////// USS Maaka-Kakja (CV-3)
Admiral Lelaa-Tal-Cleraan paced her bridge and stared out at the developing battle in the distance. “Degenerating” battle, more correctly, she thought grimly, since all semblance of order had disintegrated after High Admiral Harvey Jenks, his flag now flying from the Imperial first-rater Mithra, slammed his battle line into the bulk of the enemy fleet. What ensued, according to excited wireless reports and the few planes remaining above the action, was a jumbled melee of ships of all sizes, pounding away at one another at point-blank range. That wasn’t what they’d planned, but she assumed Jenks had seen some pressing need. Or had the pressing need to come to close grips with the Doms resided mainly in Harvey Jenks’s heart, after all this time? Lela wondered. She also wondered what had become of Simms, her consorts—and Fred and Kari.
She knew Simms had picked them up, of course. Orrin Reddy, now teetering slightly with exhaustion and watching her pace, had reported that himself. But wireless contact with all four DDs had been lost when they got tangled in tight with the Dom frigates, and only Achilles had managed to join Hibbs’s escape. The rest had been engulfed by the chaotic battle that erupted around them. At the very least, all had taken damage to their masts and wireless aerials. They’d done their job, though; flailing at the Doms until Hibbs could squeak past. His battered force had eventually joined Maaka-Kakja, where it was currently transferring wounded to the trailing replenishment ships—the only auxiliaries left—and cutting and splicing and making what repairs they could before . . . Before what? She paced again, glancing at the bridge watch standing at their posts—and keenly aware of Orrin Reddy’s scrutiny. Can I do it? she asked herself, remembering what Governor-Empress Rebecca McDonald had decreed, what Saan-Kakja agreed. Should I?
“You know, this may well be the last great battle between purely wooden ships on this world. And even now, ‘purely’ isn’t exactly right,” she began softly. “All our Amer-i-caan Navy DDs have armor belts amidships to protect their engineering plants. And though both the Doms and Impies still use paddlewheels, the Imperial Navy has applied some armor to its paddle boxes. That’s probably the only reason Mars and Centurion made it back to us, and the beleaguered Task Force Eleven was able to leave so many powerless Dom hulks in its wake. All new Impie ships under construction are being built with screw propellers, just like ours.” She paused, sensing Orrin’s impatience. He wanted back out there and wasn’t in the mood for what he must think were her pointless technical ramblings. But she did have a point. “Also,” she continued, “just as in Baalkpan and Maa-ni-la, riveted iron hulls are in the works in the Empire as well, now that sufficient quantities of steel required for the transition are starting to arrive from the West, or the Imperial colonies in North America.” She waved at the battle. “And of course, every ship now engaged is a steamer.”
“So?” Orrin sighed, aware he was being disrespectful, but too tired to care.
“So, technology marches, for us and the Doms. Even the Grik. Governor-Empress Rebecca’s initial strategy may have been . . . flawed, but she’s correct that this action must be decisive. I hope—I pray—that our technology may be enough to balance the enemy numbers today, but even with victory, we will be in poor condition to pursue a beaten enemy to destruction—and every Dom ship we do not destroy we will likely face again, improved to match our own at the very least.”
“What now, then?” Orrin asked, suspecting what was to come. Instead of a direct answer, Lelaa stared ahead. “How many Naancys remain?” she asked.
“Uh, just nine that I’d consider airworthy. We were short to start with, as you know, even with the ones Saan-Kakja brought. Too many got spread around,” he added, returning to an earlier argument. He let it drop. He couldn’t begrudge the ones sent with the transports to Puerto Viejo. Shinya would need them. But how long before they could even arrive, be assembled, and join the fight? It would’ve been better to put them together here and fly them ashore—but they’d been too far out. Particularly for brand-new, untried machines. “The, uh, ‘rescue’ of TF Eleven cost the wing more than twenty planes, not counting all the ones assigned to other ships that’ve been lost as well—mostly to recovery accidents,” he added harshly. The speed of the advance and the choppy sea had made recovering the little floatplanes extremely difficult. “Fortunately, we haven’t lost quite that many aircrews, although it’s been bad. The simple fact is that the guys and gals have flat flown their planes to death over the last few days, and beyond the nine I reported, any others will take at least a few days to get back in the air—or even patched well enough to float.” He considered. “We do still have eight of the dozen Fleashooters they sent us. They’ve been going out with bombs. The Doms can’t have many Grikbirds left. Haven’t seen hardly any today. Maybe it’s just all the smoke over the battle—they don’t like it—but they’re all either dead or grounded.”
Lelaa turned to him, blinking decisively. “The Fleashooters will stand down,” she said. “They can only recover aboard Maaka-Kakja, and that will soon be impossible. You will lead our last Naancys in a final bombing sortie. Instruct your aircrews to focus on Dom baattle-waagons, preferably those engaging any of our ships that seem particularly hard-pressed. I know that may be difficult to discern. . . .”
“Where will we recover?” Orrin demanded, “And why will it be ‘impossible’ here?”
Lelaa blinked at the wild, sprawling battle that seemed to lap against the high, lonely, rocky island ahead. “Unlike the carriers in the West, Maaka-Kakja remains heavily armed for surface actions, with fifty of the fifty-pounder smoothbores just like Simms and her sisters carry. Even more significantly, she retains four of Amagi’s five-point-five-inch secondaries tied into a fully functional gun director also salvaged from the Japanese battle cruiser. We shall use those as we close.”
“Close?”
“Indeed, COFO Reddy. I am taking my ship into the fight.”
“Lord,” Orrin muttered, then shrugged. “Oh well. Why not? I can’t fault your strategic logic, regarding Dom survivors, and the Makky-Kat might not have armor, but she’s hell for stout. She can take a lot.” He chuckled. “And just seeing her coming at ’em, like a smaller version of that weird island, ought’a scare the water out of the Doms. She might just turn the tide.”
“That is my hope. We will leave our support ships behind, of course. They will recover your aircraft if . . . no one else can.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Orrin replied, standing as straight as he could. With a lopsided grin, he plopped his battered crush cap on his head and threw her a salute.
Lelaa grinned back. “Really, COFO Reddy. Saluting indoors?”
“Second Lieutenant Orrin Reddy, United States Army Air Corps, ma’am. You keep forgetting I’m not Navy. I just made a report on the state of my air wing.” He shrugged again. “And besides, I felt like it. With your permission, I’ll go get my planes off this tub before the Doms start shooting holes in her.”
“By all means. Bring her into the wind,” she ordered the ’Cat at the big wheel. “Make your course three zero zero. As soon as Mr. Reddy’s planes are in the air, we will secure from air operations and clear the ship for surfaace action!” She glanced back at Orrin, touching her brow. “May the Heavens protect you, Lieuten-aant Reddy,” she said.
“You too, Admiral.”
• • •
“What a screwed-up mess,” Orrin muttered to himself, staring down through his goggles at the vast smoky brawl below. Looks like somebody set fire to a giant, two- or three-mile-wide amoeba, he thought with a sick feeling in his gut. There were a number of other ships wallowing helplessly on the periphery, or steaming in impotent circles with one of their paddlewheels shot away, but the bulk of the massive smoking germ was locked up tight. It was impossible to tell who was who, and all he could see was a hopeless scramble of indeterminate ships wreathed in gun smoke, and crisscrossing jumbles of churned-up wakes. The continuous cannonade was audible even over the dutiful drone of the engine above and behind him, and he could feel the stuttering overpressure of hundreds of guns in his chest. It was late afternoon now, the “main” battle nearly four hours old, and the visibility beyond the steaming, flashing, roiling cauldron below was virtually unlimited, with no trace of land besides that big screwy rock.
It was chilly up there, and he was glad for his peacoat, but it really was a beautiful day. Except for the battle, of course. His eight-ship flight—one plane had immediately been forced to turn back with engine problems—was orbiting the battle at two thousand feet, trying to avoid the smoke and figure out who the good guys were. Usually that was easy, with the Doms’ red sails, but not now. The chase was over, and every ship had furled her canvas and was fighting under steam alone. That only aggravated the visibility problem, particularly since the Impies and Doms both still used coal. In addition, a lot of ships were burning, and the smoke slanted roughly eastward in multicolored streaks of black, brown, gray, and near white, all obscuring the ships to varying degrees. Why didn’t Jenks stay back? he wondered. Hibbs was clear. He could’ve pasted ’em from a distance, for a while at least. Maybe he, like Lelaa, figured the only way to keep them from running off was to get stuck in. But that doesn’t make sense either. Sure, the Doms wanted to pick off TF Eleven after we dropped it in their lap, but they’d obviously come looking for a battle just like this. So why did Jenks turn around and hand it to ’em with a bow wrapped around it? Realization dawned. Honor. Simms, Icarus, and Tindal are in that mess somewhere; were in it, anyway, he corrected, all alone. After all the sacrifices TF Eleven made to get their wounded out, then the final sacrifice of Simms’s little squadron of DDs, he just couldn’t leave them there while it was in his power to provide some relief. His own desire to finally get at the Doms in the same old, instinctive way probably played a part, but when all was said and done, it probably did come down to honor. Kinda stupid, Orrin grumped, but really, no less than he’d have expected of the man.
He glanced south and sure enough, here came Maaka-Kakja, steaming at full speed, with a giant bone in her teeth. Her 5.5s would already be firing if they could pick out targets any better than he could, and they alone would be a big help. But Lelaa wouldn’t hang back either. She’d slam her big fat carrier right into the brawl like a pickup truck through a flock of guineas, spitting fire in all directions. She’d been a destroyerman—gal—’Cat—whatever, before she got Maaka-Kakja, and it suddenly dawned on him that her first Navy ship had been a razeed Grik Indiaman named . . . Simms. That ship was long gone, destroyed by traitorous Imperials working at least indirectly with the Doms. Could her willingness to go for broke be motivated, at least subconsciously, by something as primal as revenge? The hot fury of an old trauma roused by the name of a lost ship, and rising behind her conscious thoughts? Orrin knew in a flash that he was vulnerable to such things. He was still uncomfortable around Shinya after all, just because he was a Jap. He suspected Matt, his cousin, was just as vulnerable in other ways. Jenks as well. He was a man, after all. But Lemurians were different, weren’t they? Might as well’ve been Quakers before the war, from what I’ve heard. Practically pacifists. He knew they weren’t now, but did that make them more or less likely to act out of hatred? He had to doubt it; had to hope what was happening here today was more . . . rational than that. He grimaced, feeling for the first time that he knew how Cousin Matt must’ve felt at the battle for Grik City when all the ’Cats, people, whoever it was he was always trying to ride herd on, slipped their leash and just . . . stampeded. He took a breath. Either way, there’s a world-class hair-pulling underway down there. Nothing for it now, he realized. Question is, what can I do about it?
He looked in the mirror at the goggled ’Cat in the aft cockpit behind the motor, the brown and gray fur on his face plastered back by the propwash. “Seepy,” he said in his voice tube to Sergeant Kuaar-Raan-Taak, who’d been his “backseater” through thick and thin. Even now, Orrin wasn’t convinced he and the crusty ’Cat noncom were actually “friends,” but theirs was a familiar, bantering relationship that both were comfortable with. More important, they trusted each other. “Send to all other ships in the flight: attack independently, repeat, attack heavy targets of opportunity independently.” He was suddenly uncomfortably aware that he didn’t even know the tail numbers of all the planes. Everything was so jumbled up, they didn’t necessarily correspond to their aircrews anymore. “The two lowest numbered ships’ll hunt to the north of the battle, the next lowest, the south. Then east. The highest number . . .” He craned his head around in frustration. His usual plane—with the.50 cal in the nose—was down for a new engine of its own, after the morning sortie. At least that meant he could carry more bombs. “Goddamn it, Seepy, what’s our number?”
“Turty-two.”
“Okay. The highest number’ll join us over by the big rock. Tell them to give ’em hell, but watch out for our guys and make their bombs count. This is our last shot, unless they can find somebody just bobbing around out of the line of fire to refuel and rearm ’em. And for God’s sake, tell ’em not to smack into each other!”
“Ay, ay. I send it,” Seepy said.
Orrin nodded and banked to the right when he saw the formation begin to scatter. A few moments later he saw a Nancy with a big numeral “20” over the smaller “CV-3” emblazoned on its tail tuck in behind his left wing. “Okay,” he said to himself, “let’s do some hunting of our own.”
Lower down, the battle seemed even more immense, if better defined, with ships flailing at one another with fire that seemed at first to be shockingly indiscriminate. He began to see that such was not necessarily the case, however, and the Allied ships, at least, were making an effort to stick together here and there in twos and threes for mutual support. No doubt that was made easier by their better communications, but that was literally going by the board—with their masts—as the battle persisted. He caught a glimpse of Mithra, identified by Jenks’s pennant, tailed by another battlewagon. Both were pounding toward a tangled gaggle of fouled Dom heavies that gushed smoke and shot back at them as they approached, even while the two Impies fought both sides against smaller steamers, their masts askew, edging in from port and starboard. He waggled his wings and pointed, the only order his wingman needed to follow him in and attack one of the ships on the left side of the jumbled pack.
“Hang on, Seepy!” he called. “And stand by on the bomb release. I’m going to try to put two on that big mother with its bowsprit hung up in that other one’s mizzen rigging. It looks to have the best angle to hit Jenks the hardest.
“Ay, ay. I stand-een by. I hose ’em with my Blitzer too? There ain’t no Grikbirds in sight.”
“Not this time. Maybe later. Save your ammo in case some of the damn things do jump us. We couldn’t have got them all.” Orrin pushed the stick forward and bored in. A few musket balls whizzed by, maybe a couple hitting, as he shouted “Drop!” The bombs fell away and he banked right to avoid any jinking his wingman might have to make. Looking down, he saw they’d hit two ships—their target, and another just beyond, directly alongside. The “20” plane got a hit and a near miss, and was clawing skyward as well, starting to bank right to join back up. He couldn’t tell if they’d done any major damage to their target, although it had stopped firing for the moment, but the accidental hit had blown most of the upper stern and mizzen off the other ship, and flames surged upward amid the cloud of splinters and fragments of men that their bomb had thrown into the sky.
“She’ll burn,” Seepy declared, also looking back and down. “Prob’ly burn the one beside her too, they don’t shove her off. Either way, they be too busy for much shootin’ for a while.”
Orrin silently agreed, already looking for another target. “What the hell?” he suddenly blurted, his eyes catching sight of a dismasted hulk, close to the great rocky isle. The thing was shot to pieces, with only the stump of a toppled funnel gushing gray smoke. It was also visibly low in the water, but still, somehow, underway. What was more, it was towing a smaller, equally battered ship at a meager pace. He blinked disbelief as he realized the thing that really caught his attention was the ragged, practically shredded Stars and Stripes streaming from the stump of its foremast.
“Jeez! That’s gotta be Simms or Tindal, and that can only be Icarus she’s got in tow!”
“Looks bad,” Seepy agreed. “An’ there’s Doms comin’ up to finish ’em off!”
Orrin scanned the battle near the cripples. A few Allied ships were close, but there were more Doms in the way and they’d never get there in time. He banked harder right. “We’ll see about that,” he ground out grimly.