The wind had been good to Nerracca too, though, and as heavily loaded as she was, she managed a solid five knots throughout the night. Even so, at five knots it was an awful long way to the Makassar Strait. Matt didn’t like to think about what might happen if part of the Grik armada was headed for Baalkpan instead. If that was the case, by the time Nerracca and Walker reached the strait, they might find themselves caught behind the enemy fleet. There wasn’t much they could do about that but plod slowly onward and hope for the best.
Juan arrived in the pilothouse with the morning coffee and Matt gratefully accepted a refill. He reflected idly for a moment on how accustomed he’d grown to that particular ritual. Like all the routine activities that somehow carried on aboard his ship in spite of everything, it was a comforting taste of normalcy. The weird part was, ever since they ran completely out of “real” coffee and Juan was forced to make do with the local stuff, the morning brew had actually improved. In some corner of his mind, Matt still remembered the taste and smell of the coffee his mother used to make, and there was no comparison between that nostalgic ideal and what he was drinking now. But Juan’s new coffee was unquestionably better than it had been when he had the “real” stuff to ruin. Matt’s tired mind attempted to grasp the significance of that even while he tried to concentrate on the chart, but all he could come up with at the moment was that either he was actually beginning to get used to “monkey joe” or Juan’s coffee had been even worse than he realized. He straightened, shaking his head.
“I’m going to stretch out for a while, Mr. Dowden. Continue ‘steaming as before.’ Your course is zero two zero. Wake me if . . .” He shrugged and addressed the pilothouse at large. “Mr. Dowden has the deck and the conn.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Dowden replied. He turned to the helmsman. “This is Mr. Dowden. I have the deck and the conn . . .”
Even as Larry spoke, Matt was descending the ladder. Down the companionway and into his quarters, he had no conscious memory of how he arrived, sitting on his bunk and taking off his shoes. It had been a particularly grueling couple of days, physically as well as emotionally. The bad thing was, despite what he’d said to Sandra, it was only liable to get much worse.
“Captain to the bridge!”
Matt’s eyes opened with a start and he rolled over and looked at the speaker on the bulkhead. Had the summons really come or had he only imagined it? His brain was still foggy with the unpleasant and, as usual, quickly receding remnants of the elusive dream. It was uncomfortably hot and stuffy in the compartment and his shirt was soaked with sweat. He’d been so tired when he finally turned in that he hadn’t even clicked on the little fan. The light was still on too, and he wondered how long he’d slept. Rolling to a sitting position, he pressed the comm stud.
“Bridge. This is the captain . . . Did you just call me?” His voice was rough and his mouth was dry.
“Yes, sir. This is Mr. Garrett. You’re needed on the bridge.”
Surprised that it wasn’t Larry Dowden’s voice, Matt quickly looked at his watch. 1700. Somehow, he must have been asleep for almost nine hours and Dowden was probably in his own rack by now. As the Lemurian recruits were trained to the point they could competently exercise the duties of those they’d lost, Walker had finally been able to return to a normal watch rotation. So had her bridge officers, now they no longer had to wear so many other hats as well. Matt pressed the stud again.
“On my way.”
He pulled his shoes back on and quickly ran a comb through his hair. Dampening a towel in his tiny basin, he wiped the sleep from his eyes and moistened his face. Contemplating his razor for just a moment, he decided it could wait until he knew what the situation was. With the exception of Courtney Bradford, himself—and Sandra Tucker of course—virtually the entire crew now sported beards. The quality of each beard varied with the men’s individual ability to grow one, however, and a few were a little sparse. The razors on the ship would last only so long and he wasn’t going to force the men to shave, but he did require they keep themselves trimmed. His own determination was to remain clean-shaven as long as he possibly could and he disliked appearing with stubble. It was his little ritualistic way of showing daily defiance toward the adversity they faced.
Sensing it was important somehow, he picked up the razor after all. His officers knew he preferred to take the few extra minutes to make himself presentable. It never hurt for the men to see, no matter how desperate the situation, their skipper was always calm enough to hold a razor to his face. If time was critical enough to prevent him from doing so now, Garrett would have made that clear. He did hurry, though, and in just a few minutes he was climbing the ladder at the rear of the pilothouse. As he did so, he was surprised how rested and vigorous he felt. The long sleep had done him a world of good, but in spite of that he couldn’t ignore the growing dread that welled inside him. He always felt apprehensive when called to the bridge unexpectedly, but the fact that they were in the middle of the Java Sea, in broad daylight, only made his concern more acute. He knew his officers had probably conspired to let him sleep as long as he could and it would have taken something fairly serious to disturb him. In their current situation, things went from “fairly serious” to “catastrophic” pretty damn quick.
“Captain on the bridge!” Garrett called. He was waiting for him by the chart table.
“As you were. What’s up, Mr. Garrett?”
“Surface contact, Captain,” he said. “You can see it better from the fire-control platform.” The gunnery officer led him up the next ladder to the platform above the bridge. Matt followed slowly, still hampered by the use of only one arm. His plea the evening before had come to naught, but Sandra had promised to take another look at his shoulder today. Then she would make her decision. He hadn’t seen her yet today, having been asleep for most of it. Slightly winded, he gained the platform and joined the lieutenant beside the useless range finder.
“Port bow,” Garrett suggested, and pointed. “On the horizon. Nerracca saw them first and signaled. Her lookouts are a lot higher than ours. It didn’t take long for us to see them, though.”
Matt raised his binoculars and peered through them for a moment, adjusting the objective. Walker and Nerracca were in one of those rare parts of the Java Sea in which absolutely no land could be seen in any direction. They would soon raise the islands off the southern coast of Borneo, but for now there was nothing. The afternoon was bright and almost completely clear. A few high clouds scudded hastily overhead in the direction of Borneo. Evidently the wind had finally shifted back out of the south.
Matt focused carefully at the point where the sea met the sky and as he stared, he began to discern towering, dirty-white sails outlined against the light blue background. There was no doubt about it. Even as he concentrated on holding the binoculars steady, more and more of the ominous shapes resolved themselves in the distance. It wasn’t just the advance element of the enemy fleet they’d been avoiding either. There were far too many. In spite of the heat, icy tendrils clutched his heart and radiated outward, across his chest and down his back. Far in the distance, beyond the ever more crowded horizon, Matt thought he could see a hazy column of black-gray smoke drifting away to the north and up toward Borneo and the Makassar Strait. He lowered the binoculars until they hung suspended from the strap around his neck.
“They must’ve seen us,” he observed. “At least Nerracca. Her masts are twice as tall as theirs.”
“Yes, sir. It’s hard to tell, but it looks like they’ve altered course since I first saw them. Right before I called you. Should I sound general quarters?”
Matt shook his head. “Not yet. But please do have Mr. McFarlane, Mr. Dowden, and the Bosun report to the bridge immediately.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
Ten minutes later, Matt gently tapped the chart with his index finger. “We’re here,” he said to the small group that had quickly gathered on the bridge. Then the same finger stabbed down a little to the
northwest of their position. “The enemy is there. There’s no longer any question in my mind that they know where Baalkpan is. There’s no other reason for them to come this way.” His lips formed a rueful smirk. “Just like we feared, the Japs must’ve been ‘reading our mail.’ Monitoring our transmissions.” The smirk changed to a snarl. “And they ratted us out to the lizards. Regardless whatever other ‘inducements’ the Grik might have used to get the Japs to help them, they told them about Baalkpan because they wanted to.” He shook his head, genuinely amazed. The Japanese were the enemy and when it came to Amagi, he had to admit it was even kind of personal. But he still found it hard to believe they would actively, voluntarily, help the Grik. Fleetingly, he wondered how Amagi’s more junior personnel felt about that. Pointless to speculate. He looked at each of those present. “Whether this force represents the bulk of the enemy fleet or not is impossible to say just yet, but it’s certainly a sizable fraction of it. Nerracca’s lookouts have counted upwards of a hundred ships so far.” He paused and took a deep breath. “And there’s definitely a column of dark smoke rising from somewhere within or beyond the enemy force. We have to assume that smoke represents Amagi.”
“But . . . when Lieutenant Mallory reported the advance force nearing Surabaya, he also sighted a significant number of enemy ships on an identical course less than thirty miles behind them,” Dowden stressed.
“Yeah, but as I’ve been concerned all along, if they really have more than three hundred ships, they have more than enough to send a ‘significant number’ in two directions at once. It seems that’s what they’ve done.”
“We gotta warn Baalkpan!” Spanky said, around a mouthful of the yellow leaves.
“That’s happening right now. I just hope they can hear us. We’re still pretty far away.” He frowned. “I told Clancy to ask for confirmation when he gets through. Radio silence is pointless at this stage. They clearly know where we’re going.”
Dowden’s face suddenly went white with dreadful realization. “What are we going to do about Nerracca?”
Matt nodded slowly. “Precisely. What are we going to do? Walker can easily outrun the enemy, but obviously Nerracca can’t. She’s gained almost a knot, with this good wind on her starboard quarter. For her, that’s really moving. Right now the lizards are beating into the wind, but once they turn north after passing these islands here”—he pointed again at the chart—“she won’t have a chance. She might not anyway.” He nodded toward the distant ships. “As you can see, they have the angle on us.”
“Damn it, Skipper!” Gray growled with frustration. “What can we do? There’s seven or eight thousand people on that ship!”
Matt glared at him. “That’s what I was going to ask you!” He rubbed his eyes and looked at the others. “Gentlemen, we’ve got to come up with something, and we’ve got to do it now!” McFarlane’s face wore a thoughtful expression. “Spit it out, Spanky!”
“Well, you said Nerracca’s making six knots.”
“Thereabouts.”
“If we light off the number two boiler, Walker can make thirty for a while. Hell, we could sustain twenty-eight if nothing pops.” He glanced around at the expectant faces. “That’s a hell of a lot of horsepower.”
“You mean, rig a tow?” Matt breathed. Spanky nodded.
“But will it be enough?” Garrett asked skeptically. “I know Nerracca’s mostly wood, but her hull is incredibly thick and she’s . . . huge! Especially with all those people on board, I bet she weighs twenty thousand tons!”
“Probably more,” Spanky said.
“Could we add enough to her speed to make it worth the effort?” Matt asked, but Spanky shook his head.
“Skipper, I got no idea. I don’t know what else we can do.”
“I’m all in favor of giving it a try,” said Gray, “but we don’t even have a cable big enough. What are we gonna pull her with, kite string?”
“Nerracca has heavy cable,” Garrett said, thinking aloud. “Hell, her anchor cable is three feet thick.”
“Right,” said Gray, “and what are we gonna secure it to? There’s not a cleat on the ship that would stand strain like that!”
Spanky glared at the Chief. “Then figure it out, Fitz! You’re in charge of the deck divisions. You’re always reminding us of that! Rigging the tow is something you’re going to have to solve! Distribute the load to more than one cleat—you can come up with something!”
Gray nodded. “That might work,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“There’s going to be other problems, Captain,” Larry Dowden warned.
Matt sighed. “I know, Mr. Dowden. We’ll just have to solve them, won’t we?” For a moment he watched the distant armada creeping slowly but inexorably closer to the point far ahead that he’d calculated Walker and Nerracca must reach before the enemy did. “We don’t have any choice.”
Pete Alden stood on one of the many balconies surrounding Nakja-Mur’s Great Hall. The branches of the mighty tree that soared from the top of the impressive structure provided some much-appreciated shade. Still, it was hot and humid and it had been a long, grueling day. He wiped sweat from his eyes and took a sip of some sour-sweet nectar that had been offered him by a member of the High Chief’s expanded staff. Pete grimaced at the taste, as well as the situation. In the distance, down at the pier, he made out Mahan’s disheveled form. Still wounded by all she’d been through and badly battered by the storm, she’d crept painfully into Baalkpan Bay just two days before. She looked muddy with rust and her missing ’stack and searchlight tower gave her a gap-toothed appearance. Her steering had been repaired before she left Aryaal and her bridge was a bridge again, but there sure weren’t any bells and whistles.
Jim Ellis had made his report and it still felt sort of weird having an officer come to him. Letts had administrative command—after Nakja-Mur, of course—but he’d been off inspecting the wellhead and retrieving the launch from upriver when Mahan arrived. It had finally been determined that Tony Scott must have fallen prey to a “super lizard,” an ambush hunting descendant of Allosaurus, according to Bradford. The things were rare and Pete had never seen one, but by all accounts they were one of the few “dinosaurs” of this region that weren’t stunted. The Lemurian scouts had discovered tracks and blood on the pipeline. The monster must have been lying in wait for passing prey, hunkered slightly back in the dense foliage along the trail when Scott came ambling by. It was a terrible loss and Pete shuddered to think about how it must have been. Even so, the irony of the coxswain’s death wasn’t lost on him.
Anyway, since Pete had operational command of Baalkpan’s defenses, Jim cheerfully reported to him when he arrived. There wasn’t even the tiniest hint that Mr. Ellis considered it inappropriate and Pete was grateful for that. The irony of a naval lieutenant in command of a destroyer reporting to Mrs. Alden’s son was even more bizarre, to him at least, than the way poor Scott had gotten it. Ever since then, though, Jim had been down at the dock working night and day, with hundreds of Lemurian “yard-apes” crawling all over his ship. By Nakja-Mur’s command, every possible assistance, regardless of expense, was placed at the disposal of the young lieutenant and his wounded destroyer.
Nakja-Mur had certainly stepped up to the plate; Alden had no complaints about that. He no longer questioned what things cost. The High Chief had finally completely grasped the concept of total war, and everything else had dimmed to insignificance. Nothing was as important to him as saving his city and its people and he’d do whatever it took. With Letts’s help, the High Chief of Baalkpan had blossomed into a kind of bureaucratic prodigy. In a government like that of the United States, Nakja-Mur would have been performing all the duties usually associated with the secretaries of state, commerce, agriculture, public works, and war. He didn’t really know doodly-squat about any of those things, but he was smart enough to know it, and he delegated all the hands-on work to people who did. He just made sure the wheels were greased and he arbitrated dis
putes. He was also a genius at sorting out priorities and making sure the most important projects got the assets they needed the quickest. He relied heavily on Alden and Letts to advise him as to which projects those were, but since Baalkpan’s defense and the support of the AEF were almost everybody’s top priority, there was rarely any disagreement between them.
The exception to this unity of purpose was still represented by what Letts called the Run Away Party, which was enjoying a resurgence that began with Fristar’s return and was reinforced by the terrible news that the offensive was turning into a desperate retreat. The “Run-Aways” were still a minority since most of them had, of course, already run away. But Alden figured that as soon as the new scope of the threat they faced became known, the Run-Aways would gain many converts. There was no Lemurian president, or anything of the sort, to rule the collection of independent Homes and peoples from other “land” Homes that had gathered at Baalkpan. The leadership was more like some sort of screwy legislature of equal representatives. Kind of like the city-state setup of ancient Greece, Alden thought. Unlike the captain, Pete didn’t know much about history—beyond that of the Marine Corps—but he’d heard of the Spartans and he knew about Thermopylae. He hoped they weren’t facing a similar situation. He knew one of the problems the Greeks had faced was an inability to work together. But Nakja-Mur chaired all the meetings since he was High Chief of the “Host” Home. Hell, throw in speaker of the house while you’re at it, Alden thought. So far he’d managed to keep everybody’s eye on the ball.
Pete gazed out across the city below and wondered yet again at the ingenuity of the people here. Instead of walls to protect them from predators, like the Aryaalans used, they had opted for a raised-platform architecture that allowed them to sleep safely at night, when those predators were most likely to visit. The problem with that type of defense, however, was it was useless in the face of an invading army. That was a threat Baalkpan had never had to contend with before, and Alden could sympathize with the growing panic felt by those who heard the news brought by the flying-boat the evening before.
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