Chapter 68: Sixty Guns

The first fishing boat died at four hundred yards from the *Iron Will*.

Elena saw it happen from the *Stormhawk*'s quarterdeck—a twenty-foot skiff with a crew of eight, running fast across the water with a swivel gun mounted on her bow and a Federation pennant snapping from a broomstick lashed to the tiller. She was screening Revas's southeast group, darting ahead of the warships to draw fire and test the range. One of the flanking frigates tracked her with a bow chaser. The gun flashed. The ball hit the skiff amidships and cut her in half.

The two pieces of the boat separated and sank in under ten seconds. Four of the crew went into the water. The other four didn't come up.

Elena's grip tightened on the quarterdeck rail. She'd given the order. Press the attack. Screen with the fishing fleet. She'd known what screening meant—small boats drawing big guns, trading lives for distance. She'd known, and she'd said it anyway, because the math worked. Better to lose fishing boats than warships. Better to lose eight men than eighty.

The math always worked. That was the terrible thing about it.

"Southeast group is engaging," Kira called from the signal station. She'd positioned herself amidships, halfway between Elena on the quarterdeck and the signals crew at the main mast—the fulcrum of the ship's communications, translating Elena's commands into flags and receiving reports from the fleet. "Revas is at six hundred yards from the escort frigates. Two Imperial ships closing to intercept."

"Tell Revas to hit the nearest escort with everything he has. Full broadside at four hundred yards, then close and hit her again. I want that frigate out of the fight in two exchanges."

Kira's hands moved. Flags climbed the *Stormhawk*'s mast. Across the water, Revas's lead ship—the *Raker*, thirty guns—adjusted course, her bow swinging to bring her broadside to bear on the closer of the two escort frigates.

The frigate fired first. The broadside came across the water as a wall of smoke and noise, the guns going off in sequence from bow to stern, each flash adding to the cloud until the entire ship was hidden behind a curtain of gray. Iron screamed through the air. The *Raker* shuddered. Elena saw rigging part, saw a section of rail explode into splinters, saw a figure on the *Raker*'s deck thrown backward and fall.

Then the *Raker* answered. Her broadside was lighter—smaller guns, fewer of them—but at four hundred yards the shot pattern was tight and well-aimed. Elena watched the Imperial frigate take the hits. Hull strikes. At least six balls through the planking, and one that hit the foremast at the base and sent cracks running up the timber like lightning through a tree.

"Revas is closing," Kira reported. "Three hundred yards. Two-fifty."

"Second volley. Load chain shot for the rigging. I want that frigate unable to maneuver."

More flags. More smoke. The *Raker* fired again, and behind her the other two ships of the southeast group added their guns. The Imperial frigate staggered under the combined weight—chain shot tearing through her rigging, round shot punching through her hull, the cumulative effect of three ships concentrating their fire on a single target. Her foremast went over the side—the cracks from the first hit finishing the job, the mast toppling in slow motion, dragging canvas and rope and a screaming topman down with it.

The second escort frigate was coming up fast, trying to cover her crippled sister. She fired a broadside at the *Raker* from five hundred yards—long range, inaccurate, but one ball caught the *Raker*'s stern and blew out the captain's cabin windows.

"Tell Revas to ignore the second escort. Leave her for the trailing ships. Revas concentrates on the cripple—I want it sunk or struck." Elena's eyes moved to the northeast. "Where's Dunn?"

"Northeast group is past the screen. Dunn's engaging the *Iron Will* directly." Kira paused, reading the signal flags from Dunn's lead ship. "He's reporting heavy fire. The *Iron Will* is using her upper-deck guns—anti-personnel loads, grape and canister. He's losing men on deck."

"Distance?"

"Two hundred yards and closing."

Two hundred yards from the biggest warship in the Imperial fleet. Dunn had gotten through—past the screening frigates, past the fishing fleet's distraction, into the killing ground around the flagship. But two hundred yards from sixty guns was a very bad place to be.

Elena watched through the spyglass. Dunn's three ships had spread into a line, approaching the *Iron Will*'s starboard side. The lead ship—the *Osprey*, twenty-four guns—was firing as she advanced, her broadsides hitting the *Iron Will*'s hull with the rapid percussion of a drummer at double time. But the *Iron Will* was a fortress. The shots hit and did nothing visible—the flagship's hull was built thick, the oak layered and reinforced with iron strapping, and the *Osprey*'s twelve-pound balls bounced off her sides like pebbles against a wall.

The *Iron Will* fired back. Not with the upper batteries—with the main guns. The lower deck, the thirty-two pounders, the weapons that had been designed to destroy ships of the line at range. At two hundred yards they couldn't miss.

The broadside hit the *Osprey* like God's fist. Elena watched through the spyglass as the corvette's port side dissolved. Planking blew inward. Guns flew off their carriages. The mainmast shook, held, then slowly toppled—not breaking but pulling free of the deck, the step giving way, the mast falling to starboard in a tangle of rigging that dragged the ship sideways.

The *Osprey* was done. Not sinking—not yet—but crippled, her fighting power gone, her deck a shambles of broken wood and broken men. She drifted away from the *Iron Will*'s side, trailing smoke, her surviving crew trying to cut away the fallen mast before it dragged them under.

"*Osprey* is out." Elena lowered the spyglass. Her voice was flat. Twenty-four men on that gun deck. Half of them were dead. She could do the math later, could grieve later, could sit in a dark room and count the names of people she'd sent to die. Not now. "What's Dunn doing?"

"His other two ships are pressing the attack. The *Harrier* and the *Tern*. They're at a hundred and fifty yards, firing as fast as they can load."

"They're too light. The *Iron Will*'s hull is too thick for their guns."

"Dunn knows. He's targeting the upper works—the masts, the rigging, the quarterdeck. If he can't sink her, he's trying to strip her."

Smart captain, Dunn. You couldn't punch through a fortress wall with a fist, so you aimed for the windows. The *Iron Will*'s upper decks were lighter than her hull—the quarterdeck, the poop, the mast steps. Hit those hard enough and you could kill the officers, foul the rigging, take away the flagship's ability to maneuver and signal even if her guns kept firing.

But sixty guns kept firing. The *Iron Will*'s broadside thundered out again—upper and lower batteries together this time, the entire starboard side disappearing behind smoke. The *Harrier* caught the worst of it. Her bow disintegrated. The bowsprit, the figurehead, the forward six feet of hull—all of it blasted away in a single volley, leaving the ship's interior exposed like a doll's house with its front wall ripped off. Men spilled from the opening. Some fell into the water. Some didn't fall far enough.

Elena gripped the rail. The *Harrier* was settling by the bow—flooding fast, the damage too great to control. Her crew was already abandoning, going over the sides, swimming for the *Tern* or the drifting *Osprey* or simply treading water and praying someone would pick them up.

Two of Dunn's three ships gone. One still fighting. And the *Iron Will* sat in the water barely scratched, her masts intact, her guns reloading, her hull absorbing everything the Federation could throw at it.

"This isn't working," Elena said.

"No," Kira agreed. "It is not."

---

The Crown flickered.

Elena pressed her hand to her forehead. A pulse of awareness—stronger than the flickers she'd been getting, almost a full connection—washed through her and showed her the *Iron Will* from below the waterline. The hull. The keel. The water around the flagship, disturbed by cannon concussion and the thrashing of men in the sea.

And Rossa's fragment.

It was back. Not the steady, confident glow it had carried before Elena's attack—more like a lamp with a cracked chimney, flickering, uneven, the light coming in surges. But it was broadcasting. Elena could feel it reaching out through the water, touching the other ships in the formation, sending patterns that meant *hold position* and *shift fire* and *close the gap*.

Rossa was coordinating again.

As Elena watched through the Crown, the two escort frigates that had been fighting Revas's group stopped trying to engage independently and synchronized. One held the *Raker* in place with steady fire while the other swung wide, trying to get around behind Revas's line. A flanking maneuver. The kind of coordinated action that individual captains didn't attempt on their own—it required someone above them, seeing the whole picture, directing the pieces.

Rossa had her eyes back. Damaged, limited, but enough to turn twelve separate ships into a fleet again.

"She's recovering," Elena told Kira. "The fragment is working. She's directing traffic again."

Kira's jaw tightened. "Then we're out of time."

"We were always out of time." Elena turned from the rail. The *Stormhawk* was still running south, paralleling the battle, her guns loaded but unfired. Thirty-two guns. A proper warship, bigger than anything Dunn had brought to the fight, crewed by sailors who'd been itching to use those guns for weeks. "Take us in."

Kira looked at her.

"The *Stormhawk*. Directly at the *Iron Will*. Join Dunn's remaining ship. Add our guns to the assault."

"We'll be in range of sixty guns."

"We're the biggest ship in the harbor. We carry thirty-two. The *Tern* is alone out there—she needs support or Rossa will pound her to kindling." Elena met Kira's eyes. "Take us in."

Kira held her gaze for two heartbeats. Then she turned to the helm.

"Hard to port. Set course for the *Iron Will*. All hands to battle stations. Load the port battery—chain shot for the first volley, round shot after." Her voice carried across the deck with the authority of a woman who had been giving commands on this ship for weeks and expected them obeyed before the echo died. "Gun crews stand ready. Do not fire until I give the word."

The *Stormhawk* came around. The deck tilted as she turned, her sails filling on the new heading, her bow pointing straight at the dark blue hull of the *Iron Will*. The distance was eight hundred yards. Seven hundred. Closing fast, the wind behind them, every yard bringing them deeper into the killing ground.

Elena felt the Crown respond.

Not the overwhelming pull from before—the proximity was still too great for that. But an awareness. A mutual recognition between her fragment and Rossa's, the two pieces of the Crown acknowledging each other across the water like old enemies meeting in a crowded room. Elena's Crown hummed on her brow. Rossa's fragment pulsed aboard the *Iron Will*. The two signals brushed against each other, reading, assessing, measuring.

And through that brush of contact, Elena caught a fragment of Rossa's perspective.

Not thoughts. Not words. A sensation—the feel of a quarterdeck beneath boots, the smell of powder smoke, the sound of guns reloading. And a direction. Rossa's attention, channeled through her fragment, pointed at the *Stormhawk*. The admiral had seen them coming. Had identified the threat. Was already calculating—range, angle, timing, the precise moment when the approaching frigate would enter the *Iron Will*'s broadside arc and become vulnerable to the full weight of her guns.

Rossa wasn't panicking. She was working the problem. A competent officer facing a competent attack, and the mathematics were on her side because she had sixty guns and the *Stormhawk* had thirty-two.

Five hundred yards. The *Iron Will* was huge now, filling the view forward—her dark hull and her brass fittings and her gun ports open in three rows, the black muzzles of her cannon visible in the shadows behind. The Dunn's surviving ship—the *Tern*—was still engaging the flagship's starboard side, her guns barking, her shots hitting the upper works. A signal from the *Tern*'s mast: *engaging from the northeast, request support*.

"Four hundred yards," the *Stormhawk*'s helmsman called.

"Hold fire," Kira said.

Three hundred yards. Elena could see individual sailors on the *Iron Will*'s deck. Could see the gun crews through the open ports—men heaving on tackle, ramming charges, working with the speed of a crew that had been drilling for weeks. Could see the quarterdeck, and standing on it, a figure with silver hair and a dark blue uniform, one hand raised.

Rossa. Elena could see her now—not through the Crown, through her own eyes. Tall, straight-backed, commanding the flagship the way she'd commanded it for months—with precision and certainty and the absolute conviction that she was doing what the Empire required.

Her raised hand held something small that caught the light. The fragment. Not in her pocket anymore. In her palm, held up, aimed at the *Stormhawk* like a weapon.

The Crown screamed on Elena's brow. The proximity was close enough now—three hundred yards, less—for the fragments to interact directly. Rossa's fragment pushed at Elena's Crown, a focused beam of interference, trying to scramble, to disrupt, to do at range what Elena had done at point-blank. It was weaker—Rossa's fragment was damaged, her control crude—but it was enough to make Elena's vision blur and her knees go soft.

"Two hundred yards," the helmsman said.

"Hold fire," Kira repeated. Her voice didn't waver.

One hundred fifty. The *Iron Will*'s gun ports were gaping mouths. Elena could see the swabs being pulled from cannon bores. Could see the gun captains sighting down their barrels, adjusting elevation, tracking the *Stormhawk* as she closed.

One hundred yards.

On the *Iron Will*'s quarterdeck, Rossa lowered her hand.

"FIRE!" The word carried across the water—not through the Crown, through the air, Rossa's command voice cutting through the noise of battle with the clarity of a blade through canvas.

Sixty guns fired.