Chapter 8

Some people just can't leave an idea alone! The armed boats seemed such a good idea that there just had to be a way to salvage the inspiration. After a lot of head scratching and discussion, the idea of a basic modification in the boats came to mind. Somebody suggested that the whole problem could be solved by redesigning the boats! The current boats had a rounded bottom and a sort-of keel; why not change to a flat-bottomed boat with a width great enough to overcome the tendency for the boat to flip over when the machine gun was fired? The experiments with the pontoons had demonstrated that the basic idea was sound, they only needed to implement it properly.

Dick gave permission for one of the boats to be cannibalized for its water-jet propulsion system to drive the new style boat. With so much swamp and marsh land around, the very shallow draft of the new boat design would provide a wide range of operational possibilities. The designer claimed, in a fit of enthusiasm, that the boat needed so little water that a man could stand in the bow and piss enough water for them to go anywhere except uphill.

The new boat was built around other duties, but it was finished in a remarkably short time and ready for its first trials on the water. "On" the water was an accurate description, since it drew only 2 inches of water, even with the machine gun, ammunition, fuel, and crew on board. The crew consisted of a driver, who was boat captain, a gunner, and a loader, who had other duties as well. The crew loaded the boat and set out for a trial run in view of all their friends.

The performance of the boat was remarkable, it would move forward at nearly 15 MPH (knots didn't seem appropriate, considering the depth of the water it operated on) and it would turn on the proverbial "dime," though none of the humans knew what a dime was. Then it was time for the machine gun trials. Everything went perfectly when the gun was fired essentially straight ahead, though the recoil did slow the boat noticeably. However, shooting to either side caused the boat to spin out of control! The first time this happened, bullets were even sprayed at the spectators when the gunner panicked and forget to release the trigger.

This was a major design flaw and would make the boat completely unusable, unless a solution could be found. The boat designer wanted to cannibalize the power units from two other boats and mount them on the new boat to provide water-jet compensation for the recoil, but Dick vetoed that out of hand! The designer was then forced into a less elegant solution: a board mounted to the side of the boat to act as a keel whenever the machine gun was fired to the side. This board was movable and operated by the loader, and it proved to be a workable solution.

Meanwhile, on several occasions, the Wenrarians had tried to clear the last ambush point, and the humans had fought battles to keep them from doing so. So far, the humans had been successful in keeping the road blocked, and the Wenrarians were becoming desperate to get supplies through to their forward troops. Human and Ixlern pressure on Wenrarian invaders was beginning to show results, and the Wenrarians were running low on ammunition and fuel. As long as Dick's platoon could keep the roads blocked, the allies were in good shape to win the ultimate fight.

The Wenrarians were forced to bring up stronger and stronger forces to try to break through and clear the road. Finally, Wenrarian patience wore out and they started moving a major armored infantry unit into position to clear the road. At last! A real use for the boat. Much of the road wound through wetlands with enough water to support the armed flatboat. It was dispatched to do all that it could to slow down the enemy advance.

The boat had been running regular patrols up and down the route parallel to the road, so the Wenrarian troops were spotted very soon after they left camp. The boat crew tooled along parallel to the troop convoy and the loader lowered the pseudo keel. As they drew even with the convoy, the machine gunner opened up with a series of long bursts, raking the convoy with a devastating rain of heavy caliber bullets. The convoy was caught completely off guard, as they never expected anyone to fight from water. The boat sped away before a single shot could be turned against it. They didn't know how much physical damage they had done, but they knew that they had sure put a scare into the enemy!

The boat rushed back to camp with word of the convoy, refreshed its ammunition and fuel supply, and rushed back to continue the harassment of the Wenrarians. They returned to their previous route parallel to the road and found that the enemy had barely moved from the site of the original attack. There would be no sneaking up on the Wenrarians this time, it seemed as if every eye was fixed on the water watching for a repeat of the previous dastardly attack. It was immediately obvious to the humans that they needed better range on their radios; the Wenrarians could have been wiped out if there were some way to invoke a land attack against them at this time.

There was no way that the boat could do much damage to the convoy, but they did make one more shooting pass just to give the enemy something more to worry about. This time, the boat drew withering fire from the Wenrarians, so they had to make a run for distance and safety. They scurried back toward camp and reported in as soon as they were within radio range.

A plan was quickly made for the boat to continue harassing the enemy while the rest of the platoon moved as fast as they could to intercept the Wenrarians. The boat sped back to the convoy and spent as much time as they could dashing in close enough to fire a few bursts and dashing back out of range.

Ah, reinforcements had arrived! Two regular boats equipped with the machine guns soon showed up and also rushed in to shoot at the convoy near the water. The new boats did not do much physical damage to the convoy, since they could only shoot while pointing directly at the enemy, but the enemy was sufficiently unnerved by the mere presence of boats to be locked into a static position while they tried to figure out some sort of counter measure.