Storm Surge

by Taylor Anderson

  Fred shut his mouth, but opened it again. “Maybe not, but the whole point of spying is to get information out, right? I’ve got a bunch of it, and I need to get it to the Allied fleet, or they—my friends, and the most powerful enemies of the Doms—could be in for a helluva surprise.”

  Anson looked at him. “Such as?”

  “Well, for one thing, the Dom fleet’s bigger than they have any way of knowing it is!”

  “Ah! So you did learn a few things at the Temple! Don Hernan must’ve really believed he’d succeeded with you!”

  Fred frowned and scratched the scruffy young beard on his chin. “I guess. I saw maps, heard discussions—I had to know some stuff to build his stupid airplanes.” He blinked. “Wait a minute! You know about the rest of the Dom fleet?”

  “Of course. I assume you mean the eastern squadrons beyond El Paso del Fuego?” He paused when he saw Fred’s blank stare. “Hmm. Perhaps you aren’t as smart as I thought.”

  “I’m smart,” Fred defended. “I’ve heard of this El Paso, and I know they’ve got more ships. That’s enough to make me want to tell my friends. You obviously know a heck of a lot more. . . . But if you do—if you have . . . why haven’t you told anybody? That information would have to be worth taking it out yourself!”

  Anson stared straight ahead, his features suddenly hard. “And just why would I do that?” he demanded almost harshly. “From what you say, this ‘Second Fleet’ should be more than capable of handling however many ships the Doms throw at it. And what if it’s in my best interests that it do exactly that?”

  “But the lives we could save—you could save!”

  Anson rounded on him. “Clearly you’ve not yet learned that there are lives, and then there are lives. In war, some lives must be placed above others. The good above the bad is simple to justify; us over them is as old as time, no matter what world you’re from. The helpless above the strong, can often be justified, as can the few above the many, if that few is precious enough. Sometimes the equation can be as brutal as those I know above those I don’t, and perhaps that is what drives me now. Think on it, Lieutenant Reynolds, and be glad I ‘know’ you, and have such curiosity, and, yes, admiration for your most interesting Lemurian friend!”

  “Silencio!” hissed another rider. This one didn’t brandish a weapon, but seemed even more intent. Fred gulped and shut his mouth.

  “As for El Paso del Fuego, you will see it yourself soon enough,” Anson resumed, his voice quiet and conversational once more. “It’s quite amazing, and surely one of the natural wonders of this world. That’s where we’re headed, in case you didn’t know. We’ve been traveling generally west since escaping the Temple, and it’s the intent of our comrades to get you and Kari to the other side—which is always exciting. Our pagan friends desire to take Ensign Faask to a certain place far beyond it, and I can’t change that. Perhaps once at the pass, if we live that long, I can prevail on them to release you to try and make your way to the fleet. More than that, I can’t promise.”

  Leave Kari? Fred thought. No way. But if this weirdo’s going to keep secrets from me and spout philosophy when my friends are in danger, I’m through telling him everything!

  The path remained far enough back, away from the clearing, that sometimes Fred lost sight of the massive creatures for a time, but his fascination was enough that other concerns began to fade. Suddenly, just as the valley became clear once more, displaying the broad panorama of wonders below, all the horses in the column abruptly halted and swung their heads to stare in the same direction.

  “Wha—?” Fred began.

  “Shush!” Anson hissed. “You know horses?” he asked, barely above a breath. Fred nodded. “Well, though I’m sure you understand they’re not native to this land, whatever you’ve learned of them elsewhere, those that survive here have necessarily grown more attuned to their surroundings. We’ve been particularly careful about noise for the last while so they can hear better, not us. Be silent!”

  Fred realized all the great beasts in the meadow below had stiffened, staring not far ahead of where the party had progressed. Based on the wind, he judged that their reaction had more to do with smell than what they might’ve heard. Then, to his complete amazement and, frankly, terror, something much like a Borno allosaurus, or “super lizard,” burst from the forest a couple of hundred yards ahead. The thing was huge, and its massive feet and tall hind legs quickly accelerated it to a speed he wouldn’t have believed possible for something its size. He’d never seen a live super lizard, though he’d gaped at the butchered portions of a young one Silva brought in to Baalkpan once, and he’d thought it was big—but this! It was a super-duper, super lizard!

  The thing gave the impression it was mostly head and tail, and both remained amazingly parallel to the ground atop powerfully churning legs. That gave it an almost serpentlike fluidity of motion—like a monstrous torpedo flying fifteen or twenty feet off the ground. Its colors matched the dark woods and brown-gray bark of the trees very well, but in the meadow, it contrasted sharply with the bright flowers and golden-green grass. Unlike its apparent Borno cousin that had fairly long, powerful forelimbs, this creature had none at all—like the small, scavenging skuggiks Fred had seen in many lands. He fleetingly, irrelevantly wondered how these things picked their teeth.

  The reaction of the giant—call them super brontasarries—was quick. They bugled panicked warnings probably audible for miles, and turned from the terrifying predator with admirable precision and began lumbering away. As one animal reached another, they joined ranks, thundering across the valley side by side, whiplike tails flailing madly behind them like enormous, serpentine pikes. Several, maybe a little smaller, younger, bolder than the rest, had strayed farther from the protection of numbers, and the meat-seeking missile subtly altered course to intercept one of those. Recognizing its peril, it squalled piteously, but its elders paid no heed, rumbling quickly through a wooded choke point to the broader valley beyond. Only there did the now largely consolidated herd pause and establish what looked like a defensive line, its flanks anchored by the forest. Maybe they knew their sudden wall of snapping tails would create an unbreakable defense—or maybe they just couldn’t run very far and knew their attacker would be content with the laggardly offerings. Likely they didn’t think about it at all, because their flanks were now exposed to the two more monstrous predators that suddenly exploded from the woods on either side of them.

  The attackers could’ve hit those flanks and destroyed their prey entirely, but super brontasarries weren’t their mortal enemies after all, just their prey. The two additions contented themselves with angling to stop the one or two tardiest animals, but then veered for the one the first attacker had focused on. Their approach slowed that one further as it recognized the new threat, and perhaps—even just for an instant—forgot what it was running from. An instant was all it took for the pursuing monster to snatch the suddenly motionless tail in its terrible jaws about twenty feet forward of the dangerous tip and begin wrenching its massive head from side to side. The super brontasarry squealed in agony, instinctively stopping and turning, perhaps to batter the attacker with its long, muscular neck. It never had a chance. A second bark-colored torpedo actually leaped slightly to catch the distracted head in crushing jaws—just as the third pounded home “amidships,” its jaws impossibly wide.

  The super brontasarry outmassed all three of its foes combined, but was suddenly utterly helpless. The “beater” had a death grip on its tail, the first “catcher” was rapidly chewing its head from its neck, and the apparent killer of the trio wrenched its own head and tore away a mouthful of skin, bloody white fat, and purple hawsers of intestines that stretched tight and snapped. Instead of swallowing the gory gobbet, the killer spat it out and dove in for more, tearing deep into the massive body cavity, gnawing forward, inside and around the heavy ribs and through the diaphragm, to withdraw a foamy orange wreckage of lung. The super brontasarry shuddered horribly, then collaps
ed in the colorful flowers, now bright with barrels of gushing blood. Only then did the killer leap upon the writhing corpse and emit a throbbing roar of triumph. Finally, with every indication of complete agreement among themselves, the three monsters began to feed.

  “My God,” Fred whispered.

  “You haven’t seen such things?” Anson probed.

  “My friends have,” Fred defended, “but not me. Not on such a scale. Jesus, those things are big!”

  “The creatures on this continent have reached impressive proportions,” Anson allowed, his tone a little condescending. “Now you can imagine why the Temple City—Granada—has such imposing walls and artillery facing all directions! Other cities have walls as well, if not so big and high.”

  “Oh, I’ve seen bigger,” Fred stated, affecting nonchalance, “from the air. And the walls around Granada aren’t half as high as those around Aryaal—on Java,” he boasted. That wasn’t true, of course. In fact it was just the reverse—but Captain Anson couldn’t know that.

  “Vamanos!” one of the riders hissed, pointing at the carnage in the meadow, then motioning forward.

  “Yes, well. It’s a most interesting world, to be sure. And if you want to see more of it, we should do what the man says—and always pay attention to your horse!”

  Fred didn’t move. “I want to see Kari—and I want to see her whenever I want, without one of these jug heads hanging around.”

  “I might help arrange something,” Anson confessed as the riders started passing them. “Someone will have to be with you, but perhaps they will allow me to fill that role.”

  “They trust you that much?” Fred shook his head. “Then no dice. I won’t see her at all if you’re there—unless you figure out what they mean to do with her. You said they want her happy? We’ll see how well that goes over.”

  Anson sighed. “All right. I’ll see what I can discover. Now let’s move along!”

  “Okay,” Fred said, nudging his mount with his heels. He reached down and patted the firm neck. “Good horse!” he whispered.

  CHAPTER

  9

  ////// Ben Mallory’s P-40E

  Off the east coast of Saa-lon

  April 9, 1944

  “F lashy Leader, Flashy Leader, this is Flashy Two. Over.” Amid the noise of the big Allison V-1710 engine, Colonel Ben Mallory wouldn’t have recognized the Dutch pilot’s voice over the SCR-284 radio, accent or not, without his flight number. But Lieutenant Conrad Diebel was Two, so he knew who was calling. He held the Squeeze to Talk switch on the throttle knob.

  “This is Flashy Leader. Go, Two,” he replied.

  “Flashy Leader, I’m having engine trouble . . . again. Over.”

  Ben closed his eyes and cursed. “Same problem as before, Two?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Even over the noise, Diebel’s single word dripped disgust.

  “All right. Try to get your ship back to the strip. If you can’t make it, set her down on the beach north of Trin-con-lee. Over.” He didn’t say what Diebel should do if he couldn’t make the beach. He could bail out over land if he had to, but nobody would be nuts enough to do it over water. The 3rd Pursuit Squadron of the Allied Army Air Corps had taken flasher fish as their mascot, even painting the scary fish on the noses of their precious few P-40Es, resulting in a nostalgic similarity to the Flying Tigers of the AVG on another world. But the ferocious nature of real flashies, such as teemed in the shallows around Saa-lon, prevented any notion of winding up in the water alive.

  “Wilco, Flashy Leader,” Diebel said. “Flashy Two, out.”

  Ben smoldered. Diebel was a strange duck, but a damn good pilot. He needed him and his plane for this strike—not to mention operations to come—but the 3rd Pursuit had been out on a limb for weeks now, and still had no spare parts or real mechanics. They were getting desperately low on fuel and ordnance too. The fuel had always been a problem, but they were down to the nastiest dregs, and most of Mallory’s nine P-40s were down because of it. Now Diebel’s ship was down for the count, and that left Ben with a total of three airworthy planes. Soupy’s ship had remained behind to guard against Grik zeppelins, but that left Ben’s strike with only his and Shirley’s planes.

  He took a deep breath. Well. We’ve done our best. The 3rd had been tasked with slaughtering Grik ships coming to Kurokawa’s aid at Madras, and to the best of his knowledge, nothing had gotten through in daylight except a few of the giant ironclads that his squadron had been specifically ordered to avoid. It wasn’t believed he had anything that would hurt them—yet—and it was much preferred that nothing his advanced fighters attacked should survive to report to the enemy.

  But this convoy, spotted by PatWing 4, and swift feluccas posted as pickets, was a big one, and that could mean bad news for General Alden. It had to be stopped. Nancys had pounded it for two days, but Ben was short of Nancys too, and the weary planes he had left at Trin-con-lee were just as liable to fall out of the sky as his sick P-40s. Still, judging by the CW chatter he was picking up, the Nancys were doing a number on the wooden “Indiamen” transports of the enemy, with their simple incendiaries, although two had been shot down by what sounded like an improved shotgun-mortar device like they’d first seen in combat for Ceylon, and then behind protected ports on the battleships in the fighting for India. The simple weapons were short-ranged and had been fixed before, but now it appeared the enemy had developed some way of quickly aiming them.

  Columns of smoke in the hazy distance marked the position of his targets, and a sudden meteor of fire indicated the “new” enemy weapons had struck yet another of the attacking two-seat floatplanes. Ben gritted his teeth. “Cat Lead, Cat Lead, this is Flashy Leader,” he said. The Nancys’ backseat OCs, or observer/copilot/wireless operators, could hear him, but could only transmit in Morse. The Allies had TBS (Talk between Ship) sets now, but they were too big for the planes. “Concentrate on the wooden ships!” A few moments later, he pieced together the CW response: WE DO X THEM HAVE MOST PLANE KILLING GUNS X THEY IS SIX ARMORED CRUISERS FOR YOU X WE DO OUR JOB XXX.

  Ben grunted. Implied was “We’ll do our job; you do yours.” But now he had only two planes to destroy six tough targets. “Acknowledge, Cat Lead,” he said. “Just try to stay out of range of the damn things! Out!” He looked at the P-40 off his port wing. “Did you get that, Flashy Three?”

  “I hear,” came Shirley’s squeaky reply. Shirley was from B’mbaado, and her real name was Niaa-Saa. She was a tiny little thing and had to sit on two parachutes just to see through her gun sight, and had to have extensions attached to her rudder pedals so she could reach them, but of all his Lemurian P-40 pilots, only Soupy was maybe just a little better. She was already better than Ben had been when he shipped out for Java on the old Langley a long time ago and a world away.

  “Then try to conserve ammo as best you can—and don’t get too close!”

  They approached the convoy out of the setting sun, and the panorama that gradually resolved itself was stunning. It had been a big convoy this time, and it stretched southward almost as far as he could see. Happily, most of the ships were marked by towers of gray smoke that added to the haze, but quite a few were still underway in little defensive clumps of three to six. A few Nancys still wheeled overhead, occasionally swooping to drop incendiary bombs, but most had already turned back for Trin-con-lee to refuel and rearm. They’d be lucky to get back in time for a final strike before the sun went down. With a sinking feeling, Ben knew there was no way they could stop the entire convoy. They’d get most of it, they already had, but some would get through this time. He shook his head. It couldn’t be helped. His little “stepchild” air force had too few planes and pilots, and even if they’d already geared up to make some really neat flammable sap (or something) incendiaries for the Nancys locally, they were still short of gas, and the plucky little planes could only carry so much ordnance per sortie—and each sortie racked up time on overused engines and airframes. It was a harsh, unforgiving equati
on, and this time the Grik had simply sent more ships than they could kill.

  With a sick feeling, he had to consider breaking off. Chances were, no matter how much damage they did, the two modern planes would be seen this time—and reported. But could the Grik report what they’d seen well enough that Kurokawa would understand the significance? Even if they did, would only two planes alarm him enough to alter or escalate whatever plans he might have? Maybe. The final question became was “maybe” big enough? Those armored, steam-powered cruisers had proven extremely vulnerable from the air, but they could match the Allied steam frigates, or DDs in a straight-up fight, despite the Allies’ better gunnery and new fire control. He wished he had a better idea of the big plan to retake Madras so he could better evaluate the consequences of exposing his P-40s now—but he did know his planes would be a big part of that effort, and his orders to remain undiscovered implied that surprise would be a key element of the plan.

  “Damn it!” he said aloud. He and Shirley would still be invisible in the sun, but he could see a couple of the cruisers now; steamers as long as Walker, with masts and sails. They were slow and beamy, but mounted heavy guns—and their ironclad hulls sported what looked like a formidable ram at the bow. They could be very bad news for his friends. But they were vulnerable from the air. . . .

  “Shirley,” he said at last, “we’ve got to let them go. We can’t get them all, and they’ll see us.”

  “But Col-nol! They right there! I get at least three!”

  “You can’t know that. Hell, your guns might jam and you might not get any. We can’t risk it. Orders.”

  “But . . .”

  “Lieutenant Niaa-Saa, we’re breaking off to prevent observation of these aircraft,” he said harshly. “That’s an order from me. Over and out! Cat Lead, sorry to leave the party. Get as many as you can, but don’t be heroes. We’ll have new planes soon, and we need people who can fly ’em! Flashy Leader out.”