Seas of Venus(59)

Britten threw a switch. A panoramic display quivered to life on the turret face above the guns. It showed the horizon with a speck that swelled into the blurred image of a warship's superstructure as the sergeant turned a control.

"Turret Eye-Eye ready," he reported with satisfaction.

"Stand by," warned the bridge.

"For swattin' destroyers," Britten said to Johnnie, "these—"

He pointed to the 5.25s just as the breeches lowered to elevate the muzzles from their rest position. The guns were poised like hounds, waiting for the gunnery controller to slip their electronic leashes. "These're better'n the big mothers, the eighteens. Now, with only two turrets live, we might have a problem if the Angels had a decent destroyer force, which they—"

The guns slammed, one and the other. The breeches spewed out the empty cases as the rammers fed fresh rounds into the smoking bores and the lift tube raised the next sequence for the loading cages to grip. Ten seconds after the first shots, the next salvo was on the way and the third was loading.

Johnnie's helmet protected his ears, but the floor jumped and the blasts echoing through the open hatch behind them were punishing blows. The air was a hazy gray from smoke. When his nose filters clamped down, Johnnie opened his mouth. Though he only breathed through his nostrils, caustic gases seared the membranes at the back of his throat.

Hammers struck the Holy Trinity, in time with the recoiling guns of Turret II but syncopating them. Turret I on the other side of the superstructure was firing at another of the shadowing destroyers.

There were rhythmic red flashes from the ship on the display. For a moment Johnnie thought he was watching their own shells hit, but it was too soon for impacts on a distant target.

The flashes came in threes—bow, bow, and stern—while Turret II salvoed shells in pairs. He was watching the muzzle flashes of the destroyer's own guns.

Aimed at him.

Sergeant Britten pointed and grinned. "Don't sweat that, kid," he shouted over the deafening pulse of the 5.25s. "Torpedoes can hurt us, but—"

The center of the destroyer's image disappeared behind a waterspout—a near miss, short. By the dreadnought's standards, the 5.25s were small guns, but the explosion of one of their shells lifted tons of water.

There was another spout on the far side of the target. The fire director had straddled the destroyer with the first salvo.

The second, third, and fourth pairs of shells landed before the destroyer's captain could even start to maneuver out of the killing zone. The bursting charges were a deeper red than the muzzle flashes with which they mingled, and their sullen light was dirtied further by tendrils of the black smoke from which they erupted.

A shell casing stuck in the breech of the left-hand gun, just as the deck rippled with a clang! that knocked Johnnie off balance. He grabbed a stanchion while two more Angel shells rang against the dreadnought's hull.

"Come on, kid!" Sergeant Britten shouted. There was a toolrack welded to the side of the turret. Britten snatched a pry-bar from it and leaped to the jammed gun.

The right-hand tube continued to cycle at ten-second intervals, but the left was frozen in the full-recoil position. The breech stood open, but the empty case was jammed into the threads deep in the cavity.

Johnnie reached for another pry-bar but seized a maul instead when the ship quivered to another shock. He didn't know what he was supposed to do anyway, so one tool was as good as another.

He staggered across to join the sergeant. He was suddenly terrified that he'd stumble into the path of the recoiling gun and be crushed like a bug on a windshield.

The destroyer they had been engaging sheared away. Her superstructure glowed orange, and flames licked above her mast peaks. Pairs of shells still in the lethal circuit continued to strike and smash, fanning the blaze.

Turret I had ceased firing, but the clang! of a hostile shell hitting astern echoed through the Holy Trinity.

The sergeant thrust the point of his bar into the breech opening and levered fiercely to free the stuck case. His bare arms were black with powder fouling except where drops of sweat jewelled the skin.

The image of the burning destroyer dropped over the horizon. A pillar of spark-shot smoke trailed back along the crippled vessel's course.

A huge orange bubble swelled into the display, then shrank back. The destroyer's bow and stern lifted momentarily as if they were vertical brackets enclosing the space of the explosion.

The right-hand gun ceased firing, though shells already on the way continued to lift columns of spray and debris on the far horizon.

In the silence of the gun turret, Johnnie thought he heard the screams of men burning, men cartwheeling toward the jaws rising from the waves to meet them. But the cries were only in his mind.