Winds of Wrath

by Taylor Anderson

  Don Hernan stopped abruptly. Turning, he regarded Gravois strangely; the same friendly, open expression he’d always donned like a mask was covered by sticky, blackening blood. “I was angry with you, my dear Gravois,” he confessed as if revealing a great failing, “for neglecting your duties as The One. . . . But I didn’t prepare you and you couldn’t have known. I still consider you The One, since you were present, and you survived!”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The One is he who transfers the lifeblood of one, ah, ‘pope’ to another—which you did with all the assistance you’ve rendered to this point! Sadly, The One rarely survives the experience since the new Supreme Holiness”—he bowed slightly—“will equally rarely allow human eyes to rest on him.” He shook his head. “If The One is permitted to live, he becomes His Supreme Holiness’s closest advisor, since he alone may see him. My rule must be different, however, and all must see me for who I am. Slaying you would only deprive me of the excellent advisor I need.”

  Gravois decided to try his original question again. “But . . . this cave, this passage, it leads to the lake, correct?”

  Don Hernan laughed. “Of course not! My dragon flyers reported great power coming up the River of Heaven, and even more gathering to do so. There can be no escape that way and the world we would make will die with us. I fear your ships must have been destroyed already, and I join you in grieving their loss.”

  “So you lied about ‘rescuing’ your master. And the channel you described? The other river?”

  “It exists, only it is somewhat smaller than Ciano perhaps believed, and in a slightly different place. And there are rapids. Nothing the size of Leopardo could possibly negotiate them.”

  With that, he turned and strode briskly on and Gravois had to follow, hoping Don Hernan was as confident of escape as he seemed.

  USS Walker

  A pair of shell splashes straddled Walker’s fo’c’sle. The smoke was still helping, but only by blurring the enemy’s range finders, and they’d resumed shooting at each other when they only had the vaguest targets. Till now, however, it had been Leopardo’s pair of forward guns against Walker’s lone 4″-50 on the aft deckhouse. With the enemy now within a thousand yards and scoring hits, the time had come to turn on her and slug it out. “Right full rudder, make your course zero, three, zero, Mr. Bradford. Spin it!”

  “Aye, Captain!” Courtney cried in response, grinning through the blood running down his face.

  “All ahead flank, Keje. Let’s see what the old girl has left!” USS Walker groaned and rumbled as she accelerated, veering sharply out from behind her smoke and training every remaining weapon on Leopardo. That’s when they saw for the first time that she was already under attack by Bull-Bat fighters, swooping and strafing her mercilessly with their machine guns. None of the fighters had bombs, however, or if they’d brought them, they’d already used them in the city. Their machine guns could slaughter Leopardo’s people, but couldn’t much hurt the ship. Walker’s three 4″-50s that would bear, and two remaining rapid-fire 25mms certainly could. They all opened up at once, joined by three .50- and two .30-caliber machine guns. Even in local control, it was practically impossible for her well-oiled gun’s crews to miss at seven, six, then five hundred yards. Leopardo staggered under the onslaught of converging tracers, and blast after blast rattled her frame and sent debris flying from blossoms of flame. She got off only two shots in return before her forward gun mount was blasted apart, but they flayed Walker badly, smashing through the aft fireroom and forward engine room. The ship started to buck as the engine tore itself apart and the port propeller shaft vibrated wildly before slamming to a stop.

  Belching smoke and steam, Leopardo struggled to turn and bring more guns to bear, even as Walker’s speed fell off. Juan had taken Minnie’s place as bridge talker and reported casualties and flooding in the engine room, and confirmed the engine was wrecked.

  “Very well,” called Matt. “Can you still get Spanky on the torpedo mount?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Then tell him to fire at will.”

  * * *

  * * *

  The ’Cats seated on top of the starboard torpedo mount had begun tracking the target as soon as Walker turned, spinning the wheel that physically aimed the tubes. There’d be nothing fancy about this shot, just point the fish and turn them loose, so as soon as Spanky got the word, he ordered the ’Cats to fire. Nothing happened. “Stay on target!” he shouted. Unholstering his .45, he scrambled back behind the torpedo mount and used it as a hammer, whacking the emergency impulse charge detonators on the back of each tube as he passed it. Boom-thwooosh-Splash! Boom-thwoosh-Splash! Just as Spanky sent the fourth fish on its way, a shell smashed the mount and flipped it crashing into the aft funnel, tearing it away and toppling it across the shattered, steam-spewing engine room skylights. Spanky joined a cloud of clattering shell fragments that blew him over against the empty torpedo mount on the other side of the ship.

  Walker and Leopardo were dying fast under the mutual avalanche of fire they spat at each other, and the Bull-Bat pilots orbiting above (including Tikker, now) could only watch in sick frustration. The great battle for New Granada was sputtering to an end, as General Mayta was taken hurriedly from place to place to arrange the surrender of isolated clusters of his beaten army. There’d probably be holdouts in the city for days, but they couldn’t coordinate and no one but Blood Priests were left to lead them. And now that a tipping point had been reached, more and more Blood Priests were being found dead.

  Every enemy warship on the lake—except Leopardo—had been sunk, and its lonely oiler had surrendered to the first plane that flew over it. Those below might not know any of those things, but while it was clear Captain Reddy had been trying to evade Leopardo and save his damaged ship, Leopardo’s skipper clearly had only one purpose in mind. Tikker banked his plane to see Mahan racing to the aid of her sister, and even Fitzhugh Gray was on the lake now, rushing past the smoldering James Ellis—but neither could get there in time. Walker and Leopardo would kill each other before anyone could intervene.

  * * *

  * * *

  A blast of heavy machine-gun fire raked Walker’s bridge, bullets clattering all around Matt in a storm of shattered glass. He felt something like a punch in the side but there wasn’t any pain. Then again, he already felt so woozy. . . . Juan was shouting something in his ear, but it didn’t make any sense. Courtney was down, kneeling by the wheel, and Keje was trying to help him up. Juan physically grabbed Matt’s face and forced his head to the side so he could see Leopardo, less than four hundred yards away—just as a tall column of spray rocketed up alongside her, directly amidships. “I told you it was going to hit! I told you!” Juan practically screeched with glee. Matt heard that. He was glad too. Maybe now all this racket will end, he thought. Somehow, quiet had become important. He knew he was dying, just as Walker was. While he drained, she was flooding, and they’d end together. He wanted quiet for that. After all the hell she’d been through, Walker’s death should be dignified.

  In spite of everything, he maintained enough interest to watch what happened to Leopardo. Only one torpedo hit her, but especially after the punishment she’d already taken, one was quite enough. Flames roared to the sky as she settled in the middle, back broken, bow and stern both rising from the boiling water of the lake. Courtney was by him now, held up by Keje. “Good riddance, I say,” Courtney hissed through pain-clenched teeth. “I apologize for leaving my post, but we’re no longer underway, and I wanted to watch this with you.”

  Matt had known Walker was dead in the water. He could feel it. Feel the water rushing in. “That’s fine,” he said, smiling wanly. “Glad I saw it with you all.” Then, as Leopardo broke in half and plunged to the bottom of the lake, Matt slid out of his chair and fell to the splintered deck strakes. He couldn’t see, but he heard voices, especially cries of alarm wh
en somebody found the wound in his side. He felt himself handled roughly, urgently, then thought he was floating. The operating light rigged over the wardroom table glared bright in his eyes as ’Cats rushed around. He wanted to yell at them to get off the ship before they all went down, but he couldn’t seem to speak. Then he heard Tabby talking fast about Mahan, and rigging pumps, and thought he heard Spanky’s pained reply from somewhere nearby. He closed his eyes again.

  Gravois

  Bats and lizardbirds exploded into the evening sky as Gravois and Don Hernan finally crept up out of the jagged mouth of the cave. Gravois looked around, but all he could see was trees. There was no sign of New Granada, or even the great lake. There was a small pack lying on the ground, however, and Don Hernan immediately removed the bloody cloak of his new office and carefully folded it before donning the simple peasant’s garb he pulled from the pack. “You must do the same,” Don Hernan said. “We have a great distance to travel, and anyone we meet might betray us now, until we reach the Godly haven of Brazil.”

  “Brazil?” Gravois gasped, suddenly realizing why Don Hernan had lost so much weight. He’d been preparing for this! “I’ve never been in any wilderness on this world. I haven’t even stood on dry land for half a year! And how many thousands of kilometers is Brazil, across this dreadful land of monsters?” he demanded almost hysterically.

  “Don’t be so dramatic!” Don Hernan replied dismissively. “It’s only a few hundred of your ‘kilometers’ to the east coast, where we can take a boat the rest of the way.”

  “But even so . . .” Gravois quavered, terror like he’d never known rising within him as the dense, vicious forest seemed to close around him. He probably only had three or four cartridges left in his pistol—as if its tiny bullets could save him from the monsters here!

  Don Hernan handed him some filthy rags and a battered straw hat. “Never fear,” he told him gently. “God loves me. The land loves me. It can do me no harm. And heretic or not, you’re The One and I’ll try to protect you because I still need your help to join our countries. That remains my fondest dream.” He smiled encouragingly. “I give you at least one chance in five of surviving the trek, and if you do, you’ll be transformed! The land itself will cleanse you, my dear Gravois! What greater glory or challenging grace could you ever aspire to achieve?”

  A thunderous roar rumbled in the forest not so far away, and Gravois almost echoed it with a scream as he remembered. That madman Dennis Silva—I saw him in the temple—once threatened to rip my spine out and use it to beat me to death. As he stumbled after Don Hernan in a near catatonic state, he knew his backbone was already gone because all he could feel was jelly. Soon the blows would begin.

  CHAPTER 57

  ////// American Navy Clan Base

  Martinique

  September 2, 1945

  Bright sunlight pried Matt’s eyes open, and suddenly he was standing on Walker’s dark blue, rust-streaked deck. Disoriented, he gazed around and saw the rest of the ship was back in her old, prewar, light gray paint. She still looked old and hard-used, but there was no battle damage anywhere. That was all very clear, almost painfully perfect, but he was all alone and couldn’t tell where the ship rode at anchor. The distant city might’ve been Cavite, on the world he and this ship left behind, but could just as easily be Aryaal or El Corazon, even Nuevo Granada. For a whirlwind moment, he wondered if this was Cavite and everything he’d been through over the last few years was a dengue fever dream.

  “She didn’t sink, y’know. And you didn’t die.” The gruff voice jolted him with another kind of pain and he turned to see Chief Bosun Fitzhugh Gray regarding him steadily from under the visor of his battered chief’s hat. Matt managed a smile. “It’s been a while, Boats.” There’d been a time, shortly after Gray’s death at Grik City, that Matt dreamed about him a lot.

  The old Chief Bosun sucked on a cigarette, then flipped the butt over the rail. “You haven’t needed me for a while.”

  “That’s a laugh.”

  “No, it ain’t. Sure, you’ve goofed some. Like I never did? But you made it through, did what you set out to, an’ I’m damn proud of you.”

  “So many didn’t make it. You didn’t.”

  Gray shrugged. “That’s the breaks. You nearly didn’t either, a time or two. But think how many you saved from the Grik, the Doms, hell, even the League! And you saved your ship. That’s more important than you realize.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of what you built, the world you made. They’ll always need Walker to keep ’em together.” He shook his head as if mystified himself, while kicking ironically at some rust underfoot. “It’s the damnedest thing, but she’s gotten to be like the Statue o’ Liberty, or somethin’, to ’em. If the country you an’ Mr. Letts built survives, if the Alliance endures, Walker’ll still be here a hundred years from now.” He shrugged. “And you know? Even if you’d ever sunk her proper an’ they couldn’t raise her, they’d have snagged some junk up off her wreck, built a whole new ship around it, and it would still be Walker.”

  Matt pondered that, and supposed Gray was probably right. “So . . . I guess I finally have to ask you the Big One. What the hell has it all been about?”

  Gray laughed, and shook out another cigarette. “The only thing anything’s about, son. Life.”

  Matt was confused and surprised. Chief Bosun Gray had never called him “son” before. “But you’re dead.”

  “So? I died livin’, didn’t I?” He stomped the deck. “And everybody who came here on this old tub was dead before they got here. No way we would’ve got away from the Japs, and comin’ here—however it happened—gave us all a second chance.”

  Matt frowned. “A second chance to die?”

  Gray shrugged and lit his smoke with a Zippo. “Maybe. Call it a chance to die for somethin’, instead of just gettin’ heroically but uselessly rubbed out and forgotten like the rest of the Asiatic Fleet. And everybody you lost since then died for the best reason there is: protecting life. Whether that was ’Cats, Impies, Repubs, or Nussies . . . none o’ that even matters. They, you, squared off against the killers and stopped ’em.”

  “We killed them,” Matt pointed out. “Doesn’t that make us killers too?”

  “No.” Gray grinned. “Just . . . killer killers.” He seemed to grow impatient. “What the hell else were you s’posed to do, read ’em love poems? It really is all black-and-white, in the end. You gotta kill the killers. Don’t go pokin’ at ’em, but when they come for you, they don’t get to live anymore, see? That gets bloody, an’ it’s scary—as you know—but hopefully, if you kill enough of ’em, the rest’ll stop and so can you. It’s that simple.”

  Matt looked at the distant city, still not sure where he was supposed to be. “What’s it like to stop?” he asked wistfully. “Just enjoy life for a while with my wife and son?”

  Gray snorted. “Hell if I know. I wrecked my chance at that between the wars back home, but maybe you’ll find out for both of us.” He smiled fondly around at the old destroyer. “For all of us.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “Matthew?” came another voice, definitely not Gray’s, and real sunlight came into Matt’s eyes. He smiled up at Sandra, leaning low over him, her pretty face washed with care.

  “Sorry. Still dopey, I guess. Too much seep. I must’ve dozed off.” He was semi-reclined on a chair with a footrest on the quarterdeck of USS Fitzhugh Gray as the CL rode at anchor in the captured harbor of Martinique. The carriers were at sea and Savoie was too crowded with workers just trying to save her, so Gray was packed with a lot of the ambulatory wounded off the battleship, or brought back from El Lago de Vida. There were so many injured clogging the CL amidships, in fact, that some wag had taken to calling it “dead lead row.” For once, Matt doubted it was Silva, who hadn’t said much at all since the battle in the temple, and Matt was worried about h
im. Pam (and Petey) were with him all the time but he seemed very low, even stiff to Lawrence and Chack. The only time he spoke to Matt was to apologize for letting Gravois and Don Hernan get away.

  “Not your fault,” Matt had told him.

  “Sure feels like it,” was all he’d said.

  “I was just about to wake him myself,” Courtney Bradford now proclaimed. “The man’s snoring sounds like an artillery barrage, sufficient to stir stressful memories!”

  Matt laughed. Ever since their last ordeal, Courtney and Spanky, both wounded as well, had never been out of earshot. The same was true for Keje and Juan, who’d miraculously survived without a scratch. Few others had been so lucky, and Matt had been forced to add the name of Gilbert Yeager, killed in the forward engine room, to Campeti’s, Palmer’s, Fairchild’s, Neely’s, Lanier’s, Jeek’s, Rosen’s . . . and those were just the “originals,” or those with very long service. Thirty-eight more ’Cats and Impies had died in Walker as well.

  Still, most of the news they were getting was good. The war in Grik Africa was decisively over and recovery operations in the wake of the terrible flood were progressing well. The Celestial Mother was now hailed as the “Saver of Life” along with her other titles. Bekiaa-Sab-At was recovering well from losing her arm and she and Rolak reported continued good relations and cooperation with Halik and Jash. Perhaps the most exciting news that day was that RRPS Servius had been found in the shattered forest just north of Lake Nalak, having somehow survived inundation while being swept along almost a hundred miles. Searchers had frankly been looking for debris, maybe some bodies, but an off-course Nancy discovered the whole ship, partially buried in broken trees. Word that General Pete Alden was alive had slightly dulled the ache everyone felt over all their other losses.