Into the Storm d-1

by Taylor Anderson

  He tore himself from his reverie and saw that Shinya was equally absorbed by their surroundings, but Letts, and even Bradford, seemed unaffected. Of course, they’d both been to the wellhead several times. Letts must have asked him a question, because he and the Australian both looked at him expectantly. “I’m sorry, Mr. Letts. Could you repeat that, please?”

  Alan grinned. “Sure, Skipper. What I asked is, should we concentrate all the guns on one side of Big Sal, like a floating battery, and just counterweight the other, or mount guns on both sides? We may not have time or materials to make enough for both.”

  Matt shook his head. “I’m not convinced there’re going to be any guns.” Letts assumed a wounded expression.

  “Sure there will, Skipper, if we have enough time. I’ve been working with the guys at the foundry”-the “guys at the foundry” were two Lemurian brothers who owned and ran it-“and they say it’s no problem. They cast anchors for ships like Big Sal all the time, so they’re used to throwing lots of metal. You could cast five or six guns from the metal that goes into one of those babies. Labor’s not an issue. The latest news has everybody fired up, and Nakja-Mur had kittens over the prospect of cannons of his very own. The only two stumbling blocks, well, three, really, were getting somebody to let us cut gunports in the side of their ship, finding enough metal to make the guns-a truly hellacious amount of copper and tin-and, of course, ammunition.

  “Gunpowder’s not a problem. All the components are readily available and sulfur’s all over these volcanic islands. The real pain’s building a powder mill. That’s taking time. We can’t use water power, since there’re no swift rivers. Maybe we can try what the Mice came up with? Anyway, we’ll get it sorted out. We can use copper for cannonballs-that’s a cinch-but training gunners to hit something with them might be a little harder.”

  “What about boring true?” Matt asked, and Letts shrugged a little hesitantly.

  “I have a few ideas along that line.”

  Matt shook his head. He didn’t know what had cracked Alan Letts out of his amiable go-with-the-flow shell, but whatever it was, he’d become a dynamo. Maybe it was just that he, like the rest of them, had finally come to grips with the situation. “I bet Keje wasn’t happy about chopping holes in the side of Big Sal,” he mused. “How many guns are you planning to put on her, anyway?”

  “I’m hoping on twenty per side, eventually. That may not seem like many, given her size, compared to the ships of the line back in the seventeen hundreds, but…” He shrugged.

  Matt looked at him and blinked with surprise. It was a habit he’d picked up from their new friends. “Twenty! I thought you were ambitious thinking about two or three! How big are you planning to make them?”

  “Well, that depends on what size we ultimately bore them out. I’m meeting with Mr. McFarlane and Bernie Sandison this evening and we’ll kick that around.”

  Matt chuckled. “Very well, Mr. Letts. Keep me informed, but be sure you don’t use anything the ship needs to make your tools!” A wry grin spread across Letts’s face, as if he’d been about to ask permission to do that very thing. “As to what to do with them if you get the cannons made?” Matt paused. “Keje’ll have to decide. It’s his ship. A floating battery in the bay would be tough to get around, but if anything ever did, the whole defense might collapse. I’ve never been a big believer in static defenses, and I doubt Keje would be either.”

  Bradford nodded vigorously. “Yes! Yes! Look how much good the Maginot Line did the French! And I’m not even going to start on Singapore! As for Keje’s opinion, I assure you you’re right. With some quite obvious exceptions, the Lemurians are seagoing nomads. The very idea of being semi-permanently moored in any defensive position would be utterly alien, and perhaps hateful to them. I imagine they’d do it as an expedient during battle, but to actively prepare for such a thing? You might lose all credibility if you made the suggestion. So far, they’re willing to take your advice on matters of defense, but that’s all any of us really are. Advisors. We have no official status in the chain of command. I’m not sure there really is one. Nakja-Mur is the overall leader of the People of Balik-I mean Baalkpan-but Keje and any other ship captain who comes ashore, I suppose, all seem to be equals. They command their own People, but are subject to the laws and customs of the territory or ship they set foot on. It’s all so very chaotic! It would be far more convenient if they had a king, and all the various ships and places were part of some grand commonwealth!”

  “Like the British Empire?” Letts goaded.

  “Well… yes! Precisely! This current arrangement is far too much like your own various states. Always squabbling, and never agreeing to work together toward a common goal!”

  Matt smiled tolerantly at the Australian. “The United States usually manages to pull together over the important things.”

  “Yes, but it takes wars to make it happen, I might remind you!”

  “That may be,” Matt confessed, “but it looks like the Lemurians have their war too.”

  No one spoke for a while as the launch crept farther upriver. Once, Scott almost lost control when a crocodile bumped the boat and he flailed madly for the Thompson submachine gun he always carried slung over his shoulder. “Hold your fire, Mr. Scott,” Matt said, just loud enough to be heard. The croc was swimming disinterestedly away, and Tony gave him a sheepish glance as he regained control of the boat.

  “How are things going ashore, Lieutenant?” Matt asked Shinya. He’d been shaken from his trancelike study of the wildlife by the launch’s capering.

  “If you mean the preparation of the militia, Captain Reddy, I must report progress is poor, but improving.” Nakja-Mur had decreed that all able-bodied People, male and female, should take training with Sergeant Alden and Lieutenant Shinya, as well as some of their own few warriors every other day. Attendance was mandatory, but from the beginning, participation was somewhat sparse. Many of the younger, more adventurous townsfolk turned out with a will, and some had achieved a level of training that let them perform as NCOs for the less-proficient attendees. Alden had even begun training an “elite” force of a hundred of the sharpest and toughest, which would, of course, become his “Marines.”

  The vast majority managed to avoid service at first, however, due to exemptions granted almost as a matter of course whenever they complained to the High Chief’s secretaries that their occupations should be protected as “vital to the defense of the People.” Some even had a point, and to be fair, many of the young, able-bodied Lemurians had been conscripted into the projects being undertaken for or by the Americans. All those were subject to military discipline, however, and put through a daily regimen of close-order drill and basic weapons training. As the Grik threat became more real, particularly over the last couple of weeks, Shinya had noticed an increasing number of faces at drill that he’d never seen before.

  “What kind of numbers are we looking at?” Matt asked.

  “It’s difficult to say. Sergeant Alden and I drill them each day, but with a few exceptions, we only see them every other day.” Drill took place on a large “common” at the foot of Nakja-Mur’s Great Hall, and the High Chief often watched the proceedings. The place had once been, for lack of a better term, a “park” near the center of town. But the ground had now been so churned by marching feet and maneuvering troops that they’d taken to calling it the parade ground. It wasn’t big enough for everybody, however, so roughly half the militia drilled one day, and the other half the next. It was dreadfully inefficient, but with the dearth of open ground in Baalkpan, it was the only answer. Shinya gazed thoughtfully at the water and turned back to the captain. “I think it’s not impossible, right now, to field nearly fifteen hundred Baalkpan troops, reasonably well trained for the type of fighting we saw upon Big Sal. In two weeks, we can perhaps double that number. In six months, we could put ten thousand in the field, but that would include virtually the entire adult population of the city. To assemble such a force, however, w
ill take an even greater sense of… urgency than they now have.”

  “You mean we’d have to be literally under attack, here, to expect that level of participation?” Matt muttered in resignation.

  Shinya nodded. “I fear so. Of course, by then it would be much too late to organize them properly. A few of Sergeant Alden’s ‘Marines’ have gone aboard the Lemurian ships to get them to learn our drill so coordination would be possible at need. They’ve received… a mixed welcome. As for the tactics we’re teaching them, without the benefit of firearms, the only real options are those you suggested. A ‘Roman’ shield wall, backed by spearmen, backed in turn by archers.” He shook his head. “One of the most difficult things was to get them to abandon their crossbows. These people are made for shooting bows, and a longbow has a greater range and rate of fire than a crossbow, but they didn’t understand why we, a people with such technology, should advocate such simple weapons.” He grinned. “Once they saw the superiority of longbows, it wasn’t difficult to convince them.” Shinya’s expression became grim. “Of course, they want firearms.”

  Matt nodded. “I wish they had them, but without steel…” He sighed. “Once we drag them out of the Bronze Age, we can have a look at flintlock muskets or something, but for now?” He held his hands out at his sides. “I know Alden’s training some of his ‘Marines’ to use our weapons. How’s he doing?”

  “Yes, he’s training fifty of them, but they only get to fire a few rounds each. Mr. Sandison has solved the projectile problem-I think he called it swaging? But the difficulty remains making new cartridge cases if the empty ones are damaged or lost. And, of course, the primers. No one seems to think gunpowder will be a problem”-he bowed toward Letts- “but it won’t be smokeless at first, so the automatic weapons won’t function well.” He shook his head. “Of course, all these logistics matters are not my concern, particularly since I know nothing about them. But I understand that one of Mr. Sandison’s concerns is replacing Walker’s depleted ammunition stores for her main battery. His experiments with the small arms are the ‘test bed’ for the four-inch guns.”

  “Lieutenant Shinya, I don’t know how it worked in your navy, but logistics is the concern of any officer, infantry officers included-which is what you’ve become. I’m glad you’re keeping up with it.” Matt’s gaze drifted forward, and he saw massive wooden pilings set in the riverbed some distance out from shore. As they neared, he saw that a framework connected them and a party of ’Cats was working to lay down a plank deck. They’d arrived at the fueling pier.

  They secured the launch and trooped ashore. All were armed in spite of the small army of laborers nearby. Bradford had insisted, explaining that unlike in their own world, the large number of workers going about their business here wouldn’t frighten predators away; they would only alert them to a smorgasbord. A fair percentage of the Lemurians present were, in fact, dedicated to security. They were armed primarily with oversized crossbows that threw a bolt two feet long and an inch in diameter. Matt remembered Bradford telling him there were some truly astonishing predators lurking in the jungles of this new Borneo, but he’d paid only passing attention at the time, preoccupied with the refit of his ship. Now he tried to remember some of the creatures Bradford had described. They must be pretty big, he mused, if it took a handheld ballista to bring one down.

  At the edge of the clearing, three large cylinders stood atop adobe furnaces with a maze of heavy, local copper pipe twisting among them. Matt recognized the cylinders as the ill-fated torpedo tubes of the number three mount. He hoped they would prove more useful here than they had aboard the ship. Furry, kilted workers scampered around the apparatus that they hoped would become a functioning refinery-if they found anything to refine. Chief Donaghey and Mahan’s Perry Brister were supervising the project, and by their filthy appearance, they’d done more than that. Matt waved at them to carry on as the party continued past the high tower set in the center of the clearing. In it was a now fully recovered Leo Davis and one of their precious BARs. He looked like a prison guard overseeing a chain gang, but the obvious distinction was that he was there to protect the workers, not to prevent escape. More Lemurians stood guard at intervals along the trail leading from the fueling pier into the dense jungle surrounding it.

  The wellhead lay almost a mile inland. The trail was wide, and down the center was a pipeline constructed from the curious oversized bamboo that seemed, in every respect except for its massive size, just like bamboo “back home.” They’d seen it used extensively in local construction and for masts, of course, and it was a natural choice for those applications, being generally the diameter and length of a telephone pole. Matt hadn’t known they were going to use it to transport the crude. Bradford and Letts noticed him appraising the arrangement as they walked alongside.

  “Bound to leak like a sieve, Skipper,” said Letts resignedly. “The couplings are short pieces of tin pipe pounded into the ends and sealed with pitch. I guess we can build something better once we have the time.”

  “No, Mr. Letts. It’s ingenious. I hadn’t even thought how we’d move the oil from the well to the refinery. Well done.”

  Letts looked embarrassed. “Well, it was really Spanky’s idea,” he demurred.

  “A good idea, no matter whose it was.” Matt paused, looking at the pipeline with a thoughtful expression. “I can’t help but wonder, though. A fueling pier, a pipeline, even a refinery-all situated where they are just because of the wellhead. Are you sure we’re not taking one small detail a little too much for granted?”

  Bradford blinked at him and wiped the ever-present sweat from his brow with a handkerchief that might once have been white. Then he grinned mischievously. “Never fear, my dear captain. As you Americans would so quaintly say, the fix is in.” He stopped and glanced at the sky. It was visible above the quadruple-canopy jungle only because of the pipeline cut. As so often happened at this time of day, the bright blue they’d basked beneath much of the morning had been replaced by a sodden gray.

  “Oh, dear.”

  Isak Reuben took a final, long drag off his cigarette, and it burned fiercely almost to his lips. He flipped the tiny butt off the platform, where it hissed and drowned in a puddle. The deluge had become a gentle drizzle, but it fell long and hard enough to soak him completely. Not that it mattered. He was always soaked, with sweat, and his filthy T-shirt clung to his skinny torso like a slimy, splotched, translucent leech. His fireroom pallor was gone, as was Gilbert’s, replaced by the harsh reddish brown he remembered so well from his life in the oil fields. It was a color he’d hoped never to see on his own body again.

  “Goddamn,” he exclaimed matter-of-factly, “ain’t White Mice now.” He grabbed the cable that dropped down from one end of the walking beam and disappeared into the hole at his feet. The slack felt about right. “Wind ’er up, Gilbert,” he croaked at his companion, who made a rotating motion with his hand.

  A short distance away, a pair of young ’Cats sat on a brontosarry’s back, and one made a trilling sound and whacked its flank with a stout bamboo shoot. With a guttural groan of protest, the beast began to move. It was harnessed to a giant windlass, and as it trudged through a slurry of mud, round and round, a belt running from a large-diameter central shaft transferred its meager rotation to a smaller, faster wheel. Another belt ran to yet another wheel, between the two in diameter. This one turned a crank that raised and lowered a pitman, causing the walking beam to go up and down. As it did so, it raised the cable-tool bit far down in the hole and then dropped it with a resounding “thud.” The bit drove a few inches deeper every time.

  Isak looked at the sky, beyond the eighty-foot bamboo derrick that still struck him as just… wrong somehow, and saw patches of blue struggling to disperse the clouds. He shook his head unhappily. Every time a squall blew up, he hoped subconsciously that it, like the one that had brought them here, would take them home. Home to the real world, where he could bask in the honest warmth and isolation of his
beloved boilers, where steam was magically made. Steam that turned honest turbines. He frowned. Anywhere but here, where steam rose from the ground because the sun cooked it out, and where stinkin’ dinosaurs pretended to be motors! He groped for another cigarette and frowned even deeper, staring at the massive animal trudging slowly around. “RPMs ain’t much, but the torque’s pretty respectable.”

  Gilbert touched the cable himself at the bottom of its stroke, as he walked over to join him. “What?” he asked.

  “Nothin’.”

  Gilbert nodded. “Quiet rig.” Both were used to loud engines doing the work of the dinosaur.

  “Too quiet,” complained Isak. “Ain’t natural.”

  Gilbert nodded again, in solemn agreement. “Gimme a smoke, will ya?” His customary monotone was as close to a wheedle as it ever got.

  “No.”

  “Why not? I shared mine with you.”

  “Yeah, and now yer out, ain’t ya? Stupid.”

  Gilbert stared down at the well as the cable went slack, pondering. No question about it, Isak was the smart one.

  The other fireman sighed heavily, shook a soggy cigarette out of the pack, and handed it over. Then he peered inside. “Now I’m as dumb as you. Only one left.”

  The well was situated in another artificial clearing, and one of their Lemurian security guards trilled a call from his watchtower near the pipeline cut.

  “What’s he jabberin’ about?” Isak asked, irritably reaching for one of the old Krag rifles they always kept nearby. “I hope it ain’t another one of them Big Ones. We really need bigger guns for huntin’ around here.”