Into the Storm (14 page)

 

Captain Reddy was sitting in his chair on the bridge when the forenoon watch came on at 0800. The familiar routine of the watch change had a soothing effect that helped dispel the unpleasant aftereffects of unremembered nightmares that had plagued his sleep. Lieutenant Garrett relieved Larry Dowden, who immediately went in search of a cool place to rest. Garrett looked like he’d had a difficult night too, and he acted for a moment as if he had something to say. But then he stepped onto the port bridgewing where Courtney Bradford stood. The Australian was waiting impatiently for the morning fog to disperse so he could view Bali’s wonders once more. Matt stood and stretched, and then went back to stare at the chart. He heard the sound of someone climbing the ladder at the rear of the pilothouse and checked his watch. Right on time.

“Morning, Jim.”

“Morning, sir,” Jim Ellis replied.

“Sleep well?” Jim made a wry face and stifled a yawn, theatrically. Matt chuckled. “Look, I’ve made a decision you’re not going to like, but I don’t see any alternative.” Matt’s former exec looked at him questioningly. “I’m going to take
Walker
to Surabaya and have a look around. If everything’s as it should be, we’ll still have fuel for a slow run to Australia. If the . . . phenomenon has affected Surabaya like Bali, we can only assume the same is true for Perth, if not the whole world. If that’s the case . . . Well, we’ll figure out what to do. If Surabaya’s unchanged, or we run into Japs, we’ll turn around and collect you.
Mahan
will remain here until then. I’ll leave three of the nurses and all the most seriously wounded with you.” He grimaced. “I know you’re shorthanded, so I won’t leave you the prisoner to guard, but I will inflict Captain Kaufman on you. Maybe you can get some work out of him. I think his lieutenant will be a help, at least.” He motioned toward Bradford. “I don’t know whether to leave him here to gawk at the animals or take him along. He might prove useful again if we have to scrounge for fuel.”

“I don’t like you leaving, sir, but it sounds like as good a plan as any.
Mahan
would just slow you down and give you something else to worry about in a fight.” Jim grinned. “As for Mr. Bradford, I’d just as soon you take him. I’d have to watch him constantly to keep him from swimming ashore, sea monsters or not. As you said, if I don’t have men to guard a Jap, I sure can’t keep up with him.”

Matt chuckled. “Very well. We might as well get started. If we’re not back in three days, proceed to Perth alone. Alor will be our rally point. If we don’t meet you there . . . we’re not coming.”

 

The unusual mists had mostly cleared by the time the personnel were transferred and
Walker
’s anchor chain clanked and rattled through the hawse and into the well. The special sea and anchor detail directed a spray of seawater from the fire hose on the chain as it came aboard. Matt stepped out on the starboard bridgewing and peered at the enigmatic Menjangan. He noticed the wind had begun to swing the bow toward it, now that the anchor had cleared the bottom.

“Starboard engine ahead slow.” He spoke quietly, but his voice carried to the helmsman.

“Starboard ahead slow, aye,” confirmed Tony Scott. Matt sighed. The routine of ship handling soothed the tension of their predicament. The anchor came aboard as the ship twisted to maintain her position and the men on the fo’c’sle leaned against the safety chains to hose the mud and weed off the anchor. It was a procedure he’d witnessed many times, but for the first time he truly appreciated the efficient and matter-of-fact way the deck-apes accomplished it. He was glad to see that no matter what happened, some things never changed. Things like duty.

Suddenly the intercom buzzed, and the bridge talker opened the circuit to the lookout, Alfred Vernon, in the crow’s nest.

“Bridge! I have a surface target! Bearing three five zero! Range . . . damn! It’s hard to tell. The mist is still heavy in the strait. I make it six zero, double zero! Whatever it is, it’s
big
!” Vernon’s voice was pitched high with excitement.

“Sound general quarters!” shouted Matt. “Signal
Mahan
to head for the rally point. We’ll . . . distract whoever it is and catch up tonight!”

 

In the aft fireroom, Spanky had just returned the coffeepot to its place near the burner when the general alarm sounded. Then the bells rang up AHEAD FLANK and all hell broke loose. He dropped his cup reaching for something to hold on to, and it shattered. The stern crouched down as the big screws bit and
Walker
surged ahead. The Mice and the water tender worked frantically to keep water out of the turbines. The blowers roared and raw fuel gushed straight into the stacks. Isak swore when the coffeepot fell to the deck, sending scalding liquid sloshing across his legs. Men scampered about, sliding the loosened deck plates back where they belonged as the ship picked up speed, but began settling back into a relatively normal and only slightly nerve-racking acceleration.

Spanky looked around at the aftermath of chaos and wiped sweat from his brow as he checked for blown gauges. “Bloody hell!” he muttered. “I guess the Skipper didn’t take the hint when I asked him to take it easy.”

C
hack-Sab-At was sulking. High in the air, at the very top of the first great wing—almost a hundred fifty tails above the main deck of
Salissa
Home—he could concentrate on nothing but his rejection. He should have known. Selass had flirted with him only as a means of attracting Saak-Fas, first son of the clan chief controlling the center, and most prestigious, of Home’s three wings. He realized now, with a measure of embarrassed bitterness, that he’d fallen for her ruse, as had his rival. Her pretense of favor easily convinced Saak-Fas to take her to mate before it came Chack’s turn to choose. No matter. He was young and not without prospects. He had a wide choice of eligible mates. He was a first son also, and though his sister was older and closer in line to succeed their mother as clan chief of the forward wing, he expected to go far. He was the best wing runner on all
Salissa
Home and when a new Home was built in a season or two, he would climb to the top of its center wing and become fas chief himself.

Or maybe not,
he corrected himself glumly.

Selass might truly dislike him enough to see to it that her father, the High Chief of
Salissa
, did not grant him that honor. It wasn’t unheard of. The hereditary nature of the wing “nobility” was rarely interfered with, and each of the three wing clans of Home was virtually autonomous. Except, of course, in how they cooperated with the other clans to move Home from place to place. If a clan chief were incompetent, or unable to agree with one or both of the other wing clans—or the Body of Home clan, for that matter—the succession could be altered. High Chiefs always rose from the Body of Home clan and were supposedly impartial to the bickering among the wings. They had the power to confirm or deny all successions and, indeed, the power to banish.

Keje-Fris-Ar was sovereign over them all and literally held the power of life and death. If he began to dislike Chack, life—which until that very morning had seemed so full of promise—might reveal progressively more disappointment as time went by. Subconsciously, Chack knew Keje was a good and benevolent ruler. He would not countenance any personal vendetta based on a scornful daughter’s whim. But Chack felt sorry for himself, and he was in no mood to limit the depths of his misery. It didn’t help that, try as he might, he couldn’t shake the vision of Selass’s soft silver fur and green eyes from his mind.

He glanced far below at the surface of Home and saw the many Body of Home people performing their daily chores: salting fish from the morning drag or tending the plants that grew from under the protective overhangs ranged entirely around
Salissa
. Life went on as it did every day, day after day, during fair-weather times. The People were happily heedless of his puny disappointment, for the People
were
happy, for the most part. Few water monsters were a threat to anything as large as Home, and only the worst storms were noticed. The only threats were the rare mountain fish, land, and of course, the Grik.

Mountain fish were few and encountered only in the deepest regions of the Great Seas, where Homes of the People rarely ventured. Land was easily avoided. The Sky Priests, with their mystical instruments and scrolls, saw to that. If weather hindered the path they decreed, the sharp eyes of the wing-tip watchers—the post that Chack stood—would see danger in time for the Body of Home clan to deploy the great fins that could move them against all but the most furious sea. If even that failed, then they had the huge copper feet, two at each end of Home, that could be dropped into the sea attached to a great cable. There had never been a blow—not even a strakka—that could conquer the feet.

The People really feared only the Grik. The Grik were the Ancient Enemy, who cast them from paradise long ago. So long had it been that even to the Sky Priests, it was just “Long Ago.” But the People escaped the Grik, and it had been so long since any had been seen that they’d become creatures of legend, of myth, of nightmare—boogeymen to frighten younglings into performing their chores. If they did exist, they dwelt safely across the Western Ocean, upon which no vessel could pass. That was what the People believed for generation upon generation—until the Grik came again and an ancient, almost instinctual dread was revived.

They hadn’t been long in these waters, but there were more of them all the time, and they were liable to appear anywhere in their ridiculously small and fragile Homes. Homes that only a few hundred could travel upon, but Homes that were amazingly fleet and maneuverable and had very sharp teeth. Homes that always attacked. In Chack’s first seven seasons, he’d seen only one of their tiny Homes, and it had attacked them—only to be beaten off. But the shock of that day lingered still. That such a small thing with such frightening creatures would attack without thought or warning—and with such dreadful ferocity—still troubled his sleep. The next seven seasons carried him into young adulthood, and he’d seen no less than six more Grik Homes. Each time one appeared, it attacked without fail. They never managed to do more than inflict minor damage, but always a few of the People were slain repelling them. One such had been Chack’s father. It made no sense. The Grik had to be at least a little intelligent, else they couldn’t have built the fast little ships. But to attack Homes of the People from their much smaller craft was like flasher-fish against gri-kakka. They could wound, but nothing more. The priests taught that Grik were creatures of the land. Perhaps that explained their madness.

Chack didn’t pretend to understand them, any more than he understood the treachery of females. He glanced at his sister, Risa, on the wing support a dozen tails beneath him. She watched him with concern in her large amber eyes—and impatience. He knew Risa loved him; she was his very best friend. But she also thought he took things much too seriously. She made a joke of everything except her duty, but there was a difference between giving and taking a joke—and becoming one. Her body language told him more than words ever could: he was acting a fool. He blinked rueful acknowledgment and resumed scanning the skyline. They were in a confined area and as good as the priests were at laying a course, it was instilled in wing-tips from birth that they could never be too careful. Besides, it was in confined areas that the Grik usually chose to attack.

He was studying the hazy shoreline with just that thought in mind when he first saw something strange. A large puff of black smoke appeared above the haze that lingered between the small island and the large one. There was a sudden impression of rapid motion and a white froth grew on the water. A smallish shape, advancing impossibly fast, appeared atop the foam, under a diminishing cloud of smoke. He clung to his perch for a few moments more with his jaw hanging slack.
Nothing
could move that fast! He blinked his eyes. Of course it could. He saw it. He reached over and grabbed a line.

“The Grik! The Grik come!” he shrieked at the top of his lungs, and dropped down the rope toward the surprised and alarmed upturned faces.

 

“I can’t tell yet!” answered Vernon in the crow’s nest to another urgent query. “There’s too much haze,” he continued excitedly. “It’s big, though. God, it’s big! Bigger than that cruiser we tangled with!”

Dowden clambered up the ladder to the pilothouse, wiping sleep from bleary eyes. “What is it, Captain?”

“Don’t know yet, Larry. Something in the strait.” Matt smiled grimly. “Sorry to wake you. I have the conn, Mr. Garrett. Take your station, if you please. Torpedoes?” Ensign Sandison scrambled to his position at the starboard torpedo director.

“They’re ready, Captain.”

“All stations manned and ready, sir,” supplied the talker.

Matt brought his binoculars to his eyes. The haze in the strait was still thick, but it was thinning rapidly under the combined assault of the fully risen sun and a freshening breeze. Even on the bridge they could see a large dark shape, and it did appear larger than
Amagi
. Matt knew then that all their toil, sacrifice, and suffering, the gallantry and heroism of his fine crew, had been for nothing. Whatever lay ahead could only be a very large Japanese ship, and as soon as it saw them they would die. His only plan was to gain the attention of the enemy, fire
Walker
’s last torpedoes and run like hell under a cloud of smoke back in the direction of Surabaya. Maybe they could distract it from
Mahan
and the other destroyer would escape.

The talker asked the lookout to repeat himself. “Captain?” he said hesitantly. “Vernon says he’s a little above the haze now and he can see a fair amount of the target, which is also above the haze. He says it ain’t no Jap warship he ever saw. It ain’t nothin’ he ever
heard
of.”