Blood In the Water (38 page)

James Ellis
had eight brand-new water-cooled copies of the .30- caliber M-1919 Browning Machine Gun that could be emplaced at various points around the ship.
Geran-Eras
was similarly armed, as were all the large ships in the task force. Even some of the sailing steamers had a couple of thirties now, as more and more of the wonderful weapons finally found their way to the fronts. They'd been a long time coming. The ammunition had been perfected for some time, feeding the older weapons on
Walker
and elsewhere, but making good enough barrel steel to sustain prolonged firing of high-velocity jacketed bullets had been the major holdup. Once solved, the machine guns began pouring out of the Baalkpan and Maa-ni-laa arsenals. It would be a while before capacity reached the point where the Allies might focus on producing heavier machine guns or updated small arms. They still hadn't even caught up with the demand for the single-shot, breech-loading Allin-Silvas yet, and too many Allied troops in the East still carried
muzzle-loaders
. But it was hoped the current focus on light MGs would give all their troops the much-needed support they'd lacked so long. And of course, though machine guns had originally been issued to the navy as the antipersonnel weapons they'd needed so often, now at least a few ships in TF Alden had some close in protection against aircraft as well. Based on the number
of attackers and the fact that his machine gunners hadn't practiced shooting at
any
flying targets at all, Perry had to wonder how effective they'd be. Stites must've been similarly concerned. The cry, quickly passed, of “All machine gunners,
lead
your targets! Watch your tracers! Aim where the planes'll
be
when the bullets get there, not where they
are
! It's just like shooting at ships in the distance, but these targets'll be a helluva lot faster!” came from above.

“
Sular
's maanuverin',” shouted the talker. “She zigzaag. First turn away!”

“Acknowledge,” Perry said. “Helm, maintain this interval. Boats, tell Mr. Stites the secondaries may commence firing at his discretion.”

The dozen planes apparently targeting
Sular
swarmed down in a gaggle, getting closer, closer, hurried shells still bursting around them. And they carried bombs. Perry could see them now, one under each wing. And he saw something else: large red “meatballs” painted on their wings. “Son of a
bitch
! They're Japs!”

Some of the thirties opened up with a chattering roar, and white tracers arced up toward the diving planes. More tracers rose from
Sular
, crossing
Ellie
's stream of bullets. Amazingly, some started hitting almost at once. Pieces tumbled away from one plane, and another coughed smoke. Still, they bored in. The cacophony of machine gun fire intensified as the rest of the MGs joined in, just as the first enemy plane swooped low over
Sular
and released its bombs. Immediately, its left wing tore away and it spun crazily into the sea, just as its bombs threw up large waterspouts in
Sular
's wake. The rest of the planes came in close together, and how none of them collided was some kind of miracle. Another fell as two lines of tracers sawed in in half, but ten planes dropped their bombs almost at once, and eight flushed upward in all directions like an exploding covey of quail. Two wouldn't make it. One flew away, still smoking. Another pulled up too late, its landing gear catching a wave top, and it somersaulted onto its back in a spray of foam. But twenty bombs exploded around—and on—
Sular
, raising sheets of water that scoured the ship as high as the top of its casemate. At least three blasts shook her, and they were respectable, but she steamed through the towers of spray, her guns chasing the fleeing planes.

Perry stared at her through his glasses. “She looks okay,” he said loudly as his own ship's machine guns tapered off amid Stites's shouts for them to cease firing. “A bunch of her landing craft got clobbered, but her
armor shrugged it off. If those bombs were designed to punch through, they dropped 'em too low to get a head of steam.” He looked at the sky. The scene above was . . . surreal. He'd heard the term “dogfight,” referring to aerial battles, but this looked more like a swarm of flies zooming every which way. Actually, it was more like when flocks of lizardbirds engaged in combat over some morsel, swooping, veering, flaring out, attacking anything they saw without their own peculiar plumage. There appeared to be no real strategy anymore, beyond “attack,” ever since the formations had been broken by the antiaircraft fire and a few determined planes. The six P-1Cs of
Baalkpan Bay
's ready squadron had jumped in, and had apparently already knocked down a couple of enemies. Pretty good, considering the only “training” they ever had against aircraft with similar performance to themselves was when they chased each other around the sky for fun. That practice had been discouraged as pointless and dangerous at Kaufman Field near Baalkpan, at least since Ben Mallory and Walt Fisher left. Now it was saving their butts.

At least some of them,
Perry amended bitterly. A Nancy was burning, falling to the sea, with three enemy planes still shooting some kind of wing-mounted machine guns at it—again, just like their new C-model Fleashooters. And not all the Cs were safe. A plane had skillfully evaded one, and came roaring up behind it, spitting fire. The Allied plane burst into flames and spun downward. Another suddenly roared by trailing smoke, very close to
Ellie
, with a green-and-gray pursuer right behind. It was the closest he'd seen one yet, and he noted that it
was
bigger and more subtly different than he'd thought at first. They passed near enough that Perry saw the Lemurian pilot in the P-1C, struggling to keep it in the air . . . and a
human
in the fighter chasing him. Two more planes followed, drawing tracers, and just before one exploded and fell to the water, Perry caught a flash of a distinctive long, toothy snout and large, reddish eyes behind the windscreen.

Realization dawned. “Get this off!” Perry shouted to his talker as another gaggle of enemy bombers swooped down at
Sular
—and
Ellie
!—and the guns roared again. “Most of the enemy planes are piloted by Grik—repeat,
Grik
—based on the way they're acting, and the fact I just
saw
one! God knows how they taught them to fly, or built something they
could
fly. But there's Japs up there too, at least a few, who've trained to shoot down planes! So tell our guys up there to watch their asses!”

“Cap-i-taan Brister!”

Perry turned to one of his Lemurian lookouts on the starboard bridgewing, and saw her pointing forward, eyes blinking in horror. He looked. He'd been so caught up in the fight around his ship that he hadn't noticed much of what was going on beyond her and
Sular
. They'd been the center of his attention, but apparently hadn't received all, or even most, of the enemy's. Now he saw that several ships were burning—at least one oiler, by the thick, black smoke. Worse, another tall, heavy column of smoke was erupting into the sky from one of the principal members of the task force. They'd closed to little more than a mile, but with the angle, he couldn't tell which one it was. It didn't much matter. All were vital to the war effort—and Captain Reddy's campaign.

“Here they come!” Bashear growled, and Perry looked up. Several planes were diving directly at
Ellie
this time, and the banging of her guns reached a fever pitch. He glanced at
Sular
. The top of her casemate fore and aft of her two funnels was wreathed in fire and smoke as she lashed the sky as well. He couldn't affect how things went with
Baalkpan Bay
,
Andamaan
, or
Tarakaan Island
until they closed the distance. But there were eight thousand troops and maybe four hundred crew on
Sular
, and she was under
Ellie
's protection.

“
Sular
turns haard right!” the quartermaster's mate called.

“Very well, match the turn, but bring us in closer alongside her this time. Stand by for emergency flank.” He glanced at Bashear. “We'll add our guns to hers as best we can.
Bowles
is coming up on her port side now. The zigzagging let her catch up. But even if we can't turn sharp to get out from under those bastards' bombs, maybe we can still
jump
out from under them!”

*   *   *

USS
Andamaan

“Get the lead out! Let's go!” roared Lieutenant Walt (Jumbo) Fisher as he and his remaining flight crews heaved the big PB-5D out through the forward hangar doors onto
Andamaan
's tracked fo'c'sle. Walt was a big man, maybe the tallest human in the Grand Alliance. How he'd ever managed to dodge the height restrictions that should've kept him out of P-40s in the old world still remained a mystery to most who knew him.
Now, of course, there weren't enough P-40s to go around, and he flat wouldn't fit in a P-1. So even though he technically remained XO of Ben Mallory's 3rd (Army) Pursuit Squadron, he'd been left to run the flight training program at Kaufman Field until finally asked to bring all but two of the P-40s left there up to join his skipper. Even then he hadn't been needed to
fly
one, since Ben had more veteran pilots than planes—and Walt had happily agreed to switch to the far roomier PB-5D, and command of Pat-Squad 22. It had seemed like a fun, exciting assignment at the time, commanding and formulating cooperative tactics for the largest concentration of long-range, heavy-payload, bomb-and-torpedo-capable aircraft in the Alliance. Not only that, but he got to fly a lot. That all went in the crapper that morning, and he
hoped
he still had one other plane out there, circling the battle—and running out of gas, by now. Two had been destroyed by a bomb that fell through the open hangar doors aft, and two more were about to burn. He was damned if the enemy would get
this
one too.

The steam winch that usually moved the planes had lost pressure, so they had to do it by hand, and despite the help of eleven 'Cats and two Impie midshipmen assigned to his squadron, Walt, his dark brown hair sweat-plastered to his head, was probably doing most of the work.
Andamaan
was nearly dead in the water and already low by the stern. The steepening angle made it even more difficult to shift the heavy flying boat. “Just a little more!” Walt croaked. Fire was spreading forward inside the cavernous space behind, and smoke gushed out above them to join a great, gray-black pyre mounting to the heavens. 'Cats dragged hoses, directing them at the flames, but water pressure was dropping as well.

“There's no steam for the caat-a-pult!” Walt's flight engineer warned. Sergeant Aanse-Ar-Mus wore a brown pelt with almost-yellow blobs that looked suspiciously like spots. Instead of the inevitable nickname, he'd been dubbed “Moose.” There was already a “Spot” in the squadron. “The crane neither,” he added, suspecting Walt would try to set the plane in the water.

“We can work the crane with the hand winches,” Walt gasped. It was possible. The ship's cranes were designed with that capability in mind, but it would be tough. Walt looked up to see that they'd finally cleared the overhang, then glanced back. The guns at the top of the casemate hangar
were still blasting away, but the ship had slowed to a complete stop. He was horrified to see the landing craft dories, just like those covering
Sular
's sides, sliding down to the sea, filled with troops and crew. “And that's what we'll do,” he decided. “I don't know what kicked us in the ass. The bomb that fell in the hangar wasn't very big, and it shouldn't have hurt the hull. But there were those other thumps, whatever they were, and this big bastard's going
down
. Take charge of the winch detail, Moose. Hook her on and swing her out.” He looked around. The whole squadron's air and ground crews were there now, having joined the others in time to give a final push. Some of the ship's crew was gathering as well. In addition to the dozen 'Cats Moose quickly gathered, there were maybe twenty more, and two other men. “The rest of you guys, get in the plane!”

“We'll be too heavy to get in the air!” a young Impie midshipman named Reese warned him, eyes searching for attacking planes. Unsaid was how helpless they'd be just bobbing around.

“We got no ordnance. We'll get her up, and we're not leaving anybody who'll fit. Period. Now load up!”

Quickly and professionally, several of Moose's detail climbed to the top of the big plane and hooked the cables onto the three lifting points. There were two on the wings, between the inboard and outboard engines, and one on the fuselage, halfway to the tail. “Watch those taglines when she's up,” Walt warned. It was going to be very tricky indeed, as the stern dipped lower and the bow rose.
Andamaan
was sinking fast. It had been impossible to make the transverse bulkheads the yard added completely watertight, but they should've kept the flooding down to something the pumps could handle—unless multiple compartments were wide-open to the sea. And, of course, without steam pressure there'd be no pumps. Walt still wondered what hit them. There'd been no word, or even any official announcement to abandon ship. Comm must be out as well. He climbed in through the hatch in the side of the plane as the last 'Cat ducked inside. “Make way! Make yourselves small!” he shouted, squirming up through the packed fuselage. “We need room for a dozen more in here! Start the engines!” he called ahead. Ordinarily, they'd never run the engines while the plane was suspended from the crane, but they were out of time. In mere moments, the angle would be too extreme to allow the plane to clear the crane or the casemate.