There was still sniping by fanatics in New Granada, but Generals Cox and Blair were in firm control while General Shinya recovered. He’d very nearly died. It was he, however, who ordered the Sister’s Own out of the city, along with Chack’s Brigade, to establish an Allied presence on Martinique. They all needed a rest and change of scenery, of course, but after what happened to Sister Audrey, it was probably best to get them entirely out of Dominion territory. Captain Bustos and Colonel Garcia were allowed to remain, to begin preaching a different, gentler faith.
Other than that, they’d heard of another great blast in Japaan, similar to the first. The cause remained a mystery, but the Shogunate of Yokohama had dispatched a ship to investigate. Courtney had taken a sudden interest and greedily followed reports.
Matt looked at Spanky when the bandage-swaddled man rose experimentally. “Just testin’ my legs,” he assured Selass-Fris-Ar, Keje’s daughter, who’d come over from Savoie to tend the latest wounded to arrive—and be with her father. Diania wasn’t just attending Sandra on her rounds either, she was keeping her wounded fiancé, Gunny Horn, company.
“Me too,” Matt told his wife. She frowned, but knew he’d try to stand whether she helped him or not. Nodding, she made sure he had a firm grip on her arm, then the cane she handed him. Together with Spanky, Keje, Courtney, and Juan, they carefully moved to the starboard side of the ship and gazed out at the harbor.
Most of the half-sunk ships at Martinique were only fit for scrap, but Hessen was in good condition and Impero would be raised. U-112 was in Tarakan Island’s repair bay with USS Gerald McDonald, and the Nussie fleet—with USS Donaghey proudly anchored nearby—protectively surrounded the SPD. USS Savoie was a floating wreck, but though she was shot to pieces and still listing to port, she was afloat, and increasingly able to defend herself. The other survivors of St. Vincent that could make it themselves or be towed (Allied ships and their prizes) were already here, and Mahan was due this afternoon with Walker in tow. The lightly damaged Francesco Caracciolo was surrounded by the Repub battlecruisers that took her surrender and they’d made it clear they intended to keep her. The Nussies wanted Impero, for that matter, in exchange for “letting” the American Navy Clan keep the base at Martinique. Matt knew they wouldn’t push it, since they couldn’t fix Impero themselves, and everyone recognized the Navy Clan was there for all of them. Besides, Martinique was on its way to becoming the biggest Allied cemetery on this side of the world, with new graves joining that of Orrin Reddy every day. It still bothered Matt how quickly they’d all started squabbling.
Regardless, it had been a full, busy port that received the single League troopship under a flag of truce two days before, loaded with people whose release was required before the seven thousand League prisoners who wanted to leave were allowed to embark. The Allied aircraft carriers were discreetly and ominously out of sight, but the rest of the Allied warships and all the prizes and wreckage of the League’s vaunted fleet had to be grim reminders that, though there wasn’t exactly peace, the Grand Alliance wasn’t to be trifled with, and the League’s overwhelming naval might had been whittled painfully back.
Now the troopship was leaving, and Matt recalled his last conversation with Ammiraglio Gherzi that morning when he came to say farewell.
“I trust you’re feeling better, and all proceedings have gone according to the . . . guidelines you prescribed?” Gherzi had said.
“I am, and they did. A few of the Germans were angry when their families didn’t show, but the percentage was low enough for us to write it off as cold feet on the part of the transportees.”
“And I’m sure the Triumvirate will growl when they learn two thousand ‘loyal’ League subjects chose to remain behind,” Gherzi said wryly. Matt’s face had hardened. “I won’t force anyone to go back.” He paused. “I don’t think you should go.”
Gherzi waved his concern away. “Don’t worry about me. The Triumvirate needs me too much now. As you pointed out, the League still feels secure in its domestic might, yet understands it needs people”—he smiled—“with recent experience confronting a military peer. Still . . . I do wish you’d managed to account for Gravois. His reappearance might prove awkward. For us all.”
“I don’t think we need to worry much about him. Natives from a village forty miles east of New Granada reported what sounded like a greasy old witch doctor claiming to be ‘His Supreme Holiness,’ tugging another tall man along on a leash. They demanded food and were chased away. The fall of New Granada has finally broken the perverted Dom faith, in northern South America, at least.” Matt was only now learning that the Dom Empire had sparsely extended down the east coast of South America as well.
Gherzi had nodded, then his tone had turned brusque. “Now, I’m ordered to inform you that, though we have an armistice, incursions in what the League considers its territorial waters won’t be tolerated. Allied ships encountered in the eastern Atlantic, from the Cape Verde Islands north to the Azores and beyond, will be fired upon. Any incursion into the Mediterranean whatsoever, by so much as a fishing boat, will be considered an act of war and full hostilities will resume.”
Matt had smiled. “And as I told you, the same is true if we meet League ships anywhere else.”
Gherzi had nodded understanding if not acceptance, then said, “It’s a great shame we can’t settle our differences like civilized”—he’d glanced at Keje and some Lemurian representatives of the Republic—“beings. I’ve come to respect you all a great deal and have no personal quarrel with you.” He’d paused. “I hope . . . I do hope we never meet again.”
Matt had smiled sadly back. “Me too. But I doubt we’ll get what we want.”
Now he pondered that exchange when the League troopship seemed to pause in the mouth of the bay as two shapes met her on an opposite course. Matt borrowed binoculars from Toryu Miyata, who’d just come down from the bridge, and eagerly focused them. Mahan led, of course. She’d taken some damage at St. Vincent, but nothing serious at New Granada. And with the help of James Ellis’s crew, distributed between her and Walker after Ellie finally went down, she’d had a few weeks to lick her more superficial wounds. On the whole, however, she’d suffered worse than Walker on this world, once practically blown out of existence. Matt was glad to see she’d come through this so well.
In contrast, coming up behind, USS Walker still looked terrible: scorched and blackened by fires and reddened with rust. Two of her stacks had been knocked down, and her deck from the bridge to the aft deckhouse was virtually bare of anything but what might be salvageable scrap. Still partially flooded amidships, she rode a little low in the water, but Tabby and Isak—battling as much to save the ship as to divert their grief over Gilbert—had performed a miracle just keeping her on the surface. Then Matt’s heart almost burst with pride when he realized Walker wasn’t under tow. Tabby, with Ronson’s assistance, no doubt, was steaming her in on one engine and one boiler. Mahan emphasized their arrival with a blast of her horn and the big battle flags of both old destroyers broke and streamed behind their foremasts; the Stars and Stripes of another world representing the best of what it always had, but more now as well. To Matt’s amazement, the League transport acknowledged the horn, and when he looked at her with the binoculars, he couldn’t believe his eyes. All her crew, dressed in whites, had lined the rails, and a lot of the prisoners they’d released stood behind them. Matt was sure Gherzi ordered the honor—and it was an honor—but his mixed feelings surprised him. He’d liked the earnest little Italian admiral, whose only failing was absolute loyalty to a government that didn’t deserve him—to the point he’d followed Gravois’s orders to his destruction. Matt doubted they’d be where they were today if Gherzi had been in charge.
“My God,” Sandra said, seeing what he had. “If we can learn to respect one another, maybe we can stop fighting.”
“Maybe,” Matt agreed aloud. Or maybe Gherzi—or someone like h
im—will rise up in the League. Would that be good—or worse? he asked himself.
Walker crept into the harbor while Mahan practically bustled around her wounded sister. When their anchors finally splashed in the bright, clear water, horns and cheering voices erupted all over the bay.
“Execute salute!” shouted Toryu Miyata, and only then did Matt realize all the people in the bay, of every race in the Alliance, had dressed the sides of the other ships as well. A popping sound caught his attention above, and he watched the signal flags break out on Gray’s halyards, repeated by every ship in view: Tare Victor George.
Sandra put her arm around him and Matt hardly trusted himself to speak.
“‘Well Done,’ by God, an’ that’s a fact!” grated Spanky, voice breaking.
“Indeed, indeed!” Courtney agreed, beaming at Matt.
All sorts of mental images would revisit Matt from that day. Walker’s dingy, battered shape, of course. She’d made it all possible, in a way. Gunny Horn and Diania enthusiastically (and surely scandalously, in Diania’s mind) kissing in front of everyone, Fred and Kari, fingers intertwined, raised triumphantly above their heads. Keje suffused with joy, Miyata’s respectful gaze, Chack and Blas, somehow looking vaguely sad and bewildered. Abel Cook, seated nearby, staring west—with Sir Sean Bates’s sword resting on his lap. And the crackling little flags: Tare Victor George.
The most precious image of all, however, was Sandra’s happy, hopeful face as she kissed Matt heartily and said, “Well done, sailor!”
* * *
* * *
“Quit mopin’ around, damn it, it ain’t like you,” Pam groused at Silva. They’d been watching everything from up on Gray’s amidships deckhouse, and the happier everyone else seemed, the glummer Silva got. “I know you liked Sister Audrey. So did I. But she’ll be a real saint someday, an’ that’s kinda funny since you know it would just piss her off.”
“Yeah,” Silva agreed listlessly, avoiding Pam’s gaze. “I’m . . . I guess I ain’t as tore up about that, no more. Don’t know what come over me. But Sister Audrey saved Blas. Prob’ly saved us all, distractin’ the bastards. I’m . . . proud of her. Proud I knew her, an’ proud she thought well o’ me. You may not believe it, but not many do.” He shook his head. “It’s this whole ‘no war’ thing I’m worried about.” He looked searchingly at her. “You never knew me when there wasn’t a war on.”
Lawrence suddenly joined them, surprising everybody by feeding Petey a biscuit. “He’s such a jerk, he thinks he’ll lose you,” he told Pam, “and he doesn’t know ’hat he’ll do ’ith hi’sel’.”
Silva nodded slowly. “That last part’s true, sure enough. I don’t know what I’ll do with myself. I know I don’t wanna go back to what I was before the war. I didn’t even like me, then.”
“Well cheer up, dumb-ass,” Pam snapped sarcastically, “’cause this war ain’t over, it’s just takin’ a breather. It’ll light off again someday.”
“You really think so?” Silva asked, allowing himself to hope.
“Sure. But Captain Reddy won’t want you just sittin’ around, waitin’, not with so much stuff to do. There’s a whole, wide world out there waitin’ to be explored, an’ it’s packed with scary ‘boogers’ for you to kill! We’ll all go, even Petey. You in, Larry?”
Lawrence hesitated only an instant. “Sure. I ha’ nothing else to do.”
Pam grinned. “Swell! It’s settled.” Her eyes lit up. “Hey! If we’re gonna go explorin’, we might as well get somebody else to spring for it, right? Somebody who’s been dyin’ to go poke at bugs an’ lizards ever since we got here!”
Silva’s beatific grin, too long absent, suddenly erupted and he took a huge, triumphant chaw of real Nussie tobacco that Gunny Horn had given him. “Courtney!” he barked, spewing fragments of dark leaves. “Ha! A whole new ‘Corps o’ Discovery,’ only this time we can go where we want. Might even be funner than fightin’!”
“Funner than fightin’!” Petey loudly agreed, then looked a little nervously at Lawrence. “Eat?” he probed gently. In the spirit of celebration and renewed purpose, Lawrence gave Petey another biscuit.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Surprised you, didn’t I? Everyone I’ve ever spoken to simply assumed as gospel that USS Walker would eventually be irretrievably lost, but I just couldn’t let that happen. Not only because she’s such an important unifying symbol to all the people she protected on that other Earth, but because she and Mahan and every single one of their 271 sisters on this world are gone. Those that weren’t sunk in action were immediately scrapped after World War II, despite the various critical roles they filled throughout that conflict. Some thanks. So it makes me smile to think one or two might still exist in a parallel universe, where they’re lovingly maintained and admired for their gallant service.
In any event, here’s where there’s usually been a long cast of characters and an exhaustive list of equipment specifications so readers could keep track of who was where, what they were doing, and what manner of tools they had at their disposal. With the exception of a few new characters, force dispositions, and technical developments (which should be fresh in your mind), all that stuff can be found in previous books, on my website, or on the thorough Destroyermen Wiki that’s evolved with the tale and become a particularly helpful resource for audio listeners. I’m humbled by all the dedicated work so many people have put in there, as well as by the astonishing (to me) scope and vitality of the “Destroyermen Fan Association” Facebook page that sprang into being a few years ago.
So instead of another long list of characters, ships, weapons, and task forces, I wanted to use this space to sincerely thank all the wonderful people who joined me in the Destroyermen universe and, like the many characters I’ve come to love and think of as “real,” stuck with me until the end. And that’s what this is: the final chapter in an old-fashioned yarn about honor versus evil, love against hate, courage conquering terror, and how true friendship and understanding will always erode the foundations of bigotry. This is the end of the story of a battered old four-stacker and the destroyermen who steamed her to another world, fought a little skirmish against some Grik, and ultimately led their friends to victory in a global war. Sounds far-fetched, in retrospect, but stranger things have happened. Every battle Walker and her people fought has a historical inspiration of some sort, and in many of those instances, the odds were even longer.
I hope you enjoyed the tale at least half as much as I relished writing it, yet I understand many of you, no matter how much you liked it, will be relieved to see the series end. Far too many never do, and loyal readers are left hanging. That’s not right, and I promised I wouldn’t do it. On the other hand, I know there are at least as many people who will be disappointed that it won’t go on forever. I sympathize with you as well and frankly doubt I will be able to stay out of the Destroyermen universe. As Pam admonished Silva, “There’s a whole, wide world out there waitin’ to be explored,” and the possibilities for prequels, sequels, and spin-offs are endless. I have a few ideas already. But those will be different stories, not just further installments tacked onto this one, even if certain characters you already know might reappear. . . .
For now I only want to say thanks for your support, through fifteen volumes of one story. Who’d have ever thunk it?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Taylor Anderson is the New York Times bestselling author of the Destroyermen novels. A gunmaker and forensic ballistic archaeologist, Taylor has been a technical and dialogue consultant for movies and documentaries and is an award-winning member of the National Historical Honor Society and of the United States Field Artillery Association.
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Winds of Wrath Page 66
