Call me Hashmael. Y’ken pour me a double rye and I’ll regale
ye, as I’m sure ye’t’want, with news an’ stories of the Black. Yes, Yes, it’s
alw’ys stories this, stories that, stories demanded for want of a drink, and
can’t an old man find naught but peace in the bottom of a glass? Aye, an’ it’s
always the same stories, y’want to hear of battles, and of piracy, and of grand
naval manoeuvre, tales of shot and of boarders, knife to knife in spacesuits
but th’truth of it is, the truth of it is and always has been, and as long as
there’s drink, always will be, that shipwork is naught but dull an’ dreary routine
and pomp, checkin’ thrice what’ye’ve checked thrice already that day, upon the
hour ev’ry hour, but aye, there are stories, stories’ve the narrow moments of
terror in that big empty black, and since ye’ll be wantin’ a story of battles,
why, I’ll regale ye with the story of the first battle I ever did and was has
been in.
Th’ship was the Apollo, and th’captain was called Lonsdale,
Ray Lonsdale. Ran a tight ship, good discipline, rarely spoke, but had a
beautiful singing voice, aye, but that’s another story, a story of storms and
not of battles, aye but this story too was of a storm, f’w’had been caught in
solar eddies, now, the Apollo was a Light Cruiser, Florida class, not that w’re’running
anythin’ even close to a standard configuration save for the hull and the
reactor cores, but a Florida class, in big enough solar eddies, y’got to have
all hands on deck, batton down the hatches and ride with the wind until y’re
out. It’ll knock out y’sensors so ye
blind in waves, it’ll tear up your solarsail if you ride against it, aye, but
ride perpendicular and get the vectors right, and ye’ve got the smoothest
sailing ye’ve ever had, and fast too, f’r no fuel. It’s lucky too, ‘cos sure as
ye’d guess ye’ reaction drives will fail if ye try to drive ‘em hard and long,
and the constant buffeting’ll just leave ye spinning in circles if ye don’t
have a good helmsmen, aye, but the Apollo did have a good helmsmen, as ye’ll
see. Another glass, my cup runneth dry!
Now, we’d been ridin’ these waves upon hours, and that’s the
tedious kind of work where y’wait for the sensors to come good, look through ye’sextant
and try to take a reading, adjust y’sail for however ye’ve been blown, and
repeat, all the while being hurled back and forth off ye feet. T’was a few
hours in that our navigator was takin’ a readin’, then gets a look like he’d
seen the ghost of Jimmy Whittaker himself! On the next wave, he looks again, an’
sure enough he’s right shoutin’ for the Captain to look, aye, for in his
spyscope he sighted none other than the quarry we’d been tracking, and stuck
too was she in the storm!
It’ll be now that y’ll be askin’ if we was so quick to descend to piracy, and
all I’ll say is what ev’ry spaceman will tell you the same: it’s complicated
out there in the Black, and the line between pirate and navy ain’t always clear,
and we had our letter of Marque, out of date it may be, though well too far
from a port had we been, and the ship we’d been hunting wore none but enemy livery,
aye, azure and gules, party per bend sinister argent, blazoned above, three
meteors, and that is the device of the Andromeda Confederacy, which y’all’ve
heard of, and despite their name, have never seen beyond the edge of th' Milky
Way, and whose many other boasts are affront with just as many deceits.
Well, Captain Lonsdale gets a look in his eyes like an
inspired madman, and none of us are sure if he had a plan or if he’d lost his
mind to voidsickness, or perhaps even both, f’who would ever be mad enough to
engage in a raging solar storm, aye, for by now our instruments rated the
eddies as not eddies but a storm, of category two.
Captain Lonsdale, this mad glint in his eye, Captain
Lonsdale begins calling orders, not barking, no, he never raised his voice
unnecessarily, not even the one time I was hungover and derelict of duty, aye
but that’s another story, y’see Lonsdale was calm of affect, but hasteful and
direct, and he calls first to his sailors to cut the sail entirely, but to be
ready to unfurl it fully dressed again on his signal, and the men go rushin’ up
the jeffries tube in the centre of the mast t’make the adjustments. Then, he
grabs a young boy, not older than fourteen, and this boy, not quite a
stowaway, not quite a spaceman, but I suppose a sort of down-on-his-luck
cabinboy, yet to develop the vices of liquor – another round, barman! – and with
passion still in his cheeks, and Captain Lonsdale grabs this boy by the
shoulder and demands of him ‘Run a message boy! All guns manned on the
portside!” and the boy, always trying to make a good impression, especially
when the Captain himself was issuing the order, turns to run off and obey it,
but the Captain grabs him again by the shoulder, and the boy is pulled
backwards and turned by force midstep, and Captain Lonsdale demands ‘Top deck
load plasma webbing, all other decks load plasma shot!’ and again the boy
turned to run, and again the Captain pulled him back by the shoulder, this time
nearly bringing the boy off of his feet and he spun his arms in the air to hold
balance as the Captain added ‘All Port guns fire broadside on my command, then
fire at will after!’
Well the boy got runnin’, and the sailors got cuttin’ and as the sail folded and the
thrusters broke, we all were hit by naught but a fearful silence, in between
each bracing rock of the ship, and plain as interstellar space ye’d see on the
port side, we were listing closer to our quarry with each rock, each time we
were tossed we were brought to its level, aye, but then we saw, for she was too
gettin’ tossed, but not below to level as we, but instead above to level,
meanin’ only as each wave broke were we level, and in between we were naught
but below their sensor line.
Now our quarry was no mean feat, she were not like hunting a
rabbit, nay but bein’ more like huntin’ an elephant equipped with a right
rifle. We were well armed to bring her down, but she was bigger than us, more
than twice the guns and twice the men, and in a fair fight we would not be a
match. Our’s was the faster vessal, but only on the cornering, f’her thrusters
also outmatched us by two. Yet in this storm – maybe in this storm the odds
were in the favour, and surely that’s what Lonsdale was thinkin’, were he even
thinkin’ and not having fallen mad to have us hunt a bigger ship in a storm.
With each break, we knew the moment grew closer, and all
were silent, watchin’, as though somehow she might even hear our breathin’ and
we be rattled, aye, but each fearful moment passed to another more fearful, and
soon the fearful silence was fraught with exciting science, as our quarry fell
in range and Captain Lonsdale called the order ‘Broadside port guns!’
Now they say that space is silent, and that may be true for
any bastard lucky enough to be wearin’ a spacesuit and floatin’, but inside the
ship you hear the report of cannons well echo throughout the decks, back and
forth six times before stopping, albeit it’s a deadened sound, like hearing it
through this empty glass – which should be filled, barman. Now the two types of
report issued, for plasma webbing serves to tear up solar sails, gum reaction
drive and burn out the circuits of a jump, all in all, leaving the victim stuck
and floating, while plasma shot, as I’m sure y’already understand, serves only
to punch through hull armour and shields. Well, as the wave broke and we were
in range in sight, all guns shot true, and Lonsdale called for his sailors to
unfurl, and for helm to activate th’reaction drive, and he called it so: ‘Unfurl
proud! All ahead flank, thrusters, mains, tops and royals!’ then, in the next
wave break, a second volley was launched from those on the portside who had the
skill to be loaded again so quickly, launched blind as our sensors recovered,
and then, as the wave broke for the third time, we moved away at speed, chanced
just so that the way we needed to move was perpendicular to the wind, and such
that from our quarry’s perspective, a wave had broken, a ship appeared from
nowhere and loosed two rounds, and then by the third wave, that ship has
disappeared.
Now, the Captain went to the helmsmen and whispered in his
ear, and with experience I could tell ye exactly what his next order was from what
we did, but I couldn’t’ve in the time, yet it just so chanced I was near enough
to hear, and he said to his helmsmen: ‘Make range, then cut engines and all
about. Thrust between waves, and bring our starboard to her aft’ and our
helmsmen, as I said, was good enough to make that order, then the Captain
grabbed that same cabin boy by the same shoulder, for the cabinboy had been
standing right beside the both of them, and the boy had learned, a quick study,
and caught his balance before he was grabbed, and received a new order: ‘All
guns starboard, load plasma shot and wait for the order’.
The boy got busy relaying the message, and the men got busy
loading the starboard cannons, and the helmsmen fought not the storm but tamed
it for as sure as I could swear it was at that moment that the storm calmed
again, and indeed he brought us aft of our enemy, who could now see us plain as
intersteller yet had no meaningful guns aft, not any that could rally ‘gainst
our starboard broad, nor could she turn faster than our helmsmen could keep us
behind her.
How did it end? The Captain ordered us to fire at will, and
she hailed us a surrender before the third volley. Barman, another drink!