“Can’t . . . you . . . just . . . shoot . . . these . . . last’uns?” Silva managed, his chest heaving, as he clumsily blocked a hacking sword with his cutlass and thrust the ’03 bayonet through his attacker’s throat.
“I’m empty!” Laumer yelled in desperation.
“Take . . . mine!”
Laumer didn’t understand. Then he realized that Silva still had magazines for his 1911 on his belt! He’d been too busy fighting to reload his pistol. Isak bayoneted another Grik, hooting with relieved excitement, but a bong echoed in the hall and “Dewy” fell, his helmet dished by an axe. There was no telling if he was alive or not, but he was out. Silva brought his notched cutlass down across the back of the axe-wielder’s neck, but shuddered when a Grik in front of him scored with a spear. He knocked it away, but then just stood there, swaying a little. Suddenly, there were only three Grik left, and they backed away, obviously stunned that so small a group could fight its way through so many. They were born fighters, and not about to quit, but clearly recognized it was time to reevaluate things. The one in the middle seemed to realize its most dangerous prey was weakening, however, and took a step forward, crouching to spring.
Irvin was already fumbling at Silva’s pouches for his magazines, but he’d never get one out in time. “Aw hell,” Dennis grunted, pulling Linus Truelove’s ornate flintlock pistol from his belt. Shakily, he pointed it at the Grik. The thing’s eyes narrowed in realization and it leaped, but with a clack-boom! Silva shot it dead. “Always liked to save that one for somethin’ . . . you know, kinda weird. But oh well,” he said, tossing the smoking pistol on a corpse and bending over to put his hands on his knees. “Ain’t you got any bullets left, Isak?”
“Why, maybe I do.”
“Then you better shoot those other two before they eat your stupid head . . . ’cause I sure can’t stop ’em.”
Stunned by such an admission, Isak opened his loading gate and dropped his last five rounds in the magazine. The two remaining Grik charged.
Gunny Horn’s pistol barked four times, and both Grik sprawled at Isak’s feet. With trembling fingers, Isak finished chambering a round and looked at the China Marine, leaning against the wall, his Baalkpan Arsenal 1911 supported by both hands. Slowly, Horn slid to the floor, looking at the Colt copy. “Got so busy, I forgot I even had this thing till you told Mr. Laumer to take your magazines,” he said. His voice was weak and strained. “Are you going to die, Dennis?” he demanded.
Silva managed to straighten, then turned to face his friend. It was the first anyone had seen of his front since they started up the passageway, and he was soaked with blood from his short hair to his shoes. His T-shirt and sodden trousers were crisscrossed with diagonal tears, and there were a fair number of punctures as well. Everyone had seen him weakening, but now they knew it wasn’t just from fatigue. It was impossible to say whether he’d taken any mortal wounds, but he had so many, he was obviously bleeding to death.
“My God,” Laumer said, and caught Dennis before he dropped.
“Shit!” Isak croaked.
“I ain’t gonna die, you idiot gyrene,” Dennis snapped, sagging in Laumer’s arms, “so don’t go makin’ plans for swipin’ my Doom Stomper!” He looked at Irvin. “But I’m sorry. I hate to admit it, but maybe I have had enough fun for one day. You mind carryin’ the ball from here, Mr. Laumer?”
“No . . . no.”
Silva nodded. “Shift me over by Horn, if you will, then the rest of you go ahead on. We’ll watch yer backs. We both got pistols, an’ Horn’s magazines.”
Lawrence helped Laumer move the big man over to the wall as best he could, and crouched beside his friend. “I’ll stay too.”
Dennis shook his head. “Nope. Mr. Laumer might need you, an’ we’ll be fine. We got Petey, after all.” Lawrence hiss-snorted indignant frustration and spun away. Dennis chuckled, fumbling the magazine Horn handed him into his pistol. He dropped the slide, chambering a round, and then glared at Isak. “You take care o’ Mr. Laumer, you rat-faced little louse!” His voice softened. “He’s a good ’un.”
“But who’s gonna take care o’ me?” Isak demanded, almost whining. Silva blinked. “Who cares? We already know you’re gonna get ate! Live with it.”
Awkwardly, Irvin patted Silva’s shoulder, and the big man winced. “We have to go. We’ll come back as soon as we can . . . or the Raiders ought to be along soon. They’ll have rescued Surgeon Cross, and she’ll get you patched up. . . .”
“Sure.”
Irvin turned to Isak and Lawrence. “Come on,” he said.
Their footsteps echoed up the passageway, fading in the gloom, and Silva looked around. He was having trouble focusing, but when his eyes passed over the ’Cat Marine who wasn’t Dewy—he smirked—he was pretty sure he saw him breathing. Good. He settled back, taking his blood-soaked tobacco pouch out of his pocket. For some reason, he couldn’t seem to make his fingers fish out a wad of the sweetened leaves, however, and he glanced down at himself. “I’m a mess,” he muttered, a little surprised. He didn’t really hurt that much, but he’d never felt so weak in his life. He turned to look at the man beside him. “You ain’t gonna die, are you, Arnie?” he asked, but Gunny Horn appeared asleep and didn’t reply. “Better not,” Dennis warned, and sighed. “Few enough fellas left to talk with about the old days as it is.” He gazed at the tobacco pouch again, now lying in his lap. “I’d kill,” he said with a smirk, “even more stuff, for a cold San Miguel right now.” His voice was barely audible.
Hesitantly, painfully, Petey crept out of the darkness, sniffing and cringing at the growing sound of battle behind them. Focusing on Dennis, he hop-sprinted into his lap. The man usually pretended not to notice him, but this time there was no reaction at all. Staring up with wide, searching eyes, he clawed his way higher, closer to the slack-jawed face.
“Si-vaa?” Petey hissed insistently.
* * *
Irvin Laumer, Isak Reuben, and Lawrence had no doubts when they finally reached the entrance leading to the chambers of the Celestial Mother herself. There’d been no other openings in the passageway at all, and they’d reached the end of the line. They advanced cautiously toward this slightly larger, considerably more ornate archway, weapons ready, watchful for guards, but there were none that they could see. Lawrence still couldn’t manage a rifle—his right arm wasn’t working right—but he held a cutlass in his left hand, cocked to slash, and he instinctively took the lead.
“Easy,” Irvin whispered, holding his pistol up. “I’ll go first.” His voice seemed unnaturally loud. “She’s got to have some guards, if she’s in there,” he explained.
“She’s in there,” Lawrence confirmed. “I think there’s other . . . phee-males too. I s’ell—taste? Taste their hot ’reath—lung air?” He shook his head in frustration.
“Eww!” Isak hissed. “Then they must be the mouth-fartin’est critters that ever was!”
“Taste . . . pharts too,” Lawrence confirmed.
“Eww!”
“Come on,” Irvin urged, stepping through the arch. The others followed, their wide eyes tensely seeking threats in the gloom.
“Some kinda waitin’ room,” Isak guessed, pointing his Krag in the dark corners of the chamber. There were a couple of the saddlelike “chairs” that only Grik could love, but light leaked around a thick drapery at the far end of the room. Isak reached for it with the bayonet on the end of his rifle as they neared it.
“Careful,” Irvin hissed, his pistol trembling slightly.
“The hell with that, they gotta know we’re here.” Isak gulped, and slashed the drapery aside.
Beyond was another chamber, considerably larger, filled with what looked like sunlight! For an instant, all the trio could do was blink, as their eyes adjusted, but then they saw at last what they’d come all this way to find. Draped across another one of the bizarre chairs, stari
ng intently at them with large, yellow eyes, was the biggest, most ridiculously obese example of the Grik species anyone had ever seen. Its furry plumage was bright and coppery in the light glaring down from an opening in the ceiling, and it seemed to almost flash with fire as it shifted slightly and rolls of fat moved beneath its skin. Uselessly long, but meticulously sculpted claws flickered on its fingers as it clasped its hands in front of it. With a surprisingly small voice for such a monstrous creature, it spoke.
“What the hell?” Isak demanded nervously. “You picked up some o’ that Grik gibberish, didn’t you, Larry?”
Lawrence nodded, his crest high and tail stiff, eyes narrowed in concentration. He’d learned quite a bit, in fact, working with the “tame” Grik that went along on the expedition to northern Borno.
“What did it say?” Laumer asked.
“It said to enter and . . . kneel, I think . . . and it’d hear us.”
“My skinny ass!” Isak snarled. “Tell it to flop down offa that saddle an’ beg us not to blow its fat head off!”
Lawrence snatched his gaze from the monster and looked at Laumer. “She’s not going to do that.” He looked at Isak. “Don’t you get it? That’s her. That’s really her! She knows the ’attle outside is lost, ’ut thinks us are just other hunters, here to serph her!”
“Bullshit!” Isak spat. “Let’s kill her!”
“Us really need to kill her,” Lawrence fervently agreed. Something about this confrontation had him more worried than he’d been at any time during the fight to get here.
“But if we could take her alive, we might win the whole war, here and now!” Irvin insisted, stepping forward into the chamber.
“No!” Lawrence cried, leaping after him, claws outstretched.
Irvin whipped his head toward Lawrence, stunned, but saw a massive Grik, this one all muscle, lunging toward him from the right, beyond the entrance. His pistol came up just as Lawrence vaulted past him—at another giant guard, he supposed with relief—and he started shooting the first one. His pistol barked seven times fast, almost as quick as full-auto fire, and the massive Grik—he noticed it had no crest—slammed into him, trying to bury him under its dying weight. He didn’t go down, because something had him by the left arm. He saw Lawrence on the floor near the Celestial Mother, painfully trying to rise, and realized he must’ve been batted away by the far more powerful Grik—that now had him.
“Mr. Laumer!” Isak wailed, lunging past him with his bayonet, just as a wickedly barbed spearpoint erupted from Irvin Laumer’s chest. The Grik dropped the dying submariner to deal with Isak—but nothing could have dealt with the berserk little fireman just then. Screeching and stabbing with the long blade on the end of his rifle, as fast and maniacally as a piston released from a blown jug, Isak never gave the Grik the slightest chance. Finally burying the blade all the way to the guard, he drove the bloody monster back and down, then fired the Krag for good measure. Twisting the bayonet clear, he stepped back in time to see Irvin Laumer’s eyes, staring up at him, glaze into lifelessness.
“Oh, you sneakin’, fuzzy ol’ toad!” he whispered, looking back up at the monster on the throne. Its expression hadn’t changed at all. Its mouth moved and it spoke again. Without even asking Larry what it said, Isak chambered another round and fired.
The 220-grain cupronickel-jacketed Frankford Arsenal ball wouldn’t have much irritated the Celestial Mother if it had struck her anywhere else; her fat was so thick, it probably wouldn’t have even reached muscle. Blowing through her curious left eye and exploding into her brain, however, it sent her into a flailing mass of mindless flesh. With a squeaky roar and mounting rage, Isak Reuben charged. “When the hell’s ever-body gonna learn, sometimes you just gotta kill shit!” he screamed, stabbing at the convulsing, gelatinous corpse with his bayonet again and again until he managed to miss it entirely. He was blinded by the tears filling his eyes and gushing down his cheeks and the bayonet stuck in the wooden frame of the throne. “Goddamn it!” he shrieked, leaving the Krag swaying, and yanking out his cutlass.
“No!” Lawrence snapped, grabbing his arm. “No!” he repeated when Isak struggled. “Us still use her. You don’t hack her too ’uch! Co’ander Lau’er ’anted to use her,” he insisted more gently. “Us could still can!”
CHAPTER 37
////// USS Walker
“Cast off!!” came the cry from a Lemurian bosun’s mate, aft.
The heavy hawser Big Sal used to pull Walker off the sandbar now sagged low in the water of the bay, and the battered old destroyer was drifting free. Matt had made his way through the carnage that littered his ship and now stood with a bloody, grimy, Spanky McFarlane atop the aft deckhouse near the auxiliary conn. Spanky looks . . . okay, he judged with cautious relief, discounting the broken crossbow bolt shaft sticking out close to his buttocks. He’ll rant about that later, he knew, but at least there’ll be a later. Must hurt, though, and he is chewing his ’Cat tobacco more vigorously than usual. . . . Solemnly, without a word, the two men shook hands. It was a spontaneous, congratulatory gesture. Their ship was free, and they were alive. Together, they watched the end of the hawser disappear from between the depth charge racks with a splash. Spanky sighed, and Matt leaned on the number four gun, smoke stained and blood spattered, still trained out to port. He savored the buoyant feel of the steel beneath his feet.
“Signal Admiral Keje that we appreciate his help and that Salissa’s now free to maneuver,” he ordered softly. “And ask Tabby to light a fire under her damage-control parties inspecting the hull. I want to know if we opened any more seams coming off.”
“Ay, ay, Cap-i-taan,” replied Minnie’s strained voice, and she passed the word to Ed Palmer through a speaking tube. Then she whistled up Tabby. Minnie had shown up shortly before and taken the place of Spanky’s dead talker without a word. Though liberally soaked with blood, she didn’t seem injured, and Matt was grateful for that. She’s just as exhausted, physically and emotionally, as anybody, he reflected, but at least she’s alive. Too many aren’t. He looked back at her and managed what he hoped was an encouraging smile. His gaze strayed to encompass the rest of his ship—and the recent battlefield beyond.
The Grik cruiser had finally almost burned itself out, and steam was streaking the smoke as the rising tide reached the hot iron and smoldering wood. The great heap of Grik bodies that had made a ramp to Matt’s ship was starting to diminish as well. The water around it was churning violently as the ocean predators swarmed to feed, and watching the mound shift and tumble reminded Matt of a pile of dirt being eroded by runoff. He blinked. The water around Walker also frothed, as grim, exhausted details rolled Grik corpses over the side. Too often they discovered one of their own buried in the grisly tangle, and these were carefully laid out beneath the amidships deckhouse. Earl Lanier had emerged from the galley and was helping arrange the dead with an unexpected tenderness. Matt couldn’t watch the progress of the detail working where Fitzhugh Gray went down. He clenched his teeth. Alongside to starboard, Walker’s own Nancy floated, nestled among barges of workers and Marines sent from Big Sal to help Walker’s depleted crew, and manhandle at least a little ammunition aboard. This was being handed up to fill the ship’s ready lockers, and nearly every ’Cat that came aboard was draped with belts of ammo for the machine guns. If they fell in the water, they’d sink like rocks, but with all the flashies around, that was probably best. . . . The Nancy’s pilot was yelling back and forth with a hoarse-voiced Jeek, who was telling the aviator to get his plane the hell out of the way. The pilot was equally insistent on refueling and rearming from Walker. Did they know what a crock it was trying to get replenished from Amerika? Jeek screamed back that it couldn’t be worse than here because they didn’t have anything! Matt shook his head. Jeek was losing it, which was understandable, and the pilot didn’t—couldn’t—understand.
Campeti painfully climbed the ladder from the deck below, catc
hing Matt’s eye. “How much longer, Sonny?”
“Not long, Skipper. Keje didn’t send as much ammo as I’d like.” He shrugged. “Better than none, though, and it’s all ‘common.’ We still have a little AP.”
“Yeah. Tabby?” Matt asked, looking back at Minnie.
“She say we ready to maneuver now. She only lose some steam while the ’lectrics was out to the fuel an’ water pumps.”
“Leaks?”
Minnie shook her head, blinking apology. “Sorry, Cap-i-taan. I forgot to tell you. She says we weepin’ some under the for’ard fireroom, but Big Sal dragged us off real gentle. Nothin’ bad new. Aft stores is still flooded, but the engine room’s dryin’ out, an’ no more water’s comin’ in, now our ass ain’t draggin’ so.” Minnie blinked. “She’ll answer bells when you ring ’em.”
“Very well. Have her stand by.”
Suddenly, Matt’s heart leaped with relief when he saw Sandra’s concerned face appear at the top of the ladder. He’d known, intellectually, she had to be okay; the Grik had never penetrated down to the wardroom, thank God, and all the wounded that made it there were safe as well. Besides, somebody damn sure would’ve reported it if she wasn’t okay. Also, just as she’d been too occupied with her duty of saving lives—doubtless hearing word that he was okay as well—he’d been far too busy to surrender to the urge to check on her himself. But now, actually seeing her in the midst of all this relieved a terrible, constant weight that had lain heavy on his soul. “Hi,” he said simply as she stepped up on the platform. Like everyone, she was covered with blood, and it wasn’t confined to the apron secured around her neck and waist. She even had it in her hair, and there was a drying smear on her forehead where she’d wiped away sweat with her arm. Without a word, or any hesitation, she advanced and embraced him fiercely.
Just as unselfconsciously, he hugged her back, clutching her tight, but only for that crucial moment they both so desperately needed. Then, reluctantly, Matt released her, and she took a step back so she could make a report.
Deadly Shores Page 45
