“Which could all be bullshit, of course,” Alan sighed, encompassing Fiedler and Stokes with a gaze. “We’ve spent a lot of time with Hoffman and I’ll vouch that he’s on the level. He didn’t like the League anyway, and then the way Gravois just abandoned him and his boat . . . But there’s always the chance the bad guys know he turned and are feeding us a bunch of crap. I don’t think so, but we have to watch where we step.”
“As to ‘why,’ well, I’d say that’s bloody obvious, now,” Stokes continued. “Our . . . homegrown enemies think the League’ll beat us. To improve their lot under the fascist conquerors”—Stokes’s lip twisted—“and ensure their sovereignty over lands they control—another reason for their colonizing blitz—they’ve promised their help. To show good faith, they’ve sent intelligence, of course, and ‘rescued’ Captain Dupont.” He frowned. “They also promise to sow as much dissent as they can, and ultimately ‘confusion at the highest levels,’ whatever that means.” He nodded at the pistol and sword belt Matt was wearing. “We’ve no idea how far they’ll go.”
“Why not just raid the consulate?” Silva demanded incredulously. “Shut ’em down. That’s prob’ly where Dupont is, anyway.”
Forester smiled at him. “Tempting as that is, I repeat that not all Sularaans are bad. Most would be appalled to learn what we know. And what if Giaan, objectionable as he is, isn’t to blame? What if Dupont isn’t in the consulate? I speak only as an interested ally, but might not precipitous action, without proof, only intensify the rift in the Union that some Sularaans have worked so hard to achieve? Might it not ‘sow’ the very ‘dissent,’ create the very ‘confusion’ they’ve promised the League?”
“He’s right, Dennis,” Tony Scott said, then smirked. “You have to think about bigger stuff, when you’re king.”
“I’ll try to remember that, ol’ buddy,” Silva growled back dryly. He looked at Matt. “So what do we do? Just keep spyin, an’ hope for the best?”
Matt rubbed his upper lip. Finally, he took a deep breath and grinned at Alan. “Not my job, thank God. That’s up to the Chairman of the United Homes.” He looked around at the rest of his “staff.” “Our job is to take the tools he gives us out to beat the Doms and League. Stay focused on that, every day, and help me figure out how. Like I said when we first got here, I’ve got a basic plan, but I will appreciate a little help putting the pieces together.” He pointed at Alan and Stokes. “It’s their job to keep the wheels from falling off while we’re gone.”
“I sure miss our old ‘torpedo day’ celebrations,” Alan said wistfully, “when we showed off our new gimmicks instead of hiding them. Things were so much simpler back then.”
CHAPTER 18
////// Near Baalkpan, Borno
Less than an hour and a half out of Baalkpan, the roar of the engines lessened and the steeper sunbeams shifted in the compartment as Fueen began a gradual turn. Matt peered out the window. Jungle-choked mountain peaks weren’t far below, forming a vast, jagged-rimmed valley sloping down and away to the shores of two fairly large, squarish lakes. There was no evidence of habitation in any direction except for a tan, dusty X, hacked out of the opaque greenery by the east shore of the southeasternmost lake. The X quickly resolved itself into overlapping airstrips as the dirigible descended, the runways oriented north-south, east-west, and bordered by large, rough-cut hangars. Smaller buildings crouched, offset to the south, and Matt identified a sturdy-looking log-built mooring mast. Tiny figures raced to assemble around it. Oddly—and surprisingly—the only aircraft he saw exposed was Walbert Fiedler’s old trimotor Ju-52, sporting a new blue paint job and wearing Navy Clan colors. The last time he’d seen it was on Madagascar, and it looked like hell. He supposed the new planes he’d been brought to see were in the hangars. “I guess we’re here,” he said.
“I’ll be damned! It’s Jumbo!” Silva declared, descending much cruder stairs than those they’d used at Mackey Field. Looming above a gaggle of Lemurians, a couple of humans, and a handful of what looked like Grik-like Khonashi, the newly promoted Lieutenant Commander Walt “Jumbo” Fisher grinned back, saluting the officers. “How’d they ever get you outa those fat, flyin’ whales—an’ why’d they plunk you down out here in the middle o’ nothin’?”
“Easy, dumb-ass,” Jumbo called back, “they gave me something more aggressive to do. I’m sure you can appreciate that.” He looked seriously at Captain Reddy and saluted. “Sorry, sir.”
Matt chuckled. “That’s okay. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, some things take precedence over propriety. As I understand it, the last time you laid eyes on our one-man wrecking crew, he was jumping out of your Clipper over Old Sofesshk.”
“Yes sir. Figured that would finally be the end of him. But like a bad penny . . .” He shrugged. “I’m also sorry you caught us almost gone,” he added, waving back at the hangars. “I’ve only got four ships left to look at, doing some last-minute testing.”
Matt looked alarmed and cast a glance at Alan. “I thought the new planes and weapons had already been thoroughly tried.”
“They have, sir. They work swell,” Jumbo assured. “We’re just . . .” He hesitated. “Pushing things a little, is all.”
“Why don’t you just show him, Commander,” Alan said, “and tell us what you’re up to while you’re at it. I’m afraid we don’t have all day. The Assembly convenes this afternoon and I have to be there. You don’t have much time yourself.” He turned to Matt. “You approved him as COFO of the Eighth Naval Air Wing, but he lollygagged around and missed USS Madraas when she sailed with the rest of his planes and pilots. He needs to join her before she leaves Maa-ni-la in less than a week. That’s a long way.”
“My new ships can make it without even stopping for gas,” Jumbo said proudly, then added lowly, “almost. We’ll refuel on Palawaan to be safe. Hell—I mean, ‘shoot’—sir, we could still catch Madraas a couple days out at sea to the east, almost as far as Yap Island. . . .”
“Big as Madraas is, she’d still be harder to find than the Filpin Lands,” Alan retorted dryly.
“An’ you don’t wanna wind up on Yap,” Silva added darkly.
“We’ll make it,” Jumbo promised. “I just want a couple more days to sort things out. C’mon, let me show you.”
The big hangar doors were open but the bright sunlight made the interior difficult to see until they stepped into the shade.
“That’s . . .” Matt began, staring at a fairly large (by the standards he’d learned to accept on this world) twin-engine aircraft with fixed landing gear. He guessed the wingspan at fifty feet, the fuselage almost forty, from nose to tail. The engines were protected by cowlings and faired-in to the leading edges of the wings. The plane obviously utilized a lot of the thin, molded plywood he’d seen in the dirigible, and if it weren’t for the flat glass panels framed in around the fully enclosed cockpit and bombardier’s station in the nose—and the fixed landing gear, of course—it would’ve looked like an utterly modern aircraft. It shared a few essential characteristics with Muriname’s torpedo bombers, but clearly wasn’t based on them. There hadn’t been time to copy them if they’d wanted to. It bore a more than passing resemblance to the wrecked Bristol Beaufort they’d found on Madagascar, but they would’ve had to be working on this before they got many of the Beaufort’s pieces to look at. Matt knew an engine, complete with supercharger and variable-pitch prop, had been sent back at once, but a lot must’ve been started from drawings.
“Our newest baby,” Jumbo proclaimed proudly. “One of ’em, anyway,” he corrected. “The new pursuit ships’re being built in the Filpin Lands. You saw the trainers at Mackey Field?”
Matt nodded.
“Good. Chairman Letts or . . . Lieutenant Muriname, I guess, can fill you in on those when you get back. This is the TBD-2.” He assumed an expression that made him look like he’d swallowed a bug. “No fancy name for ’em yet, like ‘Deva
stator’ or ‘Avenger,’ and some of the fellas started calling ’em ‘To Be Determined.’” He rolled his eyes. “I’m calling ’em ‘Twos’ for now.” He shrugged. “Muriname came up with the first torpedo bomber on this world and he’s on our side now . . . right? Anyway, all our new planes have the same double-stacked radials we’re building here. They’re stout enough to take single-stage superchargers now, and the whiz kids at the Navy Clan refinery on Tarakan Island have come up with better fuel.” He shook his head. “Don’t ask me how. That’s a bigger secret than the planes, since we know the League hasn’t done it yet.” He nodded at Fiedler and Muriname.
“Excuse me,” Doocy Meek interrupted, “but I’m still not sure what a ‘supercharger’ does.”
“Me either, exactly,” Matt confessed. “I’m no aeronautical engineer like Ben Mallory—and all the pupils he’s scattered around”—he smiled—“but I imagine it serves the same purpose as a forced-draft blower for a ship’s boiler.” He knew Meek was familiar with those. “Increase the airflow and you can burn more fuel to make a hotter fire. More steam.”
“Not a bad analogy, Captain Reddy,” Jumbo agreed. “The upshot’s an increase in power. A single-stage supercharger doesn’t give you much when you go really high, but we’re figuring the League’s crappy gas’ll keep ’em low, anyway. What Fiedler says about League light bombers”—he glanced at the TBD—“these babies should give ’em a run for their money. They’ve got welded tube steel framing the fuselage, wing spars, engine mounts, and undercarriage, all underlying our usual laminated Baalkpan bamboo. Still a lot of fabric covering that, but good plywood stiffens the high-stress areas. They don’t weigh near as much as their League counterparts, but they’re just as strong. Might even take more light damage an’ keep flyin.” He frowned. “No armor for the crew, and they won’t carry quite the load,” he stipulated, “but they’re probably more maneuverable, and damn near as fast.”
“What can they carry?” Matt asked.
Jumbo grinned. “A ton of bombs, or a full-size torpedo.”
“Full size . . .” Silva muttered appreciatively.
“That might prove very useful,” Matt mused. “They’re awful big, though. Will they fit on a carrier?”
“Barely,” Alan Letts grudged. “They were designed to launch and recover on carriers—see the tailhook?—but the wings don’t fold so they take a lot of space. Big Sal can carry thirty, packed pretty tight, with room for enough pursuit ships to cover her. The smaller Fleet Carriers can carry twenty. Just as well, since we’ve only got about eighty so far.” He chuckled. “You’ll notice the wingtips are kind of squared off?”
“Sure. I guess that’s to stow them closer together?”
“Yeah, but only accidentally.” Alan glanced fondly at some of their Lemurian tech advisors. A couple were blinking embarrassment. “All their miracles aside, seems anybody can goof. In this case, nobody thought to measure the elevator clearance on our carriers until after we started production. Had to trim a few of the first ones, then adjust the wing-framing jigs.”
There was a moment of levity, the ’Cats laughing as loud as the rest.
“All the same,” said Jumbo, “they are pretty big. If the Nussies build the airstrips we asked for and we base ’em ashore, that’ll free up the carriers to carry more planes.” Matt’s response was drowned by the thundering rumble of two TBD-2s blasting over the hangars. Everyone stepped quickly outside to watch them bank out over the lake and begin a wide turn, bright sun flashing on glass canopies and new paint.
“What’re they doing?” Matt asked.
“Pushing things, like I said,” Jumbo replied. “About half my flight leaders are still here, working on dive and torpedo bombing. All of ’em are old Nancy pilots, by the way. Best way for them to get their flyers up to speed is to get as good as they can be. And going up against the League, no matter how you slice it, they’re going to be flying into ack-ack like they’ve never seen. We’re trying to come up with the very best speed, range, and angle of attack for them to release their weapons to maximize hits and survivability.”
The two planes roared almost directly away from them toward a large silhouette target they hadn’t noticed till then. “The trouble is, there really isn’t an answer,” he added grimly. “Even assuming calm water, you still have to fly straight and level long enough not to throw a hook in the fish before you drop it. And the livelier the sea, the closer and slower you have to go to keep the fish on target.”
Shiny brass cylinders dropped away and splashed, the waterspouts almost as high as the planes that banked and sped away. Jumbo looked at Matt. “So basically, all these guys are learning is that if you want to kill a League ship with a torpedo from an airplane, you have to make yourself a perfect target for way too long.”
Matt was nodding thoughtfully. “Against moving ships, certainly,” he said. “And in the daylight,” he added cryptically. He turned back to Jumbo and stuck out his hand. “You’re doing swell. Keep it up. I won’t see you again until we catch up with Madraas and Big Sal, but I’m damn glad we came out here today. I see now why we had to,” he added with a grin. “This isn’t the kind of training you do over Baalkpan Bay!”
He and the rest shook more hands, including—to Matt’s surprise—another one of Muriname’s Japanese defectors, two from Hidoiame, and one of Muriname’s surviving Grik pilots who had to be coaxed out of the shadows. They stayed long enough to watch the two planes touch down and taxi toward the hangars trailing dense clouds of dust.
“That’s it,” Alan said, glancing at his watch. “We have to go. I hope you liked the show?”
“I did,” Matt told him. “Very much. And just to think . . .” He shook his head. “Do the new pursuit ships perform as well? What’re they calling them again?”
“P-5 Nighthawks—though some wags’re already calling them ‘Bull-Bats’ or ‘Bugeaters.’”
Silva was vigorously shaking his head as if to say “not me, this time.”
Matt chuckled. “Inevitable, I guess. I’ve only seen the trainers, but they look slick. Like ‘Fleashooters’ still, but more”—he shrugged—“everything. Longer, more streamlined, enclosed cockpits . . . They look kind of like Curtiss P-36s with fixed landing gear. My question is, how will they stack up against the League’s Macchi-Messerschmitts?”
“Ben says about how they look, maybe almost as good as a real P-36 against a Messerschmitt or Zero. Not so hot,” he conceded, then brightened. “But way better than a Fleashooter would, and we should have the numbers.” He paused. “You know Ben loaded the last two P-40Es we had here on Big Sal, to join his two beat-up survivors?”
Matt nodded. “The last four modern planes we have. I hope we don’t need ’em—and I hope my Cousin Orrin’ll forgive me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m giving him one. He’ll still be Makky-Kat’s COFO, but he may have to leave her.” He snorted. “We’ve only got four experienced pilots left fit to fly a P-40 in combat: Cecil Dixon, a ’Cat named ‘Shirley,’ Ben Mallory . . . and Orrin Reddy. The real sticker’s going to be when Ben and Orrin open their orders.” Alan looked back blankly. “Ben’s still CO of all Army and Naval Air,” Matt explained, “but I want Orrin in charge of the reconstituted Third Pursuit Squadron when they fly. He’s more experienced in P-40s—or anything else—and he’s the best chance they have of coming out alive.”
They boarded Fueen and headed back for Baalkpan. The sun crept overhead and clouds started to form while they talked animatedly about the new planes and how to use them. Finally, Alan smiled and announced, “We’re about twenty miles out of Baalkpan and we’ve squeezed you enough about your thoughts on the TBDs. Why don’t you go down to the gondola for a look?” he asked Matt.
“What about me?” Silva demanded. He thought he’d behaved himself rather well throughout the trip.
“Sure,” Matt said. “Just don’t touch
anything. Anybody else?”
“I believe I’ll join you,” Henry Stokes declared. That started a rush of ’Cats and humans rising from their seats. “Enough!” Alan laughed. “You’ve all seen it before, and three’s about as many as we ought to inflict on Commander Noor during his approach.” He grinned apologetically at Matt. “We’ll get together again, with the rest of the CINCAF’s ‘staff,’ after the Assembly meeting.”
A ’Cat sailor, with aviation machinist’s mate insignia, opened a hatch forward and Matt, Stokes, and Silva found themselves creeping along a narrow, deceptively rickety-looking catwalk, clutching rails between great rubberized canvas bladders full of hydrogen. “No smokin’, surs,” the ’Cat said idly, obviously something he repeated to everyone. Soon they reached a broader, more substantial deck surface and their conductor opened a square hatch at their feet and stood aside while Matt, Silva, and Stokes descended a ladder inside a boxlike structure. Reaching the bottom, they stepped out into Fueen’s control gondola. Half a dozen ’Cats were there, one standing at a big brass wheel behind a compass binnacle, peering through the forward windows. To his left stood another ’Cat, poised by an engine order telegraph with four handles and dials. Except for another wheel on the starboard side, with a fore and aft inclinometer behind it on the bulkhead, the arrangement looked just like Walker’s pilothouse, down to the talker and speaking tubes at the back of the gondola. They were met by a ’Cat in whites, with three stripes on his sleeves. Fueen might not be a Navy Clan airship, but she had a Navy Clan crew.
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