Deadly Shores

by Taylor Anderson

  “The whaleboat’s away,” Smitty reported, having come aft to watch the takeoff with Inquisitor Kon Choon. “She’ll be fine, Skipper,” he added, nodding at the little blue seaplane. “They’ll both be fine.”

  “A remarkable machine,” Choon exclaimed. “And such a pretty color. Ingenious how you have painted them to resemble the sea from above, but the clouds from below. But building them to float and fly—I never tire of watching them.”

  “Never tire of watching aircraft? Or just our aircraft?” Greg probed. The Republic was an ally, but so far of necessity rather than of complete trust. Just as there remained a few things Matt didn’t want to share with them, such as torpedoes, armor-piercing shells, and the new fire-control system aboard Donaghey, for example; they kept secrets too. One such secret was whether they had aircraft of their own. There was no doubt they had the technology. Greg suspected that, as Captain Reddy, Adar—and Herring, of course—got to know Von Melhausen, Lange, Meek, and others, they’d probably start blabbing all sorts of things to one another. It was in everyone’s interest to know one another’s capabilities, after all. But Choon was enigmatic and secretive by nature, so he might not have told even if allowed. It mattered little to Greg, and he’d find out for himself when Donaghey reached the Republic. Trying to get Choon to open up had begun to amuse him as much as it did Bekiaa, though, just as Choon still seemed to delight in playing his own game of evasion.

  “We have no air-craaft like those,” Choon said, blinking to acknowledge the ongoing sport. “Nor have we any like the smaller planes, the ‘Flea-shooters,’ I think you call them, that fly off the deck of Salissa. What need have we of such? With the sadly poor exception of the War Palace, ah, Amerika, we are not a high-seas naval power.”

  Greg grinned. SMS Amerika was still decrepit despite her repairs; her old hull was awfully thin. But she did have some teeth, and she was at least twice as fast as anything the Grik had—that they’d seen. Greg knew that any “naval power” might have a hard time entering a Republic port uninvited, however. Lange had very matter-of-factly described the powerful harbor gunboats they maintained, and Miyata had appeared free to discuss them as well. Sadly, given the descriptions of the weather off the cape, no one seriously thought they could be brought to bear against the Grik. Apparently, barring something unrevealed, the Republic’s greatest contribution would be some excellent, if somewhat gaudy, infantry and cavalry, and some good artillery as well—although what manner of artillery they possessed hadn’t been much discussed either.

  “You may not get a good look at how effective our air can be before we reach Alex-aandra, Inquisitor,” Greg said as the Nancy roared into the sky, “but I bet Captain Von Melhausen and Mr. Lange will.”

  “Oh, splendid!” Choon exclaimed with a clap of his hands, his eyes on the plane.

  Lizard birds swirled from the trees on shore to take flight in great, convulsing clouds at the startling thunder of the Nancy, and perhaps the sight of the giant blue bird they’d never seen before. The plane banked to avoid the swarm that seemed equally intent on avoiding it, and clawed for altitude.

  “But you already know how effective they can be, if you have any of your own,” Greg said almost absently, suddenly focusing on the bird-things of Mauritius. Thousands—millions—of them were erupting from the jungle.

  “Indeed I do . . . if we do,” Choon replied. He was watching the lizardbirds with keen interest now as well. Waves of the colorful fliers continued to surge randomly about, the rising plane apparently already forgotten. Greg raised his own glass to watch. Random at first, he realized, but the collective behavior grew more organized. And despite the passage of the plane, he got the impression he was seeing some kind of purposeful, morning ritual. The creatures were indeed “ordinary” lizardbirds in form, though the riot of colors was more spectacular than any he’d seen before. Many had longer heads as well, some with slender jaws full of tiny teeth, and others with genuine beaks. He also began to realize that animals of similar form and color tended to throng together, and that was something kind of unusual too. Then, as the swarms appeared to sort themselves out, they began to pursue very specialized behavior. One type of lizardbird descended on the beach, overwhelming it with their numbers, and started gorging on whatever the storm and surf had washed ashore. Other fliers of various types slashed down in the shallows, chasing baitfish or other swimmers. Their impacts on the water threw up stabbing splashes like automatic weapons fire. With a tidbit in their mouths or beaks, these fliers then bolted back into the sky to consume their meal before repeating the process. Even in this melee of “bird bullets,” as Greg thought of them, he was amazed to see the various species maintain a kind of separation. He’d never seen anything like that at all. Similar creatures on Borno and other places always commingled and often fought viciously over the slightest morsel, or even ate one another. There was some of that. One species, larger than most but few in number, struck victims out of the teeming multitudes and carried them screeching back to the trees.

  “I wish Mr. Bradford could see this,” Greg murmured.

  “He shall, if we determine this is a good place for another ‘staging point’ as you put it,” Choon said. He’d borrowed Sammy’s glass and was raptly watching the colorful, chaotic drama. Greg felt a prickly suspicion, however, as he watched the line of bird splashes edging toward his ship—and the whaleboat that had slowed almost to a stop.

  “I don’t know,” he murmured. “Sammy,” he said louder, suddenly decisive, “signal the whaleboat to return to the ship at once! Fire a gun to get their attention if you have to.”

  “Ay, Cap-i-taan!” Sammy replied, a new urgency in his tone. Smitty went to prepare a gun.

  Greg raised the glass again, even as the signal raced up the halyard. Bekiaa had been right—her lieutenant knew his stuff. He’d already ordered the boat about. In a sick instant, though, Greg realized it wouldn’t make any difference. New explosions of water erupted on the bay, from below this time. Apparently, the birds had chased their prey to a drop-off or other underwater feature guarded by something like flasher fish—voracious, tuna-size predators that congregated in virtually every shallows they’d visited. Here, they began snatching the swooping lizardbirds in their jagged teeth even as the fliers slammed the water with even greater determination to eat their fill before the baitfish, or whatever they chased, escaped their grasp for another day. Caught in the middle of this sudden confluence of savage appetites was the whaleboat.

  Flashies started hammering the boat with their hard, bony heads, probably going for the brightly spinning screw at first. The coxswain, standing in the sternsheets at the tiller, was pitched sprawling into the sea. He never even surfaced. A growing number of lizardbirds dove on the Marines, snatching bites from furry arms or bouncing off helmets and leather armor. Somebody, probably Lieutenant Ra-Saan—it was impossible to tell at this distance—opened up with a Blitzer, the muffled report reaching them seconds later. The lizardbirds recoiled from the unfamiliar sound, but they quickly renewed their attack. Screams began to reach the ship.

  “Fire a gun, Smitty!” Greg yelled in desperation. Almost immediately, one of the eighteen-pounders directly below in the waist roared, spitting fire and a dense cloud of white smoke that swept swiftly downwind. Greg focused his glass, but quickly saw the great gun had no effect. Either the lizardbirds were so used to thunder or the booming surf on the reef, or they simply didn’t care what transpired beyond their apparent boundary, and they flocked around the boat in countless numbers. The whaleboat itself, now settling due to the battering the flashies had given it, had become a heaving mound of colorful lizardbirds, frantically feeding on the unfortunate Marines. As the boat flooded lower, it looked like a little flowery island in the calm water of the bay, surrounded by white, splashing breakers of its own. If anyone was left alive to scream by now, the sounds were mercifully drowned by the raucous roar of feasting birds.

 
“Lookouts and topmen below! Get out of the rigging!” Greg bellowed. “Clear for action!”

  “Rig the overhead netting,” Sammy added. “Marines will draw shotguns, but all others will go below and batten down!”

  Greg nodded agreement. Some of the smoothbore muskets had been converted to breechloaders with the same Allin-Silva technique as the standard-issue rifles, essentially becoming 20-gauge shotguns. They might be effective, but to use them, they had to get as many people out of the way as they could. He stared back at the colorful swarm as ’Cats slid down stays and bare feet thundered on the deck.

  “They are not coming,” Choon said mildly. “They have stopped.” Greg felt an irrational surge of anger at the Republic snoop, but it quickly vanished as he realized his rage was misplaced. He wanted the lizardbirds to come on so he could kill them for what they’d done. But that was nuts. There weren’t enough shotshells in the entire ship to put a dent in the swirling mass, and Donaghey would be lucky to escape an attack with no worse than shredded rigging. He sighed with belated relief, but he had to wonder if Choon really was as unaffected by all this as he appeared. Shaking his head, he stared toward shore. Slowly, like a receding wave, the swirling clouds of lizardbirds had begun edging back toward the island. Already, the explosive splashing of the flashies had ceased. A couple of orange, black, and green fliers still stalked the gunwales of the whaleboat, the only part still visible, but when it finally slipped under entirely, the lizardbirds flapped their furry, membranous wings and joined others of their kind surging back toward the trees.

  “The island is theirs,” Choon observed. “And the waters to a point. There is no food—or life for them—beyond where the water belongs to the fish, so they do not cross.” He regarded Greg with his big, sky blue eyes. “Quite fortunate for us, I suppose.”

  “Yeah,” Greg agreed hollowly. “But I guess Mr. Bradford won’t see this place after all. Not much point.”

  “No.”

  “Now we know why nobody lives here, though,” Saama-Kera softly agreed.

  “Secure from battle stations, but keep a sharp lookout,” Greg told his exec. “And run up a signal Captain Bekiaa and Ensign Kaar can see when they return. Tell them, whatever they do, to stay the hell away from that island when they set down!”

  CHAPTER 14

  ////// Above Mauritius

  Bekiaa-Sab-At had flown before, in one of the big lumbering “Clippers.” But those had four engines and enclosed passenger compartments. Flying in the Nancy was an entirely different experience. The takeoff had been weird—and wet—and the mass of swirling lizardbirds had actually frightened her. She hadn’t thought that was possible anymore, and she was frankly encouraged that it was. She didn’t know how much damage hitting one of the creatures would do to the plane, but imagined there’d be some. As little as she knew about aircraft and flight in general, even she knew that hitting hundreds of the things at once would not be survivable. Ensign Kaar was a good pilot, though, and he’d managed to avoid the mass of flying creatures that seemed to rise just as the plane did. She briefly wondered about them and hoped everything was all right back at the anchorage, but she also began enjoying herself for the first time in longer than she could remember. Flying—this kind of flying—was fun!

  The view was stunning and unforgettable. There were little islets scattered around “Maar-ishus,” some little bigger than Donaghey. Only one was as large as Salissa, and it was merely a barren black rock. Nothing else but the subsiding sea was visible on any horizon, and the sky was a brilliant, cloudless blue. Mauritius wasn’t very large itself, but it was charming enough from the air. Shaped much like a flattened squash on this world, it was roughly fifteen miles wide, east to west, and twenty or so from north to south. The neck of the “squash” was on the northernmost end, jutting into the sea and curving east and slightly south like the neck of a goose. There was a broad savannah in the north, but the rest of the island was largely blanketed by dense jungle. Bekiaa remained amazed by how many of the colorful lizardbirds there were, flowing in swarms as if controlled by a single mind, but they stayed down close to the treetops and didn’t venture near the plane flying a couple of thousand feet above them. They didn’t go far out to sea either, and she watched as they churned the shallows for food. There seemed to be a threshold though, beyond which they didn’t go, and she wondered about that. She also wondered why they didn’t fish the reefs that almost completely surrounded the island, and took note.

  “Any sign of Sineaa?” she shouted through the voice tube, suddenly ashamed of her inattention. She should’ve been scanning for their consort herself.

  “I haven’t seen her,” the tinny voice of the pilot responded.

  “I haven’t seen any Grik, or any settlements of any kind either,” Bekiaa said. “Let’s fly back south, over the ship, and see what’s down that way,” she suggested a few minutes later. “Then we’ll head north again, along the west coast.”

  “Ay, ay.”

  The plane banked right and flew down the eastern shore. Before long, Donaghey was in view, still anchored in the picturesque little bay. Bekiaa had never seen the ship from the air, and though it looked quite small, she felt a surge of admiration and affection. Then she squinted. “There’s a signal,” she announced. “It says to not land close to shore. I wonder what that’s about.”

  “Maybe they seen something there we didn’t.”

  Bekiaa didn’t answer, but still stared at the ship as they flew overhead, and it slowly grew smaller behind them. Finally, she turned around. The southern end of the island was dominated by a high, sheer, rocky monolith that drew her attention. It didn’t seem to belong on the otherwise gently rolling landscape. “Let’s have a closer look at that,” she directed.

  The plane turned a little to the right and aimed for the high, flat-topped feature. “It must’ve been a vol-caano,” Bekiaa exclaimed. “I bet that’s all dead laavaa. Maybe the earth around it has blown or fallen away over time.”

  “The wind might get funny around it,” Kaar said. “I’ll just fly over the top, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  They got closer. Bekiaa hadn’t brought a telescope. The Imperial-made instruments were far more numerous in the fleet than binoculars, but they weren’t exactly disposable. Each ship had a few, but only a few. There were four on Donaghey. Bekiaa thought she caught a hint of movement on the dark crags ahead, and wished she could make out what it was. Normally, her keen eyes didn’t need assistance. “Wait,” she warned uncertainly, leaning out to the left to get a better look past the spinning prop and the pilot beyond. “There is something moving on that mountain!” Size was deceptive at a distance, and their elevation altered perspective as well, but she was sure now that something—numerous somethings and all fairly large—were clinging to the sheer cliffs ahead, and it looked like there were more of whatever they were crowding along the ridge at the top. “Let’s turn away,” she ordered, perhaps half a mile short of the peak.

  “You sure? I don’t see anything.”

  The first creature launched itself into the sky, great wings unfolding from its side and catching air. Others quickly followed, beating their wings and rising toward the plane.

  “The nose blocks your view!” Bekiaa cried. “Those cliffs are crawling with really big lizardbirds, and some are coming for us! Turn away at once!”

  The plane banked hard left, back toward the coast, and Bekiaa twisted around to look. “Uh-oh,” she murmured to herself. She’d never seen the “Grikbirds,” or “dragons,” as the Imperials called them, that the Allies had to contend with in the east, but she understood they were aptly named. They looked and acted like Grik Uul, displaying limited intelligence and a pack mentality, and were about the same size. The main difference was that they had wings instead of arms, of course, and a longer tail. The creatures rising toward the Nancy were similar, Bekiaa supposed, but much larger, possibly two-thirds
the size of the plane! There were other differences. These had long, narrow, toothy jaws—well suited for snatching fish, or perhaps other fliers—and almost more striking just then, they were blue and white!

  “They think we’re one of them!” Bekiaa shouted.

  Ensign Kaar had finally seen the things as they turned, and his voice came shrill through the tube. “Is that good or bad?”

  “How should I know?” Bekiaa demanded. “Step on it! They are gaining!” She snatched the Blitzer Bug from its spring-loaded rack beside her, inserted one of the Thompson-style twenty-round magazines, and yanked back the bolt. Her stomach flew into her throat. “No, no!” she yelled. “Do not dive! We may be faster, but you shorten the distance they must climb!” Kaar had instinctively pushed the nose down to gain more speed, but realized his mistake as soon as Bekiaa pointed it out. Quickly, he pulled up—just as one of the creatures shot past the plane. They are fast! Bekiaa realized. Maybe faster than us! Another monster slashed by, and Bekiaa started to fire, but hesitated. Surely they would have slashed through us if they meant to attack. What if they really do think we are one of them? She had no doubt the jagged snouts and long, thinly curved claws could’ve just made short work of the Nancy. She leaned out. Maybe a dozen more of the things were still climbing, but they were struggling now. They wouldn’t catch them. That just left the two that had. She looked forward and saw the beasts, flapping their wings for all they were worth and trying to maintain the leading formation they’d taken. They couldn’t succeed. Their mouths were hanging open now, and their oversize chests were sucking and expelling air with every beat. One creature glanced at her as the Nancy crept past, its yellow, slit-pupiled eye bulging almost indignantly. She still held her fire. “Do not fly straight to the ship,” she warned. “Let us lead them out to sea. My guess is, they’ll abandon the chase.”