The Heirs of Babylon

by Glen Cook

  Von Lappus paced. Any plan he may have had had to be scrapped, now Jager was in a trap. His face was pale and tired, his weight seemed to pull him down. “How far to the Indian coast?” he asked.

  Kurt went to the chart table. “Excuse me, Paul.” He studied the charts. “Fifty kilometers, sir.”

  “And Ceylon?”

  “The same. We’re right in the middle.”

  “We’ll head for the mainland. If we can’t hide, we’ll beach her and walk.”

  Kurt’s mind rushed back to the visitor of a week earlier. Others had tried walking home.

  “Left full rudder. All ahead standard. Tell the engine room to stand by for emergency maneuvers. I want all boilers on the line, burning coal. Ask how long they’ll need to get full steam.”

  The helmsman, lee helmsman, and telephone talker did as they were directed. All eyes were on the Captain, expectant.

  “Captain,” said the phone talker, “they say they’ll need a half hour to get superheat on the standby boilers....”

  “Tell them to get those fires burning, and to call as soon as they can put the boilers on the line.” Von Lappus resumed pacing. “How long till sunrise?”

  “About two hours, sir,” said Kurt. “But we’ll have light before then.”

  “Lookout reports flashing light from the screen commander, sir,” a phone talker announced.

  Kurt grabbed a memo pad and stepped out on the starboard wing. “Brecht, get up to the signal bridge and tell them we’re ready to receive. Take your time.”

  Haber grabbed the signal book as Brecht scrambled up the ladder to the signal bridge. The commodore’s message soon arrived. Kurt noted the groups. Haber, looking over his shoulder, searched the signal book for their meanings.

  “Should’ve known,” Haber said shortly. “He wants to know where we’re going. Captain?”

  Von Lappus shrugged. “Send some nonsense. ‘Proceeding independently to air bedding, run a degaussing range, and attack with missiles and depth charges.’ By the time he figures that out, we’ll be clear. I don’t think he’d shoot, anyway.”

  Haber encoded the message, taking his time. Kurt handed it up to Brecht. Brecht sent it slowly, as if unfamiliar with the light. All the while, the range between ships opened at a relative twelve knots.

  That range opened to four kilometers. The commodore requested a repeat. Brecht sent the message again, with minor changes. Before more was heard, Jsger could no longer read the incoming.

  She ran a point off parallel with the seas. The rolls were bad. Her bows rose high, she yawed, her bows fell, and the phosphorescent waters rushed past to make a sparkling silver trail behind. A tinge of false dawn smeared the horizon line east.

  “The seas are running high,” von Lappus observed. “Is a storm too much to hope?”

  Kurt looked around. A deeper darkness loomed to the south. “Looks like a squall there, sir, but we’d be steaming right into the Australians.”

  “Forget it.”

  There were flashes behind them, and a few ships silhouetted, as the fleet’s guns opened up on a new wave of aircraft, lager hurried on, ignoring the fighting. Kurt suffered a moment of guilt and regret for thus abandoning others to their fates.

  “Engine room reports all boilers on the line, sir,” a phone talker announced. “Very well. Tell them to give me every possible turn.” Soon lager was shuddering. She surged forward. Kurt watched the indicator on the pitometer as it crept past twenty, toward twenty-five knots. The destroyer bad not run this fast in decades — perhaps centuries.

  “Oh-oh,” someone muttered, “they’ve found us.”

  Aircraft noises approached. Half a dozen planes gathered like vultures gleeful at finding a lone and staggering man in a desert, happy to have a target outside the anti-aircraft umbrella of the fleet.

  lager corkscrewed across the waters, dodging the bombs. Her guns tore the dawn with flaming orange claws. Her frame shuddered time and again as salvos left her main battery. Kurt and others held hands over their ears, trying to keep out the deafening crack of the fiveinchers. The sound jarred the teeth and rattled the bones. It could be felt with the skin. Beside the main battery, the three-inchers and 40mm mounts were chattering children.

  “Tell the engine room to give us more speed!” von Lappus bellowed. A bomb hit water just fifty meters off the starboard bow, drowning the threats with which he punctuated the command. While the waterspout from the bomb burst was still falling, the phone talker replied, “Mr. Czyzewski says he doesn’t dare put on any more turns, sir. She’s shaking too much now.”

  Jager rattled like a Skeleton in a windstorm. Her frame groaned. The old lady was too tired to sprint as when she was young.

  “If he can make another turn, tell him to make it!” von Lappus thundered. “Down!” Shells rang against the pilothouse. A man groaned, hit by a fragment, lager shuddered even more. Kurt watched the pit log climb slowly, so slowly, toward thirty knots.

  “Sir,” the phone talker cried, “we’re taking water around the patch where we lost the sonar dome.”

  “Very well.”

  A plane burned across the lightening sky, right to left, like a comet, exploded like a holiday rocket half a kilometer ahead. The gunners cheered, but weakly. Their fourth kill was much less exciting than the first, and they were too tired to waste the energy.

  A small bomb from a plane unseen tumbled from the sky and hit the number one gun mount. Kurt saw the result, as in slow motion, while throwing himself under the chart table.

  The bomb hit. The turret rose on a small ball of fire and, intact, arced into the sea to port. Then concussion from the explosion shattered glass, bounced men around, and everything loose became a vicious missile. A cloud of acrid TNT smoke swept past the bridge, filled the pilothouse with its stench. The warship heaved and groaned and, for a moment, Kurt thought the explosion had reached the magazines. But no, the firestops had held.

  He looked down to the forecastle again as he rose, then turned away fighting his last meal. The mount was gone. In its place was a hole surrounded by burned-metal flower petals. The upper handling room, ammunition miraculously unexploded, lay open to the air. Men and parts of men were scattered about its walls. Streamers of smoke drifted out.

  “Get Damage Control!” the Captain bellowed. “Get the men out of that lower handling room! We’ve got to flood that magazine.” And all the while the surviving guns thundered their defiance.

  The helmsman, frozen to the wheel, followed his zigzag course with zombie-like precision. No one else moved. A mountain of water hurled up by a near miss drenched the bridge through broken windows. Haber tended the wounded amidst blood and seawater sloshing on the deck.

  The phone talker spoke up. “Captain, forward fire room reports they’re taking water around a buckled hull plate.”

  “How much?”

  “Just a little. The pumps are handling it. Damage Control’s putting a patch on now.”

  “Very well.”

  Kurt looked back to the forecastle, saw water filling the hole where the mount had been. The liquid was scarlet in the morning light. Human carrion mingled with pieces of ship.

  The guns spoke on, and the bombs replied. “How far to the coast?” von Lappus demanded. Kurt tried to estimate. “Twenty kilometers.”

  “What speed are we making, helmsman?” 167

  “Twenty-four knots, sir.”

  Kurt glanced at the pit log. Jager was losing speed. Too much for the boilers?

  Haber looked up from the man he was tending. “Got to keep her going for a half hour. Can we?”

  The guns never slowed, nor did the bombs.

  A napalm canister hit water portside amidships, spraying Jager with flaming jellied gasoline. One of the 40mm mounts was in its path. Screaming men died before the washdown system could save them.

  Von Lappus risked looking out a door. The washdown system was unable to flush the napalm. He whirled. “Wiedermann! Man some hoses. Get rid of the torpedo in t
hat port tube! If the fire reaches it....” He did not need to describe what a ton of TNT could do.

  Hans took several men and ran down to the torpedo deck. While some brought hoses into action, two stripped the canvas covers from the tube, and Hans readied the firing box. He hit the fire button. The torpedo left the tube with a whoosh, dove through fire, hit the sea — and did not go anywhere. The propellers were dead. Bullet holes along the tube told why. As Jager hurried away, the torpedo’s nose sank. Its aft portion stood out of the water like a milepost along a doom-time road.

  Another plane came in, cannon fire sweeping the hose crews and Hans’s two helpers off the torpedo deck. A three-inch mount evened things as the plane pulled up, going away.

  Hans crawled from beneath the torpedo tube and sprinted forward, up the ladder to the bridge. Kurt hauled him through the door. His wound was bleeding again.

  “Damn! You were lucky!” Kurt said, patting him on the back. His mind slipped right off thoughts of the unlucky ones.

  “Not finished yet,” Hans replied as Haber replaced his bandage. “Fire’s still burning.”

  “Ranke, get some men from Combat and reman those hoses!” the Captain ordered.

  Swallowing his adam’s apple, Kurt said, “Yes sir.” He hurried down the inside ladder, into Combat, and selected a half-dozen men whose jobs were least important. They went out the sonar-room door, caught the flopping hoses, turned streams of water and foam on the napalm.

  They killed most of the fire during a lull. There was just one small pool in the maindeck, a ways aft. Kurt ordered the hoses moved that way.

  Something spanged off the deck near him as he watched the work. A second something whined by, then a third ricocheted off his helmet, spinning him around and down. On hands and knees, he took cover behind a ruined potato locker and looked for the plane.

  He saw none.

  The nearest was just banking in for an attack. He searched the ship around him, saw nothing. His heart suddenly doubled its pace as full terror struck. Marquis was in action once again, for what reason he could not imagine. It was madness to shoot at a man here where Death was already establishing his throne.

  The last of the napalm washed over the side. “Get those hoses secured!” Kurt shouted. “Down!” The attacking plane roared over, strafing the bridge. “Get back to Combat” Once they were gone, he sprinted to the ladder leading to the wings.

  He reached the bridge level panting and started forward, but something caught his eye. Scattered on the deck aft the closed bridge, where the mainmast and a small locker for keeping cleaning gear provided a good hiding place, were several brass cartridge cases. He knelt and touched one of the casings. Still warm. He glanced toward where he had been standing on the torpedo deck. Yes, Marquis had crouched here to do his sniping.

  He heard the scream of air over wings, the gossip of cannons, hit the deck. Shells played tattoo on the bulkhead nearby. One shattered the wooden box housing the psychrometer. A pistol hit the deck near Kurt’s head. He glanced up. Hidden inside the psychrometer box? He sniffed the muzzle. It had been fired recently. He rose, tucked it inside his waistband.

  And almost instantly threw himself down again. Another plane coming in. But it passed over aft, leaving a horrendous roar and the scream of metal torn like paper. A ball of fire boiled up from the fantail.

  Kurt scrambled to and through the door of the closed bridge. “A hit aft!” he gasped as Hans pulled him in.

  Across the bridge, in the Captain’s chair, Haber was patching a wound in his own left leg. “I’ll have to go to the mess decks then,” he gasped.

  At the same moment the helmsman shouted, “Rudder doesn’t respond, sir.” Von Lappus growled, “Shift your engine and cable.”

  “Aye, sir. Shifting to port steering engine and port cable.” A few seconds passed. “Rudder still doesn’t answer, sir.”

  “Shift control to after steering.”

  “Sir,” a phone talker said, “Engineering reports after steering heavily damaged. Damage Control is there now. Some flooding, and a small fire.”

  Von Lappus swore vitriolically, asked, “What’s your rudder angle, helm?”

  Ten degrees starboard, sir.”

  Glancing out the door, Kurt could see Jager was running a large circle. Smoke poured from the hole in the fantail. “We could steer with our engines,” he said.

  Van Lappus nodded. He let Jager finish her circle, gave the orders. The vessel shuddered, slowed as her engines fought to balance the frozen rudder. “How far to the coast now?”

  “Fifteen kilometers!” Kurt shouted. But his words were lost as a stick of bombs exploded before the bow. Jager staggered into falling spray. “Fifteen kilometers!” he shouted again.

  Beside Kurt, Hans muttered, “Don’t they ever run out of bombs?” He stared at a plane coming in low from starboard. A five-inch shell scored a direct hit, shattered the aircraft five hundred meters out. There was a tremendous fireball as aviation fuel exploded. A tongue of hurtling fire almost reached the ship.

  “Maybe that was the last one,” Kurt said. “I don’t see any more.”

  He was correct. Air and sea soon grew quiet. Fighting her rudder, Jager staggered landward.

  “Boatswain, pass the word that the men can leave their stations to go to the head, or get sandwiches — after battle reports reach the bridge.”

  A half hour passed. The sun rose. Kurt walked the wings, looking at the ship. She appeared wrecked, yet damage reports were optimistic. The rudder was almost clear. Most all flooding had been stopped. Men were clearing the topside wreckage. A miracle — Jager was still afloat. Not a man aboard had expected her to survive the concerted attack of a half-dozen Australian planes.

  Kurt returned to the pilothouse and slumped against the chart table, exhausted. He had had, finally, time to think.

  Haber, after finishing his work in the mess decks, with a covey of boatswains and junior officers, limped off to inspect the worst damage. Once his party cleared the bridge, Kurt turned to von Lappus and whispered, “I’m sure I know who Marquis is now.” He began shaking. “He took a couple shots at me while I was getting the napalm off the torpedo deck.”

  The Captain’s eyebrows rose. Kurt gave him the shell casings and pistol. He considered them a moment, frowned, asked, “Who? And what do you think we should do?”

  Kurt rubbed his temples, thought, finally replied, “I don’t know.... I always thought Heinrich was my friend....” His eyes caught something, his shoulders slumped forward in despair. “It doesn’t matter now.” He pointed.

  Far away, on the horizon, was a line of silhouetted masts, and dark smoke hanging low. The trapping force he expected, coming from the south.

  “How far?” von Lappus asked, pointing to the Indian coastline ahead.

  “Maybe two kilometers.” Estimating was difficult. It was a jungled coast, ragged, indefinite in its meeting with the sea.

  “Can’t make it.” Von Lappus grabbed a phone. “Engine room!” he shouted. “Secure your boilers!” A pause. “I don’t care if you’ll have trouble firing them again! I don’t want any smoke.” The stacks were soon clear. Jager quickly lost way.

  Von Lappus returned to the phone. “Engine room? Get Mr. Czyzewski.” A pause while the Chief Engineer was located, then, “Ski? Trouble coming up. Give me a twenty-degree list to starboard. Yes, you heard right. Rood the voids, the bunkers, whatever you have to do. No! Just do it. You got that fire out in after steering? Good. Forget the repairs. This’s more important. I want this ship to look dead.” He slammed the phone down. “Boatswain, I want every man below the maindeck, hidden. Hoepner! Where’s Lieutenant Hoepner?”

  “Here, sir.”

  “Break out the small arms. Issue them to the landing party.”

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me. Do it.” He turned to Kurt. “Ranke, you stick with me. How long till those ships get here?”

  Kurt looked toward the Australians. He shrugged. “Half an hour, I su
ppose. They’re probably running all out.”

  “Thank you. You men, clear the bridge. Get below the maindeck. We’ll organize later.” He paused, thinking. “Wiedermann, launch the boats. Drag the liferafts below. We may need them later. Dress the dead in lifejackets and put them over with the boats. Anything we can afford to throw away, do it.”

  “Sir?”

  “Why does everyone ask questions? Do it.”

  Hans hurried away. Within minutes he had men scurrying here and there, working. Soon Jager was surrounded by boats, corpses, and debris. With help from Engineering, she had taken on a pronounced list to starboard. She soon appeared a badly wounded ship whose crew had abandoned her for the nearby coast.

  “Good!” the Captain rumbled, surveying her from the bridge. “Now, if we get the ‘if’s’ working our way, we may get out of this.”

  “Sir?” Kurt asked.

  “//they’re interested in capturing salvageable ships, and;’/they’re not willing to waste a warship to do the work, we may get home yet.” He would add nothing more.

  XVIII

  THE enemy cruisers came within firing range. One lobbed a tentative shell which fell half a kilometer short. Kurt, half asleep against a bulkhead, awakened. Von Lappus studied the Australians through binoculars. Minutes passed. Another shell fell, again at a distance. “Ah,” said the Captain. “They’re interested. A destroyer’s turning out to look us over.”

  Kurt studied her, was dismayed. Even unharmed, Jager would have been outgunned.

  Far to the east, beyond the horizon, a rumbling commenced. Little guns and big made their forceful arguments, cried, Mannerdammerung!

  In the north, defying High Command orders, the admiral of the Western fleet withheld the final blow of an easy victory, turned his ships and raced to the aid of his beleaguered auxiliaries.

  “They’ve caught the fleet,” the Captain muttered. “Come on.” He went to the inside ladder and down.

  Kurt collected his machine-pistol and followed, tired, fighting the urge to drop and fall asleep. He stumbled, caught himself. The ladder was difficult because of the list.