The European Alliance (7)
But what on earth were those galleys rowing so hard for?
Dozens of galleys were charging straight toward us in a single line.
"Don't tell me they're planning to board us? The galleys are going for close combat! Open fire on those first!"
Each one of those had to be packed with soldiers. One or two would have been manageable, but if several latched on at once, things would get seriously ugly.
BOOM! BOOM!
The gunners must have sensed the danger too, because they opened fire before the galleys even got close. The ships shelling from way out there were, after all, more noisy than threatening.
Crack! Crack-crack! Crack!
"Watch the incoming rounds, everyone!"
Ping! Ting! Ting! Dong!
Sure enough, the galleys came racing in on a straight line and started shooting back.
Shadows flickered on their decks, and bullets came zipping in — the sound of them ricocheting off the hull was deafening.
There was no such thing as bulletproof glass yet, so we had to stay sharp.
KU-BOOM!
At last, one of the galleys reached our ship.
With the turret mounted at the center of the vessel, there came a point where its guns simply couldn't get the angle.
We'd have to install some small cannons along the sides and edges of the ships later on.
"Damn it! Enemy ship closing in!"
"Battle stations!"
"Marines, get out here, now!"
Our own ship carried more than two hundred fighting men as well. It was their turn to earn their keep.
SPLASH! SPLASH!
"Row! Row harder! Just a little farther and we'll be inside where their cannons can't reach!"
Beneath a deck splattered with blood from all sides, the overseer cracked his whip and bellowed.
"What's the point?! We're all going to die anyway!"
They were on a suicide run — of course every last one of them was fated to die.
"And then your families die with you, all of them!"
"Hnnngh…"
Their ankles were chained to the ship, and even if they could somehow escape, their families would be executed the moment they fled.
Even the convicts and slaves were swallowing the bitter pill and rowing on.
"You're in the same boat, you wretched bastard!"
"Which is why I'm dying right along with you!"
The whip-wielding overseer's lot was no different. A deserter, he'd been caught while visiting home, and when they told him to board the suicide ship if he wanted his family to live, he'd had no choice.
His ankles, too, were locked in heavy iron shackles, his trembling hands gripped around a bloodstained whip.
And his eyes were brimming with tears as well.
"We've come this far — there's no turning back now! Move, damn you all! Move! Hahahaha…"
The mood aboard the galley was a shambles, a wailing that could have been weeping or laughter, no one could tell which.
Crack! Crack-crack! Crack!
"Ha… morons. If you stay right next to us, you're all going to die. Did nobody tell them that?"
On the ships flanking the rowing galleys, marines scrambled up onto the decks, firing their muskets and flailing about in a desperate attempt to do *something*.
Only after hundreds of ships had sunk did the galleys finally slip inside the Blue Sharks' firing angle.
"The cannons can't hit us anymore!"
"Everyone, charge!"
The galleys packed with boarding troops were ecstatic.
Those ships looked tall, sure, but with a line thrown up, they could scale them in seconds.
"Ram them! Go straight in!"
"Everyone, ready the lines!"
THUD.
They drove straight in and slammed against the hull.
"Throw the hooks!"
CLANG-CLANG!
Dozens of lines tipped with hook-shaped iron flew up, caught, and began the climb — a climb they'd been sent here to die making.
"Uwaaah! Climb!"
Tuk-tuk. Tuk.
What tumbled down onto their decks were fist potatoes — grenades, hurled from above.
Some splashed into the water, but plenty landed right on the planks.
"What is that thing?"
SSSSSSSK—rumble-rumble—
The grenades rolled across the deck with an ominous hiss.
"You don't think—"
"Grab them and throw them overboard! Hurry!"
The quicker sailors scrambled to scoop them up and hurl them over the side.
KWAAAA-BOOM!
"GYAAAAH!"
But most had reacted far too late. As the grenades burst across the deck, dozens of men clustered at the boarding lines were torn open and crumpled, bleeding from the holes punched through their bodies.
"AAAAAGH!"
"There's a hole in me! Help me!"
"Hnnngh…"
Because they'd all crowded together to board, the damage was catastrophic.
Crack! Crack-crack! Crack!
"Agh! Shoot back! Fire something, anything!"
"The bastards won't poke their heads over the side!"
As long as the enemy kept climbing the ropes one by one, the Blue Sharks' marines intended to simply pick them off as they came, pistols in hand, firing down from above.
Those ships would have to converge from every direction and scale the hull before they could ever reach the upper deck.
And amid that desperate struggle of the galleys—
"Now… it's time…"
"Everyone did well… hngh…"
SSSSSSSK—
The overseers touched flame to the fuses running from the powder kegs packed with shot and shells, and closed their eyes.
"Hnnngh…"
"Sniff…"
"Mama. Papa…"
In the acrid stench of gunpowder smoke that seeped into their nostrils, the convicts and slaves shed their last tears, recalling the faces of their families one final time.
SSSSSSSK—
The quietly burning fuses measured what little time they had left in this world.
The lines they had been staring at blankly vanished into their tubes, and—
"Rot in hell, Europe."
KUUUUU-BOOOOM!
GU-GU-GU-RUMBLE!
KWAAAAAANG!
Three suicide ships had apparently reached the ships of Daehan.
The instant three enormous detonations erupted in succession, the shell-hoards and iron shot stacked aboard them began spraying in every direction.
"…"
"Wh…"
"What the—!"
The blasts had gone off right in the middle of the galleys clustered together for boarding, sweeping away everything nearby and grinding it to powder.
Just three suicide runs had wiped out even the ships whose crews had been celebrating on the verge of finally climbing aboard.
"Did it work?!"
"Yes! It went off right beside them! By the sound of it, three ships' worth of powder exploded!"
The command staff aboard the flagship, watching from a distance, congratulated themselves on the success.
The smoke was tremendous — and it looked far more powerful than the powder-ship blast at Venice.
And since the Blue Sharks had gone so utterly silent and still, they seemed to believe the enemy had finally sunk, or met some crisis.
"MWAHAHAHA! Die, you bastards!"
"HA! I should have brought some drinks up here!"
"Cheers! I did — brought Daehan's red ginseng liquor."
"What—?!"
The nobles gathered on the flagship broke out Daehan's liquor all the same, lit up their cigarettes, and began celebrating.
"To our victory!"
"Shame we didn't get to watch the fight against the ironclads, though."
"You can say that again."
The ironclads were only now joining the battle line that had encircled the Blue Sharks.
"Come on then, a toast!"
"With pleasure!"
And as they raised their cups, lit their pipes, and popped chocolate into their mouths, the smoke that had blanketed everything in every direction slowly began to disperse.
And gradually, a colossal silhouette emerged from it.
"Huh?"
"Don't tell me it's… unharmed?"
"Come on… it's probably holed and sinking right now."
The wine glasses trembling anxiously in the hands of the nobles staring blankly out at the water told a different story.
"Everyone, throw your grenades! Wait for them and shoot the bastards as they climb up!"
"Keep your heads down!"
Once the galleys latched on, chaos broke out on the Blue Sharks' decks too.
The marines drew their pistols and lit the fuses on fist potatoes, hurling them over the rail by the handful.
BOOM-BOOM! KA-BOOM! CRACK!
"GYAAAAAAH!"
The turret crews were still busy hammering distant enemy ships, and the recklessly flung grenades found their marks — beyond the railing, the air filled with screams.
KA-DONG! DONG! DONG!
"Ugh!"
And still the iron shot came flying in and slamming against the hull, its racket unrelenting.
KUUUUUWAAAAAAANG!
"Gahk—!"
"Ugh…"
With that monstrous explosion, everything in every direction went quiet.
In the tremendous haze of gunpowder smoke and wood blown to splinters—
"Cough, cough."
"Huaah…"
"What… was that…"
The sailors who'd been flung rolling across the deck by the blast began coughing their way back to their feet.
"Cough, cough. Those lunatics…"
"Did they actually blow themselves up?"
"Owww, every bone in my body…"
The marines on deck had been slammed around hard enough that even the bridge crew were complaining of the bruises they'd collected against every bulkhead in sight.
"Huh? HUH? What? I can't hear ANYTHING!"
"Then drink some holy water, you fool!"
"Huh? HUH?!"
"Holy water! Ah… he can't hear a word I'm saying…"
Apparently at least one soldier had burst his eardrums.
If the shells slamming into the hull before had felt like a bell ringing while you stood trapped inside it, this time it was as if the whole bell had come down and bludgeoned them.
"Cough, cough. Ugh — and this smoke means I can't see a damn thing!"
"Is everyone alive?"
"I CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING!"
"Haah…"
Thankfully, with no one having poked their heads over the rail, nobody seemed seriously hurt.
"But aren't we actually better off this way?"
"How do you figure?"
"One blast and every ship that got close to us just… vanished?"
"…Huh. Good point."
In truth, that instant — when the galleys had swarmed against them in droves — had been the single greatest opportunity the allied fleet would ever get.
If they had boarded and pressed the fight in sheer numbers, even the Blue Sharks would have had a rough time of it.
"Fire the moment the smoke clears!"
"Everyone, pull yourselves together and man your stations!"
"Cough, cough. How long does smoke take to blow away?! I'm suffocating over here!"
The allied fleet's trump card had achieved nothing more than sore bodies and ruptured eardrums among the Blue Sharks' crew.
"Fire again the second you can see again!"
BOOM! BOOM!
And the turret began pouring shells once more.
The artillery duel with the European allied fleet had begun anew.
BOOM! BOOM!
"What—!"
"They're firing again!"
The moment the smoke dispersed, the bombardment came raining down on the allies once more.
"They SURVIVED that?!"
CRACK! KA-BOOM!
After a blast like that, the ship was intact — and the crew with it.
"It's a monster from hell!"
"No! The ship itself is a demon!"
"Everyone, fire!"
And the black shape gradually fading into view through the thinning smoke was terrifying beyond words.
It looked like some beast stalking out of the fog that had swallowed an ancient city.
"AAAAAH! Save me!"
"I don't want to die!"
"Let's run!"
"And get out of here HOW?!"
The ships were circling in a great ring around the Blue Sharks. With so many vessels still left, they were encircled in layer upon layer.
When a ship in the inner ring sank, the ships circling outside moved in to fill the gap — ships could enter the ring, but none could leave it.
Strict rules had been set, and anyone who moved against them would only collide with their own allies and sink.
"I don't care — I'm getting off this ship!"
"You're insane!"
SPLOOSH.
And so some abandoned ship entirely, clutching an empty barrel or a crate, and leapt into the sea.
Land was visible off in the distance — surely they could swim there somehow.
"Wha—!"
SPLAAASH. THUD.
…right up until they smashed into one of the circling ships and their heads cracked open.
As the allied fleet's orderly lines dissolved into chaos—
"Good! Now it's OUR turn at the front!"
"Everyone, take the forward line!"
The allied fleet's ultimate weapon, the ironclads, moved to the fore.
Thirty-one ships, still wobbling unsteadily, advanced.
FWEEEEEE—THUD! DA-DANG! ZZEONG! CRACK! KA-BOOM!
"Ooh! There it is! We're stopping them!"
With iron plates bolted on, the explosive shells were indeed ricocheting off or bursting against the surface.
Granted, the shock of the blasts was shattering armor plates and knocking them loose, and the hulls were being chewed apart bit by bit — but this much gave them a fighting chance compared to the other ships.
"Everyone, advance!"
"Let's serve it to them up close!"
Buoyed by confidence, the ironclads began closing in as they reloaded.
KA-BOOM! CRACK! CRACK!
"Ugh."
"Ghaah…"
Of course, whenever a shell landed on deck, men died on the spot. Most of the sailors were working the ship out in the open, after all.
KA-BOOM! SCREEEECH—
"No! The mast's going!"
And some ships lost their masts — and with them, all ability to maneuver.
CRACK! GU-GU-GU-GURUMBLE—
"Gah! There's a hole in the hull! Plug it!"
"Plug it with WHAT?! We have to run!"
Armored or not, their cast iron plating shattered far too easily, and their wrought iron was far too soft.
One by one, as allied ships went under, the great guns at last finished their preparations to fire.
"All guns — FIRE!"
SSSSSSSK—
With the hiss of burning fuses, the ships fell briefly silent.
They were gambling, too. If guns of this size failed to stop Daehan, the alliance was finished.
And in the thick of that tension—
KU-KWA-BOOM!
Colossal-caliber cannons erupted from both flanks of the warship, belching out vast clouds of smoke.