Maelstrom (16 page)

Chapelle rejoined Garrett on the quarterdeck. “Taking their time,” he observed, referring to the barges still laboring against the offshore swells. Dripping oars flashed in the morning sun, and Garrett glassed the figure with the flowing black cape and silver armor. She was staring in the direction of the approaching ships.

“They’re coming as fast as they can,” Garrett said.

Taak-Fas gauged the distance. “They will not reach us much before the enemy, if they do at all.” He sounded worried.

“Yeah. This could get tricky,” Garrett agreed. “If it looks like they aren’t going to make it, we’ll secure the boarding nets. I don’t want to make a present of them for the Grik.” He turned and saw the shocked expression on Chapelle’s face. “No, we won’t abandon them! We’ll stand toward the enemy and destroy them, then come back for our people.” Garrett shook his head and turned his back on his gunnery officer. The former
Mahan
torpedoman didn’t know him very well, but it irked him that the man thought it even possible he might leave anyone at the “mercy” of the Grik. Let alone anyone as important as Queen Maraan and Pete Alden.

“Damn lizards are really flyin’,” Chapelle muttered a few moments later. “They must know what we’re up to. Afraid we’re going to steal their ‘rations,’ I guess.” He spit a yellowish stream of the local tobacco juice over the side.

Garrett nodded, but didn’t take his eyes off the approaching ships. Something wasn’t right. The Grik were notorious for their single-minded aggressiveness. The all-out frontal assault, regardless of losses, had seemed to be the only military tactic they knew before and during the Battle of Aryaal. Since then, however, whenever they encountered an Allied ship, they’d demonstrated an uncharacteristic caution and respect. Garrett suspected they were capable of learning from their mistakes, and believed the Hij commanders of the Grik fleet had figured out that tangling with artillery-armed allied ships without overwhelming numbers was pointless. Up till now his suspicions had been confirmed, but the three Grik vessels approaching from the northwest were really cracking on. They were coming on in the “same old way,” and he couldn’t help but wonder why.

He carefully studied the laboring boats. The oarsmen had redoubled their efforts when they saw the Grik, but their progress against the wind and current was excruciatingly slow. He yearned to move
Donaghey
closer in, but the shoals here were treacherous, and, deprived of engines, he’d already gained a healthy respect for a lee shore. Totally at the mercy of the wind,
Donaghey
might be driven aground. He refocused on the enemy. Chapelle was right: they were flying. With another last look at the boats, he lowered the binoculars to his chest.

“They’re not going to make it,” he stated flatly. “Secure the nets and signal Her . . . Highness . . . and Sergeant—I mean
General
Alden that we’ll return to pick them up as soon as we’ve dealt with the enemy.”

“Aye, sir,” Taak-Fas replied with a frown. Unease over the brazen Grik advance was affecting him too, but it didn’t show in his voice when he relayed Garrett’s order at the top of his lungs. Chapelle spit again, and his lips formed an ironic grin, slightly distorted by the chaw in his cheek.

“I’m afraid we’re gonna get our brand-new ship all scratched up, Skipper.”

Safir Maraan, queen protector of the People of B’mbaado, representative to the Allied Council and general in what she liked to think of as the Allied Army of Liberation, watched with dread as the three Grik warships slanted swiftly down toward
Donaghey
. Quietly she urged the exhausted oarsmen to even greater effort. A few civilian refugees wailed with fright, but the sailors, warriors, and Marines at the oars made no complaint. They merely reached down and somehow grasped the final measure of their flagging reserve of strength. The gunwales creaked and timbers groaned as the panting Lemurians heaved against the disorganized swells.

“A signal from
Donaghey
,” observed Haakar-Faask, captain of Safir’s personal guard of six hundred, sometimes called the “Orphan Queen’s Own,” and general of the army of B’mbaado, who stood beside her in the front of the boat. He rolled his massive, muscled shoulders and regarded Pete with a steady gaze. “What does it say?”

Pete Alden scratched his bristly black beard and stared, his eyes shaded by his battered, faded fatigue cover. “They mean to engage the enemy and return for us.”

Safir responded with a curt blink of her wide, silver-gray eyes. “I have learned the Amer-i-caan signals, Captain,” she said, addressing Faask by his Guard rank, which in both their estimations was superior and more intimate than his other. “Allow the rowers to rest, but let us try to maintain our position.”

“As you command, Queen Protector,” Faask replied in a pious tone that made her snort.

“Now he obeys me,” she said aside to Pete. “He was insubordinate enough on earlier missions, when I ordered him to come out to the ship.”

Haakar-Faask had been her personal protector since the day she was born, and he often behaved more like a long-suffering elder brother, or even father, than she would have liked. Often. She loved him as she would have her father or brother if they’d lived, but sometimes his obsessive protectiveness could be infuriating. She’d left him behind—ordered him to stay—to gather and organize the people they’d been forced to abandon during the hurried evacuation of their homeland, and she’d been torn by anguish and missed him terribly. Compared to his former mighty self, he was weak and malnourished like the other refugees, but in spite of her efforts to protect him for a change, he’d immediately resumed his former role. She glanced at his still-powerful form and realized for the first time, with a quick stab of grief, that not only had he suffered from deprivation in the months since the evacuation, he was getting old.

“As I
command
,” she said with a false, triumphant grin, stressing the word.

Haakar-Faask regarded her with an innocent stare. “I have seen the Amer-i-caans fight,” he said. He’d been there when
Walker
savaged the first Grik invasion fleet that tried to conquer Aryaal. “But that new ship, it is not made of iron like the other.” He glanced at Alden. “There is no question of valor, but one against three is questionable odds. Should we not return to shore? We might be forced to hide or disperse if the Grik are victorious. They will search for us.”

“They will not be victorious, Captain,” Safir replied before Pete had a chance. Her grin had become predatory. She watched while
Donaghey
’s sails filled, and she heeled sharply to starboard, slanting away from the waiting boats. To the unknowing eye, it looked as though the ship were abandoning them, leaving nothing between them and the Grik. Cries of alarm arose from the boats, and she understood her people’s fear, even though she knew it was unfounded. She was no sailor, but she knew the ship would soon tack back across in front of the approaching enemy. Garrett was trying to force the battle farther away from the boats and the shore, where his ship would have better maneuverability and more water beneath her keel.

“Do not fear,” she cried out as soothingly as she could. “They will not leave us.”

Long moments passed while the Grik grew closer and
Donaghey
became more distant. Even to her it was a terrifying sight. Just as the first sense of doubt touched her soul however, she saw
Donaghey
’s aspect change, and she was filled with exhilaration when the tall ship came about and began a headlong rush toward the enemy. A cheer rose up.

“Now you will see something!” she promised.

The sun crept ever upward and the day grew hot as the four ships came together. From their current angle it looked like all were heading straight for her, but Safir could see the distance between the one and the three dwindling rapidly.
Donaghey
would soon “cross their tee,” as she’d heard the maneuver called. She would destroy the Grik, and the refugees would remember the long morning they’d spent in the boats as a stirring adventure: an exciting, reaffirming proof that the hardships they’d endured hadn’t been for nothing, and most of all, in spite of everything, victory might someday be achieved. She watched with growing inspiration as a large battle flag, the one with the stars, blue field, and curious red stripes, unfurled at
Donaghey
’s masthead and streamed to leeward. She’d heard Captain Reddy tell a tale about a battle on the world the Americans came from when a ship called
Exeter
defiantly flew a giant flag in the face of certain destruction. Matt had clearly been moved by the act, just as Safir Maraan was now. The flag of the Americans had become a powerful symbol to her: in some ways an even more powerful symbol than the nine trees and one gold star on the stainless field now representing the alliance facing the Grik. It was a symbol of hope and defiance in the face of overwhelming odds. Even despite their setbacks, it had become a symbol of victory.

She knew the flag meant much the same to
Donaghey
’s crew, though there were few human Americans aboard her. Her people were land folk; descendants of that great, prehistoric nautical exodus that had carried her race from their ancestral home and deposited them here. The Grik had been the ancient enemy from which her people fled. Rejecting a seafaring life, they estranged themselves from the majority of their species. They became isolationist, feudal. Warlike as they were, compared to sea folk they’d been vulnerable to the first major Grik incursion.

Among sea folk, each of their huge, island-size ships were nations unto themselves, and their leaders enjoyed coequal status as High Chiefs among their peers. With the coming of the war, and the Grik Grand Swarm, changes to this age-old system began to evolve. The alliance now included not only sea folk, but land folk as well, and a collective, coordinating leadership was required. Captain Reddy was supreme commander, but Nakja-Mur, High Chief of Baalkpan, had become the civic leader of the alliance by default, since his was the “nation” hosting the other chiefs: Baalkpan was also the center of all their collective industry. Safir was beginning to see the advantages of the formation of a true, formal alliance. Not one of expedience only, but one evolving to unite all willing Lemurians beneath the Banner of the Trees into a strong political union such as the Amer-i-caans claimed to spring from.

The one gold star on the stainless banner represented the Americans. It was placed in the center not to show dominance, but to symbolize that they were the organizing force, the glue holding all together during these early, terrible, trying times. Also, unlike the golden trees surrounding it, the star now represented more than the single city-state personified by a single ship. Matt continued to insist the star didn’t represent him and his surviving destroyermen, or even just his tiny but growing fleet; it represented the United States Navy in particular, and that vaguely understood nation his navy defended in general. He wanted it clear that, wherever it was, his “America” was part of this alliance. Every Lemurian joining an “American” crew became a member of the United States Navy, and swore to defend an even more vaguely understood Constitution. Captain Reddy insisted on that too. Therefore, wherever they came from, and for however long they served, any Lemurian who swore the oath became a “Navy man” and was considered by all to be an Amer-i-caan for as long as they kept that oath, and followed the Americans’ strict rules.

Nothing like those rules—or “regulations,” as they were called—had ever occurred to any Lemurian, anywhere. People did as their leaders specifically instructed them, of course, but otherwise they did as they pleased. Even in the more socially stratified lands of B’mbaado and Aryaal, behavior was not regulated by written rules or laws, but by decrees generally favoring those, like herself, who made them. She’d never imagined so many of her people would willingly submit to the level of discipline demanded by the Americans. To her surprise, as many of her people volunteered for the “Amer-i-caan Naa-vee” as did for the B’mbaadan infantry regiments forming in Baalkpan—even though those were now held to the same high disciplinary standards by General Alden. Most were turned away from the Navy because they just didn’t have the ships, but it was something to consider. The American Navy had become a tight, close-knit clan of elite professionals that watched out for their own, no matter what they looked like. Safir wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not, although she tended to believe it was, and she suddenly wondered if it might not be the strict regulations themselves that made the difference. Not only did they enforce discipline; they also enforced the rights of those subject to it. It was a concept she’d been giving much thought. In any event, as far as she or anyone else was now concerned, the streaming flag showed that everyone aboard
Donaghey
—human or Lemurian—was “Amer-i-caan.”

The ships converged rapidly now, their hulls and towering canvas contrasting sharply against the dark, cerulean sea. The American ship was bigger than the others, and clearly faster. It was a stirringly beautiful scene, in a way, that would soon be more beautiful still, when
Donaghey
began her destructive work.

“Just a few moments more,” she breathed.

“Son of a
bitch
!” shouted Chapelle when the side of the nearest Grik ship disappeared behind a heavy cloud of white smoke. He’d been reminding his gunners to aim for the enemy’s rigging when somebody pointed at the curious squares spaced evenly along the sides of the enemy ships. Squares just like
Donaghey
’s. Even as he stared, stunned, the squares opened and the snouts of crude cannons poked through. Too quickly for accuracy, a broadside—a
cannon
broadside—erupted from the enemy ship.

The angle was terrible. The Grik commander must have decided it was a matter of “use it or lose it” and given the order to fire, even though few guns would bear. As it was, not a single ball struck
Donaghey
, but the surprise caused by the sudden realization that they’d lost their only material advantage over the enemy was almost as damaging as an effective broadside would have been. As the distance closed, and
Donaghey
prepared to cross the bow of the ship that had just fired at them, all the gunners on the starboard side merely stood, transfixed by what they’d seen. Chapelle glanced at the quarterdeck and saw the shocked expression even extended to the captain’s face, and he knew there was no time.