will you take some homoerotic fighting in your Shelliott today?
thanks to @cutethulu and @mongoosingisme for the proofreading! and another BIG THANK YOU @cutethulu for once telling me the wisest of words: "We must make the men fight"
SULA’S SONG : Part 65 : THE CORLIS AVENGER: A World of Sea tale (Work In Progress)
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SULA’S SONG : THE CORLIS AVENGER
Part 65
by
De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)
153044 words presently written, WORK IN PROGRESS
Copyright 2022
All rights reserved. This document may not be copied or distributed on or to any medium or placed in any mass storage system except by the express written consent of the author.
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NEW TO SULA’S SONG? READ FROM THE BEGINNING.
PART 1 is HERE
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The Sea Trials of the now named Corlis Avenger revealed that the collected Master Boat-builders and journeymen DID know what they were doing! The Avenger did have Lateen sails that had substantial overlap.
The nay sayers among the Captain's Council witnesses were nearly silenced by witnessing it as she tacked fairly steeply into the wind.
“She is going to be a nightmare to change that tack! The booms and battens of those crazy sails will interfere with each other as she comes about!” “Look! She is nosing into the wind! This will be rich!” “What! The leading edge of the after sail just dropped! The bottom of the fore sail lifted!” “There, the fore passed right over the aft! They just dropped the fore to full sail and the aft is coming up! She is at full sail already!”
One was comparing a pennon's angle to get wind speed. “Impossible! She is going faster on that reach than the wind that is blowing into her sails!” “She is nosing down the wind at the target! She only has one catapult and it is huge! It will take forever to reload! What can it do with one shot?”
The answer to that was a huge rip through the fabric of the target, just at the painted mast! The practice rigging destroyer, made to float for recovery, splashed down in the sea far down from the target!
The Avenger had spun away as soon as its shot was fired! One of the onlooking Captains observed, “That was fired from almost half again the longest range of any Boren catapult, or our ship board ones either. Now she is looping about. Can she really be setting up another attack run that quickly?”
His answer was the launching of a hull breacher that took the target just at the water line! Again, the practice round skittered along for a long distance before coming to rest, floating nose down, the rear half behaving like a signal flag to show recovery crews where it was!
The Avenger looped widely about the target, staying well out of range of potential catapults and began a series of attacks from down wind. The results were similar except that the hull breacher smashed through the fabric of the target about at deck level!
While they were watching, the Avenger swept past the observation ship running a reach that was clearly faster than the wind filling the sails! She looped well out from them and dropped her fore sail entirely. Using just the after sail, she undertook several maneuvers, including tacking.
That was followed by dropping the after sail and raising the fore sail. She repeated all of the previous maneuvers, perhaps a bit more briskly but nothing like the performance when she had both sails up.
A smiling Captain Allison walked among the previously nay saying Captains handing out small waterproof packets with something squishy inside!
“What are these, Allison?”
“Sweet and sour sauce to eat your words with!”
Back at the Council meeting the witnesses had to report, “The Corlis Avenger appears stable and really fast. We don't know how they do it, but it appears that they can safely fire on Boren ships, even ones with catapults. The Avenger's catapult can reload quite swiftly and they somehow can choose targets from up in the rigging down to the water line or below.”
Captains who had been hostile to the whole project because of how ugly and unconventional the Avenger appeared, now clamored for the actual working details of the attack boat.
Captain Allison stood against them solidly. “The Avenger is the brain child of my journeyman Boat-builder Daron. We are keeping the details secret for a simple reason, stated in two words.
“Boren Spies.”
That was followed by the predictable outrage!
Captain Allison simply waited until Captain Sanch was forced to intervene, demanding, “Order! I will have the Sargents remove any Captain who does not follow our rules of order! This is a Council meeting, even if it is not in our pavilion on our Building Rafts. Behave or be removed!”
Captain Allison went on as if not interrupted, “We found out about the spies but not who they were while doing the raid on the Boren building raft. The matter turned up during the questioning of prisoners.
“The communication is only one way, at least for now. The spy or spies put messages into a capsule under a float. The whole thing is fastened to a plummet and released by a slow dissolving glue after a day or so.
“The pickup ship has a lookout up high on thin staff above the main mast. Since it is nearly impossible to see something so small at about forty kilometers, they can follow us closely while remaining unseen. When they spot a message float, they simply pick it up and relay the spy report to the Boren fleet. They have some fairly fast, small, long range boats for the purpose.”
The assorted Captains looked at each other uneasily. One pointed out, “The spies don't need to be Captains. Anyone on a ship could do it. Practically, it almost has to be someone in the command structure or a senior in the Crafts.”
Knowing the method that the spies were using allowed a test of the Corlis Avenger. She set out silently after dark, that very night. She too had a tall whip staff carrying a lookout in a comfortably designed bosun's chair. It even had a small writing desk and parchment held in place by clips against the wind's mischief.
In the dawn's light, they found their prey. They could barely see the mast tops of the Corlis fleet and followed a line south, maintaining that distance. It was apparent that they had missed the enemy, so they pulled about and followed north. The Avenger's lookout sent down a welcome message, “Enemy sighted, NNE.”
Soon the message was “Small ship, forty meters or less, dead ahead.”
Down on deck, it became the organized confusion of crew dashing to battle stations! “Cora! Kanahar! Take the range finding stations at the bows of the outriggers! Just like the target practice runs! Jims! Mahad! Open the magazines! Set up a hull breacher! Wind the catapult back and load!”
Danar took a deep breath and let it out as he took the steering and catapult firing station, lining up the big weapon by aiming the whole boat, just as he had been taught. Jims and Mahad were using long stout levers in the windlass to pull the massive torsion bow back to its firing stops where a snap let them know that it was safe to disengage the levers! Together they rolled a massive hull breacher onto its loading ramp. It slid into place, just ahead of the cable that was the bowstring. Reaching past the string with their levers, they made the final adjustments of the projectile. NOBODY was to get inside that bowstring!
Danar was watching the target through a small hole in a plate. Up by the bows but above the path of any projectile, was a small staff with beads on it. When the range was right, as Cora and Kanahar reported it, sighting down aiming sticks, Danar chose his bead as the boat lifted and dropped in the swells.
As the base of the bowsprit came up to the bead, he slammed the firing mallet down on the release! The sound of the mallet was drowned by the hard singing snap of the catapult releasing its cargo of destruction!
The recoil drove the catapult back down its slide, stopped only by the restraining tackle!
Danar swung the tiller hard over, looping away from the enemy and their potentially deadly catapults! He admired how deftly Baran and Tora managed the sails! Jims and Mahad had the next round ready and reset the recoil tackle. They used their levers to push the cocking carriage into place and engage the bow string. They began the hard work of winding the carriage back, bringing the machine to full cock again!
Another hull breacher slid into place, receiving its final adjustments.
Danar swung the Avenger around, aiming the ship at the rudder and stern post of the enemy ship! Carefully lining the little ship up and watching his beads, Danar finally had time to see the results of his first shot! The bowsprit had been ripped free exept for a few ropes that did no good now! Both jibs and the mainbrace had been lost! The keel had been shattered and a huge hole was ripped all the way through the wounded vessel!
Keeping to his task was made more difficult by wanting to see the wreckage left by the first shot! The enemy were firing their catapults at them but were having to aim upwards to get the best range. Their harpoons were falling far short and plunging deep instead of skittering across the water!
Cora and Kanahar gave the range signal and only seconds later the bows rose, putting the correct bead on target. The firing mallet slammed the release again! The little ship jolted to the recoil as the missile followed a low arch across the distance!
Danar spared a glance as he was swinging the rudder to take them away from the doomed vessel! The rudder and the sternpost that it was attached to were a shattered ruin just at the water line! Water was pouring in through a hole over a meter wide! Debris from the breaking rudder had been slammed into the ship by the force of the hit, making a large hole an enormous one!
As they were looping away to set up their next attack, Danar called to Jims and Mahad, “Rigging destroyer!”
Nodding understanding, they lifted the new projectile onto the loading ramp!
The force of the massive bull roarer like weapon smashed through the port side standing rigging of the main mast and ripped out the ratlines as well! One of the heavy bola like weights caught the mast itself! That caused both of the others to whip about the mast as well! With the force of the hit and the destroyed rigging, the mast began to lean to starboard! The off center mass, held from falling by surviving ropes, dragged the ship over onto her side!
The crew of the Avenger watched as the enemy ship took water and made the final plunge into the depths! Men were frantically swimming as well as they could in the debris field of the wreck.
Danar, whose home ship was on the bottom, burned by a Boren raider, took a deep breath. Face wrinkled with disgust, he ordered, “We have to pick them up. Don't want to. Make sure that they have their wrists tied before we pull them to our deck. Then tie their ankles too. We can stack them over there, on the deck over the port outrigger supports. When we get back to the fleet, the prisoners will be someone else's problem, thank the Dragons.”
With the prisoners secure, Danar had a net put over them to prevent any possible escape and make sure that none fell overboard.
Work of Art [J.JH] - sixty-five | secret agent doberman
[바보 ”Pabo” means stupid or fool. I know there was a funny live of Doyoung’s where Haechan (off camera) opened the door and called Doyoung pabo and then left that I would love to link because Doyoung’s reaction is great, but idk where it is lol]
i've been thinking a lot about their little 'fight' at the beach, when shane says smth like "i think you were supposed to let go of me" and elliott replies with "i couldnt".... was that some kind of foreshadowing or just a crazy coincidence
Aaaaah I'm so happy you caught that you have no idea 😭 yesss this was definitely foreshadowing for this entire angst phase! Very VERY intentional
