For Forty Weeks the Sunbird Flew: An Airman's Tale

Chapter 16: The Battle of the Windblown Gardens

Okay. Okay. This was it. They were ready. Night had fallen, they were approaching the enemy positions under a cloak of darkness, and Archer was absolutely not shitting himself at this very moment. The crew had been training constantly for this specific battle against this specific foe for two months now, ever since Three-Streams and a few sections even before, and Lawrence had reviewed the figures and statistics a hundred times over in just the last week. They may have sunk a rebel destroyer but Commodore Greyfax still outnumbered and outgunned them many times over. Four ramshackle corvettes and a pair of equally cobbled together frigates anchored the flanks of the rebel formation, whilst a heavy frigate equal to the Sunbird in size if not capabilities sat somewhere behind the six smaller escorts. Most worrying was the fact that somewhere in this valley was the Commodore himself upon his light cruiser, the Wolfhound. She was a far larger vessel than the Sunbird and, more worryingly, one that had actually been purpose built by a professional shipyard for war. That alone set it far apart from the rest of the man's bodged flotilla.

The engines were running silent, as was everything else on the ship. The black canvas and cloudy skies had helped conceal them, but no-one was of the delusion that they were invisible. All it would take was a single accidental torch going off, a single searchlight hitting them, and they'd be blown out of the sky in mere minutes.

But it never happened.

Instead they drifted ever-so-slowly into the middle of the rebel formation completely unnoticed. Every man gripped his weapon or a railing with sweaty palms, but none dared to let out the breaths they were all holding for fear that even the smallest noise might alert their quarry.
Every weapon was ready. The carronades, the puckle guns, even the rifles were ready to fire. The Sunbird had one shot at this, and they needed to do it right if they expected to live.
Minute after agonising minute passed by, and Archer eyed Lawrence nervously. He'd never led the Sunbird wrong before, but the risks involved here... it seemed almost suicidal.
Lawrence silently raised an open-palmed hand, signalling for the men to pick their targets as they silently drifted forwards. The foe must have had some pickets out at night, skeleton shifts to keep the formation ready and able to respond as soon as the Sunbird was sighted, and quite frankly Archer couldn't believe that they'd gotten this close to the formation unnoticed. They were closer than they had been back when they'd fought the destroyer, a scant few hundred metres away at the most. The men and women on the weapons did as their captain bid, awaiting the command to strike the foe, but the tenseness of the situation meant that they were taught like a string of wire. With the propensity of some of the crew towards impatience, Talwynn came to mind, he feared that someone would fire a weapon just a moment too early and their whole carefully laid out plan would descend into chaos.

But then something remarkable happened. Just as they came within two-hundred metres of a rebel frigate Archer sensed that the nerves were beginning to leave the crew. There was no room for doubt anymore; they had their orders, their tasks lay in front of them, and all they could do was see them done to the utmost of their abilities.

The sunbird drifted a little further forwards, and then Lawrence spoke in one of the softest, quietest voices Archer had ever heard. Not just from Lawrence, but from anyone. To call it a whisper was an exaggeration of volume, for it was little more than an exhaled breath on the wind. He beckoned the Gunnery Officer to his side, the young woman practically vibrating with anticipation, and then he smirked down at her and spoke.

"Fire, blow their sides."

And then all hell broke loose.
Twelve 32-pounders fired a volley at point-blank range towards predetermined targets on the starboard and larboard sides, whilst the puckle-guns and rifles aimed at the balloons of the smaller vessels around them. They struck hard and struck true, but it was the 68-pounders that truly stole the day.
One of the massive guns struck the heavy frigate directly on the forecastle, whilst the second hit a corvette at less than a hundred metres away and smashed it to kindling.
By the end of the first volley three corvettes and a frigate had been sent tumbling towards the ground, and not a single one of the remaining vessels had escaped unscathed.