landed in the cramped space where he’d been. Minnie squeaked and started to duck behind the chart house bulkhead, but she reversed course in an instant to try to drag her seemingly stunned captain to safety. She was half his size and just couldn’t do it. Jenks shouted and ran past her, sword in hand. Slashing at the monster’s face, he didn’t see the wicked claw at the bend of its wing slash in from the left, across his shoulder, sending him sprawling as well. The thing hopped forward, squalling, trying to shake off the halyard lines. Matt, now kicking with his heels to help Minnie, fumbled for his pistol. The Colt came out, and flipping off the thumb safety, he emptied the magazine at the creature. It screamed and flailed more violently, but now Matt had time to stand. Inserting another magazine, he took more careful aim and shot the dragon bird dead with a pair of shots.
Another flared just above him, going for the fire control platform. He shot at it too, but what probably brought it down, almost on top of the other one, was a staccato of Thompson and BAR fire that sprayed blood all over Matt and the side of the chart house, and sent a cloud of downy fuzz drifting quickly aft. There were more shots from both guns, but Matt couldn’t see the targets. He grabbed Jenks, and with Minnie’s help, dragged the Imperial underneath the overhead.
“I’m fine,” Jenks protested, “I’m quite all right!”
“You’ve got a pretty good cut there, Commodore,” Matt said, peeling back the bloody coat and weskit beneath. Jenks had been slashed f but Matt shoulder, across his chest, and upward across his chin. The firing finally began to slack outside, and Stites and the Bosun crawled gingerly over the dead beasts clogging the space at the top of the ladder, pointing their muzzles at them as they crossed.
“You okay, Skipper?” Stites demanded anxiously.
“Swell. Commodore Jenks is wounded.”
Gray pulled a field dressing from a small pouch on his belt and tore it open. Ripping an envelope with his teeth, he leaned down and sprinkled the contents on Jenks’s wound.
“What’s that?” Jenks demanded.
“Sulfonamide,” grunted the Bosun. “We’ll get you fixed up with some polta paste pretty quick, but who knows what kinda germs is smeared all over them devils. Better get started on ’em.” Gray fluffed out a wad of gauze and handed it to the man. “Here, you’re bleedin’ like a stuck pig. Hold this on, there on your chest-that looks the worst- and keep pressure on it.”
“Help me up,” Jenks insisted. Together, they assisted him to his feet. “That was… extraordinary!”
“You said it,” confirmed Stites in a loud voice. He shook his head and moved his jaw, trying to pop his ears. “Flyin’ Grik! What about that?”
“Dragons,” Jenks corrected, wincing, “but perhaps ‘flying Grik’ describes this group better,” he acknowledged. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Never.”
“Lookout,” Matt said, “what’s he see, Minnie? What are those damn dragon things doing, and what of the enemy fleet?”
“There no answer from crow nest, Cap-i-taan,” reported the diminutive talker. “Spanky say Grik birds go ’way, fly back to island. He no shoot number four at them no more, you say so. Run low on time fuse shells.”
“Of course. Tell him to cease firing and secure. Can he see the enemy?”
Minnie hesitated, listening. “They make sail,” she said. “Warships get between us and transports, transports make smoke-maybe steamers-we too far now to see what tents do, but he think enemy going on transports.”
Matt nodded. The enemy was moving. But where would they go? They’d done some serious damage, but not enough.
“Spanky say there even more flying Grik now,” Minnie continued. “He send ’Cat up aft mast wit bin-oculaars. More flying Grik over enemy fleet, but not attacking them.”
“Amazing!” Jenks said. “It must be true, then.”
“What?”
“Think on it! Somehow the Doms have the dragons in their power! They command the beasts! I would’ve never believed it.”
“What do you mean, ‘in their power’?” Gray grumbled.
“Why, they’ve trained them somehow, of course! Perhaps from birth. That must be it.”
“Makes sense, Skipper,” Stites said. “Raise ’em from a chick-or whatever…”
“Yes!” Jenks agreed. “And feed them, tend their wants, train them to consider you their masters… Amazing!”
“Yeah, but scary as hell,” Matt said. “We were in the middle of maybe winning the war, and got chased off by giant flying lizards!”
“We can go back, Skipper,” Kutas said gamely.
“Noo… As Spanky said, there’re even more back there. We’re going to have to play something new. We can’t fight the Doms and those things,” he said, gesturing at the corpses behind them. “The gun’s crews would be sitting ducks.” He looked at Jenks. “What kind of range do they have?”
“The dragons?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s an interesting question. They’re rarely seen more than thirty or forty miles offshore.”
“Guadalupe’s a hell of a lot farther than that from Baja,” Gray said.
“Indeed,” Jenks agreed. “Perhaps a hundred and fifty miles. No doubt it was a one-way trip, straight out.”
“Which means there almost had to be ‘handlers,’ or some kind of support for them practically due east.”
“Which means they’ve been preparing for this a very long time,” noted Jenks darkly. “I begin to fear there may be more than we bargained for, even on New Ireland. I so wish we could pass a message back to the Governor-Emperor!”
Ed Palmer had appeared on the bridge, staring wide-eyed at the dead, winged… things. He shook his head. “I still have nothing from Admiral McClain… sirs… or any of our ships either. We took a dogleg course, but they were supposed to come straight on to Saint Francis. Maybe they got caught up in the storm northeast of us, or it’s interfering, but I’m thinking they should’ve been in range for us to hear something by now. Our transmitter’s a lot more powerful, and I keep sending our position and intentions…” He held out his hands. “Maybe they’re hearing us, but I haven’t heard a peep back.”
“We’ll hear something in a few days,” Matt said with conviction, “even if only from ‘our’ ships. Simms, Tindal, Mertz, and the oilers are on their way, even if McClain dawdled. They had their orders.”
Jenks looked at Matt. “I’d like to apologize, Captain Reddy,” he said.
Matt blinked. “What for? McClain’s probably on his way, as he promised. Even if he is goofing around, it’s not your fault. Besides, you probably saved my life when you went at that… dragon bird with a sword -and got cut up for it.”
“That’s not what I meant. I must apologize for… influencing you and your crew to take an unreasonable risk. You were right. They did know we are at war. They can only have trained dragons for the attack we withstood today, and they’d only have gathered at Guadalupe Island to prepare an assault on the colonies. I shouldn’t have made you feel… compelled to follow outdated rules.”
Matt shook his head. “Doing the right thing should never be outdated, but in this war, the ‘right thing’ gets… blurry. Don’t worry about it. It took us a while to get used to it too. Maybe it was easier because we were fighting a ‘mean’ war before we ever wound up here.” He frowned. “We would’ve gotten a few more of their ships if we’d shot first, but not many more, and not enough to make a real difference. Only sinking the transports might have done that, and they were too well screened. The dragon birds made the difference in the end.”
“What’ll we do, Skipper?” the Bosun asked. “We gonna shadow the Doms, keep an eye on what they do, or make for Saint Francis?”
“rancis. We know it’s got to be their objective, even if we don’t know their plan. Better to warn the colonies and help them prepare for as many contingencies as we can think of. Besides, we burned a lot of fuel today. Shadowing them will cost more-especially if they throw those… things at us again. For all we know, they’ve got them as tame as puppies, feeding them and letting them roost on their ships!” He stared hard at the dead creatures on the bridge, their blood beginning to congeal in long, lumpy puddles on the strakes. “We’ll have to do something about them.”
“What?”
Matt sighed. “Right now, I have no idea. However they did it, the enemy has air cover and we don’t,
