Distant Thunders

by Taylor Anderson

  A week before Walker sailed, they’d heard the news of Simms’s fate, when a lone felucca returned to Paga-Daan, Saan-Kakja’s brother’s home. The transmission had told how Simms was approached and destroyed without warning of any kind. Worse, a felucca under the command of Saan-Kakja’s brother himself was also destroyed. Other than a few of Simms’s crew who’d apparently rowed Captain Lelaa over to Ajax to confer with the hostage takers, there were no other survivors. Saan-Kakja was in a frenzy, understandably, but she was also ready to declare war on the Empire of the New Britain Isles. Matt had to send his personal assurance that the Empire itself might not be to blame, and they’d secured a strong alliance with at least one element of the Imperial Navy. He then had to beg the Paga-Daans to replenish Jenks’s ship when it arrived instead of firing on it. Things were spiraling out of control and, for Matt at least, the all-important war in the west had assumed an almost back-burner status. Meanwhile, he spent more time trying to smooth things over between his Allies than he did running his ship—all while pursuing the criminals who had taken Sandra, the princess, and at least three more of their people. Those hostages might now include Simms’s captain.

  Just as they turned west to cut across the Moro Gulf of the Celebes Sea, they received confirmation that Achilles had indeed reached Paga-Daan and had her fuel replenished. A subsequent transmission from Achilles—O’Casey had apparently finally figured out the device he’d been given—asked why the Paga-Daans had been so unfriendly. Matt had Palmer send a message that explained the new situation—and the Paga-Daans immediately replied that they had not been rude to Jenks. Matt finally summoned Bradford and put him in charge of the diplomatic situation and insisted that it had been his job in the first place.

  Walker steamed on, her repaired sonar blasting the depths before her. The sonar had been a major concern, but all the delicate equipment had been above water in the charthouse, so it hadn’t been as difficult to fix as originally feared. They’d installed a pair of the “Y” guns—thanks to Simms, they knew those worked—but it was good to be able to cross deep water at speed. With Bradford finally dealing with diplomacy, Matt was free to drill his crew and get his ship ready to fight.

  “Sound General Quarters,” Matt said for the third time that day, and cringed. Of all the things no one had thought to repair, the general alarm was becoming the most obvious. Everything else seemed to be working fine so far, but the alarm, always ill-sounding, now reverberated through the ship like a goose being choked underwater. Despite the comical sound, the crews immediately sprang to their stations. The automatic response had already returned to Walker’s veterans, and her new draft was quickly picking up the pace.

  Fred Reynolds was the talker (he had to have something to do when he wasn’t fussing with the plane) and he began to call out readiness reports from the various stations.

  “Engineering reports manned and ready,” he said. “Main battery is manned . . . and mostly ready. They’re still having a little trouble figuring out who stands where on that Jap gun—I mean, number four.” He quickly recited the rest of the litany. Matt noticed that the young ensign visibly paled when he reported for the plane-dump detail. Matt hoped it would never come to that, but if the plane ever caught fire or was otherwise interfering with the performance of the ship or crew in battle, they had to be ready to throw it over the side. He glanced aft and almost barked a laugh. Once again, he saw a pair of ’Cat mess attendants solemnly, carefully, carrying the Coke machine forward to the companionway under Earl Lanier’s fierce, watchful supervision. Apparently, Earl was determined that providing for the iconic machine’s safety should become as instinctive as any other preparation for battle. It had been severely wounded in action before, and after Earl lovingly and painstakingly restored it to health, he wasn’t going to risk it again.

  “Lookouts, machine guns, and damage control, all manned and ready. All stations manned and ready, Captain!” Reynolds finally reported.

  “Very well,” Matt said, controlling his voice and looking at his watch with a dissatisfied frown. The time had actually been pretty good, but he had to maintain appearances. “Secure from General Quarters. Continue steaming as before but maintain condition three. I want a few fingers close to a few triggers. There are sea monsters out there, after all.”

  “Aye-aye, Skipper. Secure from General Quarters and maintain condition three.”

  In the short bustle that followed, while the crew secured their helmets and other gear, and men and ’Cats slid down the ladder from the fire-control platform above the wheelhouse, Courtney Bradford appeared on the bridge. “How invigorating!” he wheezed after the effort of climbing the steps aft. “The old girl seems as good as new and ready for a scrap! It does my heart a world of good, I must say. It feels almost like old times!”

  Matt turned to look at Bradford. “You weren’t here for the old times, back before the war. We had some damn good men and we’ve lost an awful lot of them since, but the few who remain, from Walker and Mahan, and a few from S-19, have become something a little more than just damn good men. With them, and their Lemurian shipmates, this old can probably has as good a crew as any four stacker ever had!”

  “Quite,” Courtney agreed. “I have always noted how, in the various navies I’ve grown familiar with, each crew contains all the wildly different varieties of specialized skills to operate and maintain their ship at sea and on far-flung deployments. Oddly, however, I’ve also seen how the men who possess those skills set themselves apart from one another as distinctly as, well, different races sometimes do. Aboard here, all those different skills have become wonderfully diffused through necessity. Your crew has become much better educated than is the norm, Captain Reddy, and they have accomplished that feat largely on their own.”

  “You’re right, but they’ve had a lot of help,” Matt said. “These ’Cats! They’re smart as a whip, but teaching them stuff has helped all the fellas. I’ve often heard it said that teaching makes a smart man wise. I’m not sure that’s true in a classroom, but out here?” He shrugged. “It sure shows you what you don’t know, and in our situation, you’d better find an answer. Chances are, somebody has one. That’s what’s caused your diffusion of skills.” He waved his hand. “There’ll always be rivalries. The ‘snipes’ and ‘apes’ wouldn’t have it any other way, but that’s good for morale. The thing is, after all we’ve been through and what this crew went through to get this ship back in action, there’s probably not a deck ape aboard who couldn’t lend a competent hand in the firerooms if it came to that. And vice versa. They might gripe, but they could do it and they would.”

  “Speak for yourself, Skipper,” said Chief Gray, joining the pair. “Spanky’s still mad that I missed most of the slop work. Says I’m banned from the engineering spaces! Hell, I wouldn’t go down there to piss on him if he caught fire!”

  “You see?” Matt said, laughing. “Boats, you’re the exception that proves the rule!” He shook his head. “What does that mean, anyway? What a stupid thing to say.”

  “Indeed,” Bradford agreed, lowering his voice. He glanced around as if checking to see who was in earshot. There weren’t many secrets aboard Walker, not anymore, but Bradford had learned that his theories and observations were sometimes prone to . . . upset sensitive ears. Some of those sensitive ears were already somewhat agitated. Everyone knew Walker was steaming inexorably east and there was a very good chance she’d ultimately pass into waters no Lemurian had ever been. The fact that all the humans and a fair number of the Lemurian old hands seemed so unconcerned kept the edge off among the more strictly pious or superstitious. In this case, however, Bradford himself had become suddenly and surprisingly sensitive to the imperative that they minimize stressful contemplations among certain elements of the crew.

  Apparently assured there were no panicky types present, he proceeded. “I have in fact been giving that a great deal of thought. As you know, I’ve been overwhelmed with stimuli, overwhelmed, sir! This world is a cor
nucopia of delights for a man of my interests. Forgive me if, on occasion, I’ve been diverted from some fairly obvious conclusions that would’ve ordinarily struck me with the greatest importance! It’s the sheer volume of wonders that’s crippled me and I’m but one man. . . .” He paused. “I do hope we may rescue young Mr. Cook. He’s been such a great help. . . .”

  “Courtney?” Matt prodded.

  “Of course. Where was I? Oh, yes. A mere trivial example of my preoccupation is my failure to extrapolate beyond a few observations I made when we first came to this world. Surely you remember when Miss Tucker and I dissected the creature we killed on Bali?”

  The day Marvaney died. “Yeah, I remember,” Matt said.

  “Well, you may recall that Miss Tucker and I disagreed about the physiology of the beast? I said it was more like a bird, with its furry feathers and hollow bones, et cetera, and she said its jaws made it a lizard as far as she was concerned—oh, please don’t take this as criticism of the dear woman—but, well, I was right, you see. I admonished her to judge them more by what they were like and less by what they looked like . . . and I promptly fell into the same trap myself. We bandied the term ‘lizard’ about for so long, I failed to pursue my original course of study. We were a bit busy at the time, as you’ll recall.

  “In any event, it was the boy Abel who brought it back to my mind; he was quite fascinated with dinosaurs before his unpleasant experiences turned him slightly against them. But the point is we, the scientific community of which I consider myself a part, have always assumed dinosaurs were cold-blooded reptiles! Monstrous beasts, plodding along, lying in the sun like lizards on a rock, but we were wrong! If the fauna of this world is truly descended from the same fauna as our own, there would be a lot of egg on a lot of faces at the Royal Society, if I could ever report!”

  “Well . . . that’s amazing, Courtney,” Matt said dryly, “but what’s your point? I’m afraid ‘lizards’ has pretty much stuck as slang for ‘Grik.’ I doubt you’re going to get folks to start calling ’em ‘birds’ at this point. Be happy with your win over ‘Lemurians.’ ”

  “No! That’s not what I’m saying at all!”

  “Then for God’s sake, for once in your life, say what you mean!” hissed Gray, exasperated. Matt looked at the chief and raised his hand, but couldn’t help agreeing with him.

  “I’m trying to! Aren’t you listening at all?” Bradford asked forcefully, and Gray rolled his eyes. “The thing is, all my various preoccupations pushed some rather more important thoughts from my head. One such was retrieved by your ridiculous comment that the ‘exception proves the rule.’ I know you don’t believe that,” he hastened to add, “and neither do I. That brings us to some rather disturbing thoughts I’ve had regarding our arrival on this world. We already know we must have been given, or been the victims of, some exception to the rules we knew, because, well, here we are.”

  “Clearly,” Matt said.

  “We also now know that exception wasn’t necessarily an exception at all.”

  “Shit, Mr. Bradford—’scuse me, Skipper—but just spit it out. I’m getting an ‘exceptional’ headache trying to figure you out!” Gray whispered, but Matt shushed him. He thought he knew where Bradford was going.

  “Very well,” Courtney continued, a little stiffly. “Jenks’s ancestors came through a . . . phenomenon much like the one we did. They call it the Passage, and it occurred in relatively close geographic proximity to our Squall. We also agree there may have been other similar such episodes over the centuries. Maybe it happens quite often, in fact, but the transportees are otherwise in smaller, more vulnerable ships with smaller crews, who have no means of protecting themselves in this more hostile world. They either don’t survive the event, or are lost before locals like the Lemurians discover them and give them aid. The mysterious fate of the crew of the Tjilatjap transport, Santa Catalina, and even the original crew of our own lamented PBY would seem to support that theory. As noted, a few men in a fishing boat would have poor prospects of survival.

  “We still don’t know what all else might have come through our Squall with us. Four ships now, counting the transport, plus a submarine and an airplane—that we know of. Now we learn of this Dominion that controls a portion of the Americas. Princess Rebecca is a dear child, but her history is not up to that of Jenks or Mr. O’Casey. They told me that this Dominion was founded by some bizarre combination of survivors from an ‘Acapulco’ or ‘Manila’ galleon and remnants of an even older, possibly pre-Columbian American tribe. I won’t go into the details of that twisted union at present, but it was the Acapulco galleon that rang the first warning bell.”

  “What are you talkin’ about?” Gray asked. “What’s a ‘Aca-poolco galleon’?”

  “What I’m talking about is that whatever phenomenon transported us to this world may not be nearly as unique as we first believed. Whatever conditions arise to trigger it might—might, I say—also ensure that it is a one-way transfer. I don’t begin to understand the mechanics of it yet, but that at least seems certain, since we’ve never encountered any lumbering Lemurian Homes or mountain fish on our world.” He paused. “Or maybe that is the key!”

  Captain Reddy and Chief Gray looked at each other. Evidently, Courtney was on one of his stream-of-consciousness rolls, and they might as well let it run its course.

  “What key?” Matt prodded.

  “Metal! As far as we know, only recently—relatively speaking—has any quantity of metal been abroad on the oceans of this world! Perhaps large quantities of iron contribute some form of electromagnetic aspect to the phenomenon—or the superior conductivity of the bronze guns, copper fittings . . . precious nonferrous metals of our predecessors. . . . Oh, dear me, Captain, an entirely new avenue of contemplation has opened before me!”

  “Well, let’s finish our little trip down the avenue you were already on, for now,” Gray almost pleaded. “What’s Aca-poolco got to do with anything?”

  “Oh, dear, I do apologize! Let’s see, yes. Only that our little Squall was not unique. Probably not even regionally unique! There might well be other human civilizations beyond those we know of scattered about this hostile world. Perhaps many more. Now you understand, of course!”

  Finally Matt understood. Bradford was right. The question had been sitting there in front of all of them, but they’d just been too busy to notice it and ask. The possible answer chilled him in spite of the warm day. “Acapulco galleons were Spanish treasure ships, Boats,” he explained. “They sailed once a year or so to Acapulco from the Spanish Philippines loaded with loot. We studied Commodore Anson’s circumnavigation at the Academy. He captured one of the things with a fifty-gun ship—Centurion, I think it was—and the loot set most of his crew up for life. At least, that’s the story.”

  “So? I mean, it’s a neat story and all, but what good is a bunch of Spanish treasure to us?” Gray still didn’t get it.

  “None,” Matt said. “None I can think of now, anyway.” He grinned, but then his expression turned serious again. “The problem is, no Acapulco galleon would have ever sailed into the Java Sea. If that’s indeed what it was, that means whatever happened to us could’ve happened in other places and not just other times, all over the world. Might happen again. To think otherwise would be expecting an exception to these screwy new rules.”

  “Indeed,” Bradford said again. “I would think it’s inevitable. Something, some force, connects this world with ours. In the past, our world’s oceans were vast, mostly empty places, yet there have been many unexplained disappearances there. Perhaps some of those unfortunates wound up here as well. But right now, on our earth, a global war is under way and the seas are packed with many thousands of modern, quite seaworthy vessels. If my theory is correct, I fear it’s just a matter of time before we meet another lost traveler like ourselves, and it could happen anytime, anywhere.”

  For a long moment there was silence on the bridge. Chief Quartermaster’s Mate Norman Kutas at th
e wheel, who’d clearly heard at least the gist of the conversation, finally broke it. “Well, if we do run into somebody else,” he said, “I hope to God they’re on our side. We got enough folks mad at us as it is.”

  Glaring at Kutas, Bradford lowered his voice still further. “There is yet another quite bizarre possibility,” he said.

  “Oh, no,” moaned the Bosun.

  Bradford ignored him. “Just as we’ve discovered beyond any serious possible debate that there are two earths, as it were, how can we assume there are not many, many more?”

  Walker put in briefly at Paga-Daan, long enough only for Matt to go ashore and express his sympathies and for his ship to fill her bunkers from one of the tankers moored there. There were two so far and more on the way. Most would probably take their time, creeping along the archipelago and down the Mindanao coast. Matt couldn’t blame their captains, but he wanted to make sure the commanders and crews of the ships already there, that had taken the more dangerous route across the Celebes Sea, were recognized. Bunkers full, Walker steamed away before sunset, haze blurring the tops of three funnels.

  Churning south-southeast, Matt now had a choice to make. He could continue in Jenks’s wake until he caught the Imperial within two or three days at most, or he could lose another day and swing south to Talaud. Irvin Laumer and his crew had been out of touch since the loss of Simms, and Talaud was a dangerous place. Once he caught up with Jenks he’d be slowed down, regardless, and they had to be closing the gap on Billingsly. Achilles was bigger and faster than Ajax and she’d been replenished periodically, allowing her to steam ahead in the face of contrary or indifferent winds. But where could Ajax refuel? She might have stopped and cut trees for her boiler on any number of islands, but that would have slowed her even more. Matt doubted Billingsly would have done so initially, but chances were the man considered himself safe from pursuit by now. He knew the Alliance had nothing beyond the Philippines, and Simms and the feluccas were the last gauntlet he had to pass. He would be in for a surprise.