“How you not in there, de’ending he?” Lawrence hissed in his ear.
“Reptile demons that speak as well? How marvelous,” Mayta remarked in genuine amazement. Lawrence hissed at Petey, annoyed even an enemy would equate them. Mayta looked back at Blas. “Only Blood Drinkers and their Priests—including Don Hernan, of course—may enter the Holy Temple and live. At least that’s what I always believed,” he added distractedly. “Nothing in there is meant to be seen by mere men.”
“Such as?” Sir Sean demanded.
Mayta laughed. “I don’t know! I’m just a soldier.” His face darkened. “Ask General Maduro, if you dare go inside. I’d be personally obliged if you kill him, in fact, before . . . whatever might happen to you occurs. His cowardice is why you broke through in the west so easily.”
“Then maybe we’ll give him a medal before we hang him,” Silva quipped. “If we had medals.”
Sister Audrey had left Shinya, wiping his blood on her smock. Now she moved in front of Mayta to peer at him closely.
“You must be the heretic priestess I’ve heard so much about,” Mayta exclaimed, then nodded at the man she left. “And that’s General Shinya?” His expression turned to one of genuine regret. “Such a shame he should die like this, and I never able to congratulate him on his brilliant campaign.”
“General Shinya will not die,” Sister Audrey stated emphatically, then turned to Silva and blessed him with one of her angelic smiles. “Don’t harm this man,” she said. “Unlike Blood Drinkers I’ve examined, he has the slightest spark of God’s light in his eyes. His soul may yet be saved.”
“Sure, Sister,” Silva replied awkwardly. “Salvage away, when we got time. Then we’ll hang his ass too.” He’d always thought Audrey was a little nutty, especially when she informed him that he was an instrument of God! But like Captain Reddy, she always expected more from him than he thought he had, and got it too. Along with his genuine affection and respect. He stuffed a wad of yellowish leaves in his cheek and motioned at the temple entrance with the muzzle of his weapon. “Right now, we got a chore to finish.”
“He’s right,” Shinya grated, as men and ’Cats carried him and Abel Cook up behind a hasty perimeter on the temple steps, largely composed of dead Doms. “There may be another exit, and you must finish this.” Unfortunately, like Chack’s, most of Shinya’s force had been detached to hold the lane clear for their push to the temple. Many who reached it alive were wounded and they had to leave a guard on their prisoner, the entrance, and the injured until help arrived. It was finally decided that Chack, Blas, Sister Audrey and Arano Garcia, Captain Bustos, Sir Sean, and Captain Anson, as well as Silva and Lawrence, of course, had to be the ones to enter the Temple of God. Blas and Sister Audrey yearned to catch up with friends they’d missed so long, but now wasn’t the time. They contented themselves with swiftly embracing Silva, Chack, Sir Sean, even Lawrence.
Captain Anson, already astonished by Lawrence, confronted Silva with an outstretched hand. “We have close mutual friends, and I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
Silva blinked his good eye and mashed Anson’s hand in his. “Swell. I don’t know shit about you. Hope you can fight.” He looked at Chack. “We’re mighty brass-heavy, ’specially with ‘Sir Sean’ along.” He grinned at the one-armed Impie, who’d just returned from speaking very earnestly with Abel Cook, but looked back at Chack. “By my lights, you’re senior. You want I should lead the way?”
Chack looked around, blinking bewilderment. Planes had arrived, strafing positions in the distance. The city was burning, battle raged all around . . . and they were about to go down a hole. “I might be senior,” he said, “but Col-nols Blas, Gaarcia, and Aaudrey know this enemy better. Besides, I doubt anyone’s ‘in chaarge’ of things at this point, Dennis, so by all means, lead on.”
“Be careful, Dennis, you big jerk!” Pam called out, eyes revealing how desperately worried she was. She’d moved away from Shinya—hopefully a good sign—to work on Abel Cook’s leg. “Everybody be careful,” she quickly added.
“Sure, doll, we will,” Silva told her, then added sarcastically, “Love you too.”
“Really?” Blas whispered up at him, and the big man shrugged.
“Who knows?”
The small group started to move into the entrance, but Silva stopped them with a gap-toothed grin, fishing in a bulging pouch at his side. Producing a pair of grenades, held tight in his big hand, he pulled the pins. “Only polite to knock first. Always heard it weren’t gen-teel to show up at a party without a gift, neither. Stand clear!” he called, and threw the grenades down the long, dark corridor.
CHAPTER 56
////// Leopardo
Capitano Ciano had thought things couldn’t get worse, but he was wrong. He’d ordered the oiler to hide on the south end of the lake and made the best plan he could to defend Lago de Vida, placing Canet in ambush and trying to concentrate Leopardo’s and Ramb V’s fire. But then he’d seen the enemy scout plane and had to assume there’d be more soon, at the same time he realized Ramb V was useless, her people somehow broken. He was sure they’d surrender if they weren’t under his guns. She tried anyway, but the duel began at sufficient distance that the enemy couldn’t see the big auxiliary haul down her flag, and after the first incoming shells smashed her communications and fire control, Ramb V had to fight.
She did it poorly, as Ciano had expected. Moving to conceal his ship behind her, he’d watched the Allies—Walker!—race to cut him off from the city. If Walker had been alone, Ciano would’ve gladly fought her, but she brought another destroyer, and that monstrous ship with just as many guns. There’d be no retrieving Gravois now, so Ciano and Leopardo fled.
Racing straight away from the action and the city, Ciano ordered his lookouts to find the mouth of the river Don Hernan described. They thought they had, and Leopardo steered into it—only to discover nothing but a little bay that quickly turned to swamp. Don Hernan had fooled them. There was no river, and Leopardo was truly trapped. That’s when her lookouts saw Walker again, obviously hunting them, and she was all alone. “Battle stations!” Ciano shouted, eyes narrowing with hatred, as well as a . . . sense that this meeting had somehow been preordained. Very well, he told himself, I’ll oblige the fates. And if I smash Walker quickly enough, I might still escape down the River of Heaven and make a low-speed run to the Azores. This intention he announced to his XO and the bridge watch. He didn’t tell them if that didn’t work, he’d settle for killing Walker.
USS Walker
Leopardo was harder to find than Matt expected. Ramb V had gone down, clearing much of her smoke, but when Matt steered Walker to avoid her debris—and a surprising number of survivors in the water—there’d been no sign of the heavy Italian destroyer. Walker immediately hove to and plucked thirty men, not already in Ramb V’s half-filled boats, from the oil slick on the lake before things—not flashies, but maybe a freshwater version—started tearing the swimmers apart. Shrieking men thrashed toward the cargo net hanging over Walker’s side, but their panicked flailing drew even more fearsome predators. Some were worse than flashies, resembling nothing they’d seen, like huge, armored, shark-mouth rays. Walker quickly saved a few more and even Courtney tried to help, but he was equally torn between horror and fascination. In less than five minutes there were no more men in the water.
Those who came aboard were packed in around the galley wreckage and made as comfortable as possible, watched by a portion of Walker’s small Marine contingent (most crewed her 25mm guns) and tended by the fine medical division Sandra had created. The boats were instructed to wait for rescue, and Walker resumed her hunt for Leopardo.
“What’s that ahead?” Courtney asked, staring through his Repub binoculars as the calm, sun-sparkled water creamed away from the old destroyer’s bow. There was something like a bed of dusky, red-topped reeds in the middle of the lake.
Keje
squinted his better Lemurian eyes. “Floating birds, I think.”
A report to that effect almost immediately arrived from the crow’s nest lookout and Matt observed the creatures with his own binoculars. “Look something like big geese,” he said. “Tan bodies with red and black heads.” He chuckled. “Every one of ’em’s looking at us, their skinny necks all stretched out.”
“You mustn’t just bash through,” Courtney scolded. “They may be mating!”
’Cat chuckles joined Matt’s and he obligingly ordered a slight course correction. Moments later, the lake between the ship and the creatures, right where Walker would’ve been, convulsed with eight towering geysers from a tightly spaced salvo of 4.7″ shells. Hundreds of large birds—they did look like geese—exploded as well, taking to the air in all directions amid a great, splashing, flapping frenzy.
“All ahead flank!” Matt ordered, then bellowed at Campeti above. “Where the hell did those come from?”
“There’s a bay up ahead. One of my strikers thought she saw flashes, but there’s no target.”
“Commence firing! Maybe you’ll screw up their aim until we get one. Come left to three, three, zero and shake her tail, Mr. Rosen. Extra lookouts to starboard!”
Even as three of USS Walker’s 4″-50s barked in reply to the sudden assault, a gust of steam escaped her funnels, her stern crouched down, and her screws sped up. Another salvo smashed the water short, blasting slower, fatter birds from the swooping cloud that formed. The natural phenomenon had drawn their attention for a critical, almost fatal moment, but was now disrupting the enemy’s aim.
“Definite surfaace taarget, confirmed Leopaardo, bearing two, seven, seero, range, six t’ousaands!” Minnie reported triumphantly. “She’s puttin’ on steam, comin’ out!”
“Make ready all starboard tubes, Mr. Sandison,” Matt ordered as Bernie rushed to the director on the starboard bridgewing.
“Aye, aye, sir. Just gimme a minute!”
“That may be all you have,” Spanky snapped.
“Well, I gotta get a speed on her, don’t I?” a harried Bernie complained. “No sense throwing all our fish where she was. I gotta put ’em where she’ll be when they get there!”
“Get aft, Spanky,” Matt gently told his friend. “I know the auxiliary conn’s out, but we’ve got too many eggs in one basket here. And you can still relay orders down to the steering engine room if you have to. Go.”
Obviously reluctant, Spanky nodded and dashed away.
A salvo churned the water directly abeam, tracking Walker uncannily well, though still short. Ronson Rodriguez’s faith was well-founded, however. Lots of practice truly had made Walker’s gun’s crews the best in the world. Campeti’s excited shouts of “No change, no change! Rapid salvo fire! Let the bitch have it!” followed flashes between Leopardo’s distant funnels and a roll of orange flame. Matt’s eyes settled on Courtney. “Get below, Mr. Bradford. To the wardroom.”
Courtney smeared sweat on his balding pate with a sleeve before plopping his helmet back on and replying with determination. “Thank you for your concern, Captain Reddy, but I don’t believe I will. I’m not just a civilian to be ordered about anymore, you know.” He straightened. “I’m a praetor—admiral—in the Republic Fleet!”
Matt’s face turned stony, even as he blinked compassionate understanding in the Lemurian way. “Retired, I thought, but it doesn’t matter. Aboard my ship—” He was interrupted by more towers of spume and a pair of deafening, numbing crashes. Walker’s gun’s crews might be better, but they could only bring three of their four 4″-50s to bear—at most—at any given time. Leopardo could fire eight bigger guns, from almost any orientation. One 4.7″ shell struck right under the bridgewing where Bernie and his “’Catfish” stood. It mowed them and much of the bridge crew down with a spray of lethal fragments from their own ship before the shell punched through Matt’s quarters below and exploded in the radio room. Lieutenant Ed Palmer and his assistants, including Corporal Neely who’d joined him there, never knew what hit them.
That wasn’t the case in the aft fireroom, pierced by another shell. Aged and cranky as some valves and lines might be, even Walker’s original boilers were better than when she came to this world. Isak was known to push them to almost 300 psi. All the ’Cats and Impie gals in that space had agonizing, nightmarish seconds to endure being cooked alive by rushing steam—before erupting fuel oil stifled their screams.
USS Walker, blind and lamed, veered hard to port with no hand on her wheel, marked by a pall of roiling black smoke that momentarily shielded her from view. Leopardo, like the predator she was named for, maddened by her own painful wounds, dashed forward to finish her prey.
Leopardo
“Take us closer, damn you!” Capitano Ciano ranted at his helmsman. The poor man looked back, almost quivering with dread, but turned the wheel to obey.
“She’s still dangerous,” cautioned Ciano’s XO, very carefully. He’d never seen his captain like this before. “And we’ve taken damage ourselves,” he reminded. “Our torpedo tubes won’t traverse, and only the forward guns are still linked to fire control.”
“And we’re leaking fuel from a ricochet that struck aft,” Ciano snapped. “I know. We underestimated the enemy from the start, and this entire preposterous campaign has lurched from disaster to disaster because Victor Gravois”—he spat the name with seething venom—“wildly underestimated Walker’s commander.”
“Then . . . if it’s still your aim to escape into the Atlantic, perhaps we should go around her. More damage will severely . . . limit our options.”
Ciano laughed. “Do you really think we can still crawl out of the pit Gravois left us in? More enemy ships will be in the river by now, if not already nearly here.” The rumble of airplane engines punctuated his prediction. Leopardo was poorly protected against air attack. “We’ll never get past them,” Ciano emphasized.
“But the League . . .” his XO protested.
“You think the League will save us? After half its military wealth has already been squandered on this adventure? All that’s left for us is surrender.” He nodded at the smoke ahead and his expression twisted into a bitter snarl. “But first, one way or another, I will sink that ship.”
Silva
“Second-damnedest thing I ever seen,” Silva practically whispered, though the grenade blasts preceding the mixed assault force made stealth rather pointless. He was referring to the long, dank corridor they were in. Though carved from the same stones quarried to shape the massive, geometrically impressive structure, the passageway was deliberately shaped to resemble the inside of a natural cave.
“But consistent with their twisted belief that God and his heaven are in an ‘underworld’ of some sort,” Sister Audrey agreed.
“I don’t care ’hat they think,” Lawrence murmured. “Us just get this o’er.”
“I’m with Laawrence,” Chack admitted. All ’Cats were a little claustrophobic, but so soon after he, Lawrence, and Silva had fought their way through the mazelike Palace of Vanished Gods in Sofesshk, Chack was openly uncomfortable about entering yet another constricted battle space. “Whaat’s down here?” he asked Colonel Garcia.
“The ‘Holy Sanctum,’ whatever that is,” Garcia replied, stepping over the corpses of Blood Drinkers, probably killed by Silva’s grenades. “I know no more than our prisoner. Probably much less.”
“Movement ahead!” Blas cried, as shapes came rushing from the gloom. They opened fire, the roar of Allin-Silvas, Blitzerbugs, and Silva’s BAR painfully thunderous. Agonized, inhuman screeches accompanied toppling bodies and they waded forward, through them. One small form, unnaturally brilliant in the muzzle flashes, vaulted over the pile of dead and tried to impale Sister Audrey with a spear. Garcia fired and the attacker toppled to join the others at their feet.
“The hell with this,” Silva grumped, tossing another gr
enade in the darkness ahead. A flash lit the passageway and they heard more animalistic screams.
“My God,” Sister Audrey moaned, “I must have light!”
Silva fished out his Zippo, flipped it into flame, and handed it over. That’s when they all saw the nature of the “defenders” they’d killed. All were children, and most were girls, their hairless, naked bodies entirely covered with golden paint of some kind. Blood now too.
“Oh my God,” Audrey mourned, gently caressing the perfect young face of the last attacker. Eyes sightless, mouth wide, it was hideously obvious the girl’s tongue had been cut out, probably in infancy. And burn scars inside the ears suggested she’d been deafened as well. Lying across her bloody golden body was a wooden spear, tipped with a foot-long, finely knapped, green obsidian point. “And we once thought the Grik were monstrous,” Audrey seethed.
“C’mon, Sister,” Silva said gently. “Can’t save ’em. Prob’ly can’t save any of ’em, in here. Let’s get this done for the ones outside.”
More red-gold bodies were heaped around a fringe of rich, now grenade-tattered, drapes. Chack parted them with the bayonet on his Krag, and they beheld the “Holy Sanctum” for the first time. The chamber beyond, clearly under the temple above, wasn’t all that big, probably about forty yards wide and sixty deep, but nearly everything was red and gold, luridly lit by braziers lining garishly columned walls. “Shit!” Silva barked, his BAR thundering at human forms stationed between the columns. Three exploded before he realized they were gold-masked stone statues, each holding a painted, jewel-encrusted skull in its chiseled left hand.
“Hold your fire, Chief Silva,” Chack snapped, blinking at the far end of the chamber. A great translucent curtain was drawn across it, yet backlit silhouettes moved like shadow puppets on the other side. Many were obviously more children, and three men were clustered near the center, one crowned by a large headdress of some sort. The outlines that gave Chack pause, however, were those of perhaps forty Doms, probably Blood Drinkers, and five or six other men armed with modern rifles.
Winds of Wrath Page 63
