Antúnez slowed and crept into the anchorage. The entrance was guarded by dangerous reefs, and she took her time. All the while, Tomas continued to study the ships, still slightly on edge despite his captain’s assurance. And his eyes kept going back to the guns. Their size—the Americans’ looked to be 130 mm or so, and there were twelve of them to a side, not counting a few lighter ones on the main deck. If anything, Matarife’s looked even bigger: sixteen on the gundeck and eight smaller ones above. At least thirty-six guns were pointed at them, all larger than the three 102 mm guns in Antúnez main battery. Granted, his ship’s weapons were far superior—at a distance—but they were getting very, very close. And though all Antúnez weapons were manned, none were trained out, their crews lounging around them unconcerned. He squinted. Was it just his imagination, or did it seem like all those guns were somehow . . . tracking Antúnez? Continually shifting, ever so slightly, to adjust their aim? He hesitated to mention it because he couldn’t see anyone moving them, past the gunports, and Capitan Abuello Falto seemed so sure. It had to be his imagination. He refocused on the deck.
The capitan was certainly right that there were very few people in view. Only a couple still watched their approach as Antúnez made a leisurely turn to come alongside, now less than a hundred meters distant. They were officers, apparently, judging by the old-fashioned hats on their heads. One wore a coat, but the other was in shirtsleeves, as though he’d been helping with the work. That seemed odd. Dominion officers wouldn’t stoop to manual labor, any more than his officers would. And something else struck him. Every single man working on the ships appeared to have his back turned and his head covered, and almost seemed to be . . . crouching a bit. All he could see over the ship’s bulwarks was their shoulders and heads. Then he noticed the strangest thing of all: not a single soul was aloft, working on the rigging.
“All stop,” came the order within the pilothouse. “Drop anchor. Prepare the launch.”
“Capitan,” he said hesitantly. His voice strengthening as conviction grew. “Capitan, something is wrong.”
The anchor splashed and Capitan Abuello Falto looked at him questioningly. Then Tomas saw his eyes widen in stunned disbelief, and he turned just in time to see the Dom flags on both ships suddenly stream away and fall into the bay, their halyards slashed. Instantly, the Stars and Stripes raced to the top of Matarife’s mainmast.
“Surrendero!” cried the harsh, determined voice of one of the officers through a speaking trumpet. “Surrender now, damn it! Touch a gun and we open fire!”
The capitan said nothing, utterly frozen where he stood. A heartbeat later, Teniente Casales Padilla raced to the aft bulkhead and activated the general alarm. “Battle stations! Battle stations! Action starboard. All guns, commence firing!” he shouted over the shipwide circuit, his voice thundering outside and screeching with feedback.
Capitan Abuello Falto blinked, then rushed to push his executive officer away. “No!” he shouted over the raucous alarm as he reached for the switch. “It’s too late—we’re too close! We must surrender, even as we send a distress signal. We will not be—” He never finished. One of the ship’s two 47 mm antiaircraft guns spoke, its distinctive voice reaching them over the noise. Perhaps its crew had been as skeptical as Tomas, or maybe they were simply better trained, more prepared than others. And their weapon was easier to bring to bear than the rest of the ship’s arsenal, in any event. Just as the capitan already knew, however, resistance was pointless, and his XO’s reaction, though perhaps laudable, had doomed his ship.
No more than six or seven 47 mm shells exploded against Donaghey’s sides. None penetrated her stout timbers, but each did as much surface damage as Matarife’s roundshot—before Donaghey’s twelve portside eighteen-pounders fired as one, double charged and double shotted. Such a load didn’t lend itself to accuracy, and the added recoil strained the gun’s breechings and heaved Donaghey over several degrees. At little more than a hundred yards, however, hardly a shot could miss. A couple did, both hooking into the sea, while at least twenty struck savagely home, tearing gaping holes through the destroyer’s thin sides like BBs through a beer can. One shot swept so close by Tomas’s head, the pressure wave sent him staggering and left him momentarily stunned. Not so much that he didn’t see the same ball spatter both Capitan Abuello Falto and Teniente Casales Padilla all over the aft bulkhead, gouge its way through the equipment there, and punch out through the port side of the pilothouse. The hellish thunder of impacts ended—for almost three seconds—before Matarife’s rolling broadside, carefully aimed by Donaghey’s Marines and everyone else she could spare, continued tearing Antúnez apart. A great explosion shook the ship, and Tomas suspected a boiler had blown. Screams tore forward through a gush of steam, and the 47 mm went silent as the sound of small arms joined the cannonade. Two shots, in quick succession, blasted through the aft part of the bridge where the ship’s electronic gear, her sonar, and radios were stationed. The alarm bell instantly fell silent, but that just made the other sounds more intense.
Matarife’s cannon kept firing, quite deliberately, and Antúnez shook with each impact. It already seemed an eternity since Tomas called for his captain’s attention, but he realized this horror had taken only seconds to engulf them. Donaghey hadn’t even finished reloading yet. Trying the blood-sprayed shipwide circuit, the microphone dangling from a bundle of twisted electrical conduits, he found it dead. Snatching a dented speaking trumpet from the deck, he staggered out on the bridgewing, expecting a bullet or cannonball to find him at any moment. Nothing came at him. The forward gun crew was all either dead or hiding behind the gun mount. And as long as they made no effort to continue traversing their weapon, no one shot at them. He looked aft. Little was visible through the smoke, but for the first time he realized the ship was already listing to starboard. The boiler, he thought. Probably tore out the bottom. And as she leans, more water comes through holes in the hull, open portholes . . . With a chill, he considered the hungry denizens in the water. Raising the speaking trumpet, he shouted aft through the turmoil. “Cease firing! Prepare the rafts and lifeboats!” They couldn’t fight and they couldn’t run. Only one alternative remained. “Stand by to abandon ship!”
• • •
“My God,” Greg Garret murmured, watching the Alsedo lean farther onto her starboard side. What had been a proud, trim fighting ship just moments before was already a sinking wreck. “Cease firing! Bring the boats around.” All Donaghey’s and Matarife’s boats had been secured on the landward sides of the ships. ’Cats quickly jumped in them and took in their lines, grabbing oars. The motor launch was already speeding around Donaghey’s bow with a couple of armed Lemurians aboard. Two of the destroyer’s boats splashed into the sea, and a raft fell on top of one of them. It was chaos over there, Greg realized, and men were going to die in their panic to save themselves. “Be careful!” he called to his boats through the trumpet. “Don’t let them swamp you!” More boats were coming around Matarife and there’d be more than enough for everyone on the sinking ship, but only if they got there in time and her people could control themselves.
“Well done,” came a high-pitched voice behind him, sounding quite satisfied. Greg turned, surprised, and there was the little Dom midshipman—holding a rifle pointed at Greg’s belly. The weapon looked huge in his hands, but steady as a rock, and the boy shrugged. “One of your demons was kind enough to unlock my door before the action, just in case. I suppose she feared I might drown if things went poorly.” He shrugged again. “I killed her with my dirk and took this.” He raised the rifle slightly. “No one ever searched me for weapons, you know. How careless of you.”
Marines were quickly gathering now, pointing their rifles at the boy, shouting for him to drop his. Greg held up his hand to quiet them and took a deep breath, somehow not surprised the boy spoke English after all. “Why do you say ‘well done’? My impression was that you and the League are friends now.”
>
The boy snorted. “Hardly friends. They’re weak, like you, and unknown to the God of this world. That may change,” he added thoughtfully, “but for now they’re merely useful tools.” He smiled. “Far more so after what you just did.”
“You just said they’re weak. Why would that benefit you?”
“Weak in spirit, not in arms. You saw their ship and knew what it was capable of. That’s why you did as you did. It was your only hope. But such a convenient encounter will be difficult to arrange again and they have many more ships, some quite near.” He nodded at the Alsedo, now lying on her beam ends. “And that was probably the least capable of them all.”
“Then what makes you think they’ll be your tools and not the other way around?”
“As I said, they’re weak. They’re afraid of this world and do not possess the spiritual strength to survive—without our guidance. Some even know that already.”
Greg felt a chill, imagining the result of a marriage between League fascism and technology and Dom fanaticism.
“You and I, however, will not live to see it,” the boy continued. “You’ve served our purposes well today. Your act will bring the League even closer to us, closer to God; susceptible to direction and our understanding of His will.” His smile turned almost blissful, lighting his childish face. “I must now do my part.” Reaching up with his small thumb, he cocked the hammer back. Instantly, his head exploded when at least two rifles fired at once. The rifle clattered to the deck, followed by the thump of the corpse, its legs kicking spastically.
For a long moment, Greg could only stare. “Talk about demons,” he whispered. “Somebody throw that rotten, twisted little shit over the side. Damn!” he said emphatically, his skin crawling with horror and relief. “I’m gonna have nightmares about that punk.”
“Which was probably his intent,” Pol-Heena said gravely, stepping forward. The Allin-Silva rifle in his hand wisped smoke from the muzzle as he approached.
Greg nodded at him, blinking a mixture of apology and appreciation. It had rattled him more than he could show, that a seemingly innocent little boy could not only try to kill him, but be so filled with evil. “Most likely. What a creep. All right,” he said, raising his voice, “let’s get those people out of the water!”
Antúnez lay on her side for half an hour, her undamaged port side holding air long enough for her people to gather on her hull and calm to return. Some had jumped into the sea and not many of those survived. The few who did were plucked out almost as quickly as they hit the water and some had some ugly bites. The blue-gold flashies were just as attentive to the dinner bell as their cousins in other seas. No doubt some men had been trapped below, and there was nothing they could do for them, but the boats brought away more than fifty of her eighty-four officers and men. Outwardly deserted, Antúnez finally blew out her air in a long, dying shriek, settling by the stern on her side. Nothing was left above the surface but a spread of oil and floating debris. That was just as well. Somebody would find her eventually, running up on her if nothing else, but Greg would’ve had to blast her superstructure and masts apart if they’d been left sticking up. The sole surviving bridge officer was a blond ensign, the looped strand of braid on his left coat sleeve torn and dangling. His young, blood-spattered face was suffused with fury when he was brought before Captain Garrett.
“Do you have any idea what you have done?” he seethed, perfectly understandable but with a heavy accent. “How dare you! You killed half my crew. War, sir! There will be war after this! We will be avenged.”
“Are you finished?” Greg demanded harshly. “How dare you expect any less? You fired on us first and we defended ourselves. This after your goddamn League committed act after act of war against us, including sinking a hospital ship full of helpless wounded. Spare me the pretense of innocent outrage.”
The young officer paused. It was pointless to deny that Antúnez opened the action, not that it would matter, and he was apparently aware of the events Greg cited and unable to find an argument. Perhaps a touch of shame even darted across his face? It firmed again, however, and he stood straighter. “I am Alferez—Ensign—Tomas Perez Mole, the senior surviving officer of the Nationalist Spanish destroyer Antúnez. Who do I have the . . . honor of addressing?”
“Captain Greg Garrett, United States Navy, commanding the American Navy Clan ship USS Donaghey for the United Homes.”
“I cannot speak to the allegations you make,” Tomas said stiffly. “I am merely a junior officer in a single ship and have little knowledge of events elsewhere, nor can I—or my crew,” he stressed, “speak to the policies of my government. But for our present purposes, regardless who fired first—I cannot say for certain who did so,” he qualified, glancing slightly away, unwilling to openly concede the point. “The fact remains that you sank my ship and killed many of her people.” He glanced at his crew, gathered in Donaghey’s waist under guard, and Greg looked at them too. Many seemed angry; others subdued. Some were wounded, and Sori and his mates were attempting to examine them. Most who could shied away, though not with the terrified expressions of the Doms. Their hesitation seemed more like a desire not to accept help from an enemy. Or was it a racial response? “We are your prisoners,” Tomas stated simply. “What are your intentions?”
For the first time, Greg seemed unsure of himself and unconsciously swept a hand across his face. “I can’t leave you here,” he began, noting Tomas’s sudden hopeful expression, that he and his people wouldn’t simply be killed. Stupid kid, he thought. Why would we rescue them, just to bump ’em off? Then he saw belated disappointment touch the ensign’s face. Clearly he’d expected a quick rescue, if they were marooned, by other League ships. “Besides being a dumb move on my part, I’m told there’re deadly snakes all over the place,” he expanded. He looked at Matarife. “I guess we ought to cram you aboard her. There’re already a couple hundred Doms in her. Some are even helping out.” His face darkened. “Not sure that’s a good idea. We had one of their midshipmen aboard, only a little kid, and he just tried to kill me—after murdering one of my Marines.” He looked thoughtful. “I bet your leaders would be interested to know how he saw the relationship between his country and yours.”
“I . . .” Tomas hesitated, his face genuinely concerned. “I’d much prefer that my men not be mingled with Dominion sailors.”
“Yeah,” Greg said, thinking. “That might be awkward,” he added, for reasons of his own. “I guess we’ll have to keep you all aboard Donaghey for the time being. Your wounded will be treated, but I’ll have to keep you locked below.” He glared at Tomas. “One false move by anybody, and we will cram you in with the Doms,” he warned.
Tomas frowned. “In chains, belowdecks . . . I don’t suppose I can convince you to accept our parole? My parole?”
“Not right now. We’ll have a chance to get to know one another, and maybe that’s the best way for us to avoid things like this in the future,” he said, nodding at the bubbling, flotsam-covered sea. “But your ship came steaming in here and shot at us just as soon as we ran up our own flag. For all I know, she was hunting us specifically.” He paused and studied Tomas’s face. Interesting. That’s what I thought. Poor kid looks like I caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. At least he has a conscience. We might learn a lot from him if I handle this right. “And so far,” he continued, “we haven’t met a solitary Leaguer who didn’t try to kill us or help somebody else do it. As far as I’m concerned, your League is just as screwed-up as the Dominion. You’ll forgive me if I’m not feeling too trusting right now.”
Without waiting for a reply, he turned to Lieutenant Mak. “Put the prisoners below.” He glanced at Tomas. “We don’t keep irons in our ships—never needed them—so your people won’t be shackled; they’ll be secured and guarded in a storeroom. If they try anything, though, there’ll be hell to pay.” He looked back at Mak. “The wounded will be treated here first, a
nd any seriously wounded will be moved to the orlop. We’ll rig a secure sick bay.” He raised his voice. “As soon as that’s done, we double up on repairs and get the hell out of here. Tribune Pol-Heena, take charge of Ensign Mole and lock him in the cabin that psycho kid was in. Talk to him all he wants and assure him we won’t eat him.” He frowned. “That reminds me. Boats, please have a detail bring the Marine the kid murdered on deck and prepare her for burial.” He looked back at Tomas. “We’ll bury her in the morning, along with any of your people who don’t make it. Hopefully, she’ll go down alone. There’s been enough dying today.”
CHAPTER 18
////// Sovereign Nest of Jaaph Hunters
Zanzibar
November 20, 1944
“They’ve mined the entrance to the anchorage!” cried Commander Riku, Kurokawa’s chief of ordnance, as he burst into the parlor of his lord’s headquarters residence without waiting to be announced. Kurokawa and his flag captain, Hara Mikawa of the improved cruiser Nachi, General of the Sky Muriname, Signal Lieutenant Fukui, Maggiore Rizzo, Contre-Amiral Laborde, Capitaine Dupont, another man, clearly one of Rizzo’s pilots, and several more were standing around the great desk. They’d been peering at a large map unrolled atop it, but all looked at Riku as he belatedly paused and saluted.
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