by Allen Steele
The last is fortunate for most of the colonies, since the worst effects are usually felt east of Midland, where the hurricanes would pick up most of their force as they traveled across the Meridian Sea before dying out when they hit the narrow part of the river south of Narragansett. In this case, though, it also meant that this particular storm was barreling straight toward us.
“If you want my opinion,” I said, “I think it’s pretty obvious. If we try to turn back, we’ll only be sailing straight into that thing. Our only option is”—I let out my breath—“well, find some place to drop anchor and ride it out.”
My advice was only an echo of what I’d heard Carlos himself say while I was out on deck, but it seemed like the proper course of action. Barry cleared his throat. “The situation is a little more complicated than that,” he said, glancing at Carlos. “There’s something else you should know.”
For a moment, Carlos seemed reluctant to answer. “I’ve been asked…well, more than asked, really…to return home at once. We received word just before dinner that I’m needed at Government House. The sooner the better, storm or no storm.”
“Now? Lousy timing, don’t you think?”
“Actually, my timing hasn’t been so good either.” He sat down in one of the deck chairs. “Sorry, gentlemen. I should have never come along on this trip…or at least I should’ve dropped out when I heard about what was happening on Earth.”
I remembered something that had occurred just before the ExEx left Bridgeton. “Is that why the EA ambassador came to see you off? To ask you to stay behind?” Apparently surprised that I’d recall the incident, Carlos raised an eyebrow, then slowly nodded. “I don’t get it. What difference does it make whether you’re there or here with us? Can’t President Thompson handle this on his own?”
“Our current president is…” Carlos sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Garth’s a capable administrator, so far as the day-to-day job of running the government goes, but when it comes to something like this, he’s out of his depth. Right now, he needs someone who has firsthand experience in negotiating with the Western Hemisphere Union. And before you ask…no, Wendy can’t handle this by herself. I’m the one who worked out the details of the U.N. treaty, not her.”
I still didn’t comprehend what he was saying, but it wasn’t the time for me to get a crash course in political science. “At any rate,” Jon went on, “the Council sent word that he needs to return to Liberty at once. They’re preparing to send a gyro from Ft. Lopez to pick him up and fly him back to Hammerhead, where he’ll transfer to another gyro that will take him to New Florida once the storm passes through. All well and good…except for two problems.”
“The hurricane…”
“The hurricane, yes, that’s one. The gyro is going to have to fly out here, pick him up, and return to base within the next…” Jon paused to gaze at the satellite image of the approaching storm. “Forty hours, I’d say. Call it a day and a half, at best, before that thing reaches us. But that’s just the first problem.”
“There’s no place around here where an aircraft can land safely.” Barry shook his head. “Believe me, I’ve been keeping that in mind while we were in the sound, just in case we needed an emergency rescue. The terrain is either too steep or too wooded, and the ship’s masts would prevent a rope ladder from being lowered from a gyro. Not even a suborbital shuttle could do this. Besides, we’ve got to move away from here as soon as possible.”
“Oh, I agree.” Jon absently gnawed at a fingernail. “The last place we should be two days from now is on the river. The LeMare is built to weather a storm, but a hurricane is out of the question. So wherever we go, it has to be where we can ride it out, but also within range of the gyro…and it’s got to be soon. Very, very soon.”
“You mean, hoist anchor right now?” I couldn’t quite believe what the captain was suggesting.
Jon didn’t say anything for a moment, but instead quietly gazed at Barry. The pilot’s mouth tightened into a thin line as he contemplated the question. “I think we can do it,” he said at last. “It’s a clear night, so we’ll have plenty of bearlight, and we’ve got the radar to warn us of any floating debris.” A grim smile. “At least we won’t have to worry about colliding with any fishing boats. We’re all alone out here.”
“So the question is, where do we go?” Jon walked over to the navigation console, where he pulled up an orbital map of Coyote on its main screen. As the rest of us followed him, he zoomed in on our present position. “Farther downriver, there’s this channel here, between Pequot and Pocahontas,” he went on, pointing at the screen. “If we travel far enough up it, we may be able to find safe anchorage.”
“True…but that still puts us square within the storm’s track.” Carlos seemed apprehensive. “Also, that’s the limit of the gyro’s range. The pilot would be able to get there, but I’m not sure he’d be able to get back.”
“A shuttle from Albion…” I began.
“New Brighton’s shut down. All spacecraft grounded. We thought of that already.” Carlos paused. “I have another idea, but I’m not sure anyone here is going to like it.”
Reaching past Jon, he manipulated the trackball with his fingertips, moving the cursor in a southerly direction. “Here,” he said, pointing to the image. “South of the equator, off the coast of Cherokee.”
I felt something catch in my throat. Due south of Pequot, on the opposite side of the Great Equatorial River, lay the continent of Cherokee. And within its northern coast, we could see a broad crescent bay, with small barrier islands on each side. “If we move the ship here,” Carlos went on, pointing to the southernmost end of the bay, “we should have enough protection, provided we anchor far enough away from the beach that we’re not hit with storm surges. Not only that, but it also puts us on the hurricane’s lee side, where the winds will be a bit less violent. With luck, we might catch just a glancing blow, instead of being smack in the path of its eye.”
He was right. While Coyote’s trade winds in the northern hemisphere predominantly blew from the west, the opposite occurred south of the equator, where they came in from the east. Cherokee was a little farther away from us than Pocahontas, but if the LeMare were to sail across the Great Equatorial River and make anchorage in its northern bay, that would put the ship far enough south of the equator that it might avoid the worst effects of the hurricane.
“And the gyro?” Barry asked. “Do you think it’s going to be able to get there? Or even land?”
“By air, it’s closer to Hammerhead than Pocahontas. As for whether it can land”—Carlos studied the satellite imagery for a few moments—“looks like coastal savanna, for the most part. Might be a little muddy once you’re past the beach, but I don’t mind getting my boots wet.” He hesitated. “If the gyro lifts off first thing tomorrow morning, it should be able to rendezvous with the LeMare sometime later in the day…provided, of course, that we leave here within the next hour or two.”
He looked at Jon. “Your call, Captain. I’ll abide by whatever decision you make…including telling Government House that they’ll just have to get along without me. But I think this is feasible.”
No one said anything for a few moments. Hearing a floorboard creak behind me, I glanced over my shoulder to see Lynn standing in the doorway. How long she’d been there, I couldn’t know, but the look on her face told me that she’d heard much of our conversation. No time to snuggle tonight.
Jon finally let out his breath. “All right, then,” he said, his voice low yet decisive. “We’ll make for Cherokee.” He laid a hand on Barry’s shoulder. “Start plotting a course. We hoist anchor within the hour. And Carlos”—he glanced at his father-in-law—“put in a call to Liberty, tell them to send the gyro. I’ll go below and inform the rest of the crew.”
And that was it. Barry turned to begin making preparations to set sail, while Carlos took a seat at the communications panel. I followed Jon as he headed for the door
; he ignored Lynn as she stepped aside to let him pass, but her eyes were wide when I paused to talk to her.
“Break out your pad,” I murmured. “You’re about to get the story of your life.”
Night crossings of the Great Equatorial River were uncommon. Although lighthouses had been erected in the Bridgeton, New Brighton, and Carlos’s Pizza harbors, they were mainly there to help vessels find their way home if they stayed out too long. A fishing boat or freighter still on the river after sundown usually dropped anchor off the nearest coast, where its crew would spend the night sleeping, drinking, and playing cards. After all these years, the Great Equatorial was still considered dangerous, its depths hiding mysteries as yet unrevealed. In the wharf-side taverns, sailors told stories of friends whom they no longer counted among the living after their boats had vanished, never to be seen again.
So it was no small thing for the LeMare to attempt crossing the river in the middle of the night, particularly in an unexplored part of the world. A little more than 120 miles of water separated Pequot from Cherokee; tacking against a fifteen-knot wind meant that the ship would have to trace a shallow southwest arc until its sails caught the easterly trades below the equator. That would put us in the bay somewhere between twelve and fifteen hours after leaving Pequot; if the LeMare waited until morning to depart, the delay would increase the chances of being caught by the storm while we were still on open water. A few of the crew might have argued with Jon, but not for very long.
Even with the approaching hurricane, though, there was an almost uncanny silence upon the river as the LeMare slipped away from shore. With the exception of a few high clouds illuminated by bearlight, the night sky was clear, the stars gleaming like thousands of distant candles. Bear was nearly at zenith, its rings fully exposed; standing at the bow, one could see the giant planet reflected upon the waters; it might have been easy to pretend that the ship was gliding across a mirror, if not for the waves gently lapping against the prow and the slow rocking of the deck.
Indeed, the nocturnal peace lulled many of the crew. By midnight, most of the scientists had gone to bed, while the sailors took turns standing watch on deck. Jon, Barry, and Carlos decided to stay awake through the night; someone stoked up the wheelhouse coffeemaker, and once the automatic pilot was set, the three of them hunkered down for the grave-yard shift.
I could have sacked out, but I didn’t. Call it a premonition, or perhaps the result of having heard those stories about vanished ships, but I felt an obligation to do my job. So I went below to fetch the carbine from my cabin. I thought Jorge was asleep, yet as I sat on the edge of my bunk to load my weapon, I heard him stir, and looked up to find him peering down at me. Over the past couple of weeks, I’d been careful never to let him see me handling my rifle, lest he discover where I’d hidden the ammo. I quietly told him to go back to sleep—nothing here you need to see, Jorge—and his face disappeared again. I wondered how long he’d been watching me, though, and hoped that he hadn’t spotted me removing the magazines from beneath the mattress.
There were a couple of sailors in the peak when I came up to the fo’c’sle again, using the windlass cover as a poker table. They noticed my rifle, of course, but didn’t say anything about it. I pulled up a barrel and joined them for a few hands, using a couple of colonials I happened to have in my pocket as my stakes. I was good, but they were better. I won the pot, only to lose it again, and once it got to the point where I’d have had to start writing IOUs, I surrendered and wandered up to the bridge to see what the other guys were doing.
As it turned out, the conversation up there was rather interesting. Carlos had begun to reminisce about his younger days when he’d assumed the identity of Rigil Kent to wage guerrilla war against the Union Guard. Pouring myself a mug of coffee, I parked myself against a bulkhead and quietly listened in. Like everyone else on Coyote, I already knew about his years as a resistance leader during the Revolution. Yet it’s one thing to read his wife’s memoirs, and quite another to hear it from the man himself. Like anyone who’d lived a long and adventurous life, Carlos was prone to exaggeration; whenever his tales began to get too tall, though, Barry would playfully correct the record, and it became fun to watch the two of them argue about who did what when.
Carlos was telling us about how the Matriarch Hernandez had set up an ambush for him and his troops at Goat Kill Creek, when he was interrupted by a shrill beep from the navigation console. Still cradling his coffee mug in his lap, Jon twisted around in his seat to check the radar. A frown appeared on his face as he peered more closely at the screen.
“Something coming up off the port bow,” he murmured. “Ninety-eight degrees east, about a half mile away.”
“Driftwood?” Next to him, Barry bent a little closer. “Could be a log…”
“No. It’s in motion.” Jon paused, then sucked in his breath. “Uh-oh. Signal’s split…now there’s two of them.”
Carlos immediately forgot about the story he’d been telling. “Still coming toward us?” he asked, and Jon nodded. “Might just be catwhales, but…” His voice trailed off, then he looked over at me. “Sawyer…?”
“Right.” Pushing myself off the floor, I picked up my rifle from where I’d rested it against the bulkhead. Barry was already on his feet; he switched off the autopilot and resumed manual control of the wheel. “Better turn off the formation lights, too,” I added. “And kill the floods while you’re at it.”
Jon was about to put down his coffee mug. He nearly dropped it when he heard that. “All the lights?” he asked, giving me an uncertain look. “Are you sure?”
“Do what he says.” Carlos’s face had gone pale; he had risen from his chair and was heading for the door leading to the captain’s cabin, located behind the bridge. “If that’s what I think it is, we need to get those lights out.”
Jon didn’t argue; he’d suddenly realized what we were talking about. I didn’t wait any longer, but left the bridge as fast as I could, not bothering to use the ladder, instead jumping straight down to the deck hatch.
The formation lights on top of the masts and at the bow and stern had been extinguished by the time I made it to the fo’c’sle. The sailors with whom I’d been playing cards were still sitting at the windlass; they looked up in puzzlement as the floodlights that had illuminated the bow abruptly went out, then they turned to see me trotting toward them.
“Clear the deck,” I said. “Get below and stay there.” One of them started to gather up the cards until I pulled him away from the windlass. “Don’t worry about that. Just get out of here.”
With the floodlights off, the fo’c’sle was plunged into darkness. I glanced back at the wheelhouse in time to see the ceiling lamps go out as well; against the back-glow from the consoles, I could just make out Jon and Barry standing at the windows. But there was still light coming from the belowdecks portholes, little bright ovals that reflected off the surface of the river just above the waterline. I swore beneath my breath; even though Barry was turning the ship to the west, the porthole lights resembled the sort of bioluminescence that would attract the things coming for us.
Too late to do anything about that, though. Bracing my rump against the windlass, I shut my eyes, counted to ten, then opened them again. My pupils had become a little more dark-adapted; I avoided looking up at Bear, but peered straight out at the dark waters off the port bow. I couldn’t see anything, though, and I prayed that the creatures out there had lost interest in the LeMare.
But I wasn’t counting on it.
I flipped off the rifle’s safety, switched to full-auto, then raised it to firing position, bracing the stock against my left shoulder. Activating the infrared night-vision scope, I squinted through it with my right eye. Within the eyepiece was a clear view of the river for a range of about fifty yards, a greenish grey surface that rippled beneath the bearlight. Still nothing. Maybe they had gone away…
“Sonar contact!” Jon had opened one of the wheelhouse windows to yell down
to me. “Bearing one-seven-eight, twenty yards off port bow!”
Damn it! They’d gone under! Still watching the river through my scope, I took a deep breath, trying hard to keep my hands from trembling. If those goddamn things went under the ship, they could pop up just about anywhere…
“Easy, son.” Carlos’s voice, from just behind me. “I’ve got your back.”
I was so startled to hear him, I nearly looked away from the scope. “Mr. President, you shouldn’t be out…”
That’s when they attacked.
The first few years after humans arrived on Coyote, it was believed that boids were the most dangerous animals on the planet. And for good reason; they had killed Carlos’s parents, Jorge and Rita Montero, only a few days after the Alabama party set foot on New Florida, and over time they’d brought death to many more colonists.
But we were wrong. There were creatures on the new world far more menacing than boids. It just took a while for humans to find them…or rather, for them to find us.
The first time anyone encountered a river horse was in c.y. 06, when a group of fishermen from New Boston who’d wandered up the Great Equatorial River ran into a pack near a small island just off the coast of Great Dakota. According to an account written by Carlos’s sister Marie, who’d led the rescue effort from the nearby camp that would later be named Clarksburg, only two men survived the attack, with one of them dying on the way back to Great Dakota. Indeed, a member of Marie’s party was killed while they were getting the men off the island. In both instances, the river horses had come in fast and hard, and struck with neither warning nor mercy.
Even though river horses had rarely been seen since then, those who made their living on the Great Equatorial were all too aware of their existence. Every so often the half-eaten carcass of a catwhale would wash ashore, and once the crew of a schooner spotted a pack ganging up on one just north of Albion, circling the giant fish like hungry wolves. And, of course, there was the occasional disappearance of a fishing boat unwary enough to be caught out on the river after dark.