Pass of Fire

by Taylor Anderson

  “Ugliest thing I ever saw,” Spanky grumped, squirting a yellowish stream of Aryaalan tobacco juice at a lingering, glowing hunk of slag. He missed, and Silva immediately ejected a thicker stream that spattered and quenched the target.

  “I guess that’s why you’re a chief gunner’s mate,” Spanky observed dryly. “Gotta be something somebody as stupid-nuts as you can do.”

  “Just applyin’ my basic understandin’ o’ ballistics,” Silva replied piously. “Calculatin’ proper windage an’ elevation in local control—combined with a heavier charge under a bigger pro-jec-tile.”

  Matt snorted, and Tabby’s frown vanished as she burst into a kind of clucking giggle. “You two, spittin’ thaat yellow yuck, look like a pair o’ lizardbirds in a shittin’ maatch!”

  Dennis laughed. “Yeah, maybe.” Then he pointed up. “But Spanky’s right. That’s about the most dis-gustin’ thing I ever laid my eye on, an’ it was your idea.”

  Aided by half a dozen ’Cats on a scaffold high above, Chief Isak Reuben was welding another piece of what looked like a giant bird cage to the bottom of the old destroyer’s port propeller guard. Only a few pieces were left to add, and when they were finished, the contraption should provide some protection for the ship’s screws against heavy floating timbers and other debris still choking the upper Zambezi. Isak wasn’t any happier about it than anyone, but insisted on doing it himself, saying, “If anybody’s gonna weld that abdob-mition to my hull, it’s gonna be me. One o’ them welds goes, an’ the whole wad o’ spaghetti’ll get wound around my screws, seize my engines, an’ pop ever’ valve an’ seal in my firerooms!” Now he stood on the scaffold, staring through dark goggles with deathly intent while the ’Cats held the piece in place and averted their gaze.

  “Gotta do somethin’,” Tabby countered, “if we’re gonna do . . .” She paused and looked around. “Whaat the skipper waants to do.”

  “Oh, knock it off,” Spanky groused. “Comm and operational security’s one thing, but any idiot on Tara can see what we’re up to—and what it means.” He rubbed the reddish whiskers on his cheek, and Matt noticed those on his chin seemed whiter every day. Much like mine would be, he conceded, if I let my beard grow. The hair at his temples was already white.

  “True,” Matt agreed, “but even if the Grik are spying on us, there aren’t any on Tara, and nobody outside her can see what we’re doing.” He scratched his own chin. There had been Grik spies, and guards and scouts had killed more than a dozen skulking in the reeds along the shoreline. Some had even attempted to get close to Arracca Field and Camp Simy. “I don’t think they’ll notice the difference to Ellie, Gray, and Mahan, now they’re back in the water.” U-112 was already bound for Baalkpan, and they’d modified Gray first, then each destroyer rotated back from the Neckbone. It would take a careful and knowledgeable eye even to note a difference in their wakes since there’d been no reason for any of the ships to steam very fast. But that was something else. Nobody knew how well the contraptions would hold up under speed, especially if they hit something. The result might be worse than if they’d done nothing at all. But doing nothing only invited disaster, and they couldn’t afford to let any of their modern ships get incapacitated in the operation ahead. Thinking of that, Matt turned to Silva. “What about our old sailing steamers?”

  All but one of the surviving sail/steam frigates (DDs) remaining in First Fleet had been radically altered, their topmasts and spars removed, leaving only the most rudimentary auxiliary sail capacity. Their heavy guns had been shifted ashore and added to the impressive firepower assembling at the front. In their place, USS Bowles, Saak-Fas, Clark, Kas-Ra-Ar, and Ramic-Sa-Ar had each been equipped with a pair of Baalkpan Arsenal DP 4″-50s, mounted fore and aft, on heavily reinforced decks. Their sides had been as thickly armored as they could manage with armor plate captured at Grik City, and it was hoped they’d fare better against armored Grik cruisers in a close-range fight. Their fewer guns were far more accurate and faster shooting, and equipped with armor-piercing projectiles.

  Only the newest “old-style” DD, USS Revenge, had been spared the change for her speed, and because she carried the same anti–mountain fish (and -submarine) equipment the new steel-hulled four-stackers were getting. She’d been sent to escort the deadheading heavy haulers towing U-112 and carrying Muriname, his people, and their disassembled aircraft.

  “All done,” Silva said. “But that work was carried out alongside. Grik spies’ll have seen it, sure.” No one had any illusions they’d stopped all observers.

  “Nothing for it. We can’t take them by surprise with everything we do,” Matt added significantly. Silva nodded a little uneasily, and Matt wondered again if he was asking too much of the big man and Chack’s Brigade this time. Of course I am, he scolded himself. And I’ve done it over and over. Silva only came out to help tie in the fire control for the converted DDs. He should still be training with Chack. Then again, he consoled himself, I doubt he’s missing much. He always seems able to adapt to anything, and do new, crazy stuff almost instinctively. He frowned. But this is different. . . .

  “How much longer?” Spanky shouted up at Isak. Instead of answering, the scrawny little man stopped, turned, and raised the goggles from his eyes. Sweat streaks left bright, spiderweblike lines in the dark grime on his face and neck.

  “It’ll take as long as it goddamn takes . . . sir,” he snapped back in his reedy voice.

  “Goddamn!” squawked Petey, rising on Silva’s shoulder and flapping the membranes between his front and back legs as if just as surprised by Isak’s outburst as anyone.

  “Hey!” Spanky began, but stopped, flustered. Isak hadn’t really intended any disrespect, and his already bizarre personality was just as plagued by frustration and stress as the rest of them. Ranting at him now would only make him more sullen than usual and slow him down. “Just hurry up. We gotta get her out of here tonight, and I ain’t real happy about the weather.” He waved off toward the northeast. A dark line had been building all day. Reports from Grik City on the northern tip of Madagascar said it had been raining hard, the wind whipping up. None of the Sky Priest “weather weenies” were predicting one of the unusually violent cyclones called strakka, at least not yet, but they were confident one was likely coming soon. Matt hadn’t told anyone, but he was actually counting on it, intently conferring with the Sky Priests and Keje as often as he could.

  “I can go faster,” Isak groused, “an’ burn a buncha holes in these cornflake-thin plates. Some o’ these back here were riveted on at the Fore River Shipyard back in 1919. I bet they’ve rusted down to a quarter inch thick.” He raised his voice. “Don’t worry, I’ll get it done—but I wanna be back up here torchin’ these doohickeys off again as soon as we get the hell outa this Grik sewer river!”

  “That goes without saying, Chief Reuben,” Matt assured, though of course he couldn’t really guarantee Walker would ever leave the Zambezi, or Isak would live to do the work. He’d always worried about such things, but as his “old hands” became fewer and fewer, he caught himself brooding on the possibility none of them would survive this terrible war. I need to see Sandra, he decided. Get away to Big Sal for the night. Spend some time with my wife.

  He suddenly noticed the unexpected face of Corporal Neely peering down from beside the depth charge rack. He was the only citizen of the Empire of the New Britain Isles aboard USS Walker, and unlike most of the few other humans left in the ship, he didn’t wear a beard. That, and the fine, long mustache flowing from his upper lip, stylish in his country, made him quite distinctive. He was an Imperial Marine, lent to Walker for his talent with a bugle, but also, Matt believed, so the Empire would have some representative aboard the flagship, such as she was, of all the Allied fleets. He seemed a decent young man and practiced diligently with the ship’s reduced Marine contingent. He’d also been learning ship handling as well as signals. Welcome as a proper bugler was, par
ticularly after the final demise of Walker’s long-tormented general quarters alarm, that couldn’t be his only duty.

  “Captain Reddy,” Neely called down.

  “Yes, Corporal?”

  Neely waved a message form. “Word from Mr. Bradford, with the Army of the Republic.”

  Matt’s eyes narrowed. “Did Mr. Palmer make you bring that?” Lieutenant Ed Palmer was Walker’s signal officer, and it was no secret he’d started to think Matt hated the very sight of him for all the bad news he’d brought. That was ridiculous, of course, though Matt did dread seeing him rush up, waving a message form with a worried look on his boyish face.

  Neely shook his head. “No, sir. He’s aboard Mahan, helpin’ sort out some issues with her comm gear. I was on watch meself, but Minnie—I mean, Ensign Min-Sakir—decoded it an’ sent me ta find ye.” With that, he folded the form and clenched it in his teeth, grabbed a line trailing over the side, and slid down to join them. “Sorry fer the bite marks, sir,” he apologized, handing the message over. Matt unfolded it and read. Sighing, he looked up.

  “Bad?” Spanky asked. His tone sounded certain it was.

  Matt cocked his head and wrinkled his brow. “I don’t know, to be honest.” He glanced at Silva, then back at the work being performed. “Damned inconvenient, but we might cope.”

  “What’s the dope we gotta cope with, Skipper?” Silva asked.

  “Dope!” Petey insisted.

  “There aren’t a lot of details, but it seems our Bekiaa—and Courtney Bradford—managed to stop a major flanking maneuver against the Army of the Republic. General Kim counterattacked and not only smashed the Grik right, but a good chunk of the middle. Maybe half the Grik army facing him is either shattered or in disarray, and now he’s racing, hell for leather, straight for us.” Matt smiled slightly, almost sadly, perhaps nostalgic for a time when he would’ve been stunned by Courtney’s high-level participation in a major military campaign. They’d all changed so much, and Matt hoped Courtney’s somewhat frustrating but still endearing enthusiasm for the wonders of this world wasn’t gone forever.

  “But what about the rest of the Grik?” Spanky asked. “Half of what they had is still bigger than Kim’s whole army.”

  Matt nodded. “Yeah, but it’s out of position, confused, and playing catchup. It’ll cut Kim’s supply line,” he conceded, “but Kim’s got the Grik cut off too. In the meantime, the Repub supply effort’s been diverted here. When it starts coming in, we’ll send their ammo forward with ours. That’ll complicate the hell out of our own logistics, but Kim won’t do us any good if he shows up without ammunition.”

  “Damn chancy,” Silva reflected, but he obviously approved of the bold move. He would, of course . . .

  “Yeah, an’ those Grik Kim bypassed’ll get their shit in the sock sooner or later. They’ll chase after him and catch him up against the bigger army surrounding our beachhead.” Spanky growled.

  “Right, but with Kim roaring up their skirt, they can’t ignore him either. They’ll have to redeploy to watch two directions.”

  “An’ that’s what your plan’s all about,” Silva murmured, nodding. “Whip-sawin’ the lizards back an’ forth so fast, in so many directions, they just lose their whole damn sock.” He looked at his captain. “Kim’s move should help with that, but what’s it mean for us?”

  Matt shrugged, pasting a false, carefree grin in his face. “Nothing particularly unusual. Only that instead of maybe another month we thought we had to get ready for our big push, we’ve got weeks. Maybe days.”

  CHAPTER 13

  ////// Over El Paso del Fuego

  Holy Dominion

  0420

  February 26, 1945

  It was eerily, almost metallically bright under a full moon hovering over the western entrance to the Pass of Fire. Even the stars seemed kind of washed out by the luminous mercury glow above. Making the night feel even more surreal to 2nd Lieutenant Orrin Reddy were the ruddy rivulets of lava streaming from various vents on the towering flanks of the great volcano to the north. It wasn’t alone. There were volcanoes everywhere around here, but most were just big, broken-looking mountains. That one, the biggest he’d seen, was always doing something. Damn thing oozes fire like festering sores, he thought uncomfortably, but the story from the locals is that’s normal. It’s only when it quits that folks have to worry. He wasn’t so sure about that, and didn’t even remember what they called the volcano. But standing considerably higher than the six thousand feet he and his raiding force were flying, it was without a doubt the true, fiery heart of the pass, and he figured the dully lit city of El Corazon to the south was named after it.

  It was actually kind of cold, and he nestled farther down behind the windscreen in the cockpit of the brand-new PB-1F Nancy he’d swiped from USS Raan-Goon’s 7th Naval Air Wing, along with half its 18th Bomb Squadron. The exhaust flares of nine more engines added bluish stars to the firmament angling away to the left. If he looked hard, he’d see more. He’d taken half squadrons from each carrier as well as the entire 7th Pursuit Squadron off Maaka-Kakja under Ez “Easy” Shiaa. They’d be joined at dawn—his fingers were crossed—by two entire bomb squadrons and another pursuit squadron operating off a protected bay by the recently, rather easily, occupied Dom city of Nicoya, and a new grass strip nearby.

  Two of their precious PB5-D Clippers had gone in earlier, alone, for a predawn strike against a known Dom concentration on the other side of the pass at Boco Caribe. It was hoped, like the hype around the B-17 Flying Fortress of their old world, the array of defensive weapons Clippers carried would protect them. Particularly during the safer darkness. Like ordinary Grik, Grikbirds didn’t see as well at night. If things went well, the Clippers would join Orrin’s retiring strike and they’d all head back to the barn together in layered defensive formations. In any event, with seventy Nancys, forty Fleashooters, and two heavy bombers, this first deep raid on the Pass of Fire should make a helluva splash. Not literally, I hope, Orrin added mentally as he calculated that all those planes carried almost two hundred men and ’Cats.

  “What do you think of her?” he shouted in the voice tube beside his face over the roar of wind and engine, referring to the plane.

  “Is okaay,” came Sergeant Kuaar-Ran-Taak’s, or “Seepy’s” tinny, noncommittal voice. Seepy had been Orrin’s backseater from the start. They weren’t really friends—Orrin had finally figured out that Seepy resented him because he wouldn’t take the oath to his cousin’s Navy Clan—and Orrin gave him every opportunity to bail, but Seepy always stuck with him. “I think they gone as faar wit’ this aar-frame as they caan, though.”

  Orrin was inclined to agree. Nancys were amazing little planes. Pretty good to start with, various improvements had made them better and better and they’d been the backbone of Allied aviation throughout the war. First of all, they were seaplanes, which meant their aircrews weren’t automatically doomed to feed the voracious predators in this world’s seas if they crapped out over water. Second, they were tough and had a big wing with a lot of lift. Combined with the surface area of their hull and their just-forward-of-center CG, they could slam on the brakes in a hurry, in a dive, and that made them pretty decent dive-bombers and ground-support aircraft. The problem was, as improved enemy antiaircraft weapons, Jap/Grik fighters, and League fighters began to appear, not to mention Grikbirds, which were always a menace, it was increasingly clear the time had come to move on. Unfortunately, the middle of an existential war, being fought on a shoestring with limited production capacity, is an awkward time to halt an assembly line producing lots of “good” and gear it up to make “better” that may not come in time.

  But production had improved and new ships were in the works. Light bombers to replace Nancys and medium bombers based on that crashed Bristol Beaufort were coming, and new pursuit planes were being experimented with in more innovative facilities while the old ones
kept running. And even those weren’t just turning out the same old thing. This F model Nancy, for instance—probably the first example of something new making its way east before Matt got it in the west—had the improved 10-cylinder, 410-hp radial engine they were putting in the latest C model Fleashooters, and it was faired in to reduce drag. On top of that, it had the Allies’ first variable-pitch prop with wooden blades set in spring-loaded cammed steel sockets. The thing was a Lemurian design and kind of glitchy, relying on another small spring-mounted plate under the propeller hub, activated by a Goldbergian crank shaft with several (failure-prone) U-joints to bypass the engine crankcase, but they’d have better when they had a good look at the Beaufort’s props. Still, not only did the new prop and engine add almost fifty mph to the ship’s max speed while actually using less fuel, they also allowed a heavier bomb load and two .30-caliber machine guns in blisters on either side of the cockpit.

  Orrin liked them even if they were still slower than he’d prefer and were pretty damn touchy on the controls. Only experienced Nancy pilots got them. That was one of the reasons for his converging attack. All the F models were with him, flying straight up the pass, while the Bs would meet them after a more leisurely cross-country run.

  “Yeah,” he agreed with Seepy, “I guess the war’s passed these Nancys by. ‘F’ model probably stands for ‘Final.’ Maybe I’ll get one for myself when it’s all over, though. Fly around. See the sights.”

  “You think it’ll ever be over?” came the skeptical response.

  Orrin hesitated. “Sure,” he said. One way or another.

  A little more than an hour later, they’d descended to five thousand feet. Just as the sun was creeping over the horizon to glare in their eyes and they got their first glimpse of their target—an anchorage called La Calma within a wide bay inside the Pass of Fire—the first Grikbirds tried to bounce them.