Ironclad

by Daniel Foster

  Twitch grinned. The whistle blew and Twitch was on Garret like stink on shit.

  W

  Above on the flying deck, Commander Sharpe looked down on the boxing teenagers beneath him. He stood straight and tall and proud, just like a commander should, though he wanted to slump on the rail and bury his face in his hands. He could only watch so many flying arms and wild haymakers before they began to depress him.

  There were a few good fighters, though. Like that one there who was beating the living daylights out of the Captain’s steward. The aggressor stayed tight, kept his guard up, was light on his feet, and punched like he’d been doing it all his life. Vilner was… well, he was good at taking a beating. Looked like he’d been doing that all his life, too.

  The worst was the closest pair to Andrew. One of them was Burl Garner, the seaman who’d switched tables without a proper transfer. Garner had found another boy almost as small as himself. They were trading punches from six feet apart and Garner was still flinching like he thought he was going to get clobbered. It was probably a good thing they’d partnered up. Andrew didn’t need anyone dying of fright today.

  The officer of the deck, a fat man who hadn’t thrown a punch without the aid of alcohol in decades, parted seaman Vilner and his partner and started showing Vilner how to punch. He was making it worse. Andrew cracked and made for the ladder, unbuttoning his jacket as he went. He had ten thousand things he needed to do, but by God, these boys were going to learn how to throw a punch if he had to teach each one of them himself.

  “Commander, a word, if I may.”

  Andrew stopped with one foot on the ladder.

  “What?” he said, reluctantly stepping off the ladder. He started rebuttoning his jacket just because he felt stupid standing in front of Barty with his jacket half-off. But that meant some part of him probably cared what Barty thought, and that really irritated Andrew.

  Barty was leaning lazily against the rail. Just behind Barty, Andrew caught sight of an enlisted man fleeing the scene. Andrew recognized the expression on the young man’s face. Perplexed, scared, and pale. Barty had been interrogating him. Andrew frowned at Barty. Andrew made it a point never to hate someone for doing their job, but Barty enjoyed his job too much.

  “When we get to Serbia,” Barty said languidly, looking down at the flailing arms below him. “Will we defeat the enemy by boxing them to death?”

  “They’re sailors, not marines, Barty,” Andrew snapped. “What do you want us to do?”

  “I would like us come up with a course of action that might not result in the failure of our mission.”

  The sun was hot, Barty was annoying, and now that Andrew had rebuttoned his uniform, the wool collar was chafing his neck. Andrew looked away again, this time catching sight of two enlisted guys with lunch scraps in hand, trying to wheedle Bert the cat close enough to touch him. They had the deranged feline cornered up against a bulkhead. Bert hissed.

  “Gentlemen!” Andrew thundered down at them. “If you don’t have duties, I’ll give you some!”

  “Yes sir, sorry sir.” They vanished like ghosts.

  “When we reach Sarajevo, we won’t need sailors,” Barty resumed. “I’m not sure our own combat Marines would have been enough. Too loud. Too visible.”

  Andrew had been fretting that dilemma for a couple days now, but not in a thousand years would he have admitted that to Barty. Lieutenant Bartram stepped closer and leaned on the rail again. “War is coming, Commander. We all know it.”

  Andrew rounded on him and demanded, “Are you saying you believe our mission will fail, lieutenant?”

  “No sir, I believe it may yet succeed. But if it does succeed, it will be because officers like you and I decided to do anything necessary to prevent its failure.”

  “Lieutenant,” Andrew said coldly, “I don’t think I like where this is going, so you’d better say it, whatever it is, in case I need time to forget it before I see the Captain.”

  Barty lifted his shoulders nonchalantly. “The United States Navy is mired in procedure and politics. Secretary Daniels can’t lift a finger until every congressman in Washington has had his say. Daniels would have been with us on this. He would have given Captain Maxwell the best ship in the fleet. Not,” Barty wrinkled his nose and gestured to the matronly old ship beneath them. “This.”

  “The secretary could not have supported us, and you know it,” Andrew replied.

  “He would have, but it is immaterial. We will not be ready for this war, Commander.”

  “We are ready for it,” Andrew replied stiffly. “The United States is always ready.”

  Barty laughed a little, and didn’t try to cover the derisive edge. “Our country is a child in a world of monarchies stretching back to the Holy Roman Empire. Our naval strength is untested, and without test, Commander, strength cannot grow. The South American navies rival our own, while the Germans and French could lie off our coast and shell New York out of existence before our Atlantic Fleet could respond. The British Navy—well, the British could wipe us all back to the Stone Age.”

  “The Brits are our allies,” Andrew retorted.

  Bartram shrugged. “We are weak. We are not prepared. How much would you be willing to sacrifice for a weak, unprepared ally?”

  “Your point, Lieutenant,” Andrew demanded.

  “The European empires have been preparing for this war since before you or I were born, Commander. You plan to rely on our allies, but you know as well as I do that at this moment, our allies are hunting the Kearsarge.”

  “For the last time, get to the point Barty!”

  Normally Barty’s speech rolled fluidly off his tongue. Now he slowed down, as if considering each word before he said it. “There are those not considered allies who would none the less be aligned with our interests if they knew what we know.”

  Around anyone else in the Navy, Andrew felt like he belonged. He felt like a leader of men. Around Barty he felt off balance and slow. A smart-sounding quote came back from his school days, so he used it. “Me and my brother against my cousin, but all three of us against the world,” Andrew growled. “That’s what you’re saying?”

  Barty smiled. It was thin and sharp. “The Bedouin culture from which that came is being destroyed by the world around it, so I would use such wisdom sparingly, but yes.”

  “Even if they were willing,” Andrew argued, “there’s no way to contact them, no way to convince them we’re telling the truth. Even if we could, there’s no time to wait for help.”

  Barty leaned on the rail and looked away over the sweating, boxing men as if he were at a barn dance, leaning on a hay bale, sipping lemonade. “What if I told you that they are already aware, willing to help, and moving into position to do so as we speak?”

  Andrew invaded Barty’s space. “Lieutenant Bartram, I order you to answer me directly and clearly. What exactly have you done?”

  Barty shrugged casually with one shoulder. “As you wish commander, even though I do not have to obey your order, as I am acting on orders above your own.” For the first time, Barty faced him down. “This was done before we cast off, and not by me, but anyway, you know exactly what I’ve done. I’ve managed to salvage something from Captain Maxwell’s arrogance, and in so doing, I may have saved our lives.” Barty looked back out over the sweating, boxing men. Or children, or whatever they were.

  “Or at least,” Barty finished, the edge of anger peeking through his aloofness. “I’ve given us a fighting chance.”

  Andrew was incensed by Barty’s tone, by what Barty had dared to say about Captain Maxwell, and mostly by the fact that Barty might actually be right, at least in principle.

  Rules rules rules! Andrew fumed in his head. They’re there for a reason!

  “But of course that isn’t all,” Barty said.

  “It never is with you!” Andrew barked.

  “Captain Maxwell has ordered us to radio silence. You must disobey and co
ntact Captain Dawkins to confirm our orders.”

  “What? I must…?! I will not disobey my Captain! And neither will you, lieutenant!”

  Barty blinked languidly as if Andrew’s comment carried no more weight than an offhanded observation about the weather. “The Captain cannot do this, Commander. Neither his disposition nor his position as captain will allow it. You must do this for him.”

  “This is mutiny, Lieutenant Bartram!”

  “Captain Maxwell can’t do what needs to be done, Commander. He can’t talk to us about it. He can’t ask us to do it. Whether it be by bureaucracy, or personality or sheer stupidity, at some point in life, everyone’s hands are tied. This is the critical moment. Captain Maxwell knows it. I know it…” Ever so slightly, Barty leaned towards Andrew. It was the first time Andrew had seen him violate anyone else’s space, and it made an impression.

  “And you know it, Commander,” Barty finished. “If you care for our Captain at all, if he means anything to you as a person, or as a friend, then you must do the thing he can’t. You must save him, and all the rest of us with him.”

  Barty shifted his posture comfortably against the rail as if it were a feather bed. “I am only a lieutenant. Captain Dawkins is a man of his word, but the stakes are high. If I were in his position, I would not accept confirmation from anyone beneath the executive officer.”

  Andrew sputtered. “How…?! Wha…? What makes you so sure he’d believe me anyway?!”

  Barty inclined his head. “I’m not. If you have a better idea, Commander, now’s the time.”

  W

  Garret’s dreams made no sense that night. At least most of them didn’t. First he was in a row boat, rowing down the citadel on a river of maple syrup. Curtis leaned out of his hammock and told Garret not to “mess up the chute,” whatever that meant.

  Then Garret was cleaning out the inside of one of Kearsarge’s engines with his toothbrush, and anytime someone offered to help, he had to say, “No, I have to do this myself, Captain’s orders. You can help me lick the boilers clean later, though.” He was surprised by how many dream-people were enthusiastic about that idea.

  Then Garret was standing in a room aboard ship that he didn’t recognize. It was small and cramped, but surgical instruments and little bottles of liniment were everywhere. On the table, which occupied most of the room, a body lay beneath a sheet.

  It made Garret nervous to look at the body. It pressed up against the sheet, revealing the shape of nose, lips, forehead, shoulders, arms, chest, legs… but it was all white and draped, as if the idea was to hide whatever lay beneath it. It was strapped down as well.

  The Hollow Man was there, too. Garret shrank at the feel of him, or it, or whatever.

  Uncover his face, the Hollow Man said.

  Garret stayed right where he was. He clenched his hands into frightened fists at his sides.

  Uncover his face, the Hollow Man repeated. Garret felt a coldness around his left ring finger, then it tugged on the wire up his arm to his heart. It sent a flash of discomfort across his chest, and his heart skipped a beat. Biting his lip, Garret stumbled forward, touched the sheet, recoiled from it, then forced himself to take hold of the edge of the sheet and fold it down.

  It was Ensign Rogers, the man Garret had seen electrocuted. Parts of his face were swollen. Parts were scorched and burned away. There was a rift running up the side of his jaw to his left eye, like a valley burned out of his face. Garret stumbled back, falling against a shelf. The bottles on it rattled and toppled.

  He wanted to run for the door, but he sensed that would be futile and unwise. He cowered against the shelf, looking away from both the poor dead crewman, and the Hollow Man.

  Give it to me, the Hollow Man said.

  Garret shied against the shelf and said nothing.

  Give it to me, the Hollow Man repeated, as if he had all the time in the universe, which maybe he did.

  At last, despite the creeping presence of the Hollow Man, which seemed to wander through Garret’s mind and heart like a set of tentacles, Garret managed to summon the courage to answer him.

  N-n-no. You’re wicked, and you’ve taken enough.

  Suddenly, Garret felt the Hollow Man’s mind pressing in on his own, leaking plans, desires, hideously complex entrapments spanning throughout history and beyond. It was too much, too foreign. It wasn’t even thought, it was beyond thought, and it hurt the inside of Garret’s mind.

  Stop, please!

  The Hollow Man opened a hand, though Garret did not look at it. A few feet away from the Hollow Man’s hand, a hammock appeared in thin air, but translucent. The hammock had someone in it. It was Theo, asleep. The Hollow Man was projecting an image of what Theo was doing at that exact moment.

  Give me the dead, the Hollow Man said. Or I will take the living.

  “Alright, okay!” Garret said aloud. “I give it to you! You can have… his body. Just take it and go.”

  The Hollow Man vanished instantaneously, and so did the body. The sheet, suddenly deprived of what had been beneath it, settled shapelessly to the table. The straps thumped quietly to the mattress.

  Garret woke up in his own hammock, curled in a ball, shaking and sweating. He floundered to a sitting position. All his friends were around him, swinging gently with Kearsarge’s movements. None of them had been touched.

  He strained hard to keep hold of the dream that had tormented him so badly. If he could just remember one of them, perhaps he could begin to make sense of them, but trying to hold it was like trying to grasp the fog that vanished with the morning sun. The dream was gone from him as fully as if it had never happened.

  Chapter 13

  Everything in Andrew’s being rebelled as he pulled open the door to the telegraph room. Barty was behind him, leaning against a bulkhead. Andrew stepped through and gestured quickly to Barty. The lieutenant uncrossed his arms and sauntered towards the door. Andrew grabbed his arm, jerked him through, shut the door, and threw the latches and the dogs to seal it.

  “Well,” Barty said mildly, “if anyone was watching and they weren’t suspicious before, they certainly are now. We’re line officers, Commander. We have every right to be here.”

  “In the communications room on a voyage of radio silence?” Andrew snapped, turning his back.

  “I meant no disrespect, Commander,” Barty said, rolling his eyes as loudly as possible behind Andrew’s back. “I merely meant that acting questionable is the surest way to be questioned.”

  Andrew tried to ignore the sweat soaking his collar by focusing on how much he hated Barty. Andrew turned to the wireless telephone machine on the table. It was basically a small pile of complicated boxes with gauges, a few lights, a trumpet-like mouthpiece on a stalk, and a steel headset.

  The wireless had been added as part of Kearsarge’s recent refit, and Andrew hadn’t touched one before. He sat, removed his cover, without which he felt naked, and put on the headset, which rested around the crown of his head and over his ears.

  “Do you know how to use this thing, or not?” he said to Barty.

  Instead of replying, Barty grabbed the large, tuning fork-like switch on the wall and threw it, energizing the machine. The gauge needle on the tuning device jumped and the gauge face began to glow from behind. Barty threw more switches and spun a handle. Static crackled in Andrew’s ear, then quieted. In the middle of the bristling wireless telephone set up, there was also a simple telegraph key. Andrew looked at it with longing.

  “I hope you understand,” Andrew muttered, “that even if your ‘friend’ Captain Dawkins is as close as he’s supposed to be, we’ve got clear weather tonight with low hanging clouds. We’re probably about to drop our pants to every ship within fifty miles. Maybe a hundred.”

  “I can attempt to reduce the range,” Barty replied as he adjusted a dial. A small incandescent lamp atop the transmitter began to glow, indicating the machine was dialed-in. “Of course, we may also miss
Captain Dawkins entirely.”

  Andrew frowned at the thinly veiled sarcasm. “Do it.”

  Barty gestured to the glowing light. “You’re doing it right now, Commander.”

  Andrew gritted his teeth, then tried to use the syntax he’d heard radio operators use before. “USS Kearsarge calling HMS Agamemnon. USS Kearsarge to HMS Agamemnon, over.”

  Barty frowned at the machine and played with a dial.

  All was quiet in Andrew’s ear, so he repeated. “USS Kearsarge calling HMS Agamemnon. USS Kearsarge to HMS Agamemnon, over.”

  Barty was on his knees, inspecting the wiring behind the machine. He was tracing one wire in particular. Whatever he found, he didn’t like it at all. His eternally sharp visage sharpened even more. Barty stood and turned in a smooth motion. He stepped to the side and drew a pistol which had been hidden beneath his pea coat.

  Andrew shucked the headset and stood fast enough to knock his chair over. “What?”

  “It’s not transmitting,” Barty said quietly, pistol leveled on the door. Without taking his beady eyes off the door, he dipped his head toward the wires he’d been inspecting. “Third one from the left. It’s been rewired to send the signal somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  Barty frowned. “Well, I can’t see the other end of the wire from here, can I sir? It could be anywhere on the ship.”

  Andrew was trying not to be sick. He’d just disobeyed a direct imperative from his Captain for the first time, and now they’d been caught.

  “We have to get out of here now,” Andrew said.

  Barty waited until Andrew had undone all the clamps and dogs on the door, then Barty said, “They’ve already heard your voice sir, and possibly mine as well. Everyone aboard this ship knows the sound of the XO’s voice. There’s nowhere to go.”

  “We can’t just stand here!”

  “Yes we can.” Barty was cool as a mountain lake. It was embarrassing. “I’m not going anywhere.”