River of Bones

by Taylor Anderson

  “Our salvation, I suspect,” Ign replied. Considering what he’d said, his tone was surprisingly bleak. “First General Esshk is no fool. He will never destroy us as long as we are of use. I am distressed to say he may soon need us once more.” He took a step forward.

  “Where are you going, Lord General? We were commanded to stay out of the way.”

  “I must convince First General Esshk to restore my command,” he stated simply, “so I can put fire on that.” He pointed again at the massive dark shape even Jash now recognized.

  “Will he?”

  “I think so, when he recognizes the threat. Just as I said he must be seen to win this fight, it is even more important that he not be seen to lose it.”

  Just then, the side of the great . . . blackness on the water suddenly belched long, wicked, sparkly tongues of flame at them. Before they heard the report of the salvo, more than twenty shells, larger and more powerful than anything the Grik were firing, exploded above or among the firing line. Gun’s crews went sprawling or were tossed in the air, and several of the great guns themselves were shattered or thrown on their backs, crushing their crews. A couple of shells detonated among Jash’s Slashers, and he was already running toward them even as Second General Ign strode faster toward where Esshk and his entourage had halted their pacing.

  “You are not supposed to be here!” Naxa snapped as Jash went past him.

  “What will they do? Destroy me?” Jash snarled back. “Get back to work!” he bellowed at his warriors. “Dig!” More huge flashes lit the night, and the air crackled with the approach of more big shells.

  CHAPTER 26

  ////// USS Santa Catalina

  Zambezi River

  Grik Africa

  0230

  Dennis Silva and Gunny Horn dragged Major Gutfeld aft through the growing melee sprawling across Santa Catalina’s ravaged upper decks. Gutfeld had been hit in the leg again, with a musket ball this time. Raiders and Marines, impossibly intermixed, were falling back all around them, pausing to shoot at smoke-blurred targets or jabbing bayonets at anything that got too close. Silva didn’t know where Risa and Lawrence were; they’d been separated in the crush. He hoped they’d made it through—or around—the rampaging Grik controlling the forward part of the ship. The latter wasn’t impossible; the Grik seemed hesitant to venture below and fight through dark passageways the defenders knew so well. And the boom of a 5.5″ proved they hadn’t gotten into the air castle/casemate yet.

  A Grik musket ball snatched the PIG-cig right out of Horn’s mouth, flecking him with smoldering bits of cherry. “Shit!” he yelped, trying to brush sparks away with the back of his right hand, still wrapped around the BAR. Someone running past smacked the long barrel, and his fist, backed by the heavy gun, punched him in the mouth, splitting his lip. “Shit!” he shouted again.

  “I think even the lizards want you to quit them nasty things,” Silva grunted, heaving Gutfeld up on his shoulder.

  “Put me down, you big ape!” Gutfeld snapped. “I can walk!”

  “Not fast enough, Simy,” Silva replied. “An’ we gotta scoot!” He started running while Horn fell in behind, BAR leveled.

  “Thank ’em for their concern for me, wilya?” Horn quipped back.

  “Sure thing,” Silva replied, spraying a group of Grik that had gotten around in front of them with his Thompson. They fell kicking on the deck. He’d been forced to leave his Doom Stomper behind—it had been the big rifle or Simy—but it wouldn’t have been very effective at the moment, anyway. He slowed to step over the Grik he’d just killed. “These boogers said, with their dyin’ gasps, they don’t give a shit about you; it’s just even with all this other smoke, your PIG-cigs is makin’ ’em gag.”

  Horn backed over the corpses. “Good. I’ll fire up another, quick as I can.”

  A flurry of shots vrooped past, clattering against a bulkhead and warbling away. “Agghh!” Gutfeld groaned. “Dammit! One caught me!”

  Silva gritted his teeth but couldn’t stop to check him now. The musketry was increasing and the hair on the back of his neck seemed to tell him that Grik bayonets were right there. Finally, the portside stair down to the aft well deck was just ahead, and a heavy line of Raiders and Marines had formed a barricade, bristling with shiny, “friendly” rifle muzzles and bayonets. All were shooting as Silva and Horn hurried directly at them, both large men trying to will themselves smaller. Seconds later, they reached the barricade, and Silva tossed Gutfeld on the reverse slope of mattresses and wooden crates before he and Horn scrambled after him. More stragglers joined them, stiffening the line, but there weren’t many. They must’ve been among the last to fall back.

  “Thanks for not shootin’ us,” Silva told a ’Cat Marine, coughing between deep breaths.

  “I never seen you,” the ’Cat confessed matter-of-factly, firing again. “Caan’t see nothin’.”

  Silva blinked his good eye. “Then what the hell’re you shootin’ at?”

  “Thaat way. Griks’re thaat way.”

  “‘That way’ ain’t a target, shithead.” Silva raised his voice and yelled at a corps-’Cat. “Get the major aft—he’s hit twice. Once in the leg. I don’t know where else.” Settling beside the ’Cat who, probably like the rest, missed him only out of dumb luck, Silva inserted another twenty-round magazine in his Thompson and rested it on the breastworks. “Hold your fire!” he shouted, their front clear for the moment. “Wait’ll you got somethin’ to shoot at!” There must’ve still been plenty of targets above on the deckhouse and over on the starboard side of the ship, because the shooting there continued unabated. Only a couple of mortars were still running, dropping bombs among the galleys, and there were no more star shells. Silva wondered if the mortars had pulled back or been overrun.

  “You takin’ charge here?” a Raider asked him.

  “Not if I can help it. Why? Who’s supposed to be in charge?”

  “Major Risa,” one ’Cat cried, reminding Silva that his friend might still be forward somewhere. Others shouted “Galay” or “Gutfeld.” Silva didn’t know where Enrico Galay was either, but Gutfeld was out of it. “’Ajor Cook to I,” a Khonashi called. Even as he did, another hot blast of liquid fire whooshed out on more galleys trying to come alongside aft, prompting more crackling shrieks.

  “Major Cook’s busy,” Silva said. “Where’s your lieutenants? And where’s Chackie—Colonel Chack?”

  “No’ody knows,” replied the Khonashi. “No’ody else alive, directly o’er us, an’ us’re all ’ixed.”

  Silva sighed, but Gunny Horn barked a response. “Mixed or not, you’re all Raiders or Marines. Don’t tell me you gotta have an officer to tell you how to fight!”

  “Not how, just where,” retorted an ancient ’Cat in Marine rhino-pig armor.

  “Why, looky here! It’s Moe! How are ya, you ol’ scudder? I ain’t seen you in a coon’s age!”

  “I seen you, thaat’s why you not see me,” Moe replied. “I aall-ways say, bein’ roun’ you will get me killed.” He grinned, displaying his few remaining teeth. “I too young to die.” Silva saw the first-sergeant stripes on the sleeve of Moe’s combat tunic, so he seemed to be the highest-ranking NCO present.

  “Okaaay,” Silva said equably. “I reckon right here’s good for now.” His eye caught a renewed mass of movement in the smoke. “Here they come!”

  Muskets crackled and the Grik charged, straight into the massed, rapid fire of breech-loading Allin-Silvas, Horn’s BAR, several Blitzerbug SMGs, and Silva’s Thompson. Blood sprayed and downy fur exploded into clouds, thickening the smoke. Bodies piled up on deck, twitching, squirming, mewling in pain—but more Grik ran over the top of the heap, jaws agape, teeth bared, pressing on. “Up!” Silva roared. “Meet ’em with your steel!” Blitzers kept hammering, but Silva dropped his empty Thompson and grabbed his Colt and cutlass again. The cutlass swung and clang
ed off a musket barrel after chopping through the stock and the Grik’s fingers. The creature shrieked and died when somebody else shot it. Silva reeled when another musket slammed down on top of his helmet, but he put two bullets in the Grik that swung it.

  Suddenly, another Grik a few yards in front of him just . . . exploded. Pieces of it sprayed more Grik to its left, impaling them with shattered bone. A big hole appeared in the side of the deckhouse. Another shot had a similar effect farther forward, splattering several more Grik. Then there was a series of pops overhead and jagged shards of hot iron slashed down, killing Grik and defenders alike.

  “Down!” Horn shouted. “Back behind the barricade! Open fire, pour it in!” Silva dropped down, firing his pistol with a muffled Pop! Pop-pop! “Stupid damn Grik’ve started shelling us again,” Horn yelled. Silva had figured that much, but didn’t know why. The fire would be hard on the defenders, but most probably had a little cover at least. As he’d just seen, it would be worse for the Grik trying to root them out. Pieces of the exploding shells that flew upward were starting to fall, and a chunk glanced off his helmet as he raised his head to see.

  The Grik charge had stumbled but was still boring in. Some of its weight was gone, however, and rifle and SMG fire kept it beaten back—especially when another salvo of Grik shot pounded and exploded over the ship.

  Silva raised his voice in glee. “Hot damn, they’re doin’ our work for us!”

  “Look! Look!” cried Moe, pointing behind to the left. Silva had to wipe the gunk out of his good eye before he saw a massive dark shape loom up out of the gloom. Cook’s flamethrower lit the night, and Silva realized Arracca was back. Effortlessly, the great Home-turned-carrier demolished her way through the crop of galleys, grinding them under and smashing them aside. Her two DP 4.7″ guns opened up on the cruisers sneaking through the gap, as the portside half of her fifty big fifty-pounder smoothbores roared a broadside at something Silva couldn’t see. Tassanna had flatly refused to relinquish any of her ship’s heavy armament, specifically in case of situations like this. Doubtless she’d secured the ship from air operations in favor of surface action, something all carriers once practiced, but Arracca was the only carrier in the west still armed with enough guns to wade into a brawl.

  Santa Catalina’s riddled wreck groaned as Arracca came alongside, pulping more galleys and countless Grik between their hulls. Abruptly, to Silva’s surprise, Chack was standing beside him, oblivious to the shot still raining down or zipping past. Besides the calm on his unblinking face, he looked like hell; scorched fur and uniform utterly covered in blood. “You’ve done well,” he said, “but now we must prepare to abaandon this ship. Hold here as long as you caan while the rest fall baack to the well deck and go aboard Arracca. Help is on the way,” he assured, “but our position is hopeless.”

  Silva gestured forward. “Why fold now? We’re holdin’ okay, an’ Arracca’ll block most of the shore batteries from hittin’ us. They can’t do much to her.”

  Chack looked at him. “But their rockets might, and they’ll almost surely use them now. Besides, you may hold here, but our defense on the staar-board side is falling apaart. Arracca caan’t shield both, and there are caannon on the north baank as well.” Silva hadn’t known that, but he’d been pretty preoccupied. The fighting here had been loud enough to mask anything going on to starboard. He finished stuffing a massive wad of Aryaalan tobacco leaves in his cheek and nodded.

  “Jeez. Okay, we’ll hold. Just tell us when it’s time to skeedaddle.” He paused then, his eye looking away. There was something he hadn’t allowed himself to think about, but if they were leaving, he had to now. And Chack had a right to know. “I, uh . . . sorta lost Risa. Forward,” he said at last. “She was just there, fightin’ like a wildcat—then she wasn’t. Larry too.”

  Chack blinked rapidly then, suddenly realizing how much inner pain Silva must be feeling. “Risa is safe,” he assured. “Laaw-rence as well. Risa is . . . wounded,” he conceded cryptically, “but Laaw-rence helped her out through the inside of the ship. Quite a few escaped thaat way, but the Grik are in the ship now. You must waatch behind and beside you.”

  Silva only nodded, but Chack could tell a heavy burden had been lifted from him. “How’s Simy?” Silva asked. “We fetched him out.”

  “I don’t know.”

  A droning roar came from forward, produced by the portable bellows-driven horns the Grik favored for issuing simple commands on the battlefield, and everyone was depressingly familiar with this particular nerve-wracking note; it was the call for a general charge. Another roar rose from hundreds of Grik throats already aboard—and maybe thousands still waiting to join them. The smoke swirled around a tightly packed, rampant mob.

  “They’re protected from the shore batteries too,” Horn said nervously, slamming another magazine in his BAR. “They’ll push like hell now.”

  “They ain’t protected from those batteries,” Silva replied with a huge grin, nodding up at Arracca’s towering sides. Below the carrier’s hangar deck, but still higher than they were, the gaping muzzles of twenty-five fifty-pounders protruded from open gunports, quickly shifting, depressing. Silva emptied his pistol into the charging Grik, then ducked behind the barricade. “Better hunker down, fellas!” he called. “My guess is, all them guns is packed to the gills with canis—”

  Arracca’s gunners took their time, carefully aiming each huge piece. Even so, they fired close enough together that the individual reports were swallowed by what seemed a single, stupendous, point-blank crash. A fog bank of smoke thicker than anything they’d experienced gushed down on the ship—as did a rumbling, clattering, ricocheting storm of thousands of three-quarter-inch balls. The Grik charge was blasted away, literally smashed, and all that remained was a long, gruesome heap of shredded tunics, armor, weapons, shattered bone, and unidentifiable gobbets of flesh.

  Silva jumped up like a jack-in-the-box. “That’s the style!” he howled.

  “Get down, you idiot!” Horn snapped. “There’s more of ’em, you know? And some of our guys caught some bouncers.”

  “You should maan-age here well enough, after all,” Chack agreed, moving back in a crouch. “Send your wounded to the well deck to be taken aboard Arracca. I must direct the withdraw-aal from the staar-board side. You may pull baack as you see fit, but don’t get cut off!”

  “Sure thing, Chackie! Have fun!”

  Chack blinked consternation. He was just as exhausted as anyone after their long ordeal, but it looked like the end was near, one way or another. He actually embraced that, since First Fleet and its expeditionary force was so near at last, and he hoped—if he lived—he’d soon be reunited with Safir Maraan. Together, they’d see the beginning of a new phase in the war against the Grik. He couldn’t describe anything about their current situation as “fun,” however. Still blinking, he disappeared in the swirling smoke. Silva laughed.

  The battle was intensifying everywhere, though Silva’s view was largely limited to the narrow corridor in front of him, imposed by Arracca’s looming bulk and the riddled superstructure opposite the splintered deck. The Grik massed and charged several more times as their numbers were replenished. Each time they were annihilated by the defensive fire of Silva and Horn’s scratch platoon and Arracca’s devastating gusts of canister. Otherwise, Silva got only occasional glimpses to confirm what he thought was going on, based on where the fighting sounded fiercest. And Chack—or somebody—sent word from time to time, trying to keep him apprised so he’d know when it was time to pull back.

  Arracca’s portside guns fired continuously, hammering Grik cruisers and the massed battery on the south bank. USS Ris and USS Itaa had obviously come up with Arracca and were probably doing the same. A few planes from Tassanna’s airfield did what they could, but it was difficult to support the fight on the river in the dark. Silva suspected they were concentrating on the shore batteries. None of their solid s
hot was reaching Silva’s position anymore, but occasional case shot still exploded overhead. Worse, a few Grik rockets started lofting in from the other side of the bend, probably fired without orders, but more were likely on the way. Silva glanced aft, surprised how quickly the wounded had been transferred to Arracca and now Ris or Itaa—he couldn’t tell the former Grik cruisers apart—which had snugged up against Santa Catalina’s fantail. It was blasting grapeshot down the wrecked ship’s starboard side, and Abel Cook was spraying burning fuel over there as well. Flames lapped up over Santy Cat’s side but didn’t find much left to burn.

  Or has it been quick? Silva wondered. He had no idea how long they’d fought, and even if dawn was approaching, he wouldn’t be able to tell through all the smoke. He narrowed his eye. Raiders and Marines were spilling down the ladder to the well deck from the starboard side, firing back the way they came. Some were falling as musket balls tore into them. Troops guarding the removal of the wounded slammed a volley at the pursuing Grik, but they barely slowed, flowing after the other blocking force in a slashing tide of death. “Time to beat feet,” Silva said, tilting his helmet at the growing rout.

  “Through that?” Horn demanded incredulously.

  “Hell no.” Silva pointed up. ’Cats aboard Arracca were casting lines and lowering another cargo net down the ship’s towering side. Horn looked at it and cringed. Floating debris from all the galleys crushed between the ships had kept them from actually touching, and there remained a daunting gap. Realizing the cause for his friend’s concern, Silva grinned. “Just play like you’re a grasshopper!” Silva gazed at their motley force. “Lightly wounded, if you think you can make it, go now. The rest o’ you dopes get some lines secured around the worst cases. We’ll all shove off together once they’re clear.”

  The evacuation of Silva’s little force went better than he’d expected for a few minutes, while a chaotic, pitched battle raged astern. There was nothing he could do to help back there, so keeping a watchful eye aft, he continued getting what he and Horn increasingly considered their guys off. By the time the unwounded were climbing the cargo net, however, they’d been seen by the Grik swarming aft—where Arracca’s guns wouldn’t bear, even if there weren’t still friendlies back there.