Deadly Shores

by Taylor Anderson

  “I try!” the backseater yelled back. “They’s too much traffic!”

  “Stomp on it,” Tikker ordered, meaning for his observer-copilot to hold the transmit key down, essentially jamming all other messages on the frequency. A few moments later, the ’Cat reported. “Amer-i-kaa says they is ordered to move closer to the harbor, to turn planes around quicker!”

  “What about the planes they just ran off on!” Tikker cried incredulously. “They don’t care to turn us around?”

  “Uh . . . Kap-i-taan Leut-naant Becher Laange begs our forgiveness, an’ says Kap-i-taan Von Melhausen got the order an’ maybe got a little ahead o’ himself.”

  “I’ll say,” Tikker griped. Even as he watched, the liner-turned–commerce raider in a more-distant war than he could imagine began to slow. “Send to the other planes to motor over to her,” he instructed. “They’ll never get that thing turned around.” The backseater acknowledged, and Tikker advanced his throttle. Packets of spray wet the two ’Cats as the pitching bow of the little seaplane tossed it back. It took nearly thirty minutes, by the clock on Tikker’s instrument panel, before the half-dozen planes were back in position. By that time, nearly as many more had landed in the water.

  “Keep an eye on things,” Tikker ordered, dropping his goggles on the wicker seat and swinging up the cable that supported the fueling boom. He reached the deck of the big ship even before his ground crew—hesitant to meet his eye even though they’d had nothing to do with the fiasco—scrambled down to service his plane. Another boom was lowering a basket of ordnance. “What a screwed-up mess,” Tikker growled, disgusted. “The whole damn fight’s gonna go in the crapper just because everybody wants in on the show so bad.” He stopped one of the Lemurian crew of the Republic vessel. It dawned on him that he’d never spoken to one of the “foreign ’Cats” before, and he hesitated. “Hey,” he finally demanded. “Where’s the bridge on this tub? I gotta see your crazy skipper!”

  “Kap-i-taan Von Melhausen is not crazy!” the ’Cat defended uncomfortably in a strange accent, even though he was clearly aware of the situation. He’d hesitated as well, and Tikker briefly wondered if the other Lemurian had trouble understanding him. His speech was laced with so many Americanisms now that he doubted he’d have understood himself just a few years before. “And you cannot just go to the bridge whenever you decide!” the other ’Cat added indignantly.

  “Yes, he can,” interrupted a voice from the deck above. “Seein’ as how he outranks both of us!” Tikker looked up and saw a burly man with a gray-blond beard, dressed as an officer in the Republic Legion. “Please come along, Cap’n Tikker. I know who you are. Doocy Meek’s my name, and we’ve got a proper knot to unravel here!”

  Tikker nodded and trotted up the stairs to join the man. “I know you,” Tikker said. “What’s going on?”

  “Orders came from your Adar to move the ship closer in. Kapitan Von Melhausen’s rather keen to prove the Republic’s bound to the Alliance in this fight, and he complied just a bit too quickly.” Meek tapped his head. “Von Melhausen’s a fine man and a damn good seaman, but he’s a bit far along, if you get my meanin’. Tends to get a bit . . . overly focused. Follow me, if you please.”

  Meek wasn’t a young man, but the pace he set proved he remained in top form. Just a few minutes passed before he brought Tikker to the bridge. The scene there was . . . unexpected.

  “Kapitan,” said Kapitan Leutnant Becher Lange, obviously still in the middle of a confrontation with the much older man, “we will proceed to our appointed station as soon as is practicable—but we can’t simply leave the planes already fueling in our wake!”

  “But our orders!” Von Melhausen insisted. “I swore I would obey all signals from the flag! You have prevented me from keeping my word!”

  “No, sir! I have not. And I have already sent an explanation that will amply explain our delay. This ship is supposed to serve as a tender for the flying boats in this action, not a surface combatant. What use are we if we do not ‘tend’ the planes, as we were entrusted to do?”

  Von Melhausen blinked, and Tikker caught Lange’s pleading glance. “Kap-i-taan Von Melhausen,” Tikker said, his anger dying away, “I am Cap-i-taan Jis-Tikkar, COFO of the First Naval Air Wing aboard USNRS Salissa. Do you remember me?”

  Von Melhausen looked at him and blinked confusion in the Lemurian way. “I’m not sure. How did you come to be aboard my ship?”

  “I arrived in one of the planes now floating alongside—the planes that must have fuel and ordnance to continue our attack.” He was still standing adjacent to the port bridgewing and pointed down and aft. “One of my planes is sinking now, a plane that might have returned to action if it had not been forced to lie so long in the water. Please, sir, all I ask is that you allow my planes and the ground crew personnel that transferred to this ship to complete their current evolution. After that, you may certainly proceed to the station appointed you.”

  Von Melhausen blinked doubtfully and removed his hat from his balding head. “But Chairman Adar ordered me to move my ship,” he complained.

  “Which you may quickly do, as soon as my aircraft have been serviced,” Tikker stressed. “I swear to you by the Heavens above that this is the intent, if not the specific wording of the orders Chairman Adar sent. He does not want your ship to move closer to the fight so you may tend aircraft that have been left so far away from it!”

  Von Melhausen looked at Becher Lange. “Was this your understanding when you countermanded my orders?”

  “It was, mein Kapitan,” Lange fervently assured the old man. Von Melhausen shook his head and smiled wanly, his white mustache arching upward. “Very well. I believe I shall retire to my quarters. Would you be so kind as to have some of that wonderful pudding Admiral Keje sent brought there for me?”

  “Of course, mein Kapitan!” Lange said with relief as Von Melhausen shuffled off the bridge. Immediately, he turned to Tikker. “Please accept my most profound apologies! Kapitan Von Melhausen is an old man, and he is not often . . . like this.”

  When Tikker replied, the soft voice he used with the elderly officer was gone. “You should not have allowed him to be ‘like this’ now. Precious time has been lost, not to mention an equally precious aircraft! The Heavens only know how many lives those things might cost us! I understand your desire to spare the feelings of an aged one, but a battle is underway! You wished to participate in it, and lives depend on you.” He gestured at the departed captain. “Not him, who cannot help himself, but you who must!” Lange nodded miserably, and Meek cleared his throat.

  “You must understand Kapitan Von Melhausen’s position, and Mr. Lange’s as well. The old man has been like a father to him—to many of us. . . .”

  “Then you should have protected him from himself—and us from him!” Tikker lashed out. “I swear, by all the stars, if this . . . idiocy has cost us this fight, I will drop a bomb down the stack of this useless ship myself and save us all from any further ‘assistance’ it may inflict on us! Good day!” With that, Tikker spun and stalked back the way he’d come. Doocy Meek spared Becher Lange a rueful glance and chased after him. “Captain Tikker,” he called, “I’ve a request.”

  “What is it? I must get back in the air.”

  “Just so—an’ I’d like to fly with you.”

  Tikker paused, beginning to regret how harshly he’d spoken to their allies from the Republic. “How’s your fist on a wireless key?”

  “Smooth as breathin’.”

  “Very well. You will relieve my OC. Perhaps it is time someone from your nation saw just what kind of war you’ve joined.”

  When they reached the bulwark under the fueling boom, Tikker glanced over the side and saw his plane. Its engine already idling, it was preparing to cast off. “Wait here,” he ordered, and dropped down on top of the wing. Meek winced at the nonchalant way the ’Cat performed the feat with a
spinning propeller just a few feet away. “Go aboard up there,” Tikker shouted at his OC over the motor noise. “I gotta carry a passenger on this run.”

  Reluctantly, Tikker’s backseater climbed the handling line, leaving the trailing edge on his seat. When he reached the deck, he granted Meek a surly series of blinks while he stripped out of his parachute and handed it over. “That’s the rip cord there,” he said, pointing, “but if you get knocked around bad enough you gotta jump, I wouldn’t pull that if it looks like you gonna go in the water, if I was you. Better you go spaack! Die when you hit, er get knocked out an’ drown than get ate to death by flashies!”

  Meek nodded his dubious thanks and donned the chute. Then he had to negotiate his way out on the boom before sliding down to the seat below—again, just a few feet from the whirling prop.

  “Strap in,” Tikker called. “It’ll be bumpy.” The engine roared and the prop blurred. Moments later, the plane was wallowing away from the ship, picking up speed. Tikker had the most time in Nancys of any man or ’Cat, and he was familiar with all their idiosyncrasies. He quickly had the plane bouncing over the swells and clawing into the sky. “Raise the wing floats!” he ordered. “It’s that crank down by your left leg. Wind ’em up smart!” Meek complied. When he finished, gasping from the exertion, he realized they were already high in the air. He looked around. A fat bomb, an antipersonnel incendiary he supposed, hung beneath each wing, secured by pins. He quickly deduced that the lever by his right leg provided the mechanical advantage to release them.

  “I assume that I am your bombardier?” he asked loudly into the voice tube.

  “Right. But you just leave that lever alone until I tell you. Right now, you send to all Second Bomb Squadron planes to form on us, over Big Sal. We’re gonna have a look at Walker. All other squadrons is to make theirselves useful to Second Corps.”

  Meek gazed at the unfamiliar wireless set in front of his right knee and saw that it was on. Grasping the key, he sent the message. Belatedly putting on the headset, he caught the replies.

  “I, ah, believe I’ve accomplished that.”

  “Good. Now we gotta wait.”

  Meek glanced down and saw Salissa proceeding toward the harbor, wisps of smoke hazing the tops of her funnels. A pair of DDs preceded her, and another pair brought up the rear. Tikker had banked the plane slightly, setting up a leisurely orbit of the flagship. Eventually, three other Nancys joined them as they lifted off from Amerika’s lee. A terse signal from the last informed them that there’d be no more at present.

  “I guess we’re it, then,” Tikker announced, peeling off to the south. The other planes quickly followed, forming on Tikker’s starboard wing. With nothing to do for the first time since they’d lifted off, Doocy Meek had a moment to view the spectacle of the battle from his lofty perch. He’d never ridden in an airplane before and was experiencing a strange tightness in his chest. The closest he could come to describing it was as a kind of excited anxiety. He shook his head. He’d asked for this, damn it! Smoke from the fires still raging in the harbor towered high in the sky, much higher than they were, before blending with the overcast sky or dissipating in the wind. More smoke rose above what he assumed must be II Corps’s position to the southeast, but the plane was headed toward a lone column of smoke rising above a grounded Grik steamer. He didn’t have a telescope—Tikker’s OC must have taken his—but even he could see the slender shape of the stranded American destroyer not far from the burning enemy ship. What took his breath was the crowded swarm of Grik funneled up against it, their reserves curling back and around on shore, beyond the burning cruiser. It looked like a tightly focused stream of ants picking at the innards of some great, helpless insect.

  “There’s thousands of ’em,” he observed, “and Walker has what, three hundred crew?”

  “Maybe, with the reinforcements that went aboard.” Tikker grunted. “It don’t look good, huh? Hold on, and stand ready with that bomb lever. When I say ‘Now,’ don’t think, just do. We gotta make these bombs count, or some really good folks are gonna buy it!”

  CHAPTER 31

  ////// USS Walker

  A dense column of rain swept across the stranded destroyer at the same time the Grik managed to scramble over the disintegrating barricade in significant numbers. They seemed a little stunned they’d actually made it, and most lost their footing on the suddenly—unexpectedly—slick deck. Many were quickly killed by bayonet thrusts, but more of the defenders were falling back now, wounded or dying, as the once-protective bedding was torn away. The Marines still fought from behind their shields at the main point of contact just aft of the amidships deckhouse, but bayonet-tipped rifles didn’t make good spears for stabbing downward one-handed. Most of the killing was performed by the Marines behind them, but the frustratingly helpless shield wall was starting to buckle. Here and there, Marines even pitched their precious breechloaders behind them and drew their cutlasses as they would be more effective in this kind of fight.

  The machine guns were split between firing down on the boarders, clawing their way over the causeway of corpses and chattering at the larger mass beyond, waiting their turn to cross. The 25s were still mulching the enemy farther out, but their rate of fire had slowed, as had the 4"-50s forward. The gun on the aft deckhouse had ceased firing completely. Matt ducked a thrown spear and shot at a Grik trying to vault the shields, his Colt bucking in his hand. The Grik shrieked, then fell backward onto his comrades. Matt trotted to where the Bosun and half a dozen others with Blitzer Bugs were holding the Marine’s left flank, anchored on the torpedo mount. Gray was bleeding now, from a couple of cuts, but the rain washed the blood away so quickly, it was impossible to tell how bad they were. Probably not too bad, Matt judged. Gray hadn’t even noticed them. The older man was resting his Thompson on a Grik corpse draped over the rail, sending short arcs of hot brass clattering off the Marines’ helmets to his right. He fired like an automaton—Braap! Braap! Braap!—quickly choosing targets between his bursts. After every sixth squeeze of the trigger, the smoking barrel came up, and Chief Gray replaced the twenty-round magazine so he could do it again.

  “Been killin’ those ones on the edges,” Gray explained matter-of-factly, noticing him there. “Bastards are heavin’ the dead down in the water on either side, tryin’ to increase their front an’ get more warriors up against the ship! Damnedest piece o’ combat engineerin’ I ever saw!” He spat. “Course, I’m helpin’ ’em do it too, since half the ones I shoot just roll in the damn water anyway! Shit!”

  Matt saw what he was talking about and realized it was working too. Then he looked beyond at the seething horde and felt a terrible heat in the back of his neck. The rain obscured much, but it was clear that the numbers trying to swarm his ship were growing all the time. Silva must’ve been right. Nearly every Grik in the city not facing II Corps seemed to be surging to reach the sandbar—and USS Walker. The rain had eliminated the most dangerous Grik weapons, but there were just too many of them. Sooner or later they’d get a firm toehold on the ship, and that would be that. Matt shook his head, slinging water off his helmet. No! He emptied his pistol into the mass. “Keep at it, Boats!” he cried. “I’m going to see what’s clogging up the ammo supply to the guns.”

  “We’re gettin’ low here too, Skipper,” Gray said. “Just thought I’d mention it.” Matt nodded, turning to where the torpedo talker had been, but the headset now dangled from the wires. The ’Cat who’d stood there so long was lying on the deck with a crossbow bolt in his eye, the blood on the deck quickly diluting and running away. Matt grabbed the headset.

  “This is the Captain,” he said. “What’s the holdup on the ammo train?”

  “No holdup, Captain,” Spanky replied immediately, and Matt looked up at the man atop the aft deckhouse a hundred feet away. His gun crew was firing rifles now. “The fact is, we’re out of common shells in the aft magazine. Nothing but AP left. I figure my guy
s back here can take better cover and kill as many Grik with rifles.”

  “Out already?” Matt demanded, then realized how ridiculous he sounded. “The AP will still explode, if you shoot it at the planet!” he shouted angrily.

  “Sure, but most of the force’ll be deadened by the dirt it penetrates first. And besides, it looks like you could use a hand. I’ve released the shell handlers to take rifles and assemble behind you as a reserve.”

  Matt finally nodded. Spanky was thinking clearly—more clearly than he was, right now. “Very well, but what’s the holdup elsewhere?”

  “That’s what I was tryin’ to find out—an’ for a little more good news, the twenty-fives already have all the ammo they’re getting. It is all gone.”

  “Skipper?” It was Campeti, using the comm even though he was close enough to shout. He might not be heard, though, over the racket of battle.

  “What’s the dope? I know the forward magazines aren’t dry.”

  “Not quite, but we’re gettin’ jammed up. Too many wounded crammed under the deckhouse and getting carried down the companionway to the wardroom. Getting replenished through there is becoming a big problem.” Despite Matt’s concern over leaving that particular hatch open, they’d had no choice after all.

  “Small arms ammo?”

  “I’ve rerouted the handlers through the firerooms—I hope they don’t drop any!—and they’ll bring it up the escape trunks.” Matt glanced back just as the hatch rose and clanged against the deck. He also watched the mortar ’Cats grimly heave their weapons over the starboard side. He hadn’t heard them firing for some time now and they were obviously out of ammo as well. He nodded at them as they retrieved their personal weapons.

  “Half you guys, over here,” he shouted, pointing at the Marines fighting at the rail. “The other half, help with that ammo coming up from below. And keep a watch on that hatch! If the Grik get aboard, down you go, and secure it behind you!”