"Holy Trinity," ordered the duty officer on shore, no longer in the least bored, "put the officer of the day on at once. At once!"
"Base," said Dan, "the Oh-Oh-Dee's in the head and—"
A raucous klaxon sounded from the center of Paradise Base. Jungle beasts echoed what they took for a challenge.
"Fuck your mother with a spade," said Dan very distinctly.
Johnnie clicked his light-pen, waiting all this time.
"Starboard screws astern," said Fayette. "She wallows like a pig! Astern starboard!"
Uncle Dan slammed back one of the slide switches he'd configured as a throttle. Johnnie moved his pen, poised, and clicked it again. The Holy Trinity exploded in glare, smoke, and racket as all her automatic weapons fired at once.
Johnnie didn't bother to aim individual tubs; that wasn't the point. He was trying to create confusion with guns that were too small to do serious damage.
And at the moment, confusion was the most serious damage the Blackhorse raiders could do.
Some of the bullets arched into the wilderness, shredding foliage in a minor sideshow to the destruction the jungle regularly wreaked upon itself. A few rounds hit the other dreadnoughts anchored in mid-harbor, scarring paint or even starting minor fires.
A plurality of the streaming tracers, randomly aimed but as heavy as the first rush of a rainstorm, raked the Angel shore installations. Lamp standards went down, windows blew out; concrete walls cracked and cratered under the wild shooting.
Smoke from the multiple machine guns wreathed the Holy Trinity, fogging the muzzle blasts and turning the tracers into fingers of lightning which reached from a stormcloud. Minutes of constant operation caused one weapon after another to jam and drop out of the fusillade. The barrels of those still firing glowed an orange which verged on yellow.
Johnnie looked from the forward viewslit, toward the plot in front of the helmsman; then back again. The reality of the great drydock growing before their bow was more vivid than the hologram, but they both indicated the same thing: Holy Trinity would collide with a mass of concrete and steel through which not even her own size and power could carry her.
There was a long, shuddering tremor as the outer starboard propellor began to bite the water in reverse while the port screws continued to drive forward. The bow swung sideways, like the head of a horse fighting a hand jerking its reins.
They were clear.
There was a puff of powdered concrete as the dreadnought's swelling port side ticked the end of the drydock—tens of thousands of tons slipping past one another on either side, touching in a lovetap that could be repaired with a bucket of paint, if anybody cared.
The Holy Trinity headed for the harbor mouth, answering to her rudder alone. Uncle Dan shifted all four drive-shaft controls into their full-forward position, but it would be many minutes before the inertia of the huge screws and the mass of water they churned permitted a response.
Most of the automatic weapons were silent, choked by feeding jams or chambers so hot that rounds had exploded within before the breeches were closed. Johnnie shut down the few remaining guns. A pall of powder smoke drifted like an amoeba above the harbor.
Audible across the bridge in the relative silence, Dan spoke into a handset coupled to the dreadnought's radio, "Six, this is Three. The situation is Able, I say again, Able."
Sergeant Britten hovered behind the commander. He winced as he heard the words and warned, "Sir, sir—we don't have compatible code sets aboard this bitch. You're broadcasting in clear."
Beyond the Holy Trinity's cutwater, the running lights of the Dragger, guarding the harbor mouth, spread from a single blob to individual points. There was a series of red flashes from the tender's deck, then a stream of machine-gun tracers. If the bullets struck the dreadnought at all, their impacts were indistinguishable in the noise of the ship working.
"Six," Dan continued, "we will rendezvous at Reference Point K, I say—"
"Sir!" Sergeant Britten blurted.
"—again, Reference Point K. Three out."
He laid down the handset and met Britten's eyes.
The sergeant was wringing his hand. "Sir," he mumbled, "oh, sir, we're screwed. Two years ago we were operating with the Warcocks and they know Reference Point K is the Kanjar Straits. They'll cut off to the west, and Flotilla Blanche'll come tearing through to block the Straits for our main fleet."
The Holy Trinity's vibration lessened somewhat. The starboard screws had slowly accelerated, so that Fayette was able to lessen the amount of rudder needed to keep the vessel on a straight course.
"They'll try, at least," Uncle Dan said calmly.
A bullet from the Dragger struck the viewslit and blotched the armor glass with gray metal.