streaming, leaving wet tracks in the pale dust around them. Gusts of wind created gray dust devils in the harsh, hellish twilight, but thankfully carried away more of the dark, dead ash coating the boat. All Irvin could do was nod appreciation for what Tex and his detail had accomplished. He was still too shocked to do much else.
Talaud Island, as he’d seen through the scope, had been incinerated. Thousands of fires smoldered upon it, brightening as the day faded, adding their choking smoke to the bitter ash that swirled and danced hotly across the unimaginable world that their island, their lagoon, had become. The lagoon itself was like a soupy mud wallow, heaving sluggishly with the dulled, exhausted waves that tried, even now, to cleanse it. Dead fish with poached, bulging eyes clotted the surface of the soup in their apparently endless millions, and charred, bloating corpses of land creatures bobbed in ghastly, unrecognizable clumps. Thankfully, they hadn’t seen any remains of the scoop- boat crew or the hundred and ninety or so souls from Toolbox.. ..
S-19 had been sandblasted. Her rust streaks were gone, but so was all the remaining paint that had protected her. Even now, the exposed, dented, abraded steel was turning brown. All that remained of her rotten deck strakes were a few dangling, charred planks, still bolted to their supports. Even the top of the pressure hull, now clearly visible from above, had been blasted clean, and the dark, muddy water lapped against bright metal.
The starboard diesel rumbled and burbled to life, vomiting gobbets of mud from the exhaust ports.
“We can maneuver now,” Tex gasped thankfully. “On the port shaft, anyway.”
“Not just yet,” Irvin replied wearily. “Sandy thinks we better let the lagoon clear a little first. Too much junk floating around. We’ll stay anchored here until then.” He grimaced. “He ran the port motor up for a few seconds, just to check things out, and that seems okay at least. He thinks the starboard shaft is bent! We must’ve whacked it when the… whatever it was-the ash blow? The shock wave?” He shook his head. “When… whatever it was tossed us out of the basin. Damned if I noticed it over everything else.” He sighed. “At least the leak’s under control, now we’re on the surface. Man, oh, man! We’re going to have to repack that bearing with something to keep the water out. Flooding her down didn’t put any more pressure on the seal than a moderate sea!”
“ Toolbox,” Tex muttered after a long moment. “Poor bastards.”
“Yeah,” Irvin said. “Of course, that leaves us back on our own in a big, bad way-all over again-and I don’t think we have much time. That damn mountain did all this and then just quit. Danny’s started going on about Krakatoa again. He studied up on it some, it seems. Anyway, he said it pulled the same kind of stunt, throwing fits for a while and then clamming up. That’s when it blew its top. I don’t know, I’m no geologist, but I’m sick of having that thing hanging over our heads. I can’t help thinking we need to go.”
Tex patted him on the shoulder. “I’m with you. I get this creepy feeling all it was doing today was clearing its throat. What a mean, vicious bitch!”
Irvin nodded. “We’ll finish repairs, as best we can, sitting right here. No sense in even going ashore. There’s nothing left.”
“We’ve got water, but we’ll be awful short of food,” Tex warned.
“Yeah, but we’re not going to find any here. All the more reason to get underway as soon as possible.”
“ How soon?”
“A few days, no more. Who knows if we even have That much time?”
Tex exhaled noisily and coughed, hacking roughly. He spat. “What do you want me to do, sir?”
“Your division’s priority’ll be comm, beyond any new electrical repairs we need after today. What’ll it take to let us scream for help?”
“A better antennae aerial, mostly.” Tex blew his nose on the inside of his bandanna. “The number two periscope is thrashed. We secured it and packed it, best we could, after that ashcanning in the Java Sea. Maybe we could rig an array on it, extend it, and repack it again?”
“Do it, if you think it’ll work.”
“What else?”
“Sandy’s priority’ll be the port diesel. I’d like to run direct drive, and we’ll need the charging backup.”
“And?”
Irvin shrugged, gazing around at the island in the deepening gloom. The fires were growing. “Inferno,” he said absently.
“What?”
Irvin shook his head. “Vent the boat before the smoke gets too thick; then we’ll button up for the night. After that, we’ll do whatever else it takes to get us the hell out of here.”
CHAPTER 20
Respite Island
M att felt like he was fighting for his life. His opponent’s sword tip seemed to be everywhere at once, striking like a snake and slashing at him like lightning from a clear blue sky. He was on the defensive and he knew it-hated it-reduced to parrying the blows and jabs as they came, and he just couldn’t keep up much longer. Steel clashed against steel in a veritable blur of blades, and he knew he was giving ground even while his soul screamed attack. Attack! He couldn’t. He’d never been much of a swordsman at the Academy. He’d never expected to ever need to be, and though his fine sword had seen much more use on this accursed world than he would ever have imagined possible, he’d never faced an actual skilled swordsman-or swordscreature-before. So far, when the necessity arose, he’d just muddled along, hacking at Grik. They had no real “swordsmen” that he’d ever met. Mainly you just had to keep their teeth and claws and short, sickle-shaped swords at arm’s length until you saw an opening-or until one of the spearmen at your back did them in. Personally, he’d rather shoot them.
He was gasping for breath and the sandy shore dragged at his feet as he tried to make the half-remembered responses to the attacks. Not that what he’d learned at the Academy was doing him much good… The man he faced was doing things with a sword he’d never seen before and he had no choice but to try and do the same. Again, it hardly mattered. He felt the growing, sickening certainty that he would lose. His responses were just too slow, and he’d never developed the muscle memory required for such a contest. He had to Think about everything. That he’d lasted as long as he had might speak well for his ability to think under stress, but it wouldn’t save him. Besides, having suspected the battle was lost, he knew it already was. There was nothing left but to see it through. He parried a lunge against his flank with a crash of steel-just a little late-and realized the attack was just a feint as his opponent took another long step, past his sword, and planted his own sword tip in the center of Matt’s chest. The blade bowed slightly as the blunt point pushed against the padding.
“You’ve improved,” Jenks complimented. Naturally, both men were sweating at that latitude, but maybe Jenks was sincere. At least he was breathing hard this time.
“I’m still dead,” Matt objected.
“True, but as both our cultures recognize, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Honestly, you are much better. Certainly better than most of the young Imperial hotheads who take the field on the New Scotland dueling ground! You almost got me there, at the beginning, with your… unorthodox attack. Nothing to it, really, but experienced aggression, but sometimes that’s enough to give you an advantage over more classically trained opponents. It’s distracting, and not at all expected. If you can finish it then, why, what difference does it make how good you actually are?”
Matt took a deep breath and managed a wry grin. “Sounds like a good description of every scrape I’ve been in since the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor.”
Jenks remained silent. He’d learned a good deal about the “other earth” the Americans came from, and the war that raged there, just as Matt and his people knew a lot more about the Empire now. The mention of Pearl Harbor tweaked Jenks a bit, however, as did any reference to Imperial territory that had belonged to the Americans on that other world. Pearl Harbor simply didn’t exist, as the Americans remembered it, but the “Hawaiian” Islands did-in a sense. They composed the very heart of the Empire. He knew that as far as a few of the remaining Americans were concerned, Pearl Harbor, or the “Hawaiian” Islands still belonged to them. Most were more philosophical than that, including Matt. They recognized that tiny Tarakan Island, for example, had never been a U.S. possession before they “got here,” and Matt used an interesting phrase to describe the situation: “Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” That didn’t mean that knowing parts of their “homeland” was under “foreign” occupation
