Brass Skies vol 2 (Draft)

Hired Gun Part 40

Clarabelle reloaded the two riffles yet again as she watched the sky anxiously. It had been over thirty minutes since she had lost sight of Peters. Since then, she had kept shifting positions to keep an eye in the general directions of where she had last seen him and where she had last seen Asuka.

She just finished reloading and was shifting to fire when Jezebel came up beside her. "Do you know where Peters is?" her sister asked. "No one has seen him in quite some time."

"Yes," Clarabelle said, snapping off a shot at a British soldier aiming for a retreating mercenary.

"Thank goodness. Where is he?" Jezebel asked as she casually fired a shot from her pistol into the seeming sea of Redcoats, while Clarabelle switched rifles and went to line up another target.

"I'll tell you in a min..." Clarabelle broke off mid word as she spotted a column of red smoke in the distance. Shoving the rifle at her startled sister, Clarabelle took off running towards the wheel.

"Turn us five points toward starboard," she heard Robert shout.

"Wait!" she screamed at the top of her lungs as she ran. "Captain, wait!" she screamed again, just before her safety line hit its end, causing her to double over in pain.

By now several of the crew including Robert, the helmsman, and one of the mates, were turning her way. She snapped off her safety line and grabbed another, clipping it on as she resumed sprinting. "Please turn us about forty degrees to the port side," she begged as she ran.

"Lass, you know how much I respect ye," one of her repair party gripped her arm. "But the middle of battle not be the best time to be questioning the captain. Ye need to know your place, lass."

Clarabelle spun around looking at all the men around her, and to her sister who had scooped up both rifles and was now hurrying across the deck.

"In the whole time I have been aboard, I have tried to never abuse my position, nor question the orders I have been given by Robert or any man," Clarabelle screamed, her face red with fury and desperation. "I have rarely asked for anything beyond what I need to do my job. That red column of smoke some forty degrees off our port bow is one of our own asking for our help. Someone that went in my place to rescue another of our own! I am asking not as the Captain's woman but as best damn mechanic in the crew, and as someone that would ask the same for nearly every one of you, so Captain Robert please turn this God damn ship around!"

The ship lurched, as Robert himself grabbed the wheel. "What the hell are you louts waiting for?" Robert barked. "Forty degrees port it is. Be ready with the guns, and check to see those cannon are ready for action. I want any boat we have left on board ready to go. The moment we get close enough I want those boats on the ground gathering our own and any one else that may be still alive in the area.

"Clara... No Jezzie, get below and tell them I want those furnaces burning hotter than the pits of hell. I'm gonna need every bit of speed these props can muster. Clara, when this is over, you might have to have to re-gear those props."

"Aye, captain!" Clara shouted even as officers started relaying orders.

Behind her, Clara heard someone mutter, "I thought she was the calmer sister."

The answer came from three directions as one of the repair party, the captain, and Jezzie answered simultaneously, "She is!"

***

All across the battlefield, the remains of the makeshift army, much of the British army, and even the crew of the Sword of Phobos, looked on in varying degrees of confusion as the Robert's Revenge came about. Much of that confusion turned to awe as the propellers spun to life and the Robert's Revenge charged over the battlefield in her quest to retrieve one of her own.

At the speed she flew, it was hard for gunners to have any accuracy, so they fired only into the densest areas of the redcoats. However, since this was the case, the gunners switched from solid to canister shot, and the crews were allowed to fire at will, selecting their shots. As a result, huge holes began appearing wherever the redcoats were clustered, and they began scattering.

While the ship once again laid waste on the battle field, every life boat and landing craft Robert's Revenge carried was pressed into service snagging up any survivor they could reasonably reach. The British, predictably fired upon the lifeboats. Since they were down to light artillery, riffles, and pistols, they were able to kill some of the crew and survivors, but they failed to bring down any of the boats.

However, the reappearance of the Revenge and her boats served to cause the remaining militia and mercenaries to begin rallying towards various points, returning some semblance of order to the retreat. In some cases, pirates, mercenaries, or some of the better militia officers managed to gather up some of these groups and begin returning fire into the nearest Redcoats.

The unexpected resistance further slowed the Redcoats efforts to finish off the rag-tag army, and allowed more of the groups to pull back safely. Additionally, some of the smaller groups began merging; forming larger groups that occasionally briefly pressed back into the British lines in attempts to help extract other groups. Not all of these attempts were successful, but the successes generally outnumbered the failures.

Then the Sword of Phobos reentered the fight. Taking a different approach, the Phobos and her boats covered one of the main avenues of escape the retreating militia and mercenaries were using. A couple of Phobos' boats landed a small party that cleared away the nearest Redcoats. Soon they were joined by several mercenaries and milita members, that formed a small but formidable pair of firing lines that allowed the fleeing army through, but stubbornly blocked the pursuing British.

In the mean time, the Phobos dropped an anchor onto a squad of British troops, first crushing and then shredding them as the anchor dug into the ground and then scrapped until it came to a stop. Once the anchor was secure, the Phobos rotated, brining her port guns to bear and began firing at any large group of British. Simultaneously, Phobos' remaining boats alternated between harassing and hunting down smaller groups of British soldiers or extracting stragglers or encircled militia.

***

The corpses were piled high around Peters, and he had long sinceexhausted his own ammunition and taken to using guns taken from the soldiers hehad killed by the time one of the landing boats had reached his position. He attempted to pick up Asuka, but onlysucceeded in dragging her; he was so weak from exhaustion. Stronger arms scooped up first Asuka and thenhimself and laid them in the bottom of the boat before lifting off again.