“I’m playing a hunch you gave me. Those devils have got to be getting tired, all of them. At the same time, they’re going to hate giving up chasing something. If they really are like Grik, they can’t help it! So… we let ’em chase us, farther and farther away from their ‘base’ ships, hopefully staying just out of reach as long as we can. Shooting at ’em the whole time ought to keep them stirred up… .”
“But what happens when they catch us? They might, you know. Then we’ll have half a hundred of those vicious things romping all over the ship! We won’t be able to man the guns, and go back and assist our friends!”
“You let me worry about that. I have a surprise for them based on something else you said.”
“Oh dear,” Courtney mumbled. “I certainly hope, whatever it was, I was right!”
Staring astern, Spanky stood on the aft deckhouse, striking his signature pose, hands on his skinny hips.
“Bunch of ’em,” Carl Bashear said, taking a chew from Spanky’s tobacco pouch. A virtual cloud of “dragons” had gathered in their wake, beating their wings and gaining quickly. “Look kinda aggravated,” he mumbled around the mouthful of leaves.
“Yeah. A Grik charge in midair,” Spanky agreed. “What a hoot.” He looked at Finny, serving as his talker. “Marksmen t Redu stern. Inform the captain we’re about to engage… aerial targets.” Chief Gunner’s Mate Paul Stites had the “number four” 4.7-inch gun. Spanky scowled at him. “Don’t miss. We’re running low on those Jap time-fuse shells.” He raised his voice so he could be heard by the crews of the 25 mm’s in the tubs just forward. “Antiair… lizard batteries, in local control, commence firing!”
Matt was looking aft around the chart house, trying to see the effect of the fire. Tabby was on the ball; only the faintest wisps of smoke smeared the tops of the funnels, and the 4.7-inch and 25-mm guns still ate “smokeless” Japanese shells they’d salvaged from Amagi. Even many of the marksmen still had ’03s. That left a better-than- average view of the terrifying creatures flying up Walker ’s skirt. Matt still had trouble seeing them clearly through his binoculars, as the creatures tended to group together, and the flying mass became a wild flurry of motion in his Bausch amp; Lombs. He got indistinct impressions: furry, bright-colored bodies like the ones before, grasping talons and ferocious, golden, reptilian eyes. Every mouth was open, revealing rows of teeth unlike the Grik-thinner, longer, more curved-the better to snatch prey from the sea or sky. They were not shrieking, however. Over the sound of the guns and rifles, he couldn’t tell if they made any sounds at all. His brief glimpses at their faces left him with a growing conviction they were gasping for air.
“All ahead full!” he ordered.
The deck trembled, the blower roared, and the bow lurched out of the sea between the streaming troughs. The pitching eased a bit as the ship practically leaped from swell to swell. Still the monsters gained. If anything, they seemed to be gaining more rapidly. Maybe they knew they had to board Walker or die, at this stage, and they were giving it their all. Its fuses set shorter and shorter, the number four gun fired rapidly, the dark explosions erupting closer and closer to the ship. Shattered dragons staggered in the air or plummeted lifelessly into the sea. Pom-poms blatted at the creatures that lunged ahead and tried to board on the flanks, perforating wings and shredding bodies. Muskets started firing, joined by a Thompson and a BAR. Even more monsters fell, still reaching desperately for the ship. Spanky fired at a dragon swooping over the aft deckhouse with his pistol, and a couple actually lit on the platform, causing a wild melee of shots, slashing teeth, and a fusillade of flung shell casings. More clawed their way onto the fantail, their tongues literally lolling with exhaustion. They were easily shot-with extreme care, considering their proximity to the depth charge racks.
“All ahead flank!” Matt shouted remorselessly. Realistically, most of the dragons were probably already doomed. They’d never make it back to their ships, and their only hope was to land on Walker -but Walker was even faster now, making almost thirty knots on three boilers for the first time in… Matt couldn’t remember how long. She was just a little faster than the wind now, perfect for his purposes. It was time. Kari Faask and Fred Reynolds were on his mind when he gave his next order:
“Make smoke!”
Tabby had been waiting. Raw fuel gushed into the boilers at a far more prodigious rate than they could ever burn it all, and Jeek and the rest of his flight crew activated the on-deck smoke generators with grim satisfaction. In moments, impenetrable black columns of thick, sooty smoke piled into the sky and streamed aft, slowly spreading into the wind. In many places, it swirled on the ship itself, under the bridge and through the galley space beneath the amidships deckhouse. Men and’Cats choked and coughed, holding T-shirts over their faces. The giant lizard birds chasing the ship with their final breaths fell into the sea as if they’d been switched off, and in less than three or four minutes, a gasping Spanky called the bridge and reported that all the “air-lizards” had “splashed.”
“Very well,” Matt said with vengeful satisfaction. “Secure from flank. Secure from making smoke. All ahead full.”
“Cap-i-taan Reddy!” Minnie squeaked. “ Tindal has lost her rudder and got tangled with a Dom baattle- waagon! They try to board! Mertz steams to her aid, an’ so do Achilles an’ another Imp-ee ship!”
“I told them to keep their distance!”
“They try-but lose rudder!”
“Okay. Send to Simms to stay the hell out of there, whatever she does. Try to get Achilles to break off. We’re coming as fast as we can!” He scanned the now-distant battle with his binoculars. “Still too many!” he murmured, then lowered the glasses and stepped to the bulkhead where the shipwide comm microphone was mounted. He twisted the switch. “Well done, Walkers!” he said, and waited for the relieved, triumphant cheers to dwindle. “Now, all hands resume ‘surface action stations’! We still have a battle to finish!”
Walker dashed back toward what had become a chaotic, sprawling brawl with a bone in her teeth, shouldering aside a mounting swell. The transports had turned, possibly making for Monterey, but Port Admiral Rempel aboard Perseus was leading two more of the Imperial Frigates in a determined attack against them. Matt was frankly surprised by that. Rempel hadn’t struck him as a particularly bold fighter-and maybe he wasn’t, since the transports were only lightly armed-but he was pressing his attack with sufficient gusto to prove he had no sympathy for the enemy. Tindal was in a bad way, almost dismasted, her bowsprit snared in a Dom cruiser’s foremast shrouds. Despite her loss of control, she was still driving forward, keeping the link as rough as possible to prevent boarders from swarming across. Her guns still vigorously pounded other Dom ships that ventured too close.
Mertz had almost joined her, orange flashes stabbing out either side, smashing mighty hulls, and utterly disrupting enemy attempts to close or even maintain formation. She’d become the focus of the Dom’s attention, however, and even as she plowed forward, she was being viciously mauled. To the south, Achilles and the rig- damaged frigate Hector slashed their way through damaged and undamaged Doms alike, guns thundering and paddles churning. It was a terrible, inspiring sight. If the Doms hadn’t been thrown into such disarray, largely due to their initial formation and inability to alter it with any precision, the four allied ships in their midst would already be floating debris. Matt reflected yet again how lucky they were that the Dominion had elected to start this war before fully “modernizing” its warships.
“Pass the word to Campeti,” Matt shouted as Walker drew to within a mile of the fight. “Concentrate fire on those battleships working over Tindal and Mertz. It looks as if the remaining cruisers are peeling off to protect the transports. Get that big devil twenty-five degrees off the starboard bow! She’s stern on to us, but she’s giving Mertz hell!”
“He acknowledge!” Minnie cried, and moments later they all heard Campeti’s bellow above. “Surface target, bearing one four zero; course zero, zero, five; speed six knots! Range… three nine five zerouns one, three, and four, match pointers!”
“On target!”
“In salvo, commence firing!” The salvo buzzer rang and a mere instant later, all three guns boomed, and the smoke quickly vanished to leeward. Even over the ship noises, the “Shhhhhh!” of the shells was audible. Three splashes erupted just aft and short of the big enemy ship. “Up fifty!” came the cry. “Adjust left zero zero five degrees!”
“On target!”
“Fire!”
Three more shells screeched away, and all must have crashed through the vulnerable stern of the Dom ship before detonating against something substantial. There was a series of flashes, and, once again, another huge Dom
