Taylor Anderson - Firestorm

Revenge had just arrived in theater. She was a new construction steam frigate of an entirely new-hopefully improved-design called the “Scott” Class. Named for the first Revenge, a captured Grik ship whose human-Lemurian crew fought to the last against staggering odds, she was bigger, faster, and more powerful than the first allied steamers. Her auxiliary sailing rig remained, but she was supposed to be almost as fast as Donaghey under steam alone. She had a good skipper too. Pruit Barry had been Walker’ s assistant gunnery officer, and he’d commanded Tolson during the Battle of Baalkpan. Although he’d saved his ship, he’d been so sorely wounded that he was just now returning to action. Garrett was glad to have him back.

“Deck there!” came the cry from the lookout above. ’Cats-Lemurians-had strange voices, Garrett reflected again, to carry so well even over such a brisk wind. “Sur-fass Taa-git now eight sails! Eight! Taa-git bearing seero fo fi, rel-aa-tive!”

“Course?” Saaran bellowed in reply.

“West-sou-west!”

Saaran looked at Greg. “Perhaps business will pick up today!”

“Yeah. Tell Clancy to get Tolson and Revenge on the horn. Maybe we can work it so we can snatch the whole bunch! We’ll keep our distance here to windward until we sort something out.”

Over the next hour and a half, coded wireless messages clattered back and forth between Donaghey, Tolson, Revenge, and the distant Allied headquarters on Andaman Island. They had no proof the enemy even had receivers, but crystal sets were simple to make, and they had to assume they did. Therefore, all Allied transmissions were sent in five-letter code groups. The Japanese from the destroyed battle cruiser Amagi, which came through the same “Squall” as Walker and allied with the Grik, had been “reading their mail” from the start, and that memory still stung. Now, even before the plan of attack was finalized, Greg ordered Chapelle to bring Tolson north from the southernmost station, and she’d have to move quickly to reach position if they were to intercept the enemy short of the islands to the west. Not only was there a chance the Grik might scatter among the islands, allowing some to escape, but ocean denizens tended to congregate near the rich feeding grounds the islands provided. Revenge, with her steam power, cruised closest to shore, and Barry was told to bring her south. Before long, Tolson was seen flying north with a quartering wind, shouldering the sea aside. With the plan of attack taking shape as Garrett’s squadron assembled, Donaghey prepared to turn north herself. If everything went as Garrett hoped, it would be an exciting afternoon. Of course, Greg knew all about how fickle plans and hopes could be.

“Sur-fass Taa-git, port bow, tree hunn-red yards!” warned the lookout. Garrett and Saaran crossed the deck. “Shaark!” came several cries.

Garrett raised his glasses and stared at the fin cutting through the swells. “Jeez,” he said, “that’s not a shark! It’s a B-17 tail sticking out of the water!”

“What’s a ‘bee-seven-teen’?” Saaran asked.

“Never mind,” Greg replied flatly. He raised his voice. “Helm, make your course three, zero, zero. Mr. Saaran, please adjust the sails for speed as you see fit.” He turned and looked northeast. The Grik ships were in view now, their column in disarray. He knew they could see Donaghey, and probably Tolson, but wasn’t sure about Revenge. He wondered how they’d react. He wondered if they knew how to react. Returning to port had never seemed an option for them in the past. Just the same, he’d always tried to bushwhack them far enough out that the Allied ships could chase them down.

“Making my course tree, seero, seero,” the helmsman replied.

“Very well,” said Greg, looking back at the “shark.” It wasn’t following them. “Wow,” he murmured. There were some absolutely humongous sharks around here. According to reports, there were big ones around the New Britain Isles too, where Captain Reddy and Walker were. Greg honestly didn’t know whether they were a genuine danger to a ship like Donaghey or not. They didn’t ram-at least they never had-and the few times they’d “tasted” his ship, they’d left teeth the size of hubcaps stuck in her copper-clad wooden hull. He doubted one of the damn things could sink Donaghey, unless it did ram, but he always worried about the ship’s rudder. A shark like the one he’d just seen could bite it clean off. He shook his head and returned his attention to the Grik.

“They look like a gaggle of geese on a pond,” he said. The column was falling completely apart, beginning to bunch together as if for mutual support. The Grik ships were actually acting less like geese and more like a herd of goats that just saw a bear. Greg grinned at the analogy. He’d seen that once, back home in Tennessee, and it was a funny memory. He hated goats.

“Revenge is coming up,” cried the lookout. “There blue smoke beyond the enemy.”

For another half hour they approached the Grik convoy, and soon the three Allied frigates had closed every route but the one back to port. It struck Garrett that if the Grik had just maintained a cohesive column and continued determinedly on, some might have broken past at least one blocking ship, but these weren’t Grik warships, filled to the gunwales with fierce warriors, and evidently that made a difference. The convoy commander was probably some bright, civilian Hij-they knew such things existed now-who thought he could think his way out of this mess. His hesitation and indecision were making it worse-for him.

“Sound general quarters,” Garrett said, then in the tradition of the sailing Navy added, “Clear for action.” A quartet of Lemurian younglings, wearing the blue kilts and white leather armor of Marines, scampered to the waist, and their drums thundered in unison while a bosun’s mate rapidly struck the hollow bronze gong mounted near the ship’s wheel. The resulting cacophonous combination couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than the GQ alarm. Gun’s crews ran to their massive weapons, tails high in excitement, and twenty-four eighteen-pounders were run out. ’Cats rigged netting overhead to protect against falling debris, and gunners threaded lengths of slow-match through holes in their linstocks and waited for one of the midshipmen trotting the length of the gun deck to arrive and light the slow-burning match. Marines scaled the ratlines to the tops with muskets slung diagonally across their backs, and others stood near the center of the ship, prepared to move to whichever side they were directed.

The exercise of preparing the ship for battle went off without a hitch, just as it did in the daily drills. Greg was pleased with the professionalism of his almost entirely Lemurian crew, and he knew they were proud of it too. Donaghey had a gallant name and history, and she’d already racked up more than her share of battle honors in this war. She prepared each time as if she’d face an enemy at least as powerful as she was-she’d been the first ship surprised by Grik cannons, after all-and the extra attention to detail had served her well many times. Garrett didn’t know if any of the ships Donaghey approached was armed; in fact, he rather doubted it. They weren’t acting as if there were warriors aboard, but he’d never let appearances lull him again. He raised his binoculars.

Weird. The eight Grik ships, so similar in appearance to the ancient British East Indiamen their lines were stolen from centuries before, appeared to have heaved to, almost as if they were surrendering and waiting to be taken! “Get a load of this,” he said, handing his glasses to Saraan.

“I don’t understand,” said the ’Cat, blinking confusion. “Most un-Grik-like. They’ve never behaved like this before.”