Tikker blinked rapidly with sadness and irritation; his lips were set in a grim frown. Target fixation. Ben had warned them, and they trained hard to avoid it. They’d even lost a couple of pilots and ships in training, and he’d known it was going to be a problem. He blinked again, and surveyed the field below. Their target had evaporated. The Grik gathered there had either fled or died, and there was no point in wasting the little bombs.
“Cisco,” he said, “send to ‘A’ flight: ‘Well done, but let that be a lesson to us all. Never forget it.’ ” He sighed. “‘This squadron’s going home, unless we receive further orders from Commodore Ellis. “B” flight will withhold ordnance for targets of opportunity. That is all.’ ”
The squadron re-formed and together made a low-level pass over the field. Unheard over the engines, the Marines cheered them; Tikker saw their gestures and the waving banners. Without orders, every ship in the 1st Naval Bomb Squadron waggled its wings at the 1st Marines. The squadron had done well in its first action, no doubt about it. The outcome of the fight below had been a foregone conclusion, but the squadron had saved a lot of lives. A lot of highly professional and experienced lives. It was a heady moment. Tikker knew their success would have been proclaimed even more exuberantly in the air and on the ground if not for the already dwindling black column of smoke.
The squadron climbed to a thousand feet. That was high enough to see the jungle panorama below and avoid the eruptions of lizard birds and other flying creatures that flushed, panicked, into the sky at their passing. Larger flying things, like nothing he’d ever seen, with half the wingspan of his plane, didn’t seem too alarmed and even tried to climb and pace them. Whether they were driven by hunger or curiosity was moot because the Nancys easily outpaced them. The port city, “Raan-goon,” still burned, and they flew east, over Donaghey, to skirt the smoke and updrafts.
There were wounded on the docks, waiting to be carried out to the ships. There weren’t a lot of wounded, compared to the depressing throngs he’d seen after other battles, and he supposed they were getting better at this business of war. The battle wasn’t over, though, even if it had essentially degenerated into a general chase; it might last many hours more. Whatever it had become, there would be more wounded before it was done. More dead. He hoped this exercise would be worth the price.
CHAPTER 12
Eastern Sea
W alker had averaged eight knots during the last week, a respectable speed given the generally light airs the other ships relied on. Sometimes she sped up, steaming a wide circle around her plodding consorts. Occasionally, she hove to and let the Nancy down into the sea and Reynolds flew. Matt forbade him to fly out of sight, but one of the flights did warn them of a basking mountain fish, several miles farther out than they would have detected it with lookouts. This allowed them to give it a wide berth. Fred Reynolds saw nothing else, no islands or ships at all. If they’d been in the Carolines before, they must have left them behind. Otherwise, the sea was calm, the weather pleasant, and if not for the antiquated sailing steamers they kept company with and the Lemurian heavy crew, it would have been easy for the men aboard USS Walker to imagine that they’d somehow returned to the world they’d left behind.
Beginning the third week out of the nameless atoll where the ships refitted after the fight, the sky grew dark and the sea began to dance. A cool wind pushed rolling swells out of the south, and Walker started rolling sickeningly, as was her custom. A pod, or herd, of gri-kakka, a form of plesiosaur they’d grown uncomfortably accustomed to, crossed their path and blew among the swells. The creatures veered away and plunged for the depths as the ship’s sonar lashed at them. They used the sonar to frighten mountain fish-or “leviathans,” as the Imperials called them-away, and it seemed to work extremely well. Walker ’s crew was glad to learn it worked on gri-kakka too. They’d taken some damage once by just striking a young one.
That night Walker ran under running lights and the other ships hoisted lanterns. The wind and sea continued to build, veering out of the southwest. The quartering swells made Walker ’s crew, particularly the Lemurians, even more miserable as the roll took on a swooping, corkscrewing motion. Even the ’Cats who’d been on the sea all their lives had a hard time with it. Except for the ones who’d made their living on the fishing feluccas, none had ever noticed any except the most severe storms. Riding heavy seas on a Lemurian Home was like doing so on an aircraft carrier. Walker ’s relatively small and slender round-bottom hull made for a far more boisterous ride. With the dawn came the realization that they were unquestionably in a typhoon, or possibly a Strakka-something even worse that this world’s different climate managed to conjure. They’d never experienced a deepwater Strakka before.
Ever eastward they struggled, in the face of the mounting sea. Waves crashed across Walker ’s narrow bow, inundating the forward four-inch-fifty and pounding against the superstructure beneath the bridge. During her refit, they’d replaced Walker ’s rectangular pilothouse windows with glass salvaged from Amagi, but there hadn’t been much to spare. To protect the new glass, as well as the people behind it, plate steel shutters had been cut and installed that could be lowered into place over the windows. The shutters retained only small slits to see through, and all but eliminated visibility, but they had the compass, and soaked lookouts stood watch on the bridgewings. Chack stood watch-on-watch high above in the crow’s nest as well. He had the longest experience aboard the old destroyer of any Lemurian, and had probably developed the strongest stomach of any of his farsighted peers. Still, the wildly erratic and exaggerated motion of the crow’s nest would have made the post hell for anyone. As the storm built, he was the very last to report visual contact with the lanterns of the other ships.
Even then, they maintained wireless contact with Achilles, but her signal grew weaker with every passing hour. The growing distance between the ships wasn’t to blame. The problem was that they hadn’t been allowed time to install and regulate one of the virtually “Allied standard” 120-volt, 25-kilowatt generators in Achilles ’ engine room when they left Baalkpan. She still relied on one of the portable six-volt winddriven generators used by Allied sailing ships. The wind had grown much too violent to continue operating it, though, and the batteries were beginning to fade. Icarus and Ulysses had only lanterns, flags, guns, and rockets to communicate with, and by late afternoon even Achilles couldn’t see them anymore over the mounting crests of the tortured sea.
“Jeez, this is awful!” protested Frankie Steele through clenched teeth, struggling with the large polished wheel. Water beaded in his beard. Everyone on the bridge had been saturated by windblown rain and spray. “I remember steering Mahan through that big Java Sea Strakka on one engine, but I don’t think it was this bad.”
“If you’ll remember,” said Matt, “ Walker only had one engine at the time as well, and I believe you’re right. The water’s a lot deeper and the swells are more organized, but the troughs are deeper too.” He braced himself against his chair, bolted securely to the bulkhead, when the bow shouldered through another high peak and then tilted downward at an alarming angle. With a rushing crash, it pierced the next enormous wave and the sea boomed against the pilothouse. Through the slits in the shutters all Matt could see was a swirling white vortex, and water gushed into the pilothouse over the bridgewing rails, nearly sweeping the lookouts aft and down onto the weather deck. Somehow, they managed to hold on, and climb hand over hand back to their posts as the rush of seawater drained through the bridge strakes. Slowly, reluctantly, the bow came up again and the ship heaved sharply over to port.
Kutas, clinging to the support pole near the chart table, watched the clinometer pass twenty degrees. “A lot deeper,” he muttered nervously. “Skipper, the wind’s come around out of the northwest, and these waves are getting harder to crawl up at an angle. I recommend we change course to one, two, zero. We might take them harder over the bow, but maybe they won’t tump us over!”
Matt hesitated. If
they turned away, they might get separated even farther from their consorts. But the Imperial ships couldn’t steam forever in these seas. Sooner or later, they’d have to run with the wind. “Very well. Mr. Steele, make your course one, two, zero. Mr. Kutas, please have Mr. Riggs inform Achilles of our course change. According to their charts, there shouldn’t be anything out there we need to be concerned about running into.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper,” Steele replied, “making my course one, two, zero.”
The Bosun staggered up the stairs aft, and gasping, joined Kutas at the pole.
“What are you doing running around in the rain, Boats?” Matt quipped.
“Oh, just checking on things.”
“How’s she holding up?” Matt asked.
“Swell,” Gray replied breathlessly. He’d pulled the decorative strap on the front of his sopping, battered hat down under his chin to keep from losing it. He didn’t add “so far.” That might jinx them. On the other hand, maybe just thinking it was bad enough.
“Skipper!” cried Reynolds, who as usual joined the duty roster as talker when he wasn’t flying or tending the plane in some way. Right now, the Nancy had been disassembled and secured as well as possible.
“What is it?” Matt demanded.
“Lookout, ah, Chack, says there’s a whopper coming in! It just keeps getting bigger! He sounds… scared!”
Chack scared? Oh, hell. “Mr. Steele?”
“Almost there,” Frankie replied, straining against the wheel.
Matt joined the starboard lookout on the bridgewing. At first he couldn’t see anything through the darkness and the blinding spray. Then he heard it. Even over the screeching wind that moaned hideously through the foremast stays and the wireless aerial, over the blower and the groaning hull and thrashing sea, he heard a sound like mounting thunder. What he could see of the horizon beyond the gray-green foam had become as black as night. He looked up. And up. “Oh, Lord,” he said. Then he spun. “Sound the collision alarm!”
In spite of the situation, Tabby was actually pleased with herself. This was the worst storm she’d endured yet on Walker, but for the first time, she hadn’t been transformed into a heaving, retching, practically lifeless wreck. Must be The ’sponsibility, she decided. She’d never seen Spanky look even mildly ill when the sea kicked up. He’d been through the aft fireroom just a few moments before, moving carefully along the rail with the motion of the ship. The hull seemed tight, and though brackish water gushed back and forth in the bilge, the ship didn’t seem to be taking much on as she worked. At least the hull repairs had been properly handled-of course, they’d had more time on them. The boilers had been a hurry-up affair. She didn’t mind. She’d finished the work on number three, and it was roaring away contentedly despite the turmoil outside. She was satisfied.
She glanced around and wrinkled her nose. Just because she wasn’t sick didn’t mean there wasn’t a powerful lot of puking going on. She’d been the first Lemurian fireman and had suffered her baptism alone, except for the somewhat disinterested solicitations of the “other” Mice. Now the whole fireroom was full of her people-none of whom had ever endured anything like this. She felt sorry for them, spewing wretchedly on the deck plates, trying to reach the one they’d left open to the bilge as a “puke hole,” but she felt slightly superior as well. She was superior. She was a chief, wasn’t she? The others would come along, just as she had, and at least most still seemed able to function.
Suddenly an alarm blared in the compartment that she’d only heard a couple of times in drills. Her spine stiffened and her eyes went wide.
“Everyone! Grab hold of something!” she screamed. “Get away from the boilers and hold on!” She embraced a feed line and clenched her teeth. Something struck the ship like the hand of God. One instant, Walker seemed to be climbing a swell like so many others, and the next, the old destroyer was practically on her beam-ends. Deck plates were uprooted and went sliding or tumbling to port, and the air was filled with loosened condensation, followed by a flood of bilgewater
… and screams. Tabby’s feet fell out from under her, and she held on to the heavy pipe for dear life as others in her division did the same, or fell screeching amid the clattering tools and other debris. A few must have fallen against the boilers themselves-suddenly the air smelled of burnt hair and flesh. She watched as one of her water tenders, motionless against the port-side hull, was impaled by a plummeting deck plate that struck her with its sharp, pointed corner. The water tender never made a sound. A thundering vibration added to the din, and whether it was water coursing over the ship or the starboard screw running away, she couldn’t tell.
Another sound began that she’d never heard before. It started as a whooshing, drumming hiss, and quickly grew to a pounding rumble, and she knew- knew -that water was pouring down at least one stack into the smoke-box uptake! For what might have been only moments but seemed like forever, the ship just hung like that, heaved over, as if trying to decide whether to right herself and struggle on, or roll all the way over and go to sleep at last.
“No!” Tabby screamed. “You NOT give up! You NOT!” Over and over she shouted, “You NOT! You NOT!” until she no longer knew if she was screaming at the ship, herself, or her weakening arms. Slowly, slowly, the angle grew less extreme. “Pleeeese, ship!” she begged, almost sobbing. “You got too much to do! You got too many who love you!” Almost as if in response to her plea, Walker practically lurched upright and her screws bit again. There were more screams when firemen fell into the jumble of iron that slid deckward with them. Then came a terrible roar, and Tabby remembered the water in the uptake. Later, she could never exactly describe the sound she heard when warm seawater coursed down into the number three boiler. Maybe her ears were already shot from all the noise, and her own high-pitched wail. The best she could remember was a “crackling, thundering BONG!” before the aft fireroom filled with scalding steam.
CHAPTER 13
North of Tjilatjap (Chill-chaap)
T he expedition’s first task had been to clear off just enough of Santa Catalina to construct a camp for those who’d be remaining, and then hoist their tools and equipment aboard. The heavy work was accomplished with the old ship’s own cargo booms and plenty of hard labor by men and dozens of ’Cats, heaving on lines with a high-ratio block-and-tackle. Once there was nothing left on the barges that some monster might eat, they were sent back downriver for more supplies, equipment, and personnel. The ship was an ungodly mess. Her decks were tangled with roots and vines, and some had even gained purchase between the very planks. There were nasty, biting insects, and feces of every imaginable shape, smell, and consistency was smeared all over everything. A large proportion was lizard-bird droppings, but a lot-perhaps most-was from something else, bigger, that dumped turds the size of ostrich eggs. Either whatever left those things rolling around pooped more than anything had a right to or there were a bunch of them.
That first night they camped with a heavy guard. They’d closed every hatch leading to the interior of the ship they could find, so hopefully all they had to worry about was creatures from the water or shore. They couldn’t build an open fire, of course, but Lemurian tinsmiths had come a long way with directional gri-kakka oil lamps, inspired by the shape of Navy battle lanterns. Plenty of these were rigged facing outward. They’d brought a gas-powered generator, based on one of the four-cylinder airplane engines, and intended to eventually power some of Santa Catalina ’s lights if they weren’t too corroded.
Plenty of spooky, ill-defined things crept around in the dark that night, and nobody really got any sleep. Nothing attacked them, though, except bugs, some of which had a painful sting. Unlike the giant “gekkogator” (Isak, of all people, coined the name, in honor of the Philippine geckos he remembered), they were familiar with most of the insects. As for the shadowy creatures that lurked and screeched indignantly just beyond the lights, Chapelle was still inclined to leave things alone as long as things left them alone.
The benign visitations probably wouldn’t last. Their presence couldn’t be welcome, and once they started clearing the ship properly, they were bound to aggravate the various denizens that had claimed it as their home.
With the dawn, the clearing began in earnest. Work parties, flanked by armed Marines, hacked away the vines that seemed to clutch the ship to the shore. One Marine blew a splintered gash in the wooden deck with a musket ball when he saw the first snake any of them, ’Cat or human, had ever seen on this world. In his initial panic, he missed the snake, but then managed to poke it with his bayonet and pitch the writhing thing over the side. It was colored kind of like a coral snake, with purple, orange, and lime green instead of yellow, red, white, and black. Several spectators gathered and watched it try to swim to shore. When it was almost there, something slick-skinned, like a catfish, but blotchycolored with bulging eyes, rose and gulped it down.
Other parties started clearing the ship’s decks, and Major Mallory was having kittens to get a look inside the large crates arranged there. All the containers were about six feet wide by ten feet tall, but some were thirty-five feet long, and others forty. They were darkened with mold, and roots had invaded a few seams, but even after all this time they were largely intact. Even the one Gilbert said he and Commodore Ellis had cracked open to identify the contents didn’t appear to have deteriorated appreciably. Having seen crates just like these at Pearl Harbor before he’d shipped for Java, and then again aboard the old Langley, Ben knew exactly what was in each one. If it was possible, his excitement only grew. He was like a kid staring at the presents under the tree, waiting for his parents to wake up on Christmas Day.
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