Distant Thunders d-4

by Taylor Anderson

  As always when he stepped aboard one of the enormous seagoing cities of the Lemurians, an awesome sight greeted Matt. The main deck, with the polta fruit gardens lining the bulwark, was normally a hundred feet above the sea, and three huge pagodalike “apartments” towered above it like skyscrapers. The massive tripods that supported the great sails or “wings” soared another two hundred and fifty feet above the deck. Larger than the new Essex -class aircraft carriers Matt had glimpsed under construction so long ago, Aracca was double-ended, flat-bottomed, and built of diagonally plank-laminated wood that was six feet thick in places. He was always impressed by the incredibly tough, sophisticated design that ensured that she and others like her would last for centuries upon this world’s more hostile seas. Looking at Aracca, he couldn’t imagine any natural force overcoming her. He vividly remembered how vulnerable her daughter Home, Nerracca, had been to ten-inch naval rifles, however.

  After the ceremonial greeting, the youngling High Chief embraced Matt. He knew she felt great affection for him and he certainly returned it, but hers always made him feel a little awkward. He couldn’t convince himself he deserved it. Tassana hugged Sandra next, then Spanky and Courtney. Kutas had stayed with the boat.

  “Good morning, my dear!” Courtney said, pecking the High Chief’s furry cheek. “We have come to view your progress firsthand! Judging by the increasing quantities of scrap arriving at the shipyard, you must be proceeding beyond our dreams!”

  “It goes well,” Tassana admitted with a touch of pride. She had the support and assistance of the vastly more experienced High Chiefs of the other Homes, but she was essentially in charge of the project.

  “Anybody hurt today?” Sandra asked solicitously.

  “A few, not serious. Torch burns, most. The new ‘a… aa-set-aaleen’ does not, ah, reg… reg-ulate the same as old, and of course we no have gay-ges for new torches either.”

  “It takes a little trial and error, I’m afraid,” Courtney commiserated. Raw materials had been their very first priority, so fulfilling their need for more acetylene had dominated all other concerns for a while. The first large steam-powered generator was devoted entirely to the new furnace for cooking limestone, and the stuff was coming in from everywhere. Great, billowing white clouds arose from the crushing grounds near the shipyard, and workers emerged from a day’s labor resembling long-tailed spooks. A still for the acetone was much easier to manage, but just as hard to feed. The volatile liquid resulting from the process also tended to evaporate as quickly as it was made, negating tremendous labor, so the quality control required for the combination and compression of the gas was a little haphazard. Courtney had taken personal charge of the project, with Letts’s logistical assistance, so he felt a little responsible for each injury sustained.

  “The burns not serious,” Tassana thoughtfully assured him.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Matt said, a little impatient to see the work. “Mind if we take a look?”

  “’Course not.” Tassana led them up a long stair from the catwalk above the polta garden to the amidships battlement platform above. They strode across it to starboard and peered down over the rail. The view they beheld was amazing and terrible, like something from Dante’s Inferno. The water level within the cofferdam was considerably lower than that outside, and pumps heaved great geysers into the bay. The main portion of Amagi had actually settled atop her own amputated bow, and the scene of tangled, twisted wreckage and destruction was horrifying in a visceral way. The once mighty ship lay exposed down below her main deck and was still quite recognizable, but great arcs of molten steel jetted away from dozens of torches, spewing into the sea and causing a haze of steam to linger in the basin. Heavy booms lifted rusty, unrecognizable chunks, and even small structures. They heaved them across the expansive decks of the Homes and placed them on barges alongside.

  “Goddamn,” muttered Spanky around his perpetual wad of yellowish Lemurian tobacco leaves. “ ’Scuse me ladies, but… goddamn. Looks like Mare Island down there. Upside down or inside out-whatever-but damned impressive.” He looked at Tassana, the usual fond expression he bestowed upon her mingled with respect. “I’m impressed,” he repeated. “Keje said you could do it, that I should worry ’bout other stuff, but you know, I admit I was a little skeptical. I had a chief when I was a kid who helped cofferdam the Maine, to refloat her, and he told me about it. That was a hell of a job-but this!” He gestured around. “The Maine was a rowboat compared to Amagi.”

  “You proud?” Tassana asked eagerly.

  “You betcha. You’re going to get a lot of leakage, and I’m not sure how you’ll manage to get her bottom up, but it looks great so far.”

  “There already leakage,” Tassana admitted, “but pumps stay ahead. Also, when we get to bottom, we sink holes to pump with you hoses. We get bottom.”

  Spanky shook his head. “I bet you will.”

  Gray was watching the workers. Now that they weren’t on a moving boat, the day had turned hot, and with all the steam… “Poor devils down there must be boilin’,” he said.

  “It… uncomfortable,” Tassana agreed, “but I go down much.. . The workers… cheerful, yes? They cheerful knowing steel they bring up will kill Grik.” She grinned. “Some would like to bring up whole ship.”

  “That might make salvage more convenient,” Matt said, “having her closer to the shipyard. But it would take years to fix her. She’s torn in half, and that doesn’t even count all the damage she took before she got here. And everything on her is just so damn big! We still don’t even have cranes remotely big enough to lift her guns.”

  “Prob’ly have to cut ’em up,” Spanky lamented.

  Matt shook his head. “I’d rather have her steel now than maybe have her a few years from now.” He didn’t add that they’d need some of that steel to restore his own ship-if it could be done-but Sandra heard it in his voice.

  They lapsed into silence for a while, just staring at the monumental undertaking below. There must have been five hundred ’Cat workers on the wreck, cutting, unbolting, swinging heavy sledges, and dragging loose objects to convenient locations for the booms to reach. Their old nemesis resembled nothing as much as a murdered beetle on an ant mound being dismantled, ever so slowly, by the proud but remorseless mandibles of its killers.

  Matt shook the thought away. Any sailor hated the breaking yard, but he would not attach any sentimentality to that… monstrosity that had tormented his dreams and threatened the existence of everything he loved on this world for over a year. He knew Amagi herself was not to blame; Captain Kurokawa and the Grik had wielded the weapon she’d been. Still, she’d embodied the threat they posed, and he enjoyed the irony that he and his people would now use her against her former masters. She’d been a scourge, but now she was a precious gift. She wasn’t given willingly or received without great cost, but her corpse would provide the bones to which they could attach the sinews of modern war. She’d been the ultimate weapon of the Grik and the Japanese on this world. Now she would help destroy them.

  Sandra had noticed the range of expressions that crossed Matt’s face. Some she recognized and her heart went out to him. A few confused her. The strange smile that replaced them all left a chill in her bones.

  Dean Laney, former chief machinist’s mate aboard USS Walker, winced and shifted uncomfortably on his stool. Damn, his ass hurt! It had started bugging him a lot lately, and now he had an intermittent case of the screamers, which only aggravated the problem. He sipped his coffee, or “monkey joe,” and gazed around. Large, crude machinery hummed, rattled, and roared loudly all around him. The chassis and casings were mostly copper or brass, but some were even made of wood. Only bearings, shafts, chucks, and tool heads were made of real, precious steel, although more and more iron parts and castings were coming from the foundries. Over his head, high in the ceiling beams, leather belts whooped and whirled and spun in all directions around a precarious clockwork of rattling wooden pulleys of various sizes.
Having all that motion right over his head sometimes gave him the creeps, but usually he was able to ignore it.

  He didn’t know what his rank was anymore. Everybody had been getting fancy-sounding promotions, but if he had a new title, word hadn’t leaked down to him yet. It didn’t really matter, he supposed. It wasn’t like he’d get a raise in pay. Besides, his domain had certainly been enlarged. Instead of Walker ’s cramped engineering spaces and modest machine shop, he now oversaw a sprawling, impressive industrial complex. Three long buildings and hundreds of workers were under his direct supervision, and he was responsible for turning out the machines that would make other machines that would ultimately go to the various project directors.

  It wasn’t as much fun as what Bernie, Ben, and Spanky were doing-making all sorts of swell stuff to use directly against the lizards-but they couldn’t do their thing unless he did his. Besides, he never really was a “tight tolerance” guy, he admitted, and the majority of the machines that made machines could be relatively crude.

  His wandering eyes fell on a ’Cat machinist almost in front of him. “Hey, you,” he grumbled loudly, “watch what the hell you’re doing!”

  The ’Cat stopped turning the traverse handle, and the coils of brass that had been crawling away from the shaft she was turning abruptly sprang away to join the growing pile around her feet. “What I doing?” she demanded.

  Caught off guard, Laney was stumped. Usually, his gruff comments went unanswered. He felt it was his duty to make them periodically to keep the workers on their toes. His face turned red and he stood up-making his ass hurt even more. “You mean you don’t know what you’re doing?” he demanded hotly, questing with his eyes for some fault.

  “I know what I doing,” came a shockingly abrasive retort. “Do you?”

  “Why you…! Just look! Look at all that shit coiled around your feet! It looks like a goddamn tumbleweed! What if that chuck snatches it up? It’ll yank you in by the tail and all there’ll be is a cloud of fuzz! Who the hell taught you to be a machinist’s mate?!”

  “Dennis Si-vaa! He teach me good! He make weapons to kill Grik, not stand around all day making big pole less big!”

  Laney’s eyes bulged. “Silva?! Why, that big malingering ape couldn’t machine a proper turd with his ass!” Inwardly, Laney blanched at his own comment. Lately, he literally couldn’t do that himself. He forged ahead. “I want you to slip the belt on that machine this goddamn minute, find your chief, and tell him you want to learn how to be a real machinist!”

  Dean was so intent on his harangue that he didn’t hear the sudden snap-hack! or the shrill, warning cries of alarm. He kind of heard the dull, buzzing whoosh! of the broken belt that slapped him on the back of the head.

  He was still mad when he woke up in an aid station sometime later, but couldn’t remember why. He felt like he’d jumped off a roof head-first, though.

  “Whadami doin’ here?” he mumbled. When no answer was immediately forthcoming, he closed his eyes and raised his voice. “Hey, goddamn it! Why am I here?”

  “Shut up!” came a harsh, heavenly, female voice. “You want to wake everybody up? Besides, you might burst a vessel!”

  Laney opened his eyes and saw Nurse Ensign Kathy McCoy hovering over him.

  “It’s an angel!” he said wonderingly.

  “Nope.” Kathy laughed. “Just me.”

  “You’re an angel, all right,” muttered Laney, “and there’s damn few of you. Scarcer than the kind with wings, I bet. You danced with me a couple o’ times at the Busted Screw.”

  Kathy grimaced. “Yeah. I try to dance with all the fellas. I’d never forget you, though.” Laney’s eyes went wide and he beamed. “You stomped all over my feet,” Kathy explained. “I haven’t walked right since.”

  Destroyed, Laney uttered a groan.

  “Head hurt?”

  “Yeah. Who hit me? One of those chickenshit monkeys I have to put up with?”

  Kathy frowned. “Not who, what. One of those leather belts that runs your machines broke. Conked you pretty good. Didn’t break the skin, but you’ll have a goose egg the size of a baseball. You guys ought to be wearing helmets in there.”

  “Mmm. Ought to be doing lots of stuff. We do what we can.”

  “Yeah. Hey, you hurt anywhere else? You’ve been squirming around like a worm on a hook, even in your sleep. By the way, now that you’re awake, you need to stay that way for a while in case of concussion.”

  Laney nodded-painfully-but hesitated.

  “What? You are hurting somewhere else. Where?” Kathy demanded.

  “I’d, uh, rather not say. I’m fine.”

  Kathy nodded. She easily recognized the code words for “I’m not telling a broad about my private agonies.” “Okay, without telling me what hurts, tell me what it feels like.”

  “Like I’m shitting busted glass!” Laney blurted, then caught himself. “Hey! You tricked me!”

  “It’s my job,” Kathy said. “And it was easy. I won’t even ask to do an exam, and I don’t really want to. But judging by your physique, your complaint, and your job, I bet you spend a lot of time sitting, right?” Reluctantly, and somewhat indignantly, Laney nodded. “Just as I thought. Hemorrhoids. Piles. You know.”

  Laney shook his head. “Piles! That can’t be it. Sometimes I think I’m gonna die! You can’t die from piles… can you?”

  Kathy almost laughed, but shook her head. “No, and I’ll give you something that ought to help, at least a little… on one condition.”

  Laney’s eyes narrowed. “Doctors ain’t supposed to put conditions on helping folks, are they?”

  Kathy shrugged. “Maybe I’m a doctor here, but I’m just a nurse back home. I can do what I want.”

  “What’s the scam?”

  “Tell you what. I get a lot of guys-’Cats-in here who work for you. Just like you, they get hurt now and then. Anyway, they’re doing important work and they’re proud of that. Some would rather be doing something else, and I understand, but your division, or whatever it is, is just as critical as any other-maybe more so-and they know it. They don’t mind the work or the hours or even getting hurt, but nearly everyone I see-though anxious to get back to work-is not anxious to get back to work for you. You’re a jerk, Dean. Right now you’re a hurt jerk, so I’m trying to be nice. What it boils down to, the ‘scam,’ I guess, is this: promise to try to quit being such a pain in the ass, or I’ll let your ‘pain in the ass’ keep reminding you how you make everybody around you feel. Deal?”

  Chief Electrician’s Mate “Ronson” Rodriguez heard the exchange between Ensign McCoy and Laney through the thin reed screen that separated them. He’d come in to get his hand fixed after he’d cut it on some of the sharp Lemurian copper wire. Now stitched, disinfected, and bandaged up, he’d been taking his ease for a few moments away from the “powerhouse,” the factory he’d been put in charge of where they built, refurbished, and experimented on the various electrical contrivances Riggs was in charge of. The problem was, that stupid ox Laney was always cruising through his shop looking for deserters. Rodriguez knew Laney resented him as a jumped-up electricians’ mate third class, and thought he could toss him around with his size and personality. He was wrong.

  Ronson might have let him get away with it once, but a lot of things had changed besides relative ratings. Rodriguez had been wounded in action far more often than Laney, and besides Laney’s genuinely impressive underwater adventures, Rodriguez had seen a lot bigger “elephants” than the chief machinist’s mate. His most recent escapade was the one that finally earned him a nickname. His first name was Rolando, and his shipmates had tried to tag him with “Rolo,” “Rodent,” and even “Rhonda,” but none ever stuck. When Walker took that Jap shell in her auxiliary fuel tank in the forward fireroom, somehow Rolando’s sweatband and longish hair had caught fire. Silva put him out, but the mental image of him running around on the amidships gun platform like a lit match had left him with “Ronson” Rodriguez, and this ti
me it took.

  Since then, he kept his head shaved to his slightly scarred scalp and the only hair he cultivated was a Pancho Villa mustache. The men were allowed trimmed beards and razors were scarce, but the chiefs were allowed a little more leeway by everybody, captain to Lemurian cadet, because in most cases, they’d earned their stripes the hard way. All of Walker ’s and Mahan ’s chiefs who hadn’t gone to other ships had filled dead men’s shoes except Campeti-and the Bosun, of course-but Rodriguez didn’t think Laney filled Harvey Donaghey’s very well. If Laney felt the same way about him, he could eat turds and chew slow.

  The arguments they had over Laney’s “defectors” always escalated to bellows of rage and interfered with work in the powerhouse. Laney did know better than to take a swing, and the contention between them always had to be taken to Riggs or Spanky-more lost work in both departments. Riggs and Spanky tried to be fair, but if Laney really needed the deserter in question, the poor bastard got sent back. Rodriguez suspected the two officers were getting as tired of the situation as Rodriguez was, and Laney was probably out on a cracking plank. He wondered whether Kathy McCoy’s comments would do any good.

  Well, with that bump on his head, Laney would probably leave him alone for the rest of the day, anyway. Time to quit malingering. He stood up from the chair he’d been sitting on, cradling his wounded hand. The throbbing had nearly passed. Neat stuff, that pasty goo, he reflected. Not waiting to be released by the nurse, he ducked out of the aid station and headed back for the powerhouse.