Fire on Iron

By Andrew Fox

What price redemption? Is martial honor worth the cost of one’s soul?
Lieutenant Commander August Micholson lost his first ship, the wooden frigate USS Northport, in reckless battle against the ironclad ram CSS Virginia. However, Flag Officer Andrew Foote offers the disgraced young Micholson a chance to redeem himself: he can take the ironclad gunboat USS James B. Eads on an undercover mission to destroy a hidden rebel boat yard, where a fleet of powerful ironclads is being constructed which will allow the Confederate Navy to dominate the Mississippi.
But dangers far more sinister than rebel ironclads await Micholson and his crew. On the dark waters of the Yazoo River, deep within rebel territory, they become entangled in a plot devised by a slave and his master to summon African fire spirits to annihilate the Federal armies. Micholson must battle devils both internal and external to save the lives of his crew, sink the Confederate fleet, and foil the arcane conspiracy. Ultimately, Micholson is faced with a terrible choice — he can risk the lives of every inhabitant of America, both Union and Confederate, or destroy himself by merging with a demon and forever melding his own soul with that of his greatest enemy...
Book One of Midnight’s Inferno: the August Micholson Chronicles
Watch for Book Two, Hellfire and Damnation, available April, 2014!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew Fox
• Release date: Nov 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311964977

Andrew Fox

Andrew Fox was born in Miami Beach in 1964. He has been a fan of science fiction and horror since he saw Godzilla and friends romp through Destroy All Monsters at the drive-in theater at the age of three. In 1994, he joined award-winning science fiction author George Alec Effinger's monthly writing workshop group in New Orleans, where Andrew lived for more than two decades. Since 2009, he has lived in Northern Virginia with his wife and three boys, where he works for a federal law enforcement agency.His first novel, Fat White Vampire Blues, published by Ballantine Books in 2003, was widely described as "Anne Rice meets A Confederacy of Dunces." It won the Ruthven Award for Best Vampire Fiction of 2003. Its sequel, Bride of the Fat White Vampire, was published in 2004. His third novel, The Good Humor Man, or, Calorie 3501, was published by Tachyon Publications in April, 2009. It was selected by Booklist as one of the Ten Best SF/Fantasy Novels of the Year and was first runner up for the Darrell Award, presented for best SF or fantasy novel written by a Mid-South author or set in the Mid-South. In 2006, he was one of the three winners of the Moment Magazine-Karma Foundation Short Fiction Award.Andrew is an outspoken advocate for freedom of speech and thought in science fiction. MonstraCity Press is publishing two volumes of short fiction that, in the tradition of Harlan Ellison's groundbreaking anthologies Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions, push the boundaries of what is considered taboo in science fiction. The first volume, Hazardous Imaginings: The Mondo Book of Politically Incorrect Science Fiction, includes two of Andrew's short novels and three of his stories. The second volume, Again, Hazardous Imaginings, features 14 stories by writers from all over the world. Science fiction is not a safe space!MonstraCity Press has published Fire on Iron (Book One of Midnight's Inferno: the August Micholson Chronicles), a steampunk dark fantasy novel set aboard ironclad gunboats during the Civil War, and will publish the second book in the series, Hellfire and Damnation, in 2021. MonstraCity Press has also published the third book in the Fat White Vampire series, Fat White Vampire Otaku, and will publish the fourth book in the series, Hunt the Fat White Vampire, and the fifth book, Curse of the Fat White Vampire, both in 2021. Other projects forthcoming from this publisher in 2021 include The Bad Luck Spirits' Social Aid and Pleasure Club, a fantasy novel which intertwines a supernatural secret history of New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath; this is a tie-in to the Fat White Vampire series.Andrew's other jobs have been varied. He has worked at a children's psychiatric center, managed a statewide supplemental nutrition program for senior citizens, taught musical theater and improv to children, and sold Saturn cars and trucks (just before the automotive division was abolished by General Motors). He has also been a mime (in his younger days) and produced a multi-sensory interactive play for blind children in New Orleans.His oddest association is that he attended high school with Jeff Zucker, who would go on to become the president of NBC/Universal and then of CNN. Andrew's impressions of Zucker can be found in an article he wrote for Tablet Magazine, "Bullies, Inc." It can be found at: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/jeff-zucker-donald-trumpAndrew Fox's website and blog can be found at:www.fantasticalandrewfox.comThe latest information about MonstraCity Press books can be found at:www.monstracitypress.com

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FIRE ON IRON

ANDREW FOX

Copyright © 2013 Andrew Fox

Published by MonstraCity Press at Smashwords

All rights reserved.

ISBN 978131196497

This is a work of fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real events is purely coincidental. Portrayals of historic figures are fictionalized. Any resemblance of other characters to real persons is purely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to re-produce this book or portions thereof in any form. Brief portions of this book may be reproduced for reviews or other forms of allowable public use.

MonstraCity Press

Manassas, Virginia

www.monstracitypress.com

DEDICATION

For Dara my Captain of Logistics

And for George Alec Effinger and Mark McCandless,

who liked this one

Prologue:

The Captured Blockade Runner

Ship Island, Mississippi, February 26, 1862

Captain Zachery Douglas hated Ship Island. He hated the inescapable dampness of Fort Massachusetts, the half-finished fortress which served as his headquarters. He hated the pervasive mold which invaded the garrison’s rations like a conquering army. He hated the snakes and alligators that slithered out of the mosquito-infested swamp which formed the island’s long, narrow heart. Most of all, he hated the quiet.

In the three months since the Federals had occupied the island, not a single event with the tiniest military significance had occurred anywhere near. The garrison spent its endless days battling nothing more than boredom.

Yet today, something was different. Captain Douglas stood away from his desk and strode to the open window overlooking the empty waters. Something unsettling was blowing in from the Gulf of Mexico. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

He made a futile sweep of the empty horizon and scowled. He turned to his sergeant of Marines, a gangly young man sitting at a desk at the room’s opposite corner. Johnson, can you please explain to me why I’ve been planted on this mosquito-hive of a mud pile in the middle of God-forsaken nowhere, hundreds of miles away from the fight?

Johnson gathered his patience before replying. This particular exchange had become a tiresome game. Sir, he said, "Ship Island is the linchpin of the entire blockade of the Gulf Coast. If we weren’t here—if you weren’t here, sir—the rebels could run their contraband goods in and out of Mobile and New Orleans just as pretty as they please."

Oh? And isn’t that just what they’ve been doing? How many blockade runners have we captured since I’ve taken command? Fifty? A hundred?

Johnson quietly sighed. None, sir.

That’s right, none! Not a damned one!

Sir, we’ve only recently been assigned enough ships to make the blockade more than a piece of paper—

And what does that tell you, Johnson? Douglas’s face had turned livid. "What does that tell you about the top brass’s opinion of me? It makes my blood boil, Johnson. I should be at Hampton Roads, commanding the Monitor; I’d show them how to finish off that rebel ironclad. Or at least Flag Officer Foote should have requested me as one of his gunboat captains—that’s right, my old friend, Andy Foote! I should be on the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers, blasting the rebel forts to smithereens, making a name for myself! But where am I? He swung his arms wide with withering contempt. Here! This pathetic little spit of sand—I tell you, Johnson, for a young, talented officer like myself, it’s nothing more than an open grave…"

Fingers shaking with emotion, Douglas struck a match to light his cigar. Staring into the tiny flame, wavering in the warm, humid spring breeze, he suddenly felt—dizzy. He smelled the stink of decaying flesh. He was staring out of other eyes…eyes accustomed to the dark; and all around was water, the hated water, kept away from him by only a thin, wooden shell—

He yelped as the match burned down to his fingers. He didn’t have time to question this strange infringement on his senses, though, for Johnson had clasped his shoulder and was pointing towards the horizon. "There, sir! lTwo sets of masts! Our boys have caught themselves a prize!"

One set of masts belonged to the Union sloop-of-war Powhatan. The other belonged to her prize, a freighter the warship had taken under tow. Cheers erupted on the island’s docks as the two vessels hove into view. A crowd of enlisted men gathered at the water’s edge.

I suppose we’d better get down there, Johnson. Round up a boarding party of your Marines.

The sergeant delivered his snappiest salute. Yes, sir!

At the docks, sailors placed bets on what types of contraband the blockade runner would have in her holds. I’ll give you ten-to-one odds she’ll be loaded with them British Enfield rifles!

Really? Five-to-two she’s filled to the gunwales with bolts of silk for New Orleans Carnival gowns!

The Federal sloop-of-war, her captive in tow, steamed slowly into the harbor. Most of the bluejackets waiting to greet her remembered her as a sparkling vessel, the white stripe delineating her gunports freshly painted, her brasswork gleaming. Months of ceaseless patrolling at the mouth of the Mississippi, however, had taken their toll. The Gulf waves and ever-present humidity had begun to strip the paint from her flanks, and the older dockhands muttered among themselves as they contemplated the tens of thousands of barnacles they would have to scrape from her bottom. Compared to her prize, however, the Powhatan gleamed.

The bluejacket who had bet on the Enfield rifles spat in disgust. She’s a real pig, that one, he said to his companion. If’n I were you, I’d cancel that bet about her having silk aboard. Where the devil do you suppose she’s been?

His companion never got a chance to reply, for Captain Douglas stepped onto the dock, followed by Johnson and a small contingent of Marines. They waited while the Powhatan and her prize anchored and a gangway was extended from the warship to the pier. Lieutenant Eriksson, the Powhatan’s captain, descended the gangway, followed by a disheveled man chained in double-irons, and two burly guards.

Lieutenant Eriksson and Captain Douglas exchanged salutes. This man is Captain Rodney O’Dowell, Eriksson said, pointing to his prisoner, "owner of that vessel there. Her papers say she is the City of Tuscaloosa, but they say little else. And O’Dowell here will tell us even less."

Have you determined what she’s carrying? Douglas asked, staring up at the forlorn vessel’s torn sails.

No, sir. Her holds are very securely locked. We could have forced them open at sea, but I judged it more prudent to wait until we returned to base, on the chance there might be armed men hiding below.

The prisoner laughed. There are no armed men in my holds. Though what men there were probably wished they had been armed.

Douglas turned to the five Marines standing behind him. Let’s board her, gentlemen, and see what this fool is hiding.

Stepping onto the deck of the captured sloop, he regretted his decision almost immediately. The scarred wood was caked with dried animal dung and mud. Strange funguses, the color of an ill man’s phlegm, sprouted from the deck. Douglas considered his boots, fine new pieces of leatherwork. Perhaps he should ask Eriksson to lead this distasteful expedition? But no, the entire garrison was watching him; he could not back away from the task. So he carefully stepped around the piles of dung and the unnerving fungi and led his Marines to the forward hold.

Johnson, strike that lock off.

The Marine sergeant smashed the lock repeatedly with his rifle butt, until the rusted mechanism fell to the slippery deck. Two of the Marines struggled to open the heavy doors over the hold. What they uncovered hardly seemed worth the sweat.

What the devil—? Douglas peered closely into the dark hold. It’s…dirt. Just dirt. These fools must’ve filled half their hold with soil. Whatever for?

Stunted trees grew in small clusters near the middle of the hold, bearing heavy, sallow fruit. Had the crew been circumnavigating the globe, and so needed a renewable food supply? But the fruit of these trees hardly looked appetizing.

They turned toward the aft hold. Douglas’s nose twitched as it recoiled from a strong odor. The door above the aft hold, a hatchway only four feet square, was much smaller than the ones above the forward hold. Its lock, too, quickly gave way to the sergeant’s rifle. Johnson flung the hatchway open, then ran to the side of the ship to retch. The stench, overpowering, rose from the hold like a deathly vapor.

Captain Douglas felt dizzy again. He was intensely grateful that he did not have a weak stomach. The hold was black as pitch. Bring us up a lantern, he called to Lieutenant Eriksson. Eriksson brought one of the Powhatan’s lamps.

Johnson, looking acutely embarrassed, took the lamp from Eriksson’s hand. Sir, if you would permit me… he sheepishly asked. I would like to be the first to descend.

Of course, Johnson. By all means.

The steps were steep, and slippery. The first things they saw were the cages. Some of the animals had not survived the journey. Those still breathing were crouched in filthy hay, seemingly too weak and hungry to move. Food and water buckets lay overturned outside the cages. Douglas recalled the traveling menageries that had swept through Maine when he had been a boy, displaying creatures too fantastical to be imagined. These animals were equally fantastic. He had never seen their like before.

The largest cage was empty.

Sir! Johnson cried. Over here—

The four Negroes were dead. Not merely dead—dismembered. And their limbs had been…gnawed upon.

There was a sound of nails scraping wood. In a dark corner of the hold, something snorted. Johnson dropped his lantern. Before he could bring his rifle to his shoulder, the thing had disemboweled him.

Just before the light died, Captain Douglas saw the glimmer of bloody tusks. And eyes of unearthly fire.

Chapter One

A Commander Who Lost His Ship

Central Train Station and the Cairo Navy Yard,

Cairo, Illinois, April 1862

The train lurched to a stop, wheezing clouds of steam. Lieutenant Commander August Micholson, USN, stared out his window with eyes the color of beaten iron. Flecks of cold rain fell through the open window and spattered his face, cratered with childhood smallpox scars.

It had rained or sleeted almost the entire journey from Washington. Thirty-two years old, he felt like a tired, defeated old man. Although his hair retained the flamboyant redness of its youth, he imagined it gray, the color of the old, filthy snow his train had rolled through at stations across Ohio and Indiana. He pulled his dark blue wool overcoat closed. The coat, extending four inches below his knees, double breasted with two parallel columns of eight gold buttons, enfolded him like a blanket. He touched those buttons, embossed with anchors, and the doubled bars and twin gold stars at the cuffs, dreading the day his final surviving joy, the extended family provided by the U.S. Navy, would be denied him. That day could come frightfully soon. During his sixteen years of naval service, he had fought only one battle, less than three months ago. The battle that had killed one hundred and eleven of his men and sent his ship, the steam frigate Northport, to the bottom of Hampton Roads.

His train car was filled with fresh naval recruits for the Union’s Western Flotilla, young men barely half his age, green enough to still be entranced by the romance and excitement of war. Slowed by the minor but chronic fever which had dogged him ever since his ascent from the sinking Northport, Micholson gathered his bags from the bin above his seat and headed for the exit. His boyish traveling companions, still dressed in the homespun overalls and raw leather shoes of civilian life, eager for their first glimpse of the naval station and the gunboats they would man, jostled his gaunt form as they surged off the train.

This is the last time they’ll be treating an officer this way, he thought, but his irritation did not last long. They were too much like he and Paul had been at their age, arriving in Norfolk from Mississippi’s rural hinterlands, desperate to obtain berths aboard one of the Navy’s great ships.

Two teenaged boys, hungry for adventure and glory. Had it been Paul’s idea to enlist, or his? He couldn’t remember. They’d been like twin brothers, completing each other’s thoughts and sentences. Yes, exactly like a twin, he thought. A replacement twin. His real twin brother, Nicholas, had perished of the same smallpox outbreak which had nearly taken Micholson’s life at the age of five. His parents had recounted for him many times how long he had mourned his brother, even losing the power of speech for half a year after Nicholas had been laid into the earth.

Meeting Paul at the age of thirteen had revived his spirit from eight years of numbness and loneliness, oxygen for a dying flame. Micholson tried to remember his dead friend’s boyish, handsome face. The Mexican War had been on. Paul had brought each fresh newspaper to Micholson’s house, eager to share the U.S. Navy’s latest exploits. Only August had obtained his father’s permission before making the journey to enlist; Paul secretly absconded. The train trip to Norfolk was exotic and exciting. But no excitement the sixteen year old August Micholson had ever known could compare to the exhilaration he felt when he saw his first tall ship. Staring at her long, graceful black hull, her towering masts adorned with a blaze of flags and canvas, he knew with liberating certainty that he’d found the axis around which his life would forever revolve.

Paul’s and August’s dreams of glory had ended fifteen years and nine months after their first glimpse of that tall ship, entombed between the shattered oak ribs of a steam frigate on the cold, muddy bottom of Hampton Roads. If God’s justice had been swifter, Micholson, the USS Northport’s commanding officer, would have shared that tomb. But God, or Fate, had seen fit to preserve him that terrible morning, had given strength to his limbs as he’d kicked his way free of the Northport’s entangling shrouds and swam mindlessly towards the surface, possessed of an animal’s blind passion for survival.

And now he was here. Why had the Navy Department ordered him halfway across the continent instead of immediately drumming him out of the service? Men who lose their ships are rarely given a new command, he thought. Why have I been singled out for special service? Is this some euphemism for a court-martial? No—had they wished to subject me to court-martial, they would have done so back at Fortress Monroe on Hampton Roads.

He stepped onto the wooden platform, slick with rain, and suddenly realized he had no idea where to go. He had never been in Cairo before. He cinched his overcoat around his waist with his belt, noticing he pulled it two notches more tightly than he had just a few months earlier. The last of the recruits hurried off the dripping platform, leaving it almost deserted. A lone porter leaned against one of the platform’s square pillars, taking long drags on a stubby cigarette, shielding its weak fire from the wind.

Micholson hoisted his heavy kit bag to his shoulder and approached him. Good afternoon. I’m Lieutenant Commander August Micholson. I’ve been ordered to the Cairo Naval Station. Do you know of anyone who is supposed to meet me here?

Commander Micholson, eh? Under the man’s hard gaze, Micholson briefly re-experienced the youthful chagrin he had felt whenever anyone stared too long at his smallpox scars. Yeah, there was someone askin’ after you. A nigra.

A Negro?

An old darkie, yeah. Sprightly ol’ fella. He was askin’ after your train just this mornin’. Ain’t seen him since then.

Micholson frowned. Unless Flag Officer Foote had sent a porter to fetch him, Micholson knew of only one Negro who had reason to search him out. And he had given that man strict instructions to stay at Elizabeth’s side at her and August’s apartment in Baltimore. How far is it to the naval station?

Not very. Maybe half a mile. Follow the road out front of here to your right, and you’ll come to a bluff pretty quick. You can’t miss your naval station then.

Thank you.

Want me to call you a carriage?

No. I’d rather walk.

The porter’s face brightened as he noticed something behind Micholson. Say, he said, here comes that darkie now. He’s wavin’ for you.

Micholson turned. The man climbing to the platform was definitely Nehemiah, his man servant and, until the start of the war, Micholson’s family property. He experienced conflicting emotions upon seeing him. His anger that Nehemiah had disregarded his instructions conflicted with his undeniable gratitude that his oldest friend, his childhood tutor, the man who had done more than any other to nurse him through the corrosive grief he’d experienced after his brother’s death, had arrived to support him in the darkest crisis he’d endured since Nicholas’s burial.

As the black man approached, Micholson took care to preserve a stern face. Any show of emotion now would tear asunder the correct relationship between the two men; and once the flow of emotions started, he couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t crack him into a thousand pieces, ten fragments for each man who had died under his command.

Nehemiah spoke first. Mister August, I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you came in. The train got here ten minutes earlier than the schedule man said it would. He carried a basket; the aromas of freshly baked bread and smoked sausage made Micholson’s mouth water. He hadn’t realized how famished he’d been. Thought you’d be hungry after your journey.

Nehemiah, Micholson said, resisting an impulse to throw his arms around his servant’s neck, you shouldn’t be here. I gave you very clear, very firm instructions to stay with Elizabeth. She is carrying— His voice caught before he could say the words, a child. Other words, searing hot, flashed through his brain…

Not mine.

She is great with, he managed to continue, "with child. She needs you."

Nehemiah shook his head. She don’t need me, Mister August. She’s not in Baltimore anymore. She got her brother to fetch her back to her father’s place. They’s all in Petersburg together now.

You should have gone with her. If I can’t be there to watch over her, to protect her, then I need you to be there in my stead— He began crumbling under the weight of his kit bag. Fever and hunger had weakened him more than he’d admitted to himself. Nehemiah helped him set the heavy satchel down on the platform. "I’m your man, Mister August. Not hers. She didn’t want me along. And when I got word as to what’d happened to you and your ship in Hampton Roads—"

That, Micholson gasped, holding onto his servant’s strong shoulder, doesn’t matter. You had your instructions.

Almost a year ago, you made me a free man, Nehemiah said. The Negro suddenly seemed far younger than his sixty-plus years; if not for his wreath of white hair and the cracked lines surrounding his eyes, he could pass for a man in his thirties. I earn wages now. I spent them wages on a train ticket to come out here. You’s my employer, you got a right to fire me for disobeying, and I got a right to go to work for somebody else. But I got my own mind now, and that mind told me you need me. So am I fired, or no?

Such assertiveness surprised Micholson. After years of witnessing Nehemiah follow Micholson’s father’s instructions without question, for the man to display a will of his own seemed against nature. But he reminded himself that emancipating Nehemiah had been more than a mere legal formality; he’d returned to the man a dignity and autonomy which Nehemiah hadn’t known since his childhood in Africa. If Nehemiah wanted to help him now, he was proving himself, not a servant, but a friend.

No, Micholson said, you’re not fired.

Maybe I should be, Nehemiah said. His face turned grim. Maybe I should be caned within an inch of my life.

"Good Lord, man, why?"

"For what I told you the day before your battle. It was evil judgment, a wickedness on my part. I threw your mind into a twister storm, just when you most needed your wits. I can’t help but thinkin’…maybe I helped kill them hundred sailors of yours, same as the Virginia’s guns did."

Micholson squeezed his eyes tightly shut. No, he said. Don’t put that upon yourself. You couldn’t have seen the future. And…and I needed to know. I needed to know what you told me. Let’s not speak about it just now.

All right, Nehemiah said. He handed Micholson the basket. How about you eat something? You look ready to pitch over.

Micholson broke himself off a hunk of warm brown bread. The humble loaf tasted as good as any meal he’d ever eaten. He offered part of the loaf to Nehemiah, but his companion shook his head and shouldered the kit bag. They descended the steps to the muddy dirt road and began walking in the direction the porter had indicated. A light rain returned, making their footing even more treacherous.

Turning the wool collar of his pea coat against the rain, Micholson reached the top of a low rise overlooking the river. He assumed he would be able to see the navy yard in its entirety. What met his tired grey eyes was like no naval establishment he had ever seen. Navy yard was clearly a misnomer. Yard implied land, and the Navy appeared to own not one square foot of soil here. All of its facilities—repair derricks, dormitories, dry docks and machine shops—were afloat, mounted on a mélange of wharf-boats, steamers, flat-boats, and rafts, connected to each other with a spider’s web of rickety plank bridges. It looked as though the Lord had abandoned his eons-old promise to Noah and had released the flood again, dooming mankind to a precarious, water-logged existence.

Nehemiah must have been imagining the same apocalyptic scenario. Mister August, them things down there by them docks, are they the roofs of barns swept away by some flood?

Micholson shook his head. Not barn roofs, no. His voice cracked slightly when he spoke his next word. Ironclads.

Focusing on the long, low black objects, each about one hundred and eighty feet long and sixty feet across the beam, Micholson counted the fat, round muzzles which pierced their sloping sides. Each of those cannons could hurl up to a hundred pounds of high-explosives or iron at a velocity sufficient to smash seasoned oak several feet thick…or render a man a corpse so misshapen that not even its own brother could recognize it. These barn roofs, now silhouetted by the setting orange sun, were the reason for the floating navy yard’s existence: the ironclad gunboats of the Western Flotilla. Staring down at their dark, menacing shapes, so terribly familiar to him even though he had never before seen the flotilla or any of its vessels, he suppressed a shiver. One of the gunboats down there was his new command. The James B. Eads.

Sir, are you Lieutenant Commander Micholson?

Micholson turned to see a young cadet, face and ears turned bright red by the bitter weather, standing rigidly at attention. His pea coat was at least two sizes too large. Micholson smiled, picturing himself sixteen years ago. Yes, I’m the man you’re looking for, Cadet…?

Cadet Sumner, sir. I’m sorry I missed you at the station. Flag Officer Foote is very anxious to meet with you, sir.

Micholson was just as anxious to meet with Foote. What had the Flag Officer meant in his letter by special service? Then take me to him directly.

Yes, sir!

He followed Sumner down a narrow cobblestone lane to the water’s edge. While descending, he was able to take a closer look at the ironclads. Workmen swarmed over several, even at this late hour, hammering fresh planks into place or replacing battered auxiliary boats. One ironclad in particular was a sad specimen. One of her twin smoke stacks had pitched forward onto her pilot house. Her casemate had been pierced in several places, revealing a fire-blackened interior, and her roof was a shambles.

Cadet, what happened to the ironclads? I thought… Memories of the battle at Hampton Roads assaulted him, images of shot from his ship’s most powerful cannon bouncing off the greased sides of the Southern marauder and exploding harmlessly in the air. I thought no power on earth could do this to them.

These boats are the toughest this Mississippi’s ever seen, sir, the cadet stammered, anxious that this new officer should have a good opinion of the fleet. "But they aren’t invincible. That iron armor you’ve heard talk about only protects the fronts of their casemates and along the sides where the engines are. The rest is plain wood, just like any other boat. And sometimes freak accidents happen. Like what happened to poor Essex in the fight at Fort Henry. He pointed to a vessel at the far end of the anchorage, covered with more than her fair share of dockhands. She took a cannonball through one of her gun ports, and it smashed into her boilers. Half her crew was scalded to death, including her captain."

What is the better death, Micholson asked himself—to drown, pinned beneath smashed timbers, or to have the life scorched from you by high-pressure steam? And that ship there, he asked quietly. "The one with the toppled smoke stack? What