Another battle.

* * *

'About bloody time,' Gerta said with satisfaction.

Only the last gunpit was still uncovered, and work was going on through the night under the harsh light of the arcs.

It was sunk deep into the cliff face, taking advantage of a natural ravine through the chalky limestone. Labor gangs and explosives had hollowed out an oblong chamber, wider at its rear than at the face of the steep rock. It still smelled of green concrete, but the complex metal mountings of the giant guns were in place, and the two tubes themselves were being fastened in their cradles below. The same great cranes-modified shipbuilding models-that had lowered the guns were now transferring beams and planks of steel that were small only by comparison. Down below pneumatic riveters hammered and arc welders stuttered as hundreds of Protege laborers and Chosen engineers assembled the intricate jigsaw puzzle into multiple layers of steel. Tomorrow other teams would begin burying it under layer upon layer of concrete laced with rebar and filled with massive rubble from the original excavation, topped with twenty feet of granite quarried from the old Imperial fort.

Gerta inhaled the scent of ozone and scorched metal, fists on hips, pivoting to take in the bustling scene. The other three gunpits were already in place, spread out in a semicircle along the outer edge of the near-island. Each pit was open only along the narrow slit through which the guns would fire-and they would show their muzzles only slightly, and that only when run out for a shoot. Tunnels ran between the pits, and between the pits and their ammunition bunkers, underground barracks and mess halls, fuel stores, generator rooms; but they were all carefully kinked and equipped with blast doors taken from junked battleships to contain internal damage.

'About bloody time is right,' Kurt Wallers said. He was carrying colonel's tabs, with dual artillery and