Maelstrom (28 page)

“Mr. Clark is fighting his ship well,” Shinya observed politely.

“He’s a brawler,” Gray conceded, “but he’s fighting stupid.
Felts
is faster and more maneuverable, and her gunnery’s obviously better. He should be taking advantage of that. He’s gotten sucked into a slugging match, and that’s the Grik’s kind of fight.” The ships were close enough now that there was only the slightest pause before they heard the sound of the guns. The tearing-canvas shriek of shot passing nearby was more frequent too, but the staff no longer flinched. “He needs to get out from between us and them. The tide’s out, and he’ll run out of water pretty soon.” Sure enough, while they watched,
Felts
heeled slightly, righted herself, then heeled sharply over as she went hard aground, beam-on to the advancing swells and the enemy.

“Dumb ass. Give the kid a ship and what does he do?” He shook his head. “Mr. Shinya, get a platoon of Marines into the boats and pull for
Felts
. Those Grik bastards draw more water and they’ll be aground too, I expect, but they’ll send boarders. I doubt they’ll fool with us while they’ve got the ship right in front of them. We have to keep them off her at all costs.”

Shinya saluted. “Very well.” He looked at the commander of First Platoon. “With me.”

Even aground,
Felts
kept up a withering fire, but the Grik remorselessly advanced. Inevitably, they too struck, and then it became a race to see whether the Marines or the enemy boarders reached
Felts
first. Another of the Grik ships, holed repeatedly, filled and heeled over on her side in the shallow water. Most of her crew were already in the boats, however, and
Felts
’s guns churned the sea with canister, splintering boats and scything down their crews. Before long, though, they were under her guns. At their upward angle they just couldn’t be depressed far enough, and when they gained her side they swarmed up and over the bulwarks. They were met by a withering fusillade of arrows and more canister from the guns that were loaded and waiting. Mangled bodies rained into the sea, and the “flashies” quickly went to work, thrashing the water beside the ship into a white, pink-tinged froth.

The Marines pulled as hard as they could, oars dipping and straining, with Shinya in the foremost boat, waving his modified cutlass and exhorting his troops to greater effort. They almost made it. They would have made it, Gray thought bitterly as he watched. The fighting was dying down, the first onslaught repulsed, when
Felts
’s own boats dropped to the water, and her crew, wounded and hale, scrambled into them. Dense smoke poured from the bowels of the grounded ship, and soon flames were licking up her masts.

“Goddamn it!” Gray seethed. “That better have been an accident, or I’ll have that useless bastard shot!”

Shinya paused his advance, resting his Marines while the abandoning crew joined him. Then, at a more leisurely pace, the flotilla of boats returned to shore. Behind them,
Felts
became fully involved, flames soaring high into the sky, still-loaded guns occasionally booming from within the inferno. The mainmast toppled amid a cloud of gray smoke and swirling sparks, about the time the first boats nudged ashore through the gentle surf. Guardsmen sprang forward to assist the wounded, and Marines and uninjured sailors mingled on the beach, sorting themselves out, while Shinya escorted Lieutenant Clark before Gray and his impatient staff.

Clark’s uniform was stained and bloody, and his hair and face were scorched. He’d clearly been the last to leave his ship. His cutlass was in its sheath, blood trickling down the side where it scraped from the blade when he thrust it in. He drew himself up before Gray and saluted. If either was struck by the irony of an officer saluting a noncom, neither commented on it; there was no question who was in charge.

“What happened?” Gray snapped.

“Why, well, we fought a hell of a fight!” Clark retorted after a brief hesitation, clearly surprised by Gray’s tone. “The bastards had cannons! We knew it was possible, of course, but we didn’t really expect it.”

“What do you mean, you knew it was possible?”

“That’s right,” Clark replied, “you couldn’t know.” He quickly outlined recent events while Gray stood, listening with growing rage.

“Let me get this straight,” Gray said at last. “Queen Maraan, Pete, and who knows who else are stranded behind enemy lines,
Donaghey
’s laid up, the rest of the new construction’s not ready for sea,
Mahan
’s gone—against orders—to rescue the queen, the goddamn Griks are gettin’ frisky and they have
cannons
now, the radio’s busted so we can’t even tell the captain”—he gestured out at the inferno—“and you just burned our only way home! You better convince me real fast why I shouldn’t have your sorry ass shot!”

Clark shook his head in astonishment. “Mr. Gray, there were
three
of them! We whittled them down to one, killed most of the boarding party they sent against us, but another was forming from the other, mostly undamaged ship. There was no way we could repel another attack.”

“The Marines were almost there!”

“Yes, sir, and maybe that would’ve helped, but I didn’t see any point losing more lives over a wrecked ship.”

“Was she wrecked?”

“She was hard aground!”

“Sunk? Leaking bad?”

“Well, not really, but . . .”

“But the goddamn tide’s out! We could’ve held her until it came back in and refloated her!”

“But . . .” Agonized realization dawned across Clark’s blistered face. “Oh my God.”

“Yep. You screwed up by the numbers in each and every category. We bett—”

Isak poked him in the ribs with his elbow. “Griks is comin’,” he said, motioning out to sea. Gray looked past the burning ship at the mass of approaching boats.

“We better get ready,” he growled. “Mr. Shinya?”

“Sir?”

“See to our defenses. Arm the sailors if they lost their weapons, and if we have anything extra.” He looked back at Clark. “If they’re true to form, there’ll be six or seven hundred of ’em. With your boys, we’ll have about two hundred and fifty. Looks like this’ll be the Grik’s kind of battle too.”

“At ’em, boys!” Alden bellowed as he dropped his shield and sprinted into the clearing from the cover of the dense forest. Others surged forward to join him: dozens, then nearly a hundred. Fortunately most didn’t follow his exuberant, somewhat irresponsible example by throwing their own shields aside. The disorganized Grik line was caught completely by surprise. This time an even larger number turned on their fellows and began hacking away. Some even dropped their weapons and simply ran—something Pete had never seen. Quite enough Grik to satisfy him reacted in a more predictable fashion: they charged to meet the attack.

He emptied his Springfield into the mass, then slashed with the bayonet at its muzzle. Knocking a sword aside, he skewered what appeared to be an “officer,” if Grik infantry had such things. The “troops” under his command maintained a relatively cohesive front when they slammed into the enemy with their handmade shields and spears of sharpened wood. Enough of them, Alden’s personal guard and B’mbaadan warriors, had real spears to do most of the killing, while those on the flanks funneled the enemy toward them. There came a crash from the center when the disorganized remnants of the Grik mob slammed into the interlocked shields and those shields pushed back. Spears bristled and jabbed, and Pete’s little army fought with everything they had, from swords to garden tools. Some of these Grik had no weapons either, the earlier surprise sweeping them away before they had a chance to grab them, but even disarmed, the Grik were deadly with their terrible claws and teeth. Therefore, brief as it was, the fight was still unimaginably fierce. Finally, all the Grik that charged the line were dead or writhing on the ground, with the exception of a trickle that ultimately ran away as well. Gasping after the sharp fight and aching after the long morning of exertion, Pete took a drink from his canteen.

The sun hadn’t been up long, but the battle had raged since before dawn. With their amazing eyesight, Lemurians could see fine in the dark, where apparently their enemy couldn’t. The Grik had no “taboos” or anything against fighting at night, but they weren’t very good at it. The local ’Cats preferred not to either, for religious reasons. Therefore, aside from his huge numerical superiority, it must’ve never even occurred to the Grik commander he might be in danger even as he slept. The sight of the enemy army asleep, totally off guard, was too much of a temptation, and Pete kicked off the attack ahead of schedule.

The killing had been almost wanton, and those that survived the initial onslaught broke and ran in all directions. Pursuit was unthinkable, though, and Alden gathered his force and withdrew to his secondary position. The enemy reacted quickly, sending reinforcements against the thrust. Like most highly specialized predators, however, Grik seemed to key on motion even in the daylight, so they were completely surprised again when they ran right into Haakar-Faask’s force that Pete’s had retired behind.

Savaged again by the stalwart B’mbaadan general, the Grik reeled back in the direction of their own lines. That was when Alden’s rested troops struck them again on the flank. It appeared this element of the Grik advance, at least, was shattered beyond reclamation.

Alden wiped his bayonet on his pants leg and snapped it back on his rifle. Taking another long drink, keen eyes glancing all around, he spit and began thumbing slender .30-06 rounds back into his empty magazine. He was already out of stripper clips, and had only the dozen or so loose rounds in his pocket.

“All right,” he said, closing the bolt, “let’s pull back. Easy does it; don’t get split up in the woods. We’ll re-form with General Faask, and see what kind of hornet’s nest we’ve stirred up. Stretcher bearers, get our wounded out of here.”

The wounded would be carried back to the “reserve” commanded by the Orphan Queen, whose primary responsibility was guarding the younglings and noncombatants.

He glanced at the sun, now clear of the treetops overhead. “It’s gonna be a long day.”

“So this is your ‘surprise’ for the mountain fish,” Keje observed.

“One of them,” Matt confirmed. “At least, I hope so. Took Sonarman Brooks long enough to get it working again, even though we had all the parts.” He shrugged. “We just never saw any point in it at first. It’s meant to find submarines underwater, and we had no reason to suspect we’d need it against any of those. I’ve heard active sonar plays hell with whales back home—our version of mountain fish, even if they’re a lot smaller—so maybe it’ll kick these big bastards in the head too.”

“Why are we going”—Keje grinned—“so slow? I thought you wanted to cross to Taa-laud as fast as possible.”

“I do, but I want to see if this works. We can’t get a return at anything much over fifteen knots. If we can get a return, Brooks ought to be able to tell us what effect it has on the big devils by how they react to it.”

They waited for the better part of an hour, crowded in the charthouse behind the nervous sonarman’s chair, while he listened intently through his headset. The constant, eerie pinging continued uninterrupted.

“Contact!” Brooks suddenly shouted, unaware his voice was so loud. “Bearing one nine five! Probable sub . . . probable mountain fish! Range fifteen hundred yards, down Doppler. Wait! Return is narrowing. Either he’s turning toward us, or away.”

Matt leaned out the hatch and caught the talker’s eye. “Sound general quarters,” he said calmly.

Knowing the cause, the talker gulped. “General quarters, aye!”

During
Walker
’s refit, much was repaired, but somehow they’d overlooked her ill-sounding general alarm. There’d been no emergency aboard since they began the mission, but daily exercises—something Matt insisted on—still took their toll. The musical, insistent
gong! gong! gong!
had gradually been replaced by something more like a loose guitar string being brutally plucked. The alarm was still referred to as “Gee-Kyoo” by the crew, but the act of setting it off had become: “Somebody up there’s (on the bridge) stompin’ on a duck.” Abused duck or not, the alarm still had the desired effect, and within seconds reports started coming in. Finally, the talker looked at the captain.

“All stations report manned and ready, Captain.”

“Very well.” Matt looked back in the charthouse. “Well?”

“He’s moving away, Skipper! First he was running straight away; now he’s on a bearing of two one oh, and picking up speed!”

“Let’s hope the neighborhood just got too noisy for him.”

“Captain,” shouted the talker, “lookout reports ‘something’ surfacing astern!”

He looked aft, but couldn’t see past the amidships deckhouse, so he scrambled up to the fire control platform. “Mr. Campeti,” he acknowledged as the new gunnery officer directed his gaze, and Matt raised his binoculars. It was a mountain fish, all right, a different one. It had risen directly astern, and was giving chase. Matt suddenly realized this “surprise” had one small weakness:
Walker
’s sonar was directed primarily forward.

He’d known, intellectually, that mountain fish were big; he’d been told so often enough. But to actually
see
one this close!
Jesus
, he thought,
the damn thing’s
huge.
Now I know what it feels like to be a grasshopper in a stock tank full of bass!
“All ahead flank!” he shouted, knowing the order would be passed along. “Mr. Campeti, have the number four gun commence firing in local control! Stand by to roll depth charges!” It looked like they’d get to try all their “surprises” today. It would be a few minutes before they accelerated to their maximum speed. In the meantime, the thing was gaining on them! “Set your depth at fifty feet!” Any shallower and they ran a serious risk of damaging the ship.

“Depth charges report set at fifty feet,’” Campeti reported a moment later. “Ready to roll at your command!”