Straits of Hell: Destroyermen

by Taylor Anderson

  “What is also in our interest, is your survival, General of the Sea Kurokawa,” Rizzo assured. “That you and your people not only survive, but thrive—and ultimately dominate this region—the entire world!—hand in hand with the League of Tripoli!” Rizzo glanced at Gravois, then leaned forward again, earnest. “There are… differences you will learn about, between the worlds we came from, your people and ours, but most of us were fighting the same war, for the same reasons. We were on the same side there, and should be here. We do not want the Americans or the Grik to win out here. We want you to win, and we will do what we can to help!”

  “Different worlds?” Kurokawa almost shrilled. He wasn’t keeping up with this well at all, and he was furious to see Muriname nodding slightly as if he understood every word. He shook his head. “But if the enemy has taken Madagascar, he has won the war! Not only that, he is within striking distance of me!”

  “Your enemy has not won the war, General of the Sea Kurokawa,” Gravois insisted. “And even if he’s taken Madagascar, he will be amazingly lucky to keep it. Believe me, sir, we cannot possibly explain everything you want to know in one sitting—our greatest help to you for now will be information, after all—so may we adjourn to a more comfortable setting? Once there—and as your guests for some time, I should hope—we will address every question we are authorized to answer. During that time you will learn why it is in the League’s interest to aid you—in what small ways you might require—against our common foes.”

  CHAPTER 2

  ////// “Grik City” Madagascar

  USS Walker

  August 22, 1944

  The dreams were back. New ones. Bad ones. They differed from the ones that used to leave him anxious and sweating when he awoke, but those, in retrospect, weren’t quite as painful. They’d been less frequent and faded quickly from his mind. Moreover, he generally recovered from the… sense of them as the day wore on. These were worse, as far as Matthew Reddy was concerned, because they stayed with him even when he woke—and they were so real! It was as if his eyes had been motion-picture cameras at the time, and he saw the awful images again and again, projected on his closed lids when he slept—and in his mind’s eye just as clearly when he didn’t. He didn’t dread sleep; he had to have it and nobody got enough these days, but he’d quit sacking out on the cot in the charthouse behind the bridge. He didn’t know if the dreams made him shout. It would be bad enough if his officers heard him but possibly catastrophic if the replacement enlisted hands did. That left only the short, sweaty naps he managed in his cramped, sweltering stateroom, where he could relive alone that terrible day when they, or rather he, nearly lost it all—and he’d still lost a lot.

  He slept soundly on the rare occasions he joined his wife, Sandra, aboard Big Sal; the dreams weren’t quite as bad then. Perhaps her touch, her mere proximity, took him to a more relaxed, less anxious state. He recognized that a recurring theme in the dreams was a sense of isolation, even abandonment. That was understandable. His old Asiatic Fleet “four-stacker” destroyer, USS Walker (DD-163), hadn’t just been separated from the rest of a reeling navy after Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and the disastrous battle of the Java Sea; she’d been swept to an entirely different world. That was bad enough, but he’d come to grips with it. They’d made friends, forged alliances, and helped create the means to resist multiple foes even more implacable than the Japanese. But USS Walker, beat-up and rebuilt again and again, always found herself in the thick of the action—too often by herself. That was getting old, particularly after the last time, when she grounded on a sandbar in the harbor of the principal city of her most ferocious foe, the Grik. All alone she’d fought, the tide going out and wave upon wave of furry/feathery, reptilian Grik swarming against her side and eventually across her deck. That was what he dreamed about—the terrible, lonely, bloody chaos of it all.

  By itself, that shouldn’t have really bothered him either, he thought. He was used to the sights, sounds, smells, and terror of desperate combat. What he wasn’t accustomed to was the utmost anguish and mounting horror of complete and final failure. Miraculously, they hadn’t failed, and in spite of everything, they’d clawed yet another victory from the literal jaws of defeat. But he couldn’t shake the sense of it—that their victory was only transitory. That anxious urgency, that… doubt… as well as a harsh, fresh grief over a very personal loss—was what nagged him now.

  Sandra helped. Being with her and enjoying the wonder of the new life stirring in her womb distracted him. But in the aftermath of the battle for Grik City, those visits were rare. There was too much to do, to prepare for, and Sandra was just as busy with all the wounded that the battle had provided her medical corps. He sighed, shifting on his grass-stuffed mattress in the boxy bed frame in the dark. Soon, he’d lose even the relief Sandra gave him if all went right in the morning staff meeting, and he dreaded the argument to come. He wanted her gone to protect her, of course, her and the child she carried. But he really had to get the wounded out of Grik City as well. They were too vulnerable and too many. He’d shamelessly appeal to her duty to them and their child, if he had to, and doubted even her legendary stubborn streak could overcome that combination. There’d be a fight, though… and he already missed her.

  “Damn it,” he muttered, sitting up and flinging the damp pillow away. The dream had killed his sleep, and his racing mind had left him too restless to even allow his tired muscles the recovery they deserved. He leaned forward so the meager circulation of the clattering fan could play across his sweaty face and neck. “I need a shrink,” he snorted aloud.

  Probably every ship’s captain since the beginning of ships with crews has had to be an amateur shrink of some kind, he told himself. Making people do dangerous things or go places they’d never go if given an honest choice has probably always taken a lot of psychology. Particularly if the voyage ends in fighting a battle that nobody in his right mind would want any part of. He sighed again. And we’ve been in the middle of a fight we never wanted, right up to our necks, for two and a half years. No leave, no downtime, hardly any real liberty… It’s a wonder any of us is sane.

  He brushed back greasy hair with his fingers, doubting he’d ever deliberately engaged in manipulative shrinkery beyond what was required of any ship’s captain in his situation. “Like that’s ever happened,” he snorted aloud, but quickly grew angry at his own self-pity. Enough of that! What good does it do for the shrink to shrink his own head?

  He rubbed his eyes and looked around in the gloom. All he’d done was his duty, as he saw it, and that was all he expected of others. But he knew the main reason he felt abandoned and isolated. They, all of First Fleet South and its expeditionary force, were on the creaking end of a very long limb, surrounded by enemies and ridiculously outnumbered. Common sense declared they ought to pull out and regroup. The problem was, if they did that—simply surrendered Madagascar back to the Grik—everybody they’d lost taking the damn place would’ve died for nothing. Even worse, Matt honestly didn’t believe they’d ever quit running once they started. His… analysis told him they’d reached a psychological, if not numerical tipping point in the war, at least against the Grik. They’d hammered them like they’d never been hammered before, and he knew in his gut that if they just kept slugging, kept smashing whatever the Grik sent at them here in their own backyard, they had to break eventually. Madagascar was only a tiny part of the Grik Empire, but it was the capital, as they reckoned such things. And after all the reversals the “invincible” Grik had suffered, even before they lost this place and their “Celestial Mother,” they had to be getting brittle… didn’t they? He closed his eyes. As a nutty Captain Shrink, I know we’re getting brittle. It’s the tipping point, all right, and it can go either way.

  Flipping the light switch, he stood to face himself in the little mirror above the sink. He saw the stubble on his face and premature (he thought) silver spreading from his temples to infest the rest of his brown hair. Red rims around
his green eyes bore eloquent testimony to his exhaustion. Barely thirty-five, and I look old, he lamented, preparing for the day. He knew instinctively that morning GQ was only moments away. His internal clock had become very precise over the last few years. He wet his face, lathered up with the odd-smelling Lemurian soap, and poised his razor. After all this time, he remained one of only a very few of his “original” destroyermen to stay clean shaven. The precedent was so well established by now that if he didn’t shave himself, Juan Marcos, Matt’s self-proclaimed “personal” steward, would clomp up to the bridge on his wooden leg and do it for him in his very own chair before the end of the watch. He didn’t want that. Juan was still hurting after the fight—they all were—and he actually preferred shaving himself. He’d always believed he did it for the men, to show them that no matter how bad or downright weird things got, some things would remain unchanged. That continuity spanned all they’d been through, and in some ways even carried them back to the world they’d left and many loved on the China Station, in the “old navy” before the war. Staring at his reflection and suddenly contemplating “shrinkery” once again, he wondered how long he’d been doing it more for himself than for anyone else.

  The squalling, tortured goose of the general alarm sounded as he finished dressing and adjusting his hat on his head. He gritted his teeth. The alarm had been going downhill for a long time, having even been sunk once, after all, but now… it was becoming unbearable. He was going to have to talk to Spanky or Tabby, or anybody who could come up with a replacement. Honestly, with all the technical miracles they’d cooked up over the last few years, how hard could it be? He sincerely hoped the alarm wasn’t being retained for nostalgia or somebody’s amusement, because it really wasn’t funny anymore. He’d held off personally requesting that something be done, particularly with all the repairs Walker had needed after her latest fight, but he was just about ready to take that step.

  With a final, skeptical glance in the mirror, he parted the green curtain and stepped quickly into the passageway leading to the companionway, aft. Mounting the steps, he emerged behind the bridge, near the main blower, and stopped before he was trampled by Lemurians—“’Cats”—and men trotting past as they headed for their stations. Some of the replacements from other ships, still amazed they’d been chosen for Walker, saluted as they passed. Matt shook his head with a sad, hidden smile. It was rightly considered an honor to serve aboard his ship, but it had proven a death sentence for far too many. He paused at the base of the stairs to the bridge and gazed at the predawn spectacle surrounding the old destroyer.

  Fires burned everywhere on land, flickering as thick as the sparks that rose above them. They were cookfires for the army, mostly, stirring to the sounds of urgent whistles and drums. A few pyres still burned for the grievously wounded who fell away each day, but those had fortunately diminished. The combined human-Lemurian army occupying Grik City was camped under tents despite the practical shelter that already existed. None could bear to occupy the filthy abodes of their enemy, and they’d been razing the whole place to the ground in any event, using the material it provided to further fortify the city. The only structures left alone were the docks and adjacent warehouses—and the enormous Celestial Palace itself, of course.

  The palace was stunning in size, if not architecture. It really did look like a “giant cowflop,” as Dennis Silva had described it, though others had said it resembled a “squashed pyramid,” since it did kind of have four rather rounded and indistinct corners. Courtney Bradford said it was as big as the Great Pyramid at Giza—even if it did indeed appear a “trifle compressed from the top.” It was just as durably built as the Great Pyramids too, constructed of enormous blue-black granite stones that Courtney insisted were indigenous to the island, though they hadn’t seen any nearby. Like the massive, ancient wall of rot-resistant Galla trees that stretched for miles and ringed the city like a sharp-peaked range of mountains to keep the wilds of Madagascar at bay, the palace, however hideous, had not been easy to build. Cleaned and brightened inside by knocking out sufficient blocks to provide light and ventilation, the various levels had become a hospital—and might serve fairly well as a fortress once they emplaced sufficient numbers of the big Grik guns (disconcertingly better than they’d seen before) that they’d found in the warehouses.

  Matt looked out at the harbor beyond where his ship was docked and saw the dark shapes of First Fleet South moored beyond the protruding wreckage of Grik “dreadnaughts.” USNRS Salissa (CV-1), was closest, and the largest ship in view. Once a vast, seagoing, sail-driven “Home” for thousands of Lemurians, she’d been converted to the first steam-powered aircraft carrier/tender this world had ever seen. Others followed, and there was a whole new class of purpose-built carriers entering the war. But their deployment was slowed by the necessary training of pilots for their planes at the Army and Naval Air Corps Training Center at Kaufman Field in Baalkpan. Other pilots were trained in Maa-ni-la, but they were all sent east to fight the so-called Holy Dominion.

  Beyond Big Sal was SMS Amerika, a large ocean liner turned auxiliary cruiser from a very slightly different world than even Walker left behind. There were still a lot of theories flying around about that, but it was mostly just an intellectual exercise at this point. Where exactly all the various allies who’d joined together on this world came from didn’t much matter anymore—or yet—to anyone but Courtney Bradford, who was the source of most of the theories in the first place. Other ships, still darkened for the night, lay at anchor; they were troopships, supply ships, oilers, all both wind and steam powered, as were the frigates (DDs) of Des-Ron 6, patrolling beyond the harbor. Closer in, the four operable PT boats that remained of MTB-Ron 1 took turns scouting the harbor mouth itself, and particularly the deep-water channel. One mystery submarine had cost them the self-propelled dry dock (SPD) Respite Island, and they’d remain on the alert for more, however unlikely more might be.

  To the northwest, on a narrow finger of land, more fires burned. Matt shuddered at the thought of their purpose. After the battle, all the Grik that fled the city had wound up there, cut off, and unable or unwilling to continue the fight. Very un-Grik-like behavior. It was possible they’d “fallen prey,” after experiencing a condition Bradford referred to as “Grik Rout,” but if that was the case, they’d all be dead by now, after an orgy of mindless slaughter. That hadn’t happened. They were trapped, and a good-size chunk of II Corps was keeping them that way, but they didn’t madly attack, slay one another, or simply leap into the sea. They just sat there. They were eating one another, to be sure. That alone was “normal” for starving Grik, but otherwise they seemed prepared to simply… wait.

  Matt grimaced and stepped into the pilothouse.

  “Cap-i-taan on the bridge!” “Minnie” the talker cried in her squeaky voice.

  “As you were,” Matt said as ’Cats slammed to attention. The only other human there was his exec, Brad “Spanky” McFarlane. He was a short, skinny guy who kept his reddish hair and beard close-cropped. He had a big personality, though, and everyone who met him always remembered him bigger as well. He alone remained relaxed, sitting in Matt’s chair, certain Matt would wave him down if he tried to stand. He would have too; Spanky was still on crutches.

  “All stations manned and ready, Skipper,” Spanky reported. “Extra lookouts are posted, steam’s up in numbers three and four, secondary batteries and the dual-purpose four-inch-fifty aft are standing by for air action.”

  “Very well, Mr. McFarlane.”

  A few Grik zeppelins had been spotted over the last several days, obviously scouting the situation in the fallen capital. The first came as a big surprise and got away scot-free. The others were quickly shot down by P-1 Mosquito Hawks (better known as “Fleashooters”) from Big Sal’s 1st Air Wing. The pursuit squadrons of the wing were all flying out of a Grik airship base east of the Celestial Palace, and that was where Captain Jis-Tikkar (Tikker), who was Big Sal’s Commander of Flight Operat
ions, or “COFO,” kept his HQ. Tikker’s pilots made short work of the zeps he’d been warned about by the screening DDs, but based on how many dirigibles the Grik had thrown at them during the campaign for Indiaa, they all expected there’d be a lot more around here.

  “All hands will remain at battle stations until the forenoon watch, then set condition three.” Matt looked at his watch, again thankful the poor thing had survived so much. “I’ve got time for coffee, but then I’ve got an early staff meeting aboard Big Sal.”

  Spanky turned in the chair. “Pass the word for coffee.” He grinned. “But tell Juan to send it up. We ain’t got all day.”

  A bosun’s pipe squealed down on the fo’c’sle, calling the boatswain’s mates to report, and Matt stiffened.

  “Chief Jeek,” Spanky explained softly. Already a bosun’s mate, Jeek had been chief of Walker’s Special Air Division, handling the lone PB-1B “Nancy” observation floatplane she carried. Now he was chief of the starboard division and in line to succeed Chief Bosun Fitzhugh Gray. Nobody, Jeek in particular, thought he could ever replace Gray. The Chief Bosun of the Navy, or “Super Bosun” as he’d been called, had been a font of wisdom and an irresistible force of nature. Now he was dead, and his loss left far more than an empty slot that needed filling. He’d been like a father to Matt and many others in various important ways, and his death had torn a hole in Captain Reddy’s—and by extension, Walker’s—heart. “Only the second or third ’Cat I ever heard learn to blow one o’ those things,” Spanky continued mildly. “Don’t know how he does it, with his lips split like that.” He paused, gauging Matt’s reaction. “He’ll make a good bosun.”