Straits of Hell

by Taylor Anderson

  “What if the Blood Drinkers don’t run?” Blair demanded sharply, hobbling up to join them. “They usually don’t, you know.” Blas hoped he was just exhausted and not wounded, but she couldn’t tell in the deepening gloom.

  “Then we’ll surround them, take them between fires from inside and out, and exterminate them to the last man if we must,” Shinya said mildly. He sighed. “I told you before. We will win a great victory today, and many have contributed to it far beyond my expectations. You, for one, Colonel Blair.” He nodded at Sister Audry, Koratin, Garcia, Rebecca, and Saan-Kakja. “You as well.” His eyes found Blas, leaning now on her rifle. “And you perhaps most of all. I won’t forget.”

  “Neither will I,” Blas promised, her tone tired and dark.

  Shinya nodded understanding. “You will rest,” he told her, “as will all who fought on the outer wall. But our larger force that your valor allowed me to keep within the inner wall has exercised only their rifles and guns today and remains ready to join the chase. You bought me that luxury, Captain Blas, and now we’ll begin what you’ve so long desired.” His voice rose so all could hear. “We will chase the Doms at last! We will chase them without pause or mercy!”

  “How?” Sister Audry asked. “Our supply lines will be tenuous at best, we are still outnumbered, and we have no air support.”

  “Our supplies are tenuous—for now,” he agreed. “And we’re outnumbered, though I expect that to change with your help. Do you think Guayak and Puerto Viejo are unique? This entire continent chafes beneath the heel of the Dominion. I have no doubt our ranks will swell as we advance. And as for air cover, I know you brought more planes to Puerto Viejo—and we are perhaps not as short of them as I have been leading the enemy to believe, in any case,” he added cryptically, then shook his head. “We can discuss all that later, but I believe you will appreciate my plan. For now, you, Saan-Kakja, and the Governor-Empress must retire inside the fort while we complete today’s victory. None of you can be spared, nor should you ever have personally come here,” he lightly scolded. “But now that you are here, please believe that this army, your army”—he smiled—“this ‘Army of the Sisters,’ I believe we shall call it, will soon have the initiative. And Don Hernan and the wicked empire he serves shall not draw a tranquil breath for the rest of the short time either one survives.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Gales in the West

  Battle of the “Go Away Strait”

  “2nd Grik City”

  USS Tassat

  September 17, 1944

  It was dawn over the Comoros Islands, and the southeasternmost one, the one infested by the largest number of Grik, was just a couple of miles to the southwest of Task Force Jarrik. The sky was like dull, weathered lead, and the sea was a similar, wetter, darker color, topped with slashes of near white. A stiff, northerly breeze stirred the sea and made it warm and humid—for now, but it was clear to all that a storm was brewing. USS Tassat, under Keje’s cousin, Captain Jarrik-Fas, and her consort, USS Haakar-Faask, under Lieutenant Commander Niaal-Ras-Kavaat, constituted TF-Jarrik, and had been cruising south of the islands under topsails alone, keeping the watchful station they’d been assigned when the rest of First Fleet South steamed northeast to deal with the gathering Grik menace at the Seychelles.

  Both DDs were Haakar-Faask Class square rig sailing steamers. Measuring two hundred feet in length with a beam thirty-six feet wide and displacing around sixteen hundred tons, they were not the newest wooden DDs in the Allied fleet, nor the oldest, and were two-thirds as long as Walker and actually heavier. Both were capable of making fifteen knots even with the new armor applied to protect their engineering spaces, and they were well armed with twenty 32-pounder smoothbores, Y guns, and depth charges.

  Haakar-Faask carried 224 officers and enlisted, while Tassat had 230, about a quarter of whom were “exchange Impies.” These were Imperial sailors and Marines assigned to “Lemurian-American” Navy ships to put more Imperials in the war in the West, while all Imperial ships remained in the fight against the Doms. It was a satisfactory arrangement for all concerned. The influx of volunteers from the Great South Isle would help the war effort amazingly—eventually. But those volunteers still had to be trained, and “Aus-traal-ans” didn’t depend nearly as much on the sea as their cousins from the great seagoing Homes, or even those in Borno or the Filpin Lands. Most didn’t even have the basic knack for seamanship that had made other Lemurians such quick learners. Factoring in the dreadful losses sustained by those more experienced ’Cats and the pace of operations that kept the rest so long deployed instead of rotating home to teach their skills, the shipyards at Baalkpan and Maa-ni-laa had outstripped the Allied ability to provide trained crews for even newer, more complicated designs. A simple lack of trained crews had created the greatest bottleneck to the deployment of ships that, had they been available, might already have turned the tide in the war.

  Conversely, the Empire of the New Britain Isles was a seafaring nation. Its sailors were already well acquainted with steam power and relatively sophisticated ship designs, and Imperial vessels now under construction should have been able to cope with armored Grik warships. But those they had in service, with their exposed paddlewheels, were as hopelessly outclassed in “western” battle lines as dedicated sailors like Donaghey had become. Therefore, a growing number of “Impie” officers, particularly from nearer possessions such as Respite Island, were coming west to learn their trade while ships were made for them back home.

  One such officer was Lieutenant Stanly Raj, who was acting as Jarrik-Fas’s executive officer on Tassat. He now stood beside his shorter, bear-shaped Lemurian captain on the DD’s quarterdeck near the exposed helm. The ship was currently hove to and still at morning GQ, her Nancy scout plane being prepared for launch. Tassat had no catapult and had to set the plane in the water where it would take off on its own.

  “A little rough for this, don’t you think?” Raj asked, gauging the wind and sea.

  “Almost,” Jarrik confirmed, “but my pilots are good. They’ve lifted from seas like this many times.” He blinked. “Any worse and I wouldn’t let them, though, and I might still have them divert to Grik City instead of trying to recover aboard here later, if the sea gets any friskier.” He scratched the reddish brown fur above his eyes. “Especially since Haakar-Faask lost her plane, an’ we couldn’t get it replaced. Ours is the only one left out here. But it’s also the only eyes we’ll get in the sky today, and we gotta stay on guard.”

  “It does feel a bit . . . lonely out here at times,” Raj observed wryly. “I concur that the Grik on the islands are no real threat, but with only our two ships standing between Grik City and the continent to the west—where all the Grik in the world reside . . . I certainly hope Captain Reddy is right about the Seychelles.”

  Jarrik grunted. “Me too. And he probably is. Reports have a lot of Grik ships gathered there.” He blinked. “But I known Cap-i-taan Reddy a long time, an’ sure as he might be, he’s gonna want to watch for sneakin’.” He grinned. “That’s why we’re here!”

  The Nancy slapped the water and tried to surge against the side of the ship, but the boom held it away. Moments later, its observer propped the engine and when it was running smooth, the pilot pointed it away and the shackle attaching it to the boom was released. Immediately, the plane wallowed away from the ship.

  “Secure from special air detail!” Raj called. “Resume course!” Piercing whistles shrieked, and men and ’Cats heaved on lines, bringing the yards back around where the sails could bite. Almost immediately, they felt the ship surge ahead.

  “By the way,” Jarrik said to Raj, “congratulations! It seems the victory at the Battle of Malpelo was more complete than first suspected. A large number of Dom ships that were thought to have escaped were later captured, severely damaged, and unable to keep up with their friends. Combined with reports from Fort Defiance, it seems things may be
looking up in the East at last.”

  “Indeed, and thank you. The aftermath of battles on land and sea is often quite confused, it appears,” Raj observed. “What seems like a defeat, or perhaps a draw in this case, may turn out to be a great victory, under further scrutiny.”

  “It is natural,” Jarrik said. “I’ve been in enough battles to understand that one rarely knows what’s happening beyond one’s own view, much less how an entire, sprawling battle proceeds. And it’s equally natural to concentrate on one’s own wounds before devoting much interest to how badly one’s opponent is hurt.” He snorted a Lemurian chuckle. “And in this case it seems High Ahd-mi-raal Jenks was quite busy gently probing his broken nose while what remained of the Dom fleet dragged itself away, trailing its entrails!”

  “An appropriate, if somewhat disrespectful metaphor,” Raj conceded a little stiffly.

  Jarrik blinked amusement. “No disrespect. He won a great victory, as did Gener-aal Shinya. And like all victories, it remains to be seen how complete they were. But certainly the war in the East can now proceed more briskly?”

  “Let us hope so, and hope also that Captain Reddy can achieve a similar victory north of here.”

  “As you say, ‘indeed.’” Jarrik swished his tail, watching the Nancy disappear in the sky to the south. “Malpelo was a helluva fight, and there will be another one today. Just two days ago,” he said, his tone turning somber, “Santy Cat and Arracca’s battle group finally joined Walker east of the Seychelles after a hard voyage. They immediately proceeded to a point fifty miles south of the islands, and already—right now, most likely—the first planes from Salissa and Arracca are closing on the enemy anchorage. Soon the bombs will fall, the new Grik rockets will rise, and destruction will reign. People will die. Let us hope that surprise has been achieved and the cost will be light. But there will be a cost.”

  For the next half hour, Tassat and Haakar-Faask cruised on companionably, alone in the “Go Away Strait,” with nothing but the Comoros Islands to share the sea as far as the horizon in all directions but to the east, where Madagascar’s low, dark form could be seen. And there was near silence aboard Tassat except for the pounding rush of the sea and the wind in her rigging. Everyone knew a great battle was shaping up to the north and time must pass before any reports were made. It remained unknown whether the enemy had the ability to monitor their wireless transmissions, but they proceeded under the assumption that it did. The codes had been changed, after cryptic orders to do so were received, and traffic was being kept to a normal minimum to prevent any listening enemy from suspecting anything was up, just in case.

  Tassat’s Lemurian signal officer scampered up the companionway from below and stood before Jarrik and Raj, eyes wide and blinking distress.

  “Well? What is it?” Jarrik demanded. “Has the attack begun?”

  “I, aah, not have news of the Saay-shells attaack yet, Cap-i-taan, but our scout makes a report!”

  “Then spill it!” Jarrik demanded. “What have they seen?”

  The ’Cat gulped and swished her tail in agitation. “Grik ships! Hundreds of ’em! All old Indiaa-maans like they use to carry warriors only, is thirty miles sou-sout’west o’ here an’ comin’ this way!”

  “How many ‘hundreds’?” Jarrik snapped.

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “Then find out—and send to all stations: whatever the Grik are doing in the Seychelles, they’re also hitting us here, now. Ask Gener-aal Safir Maraan to release all armed auxiliaries to join us near our current position. With this wind, they might just make it in time. Tell her also that we’ll direct her aircraft as best we can, once we get a better fix on the enemy position.” He paused. “And tell her that if the Grik are indeed in their ‘hundreds,’ we can’t stop them alone and she must be prepared for a ground assault upon the city.” He continued grimly. “Even if no surface elements survive, she should be able to predict where the enemy will strike by air observations, and deploy accordingly.” Blinking irony, he looked at Lieutenant Raj. “It seems there’ll be a ‘helluva fight’ here today as well.”

  Over the Seychelles

  Captain Jis-Tikkar, COFO of Salissa’s 1st Air Wing, and back with his Home where he belonged, led Salissa’s and Arracca’s combined air wings against the Grik anchorage in the Seychelles from the single seat of “his” P-1 Mosquito Hawk, or “Fleashooter.” Much as he’d have preferred to fly “his” strange P-40E configured as a floatplane, that aircraft, draggy as it was with the big Japanese pontoons bolted on, was still too fast to keep formation with his other planes. Besides, as strapped as they were, he considered the P-40 too valuable to risk in this role—whether he survived to fly it again or not. Big Sal had only two short squadrons left, just under twenty Nancys, but Arracca had sent forty, plus a dozen “Fleashooters” configured for antiship attack, with no guns and a pair of fifty-pound bombs. Not since the air attacks preceding the First Battle of Madras had he had so many planes under his command—and now he had far better bombs, and voice communications via the miniaturized TBS sets now installed in all planes in the West! As his planes approached the anchorage, it looked like they’d achieved complete surprise. The ironclad Grik battleships, or “waagons,” just lay there, moored nose to tail, and there was no smoke rising from their funnels. They didn’t even have steam up! None of the cruisers was in view, so perhaps they were clustered around one of the other islands? But there were plenty of the ubiquitous Grik Indiamen that the enemy used to transport troops and supplies.

  “Taally ho!” he cried into the clumsy microphone mounted on a boom in front of his face. “Odd-numbered flights target the waagons. The rest of you, burn down those transports!” Replies came fast and his planes bored in. It was then that he realized that not all the Grik were asleep. He’d examined the new antiair rockets they’d captured at Grik City. They were about two tails long and very narrow, with a nose shaped like a bullet and topped with a rather delicate-looking contact fuse like a big musket cap glued to a piece of tubing. Three fins were positioned toward the rear. In most respects, they looked just like oversize signal rockets to him, and if they hadn’t already lost some planes to the things, he might’ve discounted them, imagining how hard it would be to hit a plane with a signal rocket. But he’d never seen them in action before and when clustered shocks of the things jetted into the sky in initially dense, but diverging patterns, he was surprised both by their speed and their sheer numbers. Just like everything the Grik do, numbers are what make them dangerous, he realized. A lot of the rockets went wild, cartwheeling in the sky, disrupting the flight of others, or just flipping manically along the ground until they went off with small explosions. But a truly stunning number rose to meet his planes. His first “vee” was already past; they’d fired late, but when he looked back, he saw smoky tendrils intersect the next formations, followed by several flashes of light. At least four planes fell out of formation, one completely out of control with its wing peeling away. Another drifted down almost lazily, in scattered, smoldering pieces.

  Grimly touching the polished 7.7-mm cartridge case piercing his left ear for luck, he bored in on the ships below. Closer he got, closer, his left hand fingering the bomb release lever, caressing it gently, waiting for the exact instant he’d practiced so often. The first great ironclad loomed large below him—and he suddenly began noticing things.

  “Abort! Abort the run! All planes abort!” he cried into his mic as he pulled back on the stick, still not sure if he’d really seen what he thought. Banking right, he looked down and saw that several planes had already released, and bombs exploded on or near two of the huge ships below. Great wooden splinters blasted away from one ship, leaving a gaping wound in the sloping casemate, but there was no secondary explosion. Most telling of all, the damage seemed too extensive to have been caused without setting something off inside.

  “Abort your runs, daammit!” he shouted.

 
; “What’s the dope, sur?” “Why? What?” “Did I hear ‘abort’?” “What’s goin’ on?” came a flurry of queries.

  “Those waagons have no guns! No armor! Their boilers are cold, an’ there’s nobody home!”

  “You mean they’re not real?”

  Tikker continued his orbit, still looking down. “They’re real enough, just not finished, I bet. No armor bolted on, an’ no iron shutters over empty gunports. They’re just wood, painted black. No iron but the funnels—an’ I bet the funnels’re dummies!” He saw more explosions, crackling among the anchored Indiamen and the flies where they’d assumed the enemy encampments were. “Even-numbered flights, abort!” he shouted. “Everybody abort, I said!”

  “We do!” came an immediate response. “Rockets is fallin’ on our taa-gits!” Tikker stared a moment, then barked a laugh. That was something even he hadn’t thought of. With their contact fuses, of course any Grik rockets that didn’t smack a plane would go off when they hit the ground—wherever that might be. Just further proof they didn’t much care what happened to the ships and equipment they’d gathered here.

  “Skipper,” came another tinny voice. “The Indiaa-mans—they’s wrecks! Old, they look like, an’ no way fit for sea. Half are beached or sunk in shallow water!”