A ragged volley from forward cinched her decision. Mere seconds after Laney’s shots, they were coming over the bow as well. It no longer really mattered what difference Laney’s shots had made, if any. The expedition to recover Santa Catalina now had an enemy all its own.
“Marines!” she shouted. “Pre-sent! Take care not to hit the crates,” she reminded them. The first attackers, still visible in the light of the lanterns that had hastily been set on the deck, were only a few strides away. “Fire!” Tongues of flame stabbed out from the muskets and the building charge shattered under the onslaught of eight loads of “buck and ball” and a sudden cloud of choking smoke. Bodies flopped on the deck and writhed and thudded with spastic, distinct, fishlike sounds. An eerie groan swept through the attackers and more splashes were heard as others abandoned the fight. “Mister Laay-nee, get back inside,” Bekiaa ordered. “No one is to come out in ones and twos. They must form squads of at least six or more and come out together. Everyone at once would be nice. Send squads to relieve the forward guard as well. We cannot let them inside.” Forgetting Laney, she turned back to the front.
“Reload!”
“What the hell’s going on out there?” Chapelle demanded when Laney staggered, wide-eyed, back into the lounge. Lanterns were being lit and Marines and Navy salvage workers were snatching weapons and clambering for the door.
“Monsters!” Laney declared. “Slimy, toadlike, Grik-lookin’ bastards! There must be thousands of ’em!” They heard muffled firing from forward. “Oh, yeah, that ’Cat Marine said to send help to the other guards. They’re attackin’ all over the ship!” Amazingly, the big man seemed close to panic. “God a’mighty, all I wanted was a whiz over the side!”
Isak and Gilbert appeared, grimly holding two of the long, heavy Krags they always bitched about, and Ben had his pistol and an ’03 Springfield.
“You, Gilbert, go forward with Jannik-Fas and two squads of Marines.” Russ said. “They may need your help with a repeating rifle.” Another volley crashed outside, punctuated by weird cries. “Isak, you come with me and the rest of the Marines.”
“What about me?” Ben asked angrily.
“You stay out of it, hear? This whole trip’s for nothing if you get yourself killed! Know anybody else that can fly a P-40? You stay back with the rest of the Navy ’Cats. Send a runner forward with Gilbert. You’ll have to send reserves wherever they’re needed.”
“Goddamn it, Russ!”
“Just do as you’re told, flyboy.” Chapelle grinned. “Everybody knows you got plenty of guts. You can break your neck later in an airplane, and it’s none of my business. Right now you’re my responsibility!” He looked around. There were about seventeen with him, not counting Isak and Laney. Laney had an ’03 now, bayonet fixed. “Let’s go!”
They poured out the door yelling like fiends, just as Bekiaa, Moe, and the four remaining outside Marines charged, bloody bayonets lowered. Russ and his reinforcements flowed around her, firing independently as soon as their front was clear. Russ immediately saw that there weren’t “thousands” of the bizarre creatures, as Laney said, but there were more than a hundred. Quite a few lay dead, and a steady trickle of the remainder was jumping over the side, but a cohesive mass was still fighting determinedly, even in the face of their assault. If they were similar to Grik in other ways, they apparently didn’t panic en masse.
Russ fired his Springfield, careful of his shots in the dark with the precious ammunition. One of the creatures he’d thought was dead suddenly latched onto his foot with a long, sticky tongue, and he shook his leg violently as a primal revulsion coursed through him. He stabbed down with his bayonet, pinning the thing’s head to the deck, and finally managed to pry his foot free.
“Watch out for their damn tongues!” he warned, perhaps a little shrilly. “They’re just like the one that big monster had!”
“EEEE W W W W W!” squealed Isak, as he started jumping in circles. He’d stepped on an entirely dead tongue that had glued his shoe to the deck.
Laney shoved him forward, out of his shoe and back into the press. “This ain’t no time for ballerina tryouts, you nitwit!” he growled. Apparently he’d gotten over his own initial shock.
The weight of the attack, and possibly the unexpected violence and remorselessness of it all, not to mention the now steady hail of bullets that shredded bodies far beyond the natives’ ability to inflict any harm, backed the dwindling horde of slimy creatures up onto the fantail. They continued to resist, slashing at bayonets with their unnaturally long handclaws with an almost metallic shkink sound, but the steady fire and the bristling wall of bayonets kept those foreclaws from reaching much flesh. Russ did see one of the creatures dart its tongue out and snatch a musket right from the hands of a Marine-and then drive the bayonet through its own head when the tongue retracted. It was probably the most bizarre thing he’d ever seen, and he imagined the macabre humor of the image would stay with him the rest of his days.
From within the milling mass, a thrumming bellow arose, like the steady roar of a thousand frogs. The creatures fighting on the fantail seemed to pay it no heed, but suddenly there was firing from the direction of the lounge again! Behind them! Chapelle risked a glance, and there was Ben Mallory with about twenty Navy ’Cats armed with muskets, shooting at more of the monsters trying to clear the rail.
“Son of a bitch!” Russ murmured. “They sucked us in and tried to flank us!” He raised his voice. “Bekiaa, keep up the pressure! We got company!”
Lieutenant Bekiaa also risked a glance. “We will. Take that damn Laay-nee and a couple Marines. We can spare them here, but those things must not get between us!”
Russ pushed another stripper clip full of. 30-06 shells into his rifle’s magazine. The clip fell away and he closed the bolt. “Yeah,” he said. “C’mon, Laney!”
Together with two lightly wounded Marines, reloading as they ran, Russ and Laney sprinted around the wide cargo hatch and the big crates cradled upon it. Yellow eyes peeked over the rail in front of him and Russ fired low, between them. The eyes disappeared. As he neared, Russ saw that Ben and his reserves were doing essentially the same thing. Few of the creatures were reaching the deck, and those that did died almost instantly. Ben was firing carefully, aiming his pistol with every round, each shot pitching one of the creatures backward as soon as it showed itself.
“I thought I told you to stay out of it!” Russ said breathlessly.
“I did stay out of it,” Ben replied. “As long as possible. I decided I was perfectly happy to let you deal with these nasty frog-lizards, or whatever the hell they are.” He fired again. “It isn’t possible now. Sneaky bastards tried to come up from below! They undogged the hatches, Russ! I’ve got some guys watching them now, but it came as a hell of a surprise. I also sent half the reserves forward when I saw what they were trying to pull back here.” He shook his head. “A hell of a thing. They aren’t running either, not like Grik, and they don’t really even have weapons. God help us if the Grik ever learn to fight like this!”
“God help us tonight!” Russ replied.
Ben shook his head. “They’re about done, I think. Their scheme didn’t work, and isn’t going to. If they’re as smart as I’m afraid they are, they’ll figure that out pretty quick. Back here, we’re just killing them.”