“Don’t worry, he’ll get here!” Dennis assured him and wondered suddenly why he was so sure. “Stand aside!” Bam-bam-bam!
The Grik “wardroom” was an abattoir by the time they hacked and shot their way through the initial push and managed to secure the door. It had a convenient bar to prevent it from being opened from forward. Matt wondered what that said about Grik discipline? One of his Marines was dead and Garrett’s left arm hung almost useless, blood pattering on the deck to join the deep pool there. Matt wasn’t wounded, but he was splashed with gore and his “ceremonial” sword was notched and bloody. Gray was tying a tourniquet around Garrett’s arm, and the three Marines were wedging pieces of the heavy broken table against the door, which rattled with incessant pounding.
“Quick, let’s check these other rooms!” They looked in both compartments on either side. There were no enemies, but the collections decorating each were disconcerting. Skulls, mostly. Like trophies. One cabin held nothing but rows and rows of clay pots or jars, suspended from the bulkheads by netting. At a glance, they had no idea what was in them, but the stench was overpowering. Maybe they were firebombs and the compartment was a magazine? Gray and one of the Marines guarded the door leading forward. Heavy fighting raged on the other side. It was becoming more intense, and they heard a couple of grenades and more firing. They remained there, watching the rear while Matt, Garrett, and the other two Lemurians checked the final door aft. It was locked from within.
“Stand back,” Matt ordered and nodded at Garrett, who fired two shots into the familiar-looking keyhole below the doorknob. The Marines kicked it open and dashed inside. One fell back immediately, a spear through his chest. A Grik waiting beside the door slashed at the other, missing by the thickness of her fur. Garrett bellowed the first obscenity Matt had ever heard him use and fired directly through the wall. Matt lunged through the doorway and spun, raising his sword. The Grik from beside the door grappled with the remaining Marine, trying to tear out her throat. The one that Garrett had shot slumped to the deck, leaving a red stain on the wall. It was dark in the room, but blurred movement caused him to rush forward, driving his blade through a gaudily dressed Grik. It slashed at him with its claws, but they skated across his steel helmet. He yelled and stabbed it again, driving it backward to sprawl into some chairs behind it. Garrett was suddenly beside him, firing at the Grik where it lay. Together, they turned to the one fighting the Marine, and when it glanced at them with toothy, gape-mouthed astonishment, the little female Marine drove her short-sword into its belly, clear to the hilt.
Matt spun back, looking at something he’d glimpsed as he dashed inside. Seated at a dark, highly polished desk and silhouetted against the gray sea through the windows behind it, a startlingly obese Grik glared at him with intense, unblinking eyes. It was lavishly attired in a shimmering red and black silk-like robe and its fur, or plumage-whatever-was shiny and well groomed. A window was open and the desk was littered with tablets. Perhaps it was throwing things out? It snarled at him and a string of saliva foamed on its yellowed teeth. Without hesitation, it grasped a curved blade from the cluttered desk. Matt raised his sword and prepared to spring forward before it could rise. With a defiant cry, the thing drove the knife into its own throat and slashed outward, severing muscle, trachea, and arteries. Blood spumed, and the head, no longer supported by muscle and sinew, flopped backward before rebounding forward and slamming down upon the desk.
Matt lowered his sword and stared. Gun smoke eddied in the breeze through the window, but the sharp stench of blood and voided bowels was overpowering in the confined space. The female Marine, her blood-streaked sword still in her hand, retched in a corner, overcome by nausea and relief.
Gray hurried into the cabin, glancing about, taking it all in. He strode to the corpse of the Grik captain and heaved it roughly aside. It slid to the deck like a sack of wet tapioca. “Bugger was bleedin’ all over the books!” he growled.
Matt shook his head and quickly joined the Chief. His eyes moved rapidly over the haul. “May be something here.” He glanced at the dead Lemurian Marines, one still lying in the doorway and the other just outside. “I hope it was worth it.” He reeled slightly as the ship rolled drunkenly and unexpectedly in a swell. The sound of battle had diminished, unnoticed, and there came a heavy banging on the barricaded door through the wardroom. They heard muffled shouts.
“Captain! Captain Reddy! Are you in there?”
“Who wants to know?” Gray roared.
“Why, it’s me, Silva, you damned tyrant!” came the relieved, muffled reply. “Let me in! We’ve got the ship, or at least this deck of her. Some of them stinkin’ lizards has sneaked into the hold. We’re fixin’ to root ’em out.”
Gray approached the door while Silva spoke and heaved the barricade aside. The smoke and stench that filled the cabin were nothing compared to what wafted in from the long deck beyond. Silva stepped inside, leading a small pack of Marines. All were exhausted and their fur was matted with blood. Silva had a long cut on his forearm extending from his rolled-up sleeve to his fist. When he saw the captain, his bearded face split into a huge grin.
“Ahh, Skipper! Glad to see you well! We’ve killed a swarm o’ them devils. I bet there was two hundred left aboard! Most fun I ever had! I feel like a blamed pirate!” He leered at Gray and waved his cutlass. “Arrr!” Gray’s face went almost purple.
“What about our people, Silva? Anybody hurt?” Matt asked.
Silva shook his head. “I don’t know how many we lost on the contraption…” Matt blanched. Another big mistake! “But in the fightin’?” He looked at the two dead Marines between them. “A lot of ’cats bought it. Don’t know about any of our guys, past a few cuts and scrapes. It was a near thing too, when we first come down the ladders. Lizards got us backed up a mite. Then that Jap and my buddy Chack took ’em in the rear from the fo’c’sle. After that it was just pure, sweet killin’! Most of these lizards weren’t even warriors, I bet. Prob’ly just ship keepers, ’cause some weren’t even armed-not that they need to be with all them teeth and claws! But you should’a seen that Jap, Skipper! He’s a real terror with a sword!” There was genuine admiration in the gunner’s mate’s tone.
“You should’a seen the Skipper!” growled Gray. “All he had was a sword!” Silva looked down and saw the bloody thing in Matt’s hand. He whistled. Matt knew that unlike Shinya’s, his own success with the sword had come from terrified desperation, not skill. But from Silva’s expression, he realized he would probably be “Captain Blood” within a few days. The ship heaved sickeningly once again and he turned to the Bosun. “We have to get this wreck under tow right away, or get off it-one or the other. There’re too many little islands around here for us to run into. Take some people. Try to secure a towline. Have a detail cut away all that wreckage topside. I bet she’ll ride easier without it trailing over the side.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Gray responded, and started to turn. Matt stopped him.
“And check on Lieutenant Tucker.” Gray nodded, and summoning Silva’s companions, he picked his way through the bodies and debris forward and lumbered up the companionway. Matt turned to Garrett, who’d quietly joined them, holding his arm. “Maybe you should see the nurse?”
“I’m fine, Skipper.”
“Well, see what you can come up with. Sacks, sheets, anything, and wrap up whatever looks useful. Have it ready to send across to Walker in case we have to abandon this ship.”
“Aye, sir,” he answered distractedly. “Sir, there’s something you ought to see.”
“What?”
Garret flicked a glance at Silva and lowered his voice, but the tone was still insistent. “Please, Captain, just… look for yourself.”
“Very well,” he said, curious. He followed into the dead commander’s quarters, paying attention to the surroundings now. More tablets like the ones on the desk were scattered on the deck. Against one bulkhead were shelves with square partitions containing what looked tantalizingly like rolled-up charts! He stepped forward, eager to examine them. “Outstanding, Greg! This may be exactly what we’re looking for!”
“Sir,” insisted Garrett with uncharacteristic fragility. He gestured at the heavy overhead beams. Along both sides of each, like in the other cabins they’d inspected, were many, many skulls. They were of all manner of creatures, some he knew even Lemurians ate. Matt had tacked up a few sets of deer horns himself, growing up in Texas, so he felt no innate revulsion toward taking animal trophies, even if it was creepy and bizarre to take it to such an extreme as this. What made him seethe with anger was that, by far, most of the skulls hanging in the dreary shadows were Lemurian.
He’d never seen a Lemurian skull, but by their shape, that’s clearly what they were. Many were dry and yellow and covered with dust. Some were much fresher. A few were even decorated with garish painted designs, whatever that might mean. He shook his head, revolted, but from what he knew of the Grik, he wasn’t surprised.
