“You take over the detail,” he ordered, “and you better do it right. You’ve sat on your ass an’ watched it done often enough. Make yourself useful for a change. Ain’t no full-time Marines on this ship, with their dainty gloves an’ such! Clap onto that hawser when they shift it back—I mean the ‘hose,’ damn it! And pretend there’s a storm comin’ and we’re slap out of fuel!” He rounded on the others. “If there’s any more mistakes, they better come from the pilothouse, an’ not my damn division!”
Matt smiled faintly as he watched the little drama, thankful that amid all the change they’d endured in the past couple of years, Chief Gray was always there to provide a sense of continuity.
“Not going so well?” asked Spanky, rather delicately, over his shoulder.
“No, no, it’s fine. Just a few bugs. Mr. Rosen?” he said, turning to Chief Quartermaster “Paddy” Rosen. “Take the helm, if you please. Mr. Herring, you still have the conn.”
“Aye, aye, sir. I still have the conn!” Herring announced a little self-consciously. Matt nodded reassuringly at him, and caught himself liking Herring at last. He was glad the pedantic intelligence officer was genuinely doing his very best to learn the art of shiphandling. He hoped the new attitude would help him become a better, more levelheaded analyst as well. Rosen stepped beside the foam-sweaty ’Cat at the big brass wheel. “I relieve you, sir.”
“I staand veery relieved!” gasped the ’Cat, and Matt had to stifle a grin. Looking up, he watched as one of Big Sal’s seaplane-lifting booms raised the heavy hawser back out of the sea. The hawser was standing in for a fueling hose for this drill. Slowly, carefully, the boom came down, leaving the end of the hawser dangling just in front of the bridge. Chief Gray roared again, and taglines brought the heavy cable near where a fueling hose would have to be in order to transfer oil into the ship’s bunkers. Miraculously, this time, they managed to maintain station for almost eleven minutes. Miles held the cable end coiled on the deck while others on both ships worked to keep the proper tension on the “hose” and boom as Walker capered alongside the relatively motionless Salissa.
Suddenly, Walker’s bow took another unexpected plunge, and seawater coursed across the fo’c’sle, knocking a couple of ’Cats to the deck. Miles was almost yanked off the ship before releasing the cable, and he watched it whip into the sky. Then he shot the Bosun what might’ve been a resentful smirk before he shrugged.
“Well,” Matt said, looking at his watch in disappointment. “Eleven minutes. That’s something. Secure from underway fueling. Mr. Palmer, signal Big Sal and thank Admiral Keje for his cooperation. Tell him we’re finished for now, and we’ll resume our screening pattern.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper,” replied Lieutenant Ed Palmer, moving behind the Morse lamp as Matt stepped back into the pilothouse. A light flashed on Salissa, and the young signals officer grimaced. “Admiral Keje says ‘anytime,’ and ‘we must all do what we can to avoid the tedium of this voyage,’ and his people ‘enjoy fishing for Walker very much!’ His words, sir.”
“Oh crap,” Spanky grumbled. “That’s just mean. Look, sir, you know how I like my—I mean Tabby’s—bunkers: fat an’ happy. But we already proved we can replenish when the sea’s not up so high. And we’ve been doing it alongside Big Sal when she’s stationary for two damn years! Why’ve we gotta keep humiliating ourselves? Hell, nobody back home had even really perfected a stunt like this when we left!”
“No, but they’d been working on it for twenty years because it’s a valuable capability.” Matt frowned. “And maybe I just don’t like the idea of being a sitting duck. We’re going an awful long way from home again, and nobody we know has even been there to tell us what to expect this time—except one lost Jap. Besides”—Matt shrugged—“like Keje said, it passes the time.”
“Keje asks if you’ll be over to dine with him—and your, uh, ‘mate’—this evening,” Palmer interjected.
“It’s my pleasure, as always,” Matt replied in a softer tone. “Now,” he said, more businesslike, “resume standard screening pattern, if you please, Mr. Herring. You have the deck and the conn. Mr. McFarlane and I will be in the wardroom.”
“I have the deck and the conn,” Herring declared. “Standard screening pattern, aye.”
Matt nodded and turned toward the stairs at the back of the bridge.
“I know what you’re really worried about,” Spanky gruffed quietly, conspiratorially, following him down the metal steps, and then down the companionway leading between the officers’ staterooms toward the wardroom.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Matt grumbled. As always, the smells assailing them as soon as they left the open air were overwhelming. Sour sweat and mildew were all-pervading, but so were other things like hot linoleum, fuel oil, and those vague but distinct odors of brass, iron, paint, and rust. They were used to the smells, of course, but that didn’t mean they never noticed them. Worst of all perhaps, as they passed through the embroidered curtain into the wardroom, was the stench emanating from the officers’ coffeepot as they drew near.
“Sure you do,” McFarlane insisted.
Instead of replying, Matt, his expression grim, raised the lid on the pot and looked inside. “My God. I know it’s against tradition to wash these things and all, but it’s not like Juan has real coffee to ruin. Juan!” he shouted, being uncharacteristically harsh. A few moments later, Juan Marcos, the peg-legged, self-appointed chief steward for the commander in chief of all Allied forces, stumped into the compartment from the chief’s quarters forward, his small, Filipino face aggrieved.
“Cap-tan?”
Matt calmed himself and closed the lid. “Could you make some more coffee, Juan . . . and maybe slosh a little of the foam out of this thing first?”
“Of course, Cap-tan,” Juan said, a little stiffly, taken aback. Juan treated Matt and all the officers very well, and nobody ever criticized him but the fat cook, Earl Lanier. But suddenly, Matt’s tone and expression implied reproach. Juan snatched the pot and stumped out of the wardroom with remarkable poise and agility, considering his condition and the continued pitching of the ship.
“Kind of hard on the little guy, weren’t you, Skipper?” Spanky said. “Yeah,” he decided. “You’re worried about that pigboat Silva saw!”
“I’m not worried about something that’s probably not even out there,” Matt denied.
“Who says it isn’t? Why can’t there be another pigboat somewhere on this creepy world? Hell, we used to have one!”
Matt took a breath, glad Laumer was on Big Sal. He was still taking the loss of his sub-turned-torpedo-boat hard. “Then I guess what I’m saying is, we don’t know what it was—if it was anything. And Silva didn’t see it. Frankly, weird as it sounds, I’d feel better if he had. Gunny Horn seems reliable enough, but when has he ever seen a periscope? Silva’s likely right. It was probably some kind of fin. All those idiots were mixed up with a bunch of weird fish at the time. Who knows what kind of fin might’ve been sticking up?”
“Courtney didn’t think it was a fin,” Spanky reminded.
“He didn’t see it.”
“No, but he said there wasn’t anything around that had a fin any ‘thinking being,’ as he said, could possibly mistake for a periscope.”
“So, he’s insulting Horn or Silva—not that either would care. But whose side is he on?” Matt demanded, frustrated. He’d been furious when he heard about the latest “Silva Stunt,” and it had put him in a bad position. Dennis Silva had just recently out-heroed himself and deserved all their gratitude—but then he turned around and disobeyed a long-standing, direct order; something Matt had been fairly sure Silva wouldn’t ever do again. That Lanier was the instigator didn’t even signify. He was a lost cause; only marginally useful—any of his mess attendants could take over as cook—and only barely tolerable anymore. But Matt had grown to rely on Silva far more than he�
��d realized, and Courtney’s reckless, irresponsible participation had been icing on the cake. That was why Courtney was on Big Sal right now instead of Walker: he was on probation. Not that such a banishment was really a punishment; Big Sal was much more comfortable, and there was a great deal more for Courtney to do aboard her. But the implied threat was that he had better shape up if he wanted to join Walker again when something “interesting” was in the works.
Matt still had to figure out what punishment he’d inflict on the other miscreants—right at a time when they’d embarked on perhaps their most audacious, precarious, and with Adar along, potentially ambiguous operation of the war! For obvious reasons, he had a lot on his mind. His, and the other ships in the task force were in reasonably good shape, but they’d been handled roughly very recently. He had every confidence in Chack-Sab-At, and was sure his Raider Brigade and the PT “mosquito fleet” would be ready to go when they reached Diego Garcia, but he wasn’t sure exactly what else he’d find when they got there. “Lemurian” aborigines! Representatives of an extremely strange power also opposing the Grik! A Japanese refugee from Amagi, who claimed actual personal knowledge of Grik Madagascar! How would all that come together?
Other things nagged at him. He visited Sandra aboard Big Sal nearly every day, coincidentally crossing to confer with Adar, Keje, and the staff of First Fleet South, but shortly after leaving Madras, Sandra had grown suddenly cryptic, even distant to a degree. That confused and hurt him. In addition, Adar increasingly used the terms “take” and “liberate” instead of “raid” in connection to their mission to the prehistoric birthplace of his people, and everyone around him, even Keje, seemed affected by his rhetoric. Then, of course, besides the recent episode, Courtney Bradford was acting even more strangely than usual, becoming short-tempered and rebellious as he apparently wrestled with what he’d begun calling his own “unified theory of here.” Matt took a long breath. And there’s this “periscope fin” to consider.
He’d planned this expedition, worked for it, done everything he could to convince everyone it was right, and he still believed that. But he felt increasingly hemmed in by alterations, unexpected developments, and what appeared to be the changing aims of all the other participants. He was used to improvisation, and was honest enough to realize that his ability to adapt to situations, either strategically or in a slugging match, had certainly saved his ship many times. It had maybe even saved the whole war. But for the first time in longer than he could remember, he was beginning to feel uncertain, even overwhelmed. There was too much happening all at once, and he had far too little control. Worse, right when these feelings began to mount, when he most needed Bradford’s advice, Adar’s steady purpose, Sandra’s quiet strength and love—and even Silva’s loyalty, damn it!—he sensed a growing gulf between himself and all those things.
“Sounds like Courtney’s either saying Horn’s an idiot for claiming a periscope, or Silva is for not believing him,” Spanky mused, thankfully oblivious to Matt’s thoughts.
“Yeah,” Matt agreed, looking at his watch. It was 1649 hours. “I think it’s time we asked him which it is. That, and a lot of things.”
“When? Tonight when you go over to Big Sal?”
Matt thought it over, then shook his head. “No. Not in any big way, anyhow.” He smiled. “We’ll be at Diego in five or six days if the weather holds. Let’s see just what the hell is going on with our new friends from this ‘Republic of Real People’ before we pin him down. That may be the last card he needs before he lays his hand on the table.”
The hard-used, once-drowned general alarm squawked horribly through the overhead speaker, and Matt and Spanky looked at each other.
* * *
“Cap-i-taan on the bridge!” trilled the diminutive ’Cat talker named Min-Sakir, or “Minnie.” Matt reflected again that the little Lemurian really did sound like Minnie Mouse.
“As you were,” he said. “Report, Mr. Herring.”
“Jarrik-Fas on USS Tassat has a mountain fish contact.”
“Mountain fish,” “island fish,” or just simply “Leviathans” as the Imperials called them, were utterly tremendous beasts. They were many times the size of a blue whale, but they were similar in the sense that they were air breathers and filter feeders—of a sort. Those were about the only similarities, however, if one discounted the obvious fact that they swam in the sea. Entirely unlike blue whales, mountain fish were aggressively territorial, at least part of the time. They did apparently migrate to breed—during which time they were as passive as monstrous lambs, according to new information from Admiral Jenks in the East—but little more about their nature was known. And their method of “filter feeding” wasn’t passive at all, gobbling anything that would fit in their mouths as they cruised along, including plesiosaurs and the humongous sharks in these waters. They could even be dangerous to vessels the size of Big Sal.
Matt’s brows rose. “Really.” Usually, the monstrous fish avoided the punishing sound pulses used by the screening ships and rarely hung around long enough to be detected. “Where’s Tassat?”
“Dead ahead, Captain,” Herring said. “Two two zero degrees. I took the liberty of steering toward her.”
“Very well.” Walker was the fastest ship in the fleet, maybe in the world, and her job when it came to mountain fish encounters was to sprint toward whichever ship detected one, just in case it didn’t go away. “All ahead full. Have Mr. Fairchild commence underwater search.”
“Ay, ay!” called Minnie. Every steam-powered DD in the West had very crude sonar now, but Walker’s set, primitive as it was by modern standards on the world she left, was at least capable of providing the general position of an underwater target. The accuracy of that position plummeted in direct proportion to her speed, however; the faster she went, the worse the return. This was problematic against submarines, of course, but all she had to do was get near a mountain fish. The huge creatures clearly used some kind of natural sonar themselves, and were extremely sensitive to the electronic lashing Walker could deliver at close range. They almost always fled.
Walker quickly built speed, and the blower behind the bridge roared louder, forcing more air into her fiery boilers to burn the sudden gush of additional fuel oil. The fuel flared against the water tubes to generate more, quicker steam, to spin up the lovingly maintained Parsons geared turbines in the ship’s two engine rooms. Twin shafts turned faster, and the screws churned the sea beneath the propeller guards. Matt took a step to the left and glanced aft, past the charthouse, and saw hardly a puff of extra smoke haze the top of two of the ship’s four funnels. Lieutenant Tab-At, or “Tabby” as everyone called her, had become a fine engineering officer. Of course she had the aid of Chief Isak Reuben, one of the original fireroom Mice, and no doubt he was watching the burner batters like a hawk . . . or some other, stranger creature, Matt reflected. He turned back forward to watch the sea sluice up past the fo’c’sle in ragged gouts of spray.
Ahead, just over a mile now, was USS Tassat. Tassat was a fine-looking ship, practically streaking along with her sails taut, and white spray cascading back from her sleek black hull. She was one of their second-generation square rig, screw steamers of the Haakar-Faask Class. Displacing 1,600 tons—heavier than Walker herself—she was all wood except for blisters of armor plate to provide some protection for her engineering spaces. Even with the add-on weight of the armor, she could make fifteen knots on steam alone—somewhat more when all sails were set and she had her favorite wind. She still carried the older thirty-two-pounder guns, but had twenty of them, along with her Y guns and depth charges. Her captain, Jarrik-Fas, was Keje’s cousin, and Matt had known him almost as long as any Lemurian. He and many of his 226 officers and enlisted crew had come from Salissa herself. Matt smiled when he noted only the merest wisp of smoke from Tassat’s single tall funnel just forward of the mainmast.
“Tell Captain Jarrik to ease off on the gas,
” Matt instructed his talker. “We’ll be up with him soon enough. If his contact wants to be stubborn, no sense making it mad all by himself. We’ll chase it off together.”
“Sound room has the con-taact,” Minnie reported. “Con-taact bearing two four seero!”
“Very well. Inform Tassat. Right standard rudder, Mr. Rosen. Bring us to two four zero.”
“Two four zero, aye.”
Tassat altered course and slowed slightly while Walker caught up; then both ships proceeded toward the contact in line abreast, about six hundred yards apart, at twelve knots.
“Sound room has firm contact,” Minnie announced. “Faar-chyd reports taargit course two seero seero now, bearing two two seero!”
“Range?” Matt demanded.
“Eight hundred.”
“It’s not running away,” Herring observed, a trace of tension in his voice. He’d never seen a mountain fish up close before, and didn’t really want to.
“No,” Matt agreed. “But it’s not coming at us either.” He looked at Spanky. “We can’t let it just hang around out here, though. We’re not far off the path the bulk of the task force will take, and it’s sort of frustrating when you get that many ships to alter course around one of the damn things, and then it just swims back in front of ’em again.” He stared out the pilothouse windows, then continued for Herring’s benefit. “Normally, we prefer to leave the big boys alone if they leave us alone. They can be . . . a handful when they get annoyed.” He scratched his nose. “But this one’s being unusually persistent.”
Deadly Shores Page 13
