ball-headed Kraut! Your willy-nilly broadside found a weak spot and killed the damn thing!”
Smitty arrived amid enthusiastic cheering, grinning ear to ear. “I just wish I knew which gun did the trick-and where it was aimed!” There was a roar of laughter and stamping feet.
“It might have been fire from Tolson,” Saaran reminded him. “Or the combined fire of both ships. It is said, however, that the inestimable Dennis Silva once killed such a creature with a single shot from a four-inch- fifty.”
“It was four shots!” Smitty denied. “I was there! One shot might’a killed it, but he shot that big empty forehead hump three times first!”
Garrett patted Smitty on the shoulder, then looked back at the gathered Grik ships, now off the starboard quarter. The broadside they’d fired into the gaggle had left it even more disarrayed. He raised his glasses. “Helm,” he called. “Mr. Saaran, we’ll come about and finish that mob. Prepare to wear ship!” The Grik were no longer flinging gobbets of meat over the side, and the swarm of feeding fish, those not killed by the depth charges, were beginning to abandon them for the mountain of bleeding meat floating nearby. Now, most of the Grik in view, furry, upright, vicious-looking crosses between an emu and a komodo, just stood there, staring sullenly. Their plan, clearly to break the blockade by destroying Garrett’s entire squadron at one act, hadn’t workedand he was suddenly stunned that the Grik had been capable of conjuring such a scheme, not to mention implementing it. Grik always seemed ready to attack with everything they had, or flee with equal abandon. To design a plan that called on them-even Hij-to cold-bloodedly, calculatingly, sacrifice themselves for others of their kind was so utterly alien to anything they’d come to expect from their foe, it was still difficult to imagine. There was no doubt they’d deliberately lured the mountain fish, hoping it would destroy all of Garrett’s ships. They had to know it would destroy them as well. Damn.
Donaghey had come about, steering to bring her port broadside to bear on the bows of the enemy where they were linked together. Tolson was preparing to pummel the north side of the confused raft of ships. At just over one hundred yards, Garrett opened his mouth to give the command to fire. He never had a chance. With a cataclysmic eruption of fire, shattered debris, and a massive, towering mushroom of dirty white smoke, all eight Grik ships simultaneously blew themselves up.
Greg Garrett opened his eyes to see Clancy’s fuzzy, worried face hovering near. Greg was totally disoriented, and it took him several moments to figure out where he was. He decided he must be lying on his back somewhere on the quarterdeck, but looking up, he couldn’t see the sails, yards, or the spiderweb of cordage that should have been overhead. That con- fused him even more. Clancy’s mouth was moving, but at first Greg couldn’t understand anything he said. There was only an all-encompassing, high-pitched buzz, with a kind of muffled warbling creeping in around the edges. He stared hard at Clancy and began to realize part of the warbling sound was the communications officer calling his name. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and propped himself up on his elbows.
His vision was clearing, and other sounds began penetrating the incessant noise inside his head. He commenced a rapid inventory of all the new aches and pains he felt, but decided nothing was broken. Looking at himself, he saw that he was spattered with blood, but except for a few small tears in his clothing, he thought he must be okay. Most of the blood had to be somebody else’s. He suddenly realized the sky was empty because the mainmast had snapped off just below the top, taking the main yard and everything above over the side. Tangled stays and shrouds stretched taut across the deck, and the bulwarks on either side were smashed. Even as he watched, bloodied, disheveled Lemurian sailors hacked at cables, and each one parted with a sound like a rifle shot. The ship beneath him wallowed uncomfortably in the uneven swells, and there was a great grinding, pounding in the fibers of the deck from the shattered mast working alongside.
Glancing farther forward, he saw that the foremast was gone completely, snapped off at the deck of the forecastle, and its remains had already been cleared away. Looking around with increased urgency, he realized that only the bowsprit and mizzenmast still stood intact. A great many bodies lay scattered on deck, some moving, others not, and the pitiful cries of the wounded began to seep through the ringing buzz. The surgeon was on deck, along with Marine corpsmen and pharmacist’s mates, moving from one prone figure to the next. Some they quickly inspected before moving on, and others they had carried below to the wardroom. What had been a taut, beautiful, well-run ship had suddenly become a scene of devastation and chaos.
“Mr. Garrett! Thank God!” he finally heard Clancy say. “I thought you were a goner when I first laid eyes on you.”
“What happened?” Greg asked. It may not have been the most original phrase uder the circumstances, but right then, it was the most appropriate.
“I’m not sure, sir. I was belowdecks in the wireless shack when I heard this god-awful, humongous boom-and something hammered the ship. I came up here”-Clancy gestured around-“and seen all this! Jesus! One fella I ran into told me those Grik ships, all eight of ’em, just blew the hell up! All at once! My God, the only way they could’ve done it like that, simultaneously, is electrically! Electrically!” he repeated. “No fuse would’ve worked. They’d have gone up like a fireworks show, not all at once. And they couldn’t have done near as much damage that way. I swear.” He shook his head.
“How about Tolson?” Greg asked, managing to stand with Clancy’s help.
Clancy pointed. “Hell, sir, she looks worse than us. Lost every stick.”
Garrett saw Tolson, completely dismasted, wallowing helplessly to leeward, surrounded by a sea of floating debris. Revenge was standing by her, apparently undamaged, trying to rig a towline. “Where’s Saaran?” he asked.
“In the wardroom,” Clancy said. “Looks like he’s maybe got a concussion. Something conked him on the head. Caught some splinters too. You’re lucky, Skipper. Smitty was with you when I came on deck, but the surgeon said you ought to come around soon, and Smitty took off to help with damage control. You were out about twenty minutes.”
“Do we have communications?” Garrett demanded.
“Yes, sir. One of my strikers just reported. We can’t get Tolson, or at least they can’t respond, but we’ve got Revenge.” Clancy shrugged. “Our wireless aerial’s on the mizzen, and it’s still mostly in one piece.”
“Okay,” said Garrett, shaking off Clancy’s supporting hand. “Tell Revenge she’ll have to try to tow us both. Then get a message off to HQ; tell them what happened… and they might want to kind of expect a call for assistance.” He smirked. “Like there’s anything they can do about it. As far as I know, there’s not another Allied ship for five hundred miles!”
“Maybe they’re doing another coast recon of the proposed LZs?” Clancy speculated.
“Maybe… and we wouldn’t know it either. They won’t make a peep in case the Japs have helped the Grik come up with a transmission direction finder of some sort,” Greg fumed. “Let’s just hope we won’t need any assistance Revenge can’t give us!” He paused. “Thanks, Clance. You get back to the radio shack and keep your ears open.”
The new steam frigate passed a heavy cable to Tolson and eventually, carefully picking her way through the raft of floating chunks of eight entire ships, pulled Russ’s derelict close to Donaghey . In the meantime, much to Greg’s relief, Smitty and the ’Cat carpenter reported that his ship’s leaks were under control. Most were caused by the pressure of the blast-opened seams, but some were made by pieces of Grik ships striking at high velocity. A bowsprit had speared Donaghey like a harpoon amidships. Garrett’s ship would float, but she’d lost a lot of people. All the Marines in the tops, for example, had gone over the side. With so many predators in the sea, their deaths had probably been quicker than drowning-if even more horrifying. Almost a third of the crewfolk and Marines exposed on deck were dead or wounded.
Garrett saw Russ near Tolson’ s stern, a bloody rag around his head, directing a detail preparing to send or receiv a cable. Greg already had a similar party waiting in his ship’s fo’c’sle. He raised a speaking trumpet. “Are you okay, Mr. Chapelle?”
“I’m fine,” Russ replied. “My ship ain’t,” he added bitterly. Bloody water gushed down Tolson’ s sides from the scuppers, her pumps working hard. “We’re staying ahead of the flooding, though.” He paused. “If you don’t mind my saying, Donaghey looks like a porcupine.” It was true. Greg had peered over the port side and was amazed by the number of timbers and splinters sticking in his ship. “I bet you could build another whole ship out of all that junk!”
“I promise not to throw any of it away, then,” Greg countered. “You might need it.”
