Destroyermen its-1

by Taylor Anderson

  He'd never seen a Lemurian skull, but by their shape, that's clearly what they were. Many were dry and yellow and covered with dust. Some were much fresher. A few were even decorated with garish painted designs, whatever that might mean. He shook his head, revolted, but from what he knew of the Grik, he wasn't surprised. 'Cats are people,damn it!

  He looked at Garrett. It was clear he was shaken by what he'd seen.

  "Yes. Well, make sure they're taken down carefully and with respect.

  We'll turn them over to our allies and they can deal with them in their way."

  "Captain!" Garrett hissed, pointing directly above his head. He stood in the very center of the cabin, right in front of the desk. The gimbaled lanterns cast a crazy kaleidoscope of sinister shadows in the recess. Matt followed his gaze, and suddenly the rush of blood in his ears surpassed the crashing sea that pounded the hull outside. There above him, leering down from sightless, empty sockets, was an unmistakably human skull.

  Silva had followed them into the cabin and was leafing through a tablet he snatched from the deck. He stared as well. His happy mood and customary laconic expression were replaced by anguish and rage.

  "Oh, those sorry, sick, buggerin' bastards!"

  "Skipper!" called Sergeant Alden from the doorway. "All the hatches are sealed, and we're ready to go in the hold. It's not gonna be a picnic, though. There may be thirty or forty down there, and they're crazy as shit-house rats! When they knew they were whipped, it was like Big Sal when they jumped over the side—only these had nowhere to go but down. They're cornered, so I bet they fight like shit-house rats, too. I'd just as soon smoke 'em out, or smoke 'em period, but I'm afraid they might chop a hole in the damn hull! Besides, you said you want prisoners . . ."

  Matt's face was wooden. He held up his sword and ran a finger distractedly down the notched blade. When he spoke, his voice was unnaturally calm, but his eyes flashed like chiseled ice.

  "Mr. Garrett, follow my orders—and do get Lieutenant Tucker to look at that arm. Our mission is a success. We've learned as much as we need to know about the nature of our enemy. The documents we've captured and the ship itself will teach us much, much more. Sergeant Alden, you said you don't speak Grik? Neither do I." He turned to look at Silva. "I don't think we really need any prisoners after all." He motioned through the door with his sword. "Shall we?"

  Walker had managed to maintain close station with the madly wallowing derelict, her gunners hovering protectively over their weapons, but it was clear in an instant when Gray thrust his head from the companionway that they would be on their own for a while.

  "Get to work clearing that debris!" he bellowed over his shoulder at the Marines following him up. He ran to a cluster of Lemurians helping Sandra with the wounded. She saw him coming.

  "Are you all right, Chief?" she shouted over the wind. He was covered with blood.

  "Nary a scratch, thanks for askin'." He saw her tense expression. "Captain's fine, ma'am." She visibly relaxed, but Gray decided now was as good a time as any to get something off his chest. "No thanks to you." He gestured at the pistol thrust in the web belt around her waist. "He could've used that." Stung, she touched the pistol with her fingertips.

  "I told him not to leave it!"

  "Like that made a difference! I didn't think he should even come over here, but he did and he's the captain. He figures he got us in this mess and he can't just sit back and watch. That's the kind of guy he is. But your coming was just a stupid female stunt and you nearly wound up killed."

  She bristled, but he stared her down. "Sure, sure, you came for `the wounded,' but what if you'd been killed? What do you think that would've done to him? To all of us?" He watched his words sink in. Finally, he continued in a softer tone. "Look, we gotta clear this shi . . . stuff and this ain't no fit place for you or the wounded. The main deck's secure. It's a bloody mess down there, but it's out of the weather." She began to nod.

  "If we can get them down there, that would be best. And Chief . . . I'm sorry."

  Gray started to say something else, but shook his head. "Right."

  He struggled toward a couple of Lemurians near the bulwark, clutching the chaotic mass of shrouds. They were two of the ones left on deck as a security force, but they'd obviously decided their own security was paramount. A wave crashed over the deck, knocking Gray to his knees and washing him in among the terrified forms. He reemerged from the warm gray water and grabbed one of the 'cats. A grinding and bumping was felt alongside as the ship's masts and spars, twisted in an impossible nightmare of tangled rigging, pounded against the ship as it worked.

  "You useless bastards! Help Lieutenant Tucker get the wounded below!" He beckoned those behind him. "The rest of you, cut everything away!" he yelled, hoping they understood. "With your swords!" He pulled his own cutlass and laid into the cables with a will. They quickly got the idea and chopped with mad abandon at his side. Other Marines, relieved from the fighting below, arrived to add their swords. Piece by piece, rope by rope, the debris threatening to drag the ship over was released, and the hulk began riding more easily. The roll increased, but at least it was a more buoyant roll.

  Gray's arm felt like lead as he swung the cutlass, huffing and wheezing with every blow. I'm close to sixty, and too fat for this shit, he complained to himself, but no word of complaint escaped his lips. Nor would it ever.

  The Bosun is all-powerful and indestructible. He has to be. He glanced at the sky. It was early afternoon when the Grik were first seen, so they couldn't have much light left. Already, it was noticeably darker. If they couldn't get a towline secured before dark, they were probably screwed.

  He left clearing the remainder of the wreckage to fresh, willing hands and ran to fetch something to signal the other ship.

  Five grenades went down the hatch into the gloom of the hold. Each time one detonated, there was a chorus of nightmarish wails. Silva and Scott pounded down the companionway together this time, followed closely by Matt, Alden, Chack, Shinya, and a score of Lemurian Marines. They advanced through the darkness, blasting or stabbing at anything that moved and, as Alden suspected, the confined space in the bottom of the ship was working with the vermin. Footing was treacherous on the slimy ballast stones, and there were other things, barely glimpsed in the guttering torchlight. Bones. Thousands of bones intermingled with the rocks. The stench was unreal. Then, even as they fought, and their eyes became accustomed to the gloom, they entered a waking nightmare they would never forget. With the searing clarity of a lightning strike, Matt realized he hadn't learned the true nature of their enemy. Not till now. The belly of the ship was a slaughterhouse, in more ways than one. The gnawed and shattered bones in the ballast were mostly Lemurian. Half-butchered Lemurian carcasses swayed from hooks and all the grisly paraphernalia of the butcher's trade dangled, obscenely well ordered, nearby. Chained along the sides of the ship, conveniently out of the way but well situated to witness the horror they were doomed to endure, cowered maybe a dozen filthy, mewling, near-starved Lemurian captives. Matt knew then, that even if he ordered it, no Grik prisoners were possible.

  The Marines went amok. They fought with abandon and no regard for their own lives. So, to a degree, did the humans. Scott staggered back, blood on his face, and Shinya dragged him from the fighting. Matt took the Thompson himself, firing controlled bursts at maniacally charging Grik. He burned with a towering, righteous wrath. At last there was focus for all the rage and anxiety, grief and loss he'd suppressed for months.

  When the Thompson clicked empty, he drew his sword again.

  "At 'em!" he screamed. Once, he'd never imagined drawing his sword in anger, but now it seemed an extension of his very soul: the instrument of purification. The Marines surged forward, bronze spearpoints gleaming red in the guttering light. With a ringing whoop, Silva drew his cutlass, and so did the others. Alden knew with sinking certainty that of all the people in the world, Captain Reddy had the least business in this fight, but it was pointless to t
ry to stop him. They charged. Without even shields, they slammed into the final, teetering Grik line and slashed it apart with a manic savagery that must have shocked even the Grik. The survivors broke. Shrieking in mindless terror, they fled farther into the darkness, flinging themselves against the hull, the overhead—anything to escape.

  Most had dropped their weapons. For a moment, Matt paused, leaning on his knees and gasping for breath. He started forward again.

  "Captain," Alden said gently, grasping his arm. "It's done. It's done!"

  Matt started to shake him off, but then stopped, shocked by the intensity of his emotions. He nodded. The Marines, still in a blind frenzy, shouldered past and slaughtered the twenty or so Grik holdouts that had fled to the farthest reaches of the dank, half-flooded hold. They mercilessly hacked apart every last Grik they found, and the Americans stood, listening, until the final shriek ended.

  Chack returned from the gloom, limping and leaning on Dennis Silva.

  Both were drenched in blood and Chack was clearly hurting, but Silva looked like some mythical god of war. Marines filtered back into the dim light, dazed.

  "Sergeant Alden, get our wounded out of here, then form a detail to release these poor bastards." He gestured helplessly at the captives.

  Most of the captives had begun a shrill, keening sound. In their tortured reality they probably thought their time had come to face the knives and saws. They seemed utterly mad. Matt remained for a while, watching while they were gently released a few at a time and taken on deck to the open air, as far from their prison as possible, by expressionless, furiously blinking Marines. Once there, they were wrapped in sailcloth against the wind and spray that came over the rail. They were fed and watered and carefully tended, but their chains weren't removed. In their current state they might harm themselves or others if freed.

  Silva was helping Chack through the stones (he'd flatly refused to be carried) when the Lemurian suddenly halted before a captive still chained to the hull. The wretched creature recoiled from his stare and made small gurgling sounds. Its skeletal chest heaved with terrified gasps. Matt stepped closer and regarded the creature with pity. He had great respect for the Lemurian people. He'd come to know them as stout warriors and generally cheerful, free-spirited individualists—not unlike his own destroyermen—but the things the captives had seen and endured would have broken anyone.

  "Leave him alone, Chackie," said Silva, uncharacteristically subdued.

  "Can't you see he's fixin' to vapor-lock?"

  Chack shook his head and leaned closer still. "I greet you. Do not fear," he said in his own language.

  "You know him?" Matt demanded.

  Chack nodded, a strange smile on his face. "I know him."

  "Does he know you?"

  Chack spoke rapidly, repeating a few words many times. A slight sheen slowly returned to the captive's flat, dull eyes and, hesitantly, he spoke.

  After a moment, Chack turned. "He said these were mostly survivors of Chill-chaap, but there were some from other places. He himself was transferred from another ship—as was a Tail-less One like yourself."

  Matt remembered the skull. "What happened to the Tail-less One?" he demanded. Chack gestured as if it was obvious, and Matt nodded sharply.

  "You said you know him. Who is he?"

  Chack almost seemed to sigh. "His name is Saak-Fas. Daughter-Mate of Keje-Fris-Ar."

  Tony Scott and Tamatsu Shinya found Gray resting in the gloom near the ship's wildly spinning wheel. He was breathing hard and futilely wiping at the salt that stung his eyes. The coxswain had a cut on his shoulder that left a bloody scrap of sleeve flapping in the wind, and his lower lip was split and swollen. He still had no helmet, but he'd tied a rag around his head to keep the hair out of his eyes. The Thompson was lovingly slung over his undamaged shoulder.

  "Cambin's commimenpfs, Cheeb," Scott said, trying to talk around his busted lip. "How are eberations goin' 'or da tow?"

  Gray groaned as he rose to his feet. "We're under tow, you nitwit. Have been for the last fifteen minutes. I was about to report to the captain myself when you interrupted me!"

  Scott nodded. "'Innat cay, cambin wans you ter sounderwell."

  Gray looked at him in the near-darkness. The ship rode much easier now that Walker was towing her and she no longer rolled beam-on to the swells.

  "What the hell's a sounderwell?" he demanded.

  "Sound-the-well!" Scott painfully repeated. "Vinally got da las o' dat verbin cleared out o' da hold an' da cambin wants to know if she'll f-f-vloat. I'll go vif you."

  Gray nodded. "Right. I'll report to the captain first, though. What's he doin', anyway? I figgered he'd of been up here by now."

  "Lookin' at fings. Charts an' stuvv . . . an' udder fings. There's . . . awful fings down dere."

  Gray turned for the stairs.

  "Chief Boatswain's Mate Gray," said Shinya. "May I have a brief word?"

  Gray's face darkened, but he jerked a nod.

  "I know you don't like me, but you saved my life today, when the corvus parted. I would like to thank you."

  Gray shrugged. "There was guys behind you. I had to get your Nip ass out of the way." He turned to follow Scott, but stopped again. "You got any kids?" he asked. Tamatsu was taken aback.

  "No."

  "I did. A boy. Close to thirty, now. Took after his old man—'cept he was a snipe. Machinist's mate. I hadn't seen him in four years, but I was proud of him. He was my son, you know?"

  "What happened to him?"

  "They never found his body, so officially he was missing. But he was in Oklahoma's fireroom when she rolled over. At Pearl Harbor. So don't you dare thank me for saving your worthless ass! It makes me sick! I was just pitching you out of the way." With that, he stormed down the ladder.

  "Yes," Shinya said to himself, "but it would have been easier to `pitch' me into the sea instead of on the deck."

  "Well, we did what we set out to do," Matt said grimly. "We've learned about the enemy." He, Sandra, Garrett, Shinya, and Alden sat around the Grik captain's desk poring over the tablets and charts they'd found. Walker towed the derelict charnel house in a wide, lazy circle across the Makassar Strait, into the Java Sea. That would keep them off the islands and shoals through the long night and bring them to Big Sal and their friends by morning. The sea was moderating, and Gray reported they'd float as long as the rhythmic clunk-thump of the chain pumps was maintained.

  His report was uncustomarily subdued after he returned from inspecting the hull. It sustained little battle damage, but seams had opened while she wallowed in the heavy seas and water was coming in. That wasn't what bothered him about his tour of the well, though. All of them would be haunted by the things they'd seen and survived that day, and by what they'd come to know about the nature of their enemy.

  "They're worse than Japs, sir!" said Alden with conviction mixed with quiet horror. The exhausted Marine belatedly glanced at Shinya, who bristled at the slightest comparison. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded. Hell, they're worse than anything!"

  Captain Reddy had in fact been idly searching his memory for any culture in human history to compare with the Grik. So far, his tired mind wouldn't oblige. He rubbed his eyes and watched Shinya visibly relax.

  "Anything," he repeated dully. "I think you're right."

  It had been a long, bloody day. Eighteen Lemurian Marines were killed and almost that many wounded. Most of his destroyermen were lightly injured as well, although only Norman Kutas suffered a serious wound.

  That was when Scurrey dropped his cutlass down a companionway and nailed his foot to the deck. Miraculously, it missed the bones, but Kutas was off his feet for a while. Aside from the quartermaster's mate's pain, it might even have been funny under other circumstances—but nothing was funny now.

  They had one of the Grik charts spread before them on the desk. Matt thought how horrified Adar would be to learn that the Grik had "Scrolls."

  They were looking at an overvie
w of the western Indian Ocean, Madagascar, and East Africa up to the equator and south to latitude 30. The eastern boundary of the map was the 80th parallel. The quality of the representations was poor—about on a par with sixteenth-century maps he'd seen in history books, but they, along with the printed information, were more than adequate for rudimentary navigation. The most startling and terrible thing about the charts, however, was that he could read them.

  Most of the writing, and anything added by hand, was incomprehensible and resembled a slashing form of Arabic. But many of the placenames and nautical references used recognizable letters forming English words. All the numbers were familiar too. Obviously, the Grik got much more out of their British teachers than the Lemurians did. From what they'd seen that day, Matt imagined the Grik had certainly been more persuasive.

  "Madagascar," Matt said at last. "I bet old Bradford's right about that being the original home of the 'Cats." Sandra peered at the island.

  "Probably. It's been well within the Grik empire for a long, long time.

  In fact, every landmass shown seems to be part of their territory." Garrett glanced at Matt with a worried frown.

  "They've got a lot of weight behind them, that's for sure. Way more than us."

  Matt looked at Alden. "Anything from the tablets yet?"

  Pete shook his head. He'd been skimming the roughly twelve-by-twelve-inch booklets while the others studied the charts. They were filled, mostly, with pen-and-ink illustrations. "Captain Grik was a pretty good drawer, or his clerk was. Mostly animals, bugs, places, and such. Must've been a naturalist like Bradford, in a perverted, lizard sort of way." Matt nodded absently and motioned Shinya to bring another chart. He unrolled it carefully and placed his cutlass on one end and a couple of .45s on the other.

  At a glance, this one seemed most pertinent, at least in the short term.

  Even cruder than the others, it was less like a navigational chart than a map of enemy territory. It extended from the mouth of the Ganges River southward to include the Cocos Islands. From there, west to Timor, then back to Formosa. All French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies showed varying detail. The farther east, the vaguer the shapes of landmasses became. The Philippines weren't shown at all.