Rising Tides

by Taylor Anderson

  Matt hesitated. If they turned away, they might get separated even farther from their consorts. But the Imperial ships couldn’t steam forever in these seas. Sooner or later, they’d have to run with the wind. “Very well. Mr. Steele, make your course one, two, zero. Mr. Kutas, please have Mr. Riggs inform Achilles of our course change. According to their charts, there shouldn’t be anything out there we need to be concerned about running into.”

  “Aye, aye, Skipper,” Steele replied, “making my course one, two, zero.”

  The Bosun staggered up the stairs aft, and gasping, joined Kutas at the pole.

  “What are you doing running around in the rain, Boats?” Matt quipped.

  “Oh, just checking on things.”

  “How’s she holding up?” Matt asked.

  “Swell,” Gray replied breathlessly. He’d pulled the decorative strap on the front of his sopping, battered hat down under his chin to keep from losing it. He didn’t add “so far.” That might jinx them. On the other hand, maybe just thinking it was bad enough.

  “Skipper!” cried Reynolds, who as usual joined the duty roster as talker when he wasn’t flying or tending the plane in some way. Right now, the Nancy had been disassembled and secured as well as possible.

  “What is it?” Matt demanded.

  “Lookout, ah, Chack, says there’s a whopper coming in! It just keeps getting bigger! He sounds ... scared!”

  Chack scared? Oh, hell. “Mr. Steele?”

  “Almost there,” Frankie replied, straining against the wheel.

  Matt joined the starboard lookout on the bridgewing. At first he couldn’t see anything through the darkness and the blinding spray. Then he heard it. Even over the screeching wind that moaned hideously through the foremast stays and the wireless aerial, over the blower and the groaning hull and thrashing sea, he heard a sound like mounting thunder. What he could see of the horizon beyond the gray-green foam had become as black as night. He looked up. And up. “Oh, Lord,” he said. Then he spun. “Sound the collision alarm!”

  In spite of the situation, Tabby was actually pleased with herself. This was the worst storm she’d endured yet on Walker, but for the first time, she hadn’t been transformed into a heaving, retching, practically lifeless wreck. Must be The ’sponsibility, she decided. She’d never seen Spanky look even mildly ill when the sea kicked up. He’d been through the aft fireroom just a few moments before, moving carefully along the rail with the motion of the ship. The hull seemed tight, and though brackish water gushed back and forth in the bilge, the ship didn’t seem to be taking much on as she worked. At least the hull repairs had been properly handled—of course, they’d had more time on them. The boilers had been a hurry-up affair. She didn’t mind. She’d finished the work on number three, and it was roaring away contentedly despite the turmoil outside. She was satisfied.

  She glanced around and wrinkled her nose. Just because she wasn’t sick didn’t mean there wasn’t a powerful lot of puking going on. She’d been the first Lemurian fireman and had suffered her baptism alone, except for the somewhat disinterested solicitations of the “other” Mice. Now the whole fireroom was full of her people—none of whom had ever endured anything like this. She felt sorry for them, spewing wretchedly on the deck plates, trying to reach the one they’d left open to the bilge as a “puke hole,” but she felt slightly superior as well. She was superior. She was a chief, wasn’t she? The others would come along, just as she had, and at least most still seemed able to function.

  Suddenly an alarm blared in the compartment that she’d only heard a couple of times in drills. Her spine stiffened and her eyes went wide.

  “Everyone! Grab hold of something!” she screamed. “Get away from the boilers and hold on!” She embraced a feed line and clenched her teeth. Something struck the ship like the hand of God. One instant, Walker seemed to be climbing a swell like so many others, and the next, the old destroyer was practically on her beam-ends. Deck plates were uprooted and went sliding or tumbling to port, and the air was filled with loosened condensation, followed by a flood of bilgewater ... and screams. Tabby’s feet fell out from under her, and she held on to the heavy pipe for dear life as others in her division did the same, or fell screeching amid the clattering tools and other debris. A few must have fallen against the boilers themselves—suddenly the air smelled of burnt hair and flesh. She watched as one of her water tenders, motionless against the port-side hull, was impaled by a plummeting deck plate that struck her with its sharp, pointed corner. The water tender never made a sound. A thundering vibration added to the din, and whether it was water coursing over the ship or the starboard screw running away, she couldn’t tell.

  Another sound began that she’d never heard before. It started as a whooshing, drumming hiss, and quickly grew to a pounding rumble, and she knew—knew—that water was pouring down at least one stack into the smoke-box uptake! For what might have been only moments but seemed like forever, the ship just hung like that, heaved over, as if trying to decide whether to right herself and struggle on, or roll all the way over and go to sleep at last.

  “No!” Tabby screamed. “You NOT give up! You NOT!” Over and over she shouted, “You NOT! You NOT!” until she no longer knew if she was screaming at the ship, herself, or her weakening arms. Slowly, slowly, the angle grew less extreme. “Pleeeese, ship!” she begged, almost sobbing. “You got too much to do! You got too many who love you!” Almost as if in response to her plea, Walker practically lurched upright and her screws bit again. There were more screams when firemen fell into the jumble of iron that slid deckward with them. Then came a terrible roar, and Tabby remembered the water in the uptake. Later, she could never exactly describe the sound she heard when warm seawater coursed down into the number three boiler. Maybe her ears were already shot from all the noise, and her own high-pitched wail. The best she could remember was a “crackling, thundering BONG!” before the aft fireroom filled with scalding steam.

  CHAPTER 13

  North of Tjilatjap (Chill-chaap)

  The expedition’s first task had been to clear off just enough of Santa Catalina to construct a camp for those who’d be remaining, and then hoist their tools and equipment aboard. The heavy work was accomplished with the old ship’s own cargo booms and plenty of hard labor by men and dozens of ’Cats, heaving on lines with a high-ratio block-and-tackle. Once there was nothing left on the barges that some monster might eat, they were sent back downriver for more supplies, equipment, and personnel. The ship was an ungodly mess. Her decks were tangled with roots and vines, and some had even gained purchase between the very planks. There were nasty, biting insects, and feces of every imaginable shape, smell, and consistency was smeared all over everything. A large proportion was lizard-bird droppings, but a lot—perhaps most—was from something else, bigger, that dumped turds the size of ostrich eggs. Either whatever left those things rolling around pooped more than anything had a right to or there were a bunch of them.

  That first night they camped with a heavy guard. They’d closed every hatch leading to the interior of the ship they could find, so hopefully all they had to worry about was creatures from the water or shore. They couldn’t build an open fire, of course, but Lemurian tinsmiths had come a long way with directional gri-kakka oil lamps, inspired by the shape of Navy battle lanterns. Plenty of these were rigged facing outward. They’d brought a gas-powered generator, based on one of the four-cylinder airplane engines, and intended to eventually power some of Santa Catalina’s lights if they weren’t too corroded.

  Plenty of spooky, ill-defined things crept around in the dark that night, and nobody really got any sleep. Nothing attacked them, though, except bugs, some of which had a painful sting. Unlike the giant “gekkogator” (Isak, of all people, coined the name, in honor of the Philippine geckos he remembered), they were familiar with most of the insects. As for the shadowy creatures that lurked and screeched indignantly just beyond the lights, Chapelle was still inclined to leave things alone as l
ong as things left them alone. The benign visitations probably wouldn’t last. Their presence couldn’t be welcome, and once they started clearing the ship properly, they were bound to aggravate the various denizens that had claimed it as their home.

  With the dawn, the clearing began in earnest. Work parties, flanked by armed Marines, hacked away the vines that seemed to clutch the ship to the shore. One Marine blew a splintered gash in the wooden deck with a musket ball when he saw the first snake any of them, ’Cat or human, had ever seen on this world. In his initial panic, he missed the snake, but then managed to poke it with his bayonet and pitch the writhing thing over the side. It was colored kind of like a coral snake, with purple, orange, and lime green instead of yellow, red, white, and black. Several spectators gathered and watched it try to swim to shore. When it was almost there, something slick-skinned, like a catfish, but blotchycolored with bulging eyes, rose and gulped it down.

  Other parties started clearing the ship’s decks, and Major Mallory was having kittens to get a look inside the large crates arranged there. All the containers were about six feet wide by ten feet tall, but some were thirty-five feet long, and others forty. They were darkened with mold, and roots had invaded a few seams, but even after all this time they were largely intact. Even the one Gilbert said he and Commodore Ellis had cracked open to identify the contents didn’t appear to have deteriorated appreciably. Having seen crates just like these at Pearl Harbor before he’d shipped for Java, and then again aboard the old Langley, Ben knew exactly what was in each one. If it was possible, his excitement only grew. He was like a kid staring at the presents under the tree, waiting for his parents to wake up on Christmas Day.

  “Hurry up, fellas,” he murmured now and then to the party that was clearing debris from around the once opened crate, not really caring if they heard him or not. When that box and the one just next to it were completely exposed, and the deck around them was clear and swept, leaving only the damp, dark, mushy wood, he finally advanced on the crate with a wrecking bar. Ellis had opened it carefully before, and once he discovered what was inside, he’d closed it up as best he could. To Ben, it looked like the seam had survived okay. If anything, the constant humidity might have swelled the crate even more tightly shut. He hoped so, anyway. He jammed the wrecking bar between the reinforcing planks and then drove it in deeper with a heavy mallet somebody handed him. He soon had a gap, and he worked the iron bar up and down, wrenching the nails from their holes.

  He didn’t want to damage the crate too much. One way or the other, he’d decided he wasn’t leaving this place without its contents, but regardless of how he managed it, the salvage party would eventually have to offload the crates and so they needed to be structurally sound. He decided to use the same method Ellis had before, simply pry one panel away far enough to form a gap he could squeeze through. Gilbert appeared at his elbow, offering advice on how they’d done it before. He also brought one of the lanterns and set it down protectively beside him, implying that he intended to get a look inside this time as well. With a final, rending scree! the left panel released enough to allow one of the’Cats to hold it aside for them. Mallory knocked a few of the nails out, just as Ellis had done before, and after the slightest, rueful hesitation, allowed Gilbert to precede him into the crate.

  “Je-hoshaphat, there she is,” came the muffled exclamation. “First time I seen one o’ these babies since those stupid Army A-A goons guardin’ Cavite shot one down by mistake. Like that really looks like a goddamn Zee-ro!” Unable to contain himself any longer, Ben shoved his way through as well. Inside the crate, the air smelled musty, and there was definitely some mildew, but the strong scent of fresh wood, oily steel, aluminum, new rubber, and fresh paint still predominated. Gilbert was flashing the lantern in all directions, almost spastically, creating a kaleidoscope of images. He seemed most intent on surveying the dark reaches of the crate to ensure that no vermin waited to spring at them.

  “Here,” Ben said, snatching the lantern, “give me that!” He focused the flickering beam on the nearest shape and experienced a sense of almost religious joy. Dark grease still covered a bright steel prop shaft. More surface rust than Ellis had probably seen when he was there had taken hold where the grease was thin, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d feared when he saw the ship. For this crate at least, the expedition seemed to have arrived just in time. Any longer and the roots would have opened it to the salt air and the tropical rains and heat; just a few weeks of such exposure would have ruined everything. He knew some of the crates in the hold were actually in the water and the submerged aluminum and steel would be corroded beyond repair, but some spare parts would be salvageable. Maybe even more than that. Regardless, a huge grin split his bearded face as he gazed at the shiny Curtiss green color, the flared exhaust stacks, the distinctive intake and lack of nose-mounted guns that confirmed the fuselage as that of a P-40E—the most advanced fighter he’d ever flown—instead of a B, which had still been the more common aircraft.

  He knew the P-40s, and especially the Es, had been getting a bad rep out of the Philippines, but they were heavier than the Bs, and the guys there had just received them when the war started and hadn’t had time to get used to them. He’d flown both, and knew the E was better. Hell, Claire Chennault’s AVG had been kicking Jap ass with Bs in China, while The poor guys in The Philippines were cracking up more planes Trying To Take off and land in clouds of dust Than They were losing in combat. He stroked the intake fairing like he might caress a woman’s chin. They just weren’t used To Them. They’d never had a chance. He took a piece of chalk out of his pocket that he’d brought to mark the crates and drew something on the plane.

  “What’s that?” Gilbert asked.

  “An M.”

  “What’s it for?”

  Ben shrugged. “M for ‘Mallory.’ M for ‘mine.’ Whichever. But that’s my plane!”

  Ben didn’t open any more crates that day as the clearing proceeded, but he did find a couple that were damaged and he marked them accordingly. Presumably those would need the quickest attention when they were offloaded to determine if they could be salvaged as planes or parts. By midafternoon, most of the ship’s upper works were cleared, and the work party almost wished they’d waited, since the sun beat down on them unmercifully. Chapelle was right, though. Once they went belowdecks, they didn’t want to leave any hiding places up top for anything they flushed from below. Hopefully, if they encountered anything and it made it past them, it would see the lack of cover and abandon the ship for the water or the jungle. After all the ruckus and banging around they’d done during the day, they expected something akin to a disturbed hornet’s nest when they cracked the hatches, so everyone was prepared for anything when the first party entered the superstructure.

  To their surprise, nothing flushed out of the pilothouse, radio shack, or the officers’ quarters but a few of the “lizard bats” Gilbert had told them to expect. The interior furnishings were considerably more deteriorated than when he’d been there before, but as they cleared away the rubbish and filth, they discovered a number of useful items. They’d taken some long guns with them after their first visit, mostly civilian models, but all worthwhile specimens for Bernie Sandison’s guys to look at for ideas. This time they discovered a few handguns in drawers or other places that were in various stages of preservation. There was an old Mauser that something had dropped a turd right on top of and Chapelle was tempted to just throw it over the side. It was so badly corroded, he doubted it could even be disassembled. Laney found a pitted but serviceable 1911 Colt between a pair of rotting mattresses and Chapelle said he could keep it. The real prize, from a technical, and perhaps sentimental perspective, was a nickel-plated single-action Colt “Frontier Six Shooter,” in .44-40 caliber, that they found wrapped in oilcloth inside what was probably the captain’s desk. Chapelle figured it would make a good pattern for simple revolvers they could make at Baalkpan, as well as a fitting gift for Captain Reddy. The Ski
pper was a Texan, after all.

  The ship’s radio equipment was all badly corroded, but some of the components were probably salvageable. Riggs and Rodriguez would be happy just to get their hands on the resisters and capacitors. Even Bakelite knobs and insulators would be welcome. A work party entered a large compartment in the aft superstructure, just at deck level, that Gilbert said they’d never explored during their brief prior visit. Chapelle was summoned and Mallory joined him in what appeared to be a dining room or lounge of some sort. As a freighter, Santa Catalina would have had at least limited accommodations for passengers. With her cargo of aircraft, she’d probably been transporting air crews, and possibly ground crews, for the planes. The earlier expedition had been unable to even speculate upon the fate of those people or the crew of the ship. The presence of firearms, still locked in a cabinet, argued that not only had no one ever made it off the ship, but they hadn’t even known they were in danger before “something” got them. Now a little better explanation emerged.

  “Say,” Russ said, looking around the ruined lounge, “that solves one mystery, anyway.”

  In the center of the compartment, partially concealed beneath overturned chairs, rotting rugs, and the detritus of marauding denizens, were a number of short, still vaguely olive-drab crates. A ’Cat kicked one open; inside was nothing but a heap of crinkled brown wax paper.

  “Tommy gun boxes,” Ben observed. “Ten each. And there’s four crates that size. That’s about right. These other boxes had ammo and twenty round sticks in ’em.”