Firestorm : Destroyermen (9781101544556)

by Anderson, Taylor

  Taken aback by this unexpected chastisement, Alan felt even more self-conscious. The sun did terrible things to his fair skin. “Why, I guess she’d be sore. . . .” He shook his head. “Look, all I wanted to do is ask the lizard a few questions.” He looked at Hij Geerki, standing attentively behind Rolak ’s stool. The old Grik cocked his head. He came from a class of Hij required to do sums and inventories, and Letts intended to learn as much as he could from the creature about Grik logistics—among other things. Geerki understood written English and was beginning to pick up spoken words. He carried a writing tablet and a piece of chalk to answer questions.

  “Do step forward, Hij Geerki,” Rolak commanded. “You will answer this man’s questions to the best of your ability.”

  “Aye, Lord,” Geerki replied. He could say that much. He stepped closer to Keje’s ornate table, careful not to touch it. This was the first time Letts had gotten a really good look at Rolak’s “pet.” Its feathery crest was long and graying and the once dun-colored, striated “pelt” of downy fur was shot with white, but still . . . Though it was ravaged by age, most of its teeth broken, lost, or worn to nubs, its claws clipped and rounded, it was still a fearsome sight. Even if its skin hung loose over atrophied muscle, it was bigger than Lawrence, and while Rebecca’s friend had become “one of the guys,” and wasn’t really a Grik at all, this thing still had a profound aura of savage . . . otherness . . . about it. Alan had been in the fighting for Baalkpan—briefly—and the only live Grik he’d ever seen this close had been trying to kill him.

  “Well, ah, listen, Geerki. I’d like to know more about those Grik horns—how they work, what the different sounds mean, things like that.” He looked around. “Do you think he understands me?”

  “Ol’ Geeky understands,” Pete confirmed. “And evidently, he’ll even tell you the truth, if he knows it. Sometimes he doesn’t, and he’s been known to make up stuff he thought Rolak wanted to hear, but that’s over now . . . ain’t it, Geeky?”

  “O’er,” Geerki agreed solemnly. Quickly he wrote on the tablet: “No more make up. Not know, say so. New masters not like old. Want honest only. Better honest not know than lie, make masters glad.”

  “Huh.” Alan looked at Rolak. “You trust him?”

  Rolak blinked affirmative. “I suppose I do,” he said. “As best we can tell, he either tells us the truth or—now—tells us he doesn’t know. He’s given us a good picture of Grik population and industrial centers, as well as warrior concentrations—as they were when last he was on Saa-lon.”

  “Why?” Alan wondered aloud.

  Pete shrugged. “He’s figured out we’re not ‘prey’; can’t be, since we kicked hell out of the warriors he ‘belonged to.’ That makes us ‘hunters’ like any other that might’ve done the same thing. Turns out the devils fight one another all the time when there’s not somebody like us to pick on. Anyway, the ‘civvies,’ like him, belong to whoever wins, and at Rangoon, that was us.” He shrugged again. “Weird.”

  “And perhaps useful . . . or problematic,” Keje said.

  “In any event, if he knows the answer to what you ask about the horns, he will tell you,” Rolak assured him.

  Hij Geerki knew quite a lot about Grik horns, as it turned out. Like many other things, he’d been responsible for their procurement. Through a series of questions, alternately written and spoken, Geerki described how they were made, used, and what the three tones they were capable of making meant. It had long been a mystery how the sounds were made. Grik were even less suited to blowing horns than Lemurians were; yet as the Allied armies had discovered, sound commands on the battlefield were essential. The allies had resorted to drums and simple whistles even ’Cats could blow. Various tattoos or sequences of whistle blasts meant different things. The same was true for the Grik, but they’d contrived instruments blown by a bellowslike device to create the bloodcurdling, rumbling roars they used. The horn itself had two holes in it, and a different sound resulted from the simple expedient of depressing the bellows with a wooden plug stuck in either or none of the holes. One sound was a warning. Another was blown to assemble all warriors within earshot. The last was a signal to attack.

  “I’ll be damned,” Pete confessed. “Hell, we’ve captured some of the gizmos. Didn’t know what they were.”

  “Are any aboard here?” Alan asked.

  “I don’t know. Could be. I’ll find out. If we kept any, they might be back on Andaman.”

  “We’re still close enough for a plane to bring one out, as long as it refuels for the return,” Keje suggested. He looked at Alan. “Why?”

  “Well, think about it. I’m no infantryman, but just imagine the confusion we could cause if we had some of those horns to toot on at the right time.”

  “Wow,” Pete said. “That’s a swell idea.” He paused. “And one that doesn’t leave this compartment,” he warned. “We might make use of it at some point, but it’ll take more than a couple of horns to pull it off. It’ll probably only work once on a large scale, and that’s the only way it makes sense to use it.” He looked at Letts and scratched his beard. “You know, we need to keep this in our back pocket, but maybe start up a ‘dirty tricks division’—start getting some guys to work making more ‘Grik horns,’ and cooking up other angles on stuff the Grik do that we can use against them.” He grinned. “This is the sort of stunt you plan a battle around, and I want more of ’em to choose from!”

  “Ha!” barked Rolak. “A ‘dirty tricks division’! That is just what we need to put some ‘fun’ in this dreadful war, and maybe it will help us win it!” He looked around. “Obviously, Mr. Letts should be in charge. . . .”

  “As if I didn’t have enough stuff to do already,” Alan interrupted, but he was grinning too.

  “Indeed,” Rolak agreed. “I suspect you and Hij Geerki will be spending a great deal of time together!”

  CHAPTER 7

  Adar’s Great Hall Baalkpan December 25, 1943

  Adar, High Chief and Sky Priest of Baalkpan and Chairman of the Grand Alliance (COTGA), sat stiffly on a heap of cushions in the “War Room” section of the Great Hall. Ironically, it was one of the few places he could find “peace” anymore, since only those invited, or had a “need to know” what was discussed inside, were ever allowed. He took refuge there more and more often during the days when office seekers, deputations from other Allied powers, and representatives of the Home and Allied Councils sought him out to berate or cajole him concerning what he saw as trivial matters. Some were trivial and others weren’t, but Adar wasn’t a High Chief by temperament, at least in the jovial fashion of his predecessor, the Great Nakja-Mur. Once a simple Sky Priest, a celestial observer who’d charted Salissa Home’s nautical wanderings by plotting her position on the Sacred Scrolls of the prophet Siska-Ta, he’d become a “War Leader”; a position, even a concept, unimaginable to most Lemurians just a few years before. He hated it.

  He longed to be just a simple warrior; to personally fight the hated Grik, but he had neither the training for, nor the “luxury” of engaging in such a personal craving. Perhaps because he was a Sky Priest, able to grasp the evidently progressively more flawed, but still pertinent “big picture” of life, he was possibly uniquely qualified to lead the Grand Alliance through the ever-expanding panorama of an increasingly global war. Right now, he wasn’t leading anything, even the conversation flowing around him. He merely sat listening intently, his silver eyes fastening on each speaker in turn.

  “Some of Ben’s toys are washouts, if you’ll pardon the term,” said Walker’s former comm officer, and Adar’s acting chief of staff, Steve Riggs. He was also “Minister of Communications and Electrical Contrivances.” “But we might save some of the radios. There were even a few spare sets aboard Santa Catalina. Might help Pete with his mashed-up comm. They’re short-range sets, of course, but still plenty useful, tactically. We can have the operators speak ’Cat in case the Japs still have, or have developed, a new means of listening in.�
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  “Good idea,” said Rolando “Ronson” Rodriguez, the former EM who’d taken over most of Steve’s day-to-day responsibilities, particularly where it came to electrical power and comm development. “I’ll pry what I can from Colonel Mallory. We’ll be able to build similar sets soon, now that we’re blowing glass and we’ve got a vacuum chamber to assemble tubes in.” He shrugged. “It’s just a little thing now, ‘proof of concept,’ but it works, and we’ve made some rectifier tubes already.” He grinned. “They’re pretty big and look like a squash, but at the rate we’re going, we’d have voice comm with Walker in a month—if she were closer.”

  “How will we get the sets to General Alden?” Karen Theimer-Letts, Acting Minister of Medicine, asked. She’d quickly fastened onto the radios as something else they could send to First Fleet—anything to assist the mission her husband Alan was on.

  “We can send one of the ‘Buzzards,’ ” said the dark-haired Commander Perry Brister. He’d been Mahan’s engineering officer and was now Minister of Defensive and Industrial Works.

  “Have to ask Ben,” Riggs said. “We’ve got only four of the things, and we’re working their asses off. One’s a dedicated trainer.”

  “We should have built more,” Karen murmured.

  “Ben argued, and I agree, that they’re underpowered,” said Riggs. He held out his hands. “We need bigger engines—or bigger planes to handle four of the ones we have. We’re working on both. We’ve taken the basic ‘Nancy’ design about as far as it can go. We might build more ‘Buzzards’ as light bombers—Ben really wants bombers!—but what we really need is a bigger, more powerful plane to carry more bombs, freight, or passengers.” He looked at Sister Audry, seated next to Adar. “Speaking of passengers . . .”

  “I told you all I am able,” the nun said tartly. “I gave my word. I personally owe the man a great deal, as do we all, and all I’m currently at liberty to say is that he got on the plane as ordered, but ‘left’ somewhere between Maa-ni-la and here. We made four stops, for fuel and sleep. Search where you like.”

  Adar grumbled a chuckle, unable to restrain himself. He enjoyed the idea that the young and apparently attractive—by human standards—but almost annoyingly principled holy woman, could feel so obligated to such a depraved creature.

  “Those Air Corps guys saw what happened,” Riggs said darkly. “I’ll get it out of them.”

  “I bet Bernie gets it first,” said Ronson. “They went down to the field to report to Ben Mallory and Mr. Sandison’s there.” He shook his head. “Is he ever gonna be hot!”

  Karen looked almost accusingly at the nun. “What will you tell Nurse Cross? I don’t want to be the one. Her little heart will break!”

  “I’ll speak to her, and Lieutenant Cross will understand,” Audry said. A strange expression crossed her face. “I don’t expect any of you to believe it, knowing the man, and I’m sure he would disagree, but somehow . . . I’m convinced God has a purpose for Dennis Silva.” She was confronted by astonished stares. “I didn’t expect you to understand. He’s a beast, true, but God created the beasts as well. In this case, I have come to suspect His influence over Mr. Silva’s behavior, since by pure coincidence, through no possible connection to the man’s senseless . . . notions, he always seems to be where he’s needed most.” She shrugged, at a loss. “Perhaps you would have to see it,” she ventured. “I grant he is profane, sacrilegious in the extreme, and routinely engages in every deadly sin. He may have even invented more, yet . . .” She shrugged again. “If something has prompted him to disobey your orders, I suspect he has a reason, vague though it may be, and I cannot discount the possibility he is unconsciously moved by a higher power.” She actually blushed. “I know I must sound mad . . . Silva, of all people . . .” She touched the cross at her breast.

  “O . . . kay,” Riggs said, eyes still wide. “Well, the sister’s right—we do owe him.” He shook his head. “We’ll write it off that he’s shell-shocked—moonstruck—whatever. ‘Temporarily and unwittingly employed as God’s attack dog’ might go to his head. No charges I guess, so long as he turns up soon.”

  “He’ll be trying to join Maaka-Kakja and go east,” Ronson predicted, “but she’s already sailed. “No way he could’ve gotten back to Maa-ni-la from wherever he wound up before she left. He’ll show in a few days.”

  “About that,” Adar interrupted. “I dislike that Saan-Kakja’s most formidable battle group will be leaving the vicinity of the Fil-pin Lands with these unknown Jaaps on the loose. We have already dispatched four of the precious five-point-five-inch guns to go to Okaa-daa’s Mizuki Maa-ru, but do you think he will find them?”

  “He’s got the best chance,” Riggs said, “and looking like just another Jap freighter that ‘came across,’ he might get close enough to take or sink them. Anything we’ve got never would, except maybe Walker, and she’s already pulled her hook for the American West Coast!” He paused. “Man, this war just gets bigger all the time!”

  “Can we trust Okaa-daa?” Adar asked pointedly.

  “I think so. Saan-Kakja, Minister Tucker, and Shinya do too. After what happened to his ‘shogunate,’ they all believe he’s extremely sincere. As for the Fil-pin Lands, I think they’re safe. Tarakan might be another matter. The same ship carrying Okada’s guns will stop there with more troops, and another five and a half to add to the one already there. If these rogue Japs try the place, their ’can will take a beating, and even if they knock out the long-range guns, there are enough troops and big, short-range guns to make a landing impossible.”

  Adar sighed and stood. “Very well, my friends. I must return to my peculiar duties, and you all have much to do. There is so much going on; Task Force Garrett has ground ashore and First Fleet will attack Saa-lon within days. Our new Imperial ‘allies’ will attempt to retake their ‘New Ireland.’ Even now, Captain Reddy steams into the void toward I know not what. . . .” He blinked anxiety. “It seems, once again, our fates are beyond our control, and all is in motion toward multiple, inevitable crises to come over the next week or so that will again determine whether we are winning, losing, or still just holding on. The tension fairly tears my insides.”

  “That about sums it up, Mr. Chairman,” Riggs said. “It’s a war.” He looked at Karen. “I’ll try to get those radios out to Pete before the balloon goes up.”

  ArmyNavy Air Corps Training Center Kaufman Field Baalkpan

  Colonel Benjamin Mallory was stripped to the waist and sweating in the steamy, humid air beneath the glaring sun. A squall had pounded the airstrip in the broad clearing northeast of the city that bordered the Saanga River. All the tarps they’d rigged to shade the laborers and shield the sensitive machines had gulped as much water as they could before collapsing. A few “hangars” were already up, protecting several of Ben’s precious machines, already partially assembled, but they needed more every day. There were many “hangars” down at the broad river mouth, more like boathouses really, where the trainers and PB-1Bs of PatWing 1 were guarded from the weather and hoisted from the water.

  Ben was exhausted, like everyone else, but the longer they waited to open what remained of his fifty-six roughly forty-by-ten-by-six-foot “Christmas boxes,” the more likely were the contents to suffer irreparable harm. Each mighty crate, arranged along a crushed and packed limestone “taxiway” near a massive warehouse structure weighed about eight thousand pounds, and contained either the fuselage or wing assembly of a Curtiss P-40E fighter. Many crates had been damaged by time, the elements, or flooding down in the hold of the Santa Catalina. The salvage effort to rescue the ship and her priceless cargo from its swampy grave near distant Tjilatjap (Chill-Chaap) had been monumental, and cost more than a few lives. Ben figured he owed it to the dead to put as many of the planes in service as he possibly could, and besides, he wanted them.

  Six were definite write-offs. That was how many fuselage and wing boxes—twelve total—were almost entirely submerged in the flooded ship. Even now, doze
ns of ’Cats, supervised by the former torpedo officer and Minister of Ordnance Bernie Sandison, were cannibalizing the corroded carcasses of anything potentially useful as spares for other planes, or parts for other projects. The aluminum was badly oxidized after its long immersion and sudden exposure to the sultry, salty air. It was being sent to the smelter where the salvaged remains of the dead PBY had already gone, to be turned into ingots more precious than gold.

  That left twenty-two planes that might be made to fly. Ben grimly accepted that the realistic number might be closer to eighteen or twenty, but that was still a heady, and quite reasonable figure. Santa Catalina had been transporting the planes to Java, far too late as it turned out, but for probably the first time in the annals of military history, the shipment included everything needed to immediately pitch the planes into action, except fuel. There were spare engines, tires, radiators, hoses, propeller blades, instruments . . . everything. There were crated .50-caliber Brown-ings, drums of Prestone and hydraulic fluid, cans of grease, bundles of priceless, specialized tools, and despite the manifest, closer to three million rounds of ammunition. The men who’d been on the ship, the crew, pilots, and ground crews that went with the planes, had evidently scrounged more ammo at the last minute. Sadly, when they found Santa Catalina a year after her grounding, there were no men aboard. There was evidence they’d left—well armed—and all hope for them wasn’t lost, but the wildly dangerous, primordial jungle of South “Jaava” was full of appalling and often utterly unexpected terrors.

  Once the prizes were safely in Baalkpan, getting the heavy crates here from the dry dock where Santa Catalina lay had been almost anticlimactic. First, they were hoisted out and set on barges that brought them within a mile of the airstrip Adar and Brister had been preparing since the planes were discovered. The most nerve-racking job had been getting them ashore and brought near the warehouse where they could be opened and the planes assembled. Ben was still at a loss to describe the sight of using balky teams of “brontasarries” to drag crates containing modern, high- performance aircraft, on rollers, to their present location. Now, all that remained for Ben and his highly motivated but technically unprepared Air Corps cadets, consisting of the 4th and 7th Bomb Squadrons—reassigned to PatWing 1—and the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Pursuit, detached from the 2nd Air Wing for “extra training,” was to put the things together.