by Peter Tonkin
The three filthy men arrived in the bridge together, with Richard brandishing the Type 94 pistol he had no intention of firing if he could possibly help it, to find Tom, Nils and Robin back in charge, each holding a Colt .45 just like John Wayne. ‘We have to go and get the women off that pirate bastard’s prau,’ grated Nic.
But even as he spoke, the radio came to life, still at full volume from the screaming match between Kerian and Captain Nakatomi.
‘This is the Baya harbour master. Will any vessel under power with any sea room at all please come into port at once. The final group of three hundred survivors including the prince and his entourage must be removed immediately, I say again immediately...’
And, as if to emphasize his desperate words, a new rain of magma bombs began to fall on the blazing city. And the largest landed directly on the harbour master’s office, blowing the building and everyone within it to smithereens.
Chapter 26: Hell
For Sailendra, the destruction of the harbour master’s office was the beginning of the end. Scarcely able to believe what he was seeing, he ran along the steaming, mud-splattered roadway that joined the levee, the piers and the warehouse area, calling into his walkie-talkie, pressing Number 1 as though if he pushed hard enough the harbour master would be able to arise from the blazing wreckage and answer.
Instead, a completely new voice filled the airwaves. ‘Hello, Baya Harbour Master, this is the captain of the Java Queen Berth 1. Five hundred aboard in various states of repair. Departing harbour. I have to warn you the channel is badly silted and getting worse, according to my radar. Whatever it was that hit the harbour just now has damaged the levee and fouled the bottom of the bay. All riverside channels likely to be closed soon. Will warn all vessels in my vicinity. Advise using inner harbour, and being as quick as you can. Good luck.’
Almost as soon as the Java Queen’s captain had reported, the outer end of the levee toppled decorously inwards and the great, glowing mud bank of the lahar began to spill straight into the harbour itself.
Sailendra thumbed all the other buttons in order, yelling instructions as he ran across the back of the harbour at full tilt. Thank Heaven he had agreed the fail-back position with the harbour master. His directions that everyone not going aboard one of the last ships be moved to the deep-water berth beside the warehouses now looked providential, though his main motivation had simply been to get as far away from the eruption as possible. As long as they could find a vessel nimble enough to get in there and get out, there was hope for the last few hundred. As long as the volcano would give them time.
The mud-soaked, scalded scarecrow of a prince hurled himself to the ground as the next set of magma bombs rained down on the shaking city. But when he looked up, Bambang was there with Parang at his side and his father at the wheel of the last working truck. ‘The hospital has gone!’ Parang shouted. ‘That was the last place being cleared but the last rain of these bombs hit it hard and the whole lot went up. It was like Hell itself in there. The only people to survive were the ones who could run. The doctors, the nurses...’
‘Send them to the warehouse dock,’ ordered Sailendra. ‘Send them all to the warehouse dock. It’s our last hope.’ He looked up at the next bombardment of magma bombs arcing overhead and shrugged hopelessly. ‘It’s our only hope.’
‘It is my decision,’ said Nils decisively. ‘She is my daughter and this is my vessel.’
‘And my command,’ added Tom. Looking uncharacteristically fierce. ‘We both agree with Captain Mariner. We must go in now. We are the only hope those people have.’
‘But what about the women?’ grated Nic, unwilling to give up without a fight. ‘They’re in one hell of a lot of trouble.’
‘Three lives against three hundred, Nic,’ soothed Robin. ‘It’s what we’re here for. I guess they’d say the same. I know Eva Gruber would.’
Nic looked away from those still grey eyes. He knew Gabriella would as well. That was the kind of person she was - why she did the kind of work she did. And Nils must know his own daughter too. He shrugged. ‘Let’s make it quick, then.’
They were not standing idly during this conversation. Dr Hirai had gone below to release le Chef and the other prisoners, warning them to prepare for entry into the blazing harbour and for an influx of burned, scalded and probably terrified people. Then her post would be at wherever spot from which she could see the mountain most clearly - armed with a pair of binoculars and one of the ship’s walkie-talkies. Now, if ever, was the time for her to use all her expertise as a volcanologist as well as a doctor.
Tom and Richard stood like statues, shoulder to shoulder, easing Tai Fun round into the busy harbour mouth. Larsen had taken over radio duty as his sails were not needed but, what with the static discharge and the state of communications in the harbour, that was a watching brief as well. Robin, looking away from the distraught and raging American turned to the navigation computers. Collision-alarm and depth warnings were both shrieking. And hardly surprisingly.
The whole ghastly panorama filled the clearview at last. On their right the towering mountain was extended by its relentless column of flame and superheated gases into a trunk that joined the earth directly to the sky. Blazing lava continued to pour out of the crater, some of it spitting over the edges like gold boiling in an alchemist’s crucible. Most of it followed the track of the lahar down the ruined valley of the evaporated river. The upper slopes were darkest now, apart from the orange lava trails and pools. It was the lower slopes that blazed. Individual spots and pocks of brightness from the magma bombs were running together into lakes of brightness. But on the mountainside itself, there was nothing left to burn. On the lower slopes beyond where the river had been it was the same story. On the thick, dark mud, drifts of pumice were gathering as though there had been a black blizzard. The only brightness came from the magma bombs littering the place in a weird golden inversion of what the stars should have looked like, had not the sky been that red-bellied roof of heavy black smoke, still sifting the rain of pumice among the boulders and the bombs. This side of the levee was an inferno. Only the harbour itself was dark, for the water itself had not yet found a way to burn. Even so, the heaving waves glittered like golden blades as they took the brightness of the blazing city and reflected it out after the departing rescue vessels.
Suddenly they were the only vessel going into the harbour. In fact they had to rely on the almost psychic bond between Robin on the radar and Richard who took the helm, for the open bridge caught the rolling thunder and amplified it through every shuddering surface and reverberating space. They were skipping between vessels of various sizes in various states of repair, all of them desperately outward-bound, many of them flashing urgent warnings telling Tai Fun not to sail on into the stricken harbour under any circumstances. And none of this was any surprise to the tall, steel-jawed man at the helm, especially when he saw what had happened to the old levee - and realized all too swiftly what the swelling mud bank would mean for the harbour itself.
More than that, however, Richard remembered all too clearly a painting depicting Armageddon he had seen once, long ago. It showed a city ablaze, reduced already to near annihilation, set against a flame-red countryside apparently being torn apart from below. Above it there was a low red sky, torn with lightning and patterned with flashes of sulphurous yellow and coruscating scarlet, frozen in what was clearly the wildest of wind-torn motion. Clouds of steam and billows of smoke were depicted, also frozen but obviously caught in the midst of the most violent activity. And through the whirling clouds was falling a wild bombardment of flaming meteors that exploded wherever they landed. In the midst of the picture, a huge fissure had opened in the earth and naked people, men, women, children alike, were being pitchforked by blazing, strange-formed demons into the jaws of Hell, most of them already on fire. All of them, like the burning city and countryside around them, obviously screaming in unending agony.
The only difference between that picture
and what Richard could see now was that the harbour stood in place of the jaws of Hell, equally gaudy and threatening, lacking only the people being pitchforked down into it. Except, of course, that that was where Tai Fun and her little complement were going.
The sense of danger was overwhelming. Every fibre in Richard’s being screamed at him to turn the ship around and get away from this dreadful place. The sound was indescribably deafening, so that he was only able to hear snatches of what Robin was bellowing at him with a voice that would have easily carried to the crow’s nest of a tall ship. The buffeting of the following gale, sucked to storm force by the inferno ahead, threatened to pitch the vessel on its end. The heaving of the constricted waters in the harbour was simply made mad by the constant thrusting of the mudflow following in the lahar’s tracks and over the top of the ruined levee. The bottom of the bay was actually moving up and down beneath the steady keel and the whole ship slewed and shuddered unexpectedly as it answered to forces far beyond anything it was ever designed to face.
A hand fell on Richard’s shoulder. It was Larsen. ‘They want us by the warehouses, I think,’ he shouted, gesturing to a wall of bombed-out buildings, some of them still ablaze.
Richard nodded. ‘More power,’ he yelled, tearing his throat. Tom Olmeijer pushed the old-fashioned engine-room telegraph firmly forward. The electric motors responded.
The first magma bomb exploded on the foredeck. And Larsen was gone. Richard was already all too well aware of the sailing master’s abilities as a fire-fighter; clearly they would have to rely upon these from now until they joined the rest of the rescue fleet away out in the Java Sea.
‘C ... le ... fort ... fi ... deg...’ called Robin. ‘Bot... fa ... ing awa...’
Richard came left forty-five degrees and hoped that it was the bottom of the harbour that was falling away. And not, for example, the bottom of the boat.
Sailendra had never seen a more beautiful sight in all his life. The tall ship, with her four great masts, came out of the smoke like something out of a dream. The forecastle seemed to be ablaze but her fire-fighting equipment was hosing it down and everything else around it. A mixture of white flame and black pumice dust was pouring out of her scuppers as she eased in towards the dock. He looked down the exposed length of the warehouse berth, and realized that everyone there was cheering. Then a pain in his throat made him realize that he was cheering too. He swung round. Bambang and Parang were standing just behind him. He hugged them both, his embrace made clumsy by the difference in their heights. Then he turned back. There was still much to do. There were the better part of three hundred people here and they needed to be moved off the dockside and on to the providential vessel before the next set of magma bombs did a fatal amount of damage. Before the volcano thought up yet more lethal little tricks.
The ship swung into place. Sailendra saw the name - Tai Fun - and knew he would never forget it. Ropes came snaking shorewards, were caught and secured in record time. Immediately gangways slammed down, fore and aft. As they did so, the next set of magma bombs screamed to earth. Another warehouse, away in the bonded section, exploded. Half a million bottles of Suntory whisky burst into gaudy life and started flowing in a burning river down towards the harbour.
It was only the careful preparations Sailendra and his people had put in place that stopped a stampede. But everyone on the warehouse dockside knew what to do and more importantly they knew that if they did it, they all stood a much better chance of surviving even something as strange and terrifying as a river of blazing whisky. So, as soon as the gangways slammed down, they began to move up them in an orderly, carefully prearranged fashion, the doctors and nurses from the bombed-out hospital fitting as best they could. The next bombardment of magma began almost immediately, completing the destruction of the warehouses and, indeed, of the last of the harbour buildings. The last buildings in the city.
Sailendra was tempted to look back, and the sight nearly broke his heart. Behind the harbour, the Old City mounted the lower slopes of the timeless, traitorous Guanung Surat. And all of it was gone now. Blocks, streets, terraces, neighbourhoods, suburbs, all. In one great conflagration. Destroyed so utterly that there seemed no hope of any recovery. All lost. All gone. Forever. So many years of effort. So many lives and hopes. So much investment of money and effort and dreams. His princedom. He stood stricken.
Until Parang, his friend and secretary, took him by the shoulder. ‘Come, Your Highness,’ he said, as gently as the mind-numbing cacophony would allow. ‘We are the last. And it is time for us to go. Let’s get the hell out of here.’
Chapter 27: Jaunt
Sailendra walked heavily up the gangway and on to Tai Fun’s deck. As soon as he stepped on to the teak of the decking, the plank was raised behind him, the ropes were cast off from the ship itself and the sleek vessel surged into motion as swiftly as it was able.
The prince was not at first struck by this fluid urgency. Everywhere he looked there were numberless reasons for haste; this was not some leisurely jaunt up the river, after all. But even so, as the ship swung round in the last deep water of the choking harbour and powered towards the swiftly silting mouth, Sailendra followed Parang into the main accommodation area, where there was at least a slight diminution in the pounding roaring from outside. ‘You know this vessel?’ he demanded. He had seen it in the harbour himself, had talked to some of the people who sailed her, but he had never been aboard before and was surprised to find Parang so certain of his way.
‘I have been on board before,’ Parang confirmed. ‘In fact I was expecting-’ The secretary stopped suddenly, as if taking mental stock of the situation. ‘So much has happened, so swiftly,’ he said by way of explanation, as though he expected Sailendra to have the faintest idea what he was talking about. Then he swung round and hurried forward, leading his prince up on to the bridge.
On the bridge itself, Sailendra was immediately struck by the concentrated sense of urgency and purpose that lay under the deafening noise tearing through the very fabric. He was a modest man, given his birth and upbringing, but he was not used to being greeted with grunts and nods when he was introduced to people. The only people who accorded him the courtesy he was used to were the two women, a Japanese doctor who was here, apparently, making her preliminary report of sick and wounded, but adding to it some kind of postscript on the state of the mountain itself, and a tall, golden-haired blonde with striking grey eyes, who was calmly and competently trying to ease them through the rapidly silting mouth of the stricken harbour. Every thirty seconds or so, she would bellow a set of headings, coordinates, depths and directions to the huge man at the wheel. He would never acknowledge that he had heard her, but the vessel would follow her orders to the centimetre; to the knot; to the degree, minute, second.
Left to his own devices by the apparent rudeness of his rescuers and suddenly feeling listless, Sailendra looked out of the clearview. He was struck anew by the velocity of the vessel as she headed at top speed for the mouth of the harbour. They were clearly running away from an incredibly dangerous situation, he thought. But were they also racing towards something he did not as yet understand?
Then another unfamiliar figure arrived. A small, dark-faced, tousle-haired individual in a blue engineer’s overall. And he was carrying a tray half filled with something that smelt like olive oil, and laden with gun parts.
‘The oil is the closest I could find to gun oil,’ he bellowed to the tall man, Captain Mariner, at the helm in a thick French accent. ‘It is first virgin cold pressing. The best. The chef de cuisine says he will take the Colts back when we have finished with them. He will fry them in the rest of the oil and serve them on a bed of young steamed palm leaves.’
Captain Mariner grunted. The French engineer carried the guns across to another man, one with a strangely familiar face who had been introduced as Mr Greenbaum, and together they started cleaning and assembling the weapons. Parang, who had seated himself beside Mr Greenbaum, started to help them
, betraying a skill his prince had never suspected he possessed. Sailendra, who had never handled a gun in his life, went to join them.
Parang glanced up as Sailendra sat down, though the secretary’s fingers did not slow in their urgent business with the gun parts. ‘It appears that we have found Councillor Kerian, Your Highness...’
* * *
Under Richard’s steady hands, Tai Fun almost felt her way forward out of the harbour. The currents and counter-currents within the water made the long vessel almost impossible to handle with the accuracy required by the delicate series of manoeuvres the rapidly silting mouth dictated. The influx of hot mud spilling across the harbour bottom was pushing the water out through an increasingly narrow channel so the speed of the current was building up as well. Nor was the water strictly liquid any longer. It was thick with churned-up mud and full of submerged and half-submerged debris, and the surface was clotted with increasingly thick rafts of floating rock. The fine pumice dust coagulated into chunks as soon as it got wet. Magma bombs were full of incandescent gas and they set on impact with the surface into sponges made of stone. Although the current was pushing towards the rapidly narrowing, steadily solidifying escape route, the wind was still blowing fiercely counter, pushing yet more floating pumice rafts into the sleek ship’s way. The racing propellers were finding it increasingly difficult to ease the vessel forward, and the motors that drove them were beginning to overheat as Richard was forced to ask for more and more power as he fought to keep Tai Fun moving forward to Robin’s dictates. But he had no choice. If they didn’t get out of the harbour they were doomed. ‘More power,’ he grated to Tom, who pushed the ancient telegraph towards its limit, watching the needles on his engine monitors flick into the red.
