“Sandra,” he said. “Miss Diania. Welcome to the bridge. Sandra, you’ll retain all the privileges you enjoyed . . . previously,” he assured her, “and are always welcome on the bridge except when you’re at your battle station. Miss Diania, you may accompany her. You”—he sighed—“may eventually even find yourself on the bridge-watch bill. In the meantime, you’re welcome to look around, but please don’t touch anything or distract anyone.” Matt knew the last warning would be tough for her to avoid. She was a beauty, and Paddy couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off her.
“What have you got there, Captain?” Sandra asked, gesturing at the clipboard in his hand.
“Well, the watch bill, for one thing.” He flipped the page. “This is another message from Baalkpan, via Maa-ni-la.” He scanned down it. “There’s some good news on top of the bad. Adar’s Torpedo Day bash went off pretty well. Ben didn’t crash any of his new pursuit planes into anything, and most of the small arms seemed to work okay. The torpedoes still need work, but they did work. Sort of.” He grinned. “On that note, Mahan still has two salvageable torpedo mounts, and she may even get four eventually. Lots of work still to do on her.” He raised his eyebrows and blinked. “I still can’t believe they raised the old girl, and we might get her back. She won’t look the same, they say, but that doesn’t matter as long as she’s back in the war!” He chuckled. “Speaking of not looking the same, Irvin’s finally settled on what to do with S-Nineteen. He means to keep her gun and bow tubes but gut everything else that makes her a sub. The conversion will take a while, but the increase in buoyancy and freeboard, as well as the extreme decrease in weight, should make her a lot quicker on her feet. No telling how she’ll handle—she’s liable to roll her guts out—but she ought to be at least as good a torpedo boat as anything we had in the Great War, with a lot longer legs.”
“It sounds like Mahan and S-Nineteen are counting an awful lot on Bernie’s torpedoes,” Sandra observed.
“Yeah, but Bernie’ll come through,” Matt agreed with certainty. Then he frowned. “I’m still not sure what to think of this Herring guy. I agreed with Alan and Adar that it was high time we had some snoops, and we need somebody who knows how to gather and compile intelligence on our enemies.” He shrugged. “Lord knows we haven’t done a good job at that. We probably already have a lot more information than we know what to do with, or how to apply. We need somebody to analyze it all.” He grunted. “He’s even already come up with some pretty good ideas. Sending Greg Garrett off exploring in Donaghey is brilliant, and I should have thought of that. Apparently even the Grik are starting to go to steam—I don’t like the sound of those big ships of theirs!—and Donaghey’s days in a battle line are probably done. On the other hand, even though Greg’s the perfect choice to lead the expedition, he’s too damn good to lose! That kid ought to be an admiral!”
“I know you’re close to Greg,” Sandra began.
“I’m close to all my people,” Matt said sternly.
“Of course. But you are a little closer to him.”
Matt sighed. “Maybe so. He reminds me a little of myself at his age, I guess—not that I’d accomplished nearly as much as he has by then! I just . . . It’s an awful big world out there, and we still don’t know what might be over the very next hill!”
Sandra looked at him. “Tell me the truth. If you were in his position and got an assignment like his, how would you feel?”
“Ha! Thrilled, I guess.”
“There you are. Now, what else about this Commander Herring bothers you?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t met him, and that’s part of it, I guess. Also, if you read Alan between the lines, I get the feeling he thinks Herring already has too much influence with Adar. Even that wouldn’t bother me too much if Saan-Kakja hadn’t tacked on that she doesn’t trust the ‘arrogant and rude’ Mr. Herring when they retransmitted from Maa-ni-la.”
Sandra chuckled. “For us and Adar to receive! I do dearly love Saan-Kakja, though you may have created a monster when you helped break her out of her shell!”
“She and Princess Rebecca are two of a kind, only one doesn’t have a tail!” Matt agreed. “About the same age, fearless, honest, and very quick to anger . . .” He paused. “God, I hope Governor-Emperor McDonald and his wife, Ruth, are all right! I think Courtney, Sean, and our forces in the New Britain Isles will help keep things together if . . . they’re not. But if Princess Rebecca winds up on top, a lot of heads will roll, and she may not be too particular whose they are!”
“Courtney won’t let her become a monster,” Sandra said with conviction. “And don’t forget: something else Saan-Kakja and Princess Rebecca have in common is their devotion to you.”
Matt shifted uncomfortably. “Well, the point is,” he said, skipping Sandra’s observation, “that Saan-Kakja thinks Herring’s a jerk. Alan doesn’t come right out and say it, but he does too.” He rubbed his nose, broken in the Battle of Baalkpan. “You know, we’ve always gotten along with the ’Cats, right from the start. Sure, we had differences—still do—but nothing we weren’t both willing to try to overcome. We’re more like them now, and they’re more like us—but we had a lot in common to start with . . . and it makes me wonder.”
“What?”
“Well, we both saw it before the war back home. There were a lot of different navies within the United States Navy that didn’t even think the same way. The rivalry, the different cultures, of the deck apes and snipes are just the tiniest example. Destroyermen might almost be a different species from submariners, and the battleship boys are something else.” He rolled his eyes. “Then you’ve got the tenders and oilers! It . . . was like different tribes! To make it even more confusing, crews attached to the different fleets for a while were different too. I had to make some big adjustments when I came from the Pacific Fleet to the Asiatic Fleet, and it took me a while. The Pacific Fleet was always more spit and polish, with newer ships and better gear.” He shrugged. “Maybe it was even more professional in some ways, but the guys in the Asiatic Fleet did what they could with what they had, and the Philippines felt more like home than home did, to some. They were more laid-back, more tolerant, I guess, and more used to people who didn’t look and act like ‘us.’ I’ve always believed that’s why we hit it off so well with the ’Cats, and I’m not so sure a ship from the Pacific Fleet, even another destroyer, would’ve had it so easy”—he snorted—“in that respect, at least.”
“I think I understand where you’re headed,” Sandra said thoughtfully. “Herring’s not Asiatic Fleet. He’s not even a fleet officer. On top of that, he’s very recently suffered terrible mistreatment from the Japanese—people who are ‘different.’ Do you think that’s why he rubbed Saan-Kakja the wrong way? Just his attitude?”
“I hope so. Like Letts said, Adar seems to trust him, and Adar’s a good judge of character, I think. . . .”
“But?”
“But,” Matt agreed, “he’s also—understandably—obsessed with exterminating the Grik, and with things heating up in the west, he might lose some of his objectivity.” Matt shook his head as if to clear it. “I trust Adar’s judgment,” he repeated, “but I also trust Saan-Kakja’s instincts. She’s been stampeded before and knows what it feels like.” He smiled at his wife. “I guess we’ll see when we get there.”
“Cap-i-taan,” Minnie said behind them. “Lookout says ‘pleezy-sores bearing seero tree seero, relaa-tive! Two t’ousand yaards! Many pleezy-sores!’”
Matt left his chair and stepped out on the starboard bridgewing, raising his binoculars. “Wow,” he muttered. “What a pack!” It looked like hundreds of the things were swimming along, blowing on the calm surface of the sea. Their backs rising and falling like whales. He handed the binoculars to Sandra. “I’ve never seen so many before.”
“What are they doing?” Sandra asked, adjusting the glasses. Then she saw. “Why, they’re like dolphins!” she exclaimed. “Maybe they’re not leaping at our bow, but they do see
m to be pacing us from a distance!”
“Better they stay at a distance! They’re a lot bigger than dolphins,” Paddy said.
“What’re daw-fins, if ye please?” Diania asked hesitantly.
“Cap-i-taan,” Minnie said. “Lieutenant Campeti requests permission to test the new ordnance again, an’ shoot at them devils.”
Matt shook his head. “Permission denied. I thought he was happy with what he learned last night against that mountain fish?” The new shells worked much better than they’d expected, almost perfectly tuned to the gun director—as a distant mountain fish discovered to its mortal confusion under the light of a bright, clear moon. The trajectories were good and consistent and the tracers worked—even if the color was a little off. The explosive force was better as well, even though the bursting charge was the same. They were simply better projectiles in all respects than anything they’d had since they ran out of those they’d brought to this world.
“No,” Matt confirmed. “If those things keep their distance, we’ll leave ’em alone.” He took a deep breath. “No sense wasting ammunition we might need very badly soon.”
* * *
Spanky climbed the skeletal iron stairs to the upper-level catwalk in the aft fireroom. Heat shimmered off the top of the massive, roaring number three boiler. It was absolute hell here in the highest reaches of the fireroom where, contrary to physics, the heat seemed almost to compress itself into a physical, oppressive presence. He wore a bandanna over his mouth and nose to protect him from the ’Cat fuzz that hung in the space like a fog, but it was already soaked with sweat and plastered to his face. His eyes watered, and seemed to float in little pools of salty, caustic acid.
“There you are!” he hollered over the thundering boiler and the blower that forced air into the contained inferno. Tabby shot a grinning, sopping glance at him before returning her attention to a pair of ’Cats wielding a massive wrench.
“Hi, Spaanky,” she shouted over her shoulder, intent on the work she was supervising.
“Damn, it’s hot!” Spanky said, joining her.
“You get soft running around in cool air topside,” she accused.
“Yeah, maybe. It was nice being off the equator for a while.”
“We head north soon, right?”
“We already have. We’re in the Fil-pin Sea, but we had to stay south of the Carolines until we cleared ’em. Too many uncharted knobs in there to run into in the dark. It should cool off tonight, and we’ll be off Samaar tomorrow.”
“Gettin’ close. We kill them damn Jaaps, we go in dry dock?”
“That’s the plan.”
Tabby wiped the foamy sweat matting the fur above her eyes and slung it at the boiler. “Thank the Maker. I don’t know how long we keep steaming on this bitch.”
“Another leak?”
“Not real leak,” she assured him. “Just hot foggy round this coupling.” She shook her head. “Mr. Letts’s gasket stuff is swell, but it seems to be going all at once. Like it gets saturated an’ steam just kinda smokes out, see? We ain’t had no failures, but we gotta tighten couplings all the time.”
“I bet it’s the heat,” Spanky said, and Tabby nodded.
“Me too. Meantime, I gotta watch these dopes, make sure they don’t spin a bolt or nut off the flange. I think we get a big failure then.”
“Yeah. Hey, be careful, wilya?”
Tabby sent him another damp, tired smile. “Don’t worry. We keep number three goin’—at least till after the fight!”
“Yeah. But you be careful! You and the rest of your snipes. If you get cooked down here, who am I gonna replace you with?” He chuckled. “I’ll have to come back down here myself!”
“No worry, Mr. Spaanky! I keep you safe in cool air!”
Spanky left them with it, tapping gauges as he went. He stood with a water tender for a moment, eyeing the water level in the feedwater line. All the pumps, feedwater, fuel, everything, were starting to gasp, and no wonder. The ship had steamed halfway around the damn world, fought several battles, and then steamed back. He didn’t want to think about how many hours of continuous steaming each boiler had racked up. He sighed and cycled through the air lock into the forward engine room.
“Howdy, fellas,” he said to the throttlemen, even though half were female and a couple of those were human women. He tried not to notice the way their sweaty T-shirts clung to them.
“We’re goin’ in the yard when we get to the Philippines, right?” asked Johnny Parks. The kid had been a fireman’s apprentice on Mahan, and now he was a machinist’s mate (engine). He seemed like a good kid, but he was just now catching up with some of the ’Cats.
“Right.”
“Good. The lube oil in the reduction gears is getting mighty thin.”
“I know, and we can’t change it out underway. Should’ve done it at Respite.”
“Yes, sir . . . but we changed it at Scapa Flow twice, coming and going, and, well, we’re out.”
Spanky scratched his chin under his whiskers. “Yeah. Right. I saw that in the division report.” He shook his head. “The old girl’s just about as beat up as she was when Amagi sank her. I’m starting to lose track of it all—and now I’ve got more than just engineering to worry about.” He forced a grin and slapped Johnny on the shoulder. “It’ll be okay. Plenty of lube oil waiting for us at Manila!”
He moved aft, past the giant turbine that dominated the space and paused by the reduction gear housing. He frowned. He’d never wanted to be exec. As engineering officer he’d had enough problems and responsibilities to deal with within his complicated but limited domain. Now he had to worry about the whole ship—and he still didn’t have half the worries the Skipper had. He didn’t regret keeping Captain Reddy in the dark about recent developments. What could he have done? But he finally understood why he’d been so mad. There was nothing he could do about the lube-oil shortage or the failing gaskets in the firerooms, but he needed to know about them. He suddenly remembered a heated lecture he’d given Tabby once, when she’d torn down a boiler without telling him. He’d told her she’d been wrong not to keep him fully informed because the Captain was basing his plans on what he thought his ship could do. Maybe this was different, and he honestly couldn’t think of anything the Skipper could have done if he’d known immediately what was happening , but he and Gray had been wrong not to tell him.
“The ship’s a wreck,” he admitted aloud to himself, “and the Skipper damn sure needs to know that before we tangle with that Jap tin can!”
CHAPTER 19
////// March 17, 1944
Scapa Flow, New Scotland
Empire of the New Britain Isles
Mrs. Carr quietly brought a pot of tea into the Imperial Library in Government House and set it near the sunken-eyed girl sitting on the leather-padded chair behind the broad, cluttered desk. It was her father’s desk, and the disheveled stacks of papers, books, and odd contraptions sprawled across it, just as he’d left them, seemed to represent him in the room. Princess Rebecca Anne McDonald stirred herself to nod slightly in thanks. With a dreadful sigh and what might have been a disapproving glare at Courtney Bradford, Mrs. Carr left the room. Courtney sat across the desk, leaning forward, yearning to enfold the girl in a comforting, supportive embrace, but the young princess had forbidden it and Courtney knew why. Possibly endless tears lurked behind those tortured eyes, and they couldn’t be released, not yet, lest they quench the white-hot steel that burned in the girl’s soul. He’d said everything he could possibly say, and she knew of the protective support, even love, he felt for her, but things—momentous things—had to be attended to, and she could not let anything interfere with that just yet. Even grief.
Mechanically, Rebecca poured a cup of tea for Courtney and another for herself; then they continued to wait. The odd, colorful, furry reptile named Petey remained drooped across the back of Rebecca’s neck like a fat little stole. He hadn’t even stirred except to cut an eye in Mrs. Carr’s direc
tion when she came and went. Perhaps he sensed something of his master’s mood, because he definitely knew Mrs. Carr was the primary source of food in the house, and normally, he would have begun yapping “Eat! Eat!” at the first sight of her.
There came a soft knock at the door and the Imperial Factor, Sean Bates, stepped into the room, accompanied by the blond-furred Lemurian Lieutenant Ruik-Sor-Raa. Bates’s expression was little different from Rebecca’s, and Ruik was blinking rapidly in condolence. Beyond the door, before it closed, a glimpse of the hallway showed it well supplied with Imperial and Lemurian Marines.
“Yer highness,” Sean began softly, his own eyes red. News had finally come. “I wanted ta say, I must say, yer father an’ mother . . . they were . . .”
“You will address me as Your Majesty, from this moment on, so there will be no misunderstanding, no possibility that any might doubt my legitimacy or intent!” Rebecca said sharply.
“Of course, Your Majesty . . . Of course,” Sean replied, forcing a formal tone. “The coronation’ll make it official . . . after the funeral, of course, but there’s certainly precedent for a direct transition of Imperial power through inheritance. . . .” He nodded harshly. “An’ I advise ye ta seize that power immediately, or everything we—and your parents—so recently accomplished might still be undone. The primacy o’ the Governor-Emperor could still be subverted, particularly since . . .” Bates stopped and lowered his eyes.
Iron Gray Sea: Destroyermen Page 29