Maelstrom (14 page)

“Be a cold day . . . here . . . before I waste one of my beauties on you ungrateful turds. You wanna eat fish? Catch ’em yourselfs and cook ’em on the boiler burners!”

Tabby reached the platter next, behind the laughing destroyermen, and took a sandwich. Gilbert snagged another, then paused. Isak was the one who usually instigated conversation, but he thought he’d give it a try. He leaned in the window and saw Lanier’s massive shape within, sitting on a creaky wooden chair, while Ray Mertz and a black-and-white ’Cat Earl called “Pepper” assembled another platter of sandwiches.

“Ah, how’s repairs to the Coke machine goin, Earl?” Gilbert inquired, expecting a diatribe. He was surprised when Lanier’s face brightened from its customary glower.

“Purty good.” He gestured beyond the bulkhead Yager leaned on, and the fireman turned to look at a bench behind him upon which the treasured Coke machine had lain in state ever since it was killed in action against the Japanese. Lanier had clearly been working on it, and many of its internal parts were restored. There hadn’t been any Cokes for months, even before it was destroyed, but the crew had taken perverse comfort from the fact that, no matter how bad things got, the Coke machine still worked. When splinters from a Japanese shell eviscerated it during their final torpedo attack on
Amagi
, after
Nerracca
was destroyed, the crew took its loss disproportionately hard.

“Compressor’s back in, and most of the lines are patched. Won’t be long before I try some ammonia in her. Cross your fingers!”

“Will do, Earl,” Gilbert said fervently, and stepped away, still looking at the battered remnant of another world. “It’d be a fine thing if it was workin’ again,” he almost whispered.

“Why?” asked Tabby around a mouthful of sandwich, her long whiskers festooned with crumbs. “You say ain’t no Cokes. I never had me no Cokes. Why fix thing to keep something cold . . . there ain’t none of?”

“We could use it to cool other stuff,” Gilbert defended. “Besides . . .” He thought of comparing it to a pet, but Lemurians thought the very idea of keeping pets was silly—for good reason. There weren’t many animals on this world that would make suitable—or survivable—pets. Much as they treasured their Homes, on land or sea, they didn’t seem particularly sentimental over inanimate objects, either. They did take trophies, though. “Think of it like a necklace of Grik claws. When the Japs busted it, it was like the string on the necklace broke and you couldn’t wear it no more. Fixin’ the Coke machine is like fixin’ the string.” He knew it wasn’t a very good comparison—“analogy” was a word he’d never encountered—but it seemed to suffice, and Tabby nodded apparent understanding.

“I see. You captured Coke machine from God-daam Jaaps?”

Gilbert closed his eyes and shook his head. He was about to correct her when he was interrupted.

“There you are, you little twerps!”

He looked up and saw Laney standing before him, hands on hips, a grossly oversize affectation of Spanky’s authoritative pose.

“What do you think yer doin’? Both of you was supposed to be on watch!”

“We been ashore, Laney,” Gilbert grated. “You know, with the
shore
party.”

Laney’s face clouded. “That don’t cut no ice with me. I don’t care if you been ’rasslin’ sea monsters, you’ll stand your watches when you’re told! And that’s ‘Chief ’ Laney to you slacking malingerers!”

“We ain’t ‘lingerin’; we just got here. We’s eatin’ and movin’ along. Earl didn’t yell at us for lingerin’.”

“Just . . . get your asses down to the aft fireroom, and get that goose-pull sorted out. Most of them ’Cats can’t tell fuel oil from bilgewater. And check on that damn feed-water pump! It’s still makin’ screwy noises!”

“All right, Laney, quit yer fussin. We’ll be along.” Gilbert sighed and began wolfing his sandwich down. Laney stood a moment, still cloudy, then moved away. Gilbert couldn’t help but compare his tyrannical attitude to poor old Chief Donaghey’s. Donaghey had been a professional who inspired proper behavior and diligence by example, as well as an inherent ability to lead. He didn’t lord it over the snipes in his division, and he was usually as grimy as they were because he worked alongside them. He’d been in the Asiatic Fleet a lot longer than Laney too. Volunteered for it. Even had a Filipino wife . . . back there. Everyone knew his worth, even the captain, and when he was killed saving the ship from an improvised mine, Captain Reddy was prepared to risk the very alliance to avenge him.

Now they had Laney.

“Like I’ve said, change is always bad,” he muttered.

Matt paced slowly between the starboard bridge wing and his chair, bolted to the right side of the forward pilothouse bulkhead. It was how he spent the majority of his time on the bridge, particularly over the last six days. He believed the smudge of land he’d seen off the starboard bow was the poignantly familiar Dumagasa Point, on the western peninsula of Mindanao; the sextant said it was, so did the scriggly lines on the Plexiglas over the chart, but it didn’t look quite the same as he remembered it. Funny. He’d been to Surabaya—now Aryaal—and Balikpapan—now Baalkpan—and they bore no resemblance whatsoever to the places he’d known, but somehow the only slightly different promontory they’d passed filled him with a new sense of loss. Perhaps because they were entering what had once been considered
Walker
’s “home” waters.

Ahead lay the Philippines—which he’d never even liked. The place was too sudden and too big a change from his native Texas, where he’d returned after being discharged during a force reduction frenzy. Then, when the worldwide threat loomed ever larger, he’d been snatched back up by the Navy and immediately sent to the, to him, already alien land. The Philippines, at least the parts frequented by Navy ships, had been a den of iniquity paralleled only by those parts of China the Navy had even then been evacuating. The short, brown people jabbered in Tagalog, or a version of Spanish he could barely comprehend. The military situation was clearly unequal to the growing Japanese threat, and those in charge didn’t seem to care, or tried to pretend the threat didn’t exist. When hostilities commenced, the incompetent, almost slapstick response would have been hilarious if it hadn’t been so tragic. The litany of mistakes that rendered the islands indefensible was without end, and was itself indefensible. It still made him sick to remember how the formidable airpower gathered there, which alone could have made such a huge difference, had been so criminally squandered.

He had to remind himself that many of the crew felt quite differently. To some, the Philippines had been paradise. The waterfront had been a place they could find anything their hearts desired, where they could slake any thirst or lust if they chose, or set themselves up almost like gentlemen on their comparatively munificent wages. Of course, quite a few knew the islands far better than he, and spent their time away from the waterfront, where the atmosphere of iniquity prevailed. In the suburbs or the country, they could find virtuous women and homes where they could settle down and forget the stress of their duty. He wondered how their approach might affect the men who’d loved it there, had expected to retire there and spend the rest of their lives with women they loved. Women who weren’t there anymore.

During the last six days, counting the time they’d lingered at Tarakan,
Walker
had left her new “home waters” of the Makassar Strait, and entered the Celebes Sea. Their average speed was reduced, by necessity, from the almost twenty knots they were gratified to learn their ship could still make on two boilers, to less than ten, and finally to the excruciatingly slow pace of six knots. They’d picked their way through the tangled, hazardous islands off the northeast coast of Borno, before tentatively beginning their island-hugging journey through what the Americans still called the Sulu Archipelago. They had finally, that morning, increased speed back to fifteen knots, but would likely have to slow again. The sea was shallower than it should be, and they couldn’t entirely trust their old charts anymore. Six long, torturous days, and according to the landmarks, and Keje’s and Dowden’s calculations, they were only about halfway to their destination. He rubbed his face and wished Juan would hurry with the coffee he’d promised.

This tedious, circuitous route was intended to allow them to avoid the abyssal depths of the Celebes and Sulu seas—and the monstrous creatures that dwelt there. Among those they were trying to avoid was one so huge it actually posed a significant threat to ships as large as Lemurian Homes. “Mountain fish” they were called by some, or “island fish” by others. Whichever it was, it made no difference. The name was not idle exaggeration. Matt had never seen one, nor had anyone who’d been aboard
Walker
since the Squall. Jim Ellis and the crew of
Mahan
swore they’d been
chased
by one when that ship attempted to cross to Ceylon while under the deluded command of the now lost Air Corps captain named Kaufman.
Mahan
was badly damaged at the time, and could barely make fifteen knots. Ellis still insisted the fish nearly got them, and was convinced only the shoaling water discouraged it. Impossibly big
and
fast. The Lemurians were just as insistent that if the thing had indeed caught
Mahan
, if it was mature, it could certainly have seriously damaged or even destroyed the three-hundred-foot destroyer—iron hull or not.

They had a few “surprises” if they met a mountain fish on this trip, but Captain Reddy hoped they wouldn’t be needed. Discovering whether they worked was important, particularly in the long term, but making it to Manila and securing an alliance was of first importance, and they couldn’t risk damage to the ship before that was achieved. Bradford was disappointed, and Matt was anxious to complete their mission, but so far the daily radio transmissions left them reassured that the Grik remained quiescent, content to consolidate their hold on Aryaal and make repairs to the damaged Japanese battle cruiser. USS
Donaghey
had begun her maiden voyage—another trip to take more of Queen Maraan’s people off B’mbaado—and maybe she’d have something to report in a week or so. In the meantime, there seemed no reason to rush, so they chose the safest, most conservative course that left them least exposed to the giant fish.

Fortunately, the things were pretty serious about avoiding shallow water, “shallow” being anything under three hundred feet or so. The Makassar Strait was considerably deeper than that, but the ’Cats believed the hundred-mile width of the strait was too confining for the monsters. Usually. They were known to haunt the deep water of the Celebes and Sulu seas, however. They cruised along with their mouths open wide, much like the blue whales Matt was familiar with that constantly ingested swarms of krill to sustain their tremendous bodies. Mountain fish were similar in principle, except the “krill” they consumed was anything else that swam in the sea, up to and including the huge plesiosaurs the Lemurians called “gri-kakka.” Matt had seen gri-kakka as large as sperm whales.

For obvious reasons there weren’t many mountain fish, and the estimated half dozen or so that could sustain themselves in a body of water the size of the Celebes Sea were highly territorial. They didn’t migrate, as far as anyone could tell, which meant they must not have to eat all the time, because the majority of their prey did move from place to place. Regardless of the hopefully effective “surprises”
Walker
had in store for the immense creatures, Matt was perfectly content to leave them in peace as long as they extended the same courtesy to his ship.

Juan finally arrived with his coffee, and he took the cup with gratitude. Vile as the stuff was, it might help keep him awake. In spite of what Juan might think, he hadn’t been sleeping well. There’d been no recurrence of the old dream that once eluded him so, not since
Nerracca
’s destruction, but it had been replaced by others, ones he remembered when they woke him. The difference, he now knew, between the old dream and the ones that plagued him now was significant. Before, he’d been tormented by a sense of loss and failure—guilt, almost, that they’d survived that long-ago flight from the Japanese juggernaut when their consorts,
Exeter
,
Encounter
, and
Pope
, were all rubbed out by the relentless enemy. That they could do nothing to help, not even slow to pick up survivors, haunted him still. But the destruction of
Nerracca
and the thousands aboard her put that previous loss in perspective. They’d rescued some survivors from
Nerracca
, but only a tithe, and the hopelessness of saving more and the risk of what little they’d done in the face of
Amagi
’s guns finally galvanized his subconscious agony with a burning hatred for their foes, old and new: the Grik, and the Japanese allied with them.

He dreamed of frantic orders and desperate attempts to save all they could, of bright, distant muzzle flashes and towering geysers of spume. Blood-streaked bodies and mangled flesh aboard his own ship, where some of the enemy’s fury found its mark, a swirling typhoon of raging flames consuming the gallant Home as shells continued to fall—these were the dreams that tormented him now, but they didn’t leave him weak; they goaded him to revenge. A revenge that would be complete only when the Grik were exterminated forever, and
Amagi
lay broken on the bottom of the sea.

His thoughts must have been evident on his face, because a familiar, gruff voice interrupted his reverie.

“It’s an important mission,” Keje said. He and Adar had approached unnoticed. They were both given the privileges of officers aboard his ship, and hadn’t asked permission to come on the bridge.

“I know. And it’s a good idea. We’re going to need all the help we can get to beat the lizards once and for all. I hope we can stir some up.” He smiled with little sincerity and lowered his voice so only his Lemurian friends could hear. He knew they were at least as passionate about their task as he. “I guess I’m just a little antsy.”