Taylor Anderson - Destroyermen

"They're worse than Japs, sir!" said Alden with conviction mixed with quiet horror. The exhausted Marine belatedly glanced at Shinya, who bristled at the slightest comparison. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded. Hell, they're worse than anything !"

Captain Reddy had in fact been idly searching his memory for any culture in human history to compare with the Grik. So far, his tired mind wouldn't oblige. He rubbed his eyes and watched Shinya visibly relax.

"Anything," he repeated dully. "I think you're right."

It had been a long, bloody day. Eighteen Lemurian Marines were killed and almost that many wounded. Most of his destroyermen were lightly injured as well, although only Norman Kutas suffered a serious wound.

That was when Scurrey dropped his cutlass down a companionway and nailed his foot to the deck. Miraculously, it missed the bones, but Kutas was off his feet for a while. Aside from the quartermaster's mate's pain, it might even have been funny under other circumstances—but nothing was funny now.

They had one of the Grik charts spread before them on the desk. Matt thought how horrified Adar would be to learn that the Grik had "Scrolls."

They were looking at an overview of the western Indian Ocean, Madagascar, and East Africa up to the equator and south to latitude 30. The eastern boundary of the map was the 80th parallel. The quality of the representations was poor—about on a par with sixteenth-century maps he'd seen in history books, but they, along with the printed information, were more than adequate for rudimentary navigation. The most startling and terrible thing about the charts, however, was that he could read them.

Most of the writing, and anything added by hand, was incomprehensible and resembled a slashing form of Arabic. But many of the placenames and nautical references used recognizable letters forming English words. All the numbers were familiar too. Obviously, the Grik got much more out of their British teachers than the Lemurians did. From what they'd seen that day, Matt imagined the Grik had certainly been more persuasive.

"Madagascar," Matt said at last. "I bet old Bradford's right about that being the original home of the 'Cats." Sandra peered at the island.

"Probably. It's been well within the Grik empire for a long, long time.

In fact, every landmass shown seems to be part of their territory." Garrett glanced at Matt with a worried frown.

"They've got a lot of weight behind them, that's for sure. Way more than us."

Matt looked at Alden. "Anything from the tablets yet?"

Pete shook his head. He'd been skimming the roughly twelve-by-twelve-inch booklets while the others studied the charts. They were filled, mostly, with pen-and-ink illustrations. "Captain Grik was a pretty good drawer, or his clerk was. Mostly animals, bugs, places, and such. Must've been a naturalist like Bradford, in a perverted, lizard sort of way." Matt nodded absently and motioned Shinya to bring another chart. He unrolled it carefully and placed his cutlass on one end and a couple of .45s on the other.

At a glance, this one seemed most pertinent, at least in the short term.

Even cruder than the others, it was less like a navigational chart than a map of enemy territory. It extended from the mouth of the Ganges River southward to include the Cocos Islands. From there, west to Timor, then back to Formosa. All French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies showed varying detail. The farther east, the vaguer the shapes of landmasses became. The Philippines weren't shown at all.

Matt leaned over the desk, trying to see better by the light of the swaying lanterns. He was painfully reminded he'd discovered unknown muscles that day.

"Skipper, look at this!" exclaimed Alden. He held a tablet close to his face to see in the dim light. Reversing it, he displayed the page. Sandra cried out and sprang to her feet. Matt managed only a short bark of incredulous laughter. There, on the yellowish paper, was a highly stylized but clearly recognizable drawing of USS Walker , down to the "163" on her bow.

"Son of a bitch !" Alden breathed. "This must be the one that got away!"

"Maybe," murmured Matt, "but does that make it the same one in company with the other two we destroyed? Why was it with two more so fast—if it's the same? I wonder how many others it came in contact with."

"Quite a few," said Sandra, leaning back over the chart. Her voice was brittle. "Look. Many of these coastlines have been updated or redrawn periodically, like survey corrections. Also, see this dark splotch here?" She pointed at a spot on the map. "I'm no navigator, but that's almost the exact place we came to Salissa 's assistance."

Garrett squinted. "Looks like . . . blood, Captain. And look! Next to it there's a little drawing of us! Just a thick line with four small lines sticking up, but I bet that's supposed to be Walker ."

Shinya nodded. "It does look like blood. Possibly representing a place of battle? If that's the case, you may note there are many such spots on this map."

"There's one at Tjilatjap," Sandra confirmed. "Mr. Shinya may be right.

There's dozens of `spots.' If they denote battles, and the picture of Walker seems to confirm that, this ship couldn't have engaged in them all, or surveyed all these coastlines alone."

"That means they communicate among themselves, even from one task force to the next." Garrett's brow was creased with concern. "That means . . ."

"Right." Matt finished for him. "This may not be the one that got away.

They might all know about Walker ."

There was a contemplative, nervous silence as they considered the implications.

"Okay," said Matt, pointing back at the chart. "Battle here, battle here, battle here—each battle mark is accompanied by this thing that looks like a tree. Maybe that's their symbol for the 'cats." His finger traced the coast of Borneo. "Nothing at Baalkpan, so maybe they don't know about Nakja-Mur's People yet."

"There is such a symbol at Surabaya," Shinya pointed out, "although no battle mark."

"I bet it won't be long," Alden growled. "I wonder what these little triangle symbols mean."

Matt felt a chill, despite the dank, oppressive warmth of the cabin. "I bet those are Grik ships. And the circles around them represent their areas of operation. See? There're three in the Makassar Strait."

"Not anymore," Alden quipped.

"They're everywhere, then," Sandra murmured, her voice quiet with despair. "There must be a dozen triangles in the Java Sea alone. And all those other charts we've looked at—there're scores of triangles on them!"

"My God," muttered Garrett.

Alden was idly tracing the procession of battle marks up the coast of Java and Sumatra. Suddenly he stiffened. "Look," he said, his finger beside a brownish stain near the Banjak Islands. There was another thick line, but with only three smaller lines sticking out. With a rush of realization, Matt remembered a funnel that fell across a davit.

" Mahan ," he breathed.

The storm dwindled to nothing as the night wore on, and its only remnant in the boulder-strewn approaches to the refloated Big Sal was a disorganized chop. Otherwise, the sun rose bright above Celebes and the sky was blue and cloudless. All was back to normal aboard the huge ship, fake debris was cleared away and the stores that littered the beach returned. Water still coursed over the side, and it would for some time, since so much had been required to "sink" the great vessel. That was the part of the plan Matt had been most concerned about, but Keje himself suggested it as bait for the trap. He'd assured his friend that sinking and refloating Big Sal wasn't difficult, or even unusual. They did it all the time.