Keje grinned, his sharp teeth bright against his dark fur, and embraced Atlaan beside him. “Three down, and just three to go! Perhaps we do have a chance to save Maa-draas!”
“Ahd-mi-raal, Cap-i-taan Atlaan!” the talker almost screamed. The signal ’Cat hadn’t even taken time to run to the bridge. “The Grik zeps! They are almost upon us-and Cap-i-taan Tikker says they carry some new, giant bomb! He cannot stop them! His OC sends that he thinks they will ram-but it will make no difference!”
The report followed them even as Keje and Atlaan rushed out on the bridgewing. “ Arracca also reports zeps closing on her and her charges!”
“ These are here already!” Atlaan gasped. The tight gaggle of airships was directly above Salissa, about eight thousand feet up. One Nancy was descending at a steep angle-probably trying to keep airspeed with a dead engine, Keje guessed. Behind them, a single, last Nancy was climbing hard, trying to catch them. “Send to COFO Jis-Tikkar to break off! There is nothing he can do now but waste himself-and he is liable to bring one of those things down on top of us!” Keje shouted back to the talker. “Get everything at Maa-draas that will fly in the air! Arracca has only her reserve squadron to defend the rest of the fleet!”
“They have not dropped their bombs yet,” Atlaan observed suddenly. “Shouldn’t they have dropped them by now?”
It was hard to tell, but Keje was sure the zeppelins had crossed well beyond the optimum release point, and no bombs had fallen. “I believe they should have,” he agreed guardedly. He realized he’d been steeling himself for something like what he’d seen happen to Humfra-Dar. He squinted his eyes. “I am no aviator, but surely if they drop now, they will miss far astern. Could they have decided to go after Arracca or Des-Div Four instead?” That made no sense. The battered DDs still lay in the enemy’s path, but Arracca was north, with most of the rest of the fleet they’d pulled out of Madras as a precaution, and apparently already targeted.
“Look! Oh, look!” Atlaan shouted. “The Grik formation fragments! It splits apart!”
Keje snatched the Imperial spyglass to his eye. Atlaan was right! The Grik gaggle was splitting up, turning in all directions-and bombs, big ones, like Jis-Tikkar said, were falling now. A single large bomb dropped from one, three, seven of the zeppelins-but the last two never had a chance to release theirs because they suddenly blew up.
“P-Forties!” Keje shrieked with glee as four of the amazing aircraft bored in for the kill. He’d never seen a P- 40 before, but he’d heard about them, of course, and he’d known they were coming… but he hadn’t really expected them! Now he understood why the Grik had hesitated-then panicked. They must have seen the planes boring in! “Oh, by the Heavens, are they not wonderful?” he chortled as three more airships erupted in flames, then two more, before the sleek, dark shapes hurtled past the aerial conflagration and turned toward the final two survivors.
Lieutenant Newman appeared, grinning hugely. “Colonel Ben Mallory’s respects, Admiral, and he’s sorry it took him so long to get here!”
“I wasn’t expecting him at all!” Keje laughed. “I knew he was expected at Andaman today…”
“He was afraid to blow in case the Jap-Griks might be listening. He refueled six of his ships at Andaman and came straight on,” Newman said. “Two had to turn back with engine trouble, though. They were cutting out. Plugs probably fouled. Ben says he hopes to God those grass strips on Ceylon are ready for him, and somebody can get gas, ordnance, food, and booze-in that order-there in a hurry!”
“He should be able to land there,” Keje said more soberly, “but it may take a few days to supply him. We had to pull our ships out of Trin-con-lee in the face of those”-he gestured at the battleships forward-“and the supplies are crossing the highlands from Colombo.” Keje blinked sudden eagerness. “Did he bring any bombs of his own?”
Newman shook his head. “They had to leave them for extra fuel. All they’ve got is a half load of ammo and empty auxiliary tanks. Ben says his plane has some AP and he’ll give that a try, but he really needs to get on the ground.”
“Ahd-mi-raal!” Atlaan blurted. He was gazing through his own glass.
“Yes?”
“The… the bombs that fell from the enemy! They are still falling-back toward us!”
“What?” Keje looked. The bombs were very large, he thought again-and getting larger! How can that be? His glass fixed on one of the objects that seemed to be falling diagonally from east to west now, perhaps a mile off Salissa ’s starboard beam. “It is a long, white cylinder with a blunt nose and extra-large fins on its tail,” he muttered, “and… are those little wings?!” The glass shook in his hand. “Send to Col-nol Maallory at once! Ignore the Grik battleships! Destroy the zeppelins making for the remainder of the fleet at any cost- any cost!”
“What do you see?” Atlaan demanded, trying to look for himself.
“Those bombs are also little aircraft! They are controlled, probably by a Grik lying inside on his belly!”
“Then perhaps they are not bombs! With a pilot-”
“Of course they are bombs!” Keje roared, as much to convince himself as Atlaan of the horrifying madness of the scheme. “They have no engine! They will hit us-or the water. Which do you think they were brought here to try?”
“Ahead flank!” Atlaan bellowed, dashing into the pilothouse. “Right full rudder! Sound the collision alarm!”
Almost calmly now, Keje refocused on the flying bomb he’d been watching and saw it turn toward his ship. He wasn’t prepared when a much closer one, descending through Salissa ’s own smoke, plunged down through the forward flight deck and exploded.
CHAPTER 29
South of the Rocky Gap
India
“So, here we are,” General Pete Alden said softly, unnecessarily, gazing out over the long, narrow, forest- crowded lake. The water was dappled by the last rays of the sun, sinking beyond the mountains to the west, and great, wide trees hung low over the shallows. Angrily squawking duck-shape lizard birds wheeled and darted in rough formations, trying to find undisturbed moorings while weary planes jockeyed toward the open shorelines, their tired engines echoing across the water. Compounding the aggravation of the lizard birds, hundreds of now- free-roaming dino-cows dominated a lot of the shady shallows they preferred, capering and bugling happily in the superabundance of water they apparently craved and had been denied by their former wranglers. Musketry still rattled in the distance, punctuated by the heavy rumble of artillery and mortars.
“Yes, here we are,” observed General-Queen Protector Safir Maraan with sharp irony. She had discarded her black cloak at some point in the fighting that brought them here, and her silver armor was dented and dark. She sounded utterly spent, but she was growing impatient with Pete’s self-recriminations. “We are here, alive, because you bravely and brilliantly saved us from the trap you sent us to,” she said bluntly. “A trap that General Rolak might have warned us against, but didn’t. A trap Colonel Flynn and I should have recognized because it was not dissimilar to one the enemy tried on us before. The Grik grow more… adaptable… than we had thought, were willing to believe, they were able.” Her tail swished irritation at herself. “Now we know. Henceforth, we must design our battles as if we were fighting against ourselves, not thoughtless animals.” She shrugged. “The majority of them may still be such, but those who design their battles are not!”
Pete Alden reluctantly nodded. “I guess. Rolak’s Corps has fully replaced yours, and nothing’ll get past him as long as he has enough ammunition.” He stopped, as if unwilling to admit he’d done something right. “We carted a lot of ammunition out of Madras before…” He shrugged. “We’ve got a fair amount of fuel too, since we didn’t have to worry about hauling water.” Nobody would drink lake water without boiling it first, but there was plenty of it. “We’ve got a good perimeter here, from the Gap down to the river that runs out of this lake,” he continued, “and we rounded up a lot of those dino-cows the Grik were staging in the jungle, so we won’t starve for a while. Eventually, ammunition and fuel are going to be a problem.” He rubbed his neck, then nodded at the lake. “I guess it might’ve been kind of pretty here once, without all the floating junk.”
All of Leedom’s remaining Nancys, battered and dingy, either floated alongside a long “dock” of fallen trees, or choked one of the gravelly beaches they’d been dragged up on to keep them from sinking. Other planes, most from Salissa, had been coming in periodically from Madras, fleeing the approaching Grik. Arracca was overcrowded,
