Seas of Venus(63)

After an uncertain length of time, Johnnie got up and headed for the ladderway to the bridge.





23


The pirate Genoese

Hell-raked them till they rolled

Blood, water, fruit, and corpses up the hold.

—James Elroy Flecker





None of the Holy Trinity's guns were firing. B Turret had taken a direct hit which wrecked the roof-mounted fire director and must have penetrated the gun house, because one of the 18-inch tubes pointed skyward at a crazy angle.

Because the guns were not being worked, the turret and barbette were nothing but armored boxes, as safe a target for incoming shells as any on the dreadnought. If the turret had been in operation, one or more of the twelve-hundredweight powder charges in the loading cycle would have burned, sending flames a thousand feet high through the punctured roof.

If the charges had flashed back into the magazine through the loading tube, the whole forward portion of the Holy Trinity would have vanished in a cataclysmic explosion.

Johnnie wondered what it felt like to be dead. Did Sergeant Britten care?

He tried to wipe his face, but his hands weren't clean either.

There was a fire on the shelter deck, just aft of the second funnel. Sparks rose in swirling clouds, sometimes lifting sections of lifeboats and wardroom furnishings with them.

There must have been explosions among the flames, but their sound was lost in the greater chaos around them.

Johnnie reached the ladderway to the bridge. The hatch was missing. While it stood open, the shock of an explosion had caught it and wrenched it from its hinges.

Three shells hit the Holy Trinity, throwing Johnnie to the deck again. One landed among the flames amidships. A huge fireball lifted into the air, separating from the ship to hang above them like the sun on the day of judgment.

As suddenly as it had formed, the globe of fire sucked inward and vanished. The Holy Trinity was alone again with the Hell-lit night.

The dreadnought twisted under hammering shells as the iguana had done when Sergeant Britten's flamethrower bathed it. A shell had pierced the starboard main-belt armor, close beneath where Johnnie pulled himself to his feet. He could not have seen the hole, even if he leaned over the rail, but the fire at its heart threw a bright orange fan across the waves.

The light swept over a mass of writhing tentacles. Squid were battling for the bodies of fish killed by concussion.

Johnnie reached the ladderway again. He clung to the railing, gasping breaths of fiery air in through his mouth because the filters restricted his nostrils.

More shells hit. Johnnie bounced like the clapper in a bell, but he retained his grip on the rail.

If the shell that pierced the main belt had landed ten feet forward and ten feet higher, it would have struck B Turret Magazine instead. Perhaps the barbette would have withstood the impact, but its armor was no thicker than that of the belt which failed.

It would have been quick. Oblivion would be better than this, and even Hell could be no worse.

"You on the bridge ladder!" growled a demon's buzzing voice. "Identify yourself!"

Johnnie shook his head. It seemed a lifetime since he last heard human speech. Words didn't belong in a universe of shock waves that flung men to and fro like the disks of a castanet. The helmet protected his ears, but it couldn't save his soul from the pummeling.

"Awright, sucker—" buzzed the voice.

He was being challenged over the intra-ship communicator. A Blackhorse seaman waited on a dark landing above him, preparing to fire at the figure silhouetted against the firelit hatch.

"—you had your—"

"No!" Johnnie shouted, flinging himself to the side. The shadows might conceal him, though they wouldn't stop a sheaf of ricocheting bullets. "I'm Johnnie Gordon! Ensign Gordon!"

He didn't have time to unclip his ship-structure transmitter, but for this purpose ordinary helmet radio was better anyway. Johnnie and the guard were within a few feet of one another, and the armored ladderway surrounding them acted as a wave guide.

He'd lost his sub-machine gun somewhere. Left it in Turret II, he supposed, though he couldn't remember unslinging the weapon with all that had gone on since he left the bridge.

Johnnie's pistol was in his hand, pointed toward the swatch of darkness which most probably concealed the guard. He'd drawn the gun in an instinctive response to his training, but he didn't think he would shoot even if a blast of shots lit the ladderway's interior.

The Angels' 16-inch shells were killing them fast enough. The Blackhorse team didn't need to join in the job of its own destruction.

"Ensign?" buzzed the guard. "Sir? Geez, you shoulda said something!"

Johnnie got up and holstered his pistol. The stair treads would have been some protection, at least if the guard was firing explosive bullets.