“Mr. Mallory!” Matt shouted at one of the men who stood, hands on hips. He turned.
“Captain Reddy!” There was a huge smile on the man’s bearded face. “Good afternoon, sir.” He motioned at the machine and eyed a set of gauges on his console. “Temps are a little variable on the cylinders, but that’s to be expected with an air-cooled in-line. The production models’ll be liquid-cooled and heavier, but the horsepower ought to be similar. The main thing is that it looks like we’ve solved the crankcase and oil pump issues—at least for straight and level.” For the first time Mallory noticed Jenks and his smile faded a little.
“It’s okay,” Matt shouted. “It’s time.”
Mallory shrugged as if to say, You’re the skipper, and motioned to one of the ’Cats stationed near another panel. “Bring her up, Tikker!”
The sable-furred ’Cat with a shiny brass tube in his ear nodded and advanced a small lever. Immediately, the noise increased and the paddlelike object whirred even faster, redoubling the gale of wind and noxious fumes. Jenks began to feel a little ill. Sandra coughed violently and patted Captain Reddy on the arm. Matt looked at her and nodded, noting Jenks’s expression as well. He patted Mallory, and when he got his attention, he made a “cut it” gesture.
Tikker noticed and backed the throttle down until the engine finally wheezed and died. The sudden, relative silence was overwhelming.
“Mr. Mallory, you’re going to choke all your workers,” Matt said with a grin. Ben looked around. If anything but excitement made him feel light-headed, it didn’t show.
“Well, yes, sir,” he said, beaming, “but it works! The damn thing works! Uh, begging your pardon.” He glanced at Jenks and his euphoria slipped a notch. “Yeah, it stinks, I guess, but we’ve been trying to keep things under wraps.”
“I know. That’s over now.” Matt clapped Ben on his good shoulder and nodded congratulations to the others. “Besides, it looks like we’ll be ready for flight testing soon and there’s no way to keep that a secret. I think it’s time Commodore Jenks, at least, sees what we’re up to.”
Jenks finally surrendered to a coughing fit of his own, but when he composed himself, he pointed at the engine. “What is that thing?” he asked. “Some sort of weapon?”
“Not by itself,” hedged one of the other workers who’d joined the group. He was a former Mahan machinist’s mate named “Miami” Tindal.
Tikker stepped closer. “We put it on a plane, and it’ll be a weapon,” he said excitedly. A lot of Lemurians acted uncomfortable around the Imperials and were hesitant to speak to them. Tikker never seemed uncomfortable talking to anyone.
“What’s a ‘plane’?” Jenks asked.
Matt looked at Ben. “If you and . . . Captain Tikker would accompany us?” He paused, his amused, understanding eyes on Perry. “You as well, Commander Brister.”
Workers raised awnings to vent the exhaust while together, the growing entourage returned to the larger, open shed. There they showed Jenks an array of ungainly contraptions. Some were mere skeletons, made from laminated bamboo strips, cannibalized even before they were complete. A couple had a kind of taut fabric stretched across their bones to which some kind of sealant or glue had been applied. One, the nearest to the shop, rested on a cart or truck much like the earlier gun tubes. This one not only appeared almost finished, but was painted a medium dark blue. There were darker blue roundels—significant devices of some kind, Jenks was sure—in several places, with large white stars and small red dots painted within them.
“So this is it?” Matt asked appreciatively. It didn’t look much like the NC craft he remembered seeing pictures of. If anything, it looked like a miniature PBY. The fuselage/hull form was virtually identical, except there was a single open-air cockpit behind a slip of salvaged Plexiglas where the flight deck would have been. Another open cockpit was positioned halfway to the tail, where the PBY had possessed a pair of observation blisters. The large single wing was supported by an arrangement of struts instead of being attached to the fuselage by a faired compartment. It was easy to see the motor would go in the empty space between the wing and fuselage—with the prop spinning mere feet behind the pilot’s head.
“What about wing floats?” Matt asked. By the tone of his voice, he was reviving an old argument.
“They’ll be cranked down mechanically by the observer/mechanic in the aft cockpit.” Ben looked a little sheepish. “I know you wanted to keep it simple, Skipper, but this is a lot simpler than putting fixed floats on a lower wing. Not to mention we don’t have to make those lower wings.” He gestured at one of the incomplete skeletons. “This way she’ll be lighter, faster, more maneuverable, and honestly, we should be able to put her down on rougher seas. With that bottom wing so close to the water, I was really worried about that.”
“That’s fine, Ben. I told you, when it comes to flying you’re the boss, and your arguments do have merit. I just want to make sure the things aren’t overly complicated. Like the ships, I want a lot of good ones, not a few of the best.”
“I agree, sir. But with this design, I think we get a little of both.”
Jenks interrupted. “Flying . . . you mean to say that thing will . . . fly?”
“Hopefully.” Matt nodded toward a large heap of twisted wreckage piled in the space between the two buildings. It was all that remained of the crashed PBY. “That one did.”
“Not very well,” Jenks observed skeptically, “if its present condition is any indication. And that one is metal. Why not these new ones?”
“You’d be amazed how well it flew,” Matt answered wistfully, “and for how long. But our enemy managed to knock it down. Do you think you could shoot down a flying target?”
Jenks didn’t answer.
“Anyway, the metal it was made of is called aluminum. It came from our old world, and I don’t know when or if we’ll ever be able to make it here. We’re having enough trouble with iron. When we get that sorted out, we’ll try steel—besides what we’re salvaging from the enemy ship. I’m afraid the lizards are probably ahead of us there. . . . Anyway, once we get real steel, and plenty of it, you’ll be amazed at what we can do.”
Sandra pulled him down to whisper in his ear and Matt’s face became grim, but he nodded. He straightened and looked Jenks in the eye.
“Now we’re going to show you something else,” he said. “So far, you probably haven’t seen anything that would assure you we aren’t a threat to your empire.”
“Quite the contrary, Captain,” Jenks answered honestly. “I could even argue that what I have seen here today proves you are a threat that should be quashed before you reach your stride, as it were.” There was no hostility in Jenks’s tone, only a dispassionate statement of fact.
“Very well. I’ll prove it to you. I’ll show you something that, up until now, we’ve been willing to kill your spies, if necessary, to keep them from seeing. I guess you could call it an industrial achievement of sorts”—he waved around—“but not like these others. Mainly, it’s an admission of vulnerability, I guess, more than anything.” His green eyes turned cold. “Something I damn sure wouldn’t show you if I was trying to intimidate you with our power. That alone should convince you we mean you no harm.”
“Does this have to do with your mysterious iron-hulled steamer you’ve been hiding from us since we arrived?” Jenks asked quietly.
“Follow me,” was all Matt said.
The group gathered on the dock overlooking the old shipyard basin. Oily brown water coiled with tendrils of iridescent purple and blue lapped gently against the old fitting-out pier. It was quiet where they stood, although considerable activity bustled nearby. Four of the great Homes had been flooded down across the mouth of the inlet in two ranks. Work was under way to seal the gaps between them, fore and aft, so there would ultimately be a pair of continuous walls from land to land.
A single “wall” was the customary dry-dock technique Lemurians had always used to build their great ships i
n the first place. Inspired by that, and realizing the need for a permanent dry dock, Spanky and Perry had designed one. It was a hard sell at first, since the effort required Walker to remain on the bottom even longer. Also, even though he helped design the dry dock, Brister had made a reluctant but strong argument against taking labor and resources away from construction of the new Allied fleet. It was actually easier, he’d reasoned, to build entirely new ships than it would be to fix Walker. He’d been in favor of using the Lemurian method to refloat the ship—and then only so they could stabilize her and prevent further deterioration. Perhaps someday they could attempt repairs. In the meantime, they should concentrate all their efforts on the new construction. As for the dry dock, it would certainly be a useful convenience, but one they could postpone.
Spanky argued that a permanent dry dock was essential, not only to refloat Walker—and do it right—but because the new construction Brister referred to would be much more prone to require repairs below the waterline than other ships the Lemurians built. He vividly remembered how difficult it had been to remove one of Mahan’s propellers and install it on Walker. With the ravenous nature of the aquatic life on this different Earth, no underwater work could be performed without elaborate preparation. Besides, once they got her up, Spanky wasn’t ready to write Walker off. No one had any illusions that repairing the badly mauled destroyer would be an easy task; it might even be impossible. But they had to try. They owed her that much.
As commander of all Allied forces, Captain Reddy had to make the decision, and he’d agonized over it, wondering if he was being entirely objective. He wanted his ship back, and everyone (particularly the Lemurians) wanted him to have her. She’d been instrumental in achieving every success they’d enjoyed, and the dilapidated old four stacker had become a powerful symbol to everyone involved in opposing the scourge of the Grik. The problem was, until they could get at her, there was no way to know if she could even be repaired, and Matt was realistic enough to know Brister was right: they had to have those new ships.
Spanky, Jim Ellis, and Sandra had been anxious too, but for a different reason. They knew they couldn’t influence his decision, but they also knew how important it was not only to the future of the man who had to make it, but to all of their futures as well. Matthew Reddy had lost . . . a piece of his soul . . . when his ship went down. Only when he knew she was safe and afloat and alive did they think he’d gain it back. And he had to gain it back. Spanky’s insistent argument that they needed a real dry dock—one way or the other—was finally sufficient to gain Matt’s support.
It was still necessary to flood down the Homes—twice as many as would have been required to simply refloat the ship—since they had to create a dry lane in which to work. It would take longer, but the wait would be worth it. The Lemurian city of Baalkpan would have a real, dedicated, honest-to-goodness dry dock, and the implications of that went far beyond simply pumping out and patching up a single battered, overage destroyer.
What Jenks saw was a lot of heavy, new-looking machinery being erected, and he recognized much of it in principle, as well as the strange variety of crude, open air, steam engines. Tarred canvas hoses were coiled in heaps and a pair of large cranes were under construction. Then his eyes rested on the unfamiliar, scarred, and dreary structures protruding from the water. He gasped.
“It has sunk!” he exclaimed. “Your iron-hulled steamer, your Walker, was sunk!”
“She was badly damaged in the battle,” Matt confirmed woodenly, “and barely managed to make it here. We’ll try to refloat her, but we’ve got no idea if it’s even possible. She might be damaged beyond repair.”
Jenks turned a sympathetic glance to Matt. He fully understood the trauma of losing a ship and wondered if that might explain a lot of Captain Reddy’s distance. Of course, he chided himself, not having known of the loss, he’d possibly been less than sensitive himself. “I didn’t know,” he managed. “Nobody knew.”
“That was our intention. You keep wondering if we’re a threat to you, but how are we to know you’re not a threat to us?” Matt shook his head. “I don’t think you could conquer us. No offense, but based on what we’ve learned from the princess and . . . Well, we’re pretty secure here now. We’ve stood against a more massive assault than I think you could ever mount. Our concern is, we already have an enemy and we have to strike as quickly as we can. As much as we’d like to be friends with your Empire, we can’t afford to be distracted right now. We have to go after the Grik with everything we have, and that would leave us vulnerable here. We’re not really even asking for a true military alliance, much as we’d like one. We just want you to leave us alone!”
“Releasing the princess into our care would go a long way toward assuring that,” Jenks said with a trace of sarcasm.
“Possibly, but she doesn’t want to be released, does she?” Sandra suddenly interjected with a passion that disconcerted Jenks. He’d been surprised she was even present. Different people had different customs, but he’d never met any culture that encouraged women to speak so boldly, or even allowed their presence in situations such as this. The rules were different for nobility of course, but the Americans didn’t have a nobility. . . . Did they? Perhaps they’d been influenced by the Lemurians. Lemurian females clearly enjoyed a status here the likes of which he’d never seen. Maybe the scarcity of American women gave them more power? No, he rejected that. He knew Miss Tucker held the rank of lieutenant and was their Minister of Medicine. She clearly had real status and felt no constraints in demonstrating it. Odd.
“I think she has more reason to fear for her safety aboard your ship than she does here,” Sandra continued. “You may not have noticed, but she’s something of a heroine to the people of this city. If they ever found out something happened to her while she was in your care, there probably would be war, and there wouldn’t be anything I or Matt or anyone else could do about it—even if we wanted to.”
She sighed, and Jenks saw the pain on her face. “None of us wants or needs such a stupid, wasteful war. There would be terrible losses on both sides, and no matter who eventually ‘won,’ both of us would ultimately lose in the end,” she said with certainty. “We don’t have time to let the Grik catch their breath, and we need every warrior we have to face them—just as I think you need all your troops and ships to avert threats of your own. To your east, perhaps?”
Her last punch was a good one, judging by Jenks’s expression, even if it was just a guess. Rebecca and O’Casey had described other humans east of the empire who had been a growing threat. They hadn’t known of any recent, open confrontations, but they’d been gone a long time and Jenks had certainly been jumpy about something from the start. Their revelations had practically pinpointed the location of the heart of the Empire as well.
“Perhaps you are right,” Jenks temporized, still overcoming his surprise. “Perhaps we both have more pressing concerns than fighting one another. But even if you are right about that, surely you can see why I personally chafe at this interminable delay? Honestly, how long must my squadron languish here while it might be needed elsewhere?”
Matt pointed to a small forest of masts clustered beyond the point, where the new fitting-out pier was. These were not just more captured Grik ships under repair. They were new ships, built and fitting out along the same lines as the first human/Lemurian frigates that had performed so well in the previous battles. This construction was different however. Structurally as stout and almost identical to their predecessors, these were steam powered with a central screw propeller. Matt disliked what he considered the Imperial’s dangerously exposed paddle wheels, and now that they knew the Grik had cannons, he’d insisted they not take any chances that a single lucky hit might put a ship out of action.
“Over there is one of the main reasons I invited you here today. The main reason.” He paused. “Why don’t you see for yourself?” he asked. “In just a few weeks, we’ll mount an expedition to assess the situation in Aryaal,
and possibly a few other places. Come with me. By the time we return, we’ll know whether or not we can push the Grik on our own terms, or if we’ll have to continue preparations for a more costly campaign. Either way, with that knowledge, I hope to be free to escort Her Highness home.”
Commander Walter Billingsly was writing furiously in his journal, quill scritching violently on the coarse paper and spattering little drips and blobs among the words. The writing style was a reflection of his personality: get to the point, regardless of the mess, and do it at a furious pace. Today, he was most furious to learn Commodore Jenks had been given a tour of the “apes” industrial center and he had not been officially informed, nor had he been allowed to send any “escorts” along. Jenks’s growing independent-mindedness regarding this entire fiasco was becoming increasingly tiresome. His hand stilled when he heard the sounds of the commodore being piped back aboard. Quickly, he capped the inkwell, wiped his quill on a stained handkerchief, and sanded his most recent passage. Closing the leather-bound book, he stood and straightened his overtight tunic and rounded the desk on his way to the door and the companionway beyond.
On deck, he moved to intercept the commodore as soon as the side party was dismissed.
“What is the meaning of this, Jenks?” he demanded quietly, but with an edge. One must always observe the proprieties of the fiction that the Navy actually controlled its ships.
“The meaning of what, Commander?” Jenks replied through clenched teeth. He was clearly angered by Billingsly’s tone, but also somewhat . . . distracted.
Billingsly straightened, glancing about. He had a lot of men on this ship, some known, others secret, but the vast majority were loyal Navy men. The charade must be maintained.
“Might I have a word with you, sir? In private?”
Jenks seemed to focus. “I suppose,” he muttered resignedly. Raising his voice, he addressed Lieutenant Grimsley. “Lieutenant, there will be an unscheduled boat alongside shortly, I shouldn’t wonder. They’ll request our coaling and victualing requirements for an extended period. Say, two months. Have a list ready when they arrive, if you please.”
Distant Thunders Page 14
