Day of Honor 01_ Ancient Blood - Diane Carey [21]
“Good God!” he choked.
His own voice barely sounded over the devilish scratch of the other ship’s dolphin striker and chains knocking against the rail and bulwarks. They’d collided!
For Picard, a starship captain, “near” was hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Not here, though. “Near” now translated into mere inches as the two battling ships jutted hard against each other, heaving sickeningly, then jockeyed for position. Without engines, there was no way to reverse the course of the attacking ship and back out of the Justina’s shrouds.
A terrible series of popping noises sounded from the other ship, and several of the marines on Picard’s ship suddenly fell dead or dying. The other ship had sharpshooters, too!
“Stay down, Alexander!” he called.
“But they can’t hurt us,” the boy protested. “It’s just a holoprogram.”
“I’m not certain of that. Do as I say.”
The sea beneath them heaved unevenly, putting the Justina down into a trough and raising the other ship up on a swell. The other ship’s bow was magnified a thousand times in Picard’s eyes as it rose, as if it meant to climb over the rail and crawl onto Justina’s foredeck. The hull was narrow-beamed and shallow, the bow sharp, masts raked at an angle that made the ship look as if it were going ten knots standing still. It was rigged differently from this vessel—the sails were not square and set perpendicular to the body of the ship, but were fewer, larger in proportion to the body of the ship, and flew, streamlined with the hull, from fore to aft.
Picard recognized it—the early rig of the American schooner. It would someday become famous for its simplicity and speed. At this point, the word “schooner” didn’t even exist.
The enemy’s nameplate crawled upward and tipped high behind Justina’s mast supports—what were those called?— and Picard suddenly had an identity on the attackers. Chineoteague.
An American ship. In 1777, those would be colonists who had declared themselves independent and were now fighting a war for the final decision.
The Chineoteague’s fifteen-foot bowsprit bashed fitfully into one of Justina’s masts and both ships staggered. The colony ship’s bow grated against Justina’s side, gouging off layers of paint and wood. The paralyzingly loud cannonfire fell momentarily silent, other than one or two pops from the stern of the British ship. The American ship couldn’t fire because none of its cannon could aim at its enemy now, with its bow pressing against the side of the Justina, and evidently it had no bow guns. That would’ve been acceptable—except that they would grind each other into sawdust if this colliding was allowed to continue.
“Well, this can’t go on, can it?” Picard shoved himself upward, climbing first onto the rail, then farther up into the vertical cables and horizontal footropes and wrapped one leg well into them. Then he grasped the other ship’s chains with both hands and hauled for all he was worth.
He found himself attempting to push over a mountain with his bare hands. The bodies of the two ships grated against each other with unimaginable power. The other ship’s bowsprit grated hard against the mast again, turned as if nauseated, as if it meant to disengage itself from its own bow, and rolled away down the deck of the Justina. Picard kept hauling.
“What are you doing, Captain?” Alexander cried from the deck.
“Better not call me ‘captain,’” Picard told him. “We’re not sure what rank I am.”
“Oh …” The boy glanced around, trying to decide just how real a holoprogram could be.
Picard knew from experience—bad ones—that the quirky holograms as old as this one were much less manageable and more subject to participation than current technology, and that things could go wrong.
He rearranged his leg and kept hauling on the chains. Suddenly the Chincoteague surged back a good two meters. He grabbed a different part of the chain and hauled again.
“Hands off, redcoat!”
Startled, Picard glanced over his shoulder. On the bow of the colonial ship, a rough-looking sailor aimed a flintlock pistol at his face. Rough, yes, but under the