Maelstrom (31 page)

“Lawrence isn’t my pet, you furry imbecile! He’s my friend!”

“Rend!” confirmed the Grik with a gasp.

Adar tried to reply, but ultimately he could only blink.

“Goodness gracious!” Bradford breathed, then cleared his throat. “My dear, I’m Courtney Bradford, and these are my friends.” The girl looked at him, zeroing in on his accent, strangely similar to her own. “If you guarantee your . . . friend’s . . . good behavior, I think we may repair him. He’s most fortunate, actually. Mr. Silva’s usually a remarkably good shot. You cannot know how glad I am his aim strayed just this once! We have a doctor, of sorts, aboard our ship. . . .”

“Ship?”

The word came from behind them, and Silva and the Marines whirled to see a variety of weapons pointed in their direction. They’d been so focused on the girl and the Grik, they’d never sensed the strangers’ approach. Most of the weapons were Thompson submachine guns, or 1911 Colts, and they were held by men dressed in remnants of garments once issued by the United States Navy. One man, dark skinned, with a huge mustache drooping over his beard, held a sawed-off musket in his one hand like a pistol. It was he who’d spoken.

“S-19?” Silva challenged.

One of the apparent Navy men lowered his Thompson slightly. He was short, with a scruffy red beard and long, thinning hair poking from under a battered chief’s hat. “I really am in hell,” he muttered, “and here’s the devil himself!”

“In the flesh,” Silva said absently, staring hard at the speaker. “Billy Flynn! It
is
you, you redheaded Irish ape! You owe me seventeen dollars!” The tension evaporated, and all the weapons were lowered except the musket/pistol held by the dark, mustachioed man. Silva regarded him appraisingly, recognizing a fellow predator. He nodded slightly before returning his attention to the others. “Who’s with you, Billy?” he asked, then added for his companions’ sake: “Billy’s the sub’s chief of the boat—sort of like the bosun, in a slimy pigboat sort of way.”

“We’ve lost some guys,” Billy acknowledged, “but we’ve preserved most of our passengers.” He nodded at the girl, the Grik, and the one-armed man. “Picked up a couple too,” he added enigmatically. Then his fierce visage disintegrated into an expression of open joy. “I never thought I’d say this, but damn, am I glad to see you!”

“You know this guy, Chief?” one of the others asked.

“You could say that.” He paused, gesturing at the Lemurians. “What’s with the monkeys? You friends of theirs?”

“Yeah,” Silva answered, a hint of threat in his voice, “good friends. Why?”

“We ran into one of their ships once. Great big bastard. Damn thing launched giant spears at us!”

Silva laughed. “That’s how we knew you were here! They thought you was a metal fish! Don’t take it personal; I’m sure you know there’s bigger fish than yours in
this
sea!”

Billy’s expression became grim again. “Tell me.”

“Tell
me
,” insisted the dark-haired man, still holding the gun, “about your ship!”

Silva bristled, then slowly grinned. “USS
Walker
, DD-163, at your service!”

Mahan
stood off the B’mbaado coast, numbers one and three guns covering the beach, in the general vicinity of where
Donaghey
had fought her battle with the three Grik ships. Now another enemy ship was aground, burning fiercely, and two more were on the bottom of the Java Sea. There hadn’t been a fight, really, merely an execution, and they didn’t even know if the ships had been armed, since
Mahan
destroyed them well beyond their own possible range. The telltale column of smoke from the burning ship was regrettable, but it wasn’t like they could put it out now.

Jim Ellis was on the port bridge wing, watching a small boat approach. Four adult ’Cats were at the oars, and a number of younglings filled it to overflowing.

“Lower the whaleboat,” he ordered. “Tow them in. We don’t have all day.”

Shortly, both boats were alongside, and willing hands helped the younglings to the deck. One of the adults raced to the bridge, accompanied by Lieutenant Steele.

“What’s up, Frankie?” Jim asked when they arrived. Steele waved at his companion, who spoke English. He was one of the Marines who’d gone ashore with Pete.

“Cap-i-taan Ellis, Gener-aal Aalden sends his compliments. Our scout saw your approach and reported your presence.”

“What’s the situation?”

“Complicated and desperate,” the ’Cat conceded, but there was pride in his tone. “Gener-aals Aalden and Faask defeated a large enemy force advancing from the city, but we took many casualties. They then turned on the force those ships landed”—he gestured at the burning wreck—“and struck their left flank, cutting a gap to this beach. Even now, Queen Maraan leads the wounded and noncombatants here. We have the boats of the Grik landing force, but if you can tow them out as you did us, it would help.”

Ellis nodded. “Of course, but what of General Alden?”

“His force now numbers little more than a hundred. He is ‘rolling up’ the enemy flank—a tactic that has worked very well—but he is . . . significantly outnumbered. When the enemy stiffens its spine, he will try to hold them long enough to complete the queen’s evacuation. The difficulty is, besides the numbers before him, it would seem the force approaching from the city has been reconstituted and reinforced. It will soon flank him in turn.”

Ellis looked thoughtfully at the shore. The battle couldn’t be far away, though he couldn’t hear anything. That was still so weird!

“How long before the second force arrives?” he asked.

“An hour. Perhaps two.”

“Very well.” He looked at Frankie. “Here’s what we’ll do. You stay here, and be ready to support us with gunfire.” Steele tried to protest, but Ellis continued talking. “Keep an eye out for more ships too. I’ll take a company of the First Marines ashore”—he nodded at the Lemurian—“if this gentleman will be kind enough to lead us. We should be able to hammer the enemy hard enough to let Pete break contact; then it’ll be hell-for-leather back to the boats.” He frowned. “That means you’ll have to have all the queen’s people aboard, and the boats back ashore, before we need them.”

“It’s gonna be tight,” Frankie observed.

“Sure, but . . .” Jim’s eyes got a faraway, haunted look. “It’ll give us . . . and
Mahan
. . . a chance to do something right foyr a change.”

Boats plied back and forth, carrying survivors and salvaged equipment to
Walker
from the beach, while Matt listened to Silva’s and Chack’s reports and spoke to S-19’s chief. More Marines guarded the perimeter. Even if the girl’s strange pet was the only Grik on the island, there were plenty of other dangerous animals. Bradford, Keje, and Adar were still present, as was the strange one-armed man, and Matt certainly had a few questions for him, but he wanted to hear Flynn’s story first. Work proceeded under Spanky’s supervision while they talked. There was little heavy equipment they could take from the sub; it just wouldn’t fit through a hatch. Besides, they couldn’t disable it further if they hoped to salvage it later—something Matt still hoped to do. She wouldn’t need her ammunition, though, and they’d discovered close to a hundred four-inch-fifty rounds.

To Matt’s bitter disappointment, there’d been no torpedoes. S-19 carried only two when she left Surabaya—there just hadn’t been any there, as Matt well knew—so that still left only the single MK-10 they’d scrounged. Besides, the sub had needed space for her “cargo,” and couldn’t have carried many more torpedoes anyway. She’d fired the two she had at a Japanese transport that blundered across her path and even got a hit, Billy claimed, but they got worked over by the transport’s “tin can” escort for their trouble. That was when their problems began. The sledgehammer blows of the depth charges cracked a battery and popped a bulb, causing an explosion in the forward battery compartment. The forward crew and officers’ berths—as well as the radio room—were incinerated. They shut the hatches to the torpedo room (S-19 had only one, forward) and the control room, but six men died, either burned or suffocated by chlorine gas, created by seawater flooding the damaged batteries.

Their “cargo,” twenty children—mostly of diplomats and highly placed executives, as well as four nannies and a nun who’d been sent to care for them—spent several terrifying hours isolated in the torpedo room while S-19 lay on the bottom of the Java Sea, a hundred feet below her test depth. Finally, the Japanese destroyer lost interest. Pressurizing the half-flooded compartment, S-19 slowly rose to the surface after dark to vent the gas and pump out the water. Still trying to reach Fremantle (and avoid enemy planes), they barely managed to submerge the following day. That was when they heard the thrashing screws and heavy detonations of
Walker
and
Mahan
’s battle with
Amagi
. They had no idea what was going on, of course—the search periscope had been damaged by the depth charges—but that must have been what they heard, because soon after that their screws ran away and they shut the motors down. Unlike the two American destroyers’ traumatic experience on the surface, that was the only effect of the Squall they felt.

Of her crew of forty-two officers and men, only twenty-six remained—and none were senior officers. The highest-ranking crewman was an ensign, who’d wisely deferred command to the more experienced chief of the boat. The rest were killed during her various attempts to land in different places, or by the local predators over the last year.

Matt could only imagine what it must have been like. He and his people had figured out pretty quickly that things were out of whack, and they’d also made some friends. S-19’s people had spent the last year living on the edge, never really knowing what had happened. Except for the moment when the screws ran away, there hadn’t even been a “transition event” to blame. They just went underwater on one world and came up on another. Their first idea that that might be the case came when they met fish as big as their boat. Matt shuddered.
Walker
wasn’t much bigger than the sub, but she was higher out of the water and a hell of a lot faster. It didn’t
feel
as much like swimming with the sharks.

“My dear Mr. Flynn,” Bradford puffed, wiping sweat with his sleeve, “a dreadful adventure indeed.” He peered at the one-armed man. “But who might you be, and the young lady, of course, and where did you find her fascinating . . . friend? We’ve tried to capture them before, you know, but . . .” He shrugged. “They simply won’t surrender, you see.”

The man saw them all staring at him, expecting answers. Matt noticed even Flynn appeared curious. Why would that be?

“I’m O’Casey,” he said at last. “Sean O’Casey.” He paused, considering, glancing at the destroyer riding at anchor in the mouth of the lagoon. “The lass’s name is . . . Becky. We was shipwrecked an’ these . . . fellas was good enough to pick us up. As for her ‘friend,’ the beastie was a maroon hi’self. We found ’im on a little isle where nothin’ could survive.” His voice was deep, with a kind of lilting accent that stressed unusual syllables. It was almost as if he spoke a different language, and his awkward insertion of words like “fellas” were substitutes he’d picked up.

“Found ’em floating in an open boat, drifting with the current, when we crossed from Mindanao to here,” Flynn supplied. “O’Casey was almost dead. Bad fever from a recently severed arm.”

Matt put his hands on his hips. “That tells us who you are, Mr. O’Casey, but not what you are, or where you come from.” He looked at Flynn, who shrugged.

“He never would say, Captain. Once he got well, him and the girl sort of kept to themselves. The . . . ‘beastie’ was friendly enough, even if he’s scary as hell, and to be honest, he prob’ly brought in more than his share of game. But the girl never played with the other kids, and O’Casey didn’t talk much. Carried his weight, though, even with one arm, and after a while that was all that mattered, you know?”

“I do know, Flynn, but that’s changed. It matters a lot—before I let him on my ship.” He scrutinized O’Casey. “So far, I’ve had a better character reference for an animal whose species we’re at war with. You’re not a shipwreck survivor from our world at all, are you?”

“Of course he is not,” Adar said, his face inscrutable, but his ears quivering with excitement. “He is a descendant of the Others, the tail-less beings that came before! The ones who taught the ancient tongue to the Prophet, Siska-Ta, then sailed across the Eastern Sea.”

Conscious of Captain Reddy’s veiled threat, O’Casey nodded reluctantly. He didn’t think for a moment these Americans—more Americans! how much more twisted could the world his ancestors left behind have become?—would leave the girl behind, but there was a distinct possibility they’d leave him, and he wanted to get to know them better despite his need to be circumspect.

“There’s old . . . tales of folk such as ye,” he admitted to Adar, “an’ our founders did pass through yer seas.”

“I knew it!” Adar exulted. “As soon as I saw the youngling! There is so much about our early history we can learn from you! So many missing pieces of the puzzle! Where did you ultimately go?”

“East,” he said vaguely. They knew that already. “Some islands. I’ll tell ye what I can, but ye must respect the fact that I know as little of ye as ye know of me. I may tell ye more as me knowledge of yer intentions . . . an’ capabilities grows.”

“Fair enough,” Matt conceded. “You can come with us, but I’ll expect further revelations.” He noticed that Silva’s attention had been diverted, and saw the “nannies” climbing aboard one of the boats with the remaining children. He’d spoken to them briefly. One was British but the others were Dutch. All spoke English, as did the nun. The children were about half Dutch and half English, with a young Australian boy thrown in. Dennis had pronounced one of the nannies an “old frump,” but the others were young. One was even attractive, as was the young nun. She’d managed to keep her habit fairly well preserved, even her bizarre hat. The women doubled the number of human females they knew about—not counting the children—and even the “frumpy” one would probably be the object of more attention than she’d ever known. He shook his head. He’d have to speak to them again.