They’d been lucky for once. The only thing that saved them, apparently, was that the monstrous wave hadn’t actually broken over the ship, crushing her like a bobbing beer can. Evidently, it had risen in their path, moving in vaguely the same direction they were. There’d been no real warning as such—even Chack hadn’t seen it in time for that—and all they’d been able to do was try to claw up its flank. They didn’t make it. The thing was just too steep, and even now no one had any real idea how high the wave ultimately crested. In spite of the wind and the direction of the swells, the top of the wave must have split of its own accord beneath the titanic weight it had amassed. Walker simply dropped over onto her side when part of this avalanche of falling sea landed upon her.
Matt, like all seamen, had long heard tales of “rogue waves” that reached to the sky, “white squalls” made of almost solid, windblown water. He admitted that he’d always put both in the same category as mermaids and sea monsters. Now he knew there were sea monsters and “white squalls” weren’t the most unusual squalls that one might encounter. Clearly, “rogue waves” existed too, and he wondered uncomfortably just how “rogue” they actually were on this world. The terror of the event still resonated within him, and even if the details of what he’d done and how he’d reacted had blurred, the overall sense of crushing, swirling hopelessness and failure wouldn’t go away. It had been that close.
Grimly, he counted the cost yet again. They’d lost seven people, all’Cats, over the side. Just gone. Both bridgewing lookouts were swept away. Most of the rest were lost while trying to secure the plane and boats and any number of other things that had been torn loose on deck. The sea had continued to run high for an interminable period, and the safety chains and lifelines simply hadn’t been up to the task. One of the launches was a total wreck, and the Nancy had suffered some damage as well. Reynolds was surveying it now to see if it could be repaired. The number three boiler had burst when they took water down the stack. It hadn’t been a catastrophic break, but the seams were blown and all the firebrick inside had exploded and practically shredded the tubes and tanks. Four more ’Cats had died in the fireroom and nearly everyone who’d been in there was injured to some degree.
Tabby was probably the worst. Somehow she’d managed to shut off the fuel and feed water to the damaged boiler in the smoke- and steamchoked compartment. She’d even closed the cut-out valve, ensuring that steam still reached the turbines from the undamaged boilers, before she’d finally been overcome. By so doing, she’d literally saved the ship and all those aboard her. Walker would have been doomed without steerageway. In the process, however, she’d burnt her lungs and been badly scalded. She was in the wardroom now, with half a dozen other bad cases. Her fur was coming off in bloody clumps and her labored breathing sounded like a sub’s diesel exhaust when water washes over the vents. Matt had been to see her, to see them all, and he figured Tabby was done for. Oddly, Selass offered some hope. Not much, but some. Matt didn’t know how she could, but he prayed she was right.
There were many other injuries, serious and light, ranging from broken bones, like Juan’s arm, to the big, stitched-up cut running along the Bosun’s jaw. Campeti had a concussion. One of the ’Cats, an ordnance striker named Faal-Pel, who’d previously been known as “Pall-Mall,” had instantly gained a new nickname when he somehow contrived to lose half his tail. Matt supposed Faal-Pel would be stuck with “Stumpy” forever. Objectively, it could have been much, much worse, and looking back over their adventures and his poor old ship’s many trials, he realized it usually had been. He had to concede that, in all honesty, this time they actually had been “lucky.”
Achilles had been “lucky” too, in that she’d survived the storm, but otherwise, not so much. Walker’s wireless array had been damaged again, and they’d lost all contact with Jenks’s ship during the storm. Even when the aerial was repaired, they couldn’t reach Achilles. By chance, they found her the following day while crisscrossing their path to leeward. She’d been almost dismasted by the blow, and her starboard paddle wheel was a wreck. Matt was seriously concerned that the once beautiful, formidable ship may have endured too much. She’d been almost two years at sea, had fought a major action, and now had gone through the worst storm imaginable. He hoped she could reach Respite. With the same concerns, Jenks allowed Walker to take Achilles under tow. As if to show how fickle fate could truly be, they sighted Icarus later that evening, looking as though she’d missed the storm completely. Of Ulysses there was no sign.
“We can fix the boiler,” Spanky said roughly, and coughed. His eyes were red and there were bandages on his forearms. He’d been one of the first into the aft fireroom and had sucked in some steam as well. He’d also personally carried Tabby to the wardroom, snarling “Don’t touch her!” at anyone who tried to take her from him. “Actually, we can rebuild it. We’re carrying more spare stuff than the old Blackhawk ever had for us.” Blackhawk had been their destroyer tender in the Asiatic Fleet. “It’ll take time and a lot of work, though. When I say ‘rebuild,’ I mean rebuild. Hell, even the casing’s warped.” He shook his head. “We’ve got a lot more water than usual coming in around the starboard shaft packing too, but otherwise, engineering came through okay.” He paused. “I mean, other than a lot of people hurt ... and the dead, of course.”
“Of course.”
The Bosun was gingerly feeling his jaw. “I never would’ve believed it,” he said. “Thin as this old gal’s skin is, I figured we’d have a thousand leaks after a beating like that, but she came through like a submarine.”
“Hey,” Spanky growled, “I was there when damn near every new rivet went in. You weren’t. She’s tighter than a drum. And not all her steel’s so thin anymore. We rolled the new plates out to original spec. That’s why it sticks up in some places when your apes bitch about the paint scraping.”
“Is that so? Well, I wasn’t bitching.”
Spanky looked almost accusingly at the Bosun. It was as if, having failed to rise to his argumentative bait, Gray had let him down. His next words, words they’d all been avoiding, confirmed it. “Then what are we going to do about the dead, anyway?”
Juan wiped the remnants of soap off the Captain’s face and beat a hasty retreat. He wanted no part of this discussion.
Matt rubbed his face and took a deep breath. “Damned if I know. All the dead ... still aboard ... were ’Cats this time, mostly in the fireroom.” He lowered his voice. “We can’t cremate them the Lemurian way, and I don’t know how they’ll feel about burial at sea. Carrying them back to Baalkpan isn’t even an option. Neither is waiting until we reach Respite. We’re still at least a week out.”
“Ask Chack,” Gray suggested.
Spanky shook his head and looked away. “I’ll ask Tabby,” he said huskily. “Leavin’ out Chack’s Marine rank, she actually kind of outranks him now, anyway. Besides ...” He couldn’t finish.
Lieutenant (jg) Fred Reynolds looked at the PB-1B Nancy from every angle, still amazed that the plane had survived the storm in one piece ... mostly. Kari-Faask imitated nearly his every move. She was just as concerned as he was about the condition of the plane, though she’d have been relieved if the damn thing had been totally destroyed or just washed over the side. She wasn’t nearly as keen on flying as her friend and pilot was. Since the plane wasn’t wrecked, she intended to make sure it was as well maintained as possible—as long as her precious hide might have to ride in it again.
“The motor plumb flooded,” announced Jeek, the flight crew chief. “We take whole thing off, replace with spare. Gaas tank, all gaas lines, come out, dry out. Use big air blow!” he said, referring to air from the ship’s compressor. “We take wet motor apart, dry out, new spare!” He seemed proud of his ingenuity. They had five spare engines for the Nancy, and an entire spare plane broken down and stowed in the aft deckhouse. Remembering that, Kari sighed. If they’d been down to the “spare” plane, that would have probably just left them making more danger
ous flights.
“That’s swell, Jeek,” Reynolds said. “Any structural damage?”
“She wet inside and out,” Jeek admitted. “Some glue come loose on inside.” He brightened. “But glue dry again, pretty day!”
Reynolds looked at him. “You better clamp those places!” he said sharply, but Jeek grinned.
“Just joke. She tight. No water get inside. Only motor wet. It outside.”
Reynolds stopped, noticing something he hadn’t seen before. There were a lot of small patches in the plane’s skin, where the flight crew had covered bullet holes. Most had been painted over and were barely noticeable. One, however, on the nose, right in front of the windscreen, had a circle around the patch with a big O and what looked like an upsidedown N.
“What’s that?” he demanded.
Jeek shrugged. “You bring plane back full of holes from bad guy guns, that fine. Lots of work to fix, but fine. You shoot hole in own plane”—he gestured at the nose—“not fine. From where you sit, numbers say NO. Maybe you remember not shoot own plane no more!”
Reynolds’s ears reddened. “That wasn’t my fault, damn it!” he said defensively. “They were shooting at us, I was shooting at them! All I had was a damn pistol!”
“You get ‘carried away,’ ” Kari agreed. “You almost shoot us down yourself!”
“I did not! Get rid of it!”
“No!” Jeek said, grinning.
“Who’s in charge here, you or me?” Reynolds demanded.
“You in charge of division,” Jeek said, “but I in charge of plane.”
Their argument was interrupted by a volley of musket fire aft, near the fantail. Kari jumped. “What’s that?”
“Them Marines,” Jeek said scornfully. “They shoot bullets at shields—see if bullets go through.” He shook his head. “Ever-body shootin’ holes in own stuff. Crazy.”
“Well ...” Reynolds hesitated. “What do I tell the Skipper?”
“Give me two, three day, this Naancy fly just fine.” He peered at Reynolds. “You lucky you got me an’ this flight crew ’stead o’ those on big ship. We know shit.”
“Yeah, lucky,” Reynolds reluctantly agreed. “Just get that stupid sign off the nose, will ya?”
Spanky McFarlane stumped painfully down the companionway. He’d been to see Tabby several times, and each time she looked worse. He half expected to find her covered with a sheet. He met Chief Tindal in the passageway, returning from having the dressing on a badly bashed elbow changed. Both men made way for two ’Cat stretcher bearers carrying another ’Cat, swaddled in bandages, aft.
“He okay?” Spanky asked.
“Sure,” Miami replied. “Just a few scrapes and some singed hair. Got a free pass from the doc to goof off a couple o’ days.” He nodded at the bearers as they passed. “They’re just taking him to his rack in the ‘guinea pullman.’ ” Gingerly, the Lemurians carried the stretcher up the companionway stairs.
“Actually, he ain’t good,” Tindal said when the patient was out of earshot. “He’ll prob’ly look like he’s got mange when his fur grows back, but he’ll make it. Selass wouldn’t have let him go otherwise. Wardroom’s only for the worst cases left. We got to clear it out.” He gestured aft. “His mates’ll take good care of him now.” Seeing Spanky’s expression, he added, “Only two borderline cases left.” He didn’t need to say that Tabby was one of them.
Spanky sighed and nodded. “See what you can do about number three, will ya? Start tearing it down as quick as you can. I know we’re short firemen, at least for a while, but it ain’t like the old days, you know? Back then, if we had two good boilers, that meant we had a spare. Only two leaves us nothing extra anymore, ’specially with that Brit hulk in tow. Get with Bashear and shanghai some of his apes with boiler experience if you have to.”
Tindal raised a brow. “He gonna squawk?”
Spanky shook his head. “Nope. Besides, we got all of Chack’s Marines to help topside. Not many of them have ever even been in the fireroom.” He started to move along, but Miami put a hand on his arm.
“Look,” he said, “for what it’s worth, everybody knows how you feel about Tabby.” Spanky started to cloud up. News of the “kiss” Tabby had laid on him was all over the ship in a matter of hours. Miami shook his head. “And I, at least, know you ain’t ‘sweet’ on her. She’s a swell dish for a ’Cat, but she’s a ’Cat, and some things just ain’t meant to be. But I also know she ain’t just a ‘fireman’ to you neither. I don’t know what she is. She ain’t nobody’s ‘pet,’ unless she’s ‘teacher’s pet’ and you’re the teacher. Maybe she’s like a kid sister or stepdaughter or somethin’. My point is, whatever she is to you, let her see it for once. So what if she’s sweet on you? God knows why she would be, but what difference does it make to you? Knowin’ you care about her, in whatever way, might make a lot of difference to her.”
Spanky nodded. This was a side of Miami Tindal he’d never seen. Maybe it was new. It seemed like everybody revealed new sides all the time these days. “Thanks,” he said. “Now go get with Bashear.” Turning, he advanced toward the embroidered wardroom curtain.
The next morning, Walker’s dead went over the side in the traditional flag-draped way, with the traditional service. Tabby wasn’t among them ... yet ... and only time would tell if there’d be another funeral service aboard the old destroyer in the coming days. Spanky’s visit had seemed to perk Tabby up, despite the nature of their ultimate conversation. She’d been adamant that, if it came to that, she wanted whatever kind of service any other destroyerman would receive under the circumstances, and she was convinced that her Lemurian comrades who’d already perished would agree. Not for the first time, Matt wished they’d brought a Sky Priest along. He didn’t feel right leading the brief Lemurian chant of supplication after the traditional service, but Jeek, of all people, had volunteered to lead a sort of “nondenominational” version. The chant was different for land folk and sea folk. Matt still found it odd when a minority of Lemurians, including a few of the Marines—such as Corporal Koratin—participated only in the Christian service. Once an Aryaalan noble, Koratin had been a convert to Sister Audry’s teachings. The proceedings at an end, Walker increased speed, straining against the towline rigged to Achilles. During the brief pause, there’d been splashes alongside the Imperial frigate as well.
The weather remained fine, with a steady westerly breeze. Icarus easily kept company, and slowly, as Achilles pieced new masts and yards together from her remaining stores and as much as Icarus could spare, she bent new canvas and more and more of the drag came off the towline. On Walker, carpenter’s mates built a new launch, scavenging as much of the wrecked one as they could. The little two-cycle engine seemed okay, but the propeller shaft was bent and they had to straighten it. Safety chains were rerigged and parted stays were spliced. Within a few days all the serious damage but the blown boiler had been attended to, and Gray, the ever-present, looming Super Bosun, even had details chipping and painting again. He was damned if Walker would steam into her first Imperial port with rust streaks down her sides “like wet makeup on a cheap Nor-leens whore.” Even as evidence of the beating the ships took from the Strakka disappeared, however, hope that Ulysses would turn up began to fade. She might well have been driven far off course and proceeded independently to their destination, but Jenks said her master, Achilles’ own third lieutenant, would have made every effort to rejoin them. He feared she’d been lost with all hands.
They began to encounter land of a sort. Small, desolate, apparently lifeless atolls scoured of any vegetation were the first they saw. Wireless communications had been restored with Achilles and Jenks counseled Captain Reddy on the most beneficial bearings. Other islands began to appear, first with a few lonely trees, then with veritable jungles and even a few humps and hills that suggested more substance to their foundations. Courtney Bradford wanted to visit them, of course, but he lost considerable interest when Jenks advised that the main reason they
sustained no settlements out of Respite was a lack of reliable fresh water. They’d already passed the island, far to the northwest, to which O’Casey and the princess had been bound, and Jenks, who was something of a naturalist himself, assured Bradford that it was the only place they’d neglected that might have truly interested him. The islands they steamed among did sustain life, however.
Birds began pacing the ships, swooping among the masts and generally, as usual, defecating all over the decks. For the first time since coming to this world, real “honest” birds not only predominated but seemed almost universal. They were strange creatures, with many of the characteristics of the “lizard birds,” such as elongated, toothy mouths instead of beaks, and almost ridiculously long tail plumages like peafowl, but they were entirely feathered and had wide, broad wings. They seemed designed to soar for long distances and snatch prey from near the surface of the sea. They saw a few “regular” lizard birds like those they’d become accustomed to within the Malay Barrier, but they were oddly shaped, and ironically, some had beaks instead of teeth. They seemed more suited for stooping and diving for prey, which Courtney enthusiastically watched them do occasionally. Mostly, however, the birds they saw acted just as curious about the ships as Courtney was about them, and curses from the deck division competed with Courtney’s chortles of glee.
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