Taylor Anderson - Firestorm

“Mr. Garrett! Thank God!” he finally heard Clancy say. “I thought you were a goner when I first laid eyes on you.”

“What happened?” Greg asked. It may not have been the most original phrase uder the circumstances, but right then, it was the most appropriate.

“I’m not sure, sir. I was belowdecks in the wireless shack when I heard this god-awful, humongous boom-and something hammered the ship. I came up here”-Clancy gestured around-“and seen all this! Jesus! One fella I ran into told me those Grik ships, all eight of ’em, just blew the hell up! All at once! My God, the only way they could’ve done it like that, simultaneously, is electrically! Electrically!” he repeated. “No fuse would’ve worked. They’d have gone up like a fireworks show, not all at once. And they couldn’t have done near as much damage that way. I swear.” He shook his head.

“How about Tolson?” Greg asked, managing to stand with Clancy’s help.

Clancy pointed. “Hell, sir, she looks worse than us. Lost every stick.”

Garrett saw Tolson, completely dismasted, wallowing helplessly to leeward, surrounded by a sea of floating debris. Revenge was standing by her, apparently undamaged, trying to rig a towline. “Where’s Saaran?” he asked.

“In the wardroom,” Clancy said. “Looks like he’s maybe got a concussion. Something conked him on the head. Caught some splinters too. You’re lucky, Skipper. Smitty was with you when I came on deck, but the surgeon said you ought to come around soon, and Smitty took off to help with damage control. You were out about twenty minutes.”

“Do we have communications?” Garrett demanded.

“Yes, sir. One of my strikers just reported. We can’t get Tolson, or at least they can’t respond, but we’ve got Revenge.” Clancy shrugged. “Our wireless aerial’s on the mizzen, and it’s still mostly in one piece.”

“Okay,” said Garrett, shaking off Clancy’s supporting hand. “Tell Revenge she’ll have to try to tow us both. Then get a message off to HQ; tell them what happened… and they might want to kind of expect a call for assistance.” He smirked. “Like there’s anything they can do about it. As far as I know, there’s not another Allied ship for five hundred miles!”

“Maybe they’re doing another coast recon of the proposed LZs?” Clancy speculated.

“Maybe… and we wouldn’t know it either. They won’t make a peep in case the Japs have helped the Grik come up with a transmission direction finder of some sort,” Greg fumed. “Let’s just hope we won’t need any assistance Revenge can’t give us!” He paused. “Thanks, Clance. You get back to the radio shack and keep your ears open.”

The new steam frigate passed a heavy cable to Tolson and eventually, carefully picking her way through the raft of floating chunks of eight entire ships, pulled Russ’s derelict close to Donaghey . In the meantime, much to Greg’s relief, Smitty and the ’Cat carpenter reported that his ship’s leaks were under control. Most were caused by the pressure of the blast-opened seams, but some were made by pieces of Grik ships striking at high velocity. A bowsprit had speared Donaghey like a harpoon amidships. Garrett’s ship would float, but she’d lost a lot of people. All the Marines in the tops, for example, had gone over the side. With so many predators in the sea, their deaths had probably been quicker than drowning-if even more horrifying. Almost a third of the crewfolk and Marines exposed on deck were dead or wounded.

Garrett saw Russ near Tolson’ s stern, a bloody rag around his head, directing a detail preparing to send or receiv a cable. Greg already had a similar party waiting in his ship’s fo’c’sle. He raised a speaking trumpet. “Are you okay, Mr. Chapelle?”

“I’m fine,” Russ replied. “My ship ain’t,” he added bitterly. Bloody water gushed down Tolson’ s sides from the scuppers, her pumps working hard. “We’re staying ahead of the flooding, though.” He paused. “If you don’t mind my saying, Donaghey looks like a porcupine.” It was true. Greg had peered over the port side and was amazed by the number of timbers and splinters sticking in his ship. “I bet you could build another whole ship out of all that junk!”

“I promise not to throw any of it away, then,” Greg countered. “You might need it.”

“You said it,” Russ shouted back ruefully.

They eventually passed a cable from Donaghey to Tolson, and when it was secure, Revenge took up the slack on both ships. Slowly, they began to move, gaining speed, and settling on a southwesterly course at about five knots. Garrett glanced back at the debris-strewn sea. The dead mountain fish still lay, a mile or more astern, huge and seemingly as invulnerable as an island, yet the sea around its wallowing corpse was stained red, and predators-gri-kakka, “super sharks,” and flashies in their countless multitudes-churned along its flanks. He looked to the northeast, toward whatever port the eight Grik ships had put out from. He could still barely believe it. The enemy had executed a carefully, redundantly planned operation to break the blockade, and it had worked. Every time the allies thought they had the Grik down, the damn things pulled some crazy stunt that stood all their preconceptions on their heads. Granted, they were dealing with some “civilian” Grik now, but how much difference should that make? Something had changed; something fundamental. He sighed. Well, that happens in war, he supposed. He only wished he and Donaghey weren’t always on the receiving end of these discoveries. He took some comfort from one fact, however. The allies had changed too. No Grik in the coming campaign against Ceylon and India could have any notion of the new Allied equipment and tactics. Hopefully, they’d be basing whatever preparations they were making on the capabilities they’d seen at the Battle of Baalkpan. They too would be surprised.

Massive sharks and a few gri-kakka shadowed the wounded train. It must have been the bloody water trailing behind that drew their attention. Slowly, as the trickle decreased and diluted, most veered away, back to where they knew an endless meal awaited-but a few continued dogging them. One massive creature, bigger than any shark had a right to be, with a fin as high as a killer whale’s, cruised effortlessly past Donaghey, just under the surface. Its back was a mottled grayish blue-black, and while maybe a quarter Donaghey’ s length, it looked nearly as broad. Garrett suppressed a shudder. In a moment, the fish was gone, outpacing them, apparently intent on examining the other ships forward. Saaran appeared on deck, a bulky wrap around his head, and glistening smears of the curative “polta paste” applied here and there across his chest and shoulder.

“What’re you doing here?” Garrett asked. “You look like hell.”

“Doc Miller told me not to sleep,” he said. “If I work, I won’t sleep.”

Garrett grunted. “Okay. If you’re determined to run around, see if you can put a detail together to sway up a new main-topmast and a few yards. Get some sail on her.” The mizzen looked okay, but the remnant of the mainmast didn’t have much support left. “We’ll have to rerig the shrouds and ys as well. See if we can do anything to get a new foremast stepped.” He looked around. “I don’t know what we’ll use… . Anyway, Revenge’ ll have enough worries dragging just one ship behind her.” Suddenly, Donaghey seemed to slow, and Tolson began to slew to starboard. “What the devil?” As Garrett watched, Tolson continued turning, until she was almost beam-on to the following Donaghey.

“Hard a’port!” Garrett cried, hoping they had enough steerageway to miss the other ship. At the moment, they were aimed directly at her, amidships.