All this information came to Matt via TBS as his ship steamed west, across the mouth of Grik City Bay, booming away at the Grik cruisers trying to sortie against her. There was little incoming fire at present since most of the cruisers’ guns were mounted in their sides and they were coming straight for her. Matt thought there were only three left, and they were all damaged to varying degrees. He grunted. Laumer’s surviving boats had just sped past at last, and now it was time to take Walker out as well. He looked ahead at the shoaling water and frowned. The lookout in the crow’s nest high on the foremast behind the bridge hadn’t passed a warning, but they were cutting it much closer than he’d have liked.
“Right full rudder, Mr. Rosen,” he commanded. “Make your course zero four zero. Minnie, what’s Tabby’s status? We’ll make for Big Sal and add her pumps to ours if we need to.”
“My course is zero four zero, Captain,” Rosen announced several moments later while Minnie consulted with Tabby.
“Very well,” Matt said, staring aft now. He felt a little better. He knew there was desperate fighting on land even then, and it was likely to get worse, but regardless of how that turned out, his “little raid” had been amazingly successful already. Vast towers of smoke piled high in the morning sky, and with just his ship, a few small PT boats, and a little help from Keje’s and Jis-Tikkar’s naval air, they’d laid a whole fleet to waste! It was a heady moment. Now, if things went well ashore, there was no telling what they might accomplish—or what they’d do next, he suddenly brooded.
“Tabby say she’s gettin’ ahead of the floodin’ at last, an’ we have ’lectricity back shortly,” Minnie proclaimed. “She not bitch—’scuse me, Cap-i-taan! She not complain if Big Sal help pump us out, though.”
“Very well,” Matt agreed, gazing out over the fo’c’sle. They’d pass fairly close to the western headland as they exited the bay, but the channel markers—great tree pilings driven into the sea bottom with faded red pennants fluttering in the freshening breeze—were clear.
“Look at that, Skipper!” Bernie said, pointing out to port. Hundreds, thousands of Grik were beginning to line the shore, waving weapons and clashing them together. They’d probably started coming out of their defenses west of the city at the sounds of battle behind them. Most of Walker’s crew had seen similar sights many times now, and even from their perspective of relative safety, the ravening mob just a few hundred yards away stirred anxious feelings. The Grik cries were muted by the wind, sea, and the blower, but the familiar hissing roar raised goose bumps and hackles. Impulsively, Bernie made an energetically rude gesture at them, then glanced apologetically at Matt. “Sorry, sir.”
“That’s okay. I was tempted myself. Maybe we can throw something more harmful at them, though.” He stepped back into the pilothouse and addressed the talker. “The number four gun will continue firing on the cruisers aft, but have numbers one and two commence firing on that enemy concentration.”
“What about the secondary baattery?” Minnie asked. The frustrated Grik were in easy range of the ship’s 25 mm, .50 cals, and even .30s.
“The twenty-five and thirty cals can play, but not the fifties.” Matt gave Bernie an encouraging smile as the torpedo officer joined him by the captain’s chair. “Despite Mr. Sandison’s other miracles, we only recently got the brass drawing process for the fifties sorted out. There’s still a shortage.” He looked at Rosen as Minnie passed the word and the salvo bell rang to warn all hands that the main guns would fire and they should cover their ears. “All ahead two-thirds,” Matt ordered. “Let’s join Big Sal as quick as we can. Tell Tabby to holler if she needs us to slow down.”
“Ay, ay.”
Even with the sporadic jolts caused by her 4"-50s, the crackle of the .30 cals, and deeper booming of the 25s, Walker still felt sluggish beneath Matt’s feet, but he sensed her speed begin to build as her shafts dutifully wound up. Still, the old destroyer hadn’t quite reached seventeen knots when she slammed hard aground on a shifting sandbar that even the Grik probably hadn’t known was there.
Matt and Rosen were the only ones on the bridge who managed to keep their feet during the abrupt deceleration. It was a somewhat mushy impact, thank God, due to the nature of the bottom she struck, but it was intense enough that nobody with nothing to hold on to could possibly remain standing. Matt had his chair, Rosen had the wheel, but nobody else in the pilothouse had anything at all. Minnie slid across the deck strakes, her headset ripping free, and tumbled into the forward-bridge plating near Matt’s legs. Bernie practically somersaulted over the back of the chair and smacked his head on the footrest. Herring and a couple of the ’Cats went down and slid forward as well, grabbing for anything they could. ’Cats on the bridgewings managed to hold on, but their feet went out from under them.
It was worse on the fo’c’sle. To Matt’s horror, a couple of ’Cats were actually pitched, headlong, over the side, and those not sitting on the “bicycle seats” on either side of the number one gun cartwheeled into the splinter shield or the low spray shield just in front of it. All firing had stopped. Matt lurched to the lee helm and slammed the lever to “all stop” before anyone else had a chance to rise. He didn’t feel the telltale vibration of the screws churning the bottom, but they had to stop the engines before they did. He also knew that, as bad as things had been among those he could see, the surprise stop would be most painful to those in the hot, machinery-filled, engineering spaces.
“Up! Up! On your feet!” came the bellow of a Lemurian bosun’s mate in a creditable imitation of Chief Gray’s manner, if not tone. “Get back to your stations!” the ’Cat continued. “This ain’t no time to loll around on deck!” Minnie scrambled for her headset, but Gray’s distinctive voice was already blaring out of the speaking tube.
“What the hell?” he demanded. “Tabby’s shutting down the engines, but all hell’s broke loose down here! Hell, an’ everything else! Everybody’s hurt, and we got at least two dead!” The repeater on the lee helm clanged to “all stop” even as the rumble of the shafts started to fade.
Matt limped slightly to the voice tubes. He must have strained his old thigh wound somehow. “You okay, Boats?” he demanded.
“I’ll live,” came the somewhat aggrieved reply. “And Tabby looks okay, but some ain’t.”
“We must’ve hit a sandbar,” Matt explained. “Too much glare on the water. The lookouts couldn’t see the bottom coming up, and we were moving too fast for soundings.” He paused. “My fault.”
“Don’t even think about that silly crap right now,” Gray scolded. “What’ve we gotta do to get off? We had the low hole in the aft engine room just about stopped up, . . .” He paused. “But we’ve ridden up a little forward. That’ll press the stern lower, put more pressure on the leak. We might’ve sprung some bottom plates too. What’re the tides like around here?”
Matt looked at Herring, who was dabbing at a cut on his chin. Herring caught his gaze and shrugged. “I’m not sure, Captain. Perhaps half a fathom? Maybe more.”
“Not good, Boats,” Matt relayed, “and it’s ebbing. We have to back her off now, or we’re stuck until the next high tide, at least. Bring the engines up slow,” he said to Gray, and the bridge in general.
“Skipper!” Bernie called, back out on the bridgewing. “Those Grik cruisers are getting closer!”
Matt nodded. “We need to get some air down on those things,” he told Minnie, who was trying to arrange her helmet back over the headset.
“I already tell Ed to call Big Sal,” she replied.
“Big Sal could pull us off,” Herring suggested, then pointed east toward where the new day had revealed the DDs of Des-Ron 6. “Or they could.”
“None of ’em can get here before those Grik cruisers do—and I don’t want ’em tangling with them in any case. Hopefully, our air or our guns can sort them out before they become a bigger problem. What’s Campeti got to say
about the main battery?”
“He just report that all guns is manned an’ ready again, but we got problems with the gun director.” Minnie blinked confusion. “It ‘jump its track,’ er somethin.”
“Tell him to have all guns resume firing at will, in local control,” Matt ordered.
Two of Walker’s four guns reopened against the closing cruisers while numbers one and two resumed a more leisurely fire on the growing Grik horde packing the beach. Muddy water churned up along the destroyer’s flanks as her screws strained to pull her off the sand. “All astern, full!” Matt said calmly, even as it became increasingly clear that his ship was badly stuck. He contemplated having the crew rock the ship, but doubted it would do any good. Smoke piled high in the air, slanting downwind of three tall funnels, joining the brown-gray puffs from the guns. The deck throbbed in time with the groaning shafts, and the windows rattled in their panes, even as the main blower impotently roared behind them.
“Spanky—I mean, the exec, Mr. McFaarlane, say the number four gun has did for another cruiser, but they all gonna drown, aft, as much water as the screws is throwin’ up!” Minnie alerted them after what seemed a very long time, but was probably just minutes. “He say we might as well save the fuel an’ the strain on the old gal.”
Matt nodded reluctantly.
“Captain,” Herring called quietly, but urgently, from the port bridgewing.
“Signal ‘all stop,’” Matt ordered. “Tell Mr. McFarlane and Mr. Gray that we’ll have to think of something else. Where are those planes? We’ve still got another cruiser out there!” he added when a series of splashes caused by a skipping shot rose alongside. “What is it, Mr. Herring?”
“Sir, you need to see this. I think we have another problem!”
“Surely not,” Matt replied, unable to mask the sarcasm as he joined Commander Herring.
“Yes, sir.” Herring lowered his binoculars and pointed. “You may have noticed that the Grik on shore are closer now.”
Matt shook his head, but then realized it was true. “My God. With the tide going out, the sandbar’s rising above the sea!”
“Yes, sir!” Herring hesitated. “Ah, surely the sandbar won’t allow them to actually reach the ship, will it? I mean, there’s bound to be some distance of water left between us and the shore . . . at low tide . . . isn’t there?”
“I’d hope so, Mr. Herring,” Matt answered grimly, “but even if there is, it might not matter much. The shallows’ll be full of flashies for a while yet, but they’ll go deeper as the day progresses. Even then, if these Grik here are the ‘old style,’ they won’t much care about losses if they think they can get at us. Our most pressing concern remains that last Grik cruiser, but we might start thinking about preparing to repel a helluva lot of boarders, shortly.”
Herring gulped. “I’ve, uh, never fought the Grik—like that—before,” he reminded.
Matt rubbed his face. “You might just get to today.”
CHAPTER 25
////// USNRS Salissa (CV-1)
A pair of rearmed and refueled P-1 Mosquito Hawks hurtled into the air, one after the other, from the front of Big Sal’s flight deck. These carried a fifty-pound bomb under their centerlines in addition to ammunition for their wheel pant–mounted “Blitzer Bug” machine guns. They’d discovered it was possible to get the little planes in the air with that much weight if they were launched into a sufficient wind, and the wind was certainly freshening. The Nancys were operating from the sea alongside a stationary Amerika. The old liner had sufficient cranes to lift damaged planes from the water, and a maintenance division had gone aboard with plenty of ammo, fuel, and spares to get the job done. Salissa and her escorts were steaming in circles around the big iron ship, launching planes when they came into the wind.
Admiral Keje-Fris-Ar turned to regard Adar as the roar of engines diminished, and two more of the little pursuit ships were wheeled over to the catapults. “The situation is spinning out of our control, my brother,” Keje gently told his lifelong friend, “as I warned you it would.” These words he added with a blink of vindication.
“As the Amer-i-caans would say, you ‘told me so,’” Adar agreed. The hood of his Sky Priest’s robes was thrown back over his shoulders, and his ears lay flat. “But why did not Cap-i-taan Reddy press me—us—more closely about our ambitions? He could have planned better had he known!”
Keje glared at him, blinking reproof. “You dare blame him—after you demanded stra-tee-gic command so you might take the blame for any failures? He gave you, all of us, ample opportunities to specifically state our ambitions, even as he counseled caution. We were afraid to tell him the truth, so he prepared for what he knew would be the least of our aims, as always agreed. Yes, he could have pressed. Perhaps he should have. But that would have diminished your position, the position you were so emphatic about. He does not want to rule us, my brother, so he could not challenge you more forcefully than he did! You will not blame him for that!”
Adar bowed his head. “It would still have worked,” he said dejectedly. “Everyone was prepared for what they suspected would happen, even Cap-i-taan Reddy himself! But no one could predict a sandbar might trap his ship!”
“War is full of ‘sandbars,’ Mr. Chairman!” Sandra said hotly, storming up behind them. She’d clearly heard most of the exchange. “And Matt’s dealt with a lot of them before. Now he’s stuck on one, and my question to you is, what are we going to do about it? You’ve got everybody out there fighting to conquer Grik City now, and one way or another, that’s become the objective. Even Matt acknowledged that! We can’t just pine away and lament how it would’ve still worked. We’ve got to make it work! We can’t just pull back now. Even if we wanted to, the Grik won’t let us. Second Corps is in close contact, Walker’s stuck, and nobody even knows where Chack is! If we’re ‘all in,’ let’s go all in!” She paused, looking Adar in the eye. “You wanted to be in charge. Take charge!”
“What would you have us do?” Adar asked.
“I don’t know!” Sandra practically yelled. “I’m not in charge!” She gestured around at the surrounding battle group. “But there are an awful lot of people and ships out here that aren’t doing much.”
Keje nodded thoughtfully. “Cap-i-taan Reddy might not approve,” he considered.
“It’s a little late to worry about that now, isn’t it?” Sandra demanded. She looked back at Adar. “Matt gave you the lead, so lead!”
Adar blinked, then nodded slowly. Finally, he took a breath. “Ahd-mi-raal Keje,” he said formally, “we will continue to try to contact Chack and his brigade of raiders, but regardless of whether we do or not, it is my order as chairman of the Grand Alliance that we shall capture Grik City at all costs! Assemble every ship in the fleet except those DDs directly supporting Second Corps. We will advance into the harbor and when it is secure, we shall land every soldier, sailor, or Marine from every ship capable of bearing arms. Is that clear?”
Keje blinked amazement. “Of course,” he said, almost eagerly. “But what of air operations? And Salissa’s batteries are much reduced.”
“By all accounts, there is little left in the harbor that will require Salissa’s guns. Besides, she still retains her original five thirty-two-pounders per side. She once performed well enough with only those if I recall. General Queen Safir Maraan shall capture that broad expanse that we suspected had been used to operate Grik zeppelins at one time, though none are present. There is evidence they have been, and perhaps there is fuel. Even if there is not, or what there is will not work, we can move some there and the Fleashooters will have a place to land.”
Keje’s eyes grew wider. “What of the Naan-cees? Amerika, at least, should remain outside the harbor to operate them.”
“Very well, but just outside, where her guns may be of assistance, and her people may join the fight on shore as well.” Adar blinked anxiously. “I o
nly pray to the Heavens that I have not dithered too long!”
“Admiral,” called Lieutenant Newman, Captain Atlaan-Fas’s exec, “Laumer’s come alongside with his PTs. He wants fuel, Marines for all his boats, and mortars, sir!” He cast a worried look at Sandra. “He says he’s headed back to Walker!”
“We will give him whatever he wants,” Keje ordered.
Sandra hesitated only an instant. “I’m going with him!”
“I do not think that is wise,” Adar said, glancing significantly at her midriff.
Of course he knows! Sandra realized. He’s “in charge,” and many of my medical division on board are bound to have seen the signs! “Probably not for me,” Sandra agreed tightly, “but all Walker has are Pam Cross and a few assistants, pharmacist’s mates, and SBAs. She’s liable to need more than that before this is done. I’m going!”
USS Walker
The final Grik cruiser had led a charmed life during its advance, and it seemed like nothing could touch her for a while. Her skipper was particularly skilled when it came to evading bombs from diving Nancys, and she’d even shot a couple down with her antiair mortars as the planes bored in ever closer to have a better chance of hitting. Even Walker’s guns seemed to have less effect than normal, firing straight at her oncoming bow. The shots caromed off the armored, angled sides, and exploded in the water, or splashed into the bay far beyond, flipping end over end with a manic whirr. Maybe she was a newer, more heavily armored class, or maybe they’d all been as well protected from the start, and they’d just been lucky enough to catch them with plunging fire on their decks. Either way, the thing had gotten way too close with her one big, forward-mounted gun that would bear, and with the armored ram they saw between the feathers of seawater she kicked up as she closed. It was the machine guns, hastily carried to the fantail, that finally did for her. They chopped up her little flying bridge and slaughtered her apparently talented officers, sending the ship careening into the sandbar herself, just inshore and a little aft. Walker’s guns finished her then, firing straight in at point-blank range. The frustrated Nancy pilots helped, and soon the other beached ship was a flaming wreck.
Deadly Shores Page 33
