The Heirs of Babylon - Glen Cook

by harry

  Von Lappus led Kurt to the ship’s laundry, puzzling him until he saw the shell holes in the outside bulkhead, just above the deck, facing the approaching destroyer. They lay on their bellies and watched the Australian rush closer.

  “What if we drift inshore while we’re waiting?”

  “A chance we have to take. We’re gambling big.” Von Lappus smiled thinly. “We can always walk home. Might do me good, help me lose a little weight.” Shortly, one of the destroyer’s guns belched fire. The shell fell two hundred meters short, woke Kurt.

  “Stay awake, boy,” von Lappus growled.

  Kurt rubbed his eyes. “I’m so tired I don’t really care any more,” he mumbled. “I want to hurt them because they’re keeping me awake. But I never wanted to hurt anybody.” Von Lappus looked at him narrowly. “Take it easy, or you’ll earn yourself the big sleep.”

  The destroyer came on. Three kilometers. Two. One. She wasted no more ammunition, but did keep her guns fixed on Jager. She slackened pace as she drew nearer, until, at a distance of a few hundred meters, she was just making steerage way. She stole past her wounded relative mere meters away, increased speed, turned, came back for another pass. This time, as she drew abeam, the doors of her bridge opened and a half-dozen men with rifles stepped out. “What?...”

  “Get down!” von Lappus snapped.

  Kurt dropped and buried his head in his arms. The chatter of small arms and the whine of ricochets lasted perhaps a minute.

  “Hope the men keep control,” the Captain muttered.

  The destroyer turned again and made a third pass. The small arms again, worse, then water foamed under her stem and she sped after her fellows, by this time well on their ways north. The sound of distant firing had become a constant grumble.

  “What now?” Kurt asked. “We wait, and hope the salvage ship’s unarmed. You can sleep now.” Kurt made a pillow of his arms and weapon, slept.

  Others prepared, were given their parts in detail. Jager was ready when the salvage ship appeared three hours later.

  She was not unarmed, being a tanker with a three-inch mount on her forecastle deck.

  Von Lappus woke Kurt and gave him his instructions — he was to lead the operation about to begin. He felt no better for his sleep, nor for the charge placed on him. The latter depressed him. He hoped he would not fail. His own survival would depend on his betraying his ideals....

  The oiler approached as cautiously as had the destroyer, but wasted no time making passes. She stopped alongside. Her deck force put fenders over to keep the vessels from injuring each other. She eased closer.

  “She must have a full load,” Kurt whispered to von Lappus. “Look how low she’s riding.”

  “This’s more than I’d hoped for,” the Captain replied. “She’ll have enough fuel to get us home — assuming we take her and get away clean. She’ll be slow.”

  “They’re ready.” A dozen Australians jumped to lager’s maindeck, immediately set about making the two vessels fast. “Now?” Kurt asked.

  Von Lappus shook his head. “A couple minutes yet. Let them tie up first. Don’t want them to be able to pull away. Oh, hell!” A wish for tears was in his voice. Someone had opened up with a machinegun. “Too soon,” von Lappus moaned. “Too goddam soon!” Firing broke out all along Jager’s starboard side. Men were falling and fleeing aboard the Australian. “Go!” the Captain thundered. “Try anyway. Get the wireless room first.”

  Kurt studied the tall superstructure built over the tanker’s stem, spotted what he thought was the wireless room, nodded. Then he was on his feet and running. He burst through a door, sprinted to the side, and, exhilarated, leaped aboard the Australian. Others rushed with him. Small arms chattered, clearing the enemy decks, lager’s main battery swung around, but remained silent.

  “Wieslaw! Fritz! Adolf!” Kurt shouted at three men nearby. “Stick with me!”

  He sprayed a ladder with his machine-pistol, climbed it, did the same with another and another. Then he stopped, jerked a door open, plunged through.

  Terrified sailors inside were desperately preparing a radio message. Kurt shot the man at the transmitter. Someone shot back, missed Kurt, hit Adolf. Kurt threw himself back out, to one side. Wieslaw chucked a grenade in. A moment later, the wireless and several operators had been silenced forever. Then up another ladder, to the bridge level. Someone there had had time to react. Several shots whined past Kurt and his two men. They ducked behind a ventilator. More shots. Kurt fired back, emptying his weapon. He slipped a new clip in. “Cover me, Wes,” he told the nearer of the two.

  Wieslaw fired at the door. Kurt crawled toward it, beneath the bullets.

  Whang! Something hit the bulkhead a foot above him. He scrambled for the ventilator.

  “Over there!” said Wieslaw, pointing. He and Fritz fired several wild shots. Kurt looked. A figure in Littoral white leaned around the signal shack and snapped off a shot The bullet narrowly missed Kurt’s hand.

  “Damn! Wes, give me a grenade!” Strangely, he felt none of his earlier fear. He pulled the pin, stood, hurled the grenade across the space between ships. It arced down, wide of its mark by a half dozen meters, plunged into a flag bag. A cloud of torn fabric exploded upward, drifted like holiday confetti.

  The gunman quit before Kurt could throw again, a white flash as he slipped over the far side of Jager’s signal bridge.

  “All right, let’s try these people again.”

  The Pole resumed shooting, with Fritz doing his loading. Kurt crawled forward until he was beside the door of the Australian pilothouse. “Captain?” he called in English. “To surrender this ship you had best.”

  No answer.

  lager spoke. Kurt jumped to his feet, startled, saw that the remaining forward five-inch mount had fired on sailors trying to man the oiler’s anti-aircraft guns. The mass of smoking wreckage on the tanker’s forecastle deck seemed convincing proof of who had whom....

  But no. The Australian, still shuddering from the explosion, jerked underfoot, rolled, yawed swiftly. Mooring lines parted with loud reports. Water boiling behind her, the tanker began to pull away.

  “Mr. Ranke,” Wieslaw called, “they’re free. We’ve got to get off!”

  Kurt considered hastily, decided he could not take the ship with the few men already aboard. “Jump!” he shouted. Wieslaw and Frifz hesitated. “What about Adolf?” one asked.

  “Jump!” He fired at the bridge door, turned, hurried to the lower level, where they had left the wounded man. “Adolf, we’ve got to jump for it. How’s your arm?”

  “Ill make it — with a little help.”

  Kurt helped him to his feet. “A long way down,” he said, looking over the rail. “Scary.”

  Shots from above whined past them. Adolf jumped. Kurt leaped behind him, weapon held high.

  It seemed an eternity before green water smacked his feet. Below, bullets sent white splashes reaching toward him.... He hit poorly, lost the machine-pistol. The wind exploded from him. He nearly drowned as he fought taking a breath, surfaced sputtering, coughed up bitter seawater, struggled in panic — until he remembered Adolf.

  Treading water, he looked around. Bullets fell like raindrops, it seemed, though in reality they were few. Others jumped from the tanker. Jager covered them with her lighter weapons. A 40mm mount systematically wrecked the Australian’s bridge. The oiler strained desperately at the hopeless task of escape. She was dead, and probably knew it. Surely, when she opened to a range where fires and explosions would no longer endanger Jager, she would receive a fatal shelling.

  Blood stained the water in places. As Kurt located Adolf, trying to swim one-armed, he realized sharks would soon gather. Lent strength by sudden fear, he seized Adolfs hair, quickly towed him to Jager’s side. Risking Australian fire, sailors tossed them a line. Kurt looped it beneath Adolf’s arms, treaded water while awaiting his own turn to be hoisted up. Above, riflemen already stood by, watching for the first gray, dark-finned torpedo shapes
to come gliding in for the feast.

  40mm mounts and machineguns nagged the Australian endlessly. Return fire died — the tanker was beyond the range of her small arms. Then, as Kurt drippingly approached the man to explain his failure, von Lappus ordered, “Main battery, fire!” The five-inchers interrupted lighter natter with fiery exclamations. The oiler had managed almost a kilometer, her last. The big shells ripped her open, fired her cargo. Kurt, suddenly ashamed, watched mites of men leap into the sea, only to be received by floating, burning oil. He turned away, forced his mind to business — so much death, so many at his own hand, and he the man who always insisted he would hurt no one.... “Ski, get steam as fast as you can.” The Captain’s voice betrayed none of his disappointment. Kurt glanced around. The officers had gathered while he brooded. Von Lappus was planning a new move already — in the light of the burning ship he appeared demonic. “Heinrich, see to the wounded. Hoepner, clean and check the guns. Inventory the small arms, see how many we lost.” Far, scarcely audible over the noise of the dying tanker, the Meeting’s rumble suddenly redoubled. The Western fighting units had come to rescue the auxiliaries, though for most it was too late. “Ranke, you and I will take us to shore. Heiden, inventory stores. Separate the essentials, especially salt. It’ll be a long trek through hot country....” This last was weary, more to himself than his listeners.

  As they reached the bridge, Kurt said, ‘Tin sorry I couldn’t manage.” Emotionally numbed by what he had done — the shooting, the killing — he had not as yet recognized the full depth of Jager’s plight. The walk home was a matter of theory no longer. The destroyer was too gravely wounded to hazard the sea journey — even providing she evaded Australian capture.

  “No matter,” said von Lappus, now a sad old man.

  “You did your best. If only I could find the man who fired that first burst....”

  Kurt had a sudden grim suspicion that Marquis was responsible, then decided the man could have no motive. Yet the notion was less insane than High Command operations as a whole. Even after Ritual War, he had no idea of the true, modern end toward which that organization worked.

  Two hundred quiet, gloomy men labored listlessly to bring Jager inshore, into a cove where she anchored and hoped to be invisible against the jungled background. The guns yet rumbled on the sea, and smoke made a cloud in the north. Dawn’s slow-moving rain arrived. In the wet, weary sailors filled the liferafts with stores. Some, unenthusiastic about the long walk ahead, insisted the ship was hale enough to make it home.

  On the watery battlefield, Western ships expended their last shells. They had fought bravely in an, uncommonly long and savage engagement, and still had numbers in their favor, but could do nothing with empty magazines. One revived the ancient practice of striking colors. Others followed suit, for all escape routes were closed. Gradually, the Australians bunched them up, forced them southward.

  Steaming independently, out of sight, Purpose and a smaller sister waited for the end. When the battleship’s radar repeaters portrayed the disposition of forces directed and desired, she would turn toward the waning battle.

  Unaccountably, to Kurt, the sun set that dying day. He had not expected to see its rising, let alone outlive its passage west. Should he thank the Fates for his survival? In those few free moments he obtained during the day, when he was not too busy to think, he dwelt upon what he had done, on faces which had abandoned life before him. All he could do to soothe his conscience, at first, was repeat. a silent formula that he had had to do it for his own survival. Yet a small monster with a Karen-voice gleefully mocked in the dungeons of his mind, down in the deep darkness where the evil was imprisoned, loudly reminded him he need not have been here at all. As a consequence, he worked harder than necessary, drowned his conscience in a dizzy wine of fatigue.

  And, as men have shown a nearly universal knack for doing, he soon managed a transference of guilt. The true culprit, he convinced himself, was High Command. Without High Command, none need have died, none need have spilled blood to the pleasure of Ares. Thus he reinforced his developed hatred, grew increasingly determined to see the spiders of Gibraltar fall prey in their own web — no matter that he was fifteen thousand kilometers distant and a lone man unequipped to drag them down. As, on leaving Kiel, he had not believed in Jager’s mortality, neither could he accept his own death as a possibility of the journey home.

  In weariness, with his conscience temporarily appeased, he slept soundly that night. Not even the threat of Marquis bothered him. Because he feared so much and this interfered with his blithe advance into the future, he had tried to ignore the dangers of the day. By nightfall he had almost forgotten. The wardens of his subconscious kept him in van Lappus’s company, or in a crowd, always armed, but at levels of awareness he abandoned the matter to Fate.

  In fact, when Marquis did cross his mind, he welcomed the possibility of confrontation. He had things to say to the man, things which had brewed and boiled within him since Otto’s death.

  Day dawned fair, and Kurt had hopes he might soon set foot on land. As at Rotnagiri, von Lappus had kept him aboard for his own safety. Darkness ashore was too much Marquis’s ally, the beachhead too widely dispersed and confused.... His hope was stillborn.

  Just six kilometers distant, a vast mass of battered ships milled. Through Jager’s telescope, Kurt saw they were of both sides. Western ships shepherded by a handful of Australians. Almost every vessel was terribly wounded. “What’s happening?” Hans asked breathlessly, climbing onto the signal bridge.

  Kurt turned from the telescope, saw that most of the dozen men aboard had gathered. “I don’t know. Strange business. Hope they don’t spot us.” He did not think they would. Lying parallel to the coast, Jager blended well with her background.

  “Look, Kurt!” Hans pointed.

  Kurt looked, was too startled to note Hans’s renewed familiarity. The High Command battleship, with a smaller cruiser in company, had appeared in the north, perhaps twelve kilometers from the formation. “What now?” Kurt mumbled, turning to Hans.

  Wiedermann was pale beneath his tan. He stumbled over his tongue several times, fighting some fierce internal battle, before managing, “Get down from here! Everybody get inside the ship. Engineers’ quarters.”

  His reward was questioning looks, then slow compliance as sailors heeded his urgency. Kurt bent to the telescope again, turned it toward Purpose. That vessel’s guns swung slowly, toward the ships.... “Kurt, come on! Let’s get out of here!” Hans seized his arm, pulled him toward the ladder. Bemused, Kurt wondered why the excitement, supposed Hans had his reasons. He did not like those that came to mind. As they reached the maindeck, smoke belched from one of the battleship’s guns. Hans ran. Kurt followed, ducked inside, went down the ladder to engineers’ quarters....

  Color faded from the passageway above. It was flooded with raw, overwhelming light. Even several times reflected as it was, it hurt Kurt’s eyes. When, after a few seconds, it faded, he found the afterimages almost as blinding. And it was hot, so hot....

  “Grab something!” Hans shouted. He threw himself to the deck, braced his body between partitions. Kurt and the others followed his lead, though all faces wore questioning frowns....

  There was a roar like all the guns of time firing in salvo, a thunderclap followed by the grumble of a cosmic waterfall, lager leaped, heeled over, groaned. Air pressure changed radically. Kurt’s ears were pits of agony. “Hang on!” Hans cried. “Tidal wave...” It hit, lifted the destroyer, bounced her like a cork, passed on. Kurt started to rise. “Not yet!” said Hans. “Back blast.” That came shortly, a fierce wind from the direction opposite the earlier shocks, though not nearly as bad.

  Then Kurt climbed to his feet. He had a dozen bruises and abrasions; a trickle of blood ran from his nose. “This’s where it started,” he mumbled. Memories came back. “But natural weather. A bird’s cry. A cool north wind. And Man, who would be a god, what hath he wrought?” He suspected, oh, he suspecte
d the worst of evils. He rushed up the ladder, out onto the maindeck.

  His worst suspicions were confirmed. A mighty, wicked tower it was, standing where a hundred ships had died, a tombstone tickling the clouds, a huge, phallic mushroom, the thing not seen these past two centuries of War.... “Atomic bomb!” he gasped. The ultimate horror, the bleak black wicked thing of such hated history, such conditioned dread, that even the hardest, most uncaring man watching was permanently turned against High Command.

  “Oh, no!” someone cried in a voice of angry tears. Kurt turned, glad someone shared his outrage and dismay. But, he immediately saw, the cry was not for the bomb. It was the eulogy of the crew, the two hundred men who had been camped on the beach — flash, heat, wind, wave had done what the Australians had failed to do, destroyed them utterly. A dozen blinded, dazed, burned men wandered the wrack-and corpse-strewn beach, the holocaust’s few survivors. Smoke from seared trees drifted on now still air, a veil for ruin. Kurt noticed how all Jager’s paint, facing the blast, had been blackened and blistered.

  He checked his men. Of the dozen who had been aboard, all but two stood with him, staring at the dying mushroom. “Where’s the Captain?” he asked. Drawing no response, he shouted, “Captain!”

  “Up here.” Looking up, Kurt saw von Lappus leaning against the bridge rail. “Mueller’s here, too.”

  “Shall I send the raft ashore, sir?”

  “What raft?” Kurt looked aft. Not only the liferaft, but the accommodation ladder as well had been lost to the wave. They would have to swim.

  “Look!” Hans gasped. Kurt turned again. The atomic cloud had begun to disperse, but another event had claimed Wiedermann’s breath. Limned by the cloud, a ship staggered landward. She was many times more damaged than lager. Her masts and stacks were gone, much of her superstructure was destroyed. Her pace was terribly slow, barely steerage way. Though she was little more than three kilometers offshore, it might take her an hour to reach the beach — if she made it at all.