we’re helping Brits fight Brits, and”-he looked at Chapelle-“some kind of goofy Spaniard Indians. Hell, there’s even a tribe of Grik on our side! No, I don’t blame you for wanting to stay out here at all.”
The ship juddered beneath his feet, and Garrett held his watch to the lantern light. “I guess we’d better get started, Commodore,” he said. “We’ve got about two hours. Just let us know when you’re about to hit the gas.” He glanced out at the lanterns on Dowden and Tassat. Other ships were beyond them, he knew, darkened in case the enemy chose to interrupt them. “We’ll hold on for the first jolt, but I may have to have the guys run back and forth to rock her.”
“I’ll let you know,” Jim promised. “We will get her off.”
“Don’t say that!” Garrett grinned. “Just go out there and break both your legs, blow the main steam line, and run aground yourself!”
“My, you’re getting superstitious!” Jim laughed.
“Can’t help it,” Greg said.
CHAPTER 12
USS Walker December 30, 1943
T he sky was almost black in the west, and the clouds above were dark, high, and huge. In the east, the horizon around the rising sun was clear and golden. Long, choppy swells rolled in from the northwest, hitting the old destroyer on the port bow. The downdraft of the storm’s leading edge sent cold, shattered spray against the windows of the pilothouse and the port side of the chart house. Walker was pitching and rolling in a corkscrew motion guaranteed to achieve vomit from all but her most seasoned crew. The cold, damp wind added to the misery. Few Lemurians other than “far rangers” or those from the Great South Island had ever experienced temperatures much below the seventies at night, and now, with the wind and humidity, along with a weak but genuine cold front, it felt like the fifties. ’Cats all over the ship were wearing Lemurian-made copies of “peacoats” that few had ever expected to need, and even the humans, so accustomed to the constant heat, were wearing peacoats and jackets off-loaded before the Battle of Baalkpan. The old wool smelled musty, and even Matt’s leather jacket had him sneezing occasionally at the mildew.
Courtney was happy as a clam, standing on the starboard bridgewing with Jenks, bouncing up and down to keep his binoculars steady as he cheerfully described a flight of perhaps a dozen giant lizard birds, or “dragons” stooping and whirling on something far to the east. Jenks was fascinated too, but mainly because the beasts had never been seen this far north, and so far out at sea. Obviously, they were dogging something in or on the water; perhaps some wandering school of fish?
“They must be out of Guadalupe Island,” Harvey Jenks speculated. “Dragons are somewhat migratory and often cooperate with one another, as you see,” he said.
“Maybe,” said Matt. Guadalupe was their “waypoint.” They meant to turn north after sighting it on the chance the suspected Dom fleet would use it for the same purpose as it worked north along the coast. Jenks said the island might provide a decent anchorage, depending on the wind, and if the Doms were waiting anywhere for things to “automatically happen,” it was as good a place as any. Putting a dogleg in their trip with their fuel so limited had been a difficult decision, but they needed to know what they were facing. They had six days until the cryptic date of January 5, plenty of time to reach their destination, with a few days to spare, but it was imperative they have something concrete to present to the authorities at the colonial port of Saint Francis-better remembered by the human destroyermen as San Francisco.
That’s going to be a… weird landfall, Matt reflected. Jenks’s description of the place didn’t sound very familiar, and that made sense with the lower sea level. They certainly wouldn’t pass under the Golden Gate Bridge. Still, it would be their first contact with what should have been their continental home, their own country. It would probably be even more painful than their arrival in the “New Britain Isles.” Besides, it was cold. Sure, it was winter here, but the weather was more like Seattle. Jenks said the “North Coast” was under ice for much of the year, and pack ice could be a problem as far south as where Matt showed him Astoria to be on their own charts. A genuine ice sheet wasn’t possible because of the tumultuous sea, but it wasn’t right at all.
“I wish we could throw Reynolds and his plane over the side to fly over there and have a look; see if that’s Guadalupe and if there’re any Dom ships there,” Matt said, looking at the sea. “Tangerous. The trouble is, if we get too close and the enemy is there, they might see us before we see them, with their higher masts and lookouts.”
“Not necessarily, Skipper,” said the Bosun, who’d been watching the darkness in the west. He gestured toward it. “We’ll have that as a backdrop, liable to blend right in. And we have better lookouts than they do.”
“Hmm.” Matt strode aft, starboard of the chart house, and stared up at the funnels. “Minnie,” he said, addressing the diminutive talker, “get Tabby on the horn and tell her number three is making too much smoke.” He looked around the pilothouse. “Might as well have a look.”
Very shortly afterward, the lookout sighted land to the east, what looked like a peak rising from the sea. The threatening storm had dissipated somewhat, becoming more benign as one front surrendered to another, but the entire sky was gray. Walker approached the landfall at fifteen knots, and soon the peak of what had to be Mount Augusta, maybe five thousand feet high, sprawled out on the horizon into a rugged island about fifteen miles long, north to south. Careful scrutiny revealed no Dominion ships along its western coast, and Jenks suggested they pass to the north and see what might lie in what he called the “northeast anchorage.”
The dragons Courtney watched earlier had disappeared, but similar shapes fluttered around the highest volcanic peak. Another peak brooded to the south, not quite as high, but shrouded by steamy clouds. It was probably active, Matt surmised. By early afternoon, they’d passed the sharp, northeast point and had an unobstructed view of the anchorage beyond. Almost at the same instant the lookout reported-his view as obscured by the point as theirs until now-those on the bridge caught their first sight of a forest of masts.
“My God, there they are!” Matt muttered. So much for sneaking in for a look. The first Dom ship, clearly distinguished by the red flag with the gold cross whipping at her stern, was only five thousand yards away. Beyond it lay more ships than they’d seen gathered since the Battle of Baalkpan; maybe a hundred. Most, particularly those anchored closest to the scant shoreline at the base of the high cliffs, were probably transports. Through his Bausch amp; Lomb’s, thousands of white dots-tents-were scattered in orderly clumps across the exposed slopes of the mountain. Apparently, they’d been here a while. The vessels encompassing the inner transports had to be warships, however, and all those would have guns. “Sound general quarters! Stand by for surface action, starboard!” he said loudly. The laryngitic duck of the general alarm squalled, and there was a short bustle in the pilothouse as men and ’Cats exchanged their hats for helmets.
“What will we do?” Courtney asked.
“You’re going to assume your battle station in the wardroom,” Matt said. “Without Selass here, all we have is a pharmacist’s mate. You’re our surgeon now, remember?”
“W-why, yes,” Bradford stammered unenthusiastically, “and I shall do my duty… but what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to stay out of range and hit ’em as hard as we can. They’re at anchor, and we’ll never have a better opportunity. See all those tents ashore? Those represent who knows how many troops. We sink their transports, and the invasion of the colonies is off.”
“Attack… without warning?” Courtney gasped.
“Damn straight,” the Bosun growled. “What do you think they’re here to do? re h
“Still…”
“Go below, Courtney,” Matt said with an edge. Bradford vanished in a huff, but when he was gone, Jenks leaned toward Matt and whispered, “Actually, though I hate to say it, he has a point.”
Matt goggled at him. “What?”
“We’re at war with the Dominion, no question, but those people over there, aboard those ships, don’t know it yet.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Gray demanded, equally shocked. “You want to run up a white flag, steam over there and tell ’em we’re at war? They’ll thrash us! Our only advantage is speed and range. We’ve got ’em served up on a platter, and you want to give that up? Did you forget how they started this war? They murdered
