Maelstrom (46 page)

“It would seem our friends are preparing to return,” Rolak stated dryly.

“Swell. Can the guns on
that
side of the fort keep firing?” Chapelle asked.

“God, I hope so,” answered Brister. “Just don’t shoot at the bay anymore!”

“I still don’t know what you hope to accomplish by this!” Shinya hissed low, as they trotted back across the center of the fort.

“Maybe nothing,” Brister replied. “Maybe everything.”

Pete Alden’s new forward command post occupied a multistory dwelling belonging to one of Baalkpan’s more affluent textile merchants. Like many of her class, she hadn’t originally been a member of the “run away” party, but she’d joined it quickly enough when
Fristar
abandoned the defenders. Pete didn’t care. All that mattered was that the dwelling afforded an excellent view of the entire south wall. The enemy facing it continued to swell far beyond the initial force that landed north of the Clump and occupied the fort road. Ever since the fort was cut off, thousands upon thousands of lizards had poured through the gap, up the road, and out through the cut, where they deployed into a mile-wide front with their backs to the jungle. Round shot bounded through their ranks from across the killing field the People had cut with such effort. Each shot killed some of the enemy, plowing through their densely packed ranks, but the fire had a negligible real effect. Pete thought it was probably good for the gunners’ morale, though, faced as they were with what stood before them. If the Baalkpan defenders had a wealth of anything, it was powder and shot for their guns. Let them shoot.

He’d have been happy to let the mortars fire as well, and they might have wreaked some real havoc, but they didn’t have as many of the bombs, and the range was a little far—for now. His reserve mortar teams were rushing from the center of the city, and when they arrived he’d have thirty of the heavy bronze tubes at his disposal. He hoped the copper, pineapple grenade-shaped bombs would dilute the force of the Grik assault when it came, preventing it from hitting his defenses as a cohesive mass. Canister ought to blunt the spearhead; hopefully the bombs would shatter the shaft. Now all he could do was wait and listen as the reports flooded in.

Chack and Queen Maraan scaled the ladder behind him from the level below. A signaler escorted them to his side.

“The First Marines have deployed in support of the Manila volunteers,” Chack said, saluting. As always, the powerful young ’Cat wore his dented helmet at a jaunty angle, and a Krag was slung over his shoulder.

“The Six Hundred and the Fifth Baalkpan are in place as well,” Safir Maraan reported in a husky tone. She was dressed all in black, as usual, and her silver armor was polished to a high sheen.

“Good,” Alden murmured. “We’re going to need them.”

“It’s certainly shaping up to be a most memorable battle,” the queen observed.

“And how,” said Chack, using the term he often heard the destroyermen use. He stood on his toe pads and peered out over the wall. From across the field beyond came the familiar strident, thrumming squawk of hundreds of Grik horns, and the hair-raising, thundering staccato of tens of thousands of Grik swords and spears pounding on shields commenced. “I think they’re about to come,” he said, turning to Pete. “With your permission?”

“You bet. Give ’em hell.”

For just an instant, as he passed her, Chack paused beside Safir. Reaching out, he gently cradled her elbow in his hand. They blinked at each other, and then he was gone. The Orphan Queen’s eyes never left him until he disappeared from sight.

“Gen-er-al Aal-den?” she asked.

Pete nodded, still looking at the enemy. “Yes. Go. I think Chack’s right.” He turned to look at her. “Be careful, Your Highness. I expect I’ll be down directly.”

“The waterfront’s in for it,” Dowden observed, peering through his binoculars. The cork in the center of the enemy advance was out of the bottle, and dozens of red-hulled ships were streaming toward the docks. Most of the mines were gone. Clusters of barrels still floated in the bay, giving the impression that mines remained a hazard, but the Grik avoided those that they could.
Kas
-
Ra
-
Ar
’s smoldering wreck had finally slipped, hissing steam, beneath the water of the bay, and Matt had ordered
Tolson
, the last shattered, leaking frigate, to disengage. Her captain, Pruit Barry, signaled a protest, but Matt repeated the order and
Tolson
was retiring sluggishly, reluctantly, from the fight. She’d given a good account of herself, surely destroying the last of the gun-armed enemy ships in the center, but she’d paid a terrible price. Her sails were tattered rags, and her foremast was gone. Matt only hoped she’d reach shallow water before she sank. The heavy guns of the waterfront defenses opened up as the enemy approached and tore them apart, but unlike the plunging fire from the fort, fewer of the hits were immediately fatal or disabling. In their same old way, the Grik just kept charging through.

“Can’t be helped,” Matt ground out. Her ammunition nearly exhausted,
Walker
had only two objectives left. First, she had to prevent any Grik ships from probing the west inlet of the bay. Not many had tried so far. The lure of the city, as expected, kept most of them drawn in its direction. Mainly, though,
Walker
had to remain visible in the bay until
Amagi
arrived. So far the Japanese battle cruiser was taking her own sweet time. That was as they’d hoped, from a naval perspective, thought Matt, glancing at the setting sun. They’d savaged the Grik fleet without
Amagi
to protect it, and
Walker
would be a more difficult target in the dark. But in the meantime people were dying. There’d been no word from Fort Atkinson since it was smothered beneath several ten-inch salvos. Smoke still rose from there, so fighting clearly continued, but the guns overlooking the entrance to the bay were silent.

A continuous, impenetrable pall of smoke obscured the south side of the city as well, and no one on
Walker
could tell what was going on from her station across the bay. Matt now knew he’d been naive to think he could control the battle from his ship. He could transmit, and presumably someone could hear him, but he couldn’t see any of his friends’ signals at all. It was beyond frustrating, and there was nothing he could do but trust the people on the spot. They were good people, and his presence probably wouldn’t make any difference, but it was nerve-racking all the same. Letts had managed to get a single message to him by means of a small, swift felucca. Several major assaults against the south wall had been repulsed so far, but the last attack had been costly, and actually made it past the moat to the very top of the wall. Most of the casualties suffered by the defenders came from blizzards of crossbow bolts, but the enemy was also employing a smaller version of their bomb thrower they hadn’t seen before. Several Grik would carry the machine between them, and once it was emplaced they could hurl a small bomb about the size of a coconut almost two hundred yards. The weapon had little explosive force, but like the larger ones it dispersed flaming sap in all directions when it burst. It was a terrible device, and the Grik had an endless supply.

Most of the reserve had already been committed, but more Grik continued pouring through the gap and up the fort road. Letts had been forced to strip defenders from unengaged sections of the wall, even as the invading army lapped around to the northeast to threaten there as well. With this new attack on the waterfront, things would get tight.

“Send a message to HQ. Tell them they’re going to have a lot of company along the dock, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“They probably know that already, Skipper.”

Matt shrugged. “All the same . . .” The rattling drone of distressed motors distracted him, and he looked again toward the wreck-jumbled harbor mouth. The PBY was returning from somewhere beyond, its latest load of depth charges gone. Gray smoke streamed from the starboard engine, and the plane, less than a hundred feet in the air, clawed for altitude.

“Mallory must’ve tried to drop on
Amagi
,” Larry said. “Crazy bastard. Now the plane’s shot to pieces! I thought you told him to stay away from her.”

Matt nodded. He had. He also knew Mallory’s view of the battle was better than anyone else’s. Only Ben Mallory knew exactly how the enemy was deployed, and he must have thought things were desperate indeed to try to tip the balance single-handedly.
Amagi
must be getting close, and Ben must have thought the defenders couldn’t take it.

The plane rumbled by, heading for the north inlet, where a backup landing ramp and fueling pier had been established. Up close now, Matt saw it was riddled with holes, and a wisp of smoke trailed the port engine as well. Ben obviously had his hands full just keeping it in the air. The navigation lights flashed Morse.

“
Amagi
,” Dowden said.

As they watched, orange flames sprouted around the port engine and leaped along the wing, consuming leaking fuel. Black smoke billowed.

“Oh, no,” Matt breathed.

The plane turned into the failing engine, but with an apparently herculean effort, Ben managed to straighten her out with the big rudder and claw for the nearest shore.

“Come
on
!” someone murmured.

Even as the lumbering fireball fought for altitude, however, throttles at the stops, the fight ended with a suddenness as appalling as it was inevitable. The port support struts gave way, and the plane staggered in agony. An instant later the wing around the engine, weakened by fire, simply folded upward. Flaming fuel erupted, spewing from the sky with a heavy, distant
whoosh!
and the brave PBY Catalina and its gallant crew plummeted into the sea.

“Get a squad of Marines into the launch to look for survivors,” Matt said huskily. By his tone he didn’t expect them to find any. “Then you’d better resume your station, Larry,” he added, referring to the auxiliary conn. With only the Grik to fight so far, he’d allowed Dowden to remain on the bridge.

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Larry said, still staring at the erratic plume of smoke hovering above the burning, sinking wreckage of the plane. He took a deep breath and looked at Matt. “Good luck, sir.”

“You too.”

Keje-Fris-Ar paced the battlement spanning the width of his Home, his fond eye tracing details he’d so long taken for granted. Even if all went well, his ship—his Home—would likely be reduced to a smoking, sunken wreck in the shallow water off the fitting-out pier. The distant sound of battle in the south had become a living, gasping, thundering throb, and the guns behind the fishing fleet wharf had begun booming as the Grik drew ever closer to his beloved
Salissa
. They were so densely packed he couldn’t even count them. Far to the west, he saw
Walker
beneath her massive flag, racing to intercept a red ship that had strayed too close to the inlet. Tiny waterspouts erupted around the Grik as one of
Walker
’s machine guns came into play. In spite of his dread of what lay in store for his own ship, he felt a surge of guilt, mingled with gratitude for all
Walker
and her people had done for them. What they had yet to do. He sent a prayer to the Heavens for their safety, and added one for
Mahan
as well. The thick smoke had prevented him from seeing the PBY go down.

He knew some still believed the Amer-i-caans had brought this upon them, that the horror they faced was somehow connected to the arrival of the slender iron ships. He also knew that was ridiculous. The Grik had always been there, and today was but a reenactment of that terrible, prehistoric conflict that fragmented and exiled his people. This confrontation had been preordained, inevitable, building to this point over countless generations. The Grik were a scourge, a pestilence, the very embodiment of evil, just as the Scrolls had said. Only distance and the hostile Western Ocean had preserved his people this long. But the Grik managed to cross that distance at last, just as they’d once crossed the water between that distant place the Amer-i-caans called Aa-fri-caa, and the ancestral home of the People.

Keje would never have known that much if
Walker
hadn’t come. They’d already done so much for his people, from that first time they helped save his ship until now. If it hadn’t been for their timely appearance, the People might already have been scattered again. Keje would certainly be dead. Far from being a party to the evil that descended upon them, Keje believed the Amer-i-caans were a gift: deliverers sent to aid them in this terrible time. That was all very well as far as the People were concerned, but it was terribly unfair to the deliverers. Whatever force for evident good had sent them to this place, its dark counterpart balanced that act by sending
Amagi
to their enemies. Fleetingly, he wished he were facing this battle beside his friend in
Walker
’s pilothouse, underneath that great colorful flag. Keje knew he was where he needed to be, however. His duty to his people—his family—dictated that he make this fight here, upon his precious Home.

He felt a presence behind him and turned. There stood his daughter, Selass, holding forth his polished armor. He already wore his finest embroidered jerkin and his old, heavy-bladed scota at his side. Reaching for the armor, he saw that the fur around Selass’s eyes was matted with tears, and for the first time in so very long he saw the true face of his daughter once more. Gone was the rebellious arrogance and air of condescension she’d so carefully honed. In its place there remained only a sad, wistful softness. He knew of her friendship with San-draa Tucker, and her dutiful attempts to help the tragic, tormented Saak-Fas come to terms with his ordeal. He also knew of her hopeless love for Chack, the one she’d once spurned. Now she’d lost them both. Saak-Fas had gone to
Mahan
. By all accounts he performed his duty, but Jim Ellis told him that he rarely spoke. Chack had earned distinction and the favor of an exotic foreign queen. The only things Selass had left were her Home and her father, and she stood on the brink of losing them as well. Keje’s heart shattered within him, and he took his daughter in his arms.