Pass of Fire

by Taylor Anderson

  Gravois allowed a genuine smile to grow. That was something he could get away with, since it might even be argued in the NUS that he was only protecting an ally from their aggression. And the whole ridiculous, wooden NUS fleet would be at his mercy. There’d be little need to tread so softly after it was gone. Ciano would be pleased to get out of here and back to sea where he could turn his men into a crew again, and what a surprise it would be to Contrammiraglio Oriani when the men and ship he’d marooned saved the new alliance with the Dominion. He’d look like a fool and couldn’t keep his command of Ramb V at Ascension Island. Perhaps Gravois would get the post? He’d probably be able to demand it, and the Triumvirate would have to agree. Then, coordinating all League naval operations in the Atlantic, he’d be in a perfect position to launch the rest of his great plan.

  On second thought, however, why should he do everything Don Hernan requested? He needed Gravois and Leopardo now, but had grand ambitions of his own. Whatever happened, it was obvious he meant to take all the credit for himself. If Mayta successfully defended El Paso del Fuego without League assistance and Leopardo entirely crushed the NUS fleet and the Doms destroyed their army, Don Hernan would be free to pursue direct negotiations with Oriani or the Triumvirate itself at his leisure. Gravois had to keep Don Hernan indebted to the League through him and ensure he continued to require their protection. He thought he already knew how to manage that.

  Still smiling, he raised his glass, and Don Hernan touched it with his own. “Tell me,” Gravois asked, “how is His Supreme Holiness?”

  “Poorly, I fear,” Don Hernan replied with a face of pure regret. “He pines for the afterlife in the underworld.” He smiled wistfully. “Or in the heavens above, as I understand your people believe? I’ll try to get used to that.” Strangely, that statement probably surprised Gravois more than anything he’d ever heard the Blood Cardinal say, since it showed how flexible the man who wanted to be Pope of the League truly was in matters of faith. “Sadly,” Don Hernan went on, “I fear he can’t resist the temptations of paradise much longer. He’ll never see the world you and I will make while he inhabits flesh.” He sorrowfully lowered his gaze. “I’ll always seek his guidance, of course. I’m sure he’ll hear my prayers.”

  CHAPTER 8

  ////// USS Walker

  On the Zambezi River near the Neckbone

  Grik Africa

  February 8, 1945

  Matt Reddy was sitting in his captain’s chair bolted to the forward bulkhead in the pilothouse of USS Walker, squinting to read the latest report on events and preparations in the East. The day was fading fast, however, and he finally blinked and gave up. Later, he told himself. Rubbing his eyes, he looked out past the number-one gun on the fo’c’sle and watched the work in the channel. The Seven Boat and two other PTs of Nat Hardee’s MTB-Ron-1 were still dropping charges over the side. Each was essentially a depth charge fitted with a time fuse instead of a pressure-sensitive detonator. The explosive barrels splashed in the reeking, murky water and sank amid the wreckage choking the channel. A lot of junk had already been blasted out. Walker was standing by at battle stations to cover the operation against Grik armored cruisers that might try to rush through and pound the torpedo boats while they just sat there, laden with explosives and no torpedoes in their tubes. They’d be practically helpless if they couldn’t get underway quickly enough.

  “How’re the kids doing?” asked Matt’s XO, Brad “Spanky” McFarlane, suddenly appearing next to the chair, scratching the reddish hair poking out from under his hat. Even standing, Spanky was little taller than Matt sitting down, though, to be fair, the chair was elevated. Regardless, Spanky’s presence had always been bigger than he was.

  “Okay, so far. At least the lizards haven’t thrown anything at them.”

  “Yeah? Good,” Spanky said, still scratching. He stopped. “You know, maybe you ought not let Nat jump out front so much,” he finally said. Matt looked at him, surprised. “He’s the CO, and it’s his squadron. I can’t tell him how to run it any more than I could tell Ben how to run the Air Corps, or Pete to run the army.”

  Spanky snorted. “That’s a buncha bull . . . sir. You can tell everybody what to do. Why, you could get on the horn right now and say ‘chicken’ to Chairman Letts, and him and every member of the Union Assembly—except maybe the Sularans—would start runnin’ around in circles, flappin’ their arms fit to bust.”

  Matt stifled a laugh at the mental image but shook his head. “Even if that were true, it isn’t how it’s supposed to be and I’ll never set that precedent. And I won’t tell Nat how to run his MTBs either.” He paused, looking intently at his XO. “What’s this all about?”

  Spanky rolled his eyes. “I know what you’ll say before I even bring it up, but I’m gonna do it anyway.” He pointed out at the darkening shapes a few hundred yards to the west. The boats were finally finished dropping their charges and had started their engines. Greenish-yellow phosphorescent water churned around their screws and at their bows. “Nat’s just a kid, damn it,” Spanky growled. “So’s Abel Cook, who just lost his best friend at Zanzibar, nearly got killed here, and you just made a full-blown major. I doubt either of ’em’s eighteen yet. They were just little kids when they came here in S-19. . . .”

  “And they’ve been doing a man’s job ever since,” Matt interrupted. “Look, I know how you feel, but I bet we’ve got twenty thousand ’Cats aboard ships or under arms who aren’t fifteen!”

  “That’s different,” Spanky protested. “’Cats grow up quicker.”

  For the first time in quite a while, Matt reflected on his own thirty-five years. Spanky had to be close to forty. He shook his head. “Maybe physically, but they’ve all grown up fast in every other way that matters, because they had to. He nodded out at the accelerating MTBs. “Just like Nat and Abel, and the even younger kids that came with them. Every one’s a midshipman or nurse already.” He barked a laugh. “Hell, Alan Letts is what, twenty-five? Twenty-six? He’s the leader of the United Homes! Governor-Empress Rebecca McDonald is Abel’s age and she’s in charge of the whole damn Empire of the New Britain Isles! Saan-Kakja’s probably less than twenty, leading the Filpin Lands.” He frowned. “I don’t think either Chack or General Queen Safir Maraan are over twenty-one, and do you know a deadlier pair?”

  “Silva and Larry maybe, one on one,” Spanky admitted reluctantly. “But that ain’t my point—or yours either.” He sighed. “It’s just . . . Hell, I guess we’re the old fogies in this war, the wobbly, white-haired ‘brass’ we always griped about. But I’ll be damned if I’ll turn into one o’ those fossilized old bastards—an’ I’ll never quit worryin’ about kids like Nat. Damn near his whole squadron got wiped out at Zanzibar and he’s already at it again. Not many guys our age can do that, over and over.”

  “But we do,” Matt said heavily. “We have. Everybody has to in this war.”

  “Yeah. But what’s it costing us? And as far as the kids go, ours or the ’Cats’, it’s not so much about age as it is what they may think they have to prove because of their age, see? I guess that’s what worries me most.”

  Matt chuckled darkly, quietly. “I doubt that bothers anybody as much as you think. As I said, it’s a very young man’s—and ’Cat’s—war. I’d worry more whether fogies like us can keep up with them, if I were you.” Louder he said, “Left full rudder. Starboard ahead full, port, full astern. Where’s Ellie?”

  “Left full rudder, ay!” cried the ’Cat at the big brass wheel. “Full ahead staar-board, full astern port, ay,” answered the ’Cat at the EOT. Walker shuddered as the screws bit and she started to twist. “James Ellis is comin’ up now,” called the tiny ’Cat talker everybody called Minnie after a certain mouse, and because her voice was just as small as she was. “She’ll take station as soon as we’re outa the way.”

  Matt nodded. It was getting dark fast. With the night might come bombing zeppe
lins or rockets, even heavy artillery, if the Grik had managed to sneak any up in range on the rougher north shore. It would be hard, physically demanding work, but the same terrain that made moving large numbers of guns and troops nearly impossible made it easier for them to sneak in a few unobserved. They’d done it before. Regardless, the Allies had to keep a powerful picket in the river, and Matt’s precious destroyers and Nat’s MTBs were all they had for now. Even though the river here, short of the Neckbone, was more like a wide lake, the main channel was barely a mile wide and they couldn’t risk Gray in such confined water. Not for this. She was surprisingly nimble for her size, able to turn almost as tightly as Walker, but her extra draft meant she had only half as much river to maneuver in.

  It wasn’t all bleak. No longer needed at Soala on the Ungee River to the South, two Republic Princeps-class monitors were supposed to be heading this way, creeping up the coast. With their shallow draft, heavy armor, and big breech-loading guns, they’d be perfect for this kind of duty. But they were never designed for the blue water they had to cross to get here and would have to proceed slowly, with great care. Who knew when they’d arrive? That left Walker, Mahan, and James Ellis to cover the MTBs. At least they were relatively small, agile targets.

  Not like her, Matt thought grimly, gazing at the black silhouette of scorched and twisted wreckage that had been Santa Catalina, now off to port. An awful lot of good people died in that old ship, especially after she was immobilized and became a sitting, half-sunk target. But my God, she went out with style! “Rudder amidships,” he said softly. “All ahead slow.” James Ellis was just ahead now, steering to pass along Walker’s starboard side. They didn’t dare steam so close in complete darkness because they couldn’t show any lights and the bottom of the river truly was littered with an astonishing amount of hull-tearing wreckage. They had to stay strictly within the carefully marked channel and there was always danger of heavy floating debris.

  The charges laid by the MTBs detonated behind them, throwing brightly glowing cataracts mixed with shattered timbers in the sky. More debris’ll wash downriver now, Matt thought. And more charges’ll keep coming all night long. Sooner or later, the Grik’ll have to try to stop us—if they haven’t got something even nastier planned for after we force the passage. It’s amazing how quickly imperatives change in war, he mused on. Santa Catalina died to jam this river, to protect us from the Grik. Now the blockage she made protects the Grik from us.

  “Wow,” Spanky murmured, looking out past the bridgewing to starboard. A heavy Grik artillery barrage had opened up on the east side of the Allied defenses onshore. Long tongues of bright, yellow-orange fire stabbed the darkness in what seemed a continuous ripple of flashes. More flashes crackled on or behind the first Allied line as exploding shells popped and flayed the earth—and who knew how many people. Not many, I hope, Matt thought. Most’ll be under cover. The Grik do this every night now, sometimes several times. That’s okay, he added grimly to himself as Allied guns answered and the light show quickly intensified. We do it back, and we’re still better at it. And we bomb their asses wherever we want.

  “I wish we’d shoot at ’em,” came Lieutenant Tab-At’s voice as she joined them on the bridge. “Tabby” was a gray-furred Lemurian with a very female, very humanlike physique she’d once gloried in tormenting Spanky with when she was his understudy in engineering. Her reasons for doing so had been complex. At first she just did it for fun—until she realized she was crazy about him and wanted his attention. She’d grown since then, in many ways, and still loved him—hopelessly, she now realized—because he loved her in a different, fatherlike way. But she loved Walker too, and had risen to become her engineering officer in his stead. She’d absorbed everything he knew, and with the help of Chief Isak Reuben—possibly one of the best, if weirdest, snipes any navy ever had—Spanky was proud to acknowledge Tabby had probably become a better engineer than he’d ever been.

  “I’d love to,” Matt replied, “but we’d literally just be shooting in the dark. We’d kill some Grik, sure, but the army and Marines can do it as good or better, for now, and they have a lot more ammo. Ours is harder to make. And we will use plenty when we make our push, hammering the Grik on their river flank, but there’s no sense reminding them we can every day.”

  “You don’t really think they’ll forget,” Spanky said. It wasn’t a question.

  “No,” Matt replied. “The Grik have finally wised up.” He shook his head. “Some have, anyway. No sense educating the rest, though, or getting them used to us shooting at them. It ought to at least fluster them a bit when we do.” He considered. “And we should have plenty of ammo when the time comes. We’re still a little strapped, but supply will catch up.”

  “I hope so,” Tabby said. “I wish the Grik haad more supply problems! How come they never run outa aammo? How come we ain’t bombed out all the places they make powder?”

  “That’s a good question,” Matt told her. “And I’m sure we’ve blasted a bunch, but I don’t think they make powder the same way we do, in large-volume facilities. They had big, mass-production assembly lines for ships and such, and probably have the same sorts of places for small arms and cannon. Those upriver are mostly rubble now, but they’ve got a whole continent to draw on and hide stuff in. We haven’t seen a speck of the joint. We’ve hit obvious factories around the lakes to the west and north, but don’t have enough Clippers to hit everywhere. We never will have enough for that. So the Clippers raid around, or Nancys run around in daylight looking for smaller targets of opportunity, but they all still have to focus close, targeting stuff the Grik rebuild nearby, or hitting obvious supply runs on the land or river. It’s like stomping ants. We might win—I think we can—but we’ll never get ’em all, and there’re a few things we’ll never overcome. First, sticking to the ant analogy, there’s just too damn many Grik we can’t even see, doing stuff we don’t know about. Second, while we’re at the end of a very long supply line, we’ve pushed them back on top of theirs.”

  He shrugged. “And I’m sure they’re running short of stuff, maybe even powder. That’s what they use for warheads and fuel for their rockets, and those’ve kind of quit around here. As fast and dirty as they were cranking them out, it has to make me wonder why. Is it a shortage of materials, labor, transportation, a place to make ’em? Or are they saving them back to smother us?” He took a long breath, still watching the artillery duel onshore.

  “Well, how do you think they make powder?” Spanky pressed.

  “Not me. Courtney Bradford,” Matt replied. “A report he sent, which I got to read before it got dark, talked about all the cottage—or mud-hut—industries they turned up in the intact parts of Soala after they took it. The whole population of Uul laborers seemed in on it, making everything from leather armor to cartridge boxes, even the fins that stabilize rockets, which’ve never been seen in the south. It was all more or less unskilled labor, just cutting stuff out to a pattern, or sewing stuff together, but it fits in with the large-scale manufacturing we’ve seen them do, even on ships. One group works itself to death making one part, a certain frame assembly or something; another group makes something else. It all finally gets gathered in one place and assembled by some Hij overseer who knows the big picture.”

  “Sounds like BuOrd, in the old days,” Spanky quipped, “only the Grik’s stuff works.”

  Matt ignored him. “Anyway, seems somebody looking around for Courtney or Inquisitor Choon found a few places with stone crushers the size of tractor tires, screens, drying racks, and big clay pots full of all the stuff to make powder. Didn’t find any stores of finished powder—that probably all got delivered as soon as it was done, which makes sense—but there was plenty of evidence on the crushers.”

  “And they had screens, which explains how they keep it consistent, if they mix it right,” Spanky groused.

  “Yeah. They probably use what’s left for bursting charges, or
rewet it and grind it again. The point is, Courtney’s discovery is anecdotal, but if the Grik do that all over, they’re probably not running out of powder or a lot of other things.”

  “So how do we beat them?” Tabby demanded. “You said you think we caan.”

  Matt nodded, finally ready to kick at least part of his scheme around with people he knew would keep it mum. “Hij Geerki’s around all those Grik we took at Grik City every day. He’s their mayor, for all intents and purposes.” A small grin spread across his face at the thought. “He’s seen how much they’ve changed as more and more of ’em live longer than they ever expected to, and they get a taste of a, well, less-oppressive life than they had before. Don’t get me wrong, he works ’em pretty hard and none of ’em have it easy, but I guess that’s a good enough description. The thing is, all the Grik are older now, even those in front of us. At least in the sense they’re allowed to think a little.” He glanced at Spanky. “All the same, don’t forget, most of them are still basically kids too, and they’ve all been through a lot: total war that touches every one of ’em, blood and suffering, and crazy-fast changes to every part of their lives. And they can actually see change happening. I can’t stress enough how new and disconcerting that must be for them. The only constant that remains is their new Celestial Mother, regardless of whether she has as much power as the old one did.” There’d been a lot of speculation about that, and Muriname confirmed that Kurokawa had been sure that First General Esshk had usurped most of her authority.