10
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The forward gun tub was decorated with the hydrofoil's stencilled number, M4434, and a freehand rendition of her unofficial name: Bellycutter. There was also a cartoon of an oriental figure to explicate the name for anybody who hadn't seen the casualty rates for torpedoboats.
The lone sailor on duty behind the twin guns was dozing, but there wasn't much reason for him to be alert. They had sped from Blackhorse across open sea and through the Kanjar Straits. The run was without incident until a pair of skimmers came out of Paradise Base, inspected M4434 as she dropped off her outriggers, and howled back within the harbor at high speed.
Johnnie stood in the bow, bracing himself against the roll with a hand on the tub's armored rim. The continent of North Hell was a mass of greens and earth tones ahead of M4434, punctuated by concrete and plastic constructions on both jaws of land enveloping the Angels' fine natural harbor.
The Angels, like Flotilla Blanche and the Warcocks, were based on the periphery of the Ishtar Basin. That would make link-up between the Angels and the Blackhorse—whose atoll was in the Western Ocean—tricky, though not impossible. Even if the direct route via the Kanjar Straits was blocked, there were scores of other passages through the archipelago sweeping around the south and east of the basin.
The Angels' main installations were on the southern arm of the harbor. They were protected by a wall; beyond the wall a fence which sparkled as high currents fried life forms attempting it; and beyond the fence, strings of flashes and explosions. Guns were firing from the wall, blowing swathes in the nearest vegetation in an attempt to knock it down before roots and branches became a threat to the inner defenses.
There were signs that the Angels had recently started to clear an area further out so that the present barrier could be given over to expanded facilities. The attempt had been abandoned, probably for the reason Blackhorse had done the same: all available men were working to put the fleet on a war footing.
If the Angels were preparing for war, then Captain Haynes must be right. What would that do to Uncle Dan's maneuvering?
The northern landspit was defended but almost unoccupied. At its tip were heavy batteries: railguns and, for engaging enemies over the horizon, conventional artillery in massive casements. The only other installations were those facing the threat of the jungle, which on this side of the harbor was muted.
While the southern jaw had been in existence for millennia, its northern counterpart was the creation of a volcano within living memory.
The lava poured out at 4,000O. Though the pullulating life of Venus had robbed the surface of its virginal sterility even before it cooled to air temperature, the fresh rock nonetheless formed a sufficient barrier against the largest and most dangerous of the predatory vegetation.
A low electrified fence, supported by chemical sprayers and flame guns, protected the gun emplacements from surface roots and the occasional large carnivore which burst from the jungle beyond the two hundred yards of russet lava. In a century—or even a few decades—rain water and the jungle would break the raw rock into permeable soil, with disastrous results for the gun crews on duty when it happened.
But that would be another day, and the concerns of a mercenary were for the far shorter term. . . .
Except maybe for Uncle Dan.
Dan had said to observe everything about Paradise Base, the way he'd reflexively observed Admiral Bergstrom's office as he entered it. Bergstrom and Haynes probably thought Johnnie had been briefed on what to expect during the interview; the exhibition of shooting had impressed them, even Haynes, despite that.
But the test had been much more extreme than that. Commander Cooke had wanted to see how well his nephew's training responded to genuine field conditions. " . . . your baptism of fire, John. . . ."
Walcheron, the sailor manning the gun tub, suddenly snapped to alertness.
Johnnie's left hand made an instinctive grab for the rifle butt-upward beside the unoccupied assistant gunner's seat. His head rotated quickly, scanning to find the cause of alarm.
There didn't seem to be anything amiss.
A pair of gliders wheeled high in the white sky, no threat even to a torpedoboat wallowing along on its main hull. The only other vessel in sight was the Angels' net-tending boat. The distance between the jaws of land was too great for the protective nets to be operated from shore, as at Blackhorse Base. Instead, a double-ended fifty-ton vessel equipped with winches accomplished the task from the center of the channel.
The net-tender was lightly armed, even by torpedoboat standards. Besides, some of the crewmen aboard her were waving cheerfully at the visitor which would break the utter boredom of their duty.
The man in the gun tub turned to Johnnie. "Your name Gordon?" he asked.
"Yes—ah, yes," Johnnie replied, catching himself barely before he, an officer, called a seaman "sir."
The gunner tapped his commo helmet. Johnnie hadn't been offered one—and hadn't wanted to ask—on this trip. "Cap'n Haynes wants t' see you in the stern," the seaman explained, gesturing with his thumb.
Johnnie opened his mouth to ask what he realized before speaking was a silly question.
"He wants t' tell you something private, I guess," said the sailor, giving the obvious answer anyway.
Captain Haynes had made this run (as the previous one, from Wenceslas Dome to Blackhorse Base) in the cockpit. Now he got up from his seat at the control console and made his way sternward. His stocky body rode gracefully through each chop-induced quiver of the deck.
Haynes didn't bother to look over his shoulder to see that Johnnie was obeying the command.
"Right," Johnnie said, picking his way carefully along the railing. He wasn't at all steady, though he was sure he'd learn the trick of walking along a pitching deck if he managed to avoid drowning in the near future.
"Careful, kid," warned a pipe-smoking petty officer amidships. He reached out to steady Johnnie as the youth passed by.
The sailor was amusing himself by blowing smoke rings onto the sea. Water boiled as predators attacked the insubstantial prey.
Johnnie wondered if Haynes would permit the torpedoboat to stop and rescue him if he fell overboard. Judging from the way teeth instantly tore the smoke rings, it probably wouldn't matter. . . .
The deck widened astern of the cockpit. Breathing hard from the earlier portion of the forty-foot journey, Johnnie reached the captain's side.
Haynes had drawn his heavy pistol. He was looking back over the wake. He didn't turn around.
Johnnie curled the fingers of his left hand firmly around the cage of ramjet penetrators. "Yes sir?" he said, uncertain whether or not the captain knew he'd arrived.
"I've been ordered to bring you along, Ensign Gordon," Haynes said.
He spat. The gobbet sailed to a point six inches from the surface of the water. A fish that was all teeth and shimmering scales curved out of the wake and snatched the spittle from the air.
Haynes fired, blasting a waterspout just short of the target. The explosive bullet sprayed bits of miniature shrapnel into the fish so that it left a slick of blood as it resubmerged.
Seconds later, the wake surged in a feeding frenzy more violent than a grenade going off.
Johnnie relaxed. If that was meant to impress me . . . he thought.
He'd almost put two rounds of his own through the head of the fish before it went under; but he had a task to carry out for Uncle Dan. This wasn't the time or place to show off.
Haynes holstered his weapon without reloading and gave Johnnie a satisfied smirk. "I'm under orders to bring you along," he repeated, "but that doesn't mean you'll be present during the negotiations. I'm not taking a chance of some untrained kid blurting the wrong thing and putting the whole deal at risk. Do you understand?"
"Yes sir," Johnnie said. He even agreed. After all, a deal with the Angels would be the best proof possible that the Blackhorse wasn't attempting some phony game to fool Senator Gordon.
"And don't try to scare me with what your father's going to say," Haynes continued in a rising voice. "The deal I cut with Admiral Braun will prove that the Blackhorse has been negotiating in good faith."
"Yessir," Johnnie said. He wondered if Haynes was stupid—unlikely, given his position—or whether the captain just thought that everybody he disliked was stupid.
"There'll be bars open at Paradise Base," Haynes continued. "Or you can stay with the boat if you like. Just keep out of trouble or I swear it won't matter who your relatives are."
"Yessir."
Haynes strode past him, back to the cockpit.
Johnnie rubbed his right palm on his thigh. His uniform had been soaked with spray on the high-speed run, but the hammering sun dried the cloth in minutes after the M4434 dropped off her foils.
He really wished he'd showed up Haynes' clumsy marksmanship; but there'd be another time. . . .
He wiped his gunhand again and returned to the bow while the torpedoboat rocked and waited for the outer net to open. He could just as easily have waited where he was, but then somebody might have thought he was afraid to chance the narrow catwalk amidships.
Johnnie reached the bow in time to steady himself against the gun tub when the auxiliary thruster accelerated M4434 through the minimal opening which the net-tender drew for them.
Reverse thrust slowed the hydrofoil again. A derrick on the net-tender's bow slid the folds of net forward again to mate with the line of buoys holding up the fixed portion of the meshes. The water was a deep blue-green, slimed with wastes discharged from the base installations.
Something else had entered with M4434. A paddle-tipped tentacle as big around as a pony keg curled out of the water and wrapped itself around the net-tender.
For an instant, all the chaos and violence was of the squid's doing. A second long tentacle encircled the little vessel. There was a flurry of foam and a mass of shorter tentacles, writhing like Medusa's hair, drew six feet of the squid's mauve body up the net-tender's starboard side.
The vessel bobbed. Waves lapped its starboard rail.
Three, then a dozen guns opened up from the hydrofoil and the net-tender itself. Explosive bullets dimpled the sea, the net-tender's hull, and the squid. Johnnie snatched out the automatic rifle as the gunner spun his twin-sixties to bear.
"Not those!" Johnnie shouted. "You'll sink them!"
When the big guns continued to rotate, the side of Johnnie's fist slammed the sailor's helmet hard enough to knock the man out of his seat. There was no time for delicacy.
"Use solids!" he warned, but he didn't have a commo helmet so nobody could hear him over the gunfire . . . and anyway, nobody would've listened to a young ensign-in-name-only.
But he was right.
A young officer leaned over the net-tender's rail with a sub-machine gun and fired most of the forty-round magazine straight down into the squid. Sparkling explosions blew the eyes to jelly and raised a cloud of lime dust from the huge parrot beak.
Sepia flooded the water around the squid; pigment darkened its flesh from mauve to greenish black.
A pair of tentacles unhooked from the rail and seized the Angels' officer. A third twisted the gun from the youth's hand as skillfully as if the squid still had eyes.
Johnnie switched his rifle to solids and fired a three-shot burst between the monster's eyes. He began walking down the squid's torso with further short bursts, probing for the ganglia. Bullets that exploded on the skin couldn't possibly kill the huge invertebrate.
The creature suddenly spasmed and blushed a pinkish white color. Its tentacles went slack, though the long pair still crisscrossed the net-tender amidships.
The young officer dropped onto the squid's sagging body. Its beak closed reflexively over his waist, but his bullets had powdered the hooked tip which would otherwise have punctured his intestines and crushed his spine.
One of the net-tender's crewmen with more courage than sense jumped into the roiling water and grabbed the stunned officer. In three frog-like kicks he made it back to the vessel's side. Four pairs of hands reached over desperately to pull him and his burden back aboard.
There was a quiver of movement from deep within the water.
"Look out!" Johnnie screamed as he pointed his rifle at where the newcomer would break surface—directly under the struggling men. It was no use trying to shoot through the water, but the target would appear jaws-first. . . .
A net-tender crewman, bleeding from a pressure cut on his cheek and forehead, tossed something that looked like a six-pack of beer over the side.
It must have been a bundle of rocket warheads with a short time-fuze, because it went off with a blast that was still bright orange after being filtered through the water.
The gout of water slammed the two vessels apart and lifted their facing sides. Johnnie fell down, but the net-tender's crew used the surge to help them snatch their fellows safe aboard.
A fragment of the squid's tentacle floated near M4434.
The other creature must have been a fish with a swim bladder to rupture in the explosion. It sank to the bottom, unseen save for a flash of terror through the bullet-spattered water.
"Cease fire!" roared Captain Haynes over the cockpit public-address system. "Cease fire! We're not here to waste ammunition!"
Johnnie's left hand was patting the magazine well of his borrowed rifle. He had ejected the empty magazine by rote, but he didn't have a full one with which to replace it.