basically.” He looked at Minnie. “Secure from general quarters, but maintain condition three… as always. Helm, make your course three, five, five, if you please. Two-thirds. Boats, get with Bashear and form a detail to clear my ship of these flying vermin. I want casualty and damage reports as soon as possible.” He looked around. “Does anybody know if the ‘Nancy’ made it through in one piece?”
Lieutenant Fred Reynolds sat on the deck, leaning on the light gauge “tub” encircling the gun position while its crew cleaned and secured it. His pistol was still in his hand, but the slide was locked back on an empty magazine. His eyes rested on the shattered head of one of the giant lizard birds that lay in the gap at the back of the tub and he shuddered. Suddenly, the exec, Spanky McFarlane, appeared, looking down at him.
“There you are, Reynolds!” he said. “I was starting to think one of those boogers carried you off!” He looked down at the creature at his feet. “Got this one, did you? Well done!”
Reynolds stood, a little shakily.
“Here, gimme that,” Spanky said, motioning for the pistol. Fred handed it over, and Spanky released the empty magazine and stuffed it in a pouch on Reynolds’s belt. Taking another, he inserted it, dropped the slide, and flipped the thumb safety up. He handed the pistol back. “Keep that handy,” he said. “Damn things might come back.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Spanky looked around. The day was still cool, but his face glistened with sweat. “A hell of a thing. Listen, round up your crew chief-Jeek, right?-and go over the plane. It looks like it’s mostly in one piece. Skipper wants it ready to fly as soon as possible.” He noticed Reynolds’s suddenly pale expression. “ Ready to fly. You ain’t going up with the sea like this. Send any of your fellas that ain’t hurt to Bashear-you got any hurt?”
“Ah, I’ll find out immediately, sir.”
“Okay. Make sure they go to the wardroom, even if it’s just a scratch. No tellin’ what they’ll catch from these nasty bastards.” He kicked the dead beast. “Any others you don’t need right away, send ’em to Bashear so we can clear all this buzzard bait off the ship.”
“Aye, aye, Mr. McFarlane,” Reynolds said to Spanky’s back as the man moved on. He took a breath. “Okay, you heard him. Wounded to the wardroom.” The crew from the portside gun had joined them, and he called out a couple of names. “You’re with me,” he said. “We’ll satisfy the ‘condition three’ requirement. The rest, find Bashear. He’ll tell you what to do.” He saw Kari Faask gingerly making her way through the corpses on deck, past the departing ’Cats.
“You okayshe asked.
“Swell.”
A little hesitantly, she hugged him with one arm. The healing wound in her side was still stiff and painful. “You not look swell.”
“I’m fine. You?”
“I was in comm shack, safe enough. Mr. Paalmer kept us all there. No weapons.” She shook her head, and her eyes blinked loathing. “Them things sure look like flying Grik!”
“Yeah.”
“We fly with them things?” Her tail twitched nervously.
“Maybe. We need to look the plane over.”
“I hope it’s busted.”
Fred snorted and looked at her. “Me too.”
It wasn’t, at least not too badly. They discovered that, in addition to rocks, some of the “dragon birds” had been carrying and throwing cannonballs! This was further proof they were in league, in some way at least, with the Doms. A big volcanic rock had exploded on impact with the deck and sent some easily patched shards into the fuselage of the “Nancy,” and a cannonball had punched a hole in the starboard wing, just forward of the aileron. Jeek said the hole would take a couple days to fix because it had damaged a stringer and the glue to fix it would take that long to dry-longer if it rained. Kari was clearly disappointed the plane wasn’t wrecked beyond repair.
The rest of the ship hadn’t suffered too badly. The heavy roundshot had dented the deck like giant hailstones but caused little damage otherwise. A ’Cat had been killed by one, and another had landed on Earl Lanier’s foot, smashing two of his toes. He was hobbling around now, tormenting a single crutch far beyond its capacity and bellowing for somebody to get the “damn, stinking things” cleared away from around the galley “if anybody ever wants to eat again.” Fred saw Tabby come on deck, look around, and seeing Spanky, rush to him and leap at him, enfolding him in a crushing embrace. Awful lot of hugging on this ship today, he mused, feeling a little uncomfortable. He wasn’t the traditionalist some were-like Spanky. Fred was young enough that tradition hadn’t yet seeped into his bones. But even he knew hugging just wasn’t right on a destroyer. Spanky obviously agreed, because he glanced around self-consciously while he peeled Tabby off. Everyone knew he considered her like a daughter, but proprieties must be maintained. Spanky didn’t scold the scarred Lemurian engineering officer, though; he just stood there, listening to her report on the leakage in the steering engine room, which Fred overheard was under control.
It wasn’t all rosy. Six ’Cats were killed in the aerial attack, and three were “missing,” including the lookout who’d been in the crow’s nest. Doubtless, the “missing” were dead too. Nobody even saw what happened to the lookout. A few men and ’Cats had been wounded, but unless they’d been poisoned or got infected with something the polta paste couldn’t handle, they’d be fine. The light nature of the injuries was confirmed when Fred saw Courtney Bradford on deck, apparently content to let his pharmacist’s mate deal with the “scratches” while he defended a relatively undamaged specimen of the new enemy from Bashear’s detail. Eventually, Captain Reddy himself came in response to Courtney’s shrill cries of outrage and interceded on his behalf, saying, “Cut it up; learn what you can. I particularly want to know what it eats, and your opinion of its intelligence. But get it over the side before dark. Their guts can’t be much different from Grik, and you’ve played with those pl, ap of times.”
Courtney set to work, and Fred and Kari moved aft.
“We fly with those things, what we do?” Kari asked.
Fred shrugged. “We’re faster, I think. We need to have a weapon, though-besides a pistol. Let’s find Campeti or Stites and see what they have to say.”
The storm in the west either dissipated or moved away, because the threatening clouds gave way to glittering stars when the sun finally sank into the sea. Walker churned north through increasingly quartering swells that maintained her sickening, corkscrewing motion, but she was no longer taking such heavy seas over the bow. The mood in the pilothouse was glum. Everyone knew they’d been on the verge of a momentous victory; one that might’ve even finished “this” war, at least for the time being, and allowed them to go “home” and get on with what many considered their “bigger business.” To be deprived of that victory and chased away by animals-and very Grik- like animals at that-left some a little confused, thoughtful, and reevaluating their priorities. Most of Walker ’s crew had fought in the Naval Battle of Scapa Flow, and it had been a bitter contest. Only a few had been ashore to see just how much like the Grik the troops of the Dominion behaved. Now a majority was beginning to realize that, regardless how different in some ways, this was the same war they’d already been fighting: a war against monsters bent on the destruction of people. That’s what it came down to, in the end.
“What’ve you got, Courtney?” Matt asked when Bradford stumped up the stairs from aft. His clothes were bloody, but his hands were clean. Jenks was behind him, walking carefully. His wounds had been treated and he’d be fine, but the curative paste of the Lemurians had a slightly intoxicating effect.
“You were right,” Bradford said. “Very Grik-like in most respects. The same, if even lighter hollow bones. A similar, though more colorful, downy covering. The wing structure is the greatest difference, but even the bones that support it look like radically elongated arm and finger bones! Of course, the musculature of the torso is different and more robust. I’m vaguely reminded of a pigeon.” He shook his head. “The proliferation and adaptation of the basic form is quite astonishing! First we had the various ‘races’ of Grik. Then Mr. Chapelle’s and Mr. Mallory’s expedition to recover Santa Catalina and her cargo revealed an amphibious species… Now we have one that flies!”
“You once said it yourself, Courtney,” Matt reminded him. “On this world, Grik, or creatures like them, have risen to the top of the evolutionary heap.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Bradford agreed with a frown. “Not only are they the most dominant life-form we’ve come across, they’re even more physically adaptable to their various environments than we ever suspected.” He glanced apologetically at the ’Cats in the pilothouse. “ Physically adaptable,” he repeated. “Like us meager humans, our
