Iron Gray Sea d-7

by Taylor Anderson

  Courtney leaned across the desk and patted a small hand. “You ask a great deal, Your Majesty. Not of Sister Audry, because I think she would be more than willing to come. But you may be asking the impossible of her and of your own people in terms of result. It might even be difficult just to keep her safe, you know.” He paused. “But I will ask her with you. She doesn’t like me much,” he admitted, “but in that, as in all things, she is honest. You can trust her advice regarding the people-and prisoners-on New Ireland.” He turned to the others. “Now, gentlemen, if you please, why don’t you leave us for a time? Her Majesty and I have sensitive, private matters to discuss.”

  Bates paused, then nodded. He knew Rebecca would feel constrained around him. He was no longer just her protector, but her factor now as well.

  “Aye, Mr. Bradford,” he said softly. “Come, Lieutenant Ruik, yers an’ Her Majesty’s Marines have arrests to make.”

  Even as the library door closed, Courtney Bradford finally moved around the desk to hold the small girl who, now that they were alone once more, began to tremble beneath the crushing weight of grief and Empire.

  A while later, perhaps a long while-Courtney’s watch had finally been stilled by the terrible blast-he stepped quietly out on the wide veranda and sat heavily in a chair. He was in a dark humor, and placed what he hoped was a sympathetic decanter of brandy on the small table nearby. Setting a glass beside it, he deliberately, almost masochistically-given his noble efforts in recent months-poured it to the very top. The night was pleasant enough, but his spirits were very low, and he stared at the stars and yearned for his long-lost pipe. Suddenly, to his surprise, a common cat rubbed up against his leg.

  Courtney had never been fond of domestic cats-few Australians were-and perhaps the fact they’d been great favorites of his unlamented wife had influenced him as well. But strangely, right then the little creature did provide some small solace. If nothing else, it distracted him just a bit from his grief and worry while he contemplated its desperate attempts to win his affection. Only two cats were known to have been aboard the “passage” ships, yet they’d quite infested the New Britain Isles, and many other places within the Empire that man had touched. They came in all sizes and colors, and it remained difficult for Courtney to believe they all sprang from only two specimens. At the same time, for all their numbers and variety, only two basic types seemed to have endured: those that were utterly feral and those that did not wish to be. The former were a nuisance that had done great harm to the ecology, just as they had in Australia, but the latter could be nearly as annoying. The people of the Empire were not particularly tolerant of any of them, as a rule. There were exceptions.

  At the time, a clowder of cats had chosen the space beneath Government House porch for shelter to rear their young. They were endured because they kept the rodents and insects around the house to a minimum, and because Her Majesty was somewhat fond of them. Eternal warfare raged between the cats and Petey, who, though often wounded in battle, kept their numbers at bay. Rebecca scolded Petey for his depredations, but seemed to have a fatalistic tolerance beyond her years for his lamentable but quite understandable behavior.

  I wonder, Courtney thought, if all her hardships and adventures, all the suffering she’s seen and endured, has contributed to that. Certainly she’s holding up better than I would have imagined. He took a gulp of brandy. Better than I am, in some respects. She’s as strong as Saan-Kakja and the Lady Sandra, as she calls her, as determined as Captain Reddy-and doubtless her long association with and strange affection for Dennis Silva has helped her as well. He sighed. She will ruthlessly move forward to quell this challenge and punish these atrocities in ways she may one day regret.

  The cat, a kitten, really, continued rubbing against him, and seemed to be gauging the possibility of achieving his lap.

  Sergeant Koratin suddenly sat in a chair opposite him, and Courtney blinked, stirring from his dark thoughts. “There you are, Sergeant,” he said. “I wondered what became of you.”

  “I have been here,” Koratin replied.

  “Hmm.”

  “Sister Audry will come?” Koratin asked.

  “I presume so. How did you know?”

  “I guessed. She will be needed here, and once the treaties are ratified, which is a certainty now, you will no longer be.”

  Courtney began to bristle, but Koratin was right. He’d come as an ambassador, but he’d largely become the face of the western allies here. Governor-Empress Rebecca would sort out the current mess, he was sure-one way or another-but she had to be seen as doing it herself. It wouldn’t do at all for her confused and frightened people to think she was weak or that she was being propped up by foreigners, no matter how popular those foreigners might be. Bates would help, of course, but as Rebecca’s prime factor and possible guardian, he’d be expected to. Ultimately, the reorganization and re-creation of the Imperial government must have an Imperial face. Still, Courtney was reluctant to leave the Governor-Empress.

  “You are wasted here, Your Excellency,” Koratin persisted more softly, “and you have other work to do. The new Governor-Empress will need soldiers to advise her now. She will need Sister Audry to counsel her as only she can do, and help her with the… spiritual dilemmas. And…” Koratin paused, then continued almost regretfully, “she will need such as I, who has trodden the rotten decks of treachery before. I will serve her however she will let me, and I will protect both her and Sister Audry with my life. They will need protection.”

  “I’m sure Her Majesty will have more protection than she can bear,” Courtney predicted, “but I do fear for Sister Audry.” He peered closely at the former Aryaalan noble. “She did convert you, didn’t she? You have become a Christian?” he probed.

  “Of a sort. I am not sure what kind as yet. There are different kinds, it appears.”

  “Indeed,” Courtney agreed with a grimace, “and I’m perhaps the same sort as you.” He chuckled. “Somewhat nondenominational, shall we say?” He took another long sip. “I suppose you’re right, though. Despite recent… events… here and the looming confrontation with the bloody Doms, it seems our war against the Grik will of necessity focus the western allies’ attention more firmly against them quite soon. For a time, at least.” He took a deep breath and leaned back. “I’m no soldier, but I do feel drawn in that direction. Particularly by these reports that the Grik are growing more dangerously sensible.” He scowled. “And our dear Rebecca will need Audry’s sweeter voice of restraint and compassion more than yet another angry friend of her father’s.” Suddenly he started and looked around. “Where did the cat go?”

  “Cat?” Koratin was confused.

  “Yes… Oh! My apologies! There was one of the small ones, a Felis catus, standing about. It’s gone now.” He frowned. “I wonder if that villainous Petey has frightened it away-or worse.” He looked thoughtful. “For all I know, the little creature might already be dead!” He looked skeptically at Koratin. “I don’t suppose you ever heard of a lecherous Austrian named Erwin Schrodinger?”

  Koratin blinked.

  “No, of course not. Why should you?” Courtney swallowed more brandy, then leaned forward. “My scientific specialty, beyond geology and industrial engineering, is comparative biology, but my horizons have necessarily expanded of late. I’m no physicist, let that be plain, and I paid only passing attention to the flurry of physical theories that drifted about Europe in the past decade like so much paper snow. Certainly Dr. Einstein and others made interesting observations, but their proposals seemed to require the elimination of every conceivable variable that might affect attempts to prove them. As a natural scientist, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principles-which, to me, stressed the impossibility of eliminating every variable in any real-world scenario-seemed more relevant to my interests, since variations in climate and habitat are the essential parts of, and not incidental or destructive to, any biological equation.”

  Courtney admonished Koratin with the brandy gla
ss. “You’re doubtless wondering what all this has to do with our missing furry friend, but it was the sudden memory of Schrodinger’s unfortunate cat that set me thinking about paradox, you see!”

  “Paara..?”

  “Of course!” Courtney thumped his chest and stifled a belch, then refilled his glass. “As a mental exercise and not an actual experiment, to be fair-I wouldn’t want to slander the bugger-Schrodinger proposed that a cat had been placed in a box with a diabolical device that would execute it at some point. As an offering to Einstein, the device utilized a trigger that would activate it at a presumably predictable moment, based on its atomic degradation…” Koratin’s confused blinking distracted him, but Courtney shook his head and plowed on. “As an illustration of paradox, I can’t see the point of that, because THE… point…” He paused, blinking himself. “The ultimate point was that the cat, once in the box, was both alive and dead!”

  “I… don’t see how that can be,” Koratin muttered suspiciously. Courtney’s belch finally escaped, and he drank down the rest of his glass before filling it again.

  “But it can… in a sense. It seems to me that an appeal to Heisenberg’s uncertainties would add to the drama of such a test, but perhaps he was trying to create a deterministic paradox.” He shrugged. “I frankly can’t remember. But though I believe determinism, that cause and effect has its place, chance-or uncertainty, if you will-constantly fiddles about with it outside the laboratory. Subjective, perceptual paradox involving life and death happens all the time-without imprisoning cats.” Courtney rubbed his bushy brow.

  “Just today, for example, when the remains of Gerald and Ruth McDonald were recovered, we learned they’d been dead since the bombing-were probably killed instantly, God willing-yet until that word came, they were still alive to us. How many times have you heard of the passing of an old friend years earlier, and realized you’d thought of them as alive and perhaps wondered what they were doing after they were dead and gone, but before you got the word? That person was dead, but alive to you. I often think of my son, even now, flying Hurricanes for the RAAF, and he’ll always be alive to me, even if somewhere on the world we came from, he’s been lost for many years. Conversely, if he lives, he knows I’m dead. If he manages to discover how I left Surabaya aboard an ancient, dilapidated destroyer, he’ll learn that USS Walker was lost somewhere in the Java Sea-along with USS Mahan, USS Pope, HMS Exeter, and HMS Encounter on that dreadful, fateful day. Hopefully, there were survivors from the other ships, but there were none, could never be, survivors from Walker and Mahan… back there. All of us who remain, the so very few of us, are dead on another world-yet we live on here.” He took another long swig of brandy and then stared at his shoes. “Or do we?” he almost whispered. He sat up straight, with some difficulty, and smiled. “ That, my dear Sergeant Koratin, is a paradox.”

  Koratin stood and gathered the decanter and the glass. “Go home, Your Excellency, back to Baalkpan. Write your book. Put these… strange thoughts to use against the Grik.”

  “I believe I shall,” Courtney said distractedly. “Look there, Sergeant! The kitten has returned!” He leaned down and extended his hand. “Come here, little fellow, and I may condescend to pet you!”

  CHAPTER 20

  March 19, 1944

  Second Fleet

  120 miles west-northwest of the Enchanted Isles

  “Hooked on!” shouted Sergeant Kuaar-Ran-Taak, or “Seepy,” as he completed attaching the hoisting cables to the lifting points atop the battered Nancy. “C’mon, you bunch’a dopes!” he insisted loudly to the crew on the lifting boom high above. “Take us up before we sink!”

  Orrin Reddy climbed out of his flooding cockpit and joined Seepy up on the wing. The purple, cloud-shadowed sea was relatively calm beneath a mostly white sky. Patches of blue peeked through the high cloud layer here and there, dashing brilliant sunshine, like bright, photo-negative squalls, on the water. It was calmer still in Maaka-Kakja ’s massive lee that shielded the returning flight from the light wind, but Orrin and Seepy grabbed the lifting cables as the slack came off. Their plane had grown heavy with water in the five minutes or so since it touched down, and both feared it wouldn’t take the strain of the lift.

  Orrin could have taken his ship into the cavernous, semisubmerged, sea-level hangar bay that could be opened in the side of the ship, but like Tikker, his counterpart in First Fleet, he considered it important that he take every opportunity to test the capabilities of his aircraft, and that included recovery procedures. Besides, this Nancy was so shot up, it would probably never fly again. If the plane collapsed during the lift, they might lose a good engine and one of the priceless. 50-caliber Browning machine guns, but other than a few other spare parts, that was all-as long as he and Seepy had a good hold on the cables.

  The lift crew’s timing was a little off, and the plane jerked up out of a light trough, streaming water from a dozen holes. Orrin held his breath and grasped the cable tighter, but nothing came apart. He began to relax as the plane made its swaying, slowly spinning ascent, and watched the other four planes of his flight-none leaking, thank goodness-position themselves beneath other booms along Maaka-Kakja ’s starboard side. His mood darkened. There should have been another Nancy maneuvering below, but a flock of “Grikbirds” had jumped them out of the sun and taken one of his planes and its crew before the others could react.

  He blamed himself. They’d expected Grikbirds, but he hadn’t expected them to use such a simple, time-honored tactic. He hadn’t expected them to use any real tactics at all. He should have. The damn things were aerial predators, after all, and had probably been attacking prey out of the sun, by instinct, for millions of years! They’re not as fast as a Nancy, thank God, he thought. And even if they’re smart enough to use them, I don’t see them aiming Dom muskets-or any chase weapons-with their feet. But they’re natural-born dogfighters!

  Still urinating streams of seawater, the Nancy was brought level with the hangar deck, and Seepy rose with the coiled line that came down with the hooks. “See you in a minute, boss,” he said, and scampered down the bobbing, turning wing, uncoiling the line behind him. At the wingtip, just as it started dipping under his weight, he flipped the line through a pigtail and leaped across to the hangar deck with the tagline in his hand!

  “Show-off!” Orrin shouted after him, but inwardly shuddered. Setting the planes down on the flight deck could be tricky in rough seas or high winds, but it was fairly straightforward. The same went for motoring in through the side of the ship. Bringing a plane inboard on the hangar deck had presented a few problems for the humans helping design the capability. A separate boom system was proposed, but the Lemurians on the project had simply asked, “Why?” They hadn’t foreseen any problems. Sometimes, despite their fur, their tails, their expressionless faces-but highly expressive body language-the human destroyermen still forgot just how different they were. No “right” way for getting planes on the hangar deck from the water had ever been established as regulation, because the ’Cats just naturally seemed to know the best way at the time, under the prevailing conditions.

  Just about any Lemurian could have done what Seepy did-the jump wasn’t really that far-but Seepy had been a wing runner on a Home and made it look easy. Even as he cringed at the sight of the careless leap, Orrin couldn’t prevent a touch of resentment and he’d meant it when he called Seepy a show-off. Orrin believed he was just about fearless in an airplane, but there was no way he could have done what Seepy did.

  With the tagline secured to a steam windlass, the dripping Nancy was hauled inboard with Orrin still sitting on top. He helped hook new lines from an overhead track to the lifting points, and when the slack was taken up again, he unhooked those from the outside boom. Finally, the plane was lowered down on a three-wheeled cradle truck, and Orrin hopped down to the deck. The entire process had taken less than five minutes. Orrin’s plane was the only one brought onto the hangar deck; the others would be deposited on the fl
ight deck above. With no reports of casualties or malfunctions, they’d be prepared for further operations up there. The main reason for this was that the hangar deck resounded with the racket of other ships being uncrated and assembled. Flight ops were about to go into full swing, and soon Orrin’s wing would have almost fifty aircraft at his disposal aboard Maaka-Kakja alone. Other ships had a scout plane or two, and twenty-odd crated planes remained in the holds of the various transports.

  “I am glad to see you are well, Mr. Reddy,” came a voice over the noise. Orrin turned and was surprised to see General Shinya, Commander Tex Sheider (Maaka-Kakja ’s exec), and Commodore Jenks approaching. Orrin had met Jenks only once, when his elements first arrived from Saint Francis and joined Second Fleet. He was easily recognizable, though, in his Imperial uniform and great braided mustaches. He hadn’t been aboard when Orrin’s flight left that morning. Orrin, Seepy, and all those around came to attention, but didn’t salute. Airy as it was, they were “indoors,” after all.

  “As you were,” Tex barked, and everyone relaxed. But Orrin was suddenly very conscious of his sweaty flight suit and wet shoes. It was Commodore Jenks who’d spoken before… Of course, he wasn’t commodore anymore, was he?

  “Thank you, sir,” Orrin said to the Imperial. “And please accept my condolences for… what happened at your home. I was honored to meet with the Governor-Emperor and his wife several times. He was a great leader, and she was a gracious lady. I understand you were close to them.”