“Watch out for their damn tongues!” he warned, perhaps a little shrilly. “They’re just like the one that big monster had!”
“EEEE W W W W W!” squealed Isak, as he started jumping in circles. He’d stepped on an entirely dead tongue that had glued his shoe to the deck.
Laney shoved him forward, out of his shoe and back into the press. “This ain’t no time for ballerina tryouts, you nitwit!” he growled. Apparently he’d gotten over his own initial shock.
The weight of the attack, and possibly the unexpected violence and remorselessness of it all, not to mention the now steady hail of bullets that shredded bodies far beyond the natives’ ability to inflict any harm, backed the dwindling horde of slimy creatures up onto the fantail. They continued to resist, slashing at bayonets with their unnaturally long handclaws with an almost metallic shkink sound, but the steady fire and the bristling wall of bayonets kept those foreclaws from reaching much flesh. Russ did see one of the creatures dart its tongue out and snatch a musket right from the hands of a Marine—and then drive the bayonet through its own head when the tongue retracted. It was probably the most bizarre thing he’d ever seen, and he imagined the macabre humor of the image would stay with him the rest of his days.
From within the milling mass, a thrumming bellow arose, like the steady roar of a thousand frogs. The creatures fighting on the fantail seemed to pay it no heed, but suddenly there was firing from the direction of the lounge again! Behind them! Chapelle risked a glance, and there was Ben Mallory with about twenty Navy ’Cats armed with muskets, shooting at more of the monsters trying to clear the rail.
“Son of a bitch!” Russ murmured. “They sucked us in and tried to flank us!” He raised his voice. “Bekiaa, keep up the pressure! We got company!”
Lieutenant Bekiaa also risked a glance. “We will. Take that damn Laay-nee and a couple Marines. We can spare them here, but those things must not get between us!”
Russ pushed another stripper clip full of .30-06 shells into his rifle’s magazine. The clip fell away and he closed the bolt. “Yeah,” he said. “C’mon, Laney!”
Together with two lightly wounded Marines, reloading as they ran, Russ and Laney sprinted around the wide cargo hatch and the big crates cradled upon it. Yellow eyes peeked over the rail in front of him and Russ fired low, between them. The eyes disappeared. As he neared, Russ saw that Ben and his reserves were doing essentially the same thing. Few of the creatures were reaching the deck, and those that did died almost instantly. Ben was firing carefully, aiming his pistol with every round, each shot pitching one of the creatures backward as soon as it showed itself.
“I thought I told you to stay out of it!” Russ said breathlessly.
“I did stay out of it,” Ben replied. “As long as possible. I decided I was perfectly happy to let you deal with these nasty frog-lizards, or whatever the hell they are.” He fired again. “It isn’t possible now. Sneaky bastards tried to come up from below! They undogged the hatches, Russ! I’ve got some guys watching them now, but it came as a hell of a surprise. I also sent half the reserves forward when I saw what they were trying to pull back here.” He shook his head. “A hell of a thing. They aren’t running either, not like Grik, and they don’t really even have weapons. God help us if the Grik ever learn to fight like this!”
“God help us tonight!” Russ replied.
Ben shook his head. “They’re about done, I think. Their scheme didn’t work, and isn’t going to. If they’re as smart as I’m afraid they are, they’ll figure that out pretty quick. Back here, we’re just killing them.”
Ben was right. A few moments later, the thrumming roar sounded again from aft, followed by another one forward. No more heads appeared over the bulwarks, and toward the fantail they heard almost continuous splashes as the creatures there suddenly jumped over the side. Ben dropped the magazine out of his Colt and pushed down on the remaining cartridges with his thumb. Taking a few loose rounds from his pocket, he refilled the magazine and shoved it back into the pistol. Only his slightly trembling fingers betrayed the fact that he’d been nervous at all. Flipping the thumb safety up, he dropped the pistol back in its holster. “It was a tough fight, Maw, but we won,” he said softly.
Bekiaa, Isak, and Bekiaa’s remaining Marines slowly, carefully, worked their way back across the corpse-strewn deck. Only now, in the light of more lanterns, could Russ see that nearly all of them were at least lightly wounded. God, he thought, I hope Those damn Things’ claws aren’t poisonous!
“Double the guard for the remainder of the night,” Russ said. “No wounded, though. If you even got a scratch, get it looked at now. Pass the word.” He sighed. “First priority tomorrow is getting the generator up and running; power every bulb on this bucket we can get to light up! We need to send a message to Tolson too. Tell them we need reinforcements and the rest of our salvage crew....” He paused. “But what if those slimy devils gang up on the barges? Hell. Lieutenant Monk’ll be in charge of the next bunch. He’ll have to make sure they’re ready for anything, that’s all.”
“What about the wounded, Cap-i-taan Chaapelle?” Bekiaa asked.
“I already said I want them looked at,” Russ repeated tiredly.
“No, I mean the ‘enemy’ wounded.”
“Maybe somebody ought’a throw some water on ’em,” Gilbert said, looking at the half dozen “frog-lizards” gasping in the meager shade offered by one of the crates. “They’re gonna dry out like a smushed toad in the road.”
Isak shrugged. “Let ’em. Nasty bastards!” Isak was missing a patch from his scruffy beard on the left side of his face, courtesy of one of the sticky tongues the night before. He also had a bandage around his left hand where a couple of claws had “barely” touched him. He hadn’t even felt the “scratch,” but it nearly severed two of the tendons in his hand. A little polta paste and the company corpsman, or “corpscat”—whatever—had absolutely, positively assured him he’d be okay. Maybe. Twenty-odd Marines had worse injuries, and three had died. Two of the dead would be burnt in the Lemurian way. One would be buried, the “Navy” way, per his dying wish. All their names would be added to the growing tablet monument on the parade ground in Baalkpan. The dead frog-lizards had been thrown over the side.
“What’re you two doin’ here?” Laney snarled. “I been lookin’ all over for ya. We gotta raise steam today and check for leaks.”
“You ain’t my boss no more, Laney,” Isak declared. “Lieutenant Monk’s over all of us. Far as I’m concerned, until he gets here—today, I hope—we’re on ‘official terms’ only. I don’t even gotta talk to you ’cept in the line o’ dooty.”
“This is duty, you moron. Cap’n Chapelle’s orders. ’Sides, we’re all still snipes, and I’m King Snipe ... unless you want to strike for the job.”
Isak took a step back. Laney probably had a hundred pounds on him. “I ain’t goin’ down there where them tongue-grabbin’ buggers can get me,” he insisted. He held up his hand. “And besides, my best flipper’s wounded.”
“Since when are you left-handed? Don’t worry about it. A squad o’ Marines has already been below, checking stuff out.” He grinned savagely. “Found some more crates of them tommy guns too. Anyway, all the frog-lizards is gone—and there weren’t none in the fireroom anyway.”
They heard a splash near the “prisoners” and turned to see that someone else had had the same idea as Gilbert. Chapelle, Bekiaa, Jannik, Moe, and Sammy were standing near the dripping prisoners. Mallory was there too, but keeping his distance. Probably under orders. He had his pistol out, though.
“Oh, well,” Isak sighed. “Since I ain’t gonna get to watch them bastards desiccate, I might as well get some work done.”
“Now what?” Bekiaa asked.
“You said you got the ‘feeling’ you might have communicated with them last night. Somehow. What made you think that?”
“I don’t know if I ‘thought’ it, really,” Bekiaa replied. Her tail twitched irritati
on, but from her blinks Chapelle knew she was irritated with herself. “Whatever it was, the feeling was gone as soon as Laay-nee started shooting.”
“Shooting make no difference,” Moe said. “They come to kill, not talk. No can talk. They come all over ship. Even we talk to these”—he indicated the area aft where his group had fought—“we not talk to others ... ah ... for-ord.”
“He’s right,” Chapelle said. “Maybe you startled them, or even got the group aft wondering a little, but they hit the guards forward at the same time. One way or another, the fight was on. There was nothing you could have done. They did come to kill us.” He paused, looking at the creatures. The dark color he’d noticed the night before was a brownish purple and the light was a yellowish orange. Weird, but probably well suited to the dingy water they lived in. They wore no clothes and had no implements, no ornaments of any kind. There was no physical evidence that they harbored any intelligence whatsoever. But last night they’d employed what could have been a damned effective tactic, and their “operation” had been well coordinated. “Throw some more water on them,” he said, and when it was done, he watched the creatures’ reactions closely. Four of the six didn’t seem badly injured, and they continued staring at him with their weird, almost fluorescent eyes, but it seemed to him that the water did give them some relief. They weren’t gasping as much, anyway.
“I wonder,” Russ said quietly. There were still a few dead monsters on the fo’c’sle that hadn’t been dumped yet. He called for one. When it arrived, carried between two disgust-blinking Marines, he had them lay it down in front of the prisoners. They showed no reaction, but of course there were several weapons pointed at them. “Jannik,” Russ said, “I want you to poke your sword in that thing’s tongue and make it flop around. Make it look like it’s striking.”
Jannik looked at him and blinked, but then did as he was told.
“Ben, shoot it in the head.”
For a moment, Mallory didn’t think he’d heard right, then he grinned. As soon as Jannik stepped back, he blasted away one of the still dully glowing eyes. The report of the pistol and what it did to the corpse caused the creatures to flinch, but that was all.
“Now, Jannik, grab its arm and make like it’s clawing the deck.” He did so, understanding beginning to dawn. Again, after he’d done it for a moment, Russ had Ben shoot it again, nearly blowing the dead skull apart this time.
Taking a breath, Russ pulled his own pistol out and pointed it at the creatures. He took a couple of steps forward, within easy range of their tongues, and squatted down to face them.
“Are you nuts?” Ben exclaimed, pointing his Colt, ready to fire if any of them even twitched.
“I think I know what I’m doing,” Russ said. Still staring into the closest huge yellow eyes, he pointed the pistol away. For an instant, while the thing’s eyes followed the pistol, he figured he’d just committed suicide, but then the eyes came back to rest on his and he knew it understood. “Well,” he said, a little shakily. “Bring some polta paste. Sammy, let them see you smear some on your arm before you try to put any on them.”
“You think they’ll let him?” Ben asked. Sammy was clearly keenly interested in his answer as well.
“Yeah. Like I said, let them see you put it on your wound, then point at one of theirs. Do it slow and gentle. Easy does it.”
“Easy does it, you betcha!” Sammy said sincerely.
After the wounded creatures were successfully doctored, Ben stepped over to Chapelle. “So. Now what? We’ve gotten them to let us smear some ooze on their oozy skins. You think that’ll make a difference?”
“No.” Russ shrugged. “I don’t know. It would to me, but we can’t think like that. Look, I ain’t a philosopher, I’m just a torpedoman at heart. You’re the one born with the big officer brain, but it just so happens I’m not a bad sailor, so they gave me a ship. That doesn’t mean I feel qualified to speculate on stuff like this.” He paused, still staring at the “frog-lizards.” “You know, we never could really figure out how the Japs think, even with Shinya to try and explain it to us, and at least they were humans. We still don’t have a clue what makes the Grik tick. I think it’s pretty amazing that us and the ’Cats are on the same wavelength on most things.” He nodded at the strange creatures. “For all we know, not killing them and doctoring them up might make them hate us even more.”
“So what do we do with ’em now?” Ben asked. “It’s going to be a hot day, as usual. We can’t just keep throwing water on ’em. The guys have too much work to do, both guarding and trying to refloat this tub. I guess we could put ’em down in the forward hold, but I was kind of hoping, if we raise steam, we might get it pumped out a little.”
Russ rubbed his eyes. “Let ’em go,” he said.
“Let them go?”
“Yeah. We might have a whole other batch to deal with tonight. But we know they talk to each other ... sort of.” He shook his head and smiled. “Sorry. Tired. I’m rambling, I guess. Maybe what I’m hoping is that they’ll think things over. They came at us and got creamed. We treat their wounded and turn ’em loose, maybe that’ll at least confuse them enough to leave us alone for a while.”
Ben chuckled. “So you are hoping they think a little like us?”
“I guess. At least on the basic, ‘don’t sit on the blowtorch twice’ level.”
The natives were still restless, but now they were afraid, and somewhat perplexed. The attempt to recover the Warren had gone horribly wrong. The strange creatures that infested it possessed inconceivable magic, and capable notions of the art of territorial conquest and defense. The natives considered themselves practiced students of that art. They used it every day to hunt and simply survive. How else had they managed to maintain complete control of such a vast body of water as their lake for so long? Now, after the terrible losses of the night before, their very hegemony over the lake itself might be at risk. They couldn’t possibly mount another such attempt to retrieve the Warren. They’d be hardpressed just to defend their territory from others of their own kind. They had no doubt they would succeed; they practiced the art well, but it would be difficult for a time—and they would, of course, require a new Great Mother sooner than they’d hoped. It was all so inconvenient.
Their perplexity had more to do with the behavior of the strange creatures after the combat was over than anything else. First, to their amazement, the strange creatures—clear victors in the contest—did not consume the dead, as was their right. Instead, they threw them into the water for the natives to claim, almost as an offering to a respected adversary. The corpses were duly retrieved. Food was food, after all, and it wouldn’t do to refuse such an odd but flattering gift. The most perplexing thing of all, however, was that the strange creatures also released the wounded. This had almost never been done before. Ancient legends told of such deeds, often recounted when the natives gathered together in times of plenty to softly croak and wheeze their tales of mythic heroes. A favorite of these, and one of the oldest remembered, recounted the tale of a supreme Hunter and practitioner of the art who, after rending their own earliest ancestors in fair and honorable combat, displayed a barely remembered and vaguely understood virtue known as Mercy, before guiding their ancestors to this very lake and gifting them with its bounty.
Evidently, the strange creatures were not only consummate practitioners and students of the art, but they understood the mythic virtue of Mercy, even when they were the victors after a combat they did not start. Most odd.
That night, virtually every native of the lake gathered around the Warren, their bright yellow eyes staring in wonder at the magical spectacle before them. The strange creatures had somehow literally brought the Warren to life! It gasped in the darkness with luminous smoke and sparks spiraling upward like the distant burning mountains! Many bright white eyes glared from it in all directions, and the strange creatures moved about beneath them, tending the living Warren’s needs. Another string of floating things arrived,
shortly after dark, bearing even more of the strange creatures, but the floating things were left in peace. The natives conversed in a muted rumble, so many voices at once, and came to the consensus that they’d been wrong to combat the strange creatures.
When the Warren first arrived, it had been sickly and wounded. The strange creatures had left it here. Presuming it to be a corpse, the natives had used it as they used all things in the world—for whatever it seemed best suited. They turned it into a shelter. It never occurred to any of them that it might be still alive, suffering the indignity of their trespass. Now the strange creatures had returned to what might even be Their Great Mother, with the sole intention of healing it—as they’d attempted to heal the wounded natives that attacked them!
Slowly, as the night wore on, yellow eyes dipped beneath the surface of the water and disappeared. Food was not a problem, thanks to the benevolence of the strange creatures, but a new Warren, of a more traditional style, would have to be begun. It would not be as convenient or enduring, but it would be theirs. Most would begin the work in a somber, meditative mood.
CHAPTER 14
Eastern Sea
Nervously, Matt endured the one-handed shave. Somehow—even Juan couldn’t remember exactly how or when—the Filipino had apparently broken his left arm during the terrible storm. He swore it hadn’t been when the ship nearly capsized; he’d have remembered that. He was darkly suspicious that it happened when Earl Lanier fell on him sometime later. Now the arm hung suspended in a sling while Matt did his best to project calm indifference as Juan’s shaky, unsupported razor scraped the stubble from his face. The sea was almost calm at last. The morning sky was blue, with a purple-tinged fleece of clouds. The typhoon, Strakka, or whatever it was, had passed, and like other Strakkas he’d experienced, there wasn’t any fooling around. When it was gone, it was gone. There was no lingering stormy aftereffect. In seas where land was near, there was always a tremendous detritus of shredded vegetation, trees, and tumbling corpses of fish and animals. The corpses never lasted long once the sea calmed down. At least within the Malay Barrier, flasher fish took care of that. Out here, in the broad Pacific, he didn’t know. Lanier, who fished over the side whenever the ship was at ease, hadn’t caught any flashies off their little atoll, although he caught plenty of other stuff. No, out here, the end of the Strakka had almost a cleansing effect; as if in its might it had absorbed and scoured the sea clear of all but the mildest weather.
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