Straits of Hell (43 page)

He considered awhile, and Raj was quiet as
Tassat
pitched into the foaming sea, her engine and shaft rumbling beneath their feet. The Grik ships were close enough now that they could've commenced firing to some effect even in such a boisterous sea, but
Tassat
's earlier long-range nibbles had depleted her shot locker more than Jarrik liked, and he wanted to get closer before the rest of his ships revealed how lightly armed they were. “Just for hoots,” he suddenly said, “I'd better send my notions off in case nobody else has thought them up—and just in case they're right. I kind of doubt I'll get a chance later.” He quickly summoned a young Imperial midshipman and dictated a note to be taken below to the comm shack. Then he turned to Raj. “We'll cross their bows at least twice, firing as we go,” he said, just above the noise of the sea, wind, and engine. “That should jumble them up. Slow them down. Hopefully, by then, our air-craaft will arrive.”

“Then?”

“Then we'll try to do the same on the western flank of their ‘formation,' causing as much mischief as we can. Maybe ‘herd' them east, as Safir Maraan desires. At some point, though, I expect our battle line to fall apart. It's inevitable in this sea. I've already passed orders that if any ship finds herself separated or surrounded, she must engage the thickest concentration of Grik she can reach.”

Raj blinked surprise in the Lemurian way. “That is suicide! And they would invite capture!”

Jarrik shook his head. “No Lemurian, and no Amer-i-caan Navy ship will be captured by the Grik. The, ah, ‘proto-col' for that was established long ago by the first USS
Revenge
, and there are fuses of several types in the maag-a-zines of all our ships.” He grinned at Raj's horrified expression. “Believe me, you don't want to be captured by the Grik!” He turned to face the growing enemy fleet, its red hulls and dingy sails darkening the heavy sea, even as the sky above continued to darken into a malignant black swirl. “I believe we may be building to a true strakka!” he said gleefully, and spread his arms. “I, for one, embrace it! A strakka of wind and fire! Starboard baattery!” he roared. “Run out your guns and stand by to commence firin' in local control! Pass the word to all ships,” he cried to the talker standing by the cluster of voice tubes beside the helm. “Local control” merely meant that the guns would be individually aimed instead of controlled by
Tassat
's crude but effective gun director in her main top. Since the aim was not necessarily to sink a few ships but to damage as many as possible, salvos would not be used.

Raj managed to compose himself—what else could he do?—and watched the gunports open and the great guns roll to their stops. He'd heard how ferociously his Governor-Empress's furry allies fought the Grik, but he'd never imagined himself in his current situation. He was here to
learn
, not die. But it looked like he was about to die regardless. His subconscious railed against that, but his conscious mind, the part ruled by honor, supposed that to die in such company would be a privilege, after all.

“Are strakkas more intense than the great cyclones, the ‘typhons' in the East?” he asked conversationally, trying to sound steady and unconcerned.

Jarrik blinked at him with respect. “I do not know,” he answered. “I've never been east of Maa-ni-la. But they're brisk enough to suit anyone in a ship as small as this, and if we're lucky and the Heavens smile
upon us, it might do much of our work for us.” He grinned. “And who knows? We may even ride it out ourselves!”

Jarrik-Fas turned to gauge the distance once more. “Fire as you bear!” he commanded. One by one, or occasionally in pairs, ten great guns roared and rumbled back, spitting their heavy shot screeching at the enemy. The smoke was quickly swept away, and glancing back, Jarrik saw white puffs and yellow flames jet away from the ships astern. Looking back at the Grik, he saw tumbling splinters and toppling masts torn aside by the freshening wind, and the closest ships twisted and collided, dragged around by trailing wreckage—but exposing their own batteries as well. One ship fired a heavy broadside, just a couple of hundred tails away. Most of her shot went wild, but a few ripped the air above
Tassat
's deck or slammed into her hull. One caromed off her tall funnel, leaving a tremendous dent, and whined away to splash into the sea. Jarrik grinned at Raj. “Isn't it wondrous how when the shooting starts, all concern immediately fades?”

Raj nodded dutifully, but he didn't necessarily agree. He was still afraid.

•   •   •

Captain Jis-Tikkar had been in the air all day, first for the aborted raid on the Seychelles, and now on this long-range raid on the Grik fleet that Jarrik was jamming up east of the Comoros Islands. There'd been a longer-than-expected delay, rearming and refueling all the planes. None could land on water or decks with bombs still slung, so they'd quickly dropped their ordnance on the Grik ghost fleet after all, before returning to their ships. No sense in leaving anything for the enemy to make use of. But the weather was worsening even then, and what should've been accomplished in half that time wound up taking more than two hours. Now midday, the two Naval Air Wings were finally closing on Jarrik's reported position after flying through the worst weather Tikker had ever experienced in any plane, much less anything as tiny as a P-1 “Fleashooter.”

The little windscreen and the propwash of the five-cylinder radial kept most of the rain off him, but he couldn't see through it. Every time he peeked over the top, his goggles quickly went opaque, and he spent the next few minutes drying them on his damp flight suit—smearing them, mostly—before taking another peek and doing it again. He'd been forced to fly into the darkening sky and increasing wind almost entirely by
compass, and his little plane bounced and swooped as erratically as a leaf. Often glancing from side to side and behind, he was gratefully amazed to see that most of
Salissa
's and
Arracca
's planes were still with him. All “his” pilots were experienced veterans now. Still, he knew he'd lost a few. Most of those had simply become lost or separated from his straggling formation, and he'd ordered them to make for Grik City. Some had gone down, though, and even if
Walker
had been close enough to pick the pilots up, he doubted she'd ever see them in the heaving sea below. “What a mess,” he mumbled to himself for perhaps the hundredth time.

They were close now, though; close enough to hear garbled TBS traffic between Jarrik's scratch task force, which meant at least a few of his ships remained in action. He told them repeatedly that they were coming and had the
Arracca
Nancy flying on his wing send the same by wireless, but nothing coherent came back from the ships. He did get Safir Maraan's latest assessments from the Cowflop, however, based on earlier wireless reports she'd received from TF-Jarrik and the last planes she'd had over the action. None of what he heard was very useful. Flying conditions had deteriorated so badly that Safir had finally relented and suspended further sorties from Grik City. She couldn't justify the sacrifice anymore. In addition to combat accidents—the Grik weren't even shooting at her planes—she was losing planes and pilots every time they tried to land on water or the airstrip. The water was too rough, and the strip had turned to mud.

“The Gen-raal say to land,” came the crackly voice through Tikker's left-ear speaker. “She say you lose too many ships when you attack in dis wedder, an' maybe not hit nuttin' anyway. The Griks
is
gonna get past Task Force Jarrik, an' Lib'ty City's defenses is bein' shifted to center where dey can deploy to face any Grik land-een.”

“No!” Tikker snapped back. “We didn't fly all this way just to dump our bombs on nothing—and crack up landing at Grik City. If we're gonna lose ships anyway, we're gonna bomb the Grik first!”

“Okay,” said the comm-'Cat, as if he'd been expecting that response. “But be aad-vised; we lost wireless contact wit Task Force Jarrik an' hadn't had eyes on the strait for over a hour, so we don't know what's goin' on there.”

“I'm getting some TBS, but I can't make much out.”

There was a moment's hesitation before General Queen Safir
Maraan's own distinctive voice replied. “Then you must be extra careful, Cap-i-taan Tikker,” she said. “Jarrik's remaining ships must have taken damage to their masts—and aerials. They are also probably quite mixed with the enemy by now. Try not to harm any of them. They will have likely suffered enough.”

“Ay, ay, Gener-aal. We'll try,” he said, knowing all his planes would've heard. He risked another peek over his windscreen, and in the moment that he had, he saw bright gun flashes against the dark sea to the south. “We got 'em in sight!” he cried. “And somebody's still fighting.” He squinted, frustrated. “You're right about one thing, though. A lot of Grik ships are past the fighting, making for the northwest headland that opens on Grik City Bay! They're all scattered out, but there's a bunch of 'em!”

“Can you see if any, what, uh, fraaction of the enemy fleet may have been driven ashore?”

“No, not yet.”

There was another long pause. “Then we must continue to assume the greater fraaction has bypassed Task Force Jarrik and will land along the northern shore. It will be the most protected from the weather in any case, and they will know that.” The wind had turned around out of the south, turning colder and starting the rain. “If you must make the attempt, your orders are to attack
those
ships, Cap-i-taan Tikker, and destroy as many as you can.”

“Ay, ay, Gener-aal,” Tikker replied, wiping his goggles again while fighting to keep his plane under control. It was
so
hard to see, and the dingy white enemy sails were difficult to differentiate from the heaving, white-capped sea, but he thought there must be at least two hundred still coming relentlessly on. A fist clenched his heart. With three to four hundred warriors on each ship, that could mean as many as
eighty thousand
Grik were still poised to strike at Grik City's defenses. He and his planes
had
to thin them out because if even half that many made it ashore, they'd outnumber Safir Maraan's entire force.

“You heard the gener-aal,” he said grimly into his mic. “Pair up and hit 'em, north to south, then west to east.
Try
not to run into each other!”

“What about Task Force Jarrik?” asked one of his flight leaders.

“Whatever's left of it must still be fightin' to the south. Try not to hit anything flying the Staars an' Stripes . . . but I don't think you gotta worry about it much. All planes! Taallyho! And good huntin'!”

//////
USS
Walker

C
hief Isak Reuben amazed himself and everyone around him by suddenly puking on the rattling deckplates of the forward fireroom. He'd been gleefully and loudly recounting a particularly vomity episode he and Gilbert once endured in the Philippine Sea in the old destroyer tender
Blackhawk
's fireroom—their first Asiatic Fleet assignment back in 'thirty-nine—when he just suddenly . . . spewed. It was damn rough in the fireroom, and everybody was holding on to something as the ship wallowed and pitched. The roar of the blower and the boiler was almost insurmountable by his reedy voice. Everyone not already puking—the ex-pat Impie gals had it
bad
—was leaning forward, trying to hear, when what must've been half a gallon of the subversive coffee they brewed in the fireroom so they didn't have to drink Earl Lanier's swill just hosed right out of his mouth. Some got on a shedding 'Cat leaning close, and she turned and spewed as well—on the only Impie gal not already
afflicted. Isak kind of hated that. He supposed he was sort of sweet on her. She immediately doubled over and added her stomach contents to the disgusting mix of sweat, condensation, oil, soot, rancid bilgewater sloshing up past the plates—and now vomit—that had combined with the fur 'Cats always shed in the hellish firerooms to create a kind of dark, creeping ooze.

In mere seconds, everybody was puking and retching—and Isak grinned. That had been the point, after all, to test the power of his developing social skills. He didn't know what made
him
puke; he felt fine. Maybe it was being ashore so long? Or maybe just going on about puking long enough would do the trick on anybody? Didn't matter. If he'd known he could start the ball rolling so easily, he'd have just conjured up some retching noises and saved his coffee. Amid the continuing sounds of gastric misery, he wiped his mouth on his skinny arm. “Well,
anyway
 . . . ,” he began again.

The airlock hatch to the aft fireroom banged open, accelerated by the motion of the ship, and Tabby glared at him. As usual, and like everybody—even human females—in the ferociously hot firerooms where temperatures often hovered around 130 degrees, she wore no shirt. That had driven Spanky nuts for a long time, and she'd finally had her department keep T-shirts handy in case Spanky came down, or for whenever they went topside. But with the storm and Spanky's gimpy leg making it unlikely he'd visit, and the extra heat of the high-speed run, she hadn't given a damn about T-shirts that day. “What the hell?” she demanded when she saw—and smelled—what had happened. She shook her head. “Never mind. C'mon, Isaak! We got problems!”

•   •   •

“Tabby says we've got a bad condenser leak, salting the feedwater,” Spanky quickly reported when Matt trotted up the stairs aft, into the dank, dark pilothouse. Rain had lashed him during his brief exposure, and he wiped it out of his eyes. “Cap'n on the bridge!” Minnie shouted belatedly, but Matt merely waved his hand, saying, “As you were,” as usual. He'd been in the comm shack with Ed Palmer listening to developments at Grik City when Spanky called him. Stepping toward his chair where Spanky sat, he nearly slammed into his friend when the ship's bow buried in a heavy swell and the sea pounded the pilothouse.
They would've already lost their new glass windows if the battle shutters hadn't protected them. Of course, that left nothing but small slits to see through. It didn't matter. Right then there was nothing to see but the dark, malevolent, rain-swept waves. “And the firebrick in the number three boiler is starting to crumble. Isak thinks it may collapse completely. All this banging around,” Spanky apologized. “I told Tabby to split the plant so only one boiler gets the contaminated feed—but that means running one engine off one boiler and the other off two—”

“And different RPMs on the shafts if we maintain speed,” Matt agreed grimly, noting that Paddy Rosen was already straining harder at the wheel than he'd already been. It would soon get much worse.

“I've called a relief to double up with Rosen at the helm,” Spanky said, reading his mind. He hesitated. “Skipper?” he began.

“We're not slowing down,” Matt said firmly.

Spanky nodded resignedly. He didn't need to tell Matt that the salted feedwater would eventually ruin the boiler tubes. If just one let go, the feedwater would flash, snuff the fires, and turn all the other tubes into busted guts. The whole boiler could be finished, maybe for good. Spanky contemplated pressing his point. They had spare tubes to fix the condenser, or they could just plug the leaky tubes. But they had to take the boiler off-line to make the repair. What he choked back was that they couldn't
rebuild
a wrecked boiler. Not out here.

“The condensers always leak,” Matt pressed.

“Not like this.”

“The tubes'll hold until we finish the job,” Matt stated stubbornly. “Tabby and Isak will fix them when this is over.”

“But what about the firebricks?” Spanky asked.

Matt braced for another big wave and then sighed. “The firebricks will hold up too. They have before; they will again. Then we'll rebrick the boiler like always. Spanky.” He paused and rubbed the grit in his eyes. “You're not the engineering officer anymore. You're my exec.”

“I know.”

“Then you also know, as much as we love her and as careful as we try to treat her, when this ship has an important job to do, the job becomes more important than the ship, see? Sometimes, the way this war, this
world
has turned, it's hard to keep that straight, but it's still the truth.” Matt went on to describe what he'd heard in the radio room; that two
hundred plus Grik ships had made it past Jarrik and were heading straight for Grik City. Tikker's two wings had accounted for maybe fifteen or twenty of those, losing half a dozen planes in the effort, and then cracking up twice that many trying to land. Tikker himself would try to fly again, but he wouldn't risk any more pilots unless the weather improved. “So we're
it
,” he said at last. “This old, worn-out, leaky ship is it. Again. Now, we don't have much farther to go, and if we can keep this speed, we might get there before the enemy. Even if we do, we'll be running and gunning like never before, and Tabby
has
to keep our feet under us that long.” He waved his hand. “We don't have to sink 'em all, at least. Just whittle 'em down to a bite-size chunk for Safir Maraan. But we've got to do that, and it'll be tough. Afterward?” He nodded at Spanky's crutch, “You can spend your deferred ‘convalescent leave' helping Tabby patch things up.”

“In case you haven't noticed, I'm not arguing with you this time,” Spanky said. “So who are you trying to convince? Me or you?”

Another wave pounded the ship and she shook beneath their feet, but then surged ahead to meet the next one as if emphasizing that she was game. Matt smiled but looked away. “Habit, I guess,” he said, then shook his head. “I don't know,” he finally added, barely loud enough for Spanky to hear, “but I just have this
feeling
that we're right on the edge, at last. We smash this Grik fleet and they'll probably send another. Maybe bigger and even better. One of Jarrik-Fas's last transmissions included a theory about that, and I think he's right. But we'll have all of First Fleet then, and two more corps as well. Not to mention another
front
to get the Griks' attention when the Republic attacks. It may not seem like it now, but I think the Grik are close to breaking, right down to the core.”

“So are we,” Spanky pointed out.

“Yeah, I've thought about that too,” Matt confirmed. “So are we.”

They passed another hour like that, slashing through the heavy seas, the old ship rising and plunging and fighting her way back up. Making the ride even worse than usual, she was getting low on the fuel that not only fed her boilers but also provided much-needed ballast. Combined with all her extra topside weight, she'd invented a new, intermittent, corkscrewing roll in the rough, disorganized sea that had even the saltiest hands feeling a little green. It did begin to moderate ever so slightly
as they neared the northernmost point of Madagascar, however, long in view from the crow's nest above, and even visible from the bridge when the ship heaved herself up to the crest of a wave. The wind wasn't as fierce, with a shorter run off the big island, and the swells weren't as high with the seafloor coming up. It was still raining, but not with the same storm-lashed intensity as when it began.

“Crow's nest report Griks!
Many
Griks, bear-een two two seero!” Minnie cried. “They hard to see through the rain, but the closest is about fifteen thousand yaards!”

“Very well,” Matt said, glancing at Spanky. “I guess we made it, barely. Reduce speed to two-thirds. That'll take some of the strain off the boilers—and the rest of the ship.” He shrugged. “We'll have to slow down to hit anything in this sea anyway.” He raised his voice. “Sound general quarters—wait!” He caught himself and grinned. “Belay that. Pass the word for the bugler instead. I believe we have time, and I'd like to do this right.”

•   •   •

Other than their Hij leaders, Grik were not generally social creatures. They worked and fought together under close supervision and direction, but the average Uul warrior possessed barely enough language to follow the most basic commands. Predatory, pack-attack instinct took over after that. It was already clear to the Allies that this wasn't because they didn't have the
capacity
for more, but because they were so rarely allowed to live long enough for their mental maturity to match the physical maturity and lethality they achieved so quickly. The current war had begun to change that to various degrees, and there'd always been exceptions. Particularly bright Grik, if recognized, were allowed to mature, to be “elevated,” to the status of Hij, though the privilege had rarely been extended beyond the offspring of already long-established Hij with the influence to persuade a regency's choosers to “recognize” and elevate their own young. Hij shipmasters were particularly adept at this, and the growing need for experienced Grik sailors was long established. Further exceptions had been made during the current crisis, creating leaders for vastly expanded armies and changing the very nature of the armies themselves. General Halik was a prime example, having been elevated from a successful sport fighter to commander of all Grik
forces in India. He'd lost most of his battles there, but he'd learned. And though his peers couldn't know it, he'd taken things a long step farther. At first of necessity and then by design, he'd preserved as much of his army as he could for long enough that a fair percentage had begun to “elevate” itself. Having influenced the program that elevated Halik and others like him, “General of the Sea” Hisashi Kurokawa was doing much the same independently, and also by design, as was General Esshk to a more limited degree. Such had never been done before, in the long history of the Grik, and it remained to be seen what the result would be.

But on that wild, stormy day when the “traditional” forces commanded by Regent Consort Ragak of Sofesshk made their great attack to recover the Celestial City from the grasp of the prey, the only Hij to attend Ragak were the usual generals and shipmasters. The generals were of the “traditional” sort as well, whose only role was to design battles and then set their Uul warriors loose. Due to the limited nature of those designs, they had little to do until they reached the shore and generally stayed out of the way. But the shipmasters and Regent Consort Ragak, who'd taken the role of “General of the Sea” for himself, had been quite busy indeed. Ragak's plan to quickly shift his horde across the Go Away Strait to the southwest coast of Madagascar itself before the prey organized its meager patrols far enough south to discover its passage had worked perfectly. There his swarm had waited until the bait was laid in the Seychelles to draw off the more powerful elements of the prey's fleet. That had worked even better than Ragak hoped, and spies that remained among the trapped survivors near the Celestial City had signaled watchers beyond the Wall of Trees with colored cook-smokes that the prey had taken the bait. They, in turn, raced south in relays along the coast. Many were slain by the various preys inhabiting the island, but enough survived to bring Ragak word that the time to strike was at hand.

Ragak was already imagining himself as Regent Champion of all the Grik, and contemplating how General Esshk should be destroyed when things suddenly became . . . tedious. First, after several days at sea without the least sign of the prey's flying machines—Esshk's air raids had drawn them back to the city, no doubt, he grudged—his great fleet encountered troublesome weather that roughened and slowed its voyage. Then, that morning near the Comoros, they'd run into a
most
troublesome handful of ships that, combined with the worsening weather, had
thrown his entire swarm into disarray. More than half his ships had been swept or diverted to the west coast of the island, and their warriors would have to make their attack there. The remaining swarm struggled on, sped by a turn of the wind, and was now rounding the northeast point of land, its objective in sight at last. He was content. The flying machines had been grounded by the storm, with one lone exception that had suddenly reappeared but merely watched from above. The rest of his fleet was turning into a quartering wind that would send the ships racing across a milder sea beyond the harbor mouth and the great guns he knew awaited him there, to the broad, flat beach he'd chosen to slam his ships ashore. After that, his warriors would leap into the surf. Some would be eaten by the ravening fish, of course, but the storm would keep most of those from the shallows. Few enough would die. Then it would merely be a matter of loosing his proud,
pure
, Uul, untainted by General Esshk's revolting experiments, to quickly scour the Celestial City of the feral vermin prey infesting it. He fully expected to be feasting on the defenders in the Celestial Palace by nightfall.