Pass of Fire
Page 1
THE DESTROYERMEN SERIES
Into the Storm
Crusade
Maelstrom
Distant Thunders
Rising Tides
Firestorm
Iron Gray Sea
Storm Surge
Deadly Shores
Straits of Hell
Blood in the Water
Devil’s Due
River of Bones
Pass of Fire
ACE
Published by Berkley
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Copyright © 2019 by Taylor Anderson
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Anderson, Taylor, 1963– author.
Title: Pass of fire / Taylor Anderson.
Description: First edition. | New York: Ace, 2019. | Series: Destroyermen; 14
Identifiers: LCCN 2018057845 | ISBN 9780399587535 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780399587542 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Imaginary wars and battles—Fiction. | Destroyers (Warships)—Fiction. | GSAFD: Alternative histories (Fiction) | Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3601.N5475 P37 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018057845
First Edition: June 2019
Cover art by Liddell Jones / American Artist
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
The Destroyermen Series
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Maps
Author’s Note
Our History Here
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Epilogue
Cast of Characters
Specifications
About the Author
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks, as always, to my agent, Russell Galen, and my amazingly supportive editor, Anne Sowards. I appreciate you both more than I can say. I don’t have a swarm of proofreading pals to help me pick through things before I submit a manuscript, and Anne is usually the first person to wade into the jumble of what I’ve written, instead of the second, third—or thirtieth. All the more reason I’m indebted to her. That said, there is a fair-sized pack of people who bounce things around on my website, and whether the story is ever actually inspired by what they post or not, I’m inspired by their imagination and dedication to the yarn. Thanks (in the order their names pop into my head) to William, Lou, Charles, Matt, Don, Steve, Nestor, Clifton, Matthieu, Alexey, Doug, Paul, Joe, Justin, Owain, “The General,” Henry, Jeff—and I’m sure I missed some more again. Sorry. If nothing else, you guys have kept me as consistent as is probably possible, and you do remind me of things that likely require revisiting from time to time. Special thanks to technical advisors Cap’n Pat Maloney, who also recently sent me a special artifact I’ll always treasure, and Mark Wheeler, who “keeps ’em flying.” From a pure “inspirational antics” standpoint, I can’t forget to thank Dennis Petty, Eric Holland, Fred Fiedler, and Mark Beck. Good friends all. Oh, and of course there’s Jim Goodrich, who’s always ready—after the fact—to point out where I goofed stuff up. Thanks, buddy. Time to rub out the character based on you! In that same vein, I’m tempted to stop thanking Dave Leedom, though he still helps with the flying too. I think he’s gone, I don’t know, maybe a little funny in the head, and I may just be encouraging him.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
A cast of characters and list of equipment specifications can be found at the end of this book.
OUR HISTORY HERE
By March 1, 1942, the war “back home” was a nightmare. Hitler was strangling Europe and the Japanese were rampant in the Pacific. Most immediate, from my perspective as a . . . mature Australian engineer stranded in Surabaya Java, the Japanese had seized Singapore and Malaysia, destroyed the American Pacific Fleet, and neutralized their forces in the Philippines; conquered most of the Dutch East Indies; and were landing on Java. The one-sided Battle of the Java Sea had shredded ABDAFLOAT: a jumble of antiquated American, British, Dutch, and Australian warships united by the vicissitudes of war. Its destruction left the few surviving ships scrambling to slip past the tightening Japanese gauntlet. For most, it was too late.
With several other refugees, I managed to board an old American destroyer, USS Walker, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Matthew Reddy. Whether fate, providence, or mere luck intervened, Walker and her sister Mahan, their gallant destroyermen cruelly depleted by combat, were not fated for the same destruction that claimed their consorts in escape. Instead, at the height of a desperate action against the mighty Japanese battlecruiser Amagi, commanded by the relentless Hisashi Kurokawa, they were . . . engulfed by an anomalous force, manifested as a bizarre, greenish squall—and their battered, leaking, war-torn hulks were somehow swept into another world entirely.
I say “another world” because, though geographically similar, there are few additional resemblances. It’s as if whatever cataclysmic event doomed the prehistoric life on “our” earth many millions of years ago never occur
red, and those terrifying, fascinating creatures endured, sometimes evolving down wildly different paths. We quickly discovered “people,” however, calling themselves Mi-Anakka, who are highly intelligent, social folk, with large eyes, fur, and expressive tails. In my ignorance and excitement, I promptly dubbed them Lemurians, based on their strong (if more feline) resemblance to the giant lemurs of Madagascar. (Growing evidence may confirm they sprang from a parallel line, with only the most distant ancestor connecting them to lemurs, but “Lemurians” has stuck.) We just as swiftly learned they were engaged in an existential struggle with a somewhat reptilian species commonly called Grik. Also bipedal, Grik display bristly crests and tail plumage, dreadful teeth and claws, and are clearly descended from the dromaeosaurids in our fossil record.
Aiding the first group against the second—Captain Reddy had no choice—we made fast, true friends who needed our technical expertise as badly as we needed their support. Conversely, we now also had an implacable enemy bent on devouring all competing life. Many bloody battles ensued while we struggled to help our friends against their far more numerous foes, and it was for this reason I sometimes think—when disposed to contemplate destiny—that we survived all our previous ordeals and somehow came to this place. I don’t know everything about anything, but I do know a little about a lot. The same was true of Captain Reddy and his US Asiatic Fleet sailors. We immediately commenced trying to even the odds, but militarizing the generally peaceful Lemurians was no simple task. Still, to paraphrase, the prospect of being eaten does focus one’s efforts amazingly, and dire necessity is the mother of industrialization. To this day, I remain amazed by what we accomplished so quickly with so little, especially considering how rapidly and tragically our “brain trust” was consumed by battle.
In the meantime, we discovered other humans—friends and enemies—who joined our cause, required our aid, or posed new threats. Even worse than the Grik (from a moral perspective, in my opinion) was the vile Dominion in South and Central America. A perverse mix of Incan/Aztecan blood-ritual tyranny flavored with a dash of seventeenth-century Catholicism and more advanced technology brought by earlier travelers, the Dominion’s aims were similar to the Grik: conquest, of course, but founded on the principle “Convert or die.”
I now believe that, faced with only one of these enemies, we could’ve prevailed rather quickly, despite the odds. Burdened by both, we could never concentrate our forces and the war lingered on. To make matters worse, the Grik were aided by the madman Kurokawa, who, after losing his Amagi at the Battle of Baalkpan, pursued a warped agenda all his own. And just as we came to the monumental conclusion that not all historical human timelines we encountered exactly mirrored ours, we began to feel the malevolent presence of yet another power centered in the Mediterranean. This League of Tripoli was composed of fascist French, Italian, Spanish, and German factions from a different 1939 than we remembered. They hadn’t merely “crossed over” with a pair of battle-damaged destroyers, but possessed a powerful task force originally intended to wrest Egypt—and the Suez Canal—from Great Britain.
We had few open conflicts with the League at first, though they seemed inexplicably intent on subversion. Eventually we discovered their ultimate aim was to aid Kurokawa, the Grik, even the Dominion, just enough to ensure our mutual annihilation, thus removing multiple future threats to the hegemony they craved at once. But their schemes never reckoned on the valor of our allies or the resolve of Captain Matthew Reddy. Therefore, when the League Contre-Amiral Laborde, humiliated by a confrontation, not only sank what was, essentially, a hospital ship with his monstrous dreadnought Savoie, but also took some of our people hostage—including Captain Reddy’s pregnant wife—and turned them AND Savoie over to Kurokawa, we were caught horribly off guard. Tensions with the League escalated dramatically, though not enough to risk open hostilities that neither we nor they were ready for. (We later learned such had already occurred in the Caribbean, between USS Donaghey and a League DD, and that 2nd Fleet and General Shinya’s force had suffered a setback in the Americas at the hands of the Dominion.) But we had to deal definitively with Kurokawa at last, and at once. As powerful as he’d become, and with a battleship added to his fleet, we simply couldn’t risk our invasion of Grik Africa with him at our backs.
Captain Reddy conceived a brilliant plan to rescue our friends and destroy Kurokawa once and for all, and in a rare fit of cosmic justice, the operation actually proceeded better than planned, resulting in the removal of one long-standing threat forever, and the capture of Savoie herself. The battle was painfully costly, however, and the forces involved too exhausted and ill placed to respond when word came that the Grik were on the move. It became clear that all our hopes for victory depended on a heretofore reluctant ally; how quickly we (and Shinya) could repair, reorganize, and rearm; and the insanely, suicidally daring defiance of some very dear friends aboard the old Santa Catalina. Under the command of Captain Russ Chappelle, the ancient armed merchantman steamed up the Zambezi and fought the Grik Swarm to a standstill, ultimately blocking the river with her own half-sunken hulk. Even then her fight wasn’t finished, and as reinforcements trickled in, the battle raged on. Finally blasted to utter ruin and with the Grik surging aboard, Commodore Tassanna brought her massive carrier Arracca to evacuate survivors, but Arracca was fatally wounded and forced to beach herself.
Thus, most awkwardly, began the Allied invasion of Grik Africa. Captain Reddy and our Republic allies to the south (with whom, incidentally, I was tagging along) lashed everything at their disposal onward to support our people marooned behind Grik lines. Through daring, terrible suffering, and sheer force of will, “Tassanna’s Toehold” held off the Grik until help arrived and the bloody beachhead in Grik Africa, from which we could finally strike deep against the ancient foe, was secured.
At the same time, on the other side of the world in the Dominion, the vile Don Hernan and the League’s equally unpleasant Victor Gravois were finalizing a treaty of alliance, while General Shinya was surging north through the devastation left in the wake of Don Hernan’s General Mayta. Both were racing to reach the city of El Corazon and secure it—and the fabled El Paso del Fuego. Mayta got there first and began fortifying El Corazon in preparation for Shinya’s and High Admiral Jenks’s inevitable assault. . . .
Excerpt from the foreword to Courtney Bradford’s
The Worlds I’ve Wondered
University of New Glasgow Press, 1956
PROLOGUE
////// Grik Persia
The sun was falling toward the distant western end of the narrow land bridge—barely three miles wide in places—connecting the convoluted coastlines of Persia and Arabia. Colonel Enaak of the 5th Maa-ni-la Cavalry (composed entirely of Lemurians from the Fil-pin Lands) was intrigued by the very different reflections the sunset cast on the great Western Ocean to his left, and the equally endless (from his perspective) but more placid Lake Sirak to the right. Enaak made a trilling sound and Aasi, his viciously protective me-naak mount, ambled forward to lap water from the lake. It was a bit salty but fresh enough to drink, and despite the land bridge, it served as the boundary between General Regent Halik’s Persia and the various Grik vice-regencies of Arabia. The border north of the great lake wasn’t as well defined, but few Grik lived that far from the coast and borders hardly mattered. A dozen troopers accompanied Enaak on this jaunt, not really a scout, just an opportunity to get away from his HQ for some air and exercise and see the sights for a while. Even for that, however, in this land, nobody went alone. His guard detail moved up and allowed their me-naaks to drink as well.
Superficially, me-naaks, or “meanies,” were like giant, long-legged crocodiles with thick hides and long jaws full of razor-sharp teeth. They also wore an almost impenetrable, semisegmented protective case covering their spines and vitals. Large eyes on the sides of their heads and narrow snouts allowed excellent forward vision and depth perception. They wer
e fast, too, as fast as the horses Enaak had heard about, serving as cavalry mounts for the Repubs from southern Africa and for the Second Fleet AEF far to the East. Having never seen a horse, Enaak could only guess which animal had greater stamina. But with their claws and teeth, a well-trained meanie had to be a better battle mount. And at least here, against the Grik, the enemy had nothing like them, and Allied cavalry enjoyed a mobility Grik could only envy.
The troopers sat their saddles, shifting and looking around for threats while their animals slurped cloudy water. Enaak trusted their diligence and allowed himself to contemplate more general matters. Arguably, he commanded the most precariously extended land force in the entire Grand Alliance. A few ships at sea might be more isolated, he reflected, but we’ve still got the weirdest, most indefinite aassignment, on the most aam-biguous front in the waar.
Originally detailed to observe the Grik General Halik’s retreat from Indiaa into Persia and make sure he kept on going as promised, the 5th Maa-ni-la and Colonel Dalibor Svec’s Czech Legion, as his Brotherhood of Volunteers still called themselves (despite retaining few actual human Czechs or Slovaks—whatever they were, and wherever they’d come from), had shadowed Halik far longer and farther than ever expected. And they hadn’t just watched him. On numerous occasions now, they’d actually scouted for him and occasionally even fought the same Persian Grik. That happened most recently when Halik’s army conquered the dead Persian Prime Regent Shighat’s capital at Sagar. Enaak and Svec used their mounted agility to harass attempts to reinforce the city, and lobbed exploding case shot over the walls with their stubby mountain howitzers to break up concentrations of troops behind the gates.
Despite that, Colonel Svec still vigorously rebelled against any notion they were “allied” with Halik—or any Grik. Enaak couldn’t blame him. Svec’s Czechs and their still-mysterious continental Lemurian brothers and sisters had been fighting a guerrilla war against the Grik in Indiaa for decades, the ’Cats having been driven out centuries before. But as long as their vague “treaty of nonaggression” with Halik held, Svec was willing to be selective about which Grik he killed. Enaak was glad. He technically commanded the combined force, but Svec’s people hadn’t joined the United Homes and even their connection to the Grand Alliance was tenuous. Enaak sensed a palpable paranoia on Svec’s part about alliances in general, based on a very old betrayal. But until they reached Sutkag, on the extreme southwest coast of Persia, and Enaak’s 5th Maa-ni-la was finally reinforced (and resupplied!) by ships from Madraas, he’d been significantly outnumbered by Svec’s detachment of the Czech Legion. If Svec had chosen not to honor the treaty, there wasn’t much Enaak could’ve done. Now the 5th had swelled to almost four thousand troopers—brigade strength for a regiment—and combined with the Czechs (human and Lemurian), Enaak practically had a division. But that still didn’t make Svec any easier to handle.