Crusade

The Mice had wedged themselves between the forward air lock of the aft fireroom and the access-hatch ladder. Nearby, clutching the grating as if the ship itself was trying to shake her loose, Tabby continued the dry retching that had wracked her small body since the storm began. Isak’s and Gilbert’s stoic expressions belied the real concern they felt for their furry companion. The monumental cacophony of sound was stunning even to them. The blowers howled as they sucked the sodden air, and the tired hull thundered and creaked as the relentless sea pounded against it. Condensed moisture rained from every surface to join the nauseating sewer that crashed and surged in the bilge as the ship heaved and pitched. The firemen on watch weren’t doing much either, just holding on as best they could and trying to supervise the gauges and fires.

«Reckon she’s gonna die?» Gilbert Yager asked, peering through the muck that streaked his face. As close as they were, he still had to shout for Isak Rueben to hear him. Even Tabby’s soggy tail lay still — he’d never seen that before. Her ordinarily fluffy light-gray fur was almost black, and plastered to her body like it had been slicked down with grease.

«Nah,» Isak Rueben reassured him after a judicious glance. «Poor critter’s just a little seasick, is all. Must be sorta’ embarrassin’ for her to be seasick after spendin’ her whole life at sea.» He was thoughtful. ' ’Course, on them big ships o’ theirs, I don’t reckon it ever gets quite this frisky. Don’t carry on so. You’ll make her feel worse.»

Gilbert looked at the exhausted, wretched, oblivious form.

«Okay. She wouldn’t want us coddlin’ her.» He paused. «Damned if I ain’t feelin’ a little delicate myself,» he admitted, glancing around the dark, dank, rectangular compartment. He could certainly feel the violent motion of the ship, but the only visual evidence was the sloshing bilge and the way the condensation sometimes fell sideways. «Now I know how those idiots who go over Niagara Falls in a barrel feel.»

The air lock beside them opened, but the «whoosh» was lost in the overall din. Spanky McFarlane spilled out onto the grating, nearly landing atopcloe='3»>«Seasick, we figger,» Isak told him.

«What’s she doin’ here? If she’s that sick, she ought’a be in her rack.» Spanky remembered then that he hadn’t seen Tabby for a couple of days.

«She was,» Gilbert confirmed. «She crawled down here today.

The roll’s just as bad, but there ain’t so much pitch. Maybe she’ll feel better.»

Spanky hesitated. «Well, try to get her to drink something. She’ll get dehydrated.»

The Mice nodded in unison. «Say, how’re things topside?» Isak asked, uncharacteristically interested in something besides the fireroom. Spanky blew his nose into his fingers and slung the ejecta into the bilge.

«It’s a booger,» he said. «It’s startin’ to taper off a little now, though. I just came from the bridge and, I’m telling you, that was a ride! It’s a miracle we haven’t lost anybody overboard. Even the lifelines have carried away!» Spanky was thoroughly soaked, but that alone wasn’t proof he’d been on deck. The Mice were soaked too. «Skipper’s been up there ever since the storm hit and he looks like hell. Lieutenant Tucker would give him a shot to put him out if she was here — and if she had one. The man needs rest, with his wounds and all. Other than that, the damage ain’t as bad as you’d think. Antenna aerial’s gone. Took the top of the resonance chamber with it so the radio’s out.» He saw their blank expressions. «You know that big pointy cylinder on the back bridge rail, right next to the main blower vent? Looks like a great big bullet?»

«You mean that’s what makes the radio work?» Gilbert asked, amazed.

'. Yeah. Anyway, the launch is wrecked too. Hell, it crashed on the deck right over your heads.» The Mice looked at him and then up at the deck above. They hadn’t heard a thing. «The life rafts are gone — not that I’d ever get on one of those things on this ocean — and we’ve lost just about everything else that wasn’t bolted down.» He patted the railing under his hand. «But the old girl’s doin’ okay — on one engine too. I think Skipper’s more worried about Mahan than anything. As usual. If she got hit as hard as we did.» He grunted. «Anyway, that Keje’s up there too.» Spanky grinned. «He’s havin’ the time of his life.»

«Where are we?» Gilbert asked and Spanky shrugged.

«If we run into something big and rocky, we’ll know it was one of the thousands of pissant islands scattered around out there, but that’s as close a guess as I’d care to make.»

«You’ve been out in a ’can like this in the North Atlantic, ain’t you?» Isak asked and Spanky nodded, accustomed to the Mice’s abrupt subject changes. «Is this as bad as that?»

Spanky just looked at him. «Son,» he said, shouting above the turmoil, «I was on the old Marblehead in a typhoon in the Philippine Sea back in ’36. That storm tore up a ’can like this and a fleet oiler too, like they were paper cups. It wasn’t a patch to this one. We’re doin’ fine.» With that, he shook his head and crept away, lurching hand over hand along the rail to resume his inspection of the engineering spaces.

«Well,» Isak said, «dudn’t feel that bad to me. Maybe we ought to get out more, Gilbert.»

«Well,» said Captain Reddy as the bow buried itself under a roller, «now I know what a Strakka is.» The entire ship shuddered with effort as it came out the other side. Gray-green water sluiced down the deck, submerging the number one gun and erupting upward against the pilothouse. After Walker spent two days runnad torm they’d ever seen.

«Yeah,» said Letts, whose thinking mirrored Mallory’s. «How’s the plane doing? Engines okay?» he asked.

The pilot hesitated. «Sure,» he answered in a defensive tone. «The oil we’re getting isn’t quite up to spec, but we change it every time she flies. Other than that, she’s better now than when we got her.» He grinned and gestured at the rain. «Cleaner too.» He pointedly didn’t remind them that «when they got her,» the PBY was full of holes and half sunk on a beach.

«Good,» Letts murmured, looking carefully at the aviator. He turned to Brister. Mahan’s former engineering officer had become the general engineer for all of Baalkpan. Captain Reddy and Pete Alden had designed the city’s fortifications with an eye toward successful historical port defenses. Alden added a few things based on local conditions. Also, with an infantryman’s eye, he’d stressed additions based on the possibility that the enemy might make a landward approach. In addition to his other duties — which now included direct supervision of the massive (by local standards) foundry — Lieutenant Brister was responsible for making the dream come true. The result might very well be the most formidable defensive works this world had ever known.

Instead of the stone walls that Aryaal enjoyed, a huge defensive berm had been thrown up around the city, the approaches festooned with entanglements and sharpened stakes. Moving the vast amount of dirt had also created a wide, deep trench that had subsequently filled with water and become an impressive moat system. The jungle was pushed back at least five hundred yards on all sides, except where the ground sank into swamp. Some of the wood was stockpiled for later use — much of it was fine hardwood after all — and some was used to shore up the breastworks and put a roof over the heads of the defenders to protect them from plunging arrow fire.

The piece de resistance was the twenty-four heavy guns that pierced the berm at regular intervals through stout embrasures, mostly facing the harbor. These were carefully concealed. The thinking was that, since the harbor was their most heavily defended point, they didn’t want to scare the enemy away from it — now they’d had a taste of cannon. If the Grik ever did attack Baalkpan, the defenders wanted them to do it in the «same old way» because the waterfront was where they would smash the invaders’ teeth. Still more guns were situated in a heavily constructed and reinforced stockade named Fort Atkinson, overlooking the mouth of the bay.

Again thanks to Alden, the landward approaches hadn’t been neglected. One hundred crude mortars were interspersed among the defensive positions. Little more than heavy bronze tubes, they could hurl a ten-pound copper bomb as far as the extended tree line. A little farther if you were brave enough to put a dollop more powder beneath it. The poor fragmentation characteristics of copper had been improved by casting the things with deep lines that ran all around and up and down the spheres — just like a pineapple grenade. When all was said and done, there wasn’t so much as a copper cup or brass earring in Nakja-Mur’s entire city, or anywhere they could quickly trade with. But what they had, hopefully, was a slaughterhouse for the Grik.

«How have the defenses held up in the rain?» Letts asked.

Brister snorted. «A little rain won’t hurt anything. Pack it all down a bit, is all. I may not be a combat engineer by trade, but when I put something together, it stays put together.»

It would wreck him. Even if he came back to his senses, it wouldn’t matter. Everyone would