The Naval Battle of Venice (3)
"Enemy ship ahead. White flag!"
"Hm? A surrender?"
"Thank goodness. Surrender or envoy, either way it means they want to talk."
"Haha. Sounds like they spent all night agonizing over it."
Guess it looked pretty hopeless to them yesterday.
"They sent a pretty big ship, huh?"
"Right? Was there even any need to send something that size?"
"Maybe it's a fast one, though?"
As long as they're flying a white flag, who cares.
"Stay here — I'll go check it out."
"Yes, my lady. Just in case."
Right. They could've set this up and have swarms of them lurking on all sides.
The ship drew closer, and then it began throwing grappling hooks, trying to lock itself onto their vessel.
It was a big ship, sure — but next to theirs it was practically a toy.
"I'll go find the captain!"
"Hurry back!"
Huh? Where did the captain go?
"Begging your pardon, ma'am?"
"Ah, I guess the one I need to talk to is down below."
One of the crew at the turret nearby seemed curious too, and she was staring blankly down at the water when—
"AAAAAGH! RUN!"
"What?!"
"ABANDON SHIP!"
The men who'd gone below came scrambling back up the ladder, gasping for air.
"Oh, no. Don't tell me—"
KWAAAAA BOOM!
Those miserable bastards! For the first time in her life, Haneul took the full blast of an explosion at point-blank range.
Rat-a-tat-tat, CRASH-bang-crash!
That was the day she first learned that even she could lose her mind when hit by a powerful enough shock.
CLANG.
Ugh. I think I just hit a steel plate somewhere…
At least she was alone. The girl next to her had been behind the turret, so…
Everything was deafening. Would her ears be all right? Surely the Holy Water would fix them.
Rumble-rumble-tumble.
She'd slammed into something, rolled, and now the sky was spinning in lazy circles.
"My lady!"
"My lady! Stay with us!"
"*Sob!* My lady!"
"I'll kill every last one of those miserable bastards!"
Ah. I think I'm coming back to myself, bit by bit.
"Uuuggh…."
"Oh! She spoke!"
"My lady!"
Everyone around her was in floods of tears.
"Ugh… dizzy…."
"Ah! My lady, please stay lying down!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
Every time they shook her, the world spun worse.
Wow…. Getting hit by that shell in Vietnam really was child's play.
If black powder can do this, what would TNT or C4 do? Sure, I can't die, but this is one experience I never want to repeat.
"Puhihi."
"Gasp! My lady's broken!"
"No!"
What? A bomb just went off next to me and I'm still alive — isn't that hilarious?
Her laughing only made them fuss over her more.
"Everyone, quiet down. Wow…. I seriously thought I was a goner."
"*Sob!* My lady, we thought something terrible had happened! They say you lay there for a good ten minutes, not blinking, not breathing!"
"What?!"
What? So I actually blacked out? It felt like a minute or two, tops.
"Is everyone all right? Nobody hurt?"
"Yes, ma'am! Not a scratch on anyone!"
Good. But my heart took a hit. Those dirty, cowardly cowards.
"Those bastards really are the worst, aren't they?"
"Yes, ma'am. Grrrrk."
Captain, that's a really bad habit. Even the Holy Water can't grow you new teeth.
"Whew…. I'm going to get some rest. I can't think straight at all."
"Yes, ma'am. Let's get you inside. And you'll need to change your clothes too."
"Huh?"
Oh. Right. I look like a beggar. Shrapnel had torn holes all over her clothes.
I'm half-naked anyway. Time to go inside, rest up, and find my inner peace.
The moment Haneul retreated to her cabin, the atmosphere on deck turned cold enough to frost over.
"Those bastards have no idea who they're dealing with."
"No, ma'am!"
Captain and crew alike were positively seething. If one of the enemy had been standing in front of them, they'd have folded him in half on the spot.
Everyone answered at the top of their lungs, and their fists were clenched so hard they'd gone bone-white.
"No surrender! We bombard them until every last shell is spent!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
It looked as though a merciless battle was about to begin.
"No, wait! When we run out, we fetch more and keep pounding them!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
"Weigh anchor!"
HWOOOOON.
The Whale Shark class ships surged forward, their horns blaring an unusually grim note today.
The Doge of Venice may well have awakened a demon….
The towers of Venice were quite tall. The people watching from them could only make out dots at that distance — but just barely, they could see the Daehan warships and the suicide ship creeping toward them.
"Oh! It exploded!"
"Well? Are they still moving?"
"If that worked, let's send more ships out and blow them up too."
The distance was too great to hear anything, but apparently they could distinguish an explosion when they saw one.
"Oh? They've all gone still?"
"Did it work?"
They'd been standing motionless for so long that the mistake was understandable.
"Huh? They're moving again!"
"What did you say?!"
"It must have gone off some distance away, not right alongside!"
No one could imagine a ship standing there unscathed after its powder magazine had exploded right next to it.
"Could we build more suicide ships?"
"Who would volunteer for that?"
"We could just point them in the right direction and float them out in swarms?"
"We don't have anywhere near that much powder…."
While the suicide ships stood a good chance of doing damage, they would have to carry enormous quantities of gunpowder out with them.
They'd bought plenty of powder from Daehan, to be sure, but it was nowhere near enough.
"Ha…. Should we truly surrender?"
"What will you do, Doge?"
"What do you all think?"
The Doge found these men utterly repulsive. When there was money to be made, they jostled to snatch every last coin at the council table — yet when a decision like this loomed, they all shoved it onto his shoulders.
"Ahem…."
"Ahem."
"If we lose any more ships, our commerce will suffer. We shall surrender and pay the indemnity."
And with that, he went down to send an envoy.
A ship flying a white flag, completely oblivious to what its own side had just done.
The vessel sailing toward the Daehan ships was sent straight to the bottom of the sea.
"What? Why?"
"They're flying a white flag! Why sink it?"
"Have these people no concept of chivalry?!"
The very men who couldn't begin to imagine what their own white-flagged ship had done minutes ago were now the ones raging in outrage.
It was a nation of merchants, and it seemed to have gathered only people without a shred of conscience.
"Could it be… because of the suicide ship just now?"
"Impossible!"
"Surely they wouldn't hold a grudge over something so petty?"
A pot calling the kettle black, as they say. These people thought in whatever way suited them best.
"Send another ship at once! At this rate they'll be right on top of us!"
"Make haste!"
They sent out ship after white-flagged ship — and all five were sunk without exception.
"Uh…?"
"What do we do now?"
"Don't tell me… it really was because of the white-flag bombing?"
Only now did the gravity of their situation begin to dawn on them.
And amid them all, only the Doge was smiling bitterly.
So this city is finished. Victorious in the War of the League of Cambrai, and reduced to this….
He wondered if, drunk on their long-awaited victory and mountains of spoils, they had simply grown too arrogant.
There had been the cautionary tale of Portugal, plain for all to see — and still it had come to this.
"What do we do now?"
"What do you mean, now what?"
"No — Doge, what will you do now?"
"We made the decision together, and now you ask what I intend to do?"
The councilmen who had just sent the Doge out to deliver the surrender immediately gathered around him and began fighting amongst themselves.
You did it! No, you did! — all of them scrambling to pin the blame on someone else.
KOOM. KOOM.
And then, faintly, the sound of Daehan's cannons began to roll across the water, two reports at a time.
"No! Get the ships to safety, now!"
"Make haste!"
"We cannot afford to lose any more vessels!"
Belatedly receiving their orders, the ships that had been pounded for so long scrambled to leave the harbor and flee to open water.
The inner lagoon was wide enough, but the channels leading out of it were not.
Ships tangled and collided, shoved each other aside, and more and more of them began running aground in the shallows.
Then the incoming shells began sinking them too, and the chaos spiraled into sheer pandemonium.
"What on earth are they doing?"
"Why do they keep crashing into each other and sinking?"
"Eh, let them eat all the shells they want."
"Yes, ma'am!"
And so the Daehan warships bombarded them with merciless abandon until the sun went down.
They fired so much that they swapped out barrel after barrel, far too many to count.
When night fell, they once again withdrew to rest. Venice had no ships left, and no strength left to resist.
The next morning, the Whale Sharks opened fire again at dawn.
"Nothing left to shoot at, is there? Let's head for the city. Lower the boats, check the depth as we go, and advance slowly."
And so each Whale Shark launched two boats, sounding the shallows as the great ships crept forward.
"What am I looking at?"
"Venice's fleet just lost to three ships?!"
The two men watching the naval battle from the mountaintop were stunned.
Venice might be a city-state, but it was a maritime superpower — a nation of merchants that even most great powers dared not trifle with.
All of that, brought down by just three ships. In three days.
"If I told this story anywhere, would anyone believe me?"
"We're not the only ones who saw it, at least."
Tell it wrong in the wrong company, and you'd be branded a hopeless braggart for life.
"Wow…. To see it with my own eyes. By the way — who exactly are they?"
"They called themselves Daehan."
"I'd heard rumors of a land of clever craftsmen who make marvelous trinkets to sell…."
No one, in all of history, had ever crossed into Daehan's lands.
A handful of travelers had passed through and spoken of iron things that ran on their own, of cities so vast one could walk for days without leaving them — but who would believe such tales?
Most had dismissed Daehan as just another merchant nation good at trade, like Venice itself.
That perception was about to change, and change dramatically.
"This appears to be as far as we can go, Captain."
"All right? Then we start from here."
"Yes, ma'am! I'll call everyone back aboard."
The Whale Shark's draft wasn't especially deep, but there was no sense taking needless risks.
Besides, from this position they could shell any part of the city they pleased. The captain recalled the soldiers who'd been sounding the depths and opened fire.
KOOM. KOOM.
From the ships standing at oblique angles to the city, the bombardment poured out without end.
The gondolas moored along Venice's countless canals splintered into flying shrapnel, and beautiful marble squares came crashing down.
The jewel of the sea that Venetians had so proudly boasted of began to be shattered, piece by merciless piece, under the bombardment.
Just how many shells had they loaded for this voyage? Three days of relentless firing, and the magazines still weren't empty.
"Captain! Another ship flying a white flag!"
"Don't bother asking questions. Sink it on sight."
"Yes, sir!"
After what had happened, no white flag could be trusted. There was nothing for it but to shoot them all down.
The three Whale Sharks shelled the city indiscriminately until late that night.
Under this much bombardment, anyone with sense would have fled on their own. And since the inner lagoon didn't look terribly deep, no one would be hurt escaping by water.
And then, that night—
The ships sat at anchor, searchlights sweeping the surroundings, when something appeared on the waterfront.
"Sir! Someone out there waving a torch!"
"Hm? What now? He's not carrying gunpowder, is he?"
"Send a signal back, whatever works."
"Yes, sir."
When they flashed the searchlight at him a few times, the man prostrated himself on the ground over and over, as if overcome with relief.
Then he began cautiously rowing a small boat toward them.
"Light him up properly. Check for anything suspicious."
"Yes, sir!"
They'd already been burned once, and they had decided they could not afford to trust anyone. They examined that little boat with painstaking care.
They kept watching long after it came alongside, and only finally lowered a rope to haul the man up.
"Well then. What is the meaning of this?"
"I am Leonardo Loredan, Doge of Venice. I beg you… accept our surrender…."
An old man of seventy, dressed in dust-caked clothes, weeping and pleading — it was almost pitiable to watch.
"You'll forgive me if I need more than words to believe that…."
"I am truly sorry for the ship that flew a white flag and exploded. I ask only for your forgiveness…."
Step. Step.
Just then, Haneul, who had been standing at the back, stepped forward.
"So how do you plan to compensate us for the damages?"
"Gah…."
The Doge, still on his knees, lifted his head to look at her — and froze.
Rumor had it she was beautiful enough to be an angel or a demon descended to earth, but he had never quite believed it. Until now.
"You see, I rather like gold."
"H-how much of an indemnity would you require…."
Standing against the backdrop of his ruined city, lit from afar by the searchlight, she looked utterly otherworldly.
An angel who loves gold…. He found himself genuinely wondering whether she might be a demon after all.