“Yeah!” chorused others.
“We’d have pulled you up,” assured Monk, looking at Gilbert.
“Well… that’s the weird part. There they was, an’ there I was, just lookin’ at each other. Ugly bastards too, bobbin’ there in the gloom. God knows what they thought o’ me in the suit. Anyway, when they didn’t eat me right off, I… I just got this funny feelin’ they weren’t going to. Don’t know why.” The suit was off his shoulders now, exposing his wet, hairy chest. He shrugged. “Maybe it was sorta like when a dog comes runnin’ up to you. Sometimes you can just tell if he wants you to pet him or if he wants to eat yer hand.”
“No dog’d ever bite you, Laney,” Gilbert jabbed. “Might as well chew arsenic.”
Laney rolled his eyes. “Two words, two syllables, mouse brain: Piss. Off.” He looked at Chapelle. “So I went back to work. I guess, compared to them flashies that nearly got me that time, I got this feelin ’ these critters could Think, you know? After that, it came to me that they could’a ate me before I ever even saw ’em, so they must’a decided not to.” He shook his head. “Then came the weird part.”
“You just said the other part was the weird part,” Isak said accusingly.
Laney scowled. “It was, goddamn it! I’m tellin’ this, so shove off! It was all weird, but it got even weirder, see? There I was, surrounded by giant ‘toady-gators.’… Hey, that sounds pretty good! Toady-gators! Anyway, still surrounded by toady-gators, I finished up that second plate and signaled for you to move me an’ lower down the last one…” He stopped and glared at Isak again. “It just hit me. You did hear That signal!”
“That time it made sense,” Isak replied defensively. “You used the signal you said you’d use. The first time I figgered you was bangin’ on barnacles ’er somethin’.”
“I just said there weren’t any barnacles!”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Chief Laney-” Chapelle prodded.
“Yeah, well, I was havin’ some trouble with that last plate. The curve was pretty good,” he said, complimenting the ’Cats who’d formed it, “but it wanted to hang sorta bad. I couldn’t tack the top and hold it against the bottom, if you know what I mean. Needed two fellas down there.”
“Only the one suit,” Chapelle reminded him.
“I know. But it was okay! Them toads must’a figgered out what I was tryin’ ta do, and seen I couldn’t do it by myself!” He stopped and shook his head again. “Couple of ’em helped me! Damned if they didn’t!”
“You’re telling me these creatures-the same ones we fought a pitched battle against just a couple of nights ago-actually helped you patch this ship? Patch the very hole they probably used to get in and out?” Chapelle demanded.
Laney was nodding. “The last part of it, anyway. Not even the little ones could’a squirmed through there by then, but yeah, they did. Pushed in on the bottom while I tacked the top, then kept holdin’ it while I ran a short bead on the bottom.” He looked around defensively. “I just got this feelin ’, ya know? That they knew what I was up to and had decided to help.”
For a moment, except for the gentle whoosh of the boiler and the cries from the nearby jungle, there was utter silence on Santa Catalina.
“Well,” Chapelle said at last, quietly, glancing over the side at the eyes in the water, “do you have confidence in your repairs, Chief Laney?”
“As much confidence as a fella can ever have in a weld, and an underwater weld at that,” he said, hedging. “Goddamn welded ships crack up and sink all the time, you know.”
“It’ll have to do until we can get her in the dry dock back home,” Russ said. “We’ll drill holes at the seams and use bolts too-if you don’t mind going back in the water.”
Laney deflated just a little, but nodded. “They didn’t eat me last time. I guess they don’t mean to. Them just bein’ around probably keeps other things away. I’ll go.”
“You be sure an’ tell ’em hi’dy for me, will ya?” Isak said with a snicker.
“I will,” Laney grumbled. “Matter of fact, no reason you can’t go next time. It’ll just be slidin’ bolts through some holes and backin’ ’em up. The suit’s no big deal. You can say ‘hi’dy’ right to ’em. Who knows, maybe you’ll get a date.”
Isak eased a step closer to Gilbert. That was what always happened whenever he tried to be friendly, talk to folks outside his “clan.” Inevitably, things escalated to a point where they started expecting him to do things. “You go, Dean,” he said, his voice subconsciously regressing to its flat, reedy, monosyllabic norm. “They’re your friends. You need friends.”
By that evening, with the assistance of the “portable” steam-powered generators from Chief Electrician’s Mate Rodriguez’s growing concern in Baalkpan, and the combination of his crude electric motors and the sophisticated Lemurian pumps, tons of brackish, ill-smelling water had already gushed out of the aft hold. Laney’s patch leaked, but seemed to be holding well enough. Myriad bizarre creatures slithered or skittered in the emerging silt accumulated in the ship. The workers down there, occasionally tightening Laney’s bolts or shoveling mucky silt toward a hose that reliquefied it so it could be sucked from the bilge, were constantly on alert for squirmy things. At one point, Isak emitted a most unmanly shriek, but then went after something that looked like a horseshoe crab with long, wickedly curved and articulated downwardstabbing forelegs, or “jabbers,” as he later called them. It had come marching directly at him out of the gloom, and probably spurred by his own initial terror, he relentlessly pursued the thing with a wrecking bar long after it reconsidered its attack. He never found it.
At about 2100, Santa Catalina began to groan. She’d been glued to the bottom for so long, her sudden buoyancy was stressing her old bones as she tried to break the suction. Chapelle had everything they could spare thrown over the side-empty or damaged crates, chairs, beds. He insisted they save the springs out of the mattresses, but they were cut up and the dank, mildewed fabric and stuffing went. A lot of the once submerged crates in the hold contained spare engines for the P-40s. Many of the engines were probably ruined, but they could salvage parts and the steel was good. The crates around them went. Paneling was torn from the officers’ and passengers’ staterooms and went into the swamp. Most was too rotten to save anyway. Santa Catalina was Cramp made, in 1913, and everyone but Gilbert was surprised to learn she wasn’t a coal burner. If she had been, Chapelle might have lightened her still more by transferring much of her remaining fuel to the barges alongside. The expedition, with the additional help of the rest of the squadron still anchored downstream, could have cut wood for her proposed voyage to Baalkpan. As it was, the ship had only about three hundred tons of fuel, and that was somewhat suspect. She could never make it to Baalkpan without a refill. It struck Chapelle that she never would have made it out of Tjilatjap with her original crew-back in their “old” world-and he felt a wave of sadness for their futile sacrifice. He transmitted the need for fuel oil from either Baalkpan, Aryaal, or First Fleet.
Considering her heavy cargo, Russ finally decided to pump out the ship’s ballast. He knew he was running a risk, because with so many crates on deck, the ship might be top-heavy, but they had to break her hold on the bottom. After that, they still had to get her through the shallow swamp and closer to Tjilatjap without a tug, or anything but her own dubious, neglected power plant. He was afraid he’d have to lighten ship still more, and so he had Ben designate the crates most likely to have allowed the most corrosion to their contents. Even the worstcorroded plane was a treasure, but if they had to toss a few to save the rest, so be it.
Near dawn, with the tide pushing back against the flow of the river, the groaning hull suddenly stopped protesting. With a ponderous, swooping sensation, Santa Catalina ’s stern finally freed itself from the muddy embrace that had clutched it for so long, and with an audible trembling moan, it swung a few degrees away from the jungle shore. Many of the expedition were asleep after a to
rturous night, but the unmistakable motion of the suddenly floating stern instigated a growing, exhausted cheer that soon included all the now nearly two hundred Lemurian sailors and Marines inhabiting the ship, as well as the half dozen humans.
“Pipe down, pipe down,” Chapelle called benevolently over the newly repaired shipwide circuit. He himself had fallen asleep on the bridge, sitting on one of the few chairs they’d preserved. He glanced at his watch, realizing he’d slept through the morning watch change. He wondered briefly if there’d been a change. No reason to do it on the bridge of a beached ship, he supposed. Hmm. Monk should be officer of the deck. “Major Mallory, Lieutenant Bekiaa, and Lieutenant Monk to the bridge, on the double. Bosun’s Mate Saama-Kera and Jannik-Fas will coordinate a detail to make sure we remain secure to the shore for now, but don’t swing around and beach again either.” He grinned. “The rest of you may continue to celebrate for one entire minute!”
The cheers resumed, punctuated by laughter, and the ship practically throbbed with stamping feet.
All around, in the water below, large yellow eyes popped up into the brightening day. The Great Mother of the Dry Folk had stirred from her sleep at last. They’d known she was alive, that she breathed once more for a couple of dark spans, but now she’d moved! They’d felt it in the water! All regretted their attack on the Dry Folk. They simply hadn’t known. Would that their meeting had been different! They certainly respected the Dry Folk now, not only as warriors but for their medicine as well. The wounded they’d returned were healing quickly, and they seemed near to healing their Great Mother! They actually envied them that. Not that the natives would ever want to heal a Great Mother, but it might be nice to have a Great Mother that inspired such devotion-an actual desire to heal her in the first place. Most extraordinary creatures.
CHAPTER 17
Respite Island
R espite Island appeared to be all its name implied as the squadron approached it from the northwest the following morning. Doubtless volcanic, the island featured a pair of high peaks near its western coast, and the land around them was a mixture of dense, exotic jungles, interspersed cultivated fields. Limestone cliffs jutted skyward along the north flank, heavily undermined by the relentless sea, but as the ships steamed east, they encountered a broad barrier reef that protected a vast anchorage on the northeast coast. Achilles was once more under her own power, but Icarus led the way, flying a large pennant to summon a pilot. Before long, a small, extreme, single-masted topsail schooner slashed its way toward them from beyond a point of land. It was a gorgeous little craft, Matt decided: around fifty feet long, painted dark blue with bright yellow trim and a white bottom. It was only about twice as large as one of Walker ’s launches, but carried a truly magnificent spread of canvas. It was fast too, faster than anything Matt had ever seen under sail. He grinned at the sight of her.
“Pretty little thing,” the Bosun commented.
“Yeah,” Matt replied. “One of these days when all this is over and I get to retire, I want one just like her!” His grin suddenly faded. “I bet Sandra would like that,” he murmured. Gray said nothing. What could he say?
Quickly, the little schooner raced to Icarus ’ side and the smaller Imperial frigate hoisted a clear signal to “follow me.” As they steamed around the point and farther out to sea to avoid the reef, the schooner dropped back and paced Walker for a distance, its crew openly gawking at the sleek, freshly touched-up old destroyer that moved along so apparently effortlessly with her twin screw propellers. Matt doubted they gawked with envy; they had no reason to be envious, given their trim, beautifully appointed little craft, but he conceded they might have been struck with amazement.
Imperial shipmakers had developed crude screw propellers, but they were virtually unused. Paddle wheels were “tried and true” and required no underwater hull piercings, which tended to leak. Matt firmly believed that paddle wheels were far more vulnerable, not only to battle damage but to heavy weather as well, but he could understand why a ship without them might look strange to people so accustomed to their use. However inefficient they were, they worked, and in a very visible way. Walker could throw up quite a wake at higher speeds, but right now there was little more than if she’d been under sail. This, combined with her odd appearance and obvious steel construction, had to make quite an impression even on people more technologically advanced than the Lemurians had been at first. The little schooner certainly made an impression on him.
Many of the Lemurians held up their hands, palm out, in their traditional greeting, and the schooner’s crew appeared to notice them for the first time. There was a sudden disarray among its sails, and then she was slanting away, back the direction she’d come. Some of the bridge watch chuckled, and Matt did too. He doubted the schooner was supposed to abandon her pilot-whoever she’d put aboard Icarus was probably throwing a fit.
After a long reach to eastward, the pilot must have indicated the channel, because Icarus turned and steamed back toward the island. Achilles made the same turn at the same point, and Walker followed suit. At their crawling pace, it would still be nearly an hour before they came under the guns of the looming limestone fortress overlooking the anchorage that Jenks had told them to expect. All the same, Matt summoned Boats Bashear.
“Another thirty minutes I should think, then line the sides, if you please.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Bashear replied and left the bridge, fingering his bosun’s pipe. Exactly half an hour later, the pipe trilled insistently and the crew turned out in style. White T-shirts, blue or white kilts and dungarees, and the ever-present Dixie cup hats had become the standard tropical (as if they’d needed any other kind) dress, and as the mixed crew lined the rails, Matt was pleased by how good they looked. Maybe a little bizarre-with humans and ’Cats, tall and short, the ’Cats with their multicolored furs-but good. Behind him, Chack’s Marines had lined the weather deck in full battle garb of dark blue kilts with red piping, white leather torso armor, and crossed black cartridge box straps. There were polished bronze greaves, sword hilts, and “tin hats” on their heads, and bright muskets on their shoulders with gleaming fixed bayonets. Chack paced among them, inspecting the troops for perfection, while he still wore his own battered American helmet, pattern of 1917 cutlass, and a Krag rifle suspended muzzle down by a strap over his shoulder.
Matt raised his binoculars. He hadn’t expected much harbor traffic, and he’d been right. There were several ships at anchor, but none appeared to be warships, and a couple even looked like they’d been through the recent storm. They were weathered and washed out, as if they’d been too long at sea, and their lines were a little jagged with missing rails and spliced yards and masts. Only one was a steamer and it was rather small. They were close enough now to see the Imperial flag floating high above the fortress, and when a thought struck him, Matt studied the ships once more. Hmm. All but the steamer were flying the Company banner. He had to force himself to consider the probability that regardless of how corrupt the Company may be, chances were that the officers and crews of those ships were just honest sailors working for a living. He wondered what cargo they’d brought, however.
More small boats of every description darted to and fro, seemingly suspended on air. Now that they’d entered the vast lagoon, the water was utterly clear, almost crystalline in its purity.
“Skipper,” Palmer said, “ Achilles sends that she’ll put in at the Company dock. It’s the biggest one. There’s no naval dock here. Commodore Jenks says he’ll signal Icarus to take up a blocking station to prevent those Company ships from getting underway, and asks if we’ll position ourselves to cover Icarus and Achilles with our guns. He… ah… begs that you’ll give the people here the benefit of the doubt for now, and he’s going to try to sort things out himself.”
Matt watched a series of signals race up a halyard aboard Jenks’s ship. “Very well,” he said, then lowered his voice to a grumble. “What does he think I’ll do? Just start blasting away?
” He hadn’t meant for anyone to hear him, but the Bosun chuckled.
“Prob’ly. And why not?” He motioned at one of the Company flags. “We may not be at war with the Empire yet, but the last thing we saw with one of those flags shot at us without warning. We are at war with the Company, ain’t we?”
“The Company, but maybe not all Company ships. Yet.” Matt said.
“Jumpin’ Jesus!” Kutas almost chirped.
Bradford was on the starboard bridgewing, studying the island beyond the port, but at Kutas’s words he looked back at the chief quartermaster’s mate. “What?” he inquired. Kutas’s face was practically purple.
“Them boats! The little ones… the fishing boats!” was all he managed.
Bradford redirected his glasses. “Goodness gracious!” he exclaimed. Many of the small boats Kutas had been trying to avoid running down were crewed almost exclusively by practically nude women. Some were nude, and their bronze skins and dark hair suddenly drew every eye. Even the men lining the rails had begun to lean incredulously forward, trying for a better view. To them, Walker had suddenly entered some magic, mythical paradise. It was Shangri-la without the snow.
“The joint’s swarming with broads!” somebody shouted excitedly. It was true. Even if the island hadn’t been exotically inviting enough before, the apparent abundance of dusky-skinned beauties lining the dock and the beach beyond was enough to send an electric thrill down every human spine. It was like a scene out of Gable’s Mutiny on The Bounty. Many women working seines through the light surf along the shore were naked too, as best the men could tell-and they did their very best to tell.
“Stand those men to attention this instant!” Matt told the Bosun, and Gray bolted down the stairs and through the forward hatch onto the fo’c’sle. For a moment he paused, staring at the boats, as guilty as the rest of the crew. He shook himself.
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