The Guns of Two-Space by Dave Grossman, Bob Hudson Read Free Book Online Page B

that could throw a cannonball bigger than twelve pounds, and it was not feasible to build a Ship with a Keel any longer than their Fang . There were smaller Ships and guns, but none larger.
    These 24-pounders were the Guldur "secret weapon"—a cannon with a throw weight twice as large as anything anyone had ever seen before. But the Guldur had apparently been limited in their production capacity, and on all their Ships they had left the bow and stern gunports empty, with a system of tracks in the deck to move the guns to those positions. In an ideal world the Fang would have had four more 24-pounders, to fill the upper and lower gunports in the stern and the bow. In Melville's mind those absent guns felt like missing teeth to a probing tongue.
    To aggravate the situation, the Sylvans on Osgil had insisted on taking two of his 24-pounders! Oh, they had paid for those guns, and paid well, in money, honor, and political support. And they had replaced them with some of the finest 12-pounders in the galaxy. But Melville still hated to see two more gaps in his "teeth."
    To say that he looked with sorrow or sadness at the spots where a 24-pounder should sit was not quite accurate. He did feel those emotions, but at times like this what he felt could be better described as a lust . He yearned for a full compliment of guns for his Ship like some men covet women or wealth. And if this battle turned out as planned, soon he would have a few more 24-pounders to fill some of those gaps, and he would have a few of the Guldur Ships to contribute to the Navy of Westerness. That would teach the bastards to attack him and his Ship!
    Meanwhile, the crew of the Fang had compensated for the shortage of 24-pounders by putting 12-pounders everywhere that they would fit. The number of spots where they could put a 12-pounder was limited by the deck space taken up by their four cutters, and the long recoil on the 24-pounders combined with the tracks needed to shift those huge guns to the gunports in the bow and stern. Still there was room for two 12-pounders in each of the stern cabins, and two more on each of their upper and lower broadsides. And there were two additional 12-pounders replacing the 24-pounders taken by the Sylvans.
    The upshot of it all was that the Fang currently carried fourteen 12-pounders and six 24-pounders. On any other human, Sylvan, or Dwarrowdelf Ship in the galaxy, the 12-pounders would be the primary armament. Aboard the Fang the 12-pounders took second place, a distant second, to the devastating, malignant power of the 24-pounders. Especially when they were being fired by Melville. Those damned guns were deadly... there just weren't enough of them to satisfy their captain.
    In his fear and confusion, Cuthbert Asquith XVI found himself gravitating toward Lt. Archer, the young officer who had gone out of his way to be friendly to the little earthling during the pistol match. Archer was in command of the two 12-pounders and two 24-pounders of the upper greenside battery, but his superbly trained crews had everything under control, and there was really very little for him to do at the moment. Thus the dapper young lieutenant was quite happy to spend a few minutes in conversation with Asquith.
    "Do you really think your two little 12-pounder popguns will do us any good?" asked Asquith.
    "Hmmm. That's an excellent question," replied Archer. "It's been a subject of considerable debate among the crew. It was pretty well established in the early age of dreadnoughts, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on Old Earth, that mixing shorter-range weapons together with longer meant that the shorter weapons never got fired, i.e., that when push came to shove they might as well not be there. Thus if one gun had a range of eight miles and another a range of ten miles there was a two-mile edge that ships had to penetrate under fire, and generally the ships in question would be sunk before they had got within eight miles. For