Straits of Hell (15 page)

“What the hell's the matter with you, you little twerp?” Earl gasped, fingering his ear. “You bit me, goddamn it!”

“Murderer!” Isak seethed, going almost limp in Tabby's arms. “I'm gonna get you for this!”

“I didn't touch the little shit!” Earl defended, looking around. “Anybody see me touch it?” The laughter had subsided to a thoughtful silence. “And even if I had, killin' Griks ain't murder. It's what we do.”

“Grikky was different! I spent weeks gettin' eem ta trust me, an' you scared eem ta death as quick as that!” Isak snapped.

Earl started to say something more, but Campeti shoved him back. “Just shut up. Get the hell back to your galley and stay there!” He turned to Tabby. “C'mon. Let's get him down the stairs. Let Spanky sort this out.”

A few minutes later, Tabby and Campeti were supporting Isak in front of the Exec. The onlookers remained, but the silence had turned respectful, and Spanky realized that, Griklet or not, the crew was on Isak's side. He leaned heavily on his crutch and sighed. “Listen to me,
you nut,” he began gruffly. “You leave Earl alone. He didn't murder your pet. He's a turd, but he was just doin' what comes naturally to him—just like your . . . Grikky, flippin' his lid and jumpin' over the side. We've seen Grik do that over and over when they're scared. Anything could've set him off eventually; blow tubes, or fire the main battery, and over he'd go. So even if he was tame as a bunny, you never could've kept him on the ship. We might've turned him over to Courtney to study”—he glared at Campeti—“but not to cut up. I mean, why would he, when he's done it a hundred times? But whatever we came up with, he'd've had to go. That said, you did good work with that thing, good enough that I won't report you attacking Earl to the Skipper as long as you write up how you managed to actually tame a Griklet. Hell, I don't think Larry's people even know how to tame their own kids!” Everyone knew that the captain had seen everything from the dock but would ignore it without an official report. It was always better for things like this to be handled by subordinates whenever possible.

“Okay,” Isak mumbled halfheartedly, “but that fat bastard Earl has to pay.”

“You leave him alone! You mess with him anymore and I
will
report you to the Skipper—with the recommendation that he not only bust you, but take you out of your firerooms and assign you to Earl as a mess attendant. You hear me?”

“Yah. I hear.”

Spanky looked at Tabby, and some kind of understanding passed between them, because she nodded and poked Isak in the ribs. “C'mon, you. You got work to do.”

Spanky looked meaningfully at Chief Jeek, who also nodded. “Right! Break it up!” he shouted to the onlookers. “We all got work!”

On the pier, Matt chuckled when Spanky caught his eye, making tearing motions at his hair.

“That was . . . different,” Sandra said, and Matt looked at her. Her expression was unclear in the falling darkness.

“What? The aerial casualty shipping the torpedo? Nah. Stuff goes haywire all the time. You know that. And taking torpedoes aboard is always ticklish. I'm actually encouraged that Jeek got it straightened out so fast.”

“That's not what I mean. I'm talking about the incident with Isak and his pet Griklet.”

“What about it? It was funny. And in all honesty, a Griklet's not much weirder than some of the critters the guys used to try to bring aboard in the old days, in the Philippines.”

“I'm talking about Isak himself. We've all been through a lot, but him going from a virtual cave dweller in the firerooms to, well, the slayer of the Grik empress, or whatever she is, has done something to him.” She shook her head. “Maybe it'll pass. Probably will. But right now I'm not sure whether he's finally starting to join the human, or human-Lemurian, race”—she made a throwing-away gesture—“or if, after everything, he's beginning to crack up.”

Matt snorted, but then considered. “You know, I've been thinking how ships' captains have to be kind of amateur shrinks. I guess doctors do too.” He smiled. “But I think Isak was always cracked. What does your shrinkery tell you about me?”

Sandra started to answer, hesitated, began again, then shook her head. Matt started to prod her, when her face lit up with a sickly green light. He looked up at the Celestial Palace and saw a flare beginning to fall—just as others went up near the airfield. He looked out to sea, beyond the harbor mouth, and saw more flares illuminating the DD on picket duty.

“Captain Reddy!” Signal Lieutenant Palmer cried from the top of the gangway. “I guess they tried to reach us”—he gestured at the fallen aerial—“but
Amerika'
s Morse lamp sends that
Big Sal
spotted Grik zeps out in the strait, coming in from the northwest! Lots of them!”

“How many is ‘lots,' Ed? And can
Big Sal
's planes intercept them?”

“There must've still been sunlight up that high because they said, well,
hundreds
, Skipper! And Keje says they're high enough that they'll
be
here before any of his planes can catch 'em!”

Matt grabbed Sandra by the wrist and started dragging her up the gangway. “Take in all lines!” he shouted. “We're getting underway! Signal
Amerika
to get underway immediately as well, and pass the word!” Gaining the deck, he and Sandra automatically saluted the flag aft, and then Campeti, but Matt didn't ask permission to board.

“What about your regulations—that keep me off your ship?” Sandra asked ironically as bosun's pipes and whistles shrieked.

“I doubt Grik bombing practice has improved that much, but they're about to drop a lot of 'em—and the docks have to be their primary target. No way I'm leaving you standing there. I'll bring you back when it's over.”

//////
Grik City Airship Field

“G
rik zeps!” came the cry from the hastily built comm shack, loud enough that Captain Tikker heard it in the HQ tent nearby. A little groggy, he jumped up from the dingy cushion he'd flopped down on seemingly moments before, exhausted after a day of shifting the 1st Pursuit Squadron back out to
Salissa
and organizing the command and support structure of the other squadrons to operate independently. “His” P-40 floatplane had been the first ship sent across, along with the pitiful few spares remaining to keep it in the air. All that was left on the field—they hadn't even named it yet—were the nineteen P-1 Mosquito Hawks, or “Fleashooters,” of the 1st Naval Air Wing's 2nd and 3rd Pursuit Squadrons. Tikker ran outside the tent, pulling on the peacoat that would cook him now, but that he'd need at altitude, along with a flight helmet and goggles.

“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 proven 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.