The Guns of Two Space: Chapter Five

Boarding Action: “Out Cutlasses and Board!"

    The Fangs all waited, each in his own way, for the two Ships to close.

    The upper and lower bow guns mercilessly battered the enemy with huge shotgun blasts of grapeshot. In the upper bow Melville crouched with his boarding party. On the upper quarterdeck Lt. Fielder had the conn. In the lower bow, Broadax waited with her marines, twirling her ax and puffing her cigar contentedly. They tried not to think about the horrors that awaited them, but everyone who could do so had changed into clean clothing to help prevent infecting wounds.

    Trailing behind the Fang, staying where the enemy couldn’t see them, the two cutters from the lower deck followed closely. Their uppersides were packed to the gunwales with hand-picked sailors, each one armed to the teeth. One of the Ships’ two jollyboats also rode beside them.

    These two, miniature, one-masted, two-space Ships were named White-socks and Fatty Lumpkin. Along with Sharp-ears and Wise-nose, the two cutters stored on the upperside, the cutters were a remnant of their dear, beloved Kestrel, the mortally wounded Ship who had died to help them capture the Fang.

    Once the cutters were separated from the Fang they took on an intelligence of their own, and the two young commanders could feel the child-like eagerness radiating from their boats. Lt. Archer was in the upper bow of White-socks and his friend, Lt. Crater, in Fatty Lumpkin. The two young lieutenants looked across at each other and grinned. The lowerside jollyboat, which had come with the Fang and had been named Rip, carried old Hans and Ulrich in it, along with a small, crack crew of sailors.

    “I wanted to be a marine but I couldn’t pass the physical. I couldn’t get my head in the jar,” said Lt. Fielder to Asquith.

    The little earthling w still crouched in malodorous misery and fear on the upper quarterdeck. A spradic spray of Guldur small arms fire was keeping his head down. Fielder sood beside him at the rail, keeping a watchful eye on the tactical situation and maintaining a generally one sided conversation with Asquith. In the midst of his own fear and anxiety, Fielder continued to draw comfort from the earthworm’s abject terror.

    Their conversation had turned to the subject of marines, and Fielder was waxing eloquent upon one of his favorite topics. “You have to think of marines as big, dumb dogs. You even have to talk to them like dogs. ŒHey, boy! How ya doing! You wanta play? Huh? Huh? Fetch, boy, fetch! Go get the Ship! Get the Ship! Come on, boy! You can do it!’”

    “Except’n fer Dwakins,” added the quartermaster at the wheel, happily contributing his two bits to a popular subject. “I do believe ‘e’s too dumb ta git the ideer.”

    “I do believe you’re right,” said Fielder with a nod. “In Dwakins’ case you just have to level with him. I can hear Broadax right about now. I’ve heard it a hundred times: ‘Dwakins, yer too dumb to live!’” he said, in a fair imitation of Lt. Broadax’s gravelly voice, causing the quarterdeck crew to break into laughter. “‘Jist try ta keep up with the other doggies, an’ do what they do. If ye die first, we’re splitting up yer gear!’”

    The baffled earthling shook his head in confusion, disgust and dismay. These people truly were insane. Of that there could be no doubt. But then a line occurred to him, and he found it comforting to say, “Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground.”

    “Ha!” said Fielder in surprise. “Behold the earthling. Wonder of the ages. Prick him and he bleeds Shakespeare. That’s The Tempest, I believe?”

    “Yes,” replied Asquith, finding that he relished the intellectual distraction. “There’s been nothing else to do here except read. It’s been kind of lonely, so, ‘My Library, was dukedom enough.’”

    “Well then,” said Fielder, gesturing expansively at the Ship, “what do you think of our little universe? The Bard says, ‘Here is everything advantageous to life.’”

    “‘True; save means to live,’” replied Asquith on cue.

    “‘Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,’” replied Fielder with a sincere grin and a shake of his head. “As for me...

    Then, tentatively, Asquith reached up his hand to Fielder. “Here’s my hand.” His gesture of friendship was under the cover of the quoting game they were playing, but it was nonetheless heartfelt, as he opened himself up to be snubbed by the sardonic first officer.

    But Fielder replied in kind, and on cue, with apparent sincerity and kindness, as he reached down his hand, “‘And mine, with my heart in ‘t.’”

    Fielder and Asquith remained in companionable silence as the battle raged about them, the first officer gripping the railing and standing ramrod straight in spite of his fears, the earthling still nestled in his corner. Then the enemy added injury to all the insult that had been heaped on poor Asquith’s plate. The Guldur Ship managed to put their upperside bow gun back into battery and sent one double-shotted cannon blast into the Fang’s quarterdeck before they were hammered by counterfire from the Fang. One of the Guldur cannonballs hit the mizzenmast and sent a shower of wood splinters amongst the quarterdeck crew.

    “Damn,” said Fielder sadly, looking down at the wounded and unconscious earthling. “This has been a real ‘bad hair day’ for you my friend. Now sleep, for,

    “Dwakins, yer too damned dumb ta live!” roared Broadax. “Jist shoot when I tell ye to, an’ stab the first Guldur ye see. Then try ta keep up with the udders, and do wat they do. If ye die first, we’re splitting up yer gear.”

    “Uh, okay, sir. Er, mah-yam,” Dwakins replied. “Ah guess ah won’t be needin’ it then.” His baby monkey cringed and managed to mirror Dwakins confused helplessness.

    Dwakins did have a very thick crust on his pudding. Life had been so much simpler when he was an apprentice mole catcher back on his home world, Fforde, but his boss had told him he should “Go join da damned marines an’ see da galaxy.”

    So he was thick, but he was also new and he had to learn everything the hard way in the midst of a veteran crew. In this case his sin was a continued failure to keep his loaded musket and its razor sharp bayonet pointed away from his comrades. With an “Eek!” of outrage, Lance Corporal Jarvis’ monkey had barely managed to deflect Dwakins’ bayonet as it was about to slice open the back of Jarvis’s head.

    There was just too much going on, and Dwakins kept getting distracted. In exasperation Broadax had put the young private in the very front of the formation, where he was less likely to shoot or stab one of his comrades in the back. However, he was also in the most perilous position, with the least combat experience and survival skills, so he was very likely to die. Bringing a certain sad truth to Broadax’s claim that he was too dumb to live.

    The job of the combat rifleman truly was one of the most mentally challenging tasks anyone could ever face. The constant fluid, changing environment of combat, the variety of weapons and circumstances, and the unforgiving nature of the environment, all meant that putting stupid men in the infantry was tantamount to murder.

    In the 20th Century one U.S. Secretary of Defense had ordered that 100,000 low IQ individuals be drafted into the U.S. Army. These were popularly known as ‘MacNamara’s 100,000,’ named after the politician and military dilettante who had made that decision.

    These draftees were individuals who would probably have been rejected even at the height of World War II due to their scores on military entrance tests. The politician who made this decision declared that the reason these men had performed so poorly on their entrance exams was because they had been socially deprived, and the military was going to be used as an instrument of social mobility for all these poor, misunderstood individuals.

    Instead, the military became the death of many of them, because at that time the U.S. was participating in a nasty little war in Southeast Asia. In combat these ‘socially deprived’ draftees died at a rate four times greater than soldiers in the top two intelligence brackets. And you have to ask yourself, how many of their comrades did they manage to kill or get killed along the way?

    Combat is a nasty, brutish, unforgiving realm, that has no forgiveness or sympathy for the physically or mentally inferior. It is the ultimate Darwinian sieve: it filters out all but the deadly, intelligent and lucky. And Lt. Broadax knew that as she put poor Dwakins in the front line. But, what the hell, thought Broadax. He knew the job wus dangerous when ‘e took it. Besides, maybe the poor dumb son-of-a-bitch’ll be lucky enough to live long enough to git deadly!

    Broadax positioned Lance Corporal Jarvis to Dwakins’ left. Then with a disgusted shake of her head she looked at the broad shouldered veteran of past battles and said, “Do yer best ta keep this poor bastard alive, Jarvis.”

    Jarvis looked like he was already overwhelmed with his own concerns, thankyewverymuch, but he said, “Yes, ma’am,” and looked across the bows with a nod and a gulp.

    “So, Dwakins,” Jarvis said patting the private on the shoulder reassuringly. “Are you ready?”

    “Um, yah, corp’ral,” replied the terrified private in a confused attempt at bravado. “We’s gonna wreckdum, right?”

    “You know,” Jarvis muttered to his monkey, “I think I’m actually stupider than Dwakins. He doesn’t know any better, but I reenlisted for this!”

    “Eep!” replied his monkey.

    As the two Ships approached, Fielder expertly reduced sail so that they came quickly into contact, the Fang’s redside bow up against the enemy’s redside bow, as gentle as a kiss.

    At that moment, as the two sentient Ships gently scraped together, there was an exchange of Moss. Along with the Moss came a transfer, almost an invasion of ideas, concepts, and history surging from Fang into the enemy Ship.

    Fang had made similar contact with the venerable old Westerness Ship Kestrel during the boarding operation that led to the Fang’s capture and Kestrel’s death. During that contact Fang had learned of an ancient Ship that loved its crew with a deep and abiding affection, built over centuries of contact and exploration. During that battle Kestrel willingly gave her life for her crew, taking most of the Guldur boarding party down with her, and in doing so she taught the young Fang about love, affection, sacrifice, partnership and trust.

    A sliver of the Kestrel’s shattered Keel had been lovingly wedged in beside the Fang’s Keel. The exchange of information and cells between these two alien life forms was a complex concept that could only be partly understood. It would be truthful to say that Kestrel lived on in Fang. It would also be correct to say that Kestrel had invaded, conquered, and even replaced the young, unformed personality of Fang. Or you could say that the two Ships now lived in symbiosis, two souls melding into one.

    Whatever it was that had happened to Fang was now happening to the enemy Ship. Fang told of a new race that did not abuse or torture its own. A new relationship based on trust and love, not fear and hate.

    Fang told of these things, via a communication system that could not lie, to an entity that could not doubt. Fang spoke of these things and the enemy Ship listened, with awe and wonder.

    Melville crouched with his boarding party as the Ships began to touch. Once again he felt a moment of great visual clarity. It was as if he were an observer in an art gallery looking at a classic masterpiece full of stunning, detailed color and breathtaking beauty. He held his sword out in front of him and watched the brilliant stars run along the blade like molten gemstones.

    It was a brief instant of stillness and quiet, a moment of bated breath. Melville’s knack for poetry brought a verse to mind.

    If the contact between the Ships was gentle, the surge of troops who flooded over the railing was not. As they closed to within a few feet Melville gave the command for his boarding party to, “Fire!” just as the bow gun gave one last, 24-pound shotgun blast of grapeshot at point blank range. <<Yes!>> “Cha-DOOM!!” <<KillDie!!>> and the deck planks bucked beneath their feet, as if to launch them into battle.

    Melville was sickened as he briefly glimpsed Guldur defenders fall screaming into the inexorably closing gap between the two hulls, to be ground into a tormented mass of offal, fur and broken weapons.

    On the lowerside, at the same instant, Broadax was doing the same thing. The bow guns above and below belched out their terrible load of death, scattering the Guldur defenders who tried to make a stand at the rail. Then the gun crews left their reeking charges, grabbed the loaded muskets standing in ready-racks beside their guns, and threw themselves into the fray.

    The huge blast of grapeshot from the cannons was devastating, painting the deck red and sending a grisly fountain of blood and limbs into the air. But the real harm was done by the volley of individually aimed musket fire. The grapeshot was junk mail, addressed to ‘occupant.’ The rifle fire was first class mail, hand delivered and personally addressed to each individual defender. This kind of precision rifle fire was a much better method of getting the message out, and the message was: “Your breathing privileges have now been revoked.”

    After the initial volley the Fangs stormed aboard the Guldur Ship in a wave of cold steel.

    On the lowerside Broadax led the way as her marines slammed into the enemy with an audible crash. The clang of steel on steel sounded like a cartload of scrap iron being dumped into a pit. This was accompanied by a roar of terror, anger and desperation from both sides, then the awful slaughterhouse thud of steel on flesh, and the groans and piercing screams of the wounded and dying.

    Broadax clenched her cigar in her teeth. Her ax sliced through the enemy in great swaths of blood and gore, and her monkey gibbered with joy. Dwakins was on her left, and she did her best to keep the young marine alive.

    Dwakins was dazed and confused by the noise and the violent movement all around him. There was a loose liquid feeling in his guts, and his testicles were crawling up to meet it. In ordinary life there was usually too much going on for him to keep track of it all, in the midst of this din and confusion he didn’t have a chance. He had fired both barrels of his rifle when the lieutenant told him to, then he leapt across with the others and now there was a big, yellow dog in front of him, about to stab him with a bayonet.

    Suddenly Dwakins’ vision narrows and nothing else in the universe matters except for the one creature in front of him. His sense of sound goes away and the world becomes deathly quiet.

    Dwakins was dumb, but his body was ancient and wise in the ways of survival. When you are profoundly frightened your brain will normally shut out all senses except one, and you will only receive data from whatever sense the brain thinks is most important for survival. Usually the one sense that is most essential is vision, and that is often further limited by tunnel vision, cutting out all distracting, peripheral sights.

    This powerful, ancient survival mechanism did exactly what it was supposed to do in Dwakins’ body and mind. The sensory overload and confusion left him. His brain tuned out all input except for the sight of the individual who was about to kill him, and his body took action to survive.

    He thrusts his rifle forward with the strength and speed of desperation, slamming his bayonet to the hilt in the Gudlur’s chest. Dwakins’ thick, black hair flies forward with the force of the blow, momentarily blocking his vision. He has a fleeting, distracting thought about his corporal, who had been telling him to get a haircut, but somehow there was never enough time. With his vision blocked and useless, the survival computer that is his brain choses to turn on his body’s tactile sensations. Suddenly he is conscious that the force of his bayonet thrust makes his hands ache like an ax blow that unexpectedly hits a rock. For a brief instant that shocked feeling in his hands, combined with a sickening, grating feeling as the blade crunches through bone, is the only sensory input that enters into the measly mental universe that is Private Dwakins’ brain.

    Then his hair settles down, his vision returns, and Dwakins looks at the creature he has stabbed. The doggie’s face is a mask of cringing confusion and dismay. Its eyes are wide, its ears are back and its head is cocked to one side. His old farm dogs looked just like that when they were being punished. Then it looked down at the bayonet hilt and the rifle protruding from its chest, and a look of ineffable despair comes over its face as it drops its rifle and wraps both hands around Dwakins rifle barrel, almost as though it is clasping its hands in prayer.

    In a flash of insight, Dwakins realizes that the primary reason he is alive is because this doggie was even more confused and scared than he is. Dwakins is struck with a great sadness as he realizes that he might have just killed one of the few creatures who is more stupid and frightened than him.

    Everything up to this point takes only a few heartbeats to transpire, but the effects of slow motion time make it seem like forever. In this same, stop-action daze, Dwakins’ eye is caught by movement above him, and he realizes that the doggie’s tick is about to bring its short sword down upon his unprotected skull.

    Dwakins’ monkey tries to stop the blow with a despairing “Eeek!” but the tiny creature is still small and immature, and the blow is too powerful for it to block. Dwakins only has enough time to look into the Goblan’s malignant red eyes and think, Oh-Gawd-I’m-gonna-die! before Lt. Broadax’s ax comes up from his right, in a great, sweeping, backhanded, upstroke that enters underneath the tick’s armpit, slicing off its left arm, shoulder and head, and launching them up into the air in a red rocket of arterial blood. The blow is so fast that even in slow motion time it seems like a blur.

    Then the Guldur drops backward. Dwakins’ bare feet slip on the blood-slicked deck, and he falls on top of his foe. The doggie’s body slams back on the deck, and the bayonet protruding from its back is driven back out of its chest, falling beside them. They are both on the deck, embracing like lovers as Dwakins reaches out and strokes the Guldur’s head. His foe looks up at him with stunned, shocked, hurt, puppy eyes.

    Dwakins whispers, with tears in his eyes, “Nice doggie. Good doggie.”

    Out of the corner of her eye Lt. Broadax saw Dwakins make one good lunge and sink his bayonet into one of the enemy. Then she saw the cur’s tick take a cut at Dwakins, and she decapitated the critter with one casual backhand swipe of her ax. She took note of the fact that Dwakins slipped and fell, then she lost sight of him as Lance Corporal Jarvis stepped over his body and shifted right to fill in the gap.

    Dwakins’ panic-induced response resulted in tunnel vision and auditory exclusion in the young private, but Broadax’s reaction to combat was completely different. She was conscious of everything around her, she heard all the sounds, and she was prepared to give commands or assistance as needed. Dwakins was a charging lion, completely unaware of anything but its prey. Broadax was a veteran wolf, hearing every member of the pack and the prey, conscious of all that was happening, and ready to contribute to the team effort.

    To Broadax’s right were Corporal Kobbsven and Gunny Von Rito. The massive Kobbsven bore a mighty, two-handed claymore, and Von Rito had only an ancient K-bar fighting knife in his hand. The two of them formed a deadly, long-range, short-range team that had been perfected in many past battles.

    The Fangs all had their monkeys perched on their backs, usually clinging with six legs and swinging a wooden belaying pin with the other two. They used these wooden clubs with supernatural speed to block enemy sword blows and bayonet thrusts, and even incoming bullets.

    Immediately behind Broadax was Corporal Petrico, their armorer and crack pistol shot, carrying four double-barreled pistols stuffed into his belt, and six more in two specially made bandoleers that formed a big ‘X’ draping across his narrow chest. Petrico was using his pistols with great care and precision to help the individuals in the front rank. The marines’ monkeys tended to block the shots and blows that were aimed at their hosts’ head and shoulders, so Petrico focused on those who were shooting or thrusting from below. With a carefully aimed snapshot and a cry of, “Take that, chew pocker!” he placed a bullet between the eyes of a Guldur who was kneeling down and about to fire a musket up into Kobbs’ stomach. Then, with another cry of, “And that, chew pocker!” he put another bullet into a dismounted tick who was scurrying around on the deck, trying to reach in and hamstring Lt. Broadax.

    The rest of the marines formed a phalanx beside and behind these lead elements, and together they chewed through the enemy like a ripsaw through soft wood. They quickly swept around the dismounted enemy bow gun and dispatched the enemy who were trying to use it as cover.

    The dog-like Guldur stood on two legs, and wore only a leather harness of crossed chest straps and belt to hang their ammunition and equipment on. Most of them held muskets in their forepaws and all of them had a vicious Goblan tick on their backs. The Fangs had learned to like and trust the Guldur prisoners who had joined their crew. In fact, many of the Fang’s doggies were participating in this boarding operation. But not a single one of their malignant, spiteful ticks had permitted themselves to be captured.

    These filthy creatures each wielded a short sword with deadly efficiency, howling and screeching like baboons as they sat perched atop each cur’s shoulders. It was generally believed that the ticks exerted some kind of mind control over their hosts, and between them and the Guldur packmasters, the average cur seemed to have no real control over its own destiny. Thus it was with particular pleasure that the marines who were not in the front ranks used their rifles to pick off the ticks. Without their ticks the Guldur were notably less deadly and determined.

    The combined effect of the marines’ attack was devastating and totally demoralizing, and the enemy fell like wheat before the reaper. Lt. Broadax’s boarding party quickly reached the enemy’s lowerside quarterdeck. Her marines were barely able to keep up with Broadax, who was a living, breathing avatar of death and dismemberment as her ax swirled through the foe in great red swaths.

    In a matter of minutes the marines stood panting upon the enemy’s lower quarterdeck. The remaining Guldur, profoundly daunted by the gore encrusted Broadax and with their ticks picked off by riflemen, threw down their weapons and cringed at her feet.

    “We surrrenderr! We submrit!” cried out the Guldur’s remaining petty officer. “You arrre a mighty warrriorrr. Therrre is no shrame in surrrenderrring to you!”

    There was a chorus of whimpers of agreement from among the Guldur as they looked up at Lt. Broadax, and then from among the phalanx of marine bayonets, an anonymous voice called out, "Damned right! And that's jist our womenfolk!"

    “We ain’t got time fer this, dammit!” shouted Broadax. “Third squad, leave a guard and the rest of ye start bustin’ through the hatches to secure the Ship’s Keel and make sure the mutts don’ scuttle the Ship. Then ever’one move up and help with the battle on the upperside!”

    On the upperside Melville took the point, with a sword in his right hand and a double-barreled pistol in his left. His two rangers, Westminster and Valandil were at his flanks, armed with sword and pistol. Each ranger also had a double-barreled rifle slung over his back. They had all left their sword scabbards behind. Their lives would not depend upon being able to sheath their blades aboard the enemy Ship, and the scabbard might trip them up and throw them beneath an enemy blade in the midst of battle.

    Westminster’s dog, Cinder stood close beside her master, panting with doggie glee at the prospect of the coming combat. The captain’s dog, Boye, was huddling hesitantly between Cinder and Melville, constantly looking to his dam and his master for reassurance. Boye’s monkey waved a belaying pin uncertainly as it clung to the dog’s neck.

    Grenoble, Melville’s Sylvan bodyguard stood behind the captain with a broad-bladed spear in his hands and a brace of pistols holstered on his hips. Grenoble was a hereditary guardian of warrior leaders. He knew that in battle a commander often had to lead from the front, but the tall Sylvan was trained to thrust his spear, over, around, and even under his captain in order protect him in battle. Ordinarily Ulrich, the captain’s coxswain would be there as well, but Melville had given him another mission.

    Brother Theo, the Ship’s purser, also stood behind the captain with a pistol in each hand. Behind Theo was a small cluster of midshipmen with pistols. The middies’ primary duty was to hand a steady supply of fresh pistols to Brother Theo, and to fire their own pistols in extreme emergencies. The midshipmen also had a few of the precious, rare and hideously expensive, Keel charge ‘concussion grenades.’ Melville hoped they could hold these in reserve, but if the momentum of the attack were bogged down he wouldn’t hesitate to use them.

    More of the Ship’s dogs were immediately behind the front line, mixed in with Ship’s boys who were carrying razor sharp knives in their fists. And all of them had a monkey with a belaying pen. The boys and the dogs ­ and their monkeys ­ fought the battle down low, scrambling among the legs, biting and hamstringing the enemy. It was hard to say if the boys or the dogs were anticipating the battle with greater glee.

    Their offensive line was set up to attack the enemy low (the boys and dogs with their monkeys), middle (the majority of the assaulters and their monkeys), and high. The ‘high’ component consisted of their topmen with their monkeys. They were led by the elite Sylvan sailors (and their monkeys), who were attacking from the Fang’s rigging into the still intact upperside rigging of the Guldur Ship. The canine derived Guldur were poor hands at operating in this realm, so they depended upon great swarms of Goblan to do any work that did not involve having both hindpaws planted firmly on the deck. The Sylvans were masters of maneuver and battle in the low gravity that existed up in the rigging, and they were confident in their ability to sweep away the Goblan who were still alive in the upper regions.

    The enemy’s upperside was better defended than the lowerside. Their upper quarterdeck fairly bristled with the remaining Guldur crew members, each with a tick on his shoulders. Melville knew that the Guldur had gutted the rest of their Ship in order to make a final stand on the upper quarterdeck. This was standard operating procedure for the curs, and it was exactly what he had anticipated.

    The Guldur’s goal was to inflict as much damage as possible upon their invaders. Melville’s objective was to prevent that. To take the enemy Ship with minimal loss of life to his precious crew. He had a scheme in place to do that, and all he could do now was fight like hell, keep an eye on the tactical situation, and see if the plan came together.

    Melville’s boarding party came across the enemy’s upperside bow, hammering the foe with a hail of grapeshot and a volley of musket fire followed by cold steel. This attack was very similar to what Fang’s marines were inflicting upon the enemy on the lower deck. The methodology was slightly different, but the results were largely the same.

    Melville vaulted over the rail and his bare feet slithered and skidded on the blood-soaked decks. All around him his boarding party stumbled over limbs and tripped over the thrashing carnage. Those who fell were left behind, but most kept their balance and launched themselves into the Guldur defenders.

    The boarding party was led by three masterful swordsmen of the Kingdom of Westerness, who sundered the enemy ranks with fearsome, fell handed skill and ability. The onslaught was supported on both flanks by veteran sailors with flashing bayonets, but the real keys to their success were Melville and his rangers. Each was a true artist with the sword, cleaving a red web of death among the enemy.

    The swords of two-space were always straight, since the corrosive influence of that strange realm played the devil with curved surfaces. The influence of two-space also helped to keep their weapons deadly sharp. They were stored in special compartments in the Ship, essentially ‘floating’ in that impossibly thin plane of two-space. The influence of Flatland worked to pull the blades ‘flat,’ atom by atom, so that the edges of the blades were drawn into mono-molecular sharpness. The bayonet blades and short swords of the enemy were equally sharp, but the curs and ticks who carried them were no match for the three swordsmen of Westerness and the blades they bore.

    The swords of Melville and his rangers flashed in crimson arcs, severing limbs and piercing bodies with a practiced ease that seemed deceptively and frighteningly effortless. Under stress the body shuts down the blood flow to the outer layer of skin and muscles. This ‘vasoconstriction’ allows the outer layer of the body to become a kind of ‘armor’ which can take great damage without much blood loss, which can be a valuable survival mechanism. One side effect of this is to make blood pressure skyrocket, and when an artery is severed, the blood fountains out with amazing power. Thus, great gouts of arterial blood sprayed out from each precisely aimed stroke those Westerness swords. Crimson ichor splattered and splashed off of blades and bodies as Melville and his rangers flicked off heads and limbs like a swordsman might flick spent blossoms off of a rose bush in idle practice.

    The Ship’s boys, dogs and their monkeys battled underfoot, bedeviling and badgering the enemy with flashing fangs and pitiless knives amidst a red rain of blood and limbs that flowed down from above. Soon the dogs were heaving great, pink, foaming, breaths from gore drenched muzzles, and the boys’ arms were soaked to the shoulder in the crimson life fluid of the hapless Guldur who they had hamstrung and neutered with their remorseless blades. The blood in the air and on their faces ran hot and salty into panting, screaming mouths, while the monkeys screeched from their backs.

    Brother Theo was delivering a continuous fusillade of rapid-fire pistol shots from directly behind the line. He picked off the Goblan ticks on the enemy’s shoulders with machinelike precision and speed, with a supply of pistols that was constantly renewed by the hurried reloads of the middies.

    Following immediately behind the piercing, penetrating triad of Melville and his rangers, forming a fourth point to their diamond, was Grenoble with his broad-bladed spear. One moment that spear flashed to Melville’s right while the captain cut to his left, spilling an enemy’s guts like a great ropey tide of slimy, sickly, purple snakes. Just as the captain’s sword stabbed to his right, Grenoble’s spear flashed back and thrust swift as an arrow to Melville’s left, piercing a Guldur’s heart in a great gush of red, and then snapped back with such speed that it left a line of blood in the air, like scarlet thread following a darting needle. An instant later that broad blade thrust high to pick off a Goblan tick, then down between the captain’s legs like some great, gore soaked, tripodal phallus, to cut a cur’s hindpaw out from under him.

    The boarding party’s monkeys, crouching upon their shoulders, were blocking and neutralizing the attacks of the enemy’s ticks, and most other attacks upon their hosts’ upper bodies. Periodically, with a resounding, “Thwack!” the monkeys’ flashing belaying pins would block an incoming bullet. This was something that the Fangs would not have believed, could not have believed, if they had not personally examined the bullet-encrusted, wooden belaying pins after past battles.

    The momentum of their combined, multilevel attack was stunning and devastating. The enemy who stood were mowed down like grass, and those who tried to take cover behind the dismounted bow gun were swept over from both flanks. Many chose simply to fall to the ground and curl into whimpering balls in the face of that implacable, inexorable onslaught. Melville and his boarders were happy to step over them, pausing only long enough to hack at any Goblan who remained alive, but permitting the broken Guldur sailors to live.

    High above them in the rigging, the Fang’s topmen, led by their Sylvan compatriots and ably assisted by their monkeys, slammed into the Goblan in the rigging. It was only on this front that the attack bogged down. It seemed than an inordinate number of the Goblan had been hiding in the crow’s nests, and now they came boiling down like a deranged cross between insane circus clowns coming out of their car and enraged hornets pouring out of their nest. The Sylvans’ skill in the low gravity of the upper rigging was astounding, but so was that of the Goblan, and their greater numbers slowed down the advance.

    The rest of Melville’s boarding party cut through to the enemy’s quarterdeck. As Josiah Westminster put it later, “We went through ‘em lahk a double dose of Mrs. Vodi’s best rhubarb purgative.”

    Gotta maintain the momentum of the attack, Melville thought to himself.

    “Come on! Come on!” he roared to his men.

    The warriors around him cheered. It was good to have a captain with Words, ancient, apt, and powerful Words ready to do his bidding. It let them know that their forefathers had been in similar straits and survived to tell of the experience. The speaking of Words at moments like this reached deep into their collective, cultural heritage to lift their spirits. Or, as old Hans put it, “Them Words can reach down inta the heart of a man what’s pissin’ his self with fear, an’ pull ‘im up by the short-an’-curlies!”

    And then they slammed into the mass of defenders at the enemy’s quarterdeck.

    "OK you bums, time to keep me safe for women every where!" cried Lt. Archer as their cutter, White-socks, approached the enemy’s quarterdeck on the upper redside. The Guldur did not notice the cutter coming at their right flank as they focused on Captain Melville’s boarding party.

    "Sir, are ya sure that’s not ‘from women every where?’” asked Petty Officer Hommer, tossing his head to flip his hair out of his eyes as the two young warriors laughed together.

    Then White-socks’ single sail was slacked and an expertly tossed grapnel came up from the cutter’s bow and thudded into the jollyboat along the enemy’s upper redside. The cutter slewed drunkenly as the grapnel was pulled tight, and the sailor at the tiller brought them expertly along side the enemy.

    “At ‘em, boys!” cried Archer.

    The lead elements of Archer’s boarding party are standing on the yardarm of the cutter’s mast, with the rest ready to follow. The young lieutenant is on the very end of the yardarm, with Hommer immediately behind him. Archer is balanced like a cat, with a pistol in each hand.

    As they approach the enemy Ship, Archer leaps into the jollyboat that hangs from davits off the enemy’s redside, firing both barrels of both pistols. “Crackcrack” first the right, then “crackcrack” the left, Archer thumbs the Keel charges on the two-space pistols as fast as he can put the front sights onto a target.

    Four Guldur fall, each with a bullet smashing into its right ear. Then Archer drops his pistols and vaults the quarterdeck railing, drawing his sword as his feet hit the deck.

    The rest of his small boarding party is right behind him, with Petty Officer Hommer in the lead, firing their muskets into the unsuspecting enemy’s right flank and leaping onto the quarterdeck behind their lieutenant. Little Midshipman Hayl is in their midst, waving his midshipman’s dirk and screaming like a madman.

    Archer’s sword begins to take its toll just as the enemy becomes aware of his presence. An overhand slash of his terrible sharp sword beheads the first Guldur, slicing effortlessly through the hapless creature’s throat, out his spine and then continuing to cut his Goblan tick in half at the waist. The surprise of the attack combines with the speed of the blow and the sharpness of the edge so that the blade cuts completely through before the victims fully understand what has happened. The Guldur has a brief look of confusion on its face as its head tumbles back and a red fountain gushes up from its severed neck. The tick is able to look down into the intestines of the lower part of its body as it falls backward with an expression of horrible, frustrated rage upon its face.

    Archer’s return stroke eviscerates a Guldur who is turning toward him, and the hapless creature crouches and turns to its left, dropping its musket and holding its spreading entrails like a football player holding a ball.

    To each side of him Archer’s sailors advance with their bayonets flashing, but the impetus of their attack quickly stalls against the mass of enemy troops. Midshipman Hayl crouches low and scrambles through the boarding party to get to his designated position behind Lt. Archer.

    Then Archer finds himself facing the biggest, blackest, ugliest Guldur he has ever seen, wearing an officer’s harness, complete with a tick to match the size of its host.

    He knows that this has to be the captain of the enemy’s Ship, and his task is to defeat this creature. The smashing blows of the Guldur, combined with the attack from its tick, are too much for Archer and he knows he is outmatched. His arm is already numb from blocking blows, his monkey is overmatched by the smashing overhand clouts of the big tick on his opponent’s back, and the sailors to his left and right are being pressed hard by multiple foes. Archer barely deflects one crashing sword blow as it slices a furrow into his left shoulder. Another scratches his right forearm.

    The young lieutenant suddenly feels an awful sense of despair. Is this what it feels like to die? he asks himself. Is this what it felt like for those creatures I just killed?

    On the enemy’s left flank Lt. Crater and his party leap from the yardarm of their cutter onto the enemy’s upper greenside, quickly cutting down the few Guldur who stood in their way. On this side of Ship the quarterdeck was still about five feet above them, with another three feet of railing above that. They slammed a volley of musket and pistol balls into the mass of enemy packed onto the quarterdeck above them. The Guldur reeled from this unexpected assault on their left flank, but they quickly rallied, and Crater’s attack bogged down at the railing.

    Melville and his men found themselves stalled at the quarterdeck. He and his rangers were battling at the ladder up to the quarterdeck, while the rest of his men stabbed up at the defenders on the deck above them.

    After many battles Melville had honed his situational awareness to a fine edge. He knew when Archer slammed into the enemy’s right flank, and he was aware of Crater hitting the left flank. The primary objective of this attack was to have Archer personally defeat the Guldur who was currently in command of the Ship. That was the key to getting the Guldur Ship to accept Archer as the new captain.

    Melville knew from personal experience that the enemy’s captain would be the biggest, toughest, most skillful fighter aboard. He also knew that young Archer would not be a match for such an enemy. Melville was hoping that the slaughter of the Guldur crew inflicted by the Fang’s cannon fire would have whittled down the enemy’s chain of command to the point where a less capable opponent would be in charge. In fact, he was betting Archer’s life on it.

    Through the mass of bodies in front of him Melville could catch glimpses of a huge, shaggy black form moving toward Lt. Archer’s boarding party, and he had a sudden, sick feeling that he had lost his bet and Archer might pay for it with his life. The young lieutenant had trusted his captain, and Melville was sick with dread at the possibility of having sent Archer to his death.

    Well, thought Melville,

    He had prepared for this possibility. This ‘mouse’ had another ‘hole.’ His plan was to come at the enemy from every possible direction, and there were still one or two directions yet to come into play. It was a slim reed to grasp, but he would do the best he could on his end and hope that Broadax, or Ulrich and Hans would be successful on their fronts.

    “Rangers!” Melville called out to Josiah and Valandil, “Archer’s facing their captain. Pop the tick off of his back. Wound the captain if you can. He’s a black, shaggy cur.”

    Without a word the rangers both took a step back, dropped their swords and unslung their rifles. The rifles slung over their back had been a hindrance to their swordsmanship throughout the battle, but they understood the plan and had been keeping them in reserve for such an occasion.

    Among the swirling mass of creatures on the quarterdeck above him Melville saw Petty Officer Hommer, fighting at Archer’s right side, take a musket ball in the chest. He felt anger and sadness as he watched Hommer, a beloved old Shipmate, fall. That helmet of blond curls drooped down as the young NCO sagged to his knees and then keeled over onto the deck, dropping his rifle from nerveless fingers.

    Melville found himself fighting alone at the base of the ladder going up to the enemy’s quarterdeck. Without his two rangers beside him he was suddenly too busy to worry about Hommer or Archer... or anything else besides survival.

    But he was not truly alone. His monkey clung tightly to his neck, blocking bullets and blows with its belaying pin, and his dog, Boye, and Josiah’s dog, Cinder (along with their belaying pin equipped monkeys) stayed at the captain’s flank. And Brother Theo and Grenoble provided support from behind him, while his sailors closed in from his left and right. After a brief instant of grave danger Melville was able to hold his own in the fierce melee.

    Amidst the milling, scrambling throng above them the two rangers spotted one tick that projected up above the mass. In an instant they both took a shot, their rifles cracking together as one, and the tick went down. But they could not get a shot at the enemy captain.

    Hans was the Fang’s best boat handler, perhaps the best in the Westerness Navy. With consummate skill the old sailor swung the jollyboat, Rip, around Archer’s cutter and across the Guldur’s stern at breakneck speed. Ulrich was perched up on Rip’s tiny yardarm, and as they shot past the enemy Ship he leapt up and clung to the ledge below the stern windows. Swift and nimble as a deranged ferret, Ulrich scrambled up the stern and launched himself onto the quarterdeck railing with his monkey clinging tightly to his back.

    The Guldur were all turned away from Ulrich, dealing with the attacks on their front and flanks. Balancing on the railing like some grotesque gargoyle, the vicious little coxswain promptly initiated a one-man assault on the enemy from a new and unexpected quarter.

    Standing up on the taffrail gave Ulrich enough height to see a huge black cur beating down Lt. Archer’s guard. This was clearly the enemy captain, and young Archer was obviously losing his sword fight. He was just seconds away from becoming dog meat.

    As Ulrich was drawing his pistol he saw the tick fall from the enemy captain’s shoulders. Two rifle bullets had entered the vicinity of the tick’s left ear and punched out the right side of its head, blowing its brains out in a fine, pink mist. Ulrich knew that this was probably the rangers’ doing, but he also understood that the force down on the main deck was unlikely to get a good shot at the enemy captain who was well back on the quarterdeck.

    Quick as a mongoose Ulrich snapped off a shot that shattered the Guldur captain’s right forepaw. Then the second barrel took advantage of a momentary gap in the mass of Guldur defenders to smash the enemy’s left ankle. He might have been able to put a bullet in his target’s head, but the goal was not to kill the enemy captain, only to weaken him enough to allow Archer to win his duel.

    The enraged Guldur forces standing behind their captain turned to face their new tormentor. Every loaded musket was turned on Ulrich, sending a hail of bullets whizzing toward him. Any Guldur who was not in direct, hand-to-hand combat with an opponent turned and charged at Ulrich in a furry tide of seriously pissed off mutts.

    With a “Thwack!” and an “Eek!” his monkey’s belaying pin deflected a head shot, but two bullets hit Ulrich like fists smacking into a block of beef. One went through his right lung and out his back. Another shot made a direct hit on his right thigh bone.

    Everything slowed to a crawl as Ulrich fell backward, and he had plenty of time to note that he barely felt the through-and-through in his lung, but the hit to his thigh bone hurt like hell. He had heard that in the heat of battle you usually wouldn’t feel a flesh wound but bone hits hurt, and he was strangely intrigued to recognize that this was painfully correct.

    With a snarl of defiance Ulrich dropped back into the cold embrace of two-space that waited below him. His right hand tossed an empty pistol into one cur’s onrushing face, while his left hand flipped a dagger into another’s throat. The last thing the Guldur defenders saw was Ulrich’s monkey echoing its master’s snarl and hurling its tiny dirk into a cur’s eye.

    Lt. Archer watches the enemy’s blade come hammering down at him. The Guldur captain is not using any finesse, just pure brute strength to pound down his guard, and it is working. Slow motion time makes the blade come down at an agonizing crawl. There is a horrific despair welling up in his chest as he watches the hated blade come down. I don’t want to die, he thought. Dear God, I don’t want to die!

    Then he sees the blur of two bullets punch into the left temple of his opponent’s tick. He had heard that the effects of slow motion time can be so intense that you could actually see bullets, and now here it was. The tick gets a confused, cross-eyed look on its face. The right side of its face balloons out and then the hateful creature’s brains spray slowly out of the right side of its skull. Archer’s monkey cries out with an “Eek!” of joy and relief as it watches its foe slump to the deck.

    Then a bullet slams into the Guldur captain’s right arm and his right forepaw began to lose its grip on the descending blade. Archers numb arm moves his sword up and deflects the now weakened blow, assisted by a “smack!” from his monkey’s belaying pin.

    The Guldur’s left forepaw reaches across and reinforces his right, beginning to fight two-handed, just as another bullet cuts his left hindpaw out from under him. The creature falls to his left with his guard still high, and Archer swings a weak, sweeping, waist-high, horizontal blow that sends a ropey flood of guts flowing out of his opponent’s body.

    With a howl of outrage a Guldur sailor beside the falling enemy captain thrusts his bayonet at Archer’s chest. The young lieutenant is just beginning to feel a wave of relief, and now once again the he sees death coming at him and he knows that he is out of position to block this blow.

    In mid-thrust the Guldur’s glaring eyes and fierce concentration gives way to a distorted mask of agony. Then it looks down in horror as its guts, and their contents, flow out onto Midshipman Hayl like a cauldron of sickening, stinging stew being poured over the little middie’s head.

    Hayl had been scurrying underfoot. When he saw a cur about to attack Lt. Archer, he thrust up with his horrifically sharp, double-edged blade and literally stirred the Guldur’s guts. He inserted his midshipman’s dirk just above the pelvic bone and was astounded at how easily it slipped in. He sliced up in a broad arc to the solar plexus, and then down and back up in a spiral motion. He continued to be amazed and strangely pleased at how effortlessly the blade slid through the Guldur’s body. Then his pleasure turned to dismay and disgust as the hot, reeking contents came pouring over him.

    “Eep?” said his monkey.

    Ulrich’s bullet-riddled body falls down off the Ship’s stern and into the merciless maw of two-space. He can clearly see the stern of the Guldur Ship churning through two-space as he falls, and he is not sure which is worse: seeing the awful blue depths of two-space coming at him, or the Ship moving away from him. He closes his eyes as he punches through the plane of two-space and feels an awful, biting cold wash over his body, a brief preview of the icy death that awaits him.

    “Brrr!!” squeaks his monkey, clinging helplessly around his neck.

    The effects of slow motion time make these seconds last for an agonizing eternity as Ulrich bounces back through the icy plane to the other side.

    “Brrr!!” repeats his monkey with a screech of despair.

    Then he seems to hang there, his last moment in life stretching on, and on...

    “Dammit, Ulrich,” says Hans, “gimme a hand here. I can’t hold ya ferever!”

    He opens his eyes to discover that, in an feat of incredible boat handling skill, old Hans has spun the jollyboat back around just in time to catch him on the rebound.

    His monkey is stretched out between the two humans, with four arms keeping a death grip on Hans’ arm while the other four are locked around Ulrich’s skull. The little creature has a look of wild desperation on its face as it quietly gibbers a stream of incomprehensible monkey obscenities.

    It slowly dawns on Ulrich that maybe he is going to live. He reaches up an arm and a leg and hugs the boat’s gunwales like an ardent lover.

    “Damn, lil’ buddy,” says Hans, rolling him the rest of the way into the boat. “They dun shot the hell out o’ ya.”

    “Thask mah technique, shee?” mumbles Ulrich. “Ik's a trick, shee? By bleeding I lures 'em inta a falsek sensa skecurity...”

    The eviscerated Guldur captain and the sailor that Hayl had gutted both leaned forward in grisly bows and plunged to the deck. There was the briefest of pause before the remaining curs turned on Archer in a final spasm of fury. The press of Guldur in front of Melville had eased off, so he took this opportunity and stepped to his left, calling over his shoulder, “Give me a boost!” Then he sprung up and grabbed the top of the quarterdeck railing with his left hand. Numerous sailors helped to launch their captain up onto the quarterdeck. Melville vaulted over the rail, hacking to his right and taking off a cur’s arm at the elbow. Then he slammed his sword to his left, driving down an enemy’s sword and cleaving its skull with a blow that jarred his wrist.

    Through a gap in the melee Melville saw a Guldur attacking Lt. Archer from the flank. This one appeared to have Archer dead-to-rights, but Melville had an ace in the hole. He twitched his left hand down to the small, single-shot pistol tucked into his belt, and with one fluid motion he drew the pistol and snapped off a round at the Guldur.

    This pistol was a family heirloom. It was centuries old and the intelligence in the pistol’s Keel charge had developed into something that was remarkably vicious, and accurate. Most two-space pistols and rifles gave a faint <<prrr>> when you thumbed them, but this little gun gave a distinct <<grrr!>> as it worked with its master to guide the bullet home.

    The ball slammed into the Guldur’s right rib cage just as it was raising its sword to strike Archer down. The bullet smashed through both lungs, unbalancing the enemy and flipping him over the rail into two-space.

    Melville caught a glimpse of the Guldur falling back with a shrieking sob. The noise cut off like a door closing when the wretched creature fell through the plane of two-space. Then the sound of its despair reappeared when it bounced once and looked up at Melville with a final gurgling sob before it dropped forever into interstellar space.

    The Guldur defenders had given one burst of wild outrage after the loss of their captain, and then they seemed to lose heart. Only the ticks were still fighting and trying to goad their hosts on. A hail of Westerness bullets picked off the remaining ticks, and then the battle was over.

    Melville and Archer knelt down beside the Ship’s dying captain. They rested wearily with both hands on the hilts of their upright swords, the points dug into the deck.

    “Watch his hands!” said Westminster, kicking a pistol out from behind the Guldur’s back. “Always watch their hands,” the ranger drawled. “Hands kill. In God we trust, everyone else keeps their hands where ah can see them. Or paws... as the case may be.” Valandil stood silently beside Westminster, facing in the opposite direction, watching his partner’s back and wiping his sword with a piece of some luckless Guldur’s shirt.

    “Therrre iss no honorrr in thiss,” hissed the Guldur, pawing the deck with arms gone flaccid as he looked up at Melville. “Thiss pup did not defreat me!”

    “It was a pack kill,” said Melville, looking down at the dying captain. “Like your four Ships attacking us.”

    “Urrr? Prack Krill,” the Guldur nodded. “Prack Krill.” Then, very quietly, with his dying breath, he looked up at Archer and whispered, “Urrr. Grood pup. Brrrave pup...”

    “It seems kind of unfair,” whispered little Hayl to himself. “We all just ganged up on him.”

    “Would you rather it was you laying there?” asked Westminster softly. The middie didn’t think anyone had heard his comment, but he should have known the sharp-eared ranger was listening. Hayl kept watching the dead enemy captain with wide-eyed fascination as the big ranger put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and quietly continued. “It’s one of Saint Clint the Thunderer’s ‘Rules of a Gunfight.’ Don’t never forget it: ‘Always cheat, always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.’”

    Young Hayl absentmindedly wiped Guldur guts and gore from his face while he looked down with wonder at the dead enemy captain. As he watched, the Guldur’s eyes become fixed and without understanding. So this is the enemy, he thought. So this is war.

    In an ideal world, all of Melville’s elements would have converged on the enemy’s upper quarterdeck at the same time. Melville’s boarding party, the crews of the two cutters from the flanks, Ulrich on the jollyboat from the stern, the Sylvan topmen coming from above, and Broadax’s marines from below, should all have hit simultaneously. But the real world seldom lives up to expectations.

    In this case the Sylvan topmen in the upper rigging had been badly delayed by stronger than expected Goblan resistance. Whatever their personal, moral and hygienic shortcomings, no one could ever deny that the ticks fought superbly in the upper rigging. In the end Fang’s topmen were not able to provide more than a sporadic sprinkling of musket fire from above before the battle was over. The topmen and the Fangs down on the deck then picked off the remaining ticks at their leisure.

    The Sylvans were delayed, but at least they were able to contribute something to the battle on the upperside. Lt. Broadax and her marines, on the other hand, arrived well after the battle was over. In the end it was anticlimactic when Broadax came smashing up through a secured hatch cover like some oversized, explosive, blood soaked mole busting out from the bowels of the earth.

    Thus arrives Broadax the Great, thought Melville with true affection in his eyes. ‘Herself a host,’ to paraphrase The Illiad.

    “Dammit!” she cried in disgust and dismay, her gore soaked head darting back and forth like a deranged, rabid, rodent peering out of its hole. “Damn, damn, damn! Ye done hogged all the fun on this end, didn’ ye?”

    Melville stood up from beside the dead enemy captain and rested his bloody sword blade on his shoulder. “Is the Ship’s Keel secured?” he asked her.

    “Aye, sir. They ain’ gonna scuttle the Ship. This Ship’s ours, dammit, bought with blood and battle.”

    “Aye,” Melville replied, and then he looked over at Archer, still kneeling beside the body of the fallen Guldur captain. “Lt. Archer, move down to the Keel and claim possession of your Ship.” Then with a sad but faintly humorous smile he added, “It is good that you are bleeding. These Ships seem to like a bit of blood.”

    “Aye, sir.” Melville could see the gleam in Archer’s eyes and he knew what the young lieutenant was thinking. His Ship, by God. It was His Ship.

    “Aye, son. Now go claim your Ship.”

    Then Melville allowed himself to relax as he crouched down and rubbed his dog’s ears. Boye had stayed faithfully by his side throughout the battle, and the little monkey on the dog’s back had stopped more than a few bullets and sword cuts, judging by the condition of the belaying pin in the critter’s true-hands. The dog’s sopping red muzzle made it clear that he had tasted blood this day; and his tongue-lolling, doggie grin said that he liked it. “Good boy!” said Melville as he thumped his dog’s side. “Good dog!” Boye looked up and licked his master’s face, and for just a moment they both shared a sense of pure, undiluted pleasure as they reveled in their victory... and the sheer joy of being alive.

    He looked around at the mass of dead and dying, a carpet of misery that covered the deck around him, and all he could feel was the joy of living in the face of death that psychologists called ‘survivor euphoria.’ Melville looked at one Guldur lying on the deck with a great, gaping wound in its throat, staring into the sky and gasping out its last breath in horrible agony, and he was amazed to feel so good in the face of so much tragedy and suffering.

    He knew from past experiences that remorse, post-combat exhaustion, and possibly even depression would come to visit him eventually, but for now it was good to be counted among the living and the victorious, and he lifted up his head and called out to the universe,

    And all around him his Fangs roared their agreement.

    Dwakins walks into the hospital with a big, yellow Guldur in his arms and tears in his eyes. They are both soaked with blood. The Guldur has been pierced through the right lung and is breathing in great, ragged gasps. “Please, mah’yam,” he asks Mrs. Vodi, “can yew fix ‘im?”

    “Yes,” she says kindly, examining the wound and guessing what must have happened. “Yep, I think we can help your friend here. Lay him down, and then you get back to your squad before you git into trouble. We’ll do the best we can.”

    “Thankee, ma’am. Thankee. Ah think ‘e’s a good doggie, mah’yam. Ah really dew.”

    Vodi just nods. The battle was largely one sided, and there are time and resources enough to be compassionate to the enemy. After all the killing, it feels good to make room for a little compassion.Chapter the 6th Rejoicing, Remorse and Recovery: “Out from the Gloomy Past”

    Lt. Broadax had just brought one of her wounded marines into the hospital. The unfortunate wretch was slung over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes being carried by an ambulatory fire hydrant, his feet dragging behind her. The marine moaned as his ankles thumped into each step as she came up the inclined ladder ­ which sailors refused to call ‘stairs.’

    “Quit yer bitchin’, dammit,” Broadax grumbled through her cigar as she flipped her cargo onto a bed. “Sweat dries, blot clots, bones heal, but glory lasts forever! So suck it up, an’ be a marine!” she said encouragingly. The marine landed next to a wounded Guldur sailor with blood soaked bandages sealing a wound to his right lung. Then she stopped to watch as Vodi and Elphinstone prepared to operate on Asquith.

    The earthling had taken a shard of wood in his left eye. Another had lodged in the palm of his left hand after severing the middle finger. The finger was hanging by a thread of flesh, and the stump was oozing blood.

    Asquith had recovered consciousness, but he was in a state of extreme shock, looking dazedly with his right eye at the shard of wood in his hand. He was still oblivious to the splinter that stuck out of his left eye like a broken tooth.

    “I guess that’s fate’s way of giving you the finger, my friend,” said Mrs. Vodi with a cheerful laugh. As she said this she reached out to hold his good hand to stop him from touching the splinter that was protruding from his eye socket. If nothing else, Vodi’s patented bedside manner was guaranteed to distract her patients. And they needed to keep Asquith distracted from wound to his eye for as long as they could.

    “Don’t worry,” Lady Elphinstone reassured the patient. “We’ll get that splinter out of thy hand, and we’ll get thy finger reattached, good as new.”

    “Splinter!” said Asquith, surfing the crest of hysteria as he looked at the mass of white wood protruding from his hand. “You call that a ‘splinter’? A splinter is something I can take out with tweezers! And just how do you primitives intend to do the microsurgery required to reattach my finger?”

    “We use leeches and maggots in our surgery,” said Vodi happily, as the surgeon began to prep the patient. “Right up until the 21st Century they were still using leeches in microsurgery, then they were replaced by all kinds of exotic, hi-tech goodies. Out here in two-space that hi-tech garbage wouldn’t last two seconds, so we use these little piggies. They’ll suck up blood and inject enzymes that will make your blood vessels dilate, engorging themselves and swelling up to ten times their original size in the process.”

    “Mmm. Sounds kinda kinky,” said Broadax with an evil chuckle and a wink at Vodi. The marine lieutenant had decided to hang around for a minute to watch the show. “I love that kinda talk,” Broadax continued. “Do tell us more.”

    “Plus it provides a mild anesthetic so thou dost not even feel its presence,” continued Elphinstone primly, pointedly ignoring the other two females in the room.

    “Ah, ‘at takes all the fun outta it!” cackled Broadax.

    “We use a slosh of beer to draw them to the surface,” said Mrs. Vodi as Lady Elphinstone pointedly ignored the lewd commentary and concentrated on her work. “The little devils love beer. There you go. Here come some cute ones to the top. Aren’t they just lovely?”

    Asquith whimpered and Broadax craned her neck, watching with the voyeuristic excitement of someone who isn’t on the chopping block.

    “The primary thing we use them for is to reattach severed limbs,” Vodi continued. They inject bunches of nature’s own anticoagulant. We just slap them onto any severed limb, and these girls do the housework for us. Sucking up all that nasty old used blood, so it doesn’t cause gangrene. Dilating blood vessels so the good blood can flow. What more can you ask?”

    Asquith listened to all this in horrified wonder. “What more can you ask! OhGodOhGodOhGod! I’ll tell you what you can ask! To be released from the clutches of depraved, sadistic people like you! Maggots! Leeches! What kind of Doctor are you?!”

    “Hmm,” replied Elphinstone distractedly, as she finished strapping Asquith to the operating table with leather coated chains. “The kind that might just save thy finger. But ‘tis another matter that concerns me.”

    “Yes? What is that?” asked the diminutive earthling.

    “Wouldst know what it is?”

    “I said so!”

    “Then I shall tell thee.”

    “Yes? And...?”

    “’Tis this,” she said, pointing sadly at the shard sticking out of his eye socket. “I’m afraid there’s no hope for thine eye.”

    On that note Asquith gave a distracted, cross-eyed look from his right eye, focusing on the splinter protruding a few inches from the left socket. Then he suddenly realized why he was not receiving any information from that eye. He spasmodically tried to reach up with his hands to feel the wound, but he was firmly strapped to the table. Then he sighed and fainted.