Spanky took an ostentatious bite. “I could work a hundred sandwiches out of
your
belly and nobody’d even notice, Lanier,” he mumbled around his mouthful.
Lanier grunted, satisfied with the response. He abused everyone on the ship—except the captain and his “lemon-limey” guests—by rote. He considered it as much a part of his job as cooking. The fellas, even the’Cats, needed an outlet to relieve their stress, and the sometimes bitter banter between them and their cook was one of the least destructive, and backed by ancient tradition. Besides, Lanier could take anything—and nearly anybody. His bloated form required real, substantial muscle to heave it around, and he’d proven many times he had plenty of guts ... beneath his expansive gut.
“Pepper,” he roared at someone behind him. “No, goddamn it, Pepper ain’t here! Bastard’s back in Baalkpan, runnin’ the Busted Screw! Prob’ly got it took over by now!” The Busted Screw, or Castaway Cook, was a saloon/café Lanier had opened near the shipyard, and Pepper had remained behind to keep it going in his absence. It was considered “necessary to the war effort” by now. “You, swabbie, what’s your name again?”
“Taarba-Kaar,” came an indignant response.
“Yeah, Tabasco! Hell, I don’t care what your name is. Get a mop and run out there an’ clean up
Mr
. Spanky’s crumbs!”
Spanky left the argument behind, shaking his head. Aft, in the cramped space around the searchlight tower and the secured Nancy floatplane, Chack and Lieutenant Blair were drilling their troops. Together.
Interesting
, he thought. He stopped and listened.
Damn, it’s
got
To be in The aft fireroom!
Number three was almost “back up”; maybe that was it,
something goofy going on in The new Tubes
. He dropped down the access trunk. Sitting there, between the hatches, he could definitely feel “it” again, and more distinctly. He opened the bottom hatch and slid down to the catwalk above the number three boiler. Closing the hatch behind him, he carefully felt the rail, a pipe, but whatever “it” was, “it” was gone again.
“God
damn
it!” he roared.
“What the matter, Spanky?” one of the ’Cat firemen asked from below.
“Oh ... never mind.” He slid the rest of the way down the ladder to the deck plates. “Where’s Tabby?” he demanded. “She ain’t in her rack like she’s supposed to be this watch.”
“She hide when you yell,” ratted one of the other ’Cats. Tabby’s division had sworn not to cover for her when it came to her health.
“I ain’t hidin’, you fink,” Tabby exclaimed in her new, gravelly voice. She stepped from behind the boiler, wiping her hands on a rag. She still looked awful—fur blotched, gray skin, no longer pink and angry but scarred now on her arms and neck. “I was checkin’ stuff,” she said, a little petulantly. Spanky motioned her forward and together they sought a little privacy, from ears, anyway.
“If you want to stay down here, you have to follow the rules,” Spanky scolded.
“Why? What’ll you do if I don’t? Get rid of me?” She held out her arms, exposing the scars. “Make me freak deck ape? I say ‘hell no,’ I stay down here.” Her drawl had begun to slip again. Never a good sign. “I already lose everything I want. I lose my Mice, I lose my Spanky—I
ugly
now! I lose my boilers too? You take that from me?”
“Tabby, I ...”
“No! You no ‘Tabby’ me! I
chief
. You say so. I feel swell! You make me lay sick, no work, I lose chief. You make some dumb-ass chief!” She shook her head. “I chief, I work. I no work, I no chief. Boiler chief all I am now, all I ever be. You take that, I die.” Tears started down Tabby’s face again, just like before in this very spot, and Spanky felt like a heel.
“You just don’t get it, do you?” he said slowly, huskily. “I’ll always be ‘your’ Spanky; you haven’t ‘lost’ me and never will. I
do
love you ... but more like a ... a
daughter
, like—than maybe like you think you wish I did.” He shook his head and sighed. “Don’t get me wrong, you’re a swell dish, a knockout. I wouldn’t give a damn about all them little scratches if I loved you a different way ... but I just
can’T
, see? Even if I could, it wouldn’t be right. Over time, I figured that out, but I also figured out I
do
love you—like my own sweet daughter that makes me proud of what she does. Can you see that?”
“You love me?” Tabby asked, sniffling.
“Sure.”
“But like a daughter, not ... not like wo-maan? Would it be different if I not ... wasn’t a ’Cat?”
Spanky shrugged. “Honest to God, I don’t know. Maybe. You do make me sneeze.... But that doesn’t matter, and we’ll never know. I love you the way I love you. I can’t change that ... and if you weren’t a’Cat, you never would’ve been down here in the first place.”
Tabby seemed to consider that for a while and her eyes dried up. “I love you the way I love you too,” she said. “I not change that either. But I be Spanky’s daughter for better than nothing.” She managed a slight grin, then it faded. “Just don’t take chief away!”
“Whatever gave you the notion I would?”
“You tried to send me away!”
“Sure I did, because I care about you! I want you well again, damn it! If you keep fooling around down here in all this steam and crap before you’re healed completely, you’re liable to get pneumonia and die! Then I’ll have to make some other dumb-ass chief.”
Tabby hugged him and he patted her gently on the back. His eyes were starting to water. Damn fur! “There, now,” he said. “Go see Selass and get her to listen to your gills. After that, light along aft and get in your rack! Me and Miami can keep things going ’til you’re fit. Nothin’ but smooth sailin’ from here.”
Weird
, Spanky thought later when he reemerged into the light and started trying to locate the “feel” again. He couldn’t find it at all. “Great,” he muttered. “It’s off and on. I’ll never figure the damn thing out.”
CHAPTER 24
Mid Eastern Sea
A
lone upon the wide, vast, empty blue,
Walker
churned onward, her abused but faithful sonar scouring her path of lurking denizens. Jenks said mountain fish, or “leviathans,” were rarely encountered in the empty spaces between the India Isles (what should be the Marshalls) and the Home Islands. Apparently, there was insufficient sustenance for the gigantic creatures there. Only occasionally, truly monstrous specimens were seen pursuing an apparently oblivious eastward course. He had no explanation for that behavior, but some Dominion officers he’d met in less tense times had hinted it might have something to do with a strange name they had for a long, shallow gulf on the northwest coast of their realm: El Mar de Huesos. “The Sea of Bones.” He’d never been there. Matt and the rest of
Walker
’s senior officers kept that disconcerting name to themselves—not that they planned to go anywhere near the place. Many ’Cats aboard had just recently come to grips with the fact that they
weren’T
about to steam off the edge of the world into the void. They didn’t need exotic, menacing placenames stirring any lingering superstition.
The sea remained relatively placid and the omnipresent heat grew less oppressive.
Walker
’s speed and the prevailing winds kept the ship wetter than her Lemurian crew preferred, because the swells were sometimes higher than her deck, but it was often actually pleasantly cool. They began to see lizard birds unlike any they’d seen before. They had long necks and tails and incredibly broad wingspans of five or six yards, perfect for cruising endless miles on the firm sea breeze with hardly any effort at all. Courtney amused the crew by chasing from one side of the ship to the other with a pair of binoculars in his hands. The creatures—he insisted they were almost true pterodactyls when Bashear called them “dragons”—seemed aware that he was intent on studying them, and constantly avoided his steady observation. Other flying creatures, wildly colorful, began to visit. There was the usual animated excitement aboard that prevailed whenever they neared a new landfall, but there was a large measure of tension as well.
The Lemurians were mindful that they were about to see where the “ancient tail-less ones” had ultimately gone, but along with the fear that they would fall off the world, they’d largely shed the reverence they once felt for those ancient visitors. The bloom was off the rose. After all, they’d met them, fought them, and knew they were capable of treachery. The question that animated most discussions was whether they would have to fight them again.
Walker
’s mostly new crew had become nearly as fatalistic, and in some ways jaded, as her original crew of Asiatic Fleet destroyermen had ever been. But in contrast, they also felt a confidence that they could deal with unknown threats, a confidence that their human predecessors had never enjoyed, and the outnumbered “old hands” tried their best to ensure that that optimism remained realistic, but Jenks, Blair’s Marines, and Respite aside, the crew was generally angry at the Empire.
In the way of most Lemurians, they wanted to get along with the strangers, but they were equally ready for a fight.
Walker
had stood toe to toe with
Amagi
, after all, and despite the mutual destruction they’d wrought on one another,
Walker
still swam, wearing
Amagi
steel. To some—who hadn’t been there—it was as simple as that. They’d come to expect misery, deprivation, and daily toil in the way all destroyermen did, but they’d missed the sense of being a tiny, wounded, hunted animal, which the humans still remembered. They believed they were steaming toward a final, straight-up confrontation with whatever power had attacked them and stolen their people, and it was difficult for some to grasp that it might not be as simple as that, and even if it was,
Walker
couldn’t smash the whole Imperial Navy by herself. They expected miracles from their special ship, and the “old hands,” Matt included, increasingly wondered and worried if that was a good thing or not.
On November 25—Thanksgiving Day—1943, USS
Walker
steamed into the New Scotland port of Scapa Flow, and the budding hubris that had begun infecting
Walker
’s crew vanished as quickly as an ice cube in the fireroom. Earl Lanier tried to lighten the mood in the spirit of the holiday by unveiling an immense roasted skuggik he’d smuggled along on the trip, deep in the ship’s laboring freezer. He’d spent the entire night before preparing the thing, complete with what notionally struck him as “traditional” trimmings. His well-meaning efforts were met with obscenities (which he duly bellowed in return) and genuine, universal horror. Skuggiks were, after all, giant earthbound buzzards, for all intents and purposes. Lanier failed to see the distinction between a cooked skuggik and a catfish, and went into a profound pout.
What had been a virtually empty sea, except for a blue-brown mound at dawn, practically filled with sails of all sizes and shapes as they neared New Scotland’s leeward coast. Most of the ships, fishermen, coastal luggers, and inter-island packets fled at the sight of the strange iron steamer racing out of the southwest. A few deep-draft “freighters” flying the Company flag ponderously turned away or hove to as the old destroyer approached the achingly beautiful mountainous isle, rising monolithically from the dazzling sea.
“Ain’t that something?” the Bosun said, gaping at the exotically familiar, but eerily ... wrong ... land. New Scotland retained a semblance of the distinctive crests of the islands now joined to form it, but it was higher, more imposing, more sharply defined. Gray’s question seemed sufficient for everyone.
“A beautiful land,” Matt said wistfully, and Jenks nodded in appreciation of more than the words.
“Thank you, sir.”
Juan Marcos, his arm still in a sling, had joined them with a carafe of coffee. He knew how the captain and the other human Americans felt. He’d been similarly overwhelmed when he first saw what his beloved Philippines looked like on this world. Of course, Matt and the others had had much longer to get used to the idea than he had at the time, and their reactions were more subdued. Still, he could sympathize. The driven-home
fact
of the thing was harder to bear than the sight of it.
Walker
was finally challenged by a swift paddle-wheel sloop with an Imperial jack, just a few miles short of the harbor mouth. Jenks appeared slightly scandalized by the tardy challenge, but it served their purposes. By then,
Walker
was flying the U.S. and Imperial flags, as well as an extensive colorful signal proclaiming her to be a friendly vessel transporting Commodore Harvey Jenks and urgent “dispatches” for the Governor-Emperor. The signal was authenticated by
Achilles
’ number and Jenks’s code group. Probably considering
Walker
to be a remarkably fast but lightly armed vessel, the sloop was content not to attempt to stop her but to escort her in—after a flurry of signals appealing for her to slow down.
“Jumpin’ Jesus,” Spanky declared when they cleared the western harbor mouth and saw the fortifications guarding it. The “west fort” was in the shape of a vast leaning wedding cake, three tiers high, bristling with forty heavy guns that Jenks assured them could reach two-thirds of the distance across to the opposite, similarly impressive works. The construction was an aggregate of coral and volcanic rock that was “spongy” and thick enough to absorb the shot of any known gun almost indefinitely without communicating any structural damage. Currently peacefully smooth, the walls of both forts glistened white.
“Ahead one-third,” Matt ordered. “Mr. Campeti will fire the salute.”
The Japanese alarm bell “salvo buzzer” rattled on the chart house bulkhead immediately before four guns barked in perfect synchronicity. Smoke streamed aft and Jenks nodded respectful appreciation. The Empire had no designated numbers for gun salutes, and though long-absent naval vessels sometimes fired them, they were required only of foreign powers. In such cases, protocol demanded that visiting ships fire all their “great guns” either in broadside or succession to signify that they were thus no longer loaded and incapable of causing harm. Since the Empire knew only one foreign power, and official (overt) Dominion visits to Scapa Flow were rare, few salutes ever sounded in the harbor. In this instance,
Walker
’s meager “broadside” would be noted and—hopefully—appreciated, but the utter perfection of the timing, possible only with her magical gyro and electronic fire control, would be noted with amazement as well. Everyone, Jenks included, considered that mixed message of respect and an apparently unprecedentedly high degree of professionalism a good one to send.
Matt watched with satisfaction as the crew of the number one gun on the fo’c’sle below commenced a rapid, well-choreographed gun-cleaning drill, much like that used on any Imperial ship. He knew the guns would look wildly bizarre enough to observers, but hoped they could keep their breech-loading nature a secret as long as possible. The crews had been instructed to cover the breeches with canvas shrouds as soon as their evolution was complete.
“It won’t fool everyone,” Jenks warned, watching. “We have experimented with breechloaders before. It is your self-contained ‘cartridges’ that make them practical. Perhaps you can keep that back for now.”
Within the harbor’s embrace, Scapa Flow grew even more impressive. Jenks had described it and drawn a few pictures for Chack, but even Matt was amazed by what the Empire had wrought on this isolated speck of land. He’d been proud of what the Allies had accomplished at Baalkpan, impressed by the exponentially greater capacity of the facilities building at Maa-ni-la, but combined, the two Allied industrial powerhouses weren’t a match for Scapa Flow in terms of infrastructure and scope. Here was a true well-established industrial city in every sense. White buildings, both stone and wood, with shakelike shingles predominated. There was color as well, if not the riot of it that one usually saw in Lemurian ports. Cranes and warehouses stood on every hand, and jetties extended outward from long piers, accommodating the forests of masts. A large shipyard lay directly ahead on the western end of the harbor and sleek hulls with
Achilles
’ lines stood on blocks surrounded by scaffolding. Great mounds of stacked timbers dried under sheds. Jenks had told him the New Scotland and New Ireland “oaks” made excellent ships, but they imported most of their timber, like everything else, from their continental colonies. Smoke rose everywhere, carried off to the west, from smokestacks, foundries, apparent machine shops, and great steam-jetting engines situated here and there that powered the various enterprises.
And there were people.
Human
people in an abundance Matt hadn’t seen since they fled Surabaya on that other world in another war. He glassed the shore. Women here didn’t run around mostly nude, he noticed with some relief, but they were doing the lion’s share of the labor. Dark-haired, dusky-skinned women in practical working attire crawled around the building ships, swinging mallets and plying saws. He refocused on a party of women led by a gray-haired matron, caulking the seams of a new hull with every bit the same professionalism he’d seen Jenks’s crew employ. Other women casually drove wagons and carts pulled by honest-to-God horses! Horses, donkeys, and cattle had all been aboard the original ships, according to Jenks, but the horses had never done well until they traded for more from the Dominion. Matt was glad to see the familiar creatures. He wished there’d been dogs, but Jenks said no. There were cats, in their teeming throngs, as well as flocks of parrots that swarmed everywhere like pigeons. Matt was curious how’Cats would take to meeting “cats.”
He shook his head. On second thought, the Fil-pin shipyards were probably more expansive, and certainly had more space to grow. They could also handle larger ships with their bigger, purpose-built, Homeconstructing cranes. Baalkpan could too. With some smugness, he saw no evidence of a dry dock either. But in terms of a dedicated populace with the proper, well-honed skills, and long-established support industries and facilities—complete with offices and barracks—Scapa Flow rivaled Pearl Harbor. And if the city beyond the waterfront didn’t match Honolulu, it was the biggest he’d seen on this world from a perspective of the numbers of dwellings. He doubted as many people lived here as lived in Maa-ni-la, but there, many families—often whole “clans” like their seagoing cousins—occupied a single large dwelling. There were a lot more houses here.
“I think our escort wants us to dock over there, Skipper,” Kutas said, nodding at a long, isolated dock under the guns of an inner harbor fort.
“Yes,” Jenks confirmed, studying signals through his telescope. “The escort and the fort are both signaling the ‘approach of strangers.’ ” We will be met by an armed party at the dock,” he warned.
“Well, until we know the deal here, we’ll have to respond in kind,” Matt said. “Sound general quarters,” he ordered. “Gun crews will stand away from their weapons, but small arms will be issued and Chack will prepare to repel boarders.” He looked at the Bosun. “Side party to the gangway, prepared to receive a reasonable delegation. If they don’t want to be ‘reasonable,’ stand ready to help Chack.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper,’ Gray said, and thundered down the metal stairs aft.
“Captain Reddy!” Jenks protested. “After all, you must not start a fight here!”
“I don’t intend to, but I won’t let them just run loose all over my ship as soon as we tie up.”
“They won’t do that.”
“By your own admission, we don’t know
what
they’ll do. I’m playing it safe until we do. Mister Steele? You have the conn. Lay her alongside the dock—gently, if you please. I’m going to go change clothes.”
Ultimately, a hostile-faced Marine lieutenant did seem ready to try to sweep aboard with a substantial “escort,” but Jenks, now standing in his best Imperial Navy uniform beside Matt at the gangway, ordered the lieutenant to leave all but two men behind.