“Steam’s up,” Silva repeated to himself, thinking. “Maybe they’re trying to move her. How far’s the other airfield?”
“Two or three ’iles,” Lawrence replied.
Silva knelt beside him and poked his head over the edge of the rail, chancing a look. “I see it. Looks like the bombs came close, but didn’t get it.” He nodded a little to the left. “What’s that?”
“Another shore ’attery, the ’ap says. Is it antiaircra’t guns?”
“Not that. I mean the clearing between the airstrip and the battery. It ain’t on the map.” He started to slide the telescope over the sill.
“Hey,” Lawrence protested. “They’ll see the glint. Griks don’t ha’ telescokes.”
“Relax. Ever’thing’s shiny in the morning.” Silva adjusted the resolution. “Jumpin’ Jehosephat!” he exclaimed. “There’s a couple ’Cats down there, inside a fence surrounded by water! There’s a little shack inside too, an’ . . . some other folks may be stretched out under awnings.” He stared a moment longer, then eased back and closed the telescope. “Larry, ol’ buddy, I think we found our people.”
“Did you see Lady Sandra?” Lawrence asked excitedly.
Silva looked at him incredulously. “Sure. An’ she has a mole on her cheek I never noticed,” he snapped. “Hell, no, I didn’t see her! I couldn’t tell them others was ’Cats from here, without their flippy tails. What’s the matter with you?”
Lawrence shrugged. “I got excited, I guess.”
“Yeah? Well, me too,” Silva admitted. “I hope she’s there. It’ll make things a lot easier if they’re all in one place. We’ll find out quick as we can.” He looked back at the crew-’Cats. “Okay, it’s about time to play busted duck, anyway.” In response to their confused blinking, he elaborated. “Make like we’re coming in to land at the strip, but when I give the word, we’ll kill the engines on the port side, see?” He looked at the Lemurian at the tiller. “It’ll get tough for you, an’ I doubt you’ll have to pretend how hard it is to keep ’er under control. Larry, you’ll have’ta guide us in. Too many eyes’ll be on us in a minute for me ta’ show my purty face. You know where we wanna set down. Just sing out if it looks wrong when we get close.”
“Rong?”
“Yeah, you know: big rocks, trees, ten thousand lizards waitin’ underneath us. That sorta thing.” His eye rested on the three Grik corpses secured in the forward gondola. “Get ready to peel ’em,” he said.
From the ground, the dingy, hard-weathered airship must’ve looked like it had seen a lot of action. Perhaps it had survived numerous raids over Grik City? Several large patches were evident, specifically where Silva once painted Walker’s number, DD-163, so they wouldn’t be shot down by friendlies. But as it descended toward the airfield, turning into the wind, and Grik line handers began to assemble, two engines on the port side suddenly clattered and died. Immediately, it veered left as the thrust of the starboard engines and the breeze took it. The rudders slammed hard over, and the throttles controlling the starboard engines were quickly cut, leaving only the centerline motor behind the forward gondola. More a steering engine than anything, however, it just wasn’t enough. And too much hydrogen had already been vented for the airship to rise again, so it kept descending as it drifted swiftly westward.
The young Japanese sailor only recently promoted to officer and who had the duty at the airfield sprang into action. He quickly ordered a telegraph message sent to HQ that they had an airship in distress and raced off on foot, leading a dozen Grik security troops. They ran as fast as they could through the dense jungle separating their post from the sea, but before they’d made it a mile down the narrow, winding path, they saw a ball of bright orange fire roll into the sky through a gap in the cover. Black smoke gushed away to seaward. Picking up their pace and panting as they went, they covered the final mile to the coast. It was all over by the time they arrived: there wasn’t even much smoke anymore. Through heroic effort, the crew of the airship had apparently managed to crash-land on the broad, blindingly white beach before they were blown out to sea, but whatever caused the engines to malfunction—whether they overheated or their fuel lines burst, there was no telling—must’ve started a fire. Constructed almost entirely of wood and fabric, the very cells containing the volatile hydrogen saturated with a highly flammable sealant, and with the heaviest weight aboard being fuel tanks, Grik zeppelins, once ignited, burned as quickly and thoroughly as nitrated paper. All that remained were scattered engines, a frail, collapsing skeleton, and the two gondolas, still smoldering.
“Check inside!” the Japanese officer shouted, waving his Grik forward before he bent over gasping, hands on his knees. The skeleton crumpled with a sparkly crash, nearly catching a couple of his Grik, but they ventured forward again, to peer inside the gondolas.
“Su’ete no shisha!” one of the Grik reported in his best butchered Japanese. He held up three clawed fingers on each hand. Six bodies; no survivors. The officer sighed and sank to the sand. “We’ll wait until the wreck cools, then see if any dispatches survived.” Those were usually in thick leather satchels or wooden tubes and may have escaped the fire. The Grik gathered round and squatted in the sand around him.
“Well, we’re here,” Silva whispered, peering from the jungle shadows nearby. Lawrence was putting the brass-framed Remington MK III flare gun that ignited the zep back in his pack. He took out a thick paper box of hardtack “heart attack” crackers and offered them around. Brassey took one, biting into the thick, dark square, and munched quietly. Silva nodded at the Khonashi sergeant who stuck to Brassey like glue. “Quick work covering our tracks, Sergeant . . . Oolak, right?” The fierce-looking Khonashi nodded. “I doubt they’d’ve noticed ’em, the way they charged right up, but who knows?” He slithered back and leaned against a tree, gazing around at his, Brassey’s, and Lawrence’s ten Khonashi and three ’Cats. “My poor zep,” he lamented. “It was the best one in the whole damn Air Corps!” He held up his canteen in salute and took a solemn sip.
“I believe it was the only one,” Brassey observed wryly.
“So?”
“And next?” Lawrence asked.
“Next we check the radio an’ Morse lamp; make sure we didn’t bust ’em. But don’t transmit,” he warned the two Khonashi comm-tokeks, as Silva called them (after the little house geckos in Java), burdened with big packs on their backs. Inside one was a hand-crank generator, folded up, that weighed forty pounds. The other contained the smallest radio they’d made yet, the same short-range set they were putting in the P-1C Mosquito Hawks, as well as a small Morse lamp. Built tough by necessity, together they weighed close to sixty pounds, and both troopers still had to carry their Allin-Silva rifles and ammunition. Their rations and other equipment had been split among the others. Dennis had most of his usual arsenal of tommy gun, .45, cutlass, and ’03 bayonet, as well as his odd flintlock pistol. At the last minute, he’d decided to leave his beloved Doom Stomper behind. It was too long and cumbersome for what they had in mind, and he’d made up the weight with extra ammo and a haversack full of grenades. He’d always liked grenades. “Then we get comfterble,” he continued. “Take a nap. It’s been a long night an’ mornin’.” He waved at the beach. “Those guys look like they’ll stick around awhile, but I doubt it’ll be too long. We’ll hang here till dark an’ try to signal our offshore support. Tell ’em we made it, an’ what we seen so far.” One of the converted AVDs (seaplane tenders), with a Nancy aboard, was supposed to steam close enough to receive their Morse lamp report sometime around midnight, then head southwest toward the African coast, and south again before repeating it by radio.
Interestingly, it and several other AVDs had been further modified as DMs, or mine layers, as well. Silva had seen the new mines that arrived with Tarakaan Island and heartily approved of them. They didn’t look much different from depth charges, but had enough buoyancy to float just un
der the surface and were studded with contact exploders. Weights kept them anchored in place. A keen eye would probably see them in daylight, in anything but the roughest sea, but when it came to mines, sometimes it was better when the enemy knew they were there. Dennis wished they had more of them, but most were lost in another ship in the battle north of Mahe, and they’d never get replacements in time to use them right. But they had enough for an . . . interesting scheme the Skipper cooked up. It might cost them all their AVD-DMs sometime over the next few days, but if it worked, it could give them an edge against Kurokawa’s fleet.
“So just relax,” Silva said, pulling his helmet down over his eye. “The next few nights’ll be mighty busy, once we start pokin’ around.”
CHAPTER 16
////// TF Bottle Cap
USS Santa Catalina
Go Away Strait
November 18, 1944
Commander Russ Chappelle took a paper box from his shirt pocket and knocked out a PIG-cig. His trusty old Zippo flared to life and he sucked the acrid-tasting smoke. Somehow he didn’t even grimace. Getting used to the damn things, I guess, he thought, stepping farther out on Santa Catalina’s starboard bridge wing and staring past the ’Cat sailors by the pelorus and Morse lamp. Beyond, on the late-afternoon waters of the Go Away Strait, was the massive USNRS Arracca. She still looked weird in her new dazzle paint scheme, after all the time she’d just been brown, then gray, and he wondered why. Santy Cat had the same paint job and didn’t look weird anymore. He glanced at the nasty-tasting cigarette between his fingers and shrugged. Boils down to what you’re used to.
Mikey Monk sauntered out of the old ship’s armored pilothouse and joined him. Russ offered him a PIG-cig, but Monk took an exaggerated step back and shook his head. “Not me, Skipper! I can’t stand those damn things. Make my mouth taste like old socks . . . ah, probably taste.”
Russ laughed. “So that’s your secret, Mikey! Maybe I’ll try chewing old socks to get the taste out.” Monk chuckled too and they stood companionably for a while, talking about little of consequence. All the while, they stared at the ships around them, the purpling sky past the single, smoke-streaming funnel above and behind the choppy, marbled sea, and the distant dark smear of Africa beneath the setting sun. Below them, ’Cats practiced loading the big twenty-foot, ten-inch rifle mounted on the foredeck. It was the salvaged breech section of one of Amagi’s main guns, and combined with her 5.5″ secondaries and cluster of machine guns, Santy Cat was still the most powerful ship in the Alliance. She’d remain so at least until USS Gray commissioned. Her current mission was to guard Arracca against any Grik heavies that chose to poke their noses past the mouth of the Zambezi. So far, none had tried.
There was a metallic rumble on the stairs behind and they turned to see Lieutenant (jg) Dean Laney’s overstuffed form rising to join them. Looking up, he saw them watching and scowled, perhaps self-consciously, but kept coming. “God,” Mikey murmured, expecting the worst. Laney had always been an asshole, and hardly a day went by that he didn’t find something to complain about. There’d been a time when he was a match for the mighty Dennis Silva, and they’d been associates and competitors in a number of escapades over the years, but Laney had gone to seed since they came to this world—physically and spiritually. Where Silva thrived, Laney faltered, and being engineering officer of Santa Catalina was probably his last chance in Matt Reddy’s Navy. Fortunately, he really was an excellent engineer and seemed to have found his place at last. His skill, if not personality, was sufficient to win the admiration of his division. Now, if only he wouldn’t bitch so much . . .
“Skipper,” Laney said. He didn’t speak to Monk, but that was normal. He and Santy Cat’s XO didn’t like each other very much.
“Laney,” Russ acknowledged, then sighed. “What’s the problem?”
Laney looked confused. “I, ah . . . nothin’, Skipper. No problems to report.” He seemed to think about it. “I wouldn’t mind if the bunkers were topped off. We’ve done a fair amount of high-speed steamin’ lately.” Russ and Monk both stared at him. “High speed” was kind of relative for their ship, her top end being barely twelve knots, with all the extra armor and armaments she carried. But she had to keep up with the carriers and sail/steam DDs, all of which could make fifteen when they had to. And with their position known to the enemy, they’d been burning a lot of fuel dodging Grik zeppelins at night. Arracca’s Mosquito Hawks tore the formations apart and kept them off their backs, but a few always got through and they had to evade their bombs. So far, there’d been very little damage. A few near misses were the worst. And there hadn’t been any suicider bombs. Maybe training their pilots had always been a Kurokawa thing. Or maybe even the Grik down here are training them for something else now. Russ wondered. At least the bombings at Grik City have stopped, giving Second Corps and Leedom’s flyboys a break—not to mention maybe keeping the Grik from getting wise when First and Third Corps come down. And we’re finally narrowing down where some of the Grik air bases must be. We’ll get ’em soon. Russ didn’t understand why, but finding and eliminating those bases had suddenly—briefly, he was assured—become a lower priority than before. He shook his head, still staring at Laney. That their fuel state was all he could come up with to gripe about today was . . . phenomenal. Was it possible he was straightening out at last, finally looking beyond his own narrow priorities? Using his own real knowledge and skill to sort things out in his division without demanding someone tell him to? Could he have actually discovered constructive initiative? Russ hoped so.
Chief Bosun’s Mate Stanley “Dobbin” Dobson stepped out of the pilothouse and it occurred to Russ that, except for Surgeon Commander Kathy McCoy and Major Simy Gutfeld of the 3rd Marines, every human aboard Santy Cat now stood together. And Kathy had only just left, possibly sensing Laney was coming. Laney had been ineffectually, somewhat sulkily, sweet on her for a long time. As far as anyone could tell, Kathy flat wasn’t interested. There’d once been a lot more humans in Santa Catalina, but most had gone to new construction and some were lost at Second Madras—along with James Ellis. Not many of us left, Russ reflected.
“The strike’s coming in,” Dobbin told them, nodding back at the pilothouse. “Bridge talker just got it from the wireless shack.” Russ raised his rare, precious binoculars and looked west, the glare of the setting sun making his eyes water through the glass. “Very well,” he said. “Pass the word to the quartermaster. We’ll ease closer to Arracca and take our usual station. Sway out the motor launch and have the recovery crew stand by.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Dobbin stepped back in the pilothouse, relayed the command to the OOD, then walked briskly back past them, blowing his bosun’s pipe. The loudspeaker crackled and the bridge talker’s voice echoed through the ship. “All haans! Staan by for re-cov-ry maan-oo-vers! Line haanlers an’ marksmen, report to you stations! Aantiair baat-ries, maan you guns!”
TF Bottle Cap had started hitting Sofesshk and the military and industrial centers beyond it every day. Whenever the airstrikes returned, every ship of the nearby screen prepared to recover flight crews as fast as they could, in case damaged planes or wounded pilots missed their landings on the carriers. There was little they could do for P-1s that went in the water, except send the motor launch and try to get their pilots out before the voracious flasher fish—or other things—did. Nancys always landed on the water, but if they were badly damaged, they’d set down alongside Santa Catalina so they wouldn’t clog recovery operations around the carrier. Santy Cat still had her cargo booms aft and would take the crew aboard, then lift the damaged plane whether it would ever fly again or not. They could always salvage parts. And Kathy and her large medical team were there to treat injured flyers. Picked riflemen from the 3rd Marines prepared to discourage larger predators like gri-kakka. There were a bunch of those in the strait, big ones, and different from what they’d ever seen. But there was little evidence rifles bothered them much. T
he machine guns did a better job, but were also manned in case some kind of enemy attack followed their own planes in. After the Battle of Mahe, they’d never assume anything again.
They prepared to do much the same each night, after the big boys, the PB-5D flying boats, went in. Clippers carried heavier bomb loads but were also more vulnerable to Grik defenses. Whereas the Nancys and Fleashooters went after specific targets they could see in daylight, the Clipper’s job, for now, was area “terror” bombing of the Grik capital city—though still not Old Sofesshk across the river. So far, the Clippers had been amazingly lucky. Several had limped in to land alongside Santy Cat for quick repairs or gas, after losing fuel from punctured tanks, but they’d lost only two of the big planes and their crews. One, badly damaged and smoking, set down too far away for any ship’s launch to reach before it burst into flames and sank. The other had simply disappeared. But Jumbo had eighteen now, with more arriving all the time, and a dozen dedicated to the bombing effort.
“This assignment’s been a grind so far,” Russ admitted, watching Fleashooters land on the carriers, tail hooks snagging the arresting cables and jerking the planes to a stop. They were always first, being the shortest on fuel. He lowered his binoculars. “But the raids are giving the Grik fits. Commodore Tassanna says her Nancys have blown the hell out of a lot of industrial sites they’ve identified along the river. Sunk some big ships too. Those new Grik BBs are tough customers, by the way. Heavier armor and fewer guns—but the fore and aft guns’re big mothers, behind sponsons. Probably on barbettes. It’ll be hot work with ’em when they come out, if our air doesn’t get ’em all first. Tassanna thinks there’s bound to be more ships and industry farther upriver, past that big-ass lake, and maybe up the other river running north. Maybe that’s where all their transports are too. Planes still haven’t seen much along those lines, but they’re concentrating on what they know is there for now. With things so stirred up, Jumbo’s afraid to risk Clippers on more long-range daylight scouts past all those rockets, and likely into more.”
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