River of Bones

by Taylor Anderson

  Russ nodded, looking through his binoculars. The mortars or Naga’s roundshot had done their work on the undamaged BB’s loading rigging—and as the other pushed it around, the forward guns wouldn’t bear, anyway. Santy Cat had taken a beating and was probably about to take a lot more, but they’d silenced the main enemy guns. And the old girl still had a lot of bite down her sides: each mounting three 5.5″ rifles, a 4.7″ DP, and up to three of the new 4″-50 DP guns as well. They might not be up for the heavy frontal armor they’d seen, but all had “homegrown” AP rounds available and could fire any direction but directly ahead. The 4.7″s could’ve already done that, from their new emplacements forward, but their muzzle blasts would’ve hammered the main gun crew. That wasn’t a problem anymore. “Commence firing the secondary battery!” Russ yelled, over another of Naga’s broadsides. “If we can sink those two bastards where they are, half our work is done.”

  What ensued was a chaotic, hellish maelstrom. The BB still under control managed to back away from the other before it slammed directly into the burning wreck of the first one they’d sunk. It continued backing up until it presented nearly its own full broadside, only partly blocked by its consort. Massive hundred-pound roundshot rumbled in from both, hammering the blocking force. It deeply dented the armor over Santy Cat’s engineering spaces and punched effortlessly through everything else. Few rounds targeted Naga or Felts, but there were enough to wreak terrible havoc, lopping off masts and tearing great gaps in their scantlings amid blizzards of splinters. So far, neither was badly holed, but that couldn’t last, and the death toll was horrendous. Russ had all his Marines take what cover they could. Their mortars were pointless now.

  On the bright side, if that term could be applied to such an appalling situation, Santy Cat and her mutilated DDs were giving as good as they got. For one thing, they remained somewhat mobile within the narrow confines of the channel, steaming back and forth and making themselves slightly more difficult targets. That required great care and amounted to little more than steaming in a fairly tight oval, but it allowed them to present fresh fire from rested crews and expose less damaged sides to the enemy. Furthermore, the modern guns mounted on the old ship were pounding deep into the enemy armor, peeling it away with every shot and exploding in the heavy wooden backing, four feet thick in places. Jagged holes began to connect the enemy gunports as more and more of their guns fell silent. Even the DDs were starting to blast through and rend Grik flesh inside the casemates. More important, by staying to fight, the increasingly shattered BBs were blocking the river themselves, and nothing as large as they were could possibly squeeze past now. Grik cruisers could still slip through, and two actually tried, quickly finding themselves caught in the middle, masking their own ships’ fire as their smaller, weaker hulls earned the Allies’ full focus. One was sunk and the other quickly retired, clearing the way for the BB’s hundred-pounders again.

  Yet even as Santy Cat’s damage mounted and she started looking more and more like a large battered cheese grater, Russ grew increasingly desperate to make the Grik pay for their foolishness, to sink them where they were, whatever the cost. Mikey Monk appeared on the bridge, blood streaming from cuts too numerous to count. To his eyes, nobody on the bridge looked any better. All the glass had been blown out of the windows, and though no shot had passed through the space, plenty of steel splinters or iron fragments had. Russ lowered his binoculars and stared, his expression uncomprehending. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “Auxiliary conn’s shot away. The whole thing just fell out from under us. I was lucky.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I went down to check on Laney on the way up here. I hadn’t heard any bitching out of him and figured he must be dead.”

  “Yeah,” Russ agreed loudly as the 4.7″ roared on the well deck below, just as a pair of roundshot sent geysers up alongside the battered fo’c’sle and slammed into the ship. “Is he?”

  “Dead? No. Pissed as hell and standin’ ankle deep in water, but he ain’t dead.” Monk shook his head. “Didn’t even notice me. He was too busy waddlin’ around, yellin’ and cussin’ at ’Cats, shorin’ mattresses against leakin’ seams. Skipper,” he added seriously, “there’s water comin’ in everywhere down there. Nothin’ big, no holes exactly—the armor we added has saved us so far—but I bet half the rivets’ve popped. It looks like there’s two hundred shower heads in the engine room, all turned on high!”

  “And he hasn’t made a peep,” Russ said wonderingly. “I’ll be damned.”

  “Sur!” interrupted a bridgewing lookout, her arm in a bloody sling. Russ looked at her, then past. The Grik BB that had rammed the wreck had caught fire on her fo’c’sle awhile back, but with the wind blowing from the south, the blaze hadn’t seemed to spread. Maybe that wasn’t the case belowdecks, however, because flames were suddenly gushing from the shattered forward casemate and Grik were spilling out the rearward gunports onto the aft deck. Others climbed out the top between the funnels, braving the still-withering fire for fear of something else. Some were physically blown into the water by the pressure of the other BB’s guns firing alongside, and that ship was starting to move, backing away again.

  “Concentrate all fire on the far enemy ship!” Russ commanded. “Let her have it!”

  The number of shrieking shells filling the air seemed to redouble, and Felts even managed a few shots. Her fire control had been cut when her mainmast fell. Naga roared, at least ten guns thundering from her less ravaged side. Two 5.5″s went off simultaneously, followed by three 4″-50s, over and over. All Santy Cat’s secondaries were still in action, though fallen crews had been augmented by Marines. And they were still controlled by the gunnery officer, Lieutenant Baak, on the fire-control platform. How he’d survived with so little protection remained a mystery. Even as the salvos bored in on the more distant ship, flames must’ve touched a magazine on the closer one at last. With a staggering roar, it simply blew up. Tons of debris erupted into the sky. Some was recognizable: two tall, crumpled funnels flipping end over end, and a massive gun was seen soaring ahead of the expanding cloud of destruction, crashing down on land.

  “Take cover!” Russ bellowed.

  Timbers and jagged iron hit the water, marching ever closer. Grik bodies, or parts of them, splapped the dark river almost as far as Santy Cat. Heavier debris rained down on the whole battered squadron. All they could see in the main channel of the Zambezi was a huge dark pall, but slowly the stiff breeze carried the worst away. What remained of the closer ship, already entangled with the first, was a jagged, flaming skeleton, already on the riverbed. Behind it, the bright paint of its new bottom and shiny bronze screws glaring at the late-afternoon sun, the fourth Grik dreadnaught was lying on its back. Hammered unmercifully, and possibly listing into a flooding side, the shock wave—or just the wave—created by the nearby blast that shattered her sister finished her, pushing her near side down until her funnels crumpled against the silty bottom.

  “I’ll be damned,” Monk murmured. “Damn.”

  “Cease firing,” Russ ordered, weariness seeping into his voice. The ship’s guns had already fallen silent, equally exhausted.

  “You think that’s it, Skipper?” Monk asked, while his captain studied the river-clogging wreckage through his binoculars.

  “No,” Russ replied. “I don’t think another battlewagon can get through that mess, but their cruisers can. And their galleys for sure. Still, they can’t know what little we’ve got on this side. Chances are they’ll think it’s more than we have, and that might make them take a breath”—he nodded at the riverbank—“until all the civvy lizards tell ’em what they saw.” He sighed. “So, we may have a little time. I hope so, to make scratch repairs. Right now I don’t think we’d survive an old lady in a rowboat, whacking the hull with a wooden spoon.” He considered. “We should get a pretty good idea what’s what from Arracca. Her planes were pretty busy themselves.” That was certainly true.
They’d even apparently made a couple of attacks on Grik heavies beyond Santy Cat’s view, after all. Russ had seen some diving planes and airbursts beyond the immediate congestion of battle. And it cost them. Several Nancys had retired overhead, trailing smoke, and he hoped they’d made it back to Arracca. At least there weren’t any antiair rocket batteries nearby—yet. “I’ll find out what her pilots saw,” he continued. “In the meantime, get Chief Dobson to reinforce the damage-control parties with Major Gutfeld’s Marines, on the double. I don’t care if Dobson has to detail ’Cats to stand there with their fingers in the holes; we have to keep up power. We may have a day or so while the Grik sort things out, or we might not have any time at all. But if rising water quenches the fires in Laney’s boilers, we’re dead.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  CHAPTER 10

  ////// The Palace of Vanished Gods

  Old Sofesshk

  November 31, 1944

  “Stopped? How? It cannot be!” ranted Esshk, Regent Champion and First General of all the Grik. His dark red eyes flared like bright hot lava and practically bulged beneath the parallel bony ridges tapering down his snout. His crest stood high and stiff with fury and challenge. “How could the irresistible power of the Final Swarm be halted—before it even reached the sea? And how can you squirm there on the floor and make such incomprehensible mewlings of defeat? To the cookpots with you, General Ign, if you cannot explain this to my satisfaction at once!”

  “You may, of course, do with me as you will, my lord,” Ign pronounced piously from his prostrate position on the moist stone pavement of the dank audience chamber in the Palace of Vanished Gods. “My life is yours, and I will happily destroy myself if I have disappointed you. But I beg you will hear my final counsel first.”

  “Hear him,” urged the Chooser, fearful that in his current state Esshk would draw his own blade and slay his best general there and then before they even heard what happened. He’d never seen Esshk like this before, more like Kurokawa, who’d always been ruled by rage—and panic—rather than the thoughtful calculation Esshk had always shown. Killing Ign would severely delay any comprehensible report, but might also be unwise for other reasons. Ign and the New Army were more devoted to Esshk than the Celestial Mother, the first time such a thing had ever occurred, but the army’s affection flowed through Ign and there was no telling how destroying him might affect that. They could ill afford to find out now.

  “Speak, then,” Esshk rasped through clenched teeth, his crest quivering slightly.

  “Of course, Lord,” Ign said to the floor. “I was not in the van, it was not my place, yet I followed close enough in Giorsh, behind the cruiser swarm leading the galleys.” Giorsh, essentially “the Place of Generals at Sea,” was the traditional name for Grik flagships. The current Giorsh was the newest, mightiest greatship of battle built in the long, broad river leading north from Sofesshk to where the waters tumbled down from the monumental Lake of the Gods. “Even there,” Ign continued, raising his head enough to roll an eye up at his lord, “I quickly sensed when things began to turn. The smaller flying machines of the prey attacked the galleys throughout the day and destroyed many of them.” He flicked his own crest. “Not enough to notice, really, if there had not been so many New Army troops and their precious equipment in the van. They managed to destroy several cruisers as well, but had no success against the greatships of battle and their new defenses. All this was expected, considering that we sortied in daylight, and the losses remained a mere nuisance. They would have made no difference to our plan.” He took a long breath and his voice turned incredulous, indignant.

  “What we did not, could not have expected, was the arrival of a powerful surface ship, the prey’s Santa Catalina itself, Lord, crouching in our own holy river with two or more smaller consorts. Together, they apparently mounted a most impressive defense. I could not view the battle, and the signals of those who could were quite confused, but the result was plain. Great explosions, towering columns of smoke, and the Swarm forced to a grinding halt. I have since gathered more reports, but the scope of the disarray resulting from the stoppage is difficult to—”

  “But,” Esshk interrupted, bulging eyes widening even farther in astonishment. It was obvious the enemy knew they were coming; they’d seen from the sky, and air attacks had been expected. But how could a single ship—he didn’t credit its consorts—dare advance against them? And regardless how powerful, how could it alone throw their plans into such a shambles? “Why did the new guns on the leading greatship of battle not simply destroy Santa Catalina in the confines of the river? I am told it is not heavily armored and only the greater range of its weapons makes it formidable. Unable to maneuver, it should have been quickly killed!”

  “The enemy chose their position well, Lord. Perfectly, in point of fact. They caught us rounding the nakkle leg, above the stretch of river where the digger fishers live.”

  Esshk’s eyes narrowed. He knew the place well—and immediately understood the problem. “So, you tried to force a passage?”

  “I did not, Lord. As I reported, I did not even know the enemy was there until the first four greatships of battle were engaged. The airships sent to scout the river ahead of us reported nothing—though the sky winds were even greater than those that swept the ground today, and they may have been pushed off course.”

  “Four greatships of battle were insufficient to sink the Santa Catalina or drive it away?” Esshk’s tone had turned bitter again.

  “Worse, Lord,” Ign confessed. “It . . . destroyed them all.” He hurried on before Esshk could respond. “The fault is still mine. As we have often discussed, the nature of this conflict constantly forces us to consider the changing role of generals as well as warriors, and I should have been in the van, despite tradition.” He spread his arms on the damp stones. “I do not know if the outcome would have been different. Most likely, my first inclination would have been to attack. It is probable I would have been destroyed as well. But it is possible I may have reacted differently, viewing the situation for myself, and my failure rests on the fact that I never imagined such a scenario and never told the ships’ commanders what to do if they met opposition at such a point.”

  “What would you have told them?” the Chooser asked, equally skeptical that Ign could—or would’ve—stopped the commanders of powerful ships from closing with what must’ve appeared to be weaker prey.

  “I hope I would have ordered them to refuse battle and await my further contemplation, based on personal observations.”

  Even Esshk snorted at that. Ign is very good, very intuitive in this new way of war, he thought, and has had time to consider what he should’ve done. But could he—could anyone—think so dispassionately in the thrall of the Hunt? Impossible. That’s exactly why generals do not lead from the front. “So the enemy is more daring and has sharper teeth than we supposed,” he said, slightly less furious. “But I still fail to see how one ship could stop so much. There were more than enough ships to physically push it aside, if necessary.”

  “True, Lord, but at the nakkle leg, only one, at most two, greatships of battle could assail it at a time. The first were destroyed, preventing more from coming to grips. The wrecks have quite blocked the deep-water channel, and none of our greatships of battle can now get past them. Nor can we do anything about the blockage as long as that ship guards the bend; we cannot clear the obstruction under fire without risking adding to it.”

  The full realization of why Ign stopped, why he was here, finally dawned on Esshk. It was disaster! Catastrophe! The river was blocked and the Swarm was trapped. For an instant, he almost contemplated destroying himself.

  “What can be done?” the Chooser asked instead, watching Esshk’s crest begin to droop.

  “The cruisers might still get through, though they will be confined to several constricted passages. The galleys will have more choices.”

  �
��Can you send the galleys now?” Esshk asked.

  Ign chose his response with care. It had taken two hours to summon an airship to meet him onshore, then two more to fly here—under constant threat of air attack—and it was almost fully dark outside. “Our New Army can fight in the dark,” he conceded. Grik had always been able to do that, but their night vision couldn’t match their opponents’, so they traditionally avoided it. Better training helped, and should come as a terrible surprise to the enemy. But under the circumstances . . . “Yet, as I reported, the disarray on our side of the nakkle leg is quite astonishing, and preparing such a thing so precipitously, and in darkness, would be extremely difficult and take many hours. Even then I expect coordination would be poor—and the burning ships would night-blind our warriors while illuminating them for the enemy. We have discussed their fast-shooting weapons before and they might shred tens, if not hundreds, of our galleys if they try to push through unsupported.”

  “What of the cruisers?”

  “With all my worship, Lord, the cruisers would suffer the same fate in the dark, under accurate fire they can ill respond to, while attempting to avoid the wreckage around them. They would probably only further block the channel.”

  “Why not simply go around this Santa Catalina?” inquired the Chooser. Esshk looked at him blankly. “The galley warriors already carried their vessels to the water from where they hid. Have them carry them around the enemy and proceed behind him.”

  “A laudable suggestion, my lord,” Ign temporized, “but also . . . difficult to effect. The banks are quite steep there, so the galleys would have to row a great distance back upstream. With the rainy season so recently past, the current remains swift. They could accomplish it,” he continued, “but would then have to carry their vessels perhaps ten leagues—as much as nearly five tens of what Kurokawa called kilo’eters—before putting them back in the water. It would take days, across fairly open ground. . . .”