Straits of Hell

by Taylor Anderson

  Gravois shifted in his chair and pinched his mustache between his thumb and forefinger. “Well,” he said. “You are not altogether wrong,” he confessed with a slight smile. Kurokawa was too stunned to speak at first. Before he could vent his mounting rage, however, Gravois continued. “We have been entirely honest with you. We do want you to win, and we desire only friendship between our peoples. But we also want you to continue your war against the various allies that oppose you—without becoming too powerful yourself.”

  “Gravois!” Rizzo hissed.

  “Oh, be quiet, Maggiore Rizzo! We obviously cannot continue this charade!” He looked at Kurokawa. “What would you do in our position? We accept you as a friend, an ally, but our leaders will never accept you as their superior. If you grow too strong, you will try to take that place.” He smiled and shrugged. “We know you very well. And we are relatively weak in this sea, as you say, and cannot afford a major war here now,” he confessed. “In fact,” he continued, “though we will help you, we cannot afford a major war against your enemies at present either. As I have alluded, they are much more widespread than you know.” He sighed. “Not only have they conquered India and Madagascar from you and the Grik; their influence extends throughout the East Indies, Australia, and most of the Pacific. They even have a toehold in the Americas—not to mention small colonies in your own homeland of Japan. Indeed, were the . . . significant forces they have deployed against another enemy they confront in Central and South America free to join them here, I do not think any of us could prevail against them without a full commitment by the League.”

  “We know of this ‘other enemy,’” Kurokawa stated, almost petulantly. “This ‘Dominion.’”

  “What do you know about it?” Gravois asked, genuinely curious. Kurokawa clouded. “Not much,” he snapped. “Only that it exists.”

  Gravois massaged his mustache again. “We know little beyond that ourselves, but we are attempting to learn more, even as we speak.” He shrugged again. He does that a lot, Kurokawa thought darkly. “As I have told you, our own resources are not unlimited and the world is vast.” He grimaced. “But in addition to all that, the American-Lemurian Alliance has sent a mission to a small power called the Republic of Real People situated in the south of Africa.”

  Kurokawa’s brows rose at that. “The ‘other hunters’!” he exclaimed.

  “You know of them?” Gravois asked, surprised himself.

  “Yes,” Kurokawa proclaimed with some satisfaction. “General Esshk of the Grik and I once attempted to enlist their aid. There was no response.”

  “Actually, there was,” Rizzo said. “They have been preparing to join the war against you for some time, but we had . . . assets there to prevent that. Peacefully, of course,” he added with a glance at Gravois.

  “How could you accomplish that?” Muriname blurted.

  “Suffice to say that we did—for a while. We have no direct contact with those assets. They must remain silent to avoid detection themselves. But it seems clear from reports we have received from Tripoli that the effort to dissuade the Republic has now ended and it will attack the Grik, though its offensive has been seriously delayed.” He frowned. “I do not know which best serves our purposes.” He looked steadily at Kurokawa. “Either of our purposes. Should you warn the Grik of this or not? Assuming, of course, that you have the means to do so . . .”

  Gravois cleared his throat. “But the point we have been trying to make is that no matter how mighty the League might be, it must be subtle at times. It can’t fight everywhere, or its power would become as diluted as the American-Lemurian Alliance. We must assume that the Alliance, at least, has finally discovered our existence through contact with the Republic, if no other way, and our leaders prefer to avoid overtly antagonizing it or the Grik, and that we maintain the appearance of official neutrality as long as possible. We will help you, discreetly for now, and primarily with information. For example, I will tell you that the Allies have sent part of their fleet at Madras to reinforce and resupply their forces on Madagascar. It is believed that this force may pass near enough to Zanzibar to discover your presence here. To avoid that, you should prepare to destroy, as suddenly and completely as possible, any snooping Allied ships or planes.”

  “Can you tell us the position of the enemy forces when they are near?” Muriname asked.

  Gravois hesitated. “Possibly,” he said.

  “Then we should attack!” Kurokawa shouted triumphantly. “Our new weapons will take them completely by surprise, and we will scour them from the sea!”

  “I would . . . counsel most ardently against that,” Gravois said with a smile.

  Kurokawa’s eyes bulged in fury. “Are you mad? To have such an opportunity and not take it is abject cowardice!”

  Rizzo bristled, but Gravois remained impassive. “I suggest that it would be wise to allow the first force to pass unmolested, if possible. It is of little consequence. You may only achieve the surprise you seek once, and if you desire the greatest return on your advantage, attack the second convoy from Madras. It will be much more important to your enemies.”

  Kurokawa stared. “How do you know all this? So far I have taken your word that you know all you say, but I must know how!” he demanded hotly. “Most of the enemy’s wireless traffic has been in code, and their radio chatter is largely in the language of their lackeys! If you have broken their code, I demand access to it!”

  “Demand?” Gravois replied with a slight frown. Then he shook his head. “We have not broken their code and it remains troublesome, but we can translate the Lemurian voice transmissions. An amazingly complete picture of Allied strategy can be assembled from loose, offhand chatter, and Lemurians are delightfully talkative creatures!”

  “How do you understand them?” Muriname asked. Gravois seemed to consider, then glanced at Rizzo. The Italian officer nodded reluctantly. “I freely told you that we lost a submarine,” Gravois said, “but what I did not say is that it—and other elements—have been deployed to observe your enemy for some time. For security reasons I cannot say how those elements are maintained, but it should suffice that the submarine once found itself in a position to capture a few Lemurians without risk of discovery. They’d been left to watch a destroyed Lemurian city on the coast of Java, near Tjilatjap, as a matter of fact.” He spread his hands. “The prisoners were persuaded to be helpful. Sadly, they didn’t know what they’d been left to guard, but were most cooperative in other respects. I believe some still survive as interpreters, though we now have others who understand the language.”

  “That is . . . amazing,” Muriname murmured. He knew the Grik had captured Lemurians before, but they were always eaten, and few ever survived long enough to be questioned. Even then, little was ever learned from them. He wondered if the League had better methods of extracting information, or did its prisoners cooperate better simply because they weren’t Grik?

  “Most interesting,” Kurokawa agreed, his tone surprisingly composed. “Almost as interesting as how you have, after so long, gone from revealing practically nothing to telling us more than I can believe.” He waved away Rizzo’s objection and nodded at Muriname. “I must consider this, and particularly how to respond to the enemy convoys you described. We can meet again tomorrow, if that is convenient for you. Perhaps I will have more questions, and a better sense of things then.”

  “At your service, General of the Sea Kurokawa,” Gravois said as he, Rizzo, and de Luca stood. When it became clear that Kurokawa didn’t mean to stomp out before them, as usual, they awkwardly took their leave. When they were gone, Kurokawa finally sat and exhaled heavily. Muriname stepped over to stand before him.

  “Do you believe them?” Kurokawa asked.

  “Yes, Lord.”

  Kurokawa nodded. “So frustrating! I wonder if we shouldn’t have simply tortured all we wanted to know from them from the start.” He smirked. “A
s passive as they claim to be, the League probably wouldn’t want to ‘antagonize’ us either!”

  “But Gravois seems to wield real power within it,” Muriname said reflectively. “And after reporting that he arrived safely, which I’m sure he did as soon as he landed, I doubt we could hope for any assistance from the League if he suddenly stopped reporting.”

  “The League,” Kurokawa hissed, “will ‘assist’ us in destroying every threat it fears, including ourselves! Gravois as much as admitted that! We will end up no better than the other, lesser members of their strange association, and likely much worse. No! I—we—have not worked so long and hard, and suffered so much to merely trade our old Grik masters for others that will use us the same! We have a purpose on this world, General of the Sky! Why else are we here? And it is not our destiny to be ruled by anyone, but to rule ourselves! To rule everyone!”

  Muriname felt his heart sink. Kurokawa’s madness was nothing if not consistent. The worst part was that Muriname agreed with most of what his leader said but was rational enough to understand that nobody could ever rule this entire, savage world. He would’ve been perfectly happy to cooperate with the League if he weren’t so sure that Kurokawa was right about them as well, and they were just as mad as he.

  “We are not in control of this situation,” Kurokawa said, his voice coldly calm. “That has been the case for far too long, and we must do something about it.” He turned his head to gaze at the jungle outside. The sky was darkening and storms would come. “For now, we shall remain the devoted friends of our new allies from the League of Tripoli. We will learn what we can from them and always push for greater commitments on their part. At the same time, we will release Tatsuma to carry a message back to General Esshk, informing him that we happily escaped the disaster at Madras with as much of the army and navy as we could save, in spite of the rebellion of his protégé, General Halik. It will go on to inform him of everything we know about the League—except where its members are, of course—and what we are trying to get out of our association with them. I don’t believe I will mention what we learned of the Republic just now either. General Esshk is no fool, and I prefer him less focused on us. An attack from the south should keep him distracted.” He smiled. “Like the League, it can only benefit us if our ‘allies’ remain confused.” He returned to the subject of his message. “Finally, it will assure Esshk that we have never stopped the hunt against our mutual foes and are poised to demolish a great fleet on its way to reinforce the enemy now holding the Celestial City.”

  “We shall attack the first force Gravois described?” Muriname asked with concern.

  “Not unless it discovers us,” Kurokawa replied. “Gravois’s point about achieving the maximum effect from our surprise was well taken.” He smiled. “Esshk doesn’t know the full extent of the force he faces. How can he? And even if he did, he can’t expect us to stop everything that passes by. But we will destroy the second, more ‘consequential’ force Gravois described!” he growled, then chuckled, his mood whipsawing in that disconcerting way. “Our message to First General Esshk will end with my appropriate condolences on the loss of our Celestial Mother, and my concerned speculation that the treachery that lost my regency in India might have left me with insufficient authority to command the necessary obedience from the Grik forces we’ve assembled here. A suitably impressive appointment from him would go a long way toward ensuring our success. Another, more expansive regency, perhaps?”

  Muriname barked a laugh in spite of himself.

  “Hilarious, is it not?” Kurokawa said in the most genial tone Muriname had ever heard him use. “I will bribe him with his own ships and troops!”

  “But what will Gravois say if he discovers what we do?” Muriname cautioned.

  “What can he say? We only continue to fight as we have—which is what he says he wants, after all.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Fire in the East

  ////// USS Simms

  Second Fleet Task Force 11

  330 miles ESE Approximate Position “El Paso del Fuego”

  (Costa Rica)

  September 12, 1944

  Lieutenant Ruik-Sor-Raa paced the damp, windswept quarterdeck of USS Simms as she bounded through cross-grained seas. The sea spray kept the nearly blond fur of his face and hands, not protected by the dark peacoat, a duskier shade than usual. The sky was a dull gray brown, but anything but lifeless, throwing a stiff northwesterly wind close enough that Simms had to rely on her staysails alone to keep her engine from working too hard. Not that Simms’s fine engine needed the help, Ruik reflected. It was still doing most of the work. But like every frigate, or “DD” skipper, he was ever mindful of his fuel state, and as the task force he was assigned to drew ever nearer the mysterious pass or strait where the Dom fleet was supposed to be gathering, thoughts of fuel—for combat speeds—plagued his thoughts more and more.

  His Filpin Lands–built Scott Class sailing steamer had recently undergone an extensive and lengthy refit and repair at New Scotland, and she still showed every sign of being better than new. She was 210 feet long, with twenty 50-pounders, two Y guns, depth charges, and 260 officers and crewfolk. She was capable of more than seventeen knots with her engine at full speed and her sails drawing a kind wind, and, at 1,800 tons, was even heavier than USS Walker. Ruik loved her, even as he understood that she was already outdated and would be hopelessly outclassed in the armor-plated brawls that had most recently characterized the naval battles in the West. Out here, in the Eastern Sea Campaign, she was still somewhat better than “state of the art.” At least against the Doms. He hoped.

  He raised his glass and stared at HMIS Icarus, steaming some distance off Simms’s starboard quarter. Icarus was old, one of the first Imperial ships the Allies ever encountered. She was a square rig steamer as well, but classed a “ship sloop” by her navy. She’d been “up-armed” with thirty-pounders, but retained her paddlewheels for steam propulsion and was having a lot harder time keeping station. Ruik snorted in sympathy. He considered Lieutenant Parr, Icarus’s skipper, a very good friend, and though the man dearly loved his ship, he had to be at least a little frustrated at times like this, comparing her to Ruik’s. And it wasn’t just age. Simms was better in virtually every respect, having drawn on much more modern designs for, well, everything. Ruik snorted again and raised his glass. His and Parr’s ships were screening Task Force 11’s extreme left, and even with the tumultuous sea, the force arrayed to his southeast was a stirring sight. Nearly half of Second Fleet, minus Maaka-Kakja and her own battle group, of course, had been committed to the Governor-Empress’s powerful probe of the Dom fleet. The force included two dozen steam frigates, or “DDs,” though some of those were now designated destroyer seaplane tenders (AVDs), and were less heavily armed than their newer counterparts. Eight mighty ships of the line of seventy to one hundred heavy guns apiece constituted Imperial Admiral E. B. Hibbs’s main battle line, and he flew his pennant from HIMS Mars. There were oilers and colliers aplenty—the Empire’s steamers still burned coal—and there was even a troopship packed with seven hundred men, sent along just in case an opportunity arose. Finally, the ships of the line, or “baatlewaagons,” as the Lemurian sailors called them, as well as the other most vulnerable ships, were enclosed by an inner screen of dedicated anti-Grikbird auxiliaries. These were the equivalent of the fast transports in the West, but they were equipped with a variety of new weapons designed to deter attacks from the Grik-like flying “dragons.” Saan-Kakja had surprised them all by arriving with enough of the new Browning copy machine guns to put two or more of them on each of the dedicated vessels.

  Ruik was encouraged by that, and the overall power he beheld. This was the first time they’d ever gone after the Doms with more than a handful of determined ships. But he still remained unsure how he felt about the whole operation; he could see both sides of the argument. He liked and admired Governor-Empress Rebecca, and agreed
with her desire to find out what they faced. If they couldn’t do it by air, a strong surface force had to try. But High Admiral Jenks was right as well. Air power—of whatever sort—was far more important than Ruik thought Governor-Empress Rebecca fully grasped. If the Dom’s “Grikbirds” could keep Second Fleet’s air away from the region, there was a good chance the enemy had finally figured out how to make the things more effective against surface ships than they’d been off Saint Francis. . . .

  “What do you think we’re gonna run into, Skipper?” Ruik’s Maa-ni-lo Exec, Gaal-Etkaa asked, mirroring his own thoughts.

  “I don’t know,” Ruik answered honestly. “I wish I did. When it gets right down to it, as my Amer-i-caan friends say, nobody really knows what the daamn Doms have anymore; what they’ve apparently drawn here from their forces in the Aat-laantic. . . .” Ruik coughed a laugh. “Aat-laantic! Not so long ago, I didn’t think anyone could sail so happily here as we do now, without falling off the world! Now I learn there is yet another vast sea beyond the land of the Doms! I can barely imagine it. I . . . begin to feel old, somehow.”

  Gaal-Etkaa blinked amusement, but then laid his ears back. “I’m twenty. Older than you. But I think I know how you feel. So much change, so fast. More in the last few years than our people have absorbed for . . .” He stopped, shrugging in the human way, and they both laughed. Gaal sobered. “But I cannot help wonder what we, our ship, might soon be forced to absorb,” he said more quietly, glancing at the ’Cats nearby. Their laughter had established for the crew that they were unconcerned by the tangible worries that naturally filled the ship, but they knew each other well enough to share their candid, private thoughts.