Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

He was too busy looking to port and starboard to see what his colleagues and comrades were doing to pay much attention to what lay ahead for some little while. When he did turn his eyes to the north again, his stomach lurched as if he were prone to seasickness. He had never seen such large ships so close before. A pirate with an ounce of sense sheered off when he spied a first-rate ship of the line. He wasn't likely to last long against one in a straight-up fight.

They were in line of battle, the men-of-war and their accompanying scavengers. All their ships sailed as if animated by a single will. So Rodney thought, anyhow, till he spied the gaggle of Dutchmen keeping station on one another rather than with their English comrades. But they didn't do much harm to the enemy line, and conformed to the movements of the rest of the fleet.

His own ships, on the other hand…

If he hadn't known they'd practiced staying together and fighting as a group, he never would have believed it. They straggled all over the sea. If they formed a line, it was a line drawn by a drunk.

At least they sailed toward the enemy fleet. The wind blew from a little north of west, which gave the enemy the weather gauge and the choice of fighting or declining battle. The big ships sailed forward, their masts blooming with sails. They weren't here to pull back.

Neither was Red Rodney Radcliffe. He glanced toward those men-of-war. Then he looked west, out toward the edge of his own ragged line-and beyond. Looking that way meant looking into the westering sun. Red Rodney smiled to himself. In some ways, this couldn't have worked out better if he'd planned it for months. He had planned to fight, but knowing when the fleets would meet… That was luck, nothing else. And luck favored him now.

Luck favored him as long as he could make a fight of it, anyhow. A bow chaser on one of the enemy ships fired. He saw the puff of smoke and the belch of fire before he heard the cannon go off. Bow and stern chasers were long guns, which gave them more range than the pieces on the gun decks.

The iron ball splashed into the sea several hundred yards short of the closest pirate ship. By the size of the splash, it was a twelve-pounder. Rodney muttered to himself. Twelve-pounders were broadside guns on the Black Hand. Would a ball from one of them even pierce a ship of the line's thick iron planking?

He'd find out before long. William Radcliff and the men who sailed with him would want to slug it out at close range. Of course they would-they had all the advantage that way. A broadside from one of those monster ships could smash a brigantine to ruins. The corsairs' fight was slash and dart and run away.

But Avalon couldn't run. Red Rodney hated his cousin with a loathing all the more profound because William Radcliff understood that too well. Individual freebooters could survive even if the worst befell their town. Their reign over the Hesperian Gulf? That would be over, over forever.

"Shall we answer them, skipper?" called a pirate at the Black Hand's bow gun.

It was a pipsqueak four-pounder, good for nothing more than frightening ships that couldn't fight back. Red Rodney nodded all the same. "Yes, by God!" he shouted. "Let 'em know we're here to give 'em what for!"

A moment later, the little popgun roared defiance at the approaching fleet. Its ball also fell short, but by less than the first gun's had. The pirates manhandled it back into position, swabbed out the bore, thrust in the worm to dispose of any bits of smoldering wadding, and then rammed home powder and ball and fired again.

Several other bow chasers on both sides went off. One ball struck home with a crash that echoed across the water. Red Rodney eyed the enemy fleet with wary apprehension. When William Radcliff or whoever was in command judged the time ripe…

As smoothly as if they'd practiced together for years, all the ships of the line and the smaller vessels with them swung to port. "Hard to starboard!" Red Rodney shouted to his own helmsman, and then, to Quint, "Signal hard to starboard!"

His own fleet's broadside would be puny next to the one that came at it, but he had to stand the gaff at least once. Yes, the corsairs would take punishment, but they would also dish some out. And they would hold the enemy in position for a little while. Rodney Radcliffe glanced west again. They needed to do that if they were to have any chance of discomfiting the dogs out of Stuart.

Then the enemy broadside spoke, and Red Rodney thought he'd fallen into the end of the world. The flame, the smoke, the thunder…A heavy cannon ball smashed into the Black Hand's rail and decking. The brigantine staggered; Radcliffe felt the shudder through his feet. Whistling, whining splinters flew everywhere. A man not six feet from him went down with a gurgling scream, clutching at the jagged length of timber that speared his throat. Blood poured from the wound, and from his mouth. He was a dead man, one who wasn't quite finished dying yet.

The corsairs' broadside answered the one from the enemy. Even to Radcliffe's ear, it sounded thin and ragged. It didn't have the crushing weight of metal the English and Dutch and eastern Atlanteans enjoyed, and it was disrupted by taking hits from those big guns. Even so, a mast on one of the men-of-war toppled. On deck, sailors on that ship ran like ants when a foot comes down. Red Rodney whooped.

He wasn't so happy when he turned his eye toward his own side. One pirate ship was on fire, another slewing helplessly out of line with rudder shot away, yet another with both masts down. The men-of-war fired again, this time ship by ship. They were happy enough pounding pirates to pieces.

Red Rodney looked west once more. He could only hope the enemy admiral wasn't doing the same.

W illiam Radcliff watched in somber satisfaction as pirate ships crumpled under the thunderous barrage from his fleet. Aboard the Royal Sovereign, sweating, swearing, bare-chested sailors reloaded and ran guns forward to fire again. Petty officers urged them on with shouts and with strokes from rattan sticks.

"They are fools, to try conclusions with us," Elijah Walton said. A little to the east, a pirate brig caught fire. Men scurried like mice, trying to douse the flames. William didn't think they'd be able to.

"They are fools, to turn corsair to begin with," he said. "Sometimes you have to beat a fool's folly out of him."

A roundshot slammed into the Royal Sovereign's oaken flank. Screams following the crash said the cannon ball or its splinters did their vicious work. The pirates were brave enough. They were almost madly brave, to challenge ships so much larger and stronger than their own.

As if echoing that thought, Walton said, "This unequal combat makes me wonder what possible hope of victory the brigands had."

"Sir!" A midshipman still too young to shave dashed up to Radcliff. "Sir! There's signals from out of the west! Fireships, sir!"

"Fireships!" William Radcliff said, and then something much more pungent than that. Fireships were every honest sailor's nightmare. You had to get away from them, regardless of what that did to your line. Let fire get hold of a ship full of men and it became an oven on the instant.

Fireships could do worse than that. He still remembered the Hellburner of Antwerp from the century before-as who did not? It had been loaded with tons of gunpowder and more tons of metal junk and stones-and it blew hundreds, maybe thousands, of Spaniards halfway to the moon. If Red Rodney Radcliffe remembered the Hellburner, too…

"Tell the signalman to raise each ship to act independently," William said.

"Each ship to act independently. Aye aye, sir!" The midshipman darted away.

Walton peered west, shading his eyes with the palm of his hand. "Damned setting sun makes them bloody hard to spy," he said.