Straits of Hell

by Taylor Anderson

  “How many, an’ how far out?” he demanded of the comm-’Cat emerging from the shack, who immediately fired a flare in the air from his copy of a Remington flare gun. NCOs began blowing whistles. The ’Cat looked at him, blinking rapidly, evidently nervous. “The picket ship report a hundred plus, jus’ ten miles out, bear-een tree two seero!”

  “Confirm receipt,” Tikker ordered, blinking as well, as much in consternation as to clear the brief nap from his eyes, “and inform Salissa we’re goin’ up.”

  “You goin’ up, sur?” the comm-’Cat asked. Tikker had placed his new Aryaalan Exec, Lieutenant Araa-Faan, in charge of the pursuit squadrons remaining at Grik City.

  “I’m here,” he said simply, trotting away toward the flight line, where ground crews were turning the props on the little ships to push oil out of the lower “jugs” on the five-cylinder radials. “Araa will get plenty experience commanding when I’m gone,” he muttered to himself. Armorers were carefully inserting the long, strange-looking magazines down through the tops of the wings to feed the.45 ACP “Blitzerbug” submachine guns in the wheel pants. These magazines were new, and had just arrived at the field from the fast little freighters. As always, Tikker was pleased by the ingenuity of his people. They’d taken the simple “stick” magazines that Bernie Sandison had designed and added a pair of drums at the top. The drums were even streamlined, to reduce drag. Tikker was concerned about how reliable they’d be; too much spring tension when fully loaded and not enough when they were low might cause jams, but if they worked as advertised, they’d effectively double his ships’ meager ammunition load. He knew a bigger, better Fleashooter was in the works, designed to carry the new Browning machine guns in the wings, but it made him glad that somebody back home still thought in terms of upgrading what they already had, instead of just waiting for the new stuff to ship.

  Ground crews were already helping other pilots into their “chutes,” and up on the wings of their planes when Tikker supplanted the pilot gearing up to take the ship beside Araa’s. “You sit this one out, Ensign,” he said gently. The younger pilot handed over his parachute and backed away with wide eyes Araa saw.

  “You goin’ up?” she demanded, blinking a combination of surprise, anger, and belated respect. Tikker almost chuckled at her eagerness, remembering how excited he’d once been to leap into an aircraft—any aircraft—and have at the Grik. Had it really been so short a time since Colonel Mallory fearfully refused to let him take the controls of the old PBY that they’d literally flown to pieces?

  “Is everyone going to ask me that?” He eyed her while the crew-’Cat helped him into the chute. He remained ambivalent about the things and would never open one over the water, but over land was a different story—and sitting on it provided some protection from ground fire. “I could ask you the same, but I won’t. Like you, I bet, I gotta see with my own eyes what the Grik are bringing us this time. The pilots who intercepted the first zeps the other day said they’re some different from the ones we fought at Madraas. I gotta know if those differences make them more dangerous before I head back out to Salissa.” He shook his head. “Never like bein’ surprised when Salissa’s at stake.” He grinned. “I bet you’ll get more chances than me to look at ’em even better before much longer, but I applaud your desire to do so quickly. I won’t interfere with your squadron leaders,” he assured, “any more than you should, beyond general orders we might decide are pertinent.”

  Araa blinked acceptance—and consternation. Her eyes really are quite eloquent, Tikker thought. And attractive. He pushed that realization aside. “Would you fly on my wing?” he asked, blinking innocently.

  Perhaps three minutes had passed since the first alarm, and rockets and flares were going up all over the city. As he strapped himself into the open cockpit of the little monoplane, he made a note to himself to point out that the display was very pretty—and doubtless highly visible to the enemy, who might otherwise have had some difficulty with their dark target. Word had it that this was a very big raid, and he supposed it was understandable that people would get excited. He was excited. But they had to do away with the rockets. At least the ships were dark, he noted, glancing out at the harbor. Their horns were sounding the alarm, but there were no lights. “Contact!” he shouted. A ground crew-’Cat propped his motor, and it coughed to life, joining others already running up. He adjusted the throttle until the engine settled down, then pressed the Push to Talk button beside it. They had “raa-dio” in the pursuit ships now, literally manufactured in Salissa’s shops. They were basically the same as the Talk Between Ships (TBS) sets on the ships, only miniaturized as much as humanly—or Lemurianly—possible. The new sets, mounted behind the seats, were still so big and heavy that they affected the Fleashooters’ already meager payload and there flat-out wasn’t room for a battery. They’d only operate with the engine running. “All stations, all stations!” Tikker said urgently. “This is COFO Jis-Tikkar. Lay off the daamn fireworks! You’re showin’ the enemy right where to bomb!” He cleared his throat. “Second and Third Pursuit, let’s go get ’em!”

  Except for the light show, it was almost completely dark now, but the airship field was big enough for four pairs of planes to take off at a time, guiding off one another’s blue exhaust flares to prevent collisions. Tikker pushed his throttle lever forward, glad all “new” aircraft controls were more like those on P-40s than Nancys. Pulling back to advance a Nancy throttle always struck him as odd. Everybody ought to make knobs go the direction you want to go! He’d decided this sometime back. His engine roared, and the little plane darted forward, tail rising immediately. The strip was bumpy despite all the work they’d done, but like all of Grik City, mere weeks after its capture, a strange ferny grass had begun to grow. He wondered about that, but at present it was enough for him that it shouldn’t be too dusty for the next flight taking off. And it wasn’t bumpy long. P-1s took to the air like startled lizardbirds. He loved them.

  Tikker hadn’t trained in the precious P-40s they’d rescued from the swamps around Chill-Chaap, and the pilot of the one they’d brought along wearing a pair of salvaged Japanese floats after another trainee ruined its landing gear had been lost when the SPD Respite Island went down. He and a couple other 1st Naval Air Wing aviators had very carefully figured out how to fly it from the exhaustive manual prepared at the Army and Naval Air Corps Training Center at Kaufman Field in Baalkpan. Their first flights had been hair-raising, but they and the plane had survived. Tikker knew “his” P-40 was a slug compared to Ben Mallory’s “clean” 3rd (Air Corps) Pursuit Warhawks, but it was faster than anything else he’d ever flown and he worshipped the raw power of its mighty twelve-cylinder “Aall-i-son” engine. He’d always love Nancys too, both for what they could do, and for the simple fact that they’d have lost the war a long time ago without them. But for sheer flying delight, fast and agile, he’d take a Fleashooter any day.

  There was no question that one rode inside the relatively massive P-40, and even in a Nancy, but one almost literally wore the little P-1. He’d heard its Baalkpan bamboo and fabric lines were inspired by something called a “P-26,” then scaled down to match the 220 “horses” its five-cylinder radial generated, but its performance hadn’t been scaled down at all. Weighing barely nine hundred pounds empty, the little ship could match the reported 230 mph speed of a P-26, and Tikker was sure it was much more maneuverable. Its limitations were its short, four-hundred-mile combat radius and meager payload. Most frustrating of all, even its relatively pitiful—compared to a P-40—armament and a full load of fuel and ammo were about all it could bear. Tests had determined that it could take off loaded with up to two hundred pounds of bombs, but only from a carrier steaming into the wind. Tikker thought he could do it off a strip—if it was long enough—but so far, the only P-1s to carry bombs from a shore base had done so with its guns removed. None of that mattered tonight, because P-1 Fleashooters with their pairs of Blitzers had p
roven to be utterly murderous weapons against Grik zeppelins over Madraas. Tikker had no doubt that he and his veteran squadrons would reap a heavy harvest against the incoming raid, but with so many enemies coming, he feared it wouldn’t be heavy enough.

  High-powered arc lights, similar to Walker’s, had been scattered strategically around the city, away from important targets (someone had been thinking about such things), and now their bright beams rose high in the sky, searching for the invaders. It wasn’t long before the first ones appeared, transfixed by the roving lights. This is new, Tikker thought with growing surprise. “Does ever’body see this?” he asked, speaking into his mic. In the past, regardless of the size of the raid, Grik airships had always attacked as a mob, much like all their warriors once had. He immediately heard a number of nervous confirmations. “Looks like they’re in some kind’a stacked formation, staggered from about five thousand feet. . . .” He paused, straining his eyes upward, but the beams only revealed the upper craft periodically. “To who knows how high,” he added, for the benefit of his pilots and those listening on the ground. “They must be guiding off exhaust flares too—or something else.” He paused. This changed things. “Lieutenant Araa, take the Second in against the lower ships. Watch for fire from above. We know they have defensive weapons! I’ll take the Third and try to find the top of the formation and hammer them from above.” It was immediately clear to him that the Grik had figured out that they were most vulnerable from high attacks and had stacked their raid—how high?—to guard against them. He suspected the 2nd had the most dangerous job, but he needed to see for himself what the Grik were up to, and, he hoped, show them that it wouldn’t work.

  “Ay, ay, Cap-i-taan!” Araa’s voice crackled back. “Second Pursuit, taallyho! Make your shots count! They a lot of these buggers!”

  “Third Pursuit, follow me,” Tikker ordered, pulling back on his stick. He knew that “following” anybody would soon be problematic, and he could only pray to the Heavens that his fliers could avoid colliding with one another—or the enemy—in the dark. Things were about to get very exciting. Up he went, still leading his squadron, he hoped, and skirting the enemy formation with his curving climb to starboard. He nearly slammed into a wayward zep, passing it before he could possibly take a shot. “Heads up!” he said. “I barely missed one! Somebody knock it down!” At ten thousand feet, he banked back to the left and looked down—just as excited voices filled his headset:

  “I got one! It burning down!”

  “I got one too! Look at that! Is bigger than I ever seen before, but burn bigger too! How-waa!”

  “Watch yursefs!” Araa’s voice broke in. “They shootin’ back!”

  “They’s droppin’ bombs! Hit ’em!”

  “I hit!” came a startled cry. “They shootin’ back a lot! I losin’ power!”

  Far below, Tikker began seeing Grik firebombs erupt across the northwest side of the harbor—right where the starving Grik were camped—but the pattern was widely dispersed and some had to be falling on Safir’s troops as well. Even as he watched, the flaring detonations sprawled across the harbor itself. “Grik fire” would burn on water as readily as fuel oil. “The docks are the target!” he cried in his mic, hoping Amerika, Walker, and the rest of their ships had made it out. Some couldn’t possibly have, he realized at once. A lot of the captured Grik ships were dedicated sailors, and many others would’ve been forced to hunker down and take what was coming, unable to clear the sunken Grik fleet in the dark that blocked a long stretch of the dock. He prayed for them. Even so, his force had apparently gotten above the highest Grik zeps. The growing conflagration below, the searchlights, and the flaming airships falling to the ground finally revealed the bulk of the raiders. He’d been right! They’d managed—and somehow maintained—an amazingly tight formation, stacked at least three levels high. The 2nd was slashing through it, dim white tracers spraying in among the enemy. Blue and yellow hydrogen-fueled flames licked skyward from their victims, but an utterly unprecedented number of bright orange flashes spat back at his darting ships!

  “I hit! I hit!” came another cry, and another.

  “You on fire, fifteen! Get out!”

  “You nuts? I still over the wa—” A small flare far below scattered into falling, sparkling fragments.

  Another P-1 just exploded, right in the middle of the Grik formation—and Tikker hadn’t even seen any fire aimed at it. What? The plane’s fiery chunks slammed into a zep, causing a spectacular aerial mushroom of fire, but it was small consolation.

  “Shaat!” Araa shouted in what sounded like a mix of terror and rage. “I hit some-ting! It nearly take my staar-board wing! I gotta get down!” There was a brief silence while both squadrons swallowed that, then: “I think I make it,” she continued. “Wing’s cut half in two, but the aal-eron’s okay. I got control, an’ the bracing wires is holding. Be aad-vised: I think maybe one in tree of these buggers not carry bombs, but is loaded wit extra swivel guns—that shoot faster than we seen. Also, I think I hit some kinda cable strung between two of ’em!”

  Of course! Tikker realized. That’s how they’re doing it! Every airship on each “level” must be attached to the ones around it! Not only did that keep them together, but it provided a spiderweb of protection from attackers darting between them! And there’d been word about some new swivel Silva had found, poking around in some wreckage. . . .

  “Get on the ground, Lieutenaant Araa,” Tikker ordered. “Second Squadron, concentrate on the zeps on the outside of the formation. We get them, maybe they’ll drag more down before they cut their cables!” They wouldn’t be able to break the bulk of the enemy formation that way, Tikker realized, and suspected those outside zeps would be the most heavily armed, but that was all he could think of at present. “Third Squadron! We’ll attack the top formation in the center from above, but do not pass between them! Maybe we can drop a spiderweb of burnin’ Grik down on top of the rest! Make your shots count. They’ll burn everything on the ground before we can land and rearm for another round!”

  A chorus of “Ay, ays” answered him, and Tikker bored down on the—hopefully—still most vulnerable tops of the highest formation. Even as he did so, he saw the firebombs below begin smearing flame across the dockyard where at least some ships doubtless remained—and most of the warehouses stood. He found a dark shape in the vicinity of his invisible sights. Gotta get some light on those somehow, he thought absently, and pushed the spring-loaded lever at his side. Cables drew back around a series of pulleys, pulling the Blitzer triggers in the wheel pants. He barely heard or felt them fire—they were a far cry from the nose-mounted.50 cal he’d had rigged in a Nancy that nearly shook the plane apart—but the burning white phosphorus in the hollow bases of his bullets arced lazily into his target as he swept past barely thirty yards above and lined up on another. The rest of the 3rd did the same. When he banked back around, he saw they had indeed lit up perhaps a dozen zeps, their burning carcasses beginning to tumble down toward those below amid rushing gouts of flame and fireflies of burning fabric. His tactic seemed to have worked. The bad thing was, he’d run out of ammo once before in a very dire situation and had learned to carefully husband ammunition, probably better than anybody in the 1st Naval Air Wing, so he knew he only had enough left for maybe two more runs despite the increased capacity of the new magazines. The survivors of 2nd Squadron were likely already empty. There simply was no way they could get all of what looked like eighty or more Grik zeppelins still relentlessly dropping firebombs across Grik City. They’d land, rearm, and have at them again as they retired, burning many more, no doubt, but his people on the ground were going to have a very rough night and there was little he could do about it. How many irreplaceable planes had he lost so far? Five? Six? How many more would be too damaged to fly again? Somehow, he didn’t think this raid was even close to everything the Grik would be sending across that cursed strait.

  “B
urn ’em down,” he practically hissed in his mic, his voice harsher than anyone had ever heard. “As quick as you’re empty, get on the ground and load up again. We can’t get ’em all,” he admitted, “but every one we do is one that won’t be back!”

  CHAPTER 12

  ////// USS Donaghey

  Alex-aandra Harbor

  September 4, 1944

  USS Donaghey’s officers had carefully watched the mighty dreadnaught for any reaction to the confrontation with Morrisette for several days now, but as far as they could tell, there’d been no response—other than that Morrisette hadn’t returned. He or his superiors probably considered that a punishment of sorts; depriving the Allied ship of fresh provisions from shore. But the embargo would have to last a very long time before it really hurt, and Greg Garrett didn’t intend to remain under Savoie’s guns that long, one way or another.

  They’d also watched the now-familiar city of Alex-aandra for any developments. Even after they had stared at it day after day, the city, sprawling at the base of the high mountains surrounding it, stirred their interest. It was old, for one thing, but not in a dilapidated way. It was obviously prosperous and well kept, but it had the air of the comfortably long established, if not the ancient about it. The architecture was a bizarre but somehow harmonious mix of the classical and the Eastern, with columns and pagodas and even domes. Greg Garrett hadn’t been to the Empire of the New Britain Isles, but he’d heard its principal city of New London had architectural aspects that would be comforting to someone with European sensibilities—in a forest-island setting. But the closest thing he’d seen on this world to the “familiar” had been the South Jaava city of Aryaal, with its stone walls and structures. Alex-aandra was by far the most “advanced” and “civilized” city he’d seen, but it was just weird enough, plainly reflecting the many cultures from the likely . . . different . . . histories that influenced it, to make it the most peculiar city he’d seen as well. Maybe a bit like Istanbul with an Asian twist?