It was overcast, but not raining this time when Sandra waved good-bye to yet another destroyer. Now Mahan was steaming toward the mouth of the bay, looking just like Walker from a distance, and fingers of dread clutched Sandra’s heart. Mahan was following in the wake of a pair of fast feluccas that had departed the night before. They’d serve as scouts at first, then transports if the need arose. Nobody really knew how many people remained on B’mbaado-trapped now behind enemy lines.
Selass was with her, come to say farewell to her mate, Saak-Fas. He’d been leaning on the rail, staring, as the ship moved away, but if he saw her in the throng he made no sign. Now the ship had almost vanished against the dreary, light gray sky. They saw a wisp of smoke, a sense of ghostly movement. Otherwise all that marked her passage was a flicker of color at her masthead as the Stars and Stripes streamed aft in the sultry air, stirred only by the ship’s motion. Sandra watched the flag slowly fade with mixed emotions, an elusive memory of something Matt once told her rising to the surface. Something he’d seen a doomed British destroyer do in the face of impossible odds, and then Exeter did the same thing before her final battle. She strained to remember, sure it was important.
“Do you think they will return?” Selass asked quietly.
“They must. We’ll need them desperately when Walker returns.”
“I meant Walker,” Selass almost whispered. “I feel so guilty. I find myself almost hoping Mahan will fail. That would mean the end of Queen Maraan, but then I might have a chance when Chack returns. It would also probably mean the end of Saak-Fas as well.” She paused, then almost pleaded, “But that is what he wants, is it not?”
“I suspect so,” Sandra replied, saddened for her tragic friend, though not shocked that her thoughts had taken such a turn. “If that’s the case, if he truly wants to die, he’ll likely get his chance.” She sighed. “Jim Ellis is a good man and an excellent officer, but I’m not sure he should be commanding this mission. He still blames himself for losing Mahan when Kaufman shot him and took command. He thinks his ship’s honor is stained- his honor too. He feels he has something to prove. Nobody like that should ever command a mission like this, with so much at stake. I know Jim, and trust him, but I can’t shake the fear that he’ll take chances with himself and his ship, hoping to remove that stain, when his most important objective is to get himself and his ship back in one piece.”
She lowered her head in thought as they walked back through the bazaar in the directi'1em' width='1em'›“Holy shit!”
Round shot kicked up splashes, skipping across the wave tops in the general direction of the beach, and a few of the staff cringed involuntarily.
“Holy shit,” Dobbin murmured again. “Where’d they get cannons?”
“Same place we did, idiot,” Gray growled more fiercely than he intended. “The bastards made ’em.”
Felts didn’t wear this time; instinctively Clark must have known it would expose his vulnerable stern. Instead, the sloop hove to and held her ground, pounding away at the enemy.
“Gonna be a better show than we thought,” Gray said ironically.
Felts ’s gunnery was far better, and she hacked away at the red ships. She finally fell away before the wind, to keep the Grik at arm’s length, and took a pounding then, but when the now crippled squadron re-formed for the advance, she hove to once more and raked them again and again. The damage she inflicted was exponentially greater this time. Rigging and stays, weakened by the previous fire, parted, and shattered masts teetered and fell, taking others, less damaged, with them. One enemy ship was a wallowing, dismasted wreck, and the other two weren’t much better, but their gunnery was improving at the point-blank range of the duel, and Felts was suffering too. Over the next hour they watched while the battle raged on the sea, and Felts maintained the same tactics: pouring withering fire into her foes until they got too close, then gaining some distance again. The dismasted, sinking Grik ship fell far behind, but the remaining two learned to present their own broadside whenever Felts moved away. It was difficult for them, since they could barely maneuver, but the American ship had finally lost her foremast and maintop as well.
“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.”
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 playsumbsed sedately on a calm, gently rolling sea. They saw nothing in the north and when they turned south it looked like more of the same at first: dense, impenetrable jungle growing right down to and beyond the shore, by means of a mangrove-type root system. It was unlike anything Matt had ever seen on such a large and isolated island, and always, in the distance, a large volcano loomed menacingly from the jungle mists enshrouding its flanks. Jets of smoke or steam curled from vents in its side. Eventually they began to notice irregularities in the shoreline, and they slowed to a crawl so they could glass them more carefully. Still, no true inlet was apparent, or even a beach. There was no sign of life at all, in fact, besides the ever-present, swooping, defecating birds. Even Courtney began losing interest by the time the sun edged toward the horizon.
“I say, Captain Reddy, shouldn’t we speed up? Hurry along, as it were? Surely the eastern side of the island is more hospitable and, well, easier to land upon.”
“We can’t know that, and we’re only looking once. If we ‘speed up’ we might miss something. It’ll soon be dark anyway, and we’ll have to anchor. I want to do it in the shallowest water possible, and right now there’s less water under our keel than we’ up’ we mid become a palpable thing, and every day they remained away added an
