Rising voices reached them and they turned to face the battlement. There, in the distance, Adar stood, arms outstretched, his long robe flowing around him. It was the stance of supplication. Quickly, most within Chack's view imitated the gesture and, almost as one, they turned to face the Sun. Risa poked him savagely in the ribs and he joined her in the pose. The warm rays swept across his face and he could see the mighty orb even through his closed eyelids. With the rest of his people he spoke the words: "Maker of All Things, I beg your protection, but if it is my time, light my Spirit's path to its Home in the Heavens!" He crossed his arms on his chest and knelt to the deck. There was an audible rumble of knees on wood as hundreds did the same. Clearly, not all participated because someone cried out in alarm and Chack looked up.
A crimson, snakelike pennant unfurled from the masthead of one of the ships, and even as it snapped taut and streamed over the sea, a great, harsh, hissing cry arose from all the ships at once. It came as a wave of sound like the wind and sea in a gale, but there was an unnatural malevolence that the sea had never meant. Shields were plucked from bulwarks and weapons clashed against them, adding a monstrous throbbing, metallic heartbeat to the sound. It was the loudest, most terrifying thing Chack had ever heard, as thousands of throats and weapons clamored at him across the water. Then, as the terrible din reached its peak, six Grik ships turned as one to destroy his Home, his family, his world.
The afternoon watch came on duty, and the normalcy of tradition-bound procedure left Matt heartened. For a moment the terrible, unreal events of the previous days seemed remote. The sea was mild, the sky was clear, and a firm, cool breeze washed across him from the open bridgewing. It seemed to cleanse him of the depression and trepidation that had settled upon him. It was one of those days that made destroyermen glory in the seemingly effortless speed and grace of their sharp-hulled ships instead of cursing them for their inconsiderate tendency to pitch and roll in heavier seas. It was a heaven-sent respite for him, as well as the rest of the crew, and whether they took their mood from their captain or not, he saw more smiles and normal, ordinary goofing around than he had in many days.
He sat in his chair and leafed through the pages of the report. Davis's leg was still not improving, but more of the invalids were ready for light duty. Spanky, Letts, and, of all people, the Mice were designing a drilling rig and had convinced Bernie Sandison to endorse their scheme to use the torpedo tubes on the inoperable number three mount for a condensation tower to refine the oil once they found it. He looked out at the fo'c'sle. Gray had the first deck division repairing topside damage, although Matt knew how the Bosun suffered over the dingy, reddening deck and the long streaks of rust that had begun to take hold. One man with a quart can of paint followed behind the welders as they refitted and straightened twisted stanchions and worked to repair the shell damage to the starboard hawse. The anchor on that side was gone forever, but they were winching the spare into place while he watched. He was surprised to see the Japanese officer helping, under the supervision of a certain Marine, who sat on the capstan bollard and watched like a chain gang overseer. The men working with Shinya kept their distance and cast many resentful looks, but they were letting him help. It was a start, Matt supposed. All in all, it was a pretty good day.
The only things darkening his mood were the subconscious fuel gauge, creeping ever downward in his mind, and the continuing dull ache over what might have happened to Mahan.
He heard voices behind him and turned to see Courtney Bradford and Sandra Tucker asking permission to come on the bridge. Matt smiled broadly, waved them over beside him, and stood up. "Good afternoon, Lieutenant Tucker, Mr. Bradford. A fine day, is it not?"
"Indeed it is, Captain," replied the Australian, and Sandra smiled back at him. "I thought you'd like to know that we've finished our `science experiment' at last, and can manage without its, uh, services any longer."
"Thank God," said Matt, and chuckled. "I take it . . . I hope you mean you pitched the stinking thing over the side?" Sandra and Bradford had worked through the night and into the morning dissecting the dead creature from Bali. Some of the crew watched throughout, duties permitting, and Bradford kept up a running lecture the entire time. The rest of the crew, however, were increasingly vocal about the overpowering stench. Now they both stood, tired but with satisfied smiles on their faces.
"Yes, um, it has gone on to the reward it so richly deserved," answered Bradford in a dry tone. Matt chuckled again, but was secretly amazed that Bradford had given up so easily. He'd half expected him to ask to keep it in the refrigerator—or his cabin, if necessary. But Matt saw now that Courtney Bradford had undergone a transformation. It may have been subtle, and possibly fleeting, but he'd been there when they were attacked and he saw what happened to Marvaney. Besides, fascinating as the creatures were, they had also, at the very least, kept him from studying anything else. The furry lizards of Bali had become his enemies as surely as the Japanese.
"Well, what did you find out?"
"Quite a lot, actually. We don't believe they were lizards at all. At least I don't," he said. "Miss Tucker is not quite so fully convinced of that." He nodded at her respectfully. "But I believe they are somewhat more like birds in many ways."
"Birds? With teeth like that? You must be joking."
"No, sir, he's not," said Sandra. "I know a good bit about human anatomy, and anatomy in general, I suppose, but I'm obviously no expert on these creatures. Nobody is. Mr. Bradford has more experience studying . . . similar things than I do, and I can see his point. They're built like birds— or emus and ostriches, to be more precise—except for the upper arms, and their bones are hollow, but incredibly strong like a bird's. Our opinions diverge because of those upper arms, their tails, and well, their heads too, I guess. Their tails have feathers, but they're muscular like an alligator's. And their upper arms show no sign of being vestigial wings, but seem to have evolved as arms to be arms. And of course their heads." She shuddered slightly. "Or more specifically, their jaws. There's nothing birdlike about them at all."
"But my dear lieutenant," countered Bradford, evidently continuing an argument. "You're basing your opinions more upon what they look like and less on what they are like—"
Matt held up his hand, smiling still, to stop him. "Enough. While this is all very fascinating, my most pressing question involves their intelligence. Are they as smart as they seemed? I mean, there were ten of us and ten of them, and they displayed what to my mind could only be described as the tactic of hitting us and the men at the boat simultaneously—in a way that would keep us apart. As well armed as they are with teeth and claws, one on one, they had every reason to expect the advantage."
Sandra was silent, and Bradford shifted uncomfortably. "We don't really know, I'm afraid," he said at last. "Theoretically, yes. They certainly have the brain capacity, and in proportion to their body size, their brains are similar to our own. Then again . . ."
Matt nodded. The very idea of something that ferocious being smart was daunting indeed. There was no question that they would have to go ashore again. Maybe not on Bali, but the first time they had set a foot on land, something had tried to bite it off. They had to presume that other places wouldn't be any different. Somehow, they had to figure out how to go ashore—and work there—without being eaten.
The crow's nest comm whistled. "Bridge, lookout," came the tinny voice of Elden.
"Bridge, Riggs here," replied the petty officer.
"PO, I've got smoke on the horizon, bearing zero one five. A hell of a lot of smoke. There's so much I thought it was a cloud at first. It's pretty much the same color—not black like an oil fire. Whatever's burning is pretty big, though, and it's in the water. Not—repeat, not—on land."
"Excuse me, please," said Matt to his visitors, raising his binoculars.
"Can you see what it is yet?" Riggs asked the lookout. "Is it a ship, or what?"
"Negative, PO. All I see is smoke. Whatever it is, it's stil
l . . . Wait! Damn! I'd about swear it was that big monkey-cat ship!" Matt lowered his binoculars with a strange mix of disappointment, relief, and curious concern. Disappointment that it wasn't Mahan, but relief that it wasn't Mahan on fire. The curious concern was for the monkey-cats, as Elden called them, if that's who it was. Well, he thought, if it is, maybe it's time we met. Besides, they appeared to be in trouble.
"All ahead full," he ordered. "Come right, fifteen degrees."
Walker's head came around and she quickly gathered speed. Water peeled back from her bow as she charged, the feather nearly reaching the fo'c'sle. The men on the foredeck stopped what they were doing and stood with fluttering clothes, their faces turned toward the rushing breeze and the towering column of smoke in the distance. Five minutes passed, then ten.
"Bridge?" came Elden's voice. The normally unflappable shipfitter sounded unusually strained.
"Bridge, aye."
"It's the monkey-cats all right, and there are several large three-masted ships around 'em. Most are lashed to her, and it looks like they're fighting! The monkey-cats are definitely burning—and maybe one of the other ships as well." There was a moment's pause. "I think there's a hell of a fight going on."
Matt turned to Reynolds. "Get the range from Mr. Barry," he ordered.
"Aye, aye, Captain," said Reynolds, wide-eyed. It was his first stint as talker, and it was just his luck something serious would happen. He spoke briefly into the microphone and listened for the response. His voice squeaked slightly when he reported. "Sir, Ensign Barry estimates the range at about fifteen thousand yards."
"Very well. Sound general quarters, if you please."
The deep gonging sound that was part horn, part buzzer resonated through the ship, and surprised men snatched helmets and life vests as they raced to their stations. Some rolled from their racks, disoriented for a moment, and hesitated like they would never have done before the Squall. Feet clanked metallically on the ladder as Lieutenant Garrett and the rest of the fire-control team gained the bridge and scampered to the platform above. Bernard Sandison appeared, tucking in his shirt, along with torpedomen Hale, Carter, and Aubrey, who took their places at the torpedo directors.
Reynolds recited a litany of readiness reports, and after much longer than Matt approved, he made the announcement: "All stations manned and ready, Captain. Mr. Dowden has the auxiliary conn and reports . . . um . . . the chaos he viewed from his perspective looked like a shorepatrol raid on an Olongapo . . . whorehouse." His face turned pink.
Matt grunted and glanced at his watch. "Pathetic," he announced. "A Jap car salesman with a rowboat and a stick of dynamite could have sent us to the bottom by now. Sparks, inform the Bosun that the deck division was the last to report." Everyone cringed to think how the Chief would exact his vengeance for that humiliation, and he was heard even now, bellowing at the crew of the number one gun.
Much of the confusion was caused by the need to stow the "peacetime" awnings that now covered the deck spaces, but Matt knew most of the blame was his. He'd grown lax about daily drills since they no longer faced imminent annihilation by the Japanese. That didn't mean all threat of annihilation had passed, and despite their trauma—or maybe because of it—drill was now more important, not less. He resolved to make sure his destroyermen were never caught flat-footed again.
He sat back in his chair, Sandra and Bradford not entirely forgotten but relegated to that portion of his mind not preparing to fight his ship if need be. "Mr. Sandison. What's the current status of our torpedoes?"
"One, three and five are loaded, prepped, and ready in all respects."
"No news on the condemned torps?"
"No, sir. I still have them apart in the shop. One didn't even have a repair tag, so we're checking it out, piece by piece. The other's propulsion machinery works fine; it just needs recharging. But it's clearly a dud. The warhead housing is all crumpled in. The tag said one of our subs fired it into a Dutch freighter by mistake and it didn't go off, but it punched a hole in her side and got stuck. Yard-apes fished it out of the freighter when she got into port." Sandison smirked ironically. "Everyone was lucky on that deal."
There'd been far too many "duds" of every sort. In this one case it was fortunate, but Matt hated to think how many American ships and submarines might have been lost, and enemies spared, simply because of faulty ordnance. A lot of the antiaircraft shells on Houston had been duds, and they'd never even suspected it because they hadn't been allowed enough live-fire practice. The same was true for the torpedoes. The suspected causes ranged anywhere from faulty detonators to a tendency to run too deep. He knew they hadn't performed well at all during the night action at Balikpapan, and most of the success there was due to gunnery. Whatever the case, he prayed they weren't carrying around, carefully husbanding, and relying on useless weapons. "Keep working on it, Mr. Sandison," was all he said.
Facing forward, he peered through his binoculars again and focused at the base of the column of smoke. He now saw for himself that there was indeed a battle under way. But compared to anything he'd ever expected, the word "battle" was wholly insufficient to describe it.
"My God . . ."
The excellent optics and seven-power magnification of the MK1 M2 Bausch and Lomb binoculars transformed the distant, blurry shapes into a high-relief scene of unprecedented horror and desperation. The . . . medieval nature of the combat wasn't what shocked him, however. What left him speechless was the obvious total involvement of the defenders and the utter lack of regard for casualties and noncombatants by the attackers. And then there were the attackers themselves.
Courtney Bradford had his own binoculars in front of his eyes, and his hands began to shake. "My God," he finally echoed.
Snarling, Chack swung the axe with all his strength and entirely severed the tail of a Grik warrior, poised to finish Risa, who lay unconscious and bleeding on the catwalk. The Grik shrieked and toppled forward, robbed of its counterbalance, but it fell on Risa and the snout opened wide, revealing razor-sharp, densely packed teeth prepared to savage her throat. He swung again and buried the axe in the Grik's back, halfway to the breastbone. It collapsed instantly in a spray of hot blood and Chack heaved it aside. He grabbed his sister by the arm and slung her off the catwalk to a pair of ancient garden tenders below.
The garden tenders were the oldest and most frail people of Home and, so far, the only ones not actively committed to the fight. Their task was to help clear the wounded and try to tend their injuries. Chack feared his sister was dying. He hadn't seen the wound, or the blow that struck her down, but her fine fur was matted with blood and she felt lifeless in his arms. His own fur was matted with blood as well, some wet and some half dry. He didn't think any was his, however. He'd fought like a demon, like he'd never imagined he could, ever since the pompous Saak-Fas had arrived and imperiously sent their last reserves into the faltering defense. The last wing runners had seen the need already, but waited for Keje's command. Released at last, they charged down the shrouds, and Chack looked to see if Saak-Fas accompanied them, but he was nowhere in sight. Nor had he seen him in the long hours since.
Surely, the People had never known such a battle! In the beginning, the Grik used their fire weapons to disperse the defenders. Flaming spheres, twice the size of a person's head, arced across the water to explode against the side of Home. Fire ran like water into the sea, but some made it onto the catwalk and the flames rapidly spread. Some spread onto people too, and Chack raged at the memory of their screams and the stench of burning fur. While they fought the flames, the Grik closed. Lance hurlers fired with a crash, and the Grik ships were festooned with their shafts, but still they came. Finally they were alongside, directly below, and their hulls ground together. Crossbow bolts rained down and thumped into bodies, shields, and the enemy decks, but then the ladders came. Hundreds of grappling hooks and dozens of ladders from each ship rose and locked the combatants together. The Grik swarmed up. The Guard slashed ropes and pushed at
the ladders, and attackers rained into the sea, to be crushed between the hulls or shredded by the incredible seething multitude of flasher-fish that churned the water into a glittering, silver-red cauldron of death. But still they came, as they always did, and there were so many.
Very quickly, the fighting became hand to hand when first a few, then many Grik gained the decks of Home. Scotas and axes rose and fell, as did the strange, curved short-swords and spears of the Grik. Spreading flames went unfought as defenders were forced to grapple with the attackers. Chack had stood with his sister, transfixed with horror as they watched the awful slaughter. A triumphant cheer began somewhere aft, and they turned to see a column of smoke and flames spew skyward from one of the Grik ships. Apparently their entire store of fire weapons was ignited on deck, and a keening, whistling, collective shriek rose from the burning warriors. Some, deliberately or in mindless panic, leaped into the sea and were torn apart. Gri-kakka had risen as well, and several cruised sedately through the turmoil, snapping at struggling figures. The Grik ship was rapidly consumed. Burning sails flapped, and crackling flames licked up the spindly masts until they withered and fell amid a huge cloud of steam and sparks. The hulk drifted slowly away, a roiling, lifeless inferno. But there were more.
Unaffected, the other Grik continued the attack. That was when the wing runners went into the fight and Chack became a warrior at last.
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