“Still, a most successful, and . . . gratifying test, no doubt?” Adar asked.
“Sure, for the most part,” Ben agreed. “Showed us what we need to fix, anyway. But mostly I hope it convinced you of the worth of my planes!”
“It did that,” Adar said softly. “So much so in fact that I’m persuaded Mr. Riggs’s scheme may have merit.”
“What scheme?” Ben asked guardedly.
“As you know, Cap-i-taan Jis-Tikkar, ‘Tikker,’ harbors concern the Grik, with Jaap aid, may employ flying machines of their own. Ahd-mi-raal Keje-Fris-Ar shares that concern, as does General Aalden. The plane that once bombed us here is still unaccounted for if nothing else, and the Grik and Jaaps have had just as long as we to . . . advance themselves.”
“So?”
“Arr-strips, just such as this, have been under construction at Aryaal and Sing-aa-pore. Another builds on Andaman Island. Mr. Riggs wants to put some of your planes there. In fact, once we secure enough of Saa-lon, he wants them to go as far forward as they possibly can—even to the extent of carrying and flying them off our . . . our carriers.”
“What?” Ben looked at Riggs. “That’s nuts! These aren’t carrier planes. They’d never take the stress of landing on a ship, or catching a cable. Christ, even if we beefed ’em up enough to take an arresting hook, they’d be too ass-heavy to fly!”
“I’m not talking about landing them on a carrier,” Riggs said, “just taking off from one. They’d fly their mission, then set down on land.”
Ben scratched his beard. “Okay. That might work.... Mack says Jimmy Doolittle did that with B-25s to bomb Tokyo! Drove the Japs wild.”
“Yeah,” Mackey agreed. “They didn’t want us to know about it, but they couldn’t help taking it out on us, so we knew something fantastic had happened. Gradually, the details seeped into the camp we were in. Cheered us up, despite the extra beatings.”
“Just let me get the planes finished and crewed with good pilots before you throw an operation like that at me, for crying out loud!” Ben demanded.
“That goes without saying.”
Ben eyed Riggs. “No it doesn’t. Say it!”
“That was fun,” Pam admitted as she and Sister Audry strolled back through the bustle of the Baalkpan trading district. They’d left the others, and after checking on the newly arrived survivors of the Japanese prison ship and tending a few small hurts, they headed back in the direction of the Baalkpan hospital. Even in spite of the war—and because of it to a large degree—the open-air bazaars had begun to thrive once more. There was a difference now, of course; there were fewer luxuries, and far more troops—some from distant lands—frequented there. Naked younglings still scampered about, eliciting laughter or chastisement, and the merchants and hawkers had grown more numerous, but most of the trade remained much as it had been, except there were more purveyors of fine blades—and gold had largely taken the place of barter as a basis of exchange. That was still odd, and the values fluctuated wildly as people became used to the new system.
“It was,” Audry agreed. “Perhaps now you see that you needn’t remain cloistered in the ‘fem box’ when not on duty?” she probed.
Pam’s face fell. “I suppose. I just miss the big rat, ya’ know?” she said, referring to Silva. “He shoulda’ come home.”
“There are other men,” Audry reminded her. “And other women now as well, at last,” she added with satisfaction, watching some dark-skinned former Respitans being led through the crowd, bearing a long, rolled-up fishing net. The women were mostly young and attractive, she noted, of that adventurous age most likely to strike out beyond the relative free- dom, safety, and security they’d already found in Maa-ni-la. Nearly a hundred had reached Baalkpan so far, and though uneasy, they wanted to work. People stared at them, but there was no hostility, only curiosity and generally pleasure that the “dame famine” was over. Already, a few “old” destroyermen had been seen, in their best shoregoing rig, escorting an exotic beauty around the city, “seeing the sights.”
“You might attend a dance at the . . .‘Castaway Cook,’ ” Audry suggested, “without worrying about being pestered so much by men like Dean Laney!”
Pam chuckled, but it sounded forced. “I wrote Dennis that I’d marry that big jerk Laney, if he didn’t come home . . . and he didn’t. He doesn’t care!”
Sister Audry sighed. “My dear, I grant you that sometimes it’s difficult to fathom what Mr. Silva cares most about, but I’ve learned he does indeed care about a great many things.” She paused. “He cares about you, for example, very much.”
“Did he say so?”
“No, but he didn’t have to. Have you asked yourself why he didn’t return?”
“Sure, an’ I know the answer too. He’s gotta kill bad guys wherever the Skipper is!”
Audry pursed her lips. “You’re more than half right,” she conceded, “but I think, in his own way, Mr. Silva follows a calling much like Captain Reddy’s: to protect those he cares about regardless of the cost to himself, in the only way he knows. He must destroy the threat. It is perhaps a simplistic approach, but most effective when successful. The Bible is full of examples.”
Pam stopped and looked oddly at the nun. “You tellin’ me that Dennis Silva’s on a mission for God?”
“I consider it possible,” Sister Audry replied with a straight face.
“You’re serious!”
“God has chosen more unlikely tools,” Audry said, realizing she was again being drawn into a subject she didn’t want to discuss, largely because it remained unsettled—and unsettling—in her own mind. Silva had almost literally performed miracles on behalf of those under his protection, in his own singularly lethal way. She had witnessed them herself. There was often . . . disproportionate collateral damage, but the Old Testament was packed with examples where even God hadn’t been terribly choosy about who suffered as a result of His actions. She shook her head. “Skip it, as you Americans say, but consider this: by ‘abandoning’ you, Mr. Silva has freed you to make a life . . . perhaps with one such as that Colonel Mallory? He also continues to protect you—and all of us—from afar, by ‘smiting’ those that might harm us before they can. He may not have consciously realized it at the time—though I constantly underestimate him—but he has given you a great gift; one such as these Respitan women now enjoy: the freedom to do as your heart desires . . . and the safety to exercise that freedom.”
“Gee,” Pam whispered, then snorted. “Dennis Silva, an ‘Angel o’ the Lord’! That’s a laugh! Sister, you just don’t know that lug like I do!”
Sister Audry smiled back at the now-grinning nurse. “Perhaps not,” she conceded, “but you don’t know him like I do.”
“So,” Pam continued, changing the subject, “what did Adar think when you showed up back here? I’ve noticed your ‘congregation’ continues to grow.”
Audry laughed, and the sound was like musical chimes in the noisy bustle of the bazaar. “I think he was . . . discomfited. He is a dear creature and has responsibilities unprecedented among his people. I’m sure he was personally glad to see me, but the Church confuses him and even undermines his ‘True Faith’ to a degree he doesn’t want to deal with just now.” Audry smiled. “I try not to cause trouble, but the Word spreads of its own accord.... Perhaps that odd Mr. Bradford was right.”
“’Bout what?”
“Oh, possibly a great many things after all; destinies, for example.” She paused, and changed her tack slightly. “Chairman Adar is my friend, yet High Sky Priest Adar may have been less than pleased by my return!” She chuckled. “But I had only two other choices. I could have remained in Maa-ni-la, or gone to the Empire with Second Fleet.” She sighed. “Sadly, despite my expectations—it has an even more varied population—Maa-ni-la was not yet the fertile ground for the Church that Baalkpan has become. I believe it more important to continue my work here, for now.” She frowned. “After much prayer, I realized I couldn’t go east, not yet.
Even I see the diplomatic risks of extending my work into the Em- pire at this delicate time.” Her voice grew determined. “I will not be the cause of further chaos there that might cost lives. I must—I shall—go there someday to help them understand the very real difference between the Word I profess and the vile dogma of the Blood Priests. As perverted as the Church has become under the Dominion, it desecrates many of the same trappings and symbols. It must be destroyed!” she declared fervently, her face reddening with rage. She caught herself and finally managed a small smile. “In any event, I suspect even were I to demand passage there immediately, I might finally overwhelm our dear Adar’s forbearance!”
“In other words, Adar would rather you keep stirring things up here, where incidentally you’re safe, than raise a stink beyond his reach to keep a lid on it?”
Audry giggled. “Essentially.”
Isak Rueben clomped across the gangway to Santa Catalina, still high and dry in the Baalkpan dry dock.
“Foof,” he said, contemplating the wasted day. He still didn’t know why Riggs wanted him at the airstrip. A skuggik would’ve known what to do about the condensation. They’d talked a little about what to do with S-19 when she arrived, but he didn’t know. He couldn’t imagine any reason to leave her as a sub, and he’d said so. He wasn’t a diesel man, but he could see putting her engines in something, and there was a lot of other stuff they could sure use her guts for. Bernie Sandison also wanted to know what else they could do to improve Santa Catalina’s firepower. They were making an “armored cruiser” out of her, hanging protective plating over her engineering spaces and building magazines to accommodate the 5.5-inch guns they’d installed. The four they’d used were the “last of the litter,” and they’d been mounted in a casemate surrounding the single stack that allowed most of them to be brought to bear in any direction but directly fore and aft. Dual-purpose 4.7s had replaced the discarded guns that had been in the fore and aft tubs, and the tubs had been reinforced as well. The bridge had been armored too, and a fire control platform had been built on top of it. Santa Catalina would still be a creeper, but she’d be faster than a “flat-top Home,” and nearly as heavily armed. Better for long-range work, except for the ten-inch gun sections. She might even get one of those—a twenty-foot section with the interrupted-thread breech! Interrupted-thread breechloaders were the next big thing Bernie was hot for—besides his constant tinkering with some kind of powered torpedo—as soon as they could rifle big tubes.
Still no reason to drag me off, he thought mopily. I ain’t Ordnance. Prob’ly just tryin’ ta get me out an’ around again, he suspected. Ever’body figgers a fella can’t be happy ’less they’s around other folks all the time. Must think I’m pinin’ away without Gilbert an’ Tabby around. He snorted. He did miss them, like a brother or sister, but he wasn’t pining. As far as he knew, to this day, nobody but Tabby—probably—knew he and Gilbert actually were half brothers . . . or quarter brothers . . . whatever. He sometimes got their precise degree of bastardy confused. They had the same mother, but different fathers; neither of whom ever married their mother. Isak didn’t really blame either man; his mother had the face of a moose and the voice of a hog . . . but she’d been a good dame.
“Just me,” he said to the musket-armed ’Cat sentry as he stepped aboard the ship. He flicked a salute aft and padded forward in the gloom until he stood on the fo’c’sle amid the anchor chains that came in through the hawseholes. The wood beneath his feet was no longer spongy and rotten; it was hard and new. Most of the old ship had been repaired, he realized with a touch of pride. Soon, decked out in all her new goodies, she’d be out of the dry dock and back in the war. Well, in the war, anyway—a different war for her. He sighed. Santa Catalina would probably also be the last “normal-size” ship in this dry dock. They were almost finished with a pair of new floating dry docks, like those they’d been building in other places. The new dry docks wouldn’t last forever, but they were . . . portable, and they’d handle anything but a Home—or a carrier—and that was what this first, biggest, dry dock would be devoted to from now on.
He looked around. From where he stood, nobody was in sight. There was work underway aft, and on the adjacent dry dock wall, but no one could see him. His trip ashore hadn’t been a complete waste. He’d had an opportunity to stop by and see his new “business partner,” a Lemurian called Pepper, down at the Busted Screw. Pepper had been Lanier’s mate in Walker’s galley, and the two had established the Busted Screw, or “Castaway Cook,” during Walker’s resurrection and refit. Pepper ran the joint alone now, with Lanier away, and the place was usually jumping. For Isak’s purposes, Pepper had cousins everywhere, including some involved in all the various projects—cousins who didn’t care about human “habits,” but more important, could keep their yaps shut. Isak had been engaged in an ongoing project he wanted to keep to himself. His stop by the Screw that day had left him in possession of the most recent “fruits” of that venture. Inconspicuously, he fished his tobacco pouch and a little hand-carved pipe from his pocket. With another look around, he stuffed the pipe and held a lit Zippo over the bowl.
“Ooo-hoo-ook!” He coughed when the first smoke entered his lungs. He blew it out and tried again. He still coughed, but this time it wasn’t so bad. “Outta practice,” he gasped—and took another puff. This time he didn’t cough, and, with a dreamy expression, he let the smoke drain lazily from his nostrils. It was vile and raunchy beyond anything he’d ever used, even in the Philippines, but it could be smoked! He’d finally succeeded! He’d performed the greatest technological feat of the age! The yellow, waxy, Lemurian tobacco was almost universally chewed now, usually dried and mixed with something like local molasses, but up until now nobody had figured out a way to smoke it without becoming almost instantly, violently ill. “Yur-eeka!” he wheezed.
“What the hell are you doin’ out here?” demanded a gravelly voice behind him. Isak almost squirted his pipe over the rail.
“Nuffin’,” he chirped, trying to hide the smoldering pipe in his hand.
“Nothin’ my ass,” growled Dean Laney, drawing closer. “You been holdin’ out on ever’body! You sneaked out here to smoke a cigarette you’ve been hoardin’ all this time. What’s the matter with you? There’s fellas that’d choke you to death just to breathe your last, smoky breath, and if you don’t share, I’ll be one of ’em.”
“I ain’t smokin’ no cigarette!” Isak stated, seemingly oblivious of the cloud around him in the dank murk.
“Like hell! I can smell it!”
“You can? What do you smell?”
“A cigarette, you freaky little dope! Give it over!”
“An’ it smells like a cigarette?”
“Say, you’re even squirrelier than usual tonight. Sure, it smells like a cigarette ’cause it is one. Maybe not a good one, but I don’t care! Fork it over!”
Isak suddenly jammed his pipe under Laney’s nose. “There’s yer cigarette, you big, fat, lumpy turd!” he jeered, “’an that’s the last whiff o’ Isak Rueben’s ‘Patented Sweet Smokin’ Tobacco’ yer ever gonna get, if you lay one fat, turdy finger on me, hear? Ha! I’m goin’ in the smokin’ tobacco bizness. Cigarettes, see-gars, a nice arrow-matic pipe blend. Hell, I’ll be the first tobacco magnet in the world!”
It’s ‘magnate,’ you bonehead,” Laney said, but he grabbed Isak’s hand and held the pipe close to his face. “Damn, that smells good. How’d you do it?”
“No way! I tell you, and you’ll swipe the process. If you think I done all this work so you can skim off the cream, you’re stupider than you look.”
“Watch that mouth!” Laney growled, his grip tightening on Isak’s wrist.
“You watch yours, fatso, an’ leggo my arm if you don’t want my new comp’ny motto to be ‘Heavenly Smokes for Ever’body but Laney’!”
CHAPTER 14
New Ireland
Major Chack-Sab-At loved horses. Before he and his mixed “division” came ashore at the
New Ireland town of Bray the night before, he’d never ridden an animal in his life; not a brontasarry, a paalka, and certainly not one of the terrifying me-naaks, or “meanies,” the Fil-pin cavalry used. He’d never had occasion to ride the first two, and he had no inclination to ride the latter. With his background as a wing runner of the People, he’d never imagined a reason to climb atop any animal before, but a Marine Major commanding almost two thousand troops needed mobility, and he’d been introduced to horses. He was entranced by the novelty of the experience. To sit upon so large a creature—that had absolutely no desire to eat him—and with which he could actually communicate after a fashion, gave him a feeling of warm benevolence toward the animal. He’d never understood the human preoccupation with “pets”; no Lemurian did. But though he was given to understand horses weren’t exactly pets, he began to grasp the attraction of “having” a companion animal that could think for itself to a degree. He’d heard a great deal about “dogs” and understood humans were particularly fond of them, but none existed in the isles. There were small cats, which did bear a vague resemblance to his people but no more than the pesky forest monkeys did to humans (or again to his own people). He finally knew where the human “Cat-monkey–Monkey-cat” diminutive for his People came from but he didn’t mind, despite the fact that he’d seen no evidence the little cats that roamed wild on New Scotland even had brains . . . but horses! He patted “his” animal on the neck.
He suspected by its twitchy responses to the distant, muffled booming that it was growing nervous. Chack doubted the hundred-odd horses attached to his “division” were alone in that. Many of his troops—virtually all the Imperials—had never faced combat. The first of his two regiments was composed of the remnants of his platoon from Walker and the Marine contingents from Simms, Mertz, Tindal, and the oilers. Some were hardened veterans, and he counted heavily on them to steady the two hundred completely green Imperial Marines attached to the regiment. The second regiment was almost entirely Imperial, but had a lot of the men who’d fought at the Dueling Grounds. All were “marching to the sound of the guns” in a sense, because the wind brought the heavy reports of the New Dublin defenses about fifteen miles east, over the Sperrin Mountains, and deposited the sound in such a way that it seemed to lie before them.
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