Several other officers were introduced, including another distant cousin of Chack named Lieutenant Eno-Sab-Raan. He was the torpedo officer and had also worked with Bernie. Gaat-Rin was the final ensign to be named before Chief Bosun’s Mate Pepper was introduced. Alan shook his head and smiled at the black-and-white ’Cat. “We’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel now,” he said.
“Yah,” Pepper agreed. “An’ me just a cook on Waa-kur before.” He’d been a cook ever since, in fact, managing a thriving café and bar called the Castaway Cook in partnership with the absent Earl Lanier. The establishment was very popular with sailors and Marines, and better known by the unofficial name of the Busted Screw.
Stokes chuckled. “You’ve been runnin’ the Screw like a bosun, by all accounts. You’ll have no worries.”
“I ain’t worried about bossin’ sailors around. Like you said, I do that all the time. I’m just worried how the old Screw will get along—an’ my other business enterprises.” He blinked suspicion. “Some o’ my cousins are not the most honest ’Caats.”
Everyone laughed at that, even Miyata, but then his expression sobered. “Perhaps, sir, now that the introductions are complete, it is time for me to make my report?”
Alan nodded. “Please.”
Miyata sighed. “All was well—much better than expected, in fact—until the full power astern trial.”
“If I may, Cap-i-taan?” Lieutenant Sainaa asked.
Miyata frowned. “It was not your fault, but it was my responsibility.”
Alan cleared his throat. “One thing you still need to get past, Toryu,” he said gently. “We don’t fling blame around in this navy when there isn’t anyone to blame. I assume Lieutenant Sainaa observed the casualty firsthand? Let her have her say.”
Miyata reluctantly nodded, and Sainaa spread her brown-furred hands on the table. “Thaank you, Mr. Chaar-man. But I do have blame. Some of the problem was because my snipes is so inexperienced. I should’a trained ’em better.”
“You’ve had very little time,” Miyata interrupted, “and this crew is very green . . .”
“Please, just tell us what happened,” Alan pressed.
“As he said”—Sainaa glanced at Miyata—“the crew is very green, but they been trainin’ haard an’ is staartin’ to get the haang of things. Still, on top o’ all the usual little stuff that craaps out in trials”—she’d participated in quite a few, so she knew what she was talking about—“some things go unchecked.” She shrugged. “An’ with a whole new kinda ship, there’s things maybe we don’t know to check—or expect. The worst was when the lube-oil pump for the staar-board shaaft croaked an’ quit.” She blinked anger at herself. “I prob’ly should’a heard that,” she confessed, and with her acute Lemurian hearing, Alan didn’t doubt her. “But Gray’s noisy down below, an’ I ain’t learned all her sounds yet myself. Caan’t blame green younglings—though it should’a been looked over.”
“What happened?” Ambassador Doocy Meek enquired, speaking for the first time beyond his greetings. He’d been a ship’s engineer himself long ago, in another war on another world, and was keenly interested. Sainaa looked at him. “The bearing croaked too. Seized up the shaaft.”
“We believe we secured the engine quickly enough to prevent serious damage,” Miyata interjected. “But the bearing, at least, must be replaced. And the pump repaired, of course.”
Alan leaned back. “That doesn’t sound too bad. What, maybe a week or two in the yard? But why didn’t you just bring her in on two engines?”
Gray’s officers exchanged looks, and Miyata sighed. “It’s not quite that simple, and as I said, it’s my responsibility.” He hesitated. “Considering the critical shortage of ships at Captain Reddy’s disposal and how important it is to take this one to him as quickly as we can, with the shaft secured and the ship in no danger, I . . . chose to proceed with further trials. It’s possible Gray will lose an engine in combat, and I saw an opportunity to learn how she handles in such a circumstance.” He brightened. “The answer is, quite well, actually. On her remaining two shafts she can maintain eighteen knots with ease, and with the center engine directing its thrust at the rudder, she turns almost as sharply as she otherwise would.”
“Then what happened?” Alan pressed, and Miyata’s face fell. “Perhaps in my exuberance, fueled by this discovery, I ordered emergency full astern.” An uncomfortable silence descended on the wardroom, and Gray’s officers fidgeted in their seats.
“Oh, for God’s sake, spit it out!” Stokes exploded. “We’re wastin’ time!” Miyata looked at him and nodded miserably. “She answered very well at first, slowing rapidly. Then she began to back.” He blinked. “Perhaps it was the uneven thrust, or the rudder geometry itself is problematic, but . . . it slammed hard over, damaging the steering gear and wrenching the rudder shaft out of alignment. That’s why we had to request a tow.”
“Blimey,” Meek murmured.
“What’s the breakage?” Alan asked with a sigh.
“Where’s Commander Rulk?” Stokes demanded. Rulk was the senior inspector for the Baalkpan Navy Yard and had supervised the trials.
Sainaa waved toward the stern. “Aaft. Him an’ his team is still surveyin’ the daamage, but he thinks it’ll take a month in the dry dock.”
“A month!” Alan declared.
“They may haavta rebuild the whole stern, strengthen the shaaft, an’ reinforce the framing. He didn’t know.”
Stokes fulminated, and even Alan simmered. He wasn’t mad at Miyata; what he’d done was reasonable. God knows how many times Walker has been down to one engine, he thought. But still . . . He’d hoped to get Gray squared away and deployed immediately.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” he said flatly. “Everybody knows Captain Reddy finally kicked Kurokawa’s ass, and the Repubs”—he nodded at Doocy Meek—“have won a battle against the Grik in southern Africa and pushed all the way north to the Ungee River, near some Grik burg called Soala. That’s only a couple hundred miles southwest of Sofesshk itself. Crossing the river’s gonna be a bitch, though, because the Grik have shoved a lot of reinforcements down to stop it—which is what we wanted, I guess: to weaken Esshk’s Final Swarm. But the Repubs are in for a bloody slog. All the same, people here are pretty pumped about how things are going, and that’s good.” He paused and took a sip of tea.
“In the East, in the fight against the Doms”—he glanced at Forester this time—“USS Donaghey met up with Fred Reynolds and Kari-Faask. And Greg Garrett’s finally getting to know people in the New United States.” He shook his head. “That’s still so weird. Americans—from 1847!—that’ve made their own country in south-central North America. Anyway, they’re gearing up to jump on the Doms from the East while CINCEAST Harvey Jenks gets ready to hit ’em from the west at that ‘Pass of Fire’ of theirs.” He looked around. “What isn’t as widely known is that General Shinya’s Second Fleet Expeditionary Force kind of got its ass handed to it, chasing Don Hernan’s Army of God. Seems Don Hernan isn’t in charge anymore, and the Doms finally have a general who can pour piss out of a boot. Nobody knows where Don Hernan is—he probably got away—but Shinya’s pushing hard to catch up with his army and mount a joint operation against the Pass of Fire with High Admiral Jenks. We’ll see how that goes.”
Alan took a deep breath. “Worse, and what nobody knows, is that Greg Garrett confirmed that the Doms and the goddamn League have been talking. We don’t know what that’ll lead to, but it can’t be good.”
The League of Tripoli was a fascist power composed of a warped alliance between France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and possibly a few others that had arrived in the Mediterranean from a very different 1939 than the one Alan Letts, Tony Scott, and Toru Miyata remembered. And they’d come with a modern fleet originally intended to wrest Egypt from the British Empire and take the Suez Canal. There’d been considerable friction, but
for reasons of its own the League seemed more intent on subverting its war effort against the Grik and Doms than actually joining the fight. And with the information Matt Reddy had obtained from one of their disaffected German pilots and a few Leaguer prisoners taken when they captured Zanzibar—and the League battleship Savoie, which had been given to Kurokawa—a very few now knew roughly what the League had in terms of ships, planes, and men. If they combined with the Doms, it could be catastrophic. Alan didn’t elaborate on that. Everyone understood the implications.
He took another sip of tea and set the mug on the wardroom table. “Finally,” he said, “and worst of all.” He glanced again at Meek. “Repubs on the Ungee or not, the Grik are about to launch their whole damn Swarm at Madagascar. We’ve confirmed that by aerial reconnaissance, and we’re talking hundreds of thousands, armed with muskets and cannon instead of crappy crossbows, swords, and firebomb throwers. And they’re going in galleys, thousands of ’em, which they can scatter all over the Go Away Strait if they get out of the Zambezi River.”
There was shock in the compartment, and Miyata exclaimed, “But Captain Reddy and what remains of First Fleet are stuck at Zanzibar and Mahe Island, making repairs!”
“Too bloody right,” Stokes replied sourly. “Captain Reddy can’t do a bloody damn thing about it. All we have in the way is Task Force Bottle Cap.” Everyone knew all it consisted of was the heavy Home-turned-carrier USNRS Arracca and her small battlegroup, which included USS Santa Catalina. She was just an old freighter with a few guns and a little armor slapped on. She’d done good work and could handle herself against Grik battlewagons by keeping her distance and relying on longer-range weapons. But she was fat and slow, and no matter how they used her, she wasn’t really a warship. Unfortunately, she was the only surface combatant of any consequence on the scene. Against the force they were expecting, she stood no chance.
Alan confirmed their worst fears. “Russ Chappelle is taking Santy Cat up the Zambezi to block the Swarm until we can get some help down there. It’s suicide,” he stated with utter certainty, “but she’s all there is.” He looked squarely at Miyata. “So I want Commander Rulk in my office as soon as he has hard figures, or inside of two hours even if he doesn’t, and you’ll get ready to shift this tub over to the dry dock right now. No liberty for anyone until she’s out of the water. Then, however long Rulk figures it’ll take to fix Gray up, you’re personally going to make sure it takes half that time. Is that understood?”
Toryu Miyata bowed over the table, expression intense. “Yes, Mr. Chairman, it is.”
CHAPTER 2
////// USS Santa Catalina
Go Away Strait
(Mozambique Channel)
November 30, 1944
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Lieutenant (jg) Dean Laney practically roared, shoving his way past the Lemurian stationed at the lee helm on (CAP-1) USS Santa Catalina’s bridge. The ’Cat, his tail arching slightly beneath his kilt and his eyes blinking indignation, almost shoved back. Almost. Huffing from his climb up the stairs outside, Laney stopped in front of Commander Russ Chappelle’s captain’s chair and glared at the younger man with light brown hair. Younger he might’ve been, but similar to Laney’s longtime nemesis, Dennis Silva, Russ was more than a physical match for the obese engineer who’d gone considerably to seed. And his moral, not to mention official, authority towered over Laney’s.
Once a mere torpedoman 1st aboard USS Mahan (DD-102), Russ Chappelle had risen to become captain of the Santa Catalina, a former naval auxiliary general cargo hauler of 8,000 tons that they’d discovered half-sunk in a Tjilatjap (Chill-Chaap) swamp. Its cargo had been crated P-40Es, which they’d salvaged and used to good effect. Sadly, particularly after recent battles, nearly all of those were gone. But refloated and reconstructed as a protected cruiser and seaplane tender, while retaining her cargo capacity, Santy Cat carried as much armor as her old bones would support and was armed with a variety of weapons. Some had been salvaged from the Japanese battlecruiser Amagi, including a breeched twenty-foot section of one of her main guns. This 10″ rifle was forward, on a robust pivot mount, with spring-assisted hydro-pneumatic shocks to tame the recoil. It was a bear to load, having to be returned to a fore-and-aft orientation and depressed between shots, but with an imaginative fire-control arrangement, it could throw an improved 500-pound projectile with surprising accuracy up to ten thousand yards.
Six of Amagi’s 5.5″ secondaries had been placed in an armored casemate, or castle, at the base of Santy Cat’s amidships superstructure. And two 4.7″ DP mounts had been moved to flank the main gun, somewhat behind and below on the well deck, when five new DP 4″-50s were recently installed—four on the upper central superstructure and one on the fantail. In addition, pipe mounts had been welded to almost half the stanchions and would accept the twenty new copies of the .30-caliber Browning M1919 water-cooled machine guns the ship was issued, in light of the new—hopefully now controlled—air threat that had been posed by Kurokawa’s aircraft on Zanzibar. Everybody prayed that with the fall of that place, they’d seen the last of those, but there were plenty of other threats in the world and lots of things those machine guns could defend against, in the sky and on the surface. Russ certainly hadn’t clambered to give them back. The only new thing Santy Cat hadn’t received that Russ really wanted was one of the quad-tube torpedo mounts with the improved MK-6 torpedoes. Her role as a seaplane tender required her to keep a little open deck space, however, and there just hadn’t been anywhere to put one. In any event, bizarre as she was, Chappelle commanded what was, at least until USS Fitzhugh Gray joined the fleet, the most powerful warship in the Union and Grand Alliance—and he still had to deal with the likes of Dean Laney.
“What was that again, Lieutenant?” Russ asked softly, but his tone was full of menace.
Laney, without thinking, blinked something akin to “excuse me” in the Lemurian way. ’Cat faces weren’t quite as expressive as human faces, and they conveyed a lot of meaning through blinking, as well as ear and tail positions. Humans couldn’t do the ears or tails, but many had incorporated some blinking over time. Even Laney. When he spoke, however, he didn’t sound very contrite. “I asked . . . sir, just what the hell you’re about to do with my engine.” He glanced at the compass binnacle and saw their course, 270—due west—and nodded to himself with a grimace. He’d already been ordered to increase speed to 10 knots, practically flank speed for the old ship. “Scuttlebutt is, the flyboys off Arracca saw the Grik gatherin’ up to come gallopin’ out. That’s a helluva thing, sure, what with the rest of First Fleet stuck at Zanzibar or limpin’ back to Mahe Island. We’re on our own.” He flapped his arms in genuine frustration. “We kinda been on our own before, an’ whupped our way out of the jam. Even the ol’ Santy Cat’s as fast or faster than those Grik cruisers an’ BBs, or whatever they might send out. We got better guns, too. We can stay at arm’s length an’ hammer ’em till they quit, or we get some goddamn help down here. But that’s not what you got us doin,” he accused. “Is it . . . sir?”
“No,” Russ agreed. He looked at the bridge talker, a young female Lemurian who reminded him of Minnie aboard USS Walker. Even her tiny voice was similar. “Call the XO to the bridge, if you please,” he ordered. “Tell him to ask Major Gutfeld for a pair of Marines on the way,” he added, glaring significantly at Laney. Laney gulped, possibly realizing he may’ve gone a step too far this time. Good, Russ thought. Laney rules the roost in his engineering spaces, the one and only place he hasn’t been kicked out of. The problem is, he stays there so much that he’s begun to think the rest of the ship is just a shell around his engine, not the warship his engine pushes around. Well, it’s time to straighten him out once and for all—even if it’s for the last time, he considered bleakly, or finally just relieve his stupid ass.
“Captain . . .” Laney began.
“Shut up, you. I’ve had enough. You throw your
weight around”—he glanced significantly at Laney’s waist—“in your division pretty well. The only thing you’ve ever excelled at. And you’ve got all your poor snipes buffaloed because they put up with it. Hell, they must like it, God knows why, or they would’ve tossed you in the wake long ago. But whatever you do, whatever they think of you, you somehow keep the screw turning better than I ever thought you would. That’s the only reason I haven’t had you up on charges for your shit before. But you won’t come up here and talk to me like that!”
“Cap—”
“No! Shut the hell up. You will not say another word. I’m talking to you now, see? And you’re going to listen.” Russ rubbed his face and stood. “You’re an asshole, Laney. Probably born that way and can’t even help it. I don’t know how many postings you got tossed from before you came to me, but like I said, you do your job and I’ve let you slide. But now we’re in a crack and there’ll be no more sliding for anybody. It’s time for everyone to get together and pull more than their weight.” He shrugged and stepped to the aft bulkhead beside the talker, and turned the knob on the intercom to Shipwide.
“Now hear this,” he said calmly. “You all know about a week ago, Captain Reddy and First Fleet finally kicked Kurokawa’s sorry ass to death.” Even on the bridge, they heard a similar roar of approval throughout the ship. Russ waited for it to subside. “You also know First Fleet took a beating in the process and’ll take some time to make and mend.” He looked straight at Laney. “What some of you have heard, that the Grik are gathering around Sofesshk to come charging down the Zambezi in full force—right in our face—is also true,” he added. There was silence in the ship now except for the throb of the engine, other machinery noises, and the salty wind gusting around the open, armored hatches on either side of the pilothouse.
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