Most Lemurians, on the other hand, had always considered themselves well-off if they had enough to eat. Now there was plenty. The great seagoing Homes still brought in gri-kakka—for meat, primarily—and many sold their huge fish harvests on a daily basis. The great ships themselves were virtually independent of land and needed money only to replace things that broke or to make necessary repairs. As reserve navy ships, they had access to the repair yards for things like that. Hunters scoured the wilds of Borno for rhino pigs that never seemed to decrease in numbers, and some Lemurians had actually begun raising them and other wild beasts. The vast killing grounds beyond the fortifications had been planted with crops as well, initiating the first large-scale agricultural effort Lemurians had ever attempted. A lot of food went to the war effort, of course, but there were no shortages at home. Luxuries weren’t unknown to Lemurians, but they weren’t very important just now. That would change, eventually, Alan suspected, especially after the war was won. But in the meantime, there was little for anyone to spend their pay on, and no reason to complain that it wasn’t greater.
Beyond the waterfront machine shops, incongruously, was a long, open-sided tavern called the Busted Screw. Over time, it had become as much a fixture on the Baalkpan wharf as the teeming bazaars had been. The place was packed, as usual, with yard workers, sailors, and Marines, but few were there to drink. The Screw’s principal owner, a ’Cat called Pepper, charged more than the factory commissaries, but his chow was better. So was the entertainment, for ’Cats and men. The Screw still served beer and seep, but only to workers showing timecards proving they weren’t due back at work for more than six hours, and sailors and Marines had to show their liberty cards. The Screw’s personality changed considerably after dark, but food was still available for the night shifts.
Alan shook his head. Pepper was a character who’d been one of Earl Lanier’s cook’s mates on Walker, and Lanier remained an absent partner in the Screw. But Pepper had other business interests, not all entirely savory. His partnership with Isak Reuben and Gilbert Yeager for instance, to make the nasty, waxy Aryaalan tobacco fit to smoke, would probably get them all lynched if word got out that they stripped the leaves with a process involving the urine of the pygmy brontasarries indigenous to Borno. Alan arched his eyebrows thoughtfully. Then again, probably not. Too many people, ’Cats and humans, are already too addicted to their vile PIG-cigs to shut down supply. He’d have to have a word with Pepper about modifying his process, however.
Finally, they worked their way past another engine powering the first of many heavy cranes along a busy dock, and for the first time they had an unobstructed view of the old fitting-out pier and Baalkpan Bay beyond. The bay was packed with shipping of every description, some under sail and others coughing smoke from tall funnels. Small feluccas darted to and fro, carrying passengers or small cargo from one part of the harbor to another. But dominating the scene were three monstrous seagoing Homes. Two were moored some distance out, while the third had maneuvered past them with its great sweep oars. Its three massive “wings”—semirigid junklike sails rising up tripod masts, enclosing the pagodalike quarters of its people—were starting to draw the mid-afternoon breeze. Soon, the sweeps would be secured and the whole thousand-foot-long monster would move—slowly—under wind power alone.
“A stirring sight,” Forester said, loud enough to be heard over the engine noises and voices around them.
“Yeah,” Alan agreed, embarrassedly aware he’d tuned out Forester some time ago. No doubt the ambassador knew it and understood why. Alan was barely twenty-five and had an awful lot to wrap his head around. Just then he was remembering the first time he’d seen one of the immense, seagoing Homes. “Big Sal was one of those once,” he said a little sadly. “So was Arracca. Now they’re aircraft carriers. The biggest ones we have, along with Makky-Kat.” Maaka-Kakja was the Maa-ni-la-built carrier damaged at Malpelo while fighting the Doms. Though a purpose-built carrier, she had the same hull form and dimensions as a Home. “And of the four first-generation fleet carriers we built, New Dublin and Raan-Goon are finally heading east from Maa-ni-la to join Second Fleet and help High Admiral Jenks against the Doms. Madras is steaming west to join First Fleet.” He took a deep breath. “And Baalkpan Bay’s on the bottom of the sea,” he said, then added to their driver, “We’ll stop here.” When the carriage swayed to a halt, the four men and two ’Cat Marines stepped out.
“New Dublin?” Forester queried, surprised. That was the name of a once-rebellious city on the Imperial island of New Ireland. “Don’t misunderstand; I’m not ungrateful for your country’s generosity! And two carriers—and the escorts we’ve completed at Scapa Flow—will give me greater confidence we can hold what we’ve gained against the damnable Doms, but perhaps I don’t understand your naming conventions.”
“We name carriers for battles,” Alan told him.
“An’ destroyers for bloody heroes,” Stokes adjoined. “We didn’t in His Majesty’s navies, but it seems fittin’.”
“Ah.” Forester cleared his throat. “Indeed.”
The pier they stood on was the old one in name only, having been badly damaged once and rebuilt three times. The newer fitting-out piers and shipyards to the north were larger, but were still almost entirely devoted to building wooden hulls. Some were quite large and would become the latest—again, slightly smaller—class of Fleet Carriers, as well as cargo ships, oilers, and essentially everything they wanted Austraal to start making. Bigger, dedicated steam-powered auxiliaries would help with many things. They’d require smaller crews, carry heavier loads, and get them where they were needed faster. Only that would help get a handle on their supply problems. But while the Empire of the New Britain Isles was finally hitting its stride building screw-propeller, iron-armored wooden warships, the western Alliance had gone all in with steel-hull designs for combat vessels. And now that they knew how, and materials were available in larger quantities, they were quicker to make. Not only did they require less skilled labor, but it also wasn’t necessary to cut the wood, freight it in, trim it, and lay it up to dry—or dry it themselves, which, on the scale they were building, required a process nearly as extensive as making steel in the first place.
Three steel ships were currently fitting out, floating high in the water at the pier, and the skeletons of more were rising on the ways nearby. The closest two hulls looked just like Walker’s and those of the two other new destroyers that had already deployed. Unfortunately, one of those was already lost as well. And hulls were about all these were, as yet. The closest had been decked, and the foundations for the bridge structure and aft deckhouse stood incongruously square atop it, but the skylights over the engineering spaces gaped empty. Workers operated windlasses and heaved on taglines secured to a large, complexly shaped object suspended from a crane. The next ship seemed slightly farther along, and a couple of hundred yards down the pier was yet another similar, larger shape that looked almost complete. Two Lemurian naval officers practically ran to meet them, but Alan smiled and waved them away after returning their salutes. “As you were. We’re just here to gawk.”
“Ay, ay, Mister Chaar-maan,” one said, “but peese waatch you steppings.” He waved at the crane and the extremely heavy-looking iron . . . thing . . . hanging from it. “Is stuff sqwaash you all ever-where. Even in aar!”
“We’ll be careful,” Alan assured. “Don’t let us distract you.”
The ’Cats nodded skeptically and backed away, leaving the four men watching the object sway down toward the closest hull.
“That’s one of our reduction-gear boxes,” Alan told Forester proudly. “And you’ll be hard-pressed to imagine anything requiring more precision. Maybe a gun director or TDC. But reduction gears take a lot more abuse. They’re what transfer the rotation of the turbines to the screws.”
Forester shaded his eyes. “It seems a rather crude housing,” he objected. “And I thought the, ah, turbi
nes were the most difficult part of copying Walker’s power plant?”
“The geared turbine drive, Lord Forester,” Stokes stressed. “An’ the turbines themselves were tough enough, even with examples to look at. We had to make good nickel steel first—which we needed for proper automatic weapons and naval rifles, anyway—an’ then we had to relearn how to heat treat the stuff.” He grinned. “You’ve been watchin’ us go through those labor pains, and we’ve given you reports on everything we did, to share with the Empire. Suffice to say we made ’em. But you can’t use ’em as efficiently without reduction gears. Unlike reciprocatin’ engines, they get all their torque from their high speed.” He saw that Forester still looked unconvinced. “Don’t let that casin’ fool you. There’s nothin’ crude inside it.”
“They’re what took us so long to get the first new DDs out to the fleet,” Alan confirmed, then shook his head and held his hand up, thumb and forefinger almost touching. “Even with the rest of the first ships already built, we were that close to starting from scratch on their power plants, trying turbo electrics, or something like that. Some wanted to go direct drive and take the efficiency hit, or put reciprocating engines in ’em and settle for twenty knots. But Captain Reddy told us we might as well do it right. And he was right. We needed the technological kick in the ass making those things gave us. We’ve been building guns, engines, even torpedoes, and our tooling still wasn’t precise enough. We lost our best metallurgist, guy named Dave Elden, in the battle out there.” He pointed at the bay. “Fortunately, he’d already written down a lot of stuff. But our people still had to relearn it. And Courtney Bradford and Ben Mallory helped too,” he added. “Both were engineers in fields that use special metals—petroleum and aeronautics.” He shrugged. “But when it came to actually making the gears, we had an ace up our sleeve we didn’t even know about: a guy named Charlie Murphy.” Forester raised his eyebrows. “Another prisoner who survived Mizuki Maru—and the Japs,” Alan explained. “He’d been a machinist on the sub tender Canopus in Manila Bay. The old . . .” He stopped. Even Stokes had only recently learned the story of how, bombed out and listing, Canopus and her machinists fixed or made everything imaginable, not only for her subs sneaking in and out, but for anything else needed on Corregidor before it fell. And she did it all at night, setting smoke pots and pretending to be sunk and abandoned in shallow water during the day. “Anyway,” Letts said, “Murphy’s one hell of a machinist. Even so, he had to do a lot of hand turning and milling, constantly checking his work with calipers—all while teaching others to take the same care he did. He designed jigs . . .” He stopped again. “Long story.”
“I’d love to meet him,” Bolton Forester said.
Alan waved east. “He’s back in the Filpin Lands now, helping with other stuff.” He smiled. “Maybe you can borrow him in the Empire someday, but that guy’s never getting close to anything that’ll shoot him, stick him, or eat him, if I have anything to say about it.” He nodded back at the gearbox. “Building the first of those was like making giant watches.” He gave an exasperated snort. “And then we had to torture them to death! I don’t even want to think about how many units we shredded before we got the bugs worked out. But we’ve got the tooling now, for them and other stuff, and a whole shop dedicated to making one complete unit a week. Just like the ICE houses make nothing but the same engine they’re contracted to build, one after another.” He waved at the crane and chuckled. “Funny thing is, ordinarily, you’d install something like that before you even launched a ship, but we had so much trouble with the first ones—taking them out and putting them back so many times—the yard apes like it this way better. They’re even kind of superstitious about it.”
Bachman surprised them all by speaking, rather hesitantly. “But will that thing, designed for these”—he waved at the narrow hull the crane was lowering the gearbox toward—“work in a larger ship?”
Alan smiled. “Interesting you should ask, Lieutenant.” He nodded down the pier and began to walk. “Watch your ‘steppings,’ gentlemen.”
The second DD had the amidships deckhouse nearly finished and the aft searchlight tower erected. It also rode lower in the water, and Alan explained that was because all her machinery was in place. As on the first one, ’Cats romped all over it, pulling air hoses, driving rivets, and grinding rivet heads amid great yellow, sparkling arcs. Forester and Bachman appeared amazed by how fast the new ships were going together, and Forester even said as much.
“They built USS Ward—one of Walker’s sisters—in seventeen and a half days, at the Mare Island Navy Yard . . . back home,” Alan told them. “And it took less than three months from keel laying to commissioning. That was a big deal at the time,” he conceded, “and they weren’t even fighting monsters that’d eat them if they lost the war. They were going as fast as they could, though, to see what they could do. So are we, and our shipyard workforce, at least, is almost unlimited.” He frowned at Stokes. “Maybe too unlimited, at the expense of other projects. That probably sounds strange coming from me, but we’ll see.” He nodded back at the DDs and his frown faded. “Still, we haven’t already built a hundred of the damn things, to the point where the guys can slap ’em together in their sleep, and we’re still making stuff—to make stuff better. I’ll consider it just as big a deal if these’re ready to go in three more months.”
“That will still be quite a feat,” Forester agreed with a touch of envy, as they continued on. But then their eyes fell on the third ship secured to the pier and Forester barked a laugh.
“Your cruiser!” he said gleefully. “I haven’t seen her since the launch!”
“You weren’t in Sular that long!” Alan objected. He started to say that she could be seen from the Great Hall, but that hadn’t been true for quite a while. Only a small sliver of the bay, due west, was visible from there anymore. There was simply too much in the way now. “And we were on the bay together two weeks ago when we visited the ATC,” he said, remembering. “You didn’t even look this way?”
“No,” Forester confessed. “You may recall we were all a bit . . . preoccupied that day. And otherwise”—he held his hands out at his sides—“between one thing and another, I just haven’t been down to see her. My, she’s a lovely thing! And nearly complete!”
“Well, almost nearly,” Alan qualified. “There’s still a lot to do.”
To a casual observer, the new cruiser looked almost identical to USS Walker except it was bigger, with a higher freeboard even than the empty DD they’d first seen. But the pilothouse looked similar; there were four stacks and an amidships deckhouse, and a rather large aft deckhouse as well. A more careful look revealed the pilothouse was higher than Walker’s and rested atop another deck. Two gun mounts squatted in front of it instead of one, with pairs of muzzles protruding from splinter shields. The second mount was higher than the first, just forward of the pilothouse. Ordinary-looking DP 4″-50s stood on either beam atop the amidships deckhouse, and another pair stood in tubs behind the quadruple torpedo mounts flanking the aft two funnels. A tall crane with a searchlight platform on top jutted behind the fourth funnel. Two empty seaplane catapults dominated the space from there to the aft deckhouse, which was crowned by yet a third protected two-gun mount. Finally, a fifth DP 4″-50 poked up from the cramped fantail between a pair of depth-charge racks. Probably the most obvious difference between the cruiser and its inspiration, however, was a tall tripod mast forward where Walker’s foremast would’ve been, with what looked like a smaller version of the square-windowed pilothouse high in the air. Topping that was another pair of searchlights—and the obligatory crow’s nest near the top of the mast.
“Oh my,” Forester murmured, peering upward and imagining what it must be like in the small tub all alone, so high above the ship.
“You used the same, ah, reduction gears in her?” Bachman asked.
“The very same,” Stokes confirmed. “Only she has t
hree of ’em, an’ three turbines to drive her. Two outboard an’ one on the centerline. She can cruise on that one an’ save fuel. Gives her longer range.”
“I saw she had three screw propellers when she launched,” Forester remembered aloud. “Will that truly make that much difference? And with the same engines as the smaller ships, will she not be considerably slower?”
“We hope it’ll make a difference,” Alan hedged. “James Ellis sustained thirty-six knots on her trials, with engines built in Baalkpan. That’s faster than Walker ever was. Will her engines last as long as Walker’s have?” He held his hands up, then dropped them. “Who knows? We have identified a lot of inefficiencies we think we fixed on those.” He nodded toward the DDs under construction. “Either way, except for some nagging quality-control issues with tubes, I believe we’ve built better boilers than Walker or Mahan ever had.” He blinked fondly at the Lemurians working on the ship. “Those little guys can be awful imaginative when you give ’em a chance. They’re never satisfied, now they’ve got machines on their mind. They seem to constantly think, Well, if this works good, why don’t we do this too?” He arched an eyebrow. “Sometimes it works. Anyway, once Walker’s repaired, she should still work up to twenty-eight knots or so. I’d love to get her here and put brand-new boilers in her!” He glanced at the cruiser. “She’s got eight boilers spinning three turbines. Should make twenty-eight knots, at least.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Forester said, still somewhat skeptical, Alan thought. “But how can that work?”
Alan shrugged and began to recite the cruiser’s specifications, by way of explanation. “Her hull shape’s almost literally an up-scaled version of Walker’s. She’ll probably roll just as bad, but they’re damn clean lines. She’s four hundred and forty feet long, with a forty-five-foot beam. Fully loaded and ready to fight, she’ll displace around four thousand tons.” He nodded at Forester, anticipating his next question. “Yeah, three times as much as Walker, so it’ll take her longer to start and stop, but it won’t put much more strain on her engines to keep her at speed. At least that’s the theory. And with that centerline screw right in front of the rudder, she’ll turn even tighter. One of the limiting factors on Walker’s speed has always been her boilers more than her engines.” He rubbed his nose. “And age and hard use, of course.”
Devil's Due Page 5
