Distant Thunders

CHAPTER 3

A s always, Matt was happy to be back on the water. He sat comfortably in the stern sheets of Scott’s launch with Sandra Tucker snuggled tight against him, companionably quiet, ostensibly shielding herself from the occasional packets of spray with his larger form. Her mere proximity seemed sufficient to infuse him with a sense of well-being and optimism that was sometimes so elusive when he was alone with his thoughts. The launch moved through the light chop and the engine burbled contentedly while Matt gazed about the bay, memories of the battle still fresh in his mind. For once, the company and the quality of the day eased the pain those memories brought. His eyes lingered a moment on the two Imperial frigates moored near the fishing wharfs and he felt a twinge.

The Imperial liberty parties had generally behaved themselves, but there had been some incidents. Matt often met with Commodore Jenks, but their discussions were always short and to the point and Jenks invariably asked the same questions: “How much longer must we wait?” and “What progress have you made toward outfitting an expedition to return the princess to her home?” Matt’s answers were always the same as well: “Not much longer,” and “Quite a bit.” The answers were lame and he knew Jenks knew it too. Sometimes Matt got the impression Jenks didn’t expect a different answer and he asked only so they’d have something to argue about. He was a weird duck and Matt couldn’t figure him out. He chased Jenks out of his thoughts and concentrated on enjoying himself.

Sandra was pleased on a variety of levels. She was glad she and Matt no longer had to hide their feelings. She remained convinced it had been the right thing to do, but their ultimately futile attempt to conceal their attraction had added even more stress to their situation. Now, even though their public courtship remained strictly correct, the feel of his large hand unobtrusively enfolding hers seemed comforting and natural. It was amazing how restorative such simple, innocent pleasures could be. The day had a lot to do with her mood as well-their situation always seemed less grim when the sky didn’t brood-but she was also pleased with the progress one of her patients was making.

Norman Kutas, quartermaster’s mate, was the coxswain today. After the battle, she wouldn’t have given odds he’d ever even see again, much less handle a boat. He’d taken a faceful of glass fragments on Walker ’s bridge, and though she’d worked extra hard to get them all out, the damage had frightened her. But Norm was tough and his eyes were were still intact. Norman would be scarred for life, and those scars were still pink and angry, but he could see. It bothered her that she hadn’t been able to save Silva’s eye, but in his case there hadn’t been anything left to save. At least his empty socket was healing well. Once again she’d been amazed by the healing powers of the Lemurian polta paste.

Courtney Bradford, Jim Ellis, Spanky, and the Bosun were in the boat as well, but they seemed equally charmed by the pleasant day. Either they just weren’t inclined to speak, or they were allowing Sandra to treat her most important patient for a while in the best way she could at present. By mutual consent, apparently, all the men knew that a day on the water with his girl was a dose their skipper needed.

Inevitably, however, someone had to break the silence. They were in the boat for another reason too, after all. Just as inevitably, that person was Courtney Bradford.

“I say!” he practically shouted over the noise of the engine, “the military equipment is all well and good, but have they managed to salvage anything interesting at all?” he asked. He’d turned to face Matt and had to hold his ridiculous hat on his head with both hands.

Matt shrugged. “Not sure what you mean by ‘interesting,’ Courtney, but they haven’t gotten far into the hull yet. No telling what’s in there. We’ll see.” Bradford turned back to face their destination. Not far away now, the huge pagodalike structures of four Homes protruded from the sea, as if the massive vessels had sunk there in a square. The tripod masts were bare, and massive booms lifted objects seemingly from beneath the sea between them. Matt knew the Homes were sunk-in a sense-having flooded themselves down to within thirty or forty feet of their bulwarks. As they drew closer, they saw there was still more freeboard than Matt’s old destroyer ever had when fully buoyant. Courtney’s question had ruined the moment, but not in an entirely adverse way. They were all anxious to see what had been revealed within the cofferdam formed by the Homes. At last, they’d see what was left of Amagi.

Kutas throttled back and the launch gently bumped Aracca ’s side. Cargo netting of a sort hung down from above and they carefully exited the boat and climbed to the deck. Tassana, High Chief of Aracca Home, greeted them with a formal side party and full honors as they’d evolved among the Lemurians that were technically independent of Navy regulations. Her short, silken, gray-black fur glowed with the luster of healthy youth, and around her neck hung the green-tinted copper torque of her office. Her father had been High Chief of Nerracca, and when that Home was brutally destroyed by Amagi, she became a ward of her grandfather, the High Chief of Aracca. She was also his only remaining heir. When he died in the Battle of Baalkpan, she was elevated-at the tender age of twelve-to take his place. Lemurians matured more quickly than humans, but she was still considered a youngling even by her own people. She’d been through an awful lot and was clearly aware she had much to live up to, but Matt suspected she’d do all right. Her father’s blood ran in her veins and she had a spine of steel. She also had a lot of help. Keje had practically adopted her, and a better tutor in seamanship and command didn’t exist. Already, Keje loved the tragic child as his own, and Tassana adored him as well. In fact, she had quite a serious case of hero worship for just about everyone present, since they’d all been instrumental in avenging the death of her kin.

As always when he stepped aboard one of the enormous seagoing cities of the Lemurians, an awesome sight greeted Matt. The main deck, with the polta fruit gardens lining the bulwark, was normally a hundred feet above the sea, and three huge pagodalike “apartments” towered above it like skyscrapers. The massive tripods that supported the great sails or “wings” soared another two hundred and fifty feet above the deck. Larger than the new Essex -class aircraft carriers Matt had glimpsed under construction so long ago, Aracca was double-ended, flat-bottomed, and built of diagonally plank-laminated wood that was six feet thick in places. He was always impressed by the incredibly tough, sophisticated design that ensured that she and others like her would last for centuries upon this world’s more hostile seas. Looking at Aracca, he couldn’t imagine any natural force overcoming her. He vividly remembered how vulnerable her daughter Home, Nerracca, had been to ten-inch naval rifles, however.

After the ceremonial greeting, the youngling High Chief embraced Matt. He knew she felt great affection for him and he certainly returned it, but hers always made him feel a little awkward. He couldn’t convince himself he deserved it. Tassana hugged Sandra next, then Spanky and Courtney. Kutas had stayed with the boat.

“Good morning, my dear!” Courtney said, pecking the High Chief’s furry cheek. “We have come to view your progress firsthand! Judging by the increasing quantities of scrap arriving at the shipyard, you must be proceeding beyond our dreams!”

“It goes well,” Tassana admitted with a touch of pride. She had the support and assistance of the vastly more experienced High Chiefs of the other Homes, but she was essentially in charge of the project.

“Anybody hurt today?” Sandra asked solicitously.

“A few, not serious. Torch burns, most. The new ‘a… aa-set-aaleen’ does not, ah, reg… reg-ulate the same as old, and of course we no have gay-ges for new torches either.”

“It takes a little trial and error, I’m afraid,” Courtney commiserated. Raw materials had been their very first priority, so fulfilling their need for more acetylene had dominated all other concerns for a while. The first large steam-powered generator was devoted entirely to the new furnace for cooking limestone, and the stuff was coming in from everywhere. Great, billowing white clouds arose from the crushing grounds near the shipyard, and workers emerged from a day’s labor resembling long-tailed spooks. A still for the acetone was much easier to manage, but just as hard to feed. The volatile liquid resulting from the process also tended to evaporate as quickly as it was made, negating tremendous labor, so the quality control required for the combination and compression of the gas was a little haphazard. Courtney had taken personal charge of the project, with Letts’s logistical assistance, so he felt a little responsible for each injury sustained.

“The burns not serious,” Tassana thoughtfully assured him.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Matt said, a little impatient to see the work. “Mind if we take a look?”

“’Course not.” Tassana led them up a long stair from the catwalk above the polta garden to the amidships battlement platform above. They strode across it to starboard and peered down over the rail. The view they beheld was amazing and terrible, like something from Dante’s Inferno. The water level within the cofferdam was considerably lower than that outside, and pumps heaved great geysers into the bay. The main portion of Amagi had actually settled atop her own amputated bow, and the scene of tangled, twisted wreckage and destruction was horrifying in a visceral way. The once mighty ship lay exposed down below her main deck and was still quite recognizable, but great arcs of molten steel jetted away from dozens of torches, spewing into the sea and causing a haze of steam to linger in the basin. Heavy booms lifted rusty, unrecognizable chunks, and even small structures. They heaved them across the expansive decks of the Homes and placed them on barges alongside.

“Goddamn,” muttered Spanky around his perpetual wad of yellowish Lemurian tobacco leaves. “ ’Scuse me ladies, but… goddamn. Looks like Mare Island down there. Upside down or inside out-whatever-but damned impressive.” He looked at Tassana, the usual fond expression he bestowed upon her mingled with respect. “I’m impressed,” he repeated. “Keje said you could do it, that I should worry ’bout other stuff, but you know, I admit I was a little skeptical. I had a chief when I was a kid who helped cofferdam the Maine, to refloat her, and he told me about it. That was a hell of a job-but this!” He gestured around. “The Maine was a rowboat compared to Amagi.”

“You proud?” Tassana asked eagerly.

“You betcha. You’re going to get a lot of leakage, and I’m not sure how you’ll manage to get her bottom up, but it looks great so far.”

“There already leakage,” Tassana admitted, “but pumps stay ahead. Also, when we get to bottom, we sink holes to pump with you hoses. We get bottom.”

Spanky shook his head. “I bet you will.”

Gray was watching the workers. Now that they weren’t on a moving boat, the day had turned hot, and with all the steam… “Poor devils down there must be boilin’,” he said.

“It… uncomfortable,” Tassana agreed, “but I go down much.. . The workers… cheerful, yes? They cheerful knowing steel they bring up will kill Grik.” She grinned. “Some would like to bring up whole ship.”

“That might make salvage more convenient,” Matt said, “having her closer to the shipyard. But it would take years to fix her. She’s torn in half, and that doesn’t even count all the damage she took before she got here. And everything on her is just so damn big! We still don’t even have cranes remotely big enough to lift her guns.”

“Prob’ly have to cut ’em up,” Spanky lamented.

Matt shook his head. “I’d rather have her steel now than maybe have her a few years from now.” He didn’t add that they’d need some of that steel to restore his own ship-if it could be done-but Sandra heard it in his voice.

They lapsed into silence for a while, just staring at the monumental undertaking below. There must have been five hundred ’Cat workers on the wreck, cutting, unbolting, swinging heavy sledges, and dragging loose objects to convenient locations for the booms to reach. Their old nemesis resembled nothing as much as a murdered beetle on an ant mound being dismantled, ever so slowly, by the proud but remorseless mandibles of its killers.

Matt shook the thought away. Any sailor hated the breaking yard, but he would not attach any sentimentality to that… monstrosity that had tormented his dreams and threatened the existence of everything he loved on this world for over a year. He knew Amagi herself was not to blame; Captain Kurokawa and the Grik had wielded the weapon she’d been. Still, she’d embodied the threat they posed, and he enjoyed the irony that he and his people would now use her against her former masters. She’d been a scourge, but now she was a precious gift. She wasn’t given willingly or received without great cost, but her corpse would provide the bones to which they could attach the sinews of modern war. She’d been the ultimate weapon of the Grik and the Japanese on this world. Now she would help destroy them.

Sandra had noticed the range of expressions that crossed Matt’s face. Some she recognized and her heart went out to him. A few confused her. The strange smile that replaced them all left a chill in her bones.

Dean Laney, former chief machinist’s mate aboard USS Walker, winced and shifted uncomfortably on his stool. Damn, his ass hurt! It had started bugging him a lot lately, and now he had an intermittent case of the screamers, which only aggravated the problem. He sipped his coffee, or “monkey joe,” and gazed around. Large, crude machinery hummed, rattled, and roared loudly all around him. The chassis and casings were mostly copper or brass, but some were even made of wood. Only bearings, shafts, chucks, and tool heads were made of real, precious steel, although more and more iron parts and castings were coming from the foundries. Over his head, high in the ceiling beams, leather belts whooped and whirled and spun in all directions around a precarious clockwork of rattling wooden pulleys of various sizes. Having all that motion right over his head sometimes gave him the creeps, but usually he was able to ignore it.

He didn’t know what his rank was anymore. Everybody had been getting fancy-sounding promotions, but if he had a new title, word hadn’t leaked down to him yet. It didn’t really matter, he supposed. It wasn’t like he’d get a raise in pay. Besides, his domain had certainly been enlarged. Instead of Walker ’s cramped engineering spaces and modest machine shop, he now oversaw a sprawling, impressive industrial complex. Three long buildings and hundreds of workers were under his direct supervision, and he was responsible for turning out the machines that would make other machines that would ultimately go to the various project directors.

It wasn’t as much fun as what Bernie, Ben, and Spanky were doing-making all sorts of swell stuff to use directly against the lizards-but they couldn’t do their thing unless he did his. Besides, he never really was a “tight tolerance” guy, he admitted, and the majority of the machines that made machines could be relatively crude.

His wandering eyes fell on a ’Cat machinist almost in front of him. “Hey, you,” he grumbled loudly, “watch what the hell you’re doing!”

The ’Cat stopped turning the traverse handle, and the coils of brass that had been crawling away from the shaft she was turning abruptly sprang away to join the growing pile around her feet. “What I doing?” she demanded.

Caught off guard, Laney was stumped. Usually, his gruff comments went unanswered. He felt it was his duty to make them periodically to keep the workers on their toes. His face turned red and he stood up-making his ass hurt even more. “You mean you don’t know what you’re doing?” he demanded hotly, questing with his eyes for some fault.

“I know what I doing,” came a shockingly abrasive retort. “Do you?”

“Why you…! Just look! Look at all that shit coiled around your feet! It looks like a goddamn tumbleweed! What if that chuck snatches it up? It’ll yank you in by the tail and all there’ll be is a cloud of fuzz! Who the hell taught you to be a machinist’s mate?!”

“Dennis Si-vaa! He teach me good! He make weapons to kill Grik, not stand around all day making big pole less big!”

Laney’s eyes bulged. “Silva?! Why, that big malingering ape couldn’t machine a proper turd with his ass!” Inwardly, Laney blanched at his own comment. Lately, he literally couldn’t do that himself. He forged ahead. “I want you to slip the belt on that machine this goddamn minute, find your chief, and tell him you want to learn how to be a real machinist!”

Dean was so intent on his harangue that he didn’t hear the sudden snap-hack! or the shrill, warning cries of alarm. He kind of heard the dull, buzzing whoosh! of the broken belt that slapped him on the back of the head.

He was still mad when he woke up in an aid station sometime later, but couldn’t remember why. He felt like he’d jumped off a roof head-first, though.

“Whadami doin’ here?” he mumbled. When no answer was immediately forthcoming, he closed his eyes and raised his voice. “Hey, goddamn it! Why am I here?”

“Shut up!” came a harsh, heavenly, female voice. “You want to wake everybody up? Besides, you might burst a vessel!”

Laney opened his eyes and saw Nurse Ensign Kathy McCoy hovering over him.

“It’s an angel!” he said wonderingly.

“Nope.” Kathy laughed. “Just me.”

“You’re an angel, all right,” muttered Laney, “and there’s damn few of you. Scarcer than the kind with wings, I bet. You danced with me a couple o’ times at the Busted Screw.”

Kathy grimaced. “Yeah. I try to dance with all the fellas. I’d never forget you, though.” Laney’s eyes went wide and he beamed. “You stomped all over my feet,” Kathy explained. “I haven’t walked right since.”

Destroyed, Laney uttered a groan.

“Head hurt?”

“Yeah. Who hit me? One of those chickenshit monkeys I have to put up with?”

Kathy frowned. “Not who, what. One of those leather belts that runs your machines broke. Conked you pretty good. Didn’t break the skin, but you’ll have a goose egg the size of a baseball. You guys ought to be wearing helmets in there.”

“Mmm. Ought to be doing lots of stuff. We do what we can.”

“Yeah. Hey, you hurt anywhere else? You’ve been squirming around like a worm on a hook, even in your sleep. By the way, now that you’re awake, you need to stay that way for a while in case of concussion.”

Laney nodded-painfully-but hesitated.

“What? You are hurting somewhere else. Where?” Kathy demanded.

“I’d, uh, rather not say. I’m fine.”

Kathy nodded. She easily recognized the code words for “I’m not telling a broad about my private agonies.” “Okay, without telling me what hurts, tell me what it feels like.”

“Like I’m shitting busted glass!” Laney blurted, then caught himself. “Hey! You tricked me!”

“It’s my job,” Kathy said. “And it was easy. I won’t even ask to do an exam, and I don’t really want to. But judging by your physique, your complaint, and your job, I bet you spend a lot of time sitting, right?” Reluctantly, and somewhat indignantly, Laney nodded. “Just as I thought. Hemorrhoids. Piles. You know.”

Laney shook his head. “Piles! That can’t be it. Sometimes I think I’m gonna die! You can’t die from piles… can you?”

Kathy almost laughed, but shook her head. “No, and I’ll give you something that ought to help, at least a little… on one condition.”

Laney’s eyes narrowed. “Doctors ain’t supposed to put conditions on helping folks, are they?”

Kathy shrugged. “Maybe I’m a doctor here, but I’m just a nurse back home. I can do what I want.”

“What’s the scam?”

“Tell you what. I get a lot of guys-’Cats-in here who work for you. Just like you, they get hurt now and then. Anyway, they’re doing important work and they’re proud of that. Some would rather be doing something else, and I understand, but your division, or whatever it is, is just as critical as any other-maybe more so-and they know it. They don’t mind the work or the hours or even getting hurt, but nearly everyone I see-though anxious to get back to work-is not anxious to get back to work for you. You’re a jerk, Dean. Right now you’re a hurt jerk, so I’m trying to be nice. What it boils down to, the ‘scam,’ I guess, is this: promise to try to quit being such a pain in the ass, or I’ll let your ‘pain in the ass’ keep reminding you how you make everybody around you feel. Deal?”

Chief Electrician’s Mate “Ronson” Rodriguez heard the exchange between Ensign McCoy and Laney through the thin reed screen that separated them. He’d come in to get his hand fixed after he’d cut it on some of the sharp Lemurian copper wire. Now stitched, disinfected, and bandaged up, he’d been taking his ease for a few moments away from the “powerhouse,” the factory he’d been put in charge of where they built, refurbished, and experimented on the various electrical contrivances Riggs was in charge of. The problem was, that stupid ox Laney was always cruising through his shop looking for deserters. Rodriguez knew Laney resented him as a jumped-up electricians’ mate third class, and thought he could toss him around with his size and personality. He was wrong.

Ronson might have let him get away with it once, but a lot of things had changed besides relative ratings. Rodriguez had been wounded in action far more often than Laney, and besides Laney’s genuinely impressive underwater adventures, Rodriguez had seen a lot bigger “elephants” than the chief machinist’s mate. His most recent escapade was the one that finally earned him a nickname. His first name was Rolando, and his shipmates had tried to tag him with “Rolo,” “Rodent,” and even “Rhonda,” but none ever stuck. When Walker took that Jap shell in her auxiliary fuel tank in the forward fireroom, somehow Rolando’s sweatband and longish hair had caught fire. Silva put him out, but the mental image of him running around on the amidships gun platform like a lit match had left him with “Ronson” Rodriguez, and this time it took.

Since then, he kept his head shaved to his slightly scarred scalp and the only hair he cultivated was a Pancho Villa mustache. The men were allowed trimmed beards and razors were scarce, but the chiefs were allowed a little more leeway by everybody, captain to Lemurian cadet, because in most cases, they’d earned their stripes the hard way. All of Walker ’s and Mahan ’s chiefs who hadn’t gone to other ships had filled dead men’s shoes except Campeti-and the Bosun, of course-but Rodriguez didn’t think Laney filled Harvey Donaghey’s very well. If Laney felt the same way about him, he could eat turds and chew slow.

The arguments they had over Laney’s “defectors” always escalated to bellows of rage and interfered with work in the powerhouse. Laney did know better than to take a swing, and the contention between them always had to be taken to Riggs or Spanky-more lost work in both departments. Riggs and Spanky tried to be fair, but if Laney really needed the deserter in question, the poor bastard got sent back. Rodriguez suspected the two officers were getting as tired of the situation as Rodriguez was, and Laney was probably out on a cracking plank. He wondered whether Kathy McCoy’s comments would do any good.

Well, with that bump on his head, Laney would probably leave him alone for the rest of the day, anyway. Time to quit malingering. He stood up from the chair he’d been sitting on, cradling his wounded hand. The throbbing had nearly passed. Neat stuff, that pasty goo, he reflected. Not waiting to be released by the nurse, he ducked out of the aid station and headed back for the powerhouse.

He trudged through the muck of the recent rain and avoided the heavy carts pulled by bawling brontosarries until he saw the smoke rising from “his” boiler. Several ’Cats tended the beast, and it shimmered with heat and suppressed energy. The engine it powered was one of the first they’d built, and it wheezed and blew steam from its eroded and imperfectly packed pistons. He hated the engine and wanted another one, but he had to respect it as well. It had been a prototype, crudely built and not expected to last, but here it was, still chugging away after, well, thousands of hours. The generator it turned was also one of their first and he was proud of it. He’d designed it himself, and it was doing fine. Laney’s shop had actually made the transmission gears that boosted the RPMs of the slow-turning engine to spin the generator fast enough to provide the calculated voltage, but Laney probably didn’t do it himself.

“Silly, useless bastard,” he muttered, and opened the fabric flap that covered the entrance to his domain.

“How you hand?” asked one of his new strikers solicitously. Rodriguez didn’t remember the ’Cat’s name. It was unpronounceable and he hadn’t earned a nickname yet, but he’d been one of the deserters he’d succeeded in keeping. The kid was working on one of their simplest products: thermocouples for the vast variety of temperature gauges everybody was screaming for. Essentially all he had to do was join a piece of copper to a piece of iron. When heat was applied to the joint, current was produced. The higher the heat, the more current. The reason he got to keep this ’Cat was that when he was trying to explain intangible, invisible free electrons, the little guy actually seemed to understand. He had high hopes for him.

Lemurians in general were almost naturally mechanically inclined and great with practical geometry. They were accomplished jokesters and pranksters and could conceptualize common hypothetical outcomes. They loved gizmos, and if they could see something, they could understand it without much trouble. They were very literal-minded, though. When it came to things they couldn’t see-like electricity-or even hypothetical outcomes they had no experience with, they had more trouble. He’d been forced to set up a few grade-school demonstrations to let them see electricity before he could convince them it was real. He also let them feel a little now and then, but had to caution them very carefully about feeling too much of it! He still wasn’t sure how much most of his ’Cat electrician’s mates and strikers really grasped, but they knew they had to make gizmos to create and harness the semimythical electricity, and they were good about scrupulously following safety regulations. The fact that he’d threatened to give them to Laney if they goofed around with the juice probably helped in that regard.

He waved his bandaged hand at the ’Cat with the unpronounceable name and moved along. He wanted to check on the progress of the portable DC generators they’d been working on when he hurt himself. He was surprised to find Steve Riggs waiting for him at the benches they’d set aside to assemble the things.

“Mr. Riggs! Good to see you, sir.”

Steve laughed. “You mean it’s good to see me without Laney for a change. Otherwise, you’re probably wondering what I’m doing here, getting in the way.”

“Well, yes, sir.”

“How’s the hand?”

Rodriguez raised his hand and flexed the fingers in the bandage. “Fine.”

“Good. Look, I really don’t mean to pester you, but these transmitters we’re putting together are pretty simple affairs. They don’t have tubes and their voltage requirements are somewhat critical. I just wanted to see for myself how you’re coming along.”

“Fair enough.” Rodriguez motioned him to a bench where several ’Cats were cleaning up a stack of short, pipe-shaped objects. “Those are the frames. They came out of Laney’s shop and they’re rough as hell. I have to have the guys file the burrs-with shitty files out of Laney’s shop…”

“I get the picture. Laney’s a piece of work. Skip it.”

“Aye-aye, sir. Anyway, those are the frames. These guys over here are wrapping the field coils.” He stopped, self-consciously. “That’s how I cut myself. It’s great the ’Cats can make wire; I just wish it was a little more, you know, round.”

“We’ll get to that someday,” Riggs said patiently. “For now, just be thankful. We’re starting to get a lot of wire out of Amagi, but we need it for other stuff.”

“Yes, sir. Anyway, there’s the pole shoes. We screw ’em to the frame on the inside and it holds the coils in place.”

Riggs gestured at a bin with a number of internal assemblies. “Those armatures look like they came out of the Delco factory.”

“Thank you, sir. They’re a bitch. First we have to turn the shafts on the one little lathe we have…”

“It is one of the ship’s lathes.”

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir. It would be nice if we could get the guys in the ordnance shop to make those, though. Them and the core. We can’t make those like they do at Delco. We have to mill the slots on the rotary table. It’s still not a huge job, but we’re going to need more capacity. We have to make the big generators one at a time, mostly using crap from Laney, and we can’t work on those at all while we’re doing this.”

“The guys at ordnance have their hands full. I’ll see if I can get you one of the new, bigger lathes, and maybe a bigger mill. You’ll have to make motors for them, though. This isn’t a belt-drive shop, and it isn’t going to be.”

“I understand. Motors we can do.”

“So, what are you insulating the coils with?”

“Fiber. Just like the real thing, only we mulch up some of Mr. Letts’s gasket material and mix it with some other stuff. Mikey’s in charge of that.”

“How does it hold up? What about heat?”

“So far, so good. We haven’t had the glue-up issues Ben has, for example, and it does insulate well. It’s kind of like putty. We cram some in on top of the coils in the core slot too. Anyway, the coils are soldered to the commutator bar.”

Riggs inspected one of the brush end frames that a ’Cat was finishing up. “You wave-wound the core, but you’re only using two brushes?”

“Yes, sir. We’ve still got a hell of a spring shortage. We’re actually using the same gear springs Ordnance is making for their musket locks! Wave-wound generators will work with two brushes or four. We might want to put four in later.”

Riggs pulled the short whiskers on his chin. “Musket springs!” He snorted. “How do the brushes hold up?”

“The springs are fairly stout and they don’t have much range of motion. The brushes’ll have to be replaced every hundred hours or so, I’m afraid. Since we have to use brass bushings, they’ll have to be kept lubed and replaced pretty often too.”

Riggs nodded. “Okay, I want a dozen extra brushes, two extra musket springs, and half a dozen bushing sets for each completed generator. What are you doing to regulate the voltage?”

“Well, sir, since you want these things to be wind powered, we’ve calculated a low cut-in speed and a high charging rate at those lower speeds. If a serious blow hits, it’ll need to be disconnected. If they spin up too fast, centrifugal force will throw the windings out of their slots and thrash the whole thing. To cap the voltage, well, we’ve got to use a voltage regulator.” Rodriguez pointed at yet another group of ’Cats working at a separate bench. “They’re making vibrating regulators. I don’t think they have a clue what they’re doing, but I calculated all the values and gave them the plans. They could all be watchmakers after the war. They won’t screw ’em up. Of course, I’ve got my ammeter to double-check each one. Managed to save that.”

Riggs smiled. “Very good. Very, very good. If you weren’t already in charge, I’d put you there.”

“Uh, thanks.”

“Now, one more thing; just a little matter, really. How do you plan to refurbish the generators, motors, and other essential equipment on Walker after we raise the ship?”

“And this, dear boy, if I’m not much mistaken, is the spleen!” Courtney Bradford leaned back and fanned himself with his sombrerolike hat, as much to clear the vapors of the quickly putrefying creature as to cool himself. It was hot, even in the shade of the trees surrounding the parade ground where the lesson was under way. Abel Cook, his most avid student, leaned forward to view the structure. Abel was thirteen, and he’d long since grown out of the clothes he’d been wearing during his evacuation from Surabaya aboard S-19. Most of the other boys who’d been similarly saved had applied to become midshipmen in the American Navy. Abel had too, but of all of them, he was the only one who’d shown an interest in the natural sciences. Bradford couldn’t-and wouldn’t-try to prevent the boy from serving, but he saw in the blond-haired, fair-skinned, somewhat gangly teen a much younger version of himself. “We need more of me around here,” Courtney had argued with Captain Reddy, and to his surprise, Matt had agreed. Abel was still a midshipman, and naval dungarees had replaced his battered clothes, but Courtney would have him as an apprentice. For a while, at least.

“I believe you’re right,” the boy replied, his voice cracking slightly. “And that must be the gallbladder,” he said, pointing. “It is quite large!”

“The better to digest the dreadful things they eat, I shouldn’t wonder!” Bradford beamed.

Other students attended the dissection as well, ’Cat corpsmen trainees, and they shuffled forward to look. The cadaver was that of a local variety of skuggik, a much smaller but clearly related species to the Grik. Skuggiks were vicious little scavengers, mostly, and their arms had evolved away, so their external physiology bore marked differences to that of their enemy. Internally however, they were virtually identical smaller versions. Courtney had attempted to save actual Grik for the demonstrations, but there was no means of cooling them. His modest hoard of postbattle corpses had been revealed by their stench and he’d been forced to surrender them. For now, his little open-air class on comparative biology would have to make do with skuggiks.

“And what is that lobed structure it is attached to?” Bradford asked. “Be silent, Abel,” he admonished. “Let someone else answer for a change.”

“Lungs!” proclaimed one of the young Lemurians triumphantly. Most of the others snickered.

Bradford sighed. “Would you like another try?”

The ’Cat looked more intently and wrinkled her nose. “You say that other st’ucture is a spleeng? I thought you say spleeng is on lungs?” There was chittering laughter this time.

“Perhaps, my dear, you might consider applying for another posting?”

“It is liver!” burst out another voice. “Big, ugly Grik-like liver!”

“Precisely!” exclaimed Bradford, his gentle chastisement instantly forgotten. His eyes narrowed and he looked at the organ in question. “A rather dry, reeking liver, in fact. Perhaps it’s time we called it a day. Our specimen is withering before our very eyes… and noses!” He nodded at his assistants. “Please do dispose of this chap with all proper ceremony. We’ll continue the lecture tomorrow with a fresh, um, subject. Weather permitting, we may start before the heat of the day!” With that, all but Abel scampered away, glad to escape the stench.

“Well!” said Bradford, still fanning himself and gauging the height of the sun. “Still some hours before dinner, I fear. Most barbarous, this local custom of eating only twice a day! Most barbarous. I’ll never grow accustomed to it, and I may not survive.” Secretly, he was glad Abel hadn’t scurried off with the others. He didn’t know why, exactly. He’d always generally loathed children: silly, mindless little creatures. His own son had been different, of course. A rare, exceptional specimen, most likely. He doubted he’d ever see the boy again, or even know if he was alive. He’d gone to fly Hurricanes for the RAF back in ’39, and Courtney was slowly growing to accept that pining over his son’s fate was pointless. In his heart, the boy would live forever. His ex-wife never entered his thoughts. That left Abel. Maybe that was it? Perhaps the boy was becoming something of a surrogate son? He was clearly unusually bright: unlike the other children who’d been aboard the submarine, he had the sense to seek Courtney’s company and he had an insatiable curiosity.

Abel seemed to commiserate with him for a moment about the local customs, but then brightened. “Well, sir, if you’re hungry, I’m sure we could find something at the Castaway Cook.”

Bradford arched an eyebrow and looked at the boy. The Castaway Cook was a ramshackle, abandoned warehouse a short distance from the shipyard. It had suffered serious damage in the fighting and was really little more than a standing roof when Walker ’s cook, Earl Lanier, appropriated it as a kind of enlisted men’s club. It currently had little value as a warehouse, since there was no pier. In fact, it sported one of the few actual beaches on the Baalkpan waterfront. Earl was a ship’s cook, and that was all he was. With his galley underwater, he’d decided he better get back to doing what he knew before somebody made him do something he didn’t. Besides, “the fellas is always hungry,” he’d explained. He was right. The American destroyermen and submariners he fed were still accustomed to three meals a day, and with all the work there was for everyone, the Lemurian destroyermen and other naval personnel were often hungry too. It was good for morale. The various army regiments were beginning to establish haunts of their own, and with Captain Reddy and Adar’s approval had come the stern warning that Marines would also be welcome at Lanier’s establishment. Or else.

Earl did a booming business. Besides Pepper, he had five more cooks and half a dozen waitresses. There were also several bartenders and that was what made Bradford’s eyebrow rise. The Castaway Cook had another, possibly more common name: the Busted Screw. The entendres of that name were too numerous to count, but the accepted reference was to the party they’d held after replacing Walker ’s damaged propeller with Mahan ’s at Aryaal.

Bradford studied the boy’s innocent expression. “Well, I suppose,” he relented. Together, they dodged the ’Cats and marching troops, stopping now and then to admire various sea creatures on display in the bazaar. Coastal artillery crews drilled on their guns behind reinforced embrasures with augmented overhead protection. Abel watched it all, fascinated, and Courtney felt a growing benevolent affection for the lad.

“Do you ever miss the other children, the ones you were stranded among so long?” Bradford probed.

Abel cocked his head to the side. “I see them now and then,” he said thoughtfully, “but we never had much in common, you know. The girls were all-mostly all-ridiculous, squalling crybabies. Miss, uh, Princess Rebecca was the exception, of course.”

“Indeed she was. And is. Most extraordinary.” Even though Rebecca was also clearly a child, Bradford actually admired her. She had a quick mind and was utterly fearless. With a flash, he suddenly realized that Abel Cook obviously “admired” her as well. “Indeed,” he repeated. He motioned toward the martial exercises under way. “Do you wish you had more of that to do? Your, ah, other comrades, the ones old enough, are quite involved in it, you know. Of course you do.”

“I do miss it some,” Abel confessed. “I’d like to be a soldier or a naval officer.” He paused. “I think my father would expect it. Did you know, of all the children aboard S-19, I am the only one whose father was a military man? He was a naval attache and interpreter for Admiral Palliser.” He paused again, and continued more softly. “He was liaison aboard DeRuyter when she went down. I don’t… I’ll never know what happened to him.” The boy’s lip quivered ever so slightly, but his voice didn’t. Bradford knew then that he had far more in common with this lad than he would ever have imagined. “All the other children-the boys, at least-were the sons of important men, but I think Admiral Palliser got me on the submarine himself. Mum was supposed to come, but there wasn’t enough room there at the end. Sister Audry offered to leave the boat, but Mum wouldn’t have it. The captain, Ensign Laumer, even Mr. Flynn wanted to take her anyway, but that Dutch cow,” he said, referring to a somewhat dumpy Dutch nanny in charge of most of the girls, “said it just ‘wouldn’t do.’ Things were ‘quite cramped enough as it was.’” Abel’s tone turned bitter. “There would have been room for several more people if they’d have just set that one ridiculous woman ashore. I’m sure she weighs as much as a torpedo and occupies three times the space!”

“Now, now,” admonished Courtney gently, “I can certainly see your point. But one mustn’t be unkind.”

Besides Sandra and Karen Theimer Letts, only two other Navy nurses had survived: Pam Cross and Kathy McCoy. Pam was engaged in a torrid part-time affair with Dennis Silva, and for a time that had left only one known, and… wholesomely unattached female in the entire world: Kathy McCoy. This intolerable situation had resulted in the increasingly desperate “dame famine.” That famine still existed to a degree. The only practical means of truly breaking it seemed to lie in establishing good relations with the Empire, but there were a few more women in Baalkpan now. There’d been four nannies, not counting Sister Audry, on S-19 to care for the twenty children of diplomats and industrialists aboard the sub. Two of them, one British and the “ridiculous” Dutchwoman, dropped all pretense of nannyhood and had taken it upon themselves to “thank” as many of their destroyermen rescuers as they could in the best way they knew how, as soon as they returned to Baalkpan after the battle. Both women were rather plain and had probably landed right in the middle of their version of heaven. Perhaps the dame famine was broken, but in spite of terrible losses, the male-to-female ratio was very considerably out of whack. They were only two women, after all, and their energy and gratitude had limits. For now, the dame drought still smoldered.

“Besides,” Courtney continued, “your mother surely found a far safer transport, in retrospect.”

“Possibly,” Abel allowed, but his tone sounded unconvinced. For a while, the pair walked in silence.

Beyond the breastworks, they entered what was left of the old warehouse district and followed the strains of music that gradually emerged from the general noise of the nearby industrial productivity. The music came from Marvaney’s portable phonograph-a larger, tin resonance chamber had been attached to increase the volume. Bradford didn’t recognize the tune, but he rarely recognized any of the music recorded on the depleted, but still large collection of 78s the dead gunner’s mate had owned. The surviving records were almost all upbeat American tunes: jazzy, or something the destroyermen called swing. There were a few whimsical Western songs, and some stuff the men called country that sounded more like Celtic chanteys than anything else. Bradford was a classicist, and to his horror he’d learned the late Marvaney had been too, but most of his collection of that sort of music had been used as an object of weight to carry his corpse to the deep. Regardless, all the records were priceless relics now and were carefully maintained. It was rare that two songs were played in a row without a pause to sharpen the needle.

Bradford knew that sometimes, at night, they had live music at the Busted Screw. A small percentage of the Americans had been musicians, of a sort, and like virtually every item nonessential to the two destroyers’ final sortie, their instruments had been off-loaded. There were several guitars, a pair of ukuleles, a trombone, and a saxophone from Walker. A concertina, a trumpet, and a violin came from Mahan. Oddly, a pump organ, of all things, had been aboard S-19. Bradford knew space had been extremely limited on the old submarine and he again wondered vaguely where it had been kept and how they’d managed to get it through a hatch to salvage it. It wasn’t much larger than a console Victrola, but still… at least there’d been a considerable collection of classical sheet music tucked inside. The original owner was dead, but a lot of the fellows could play a piano. Bradford couldn’t, really, but he could read music. He’d attended a concert at the Busted Screw and had to say the sound created by the unlikely orchestra had been… unusual. Throw in a variety of Lemurian instruments, and he couldn’t quite describe the result. He wasn’t without hope that the bizarre ensemble might eventually be arranged into something less cacophonous.

Outside the Screw, on a makeshift hammock slung between two trees on the beach, Earl Lanier lounged in bloated repose. He wore shorts, “go-forwards,” and had eyeshades on. There was a large, faded, bluish tattoo of a fouled anchor on his chest, pointing almost directly at a bright pink, puckered scar above his distended belly button. He wore no shirt, and other than a thick mat of dark, curly hair, they were the only things upon his otherwise tanned, ample belly. Beside the hammock stood the battered, precious Coke machine, powered by a doubtlessly clandestine heavy-gauge wire. As Courtney and Abel watched, a black-furred ’Cat with specks of white appeared, complete with a towel over his arm, and took a chilled mug of something from inside the machine and handed it to Lanier. Before Bradford could form an indignant comment, Pepper retrieved another pair of mugs and brought them over.

“One is, ah, you call it beer,” he said, knowing Bradford’s preference for the exceptional Lemurian brew. He looked at the boy before handing him a mug. “The other is a most benevolent and benign nectar.”

“Thank you, dear fellow,” Courtney said. “I was just about to ask why you put up with such treatment from that ludicrous creature.”

Pepper grinned. “I like cool drinks,” he said, and gestured toward the shade of the club, “and so do guys.” He shrugged. “No happy Earl, no Coke machine. Also, I like being assistant cook. I like to cook. You wanna eat?”

“Well, now that you mention it…” Courtney and Abel followed Pepper under the shade and plopped themselves on bar stools before a planked countertop.

“What’ll it be?” Pepper asked as their eyes became accustomed to the shade. “I know you not like fish, but I got fresh pleezy-sore steaks.”

“Plesiosaur,” Bradford corrected, almost resignedly. “That will be fine. At least they aren’t technically fish.”

“It is quite good, actually,” came a small voice nearby. Bradford squinted and realized that Princess Rebecca sat almost beside him.

“Goodness gracious, my dear!” Courtney exclaimed. “What on earth are you doing here?” He glanced quickly around. Abel had suddenly become very still and Bradford suspected, if he could see it, he’d discover a deep blush covering the boy’s face. Apparently, sometime during their seclusion on Talaud Island, the young midshipman became smitten with the princess. He wondered if he’d known she’d be here. “And where is that abominable Dennis Silva, your supposed protector?”

Silva popped up from behind the bar like a jack-in-the-box. He teetered slightly. “Right here, Mr. Bradford, and I’m ambulatin’ fairly well. Thanks for askin’.”

Courtney was taken aback by Silva’s sudden, towering presence. He was also just about certain he’d quite understood the word “abominable.” Silva had always traded shamelessly in being much more than he appeared to be, and that was doubly true now. Bradford liked the big gunner’s mate-chief gunner’s mate now-and honestly owed him multiple lives, but if Silva had been frightening before, the eye patch and spray of scars across his bearded face made him positively terrifying. Particularly since Bradford knew Silva’s capacity for violence was exponentially greater than his appearance implied as well-and his appearance implied quite a lot. Nevertheless, he stood and faced the apparition with a stern glare.

“Mr. Silva, I find it difficult to believe even you would bring Her Highness to such an iniquitous place. Filthy, sweaty men and Lemurians often gather here and exchange ribald, obscene tales. There is foul speech, and on several occasions one of the Dutch… nannies… we rescued from Talaud has actually performed a striptease! There have been fights, and contrary to regulations, there’s often drunkenness. I won’t go into your personal life and speculate upon what a poor example you set as a man, but bringing that child with you here is an act of irresponsible depravity!”

Silva leered at him across the counter, and in his best Charles Laughton impression-which wasn’t very good-he uttered a single word: “Flatterer!”

Bradford took a breath, preparing to launch another salvo.

“Then what does that say about you, Mr. Bradford, and your bringing Midshipman Cook,” Princess Rebecca said, glancing at Abel and offering a small smile. Now that his eyes had adjusted, Bradford clearly saw the blush coloring the boy’s face.

“Well,” Courtney sputtered defensively, “but that is different, of course! He is young, but he’s a warrior and needs male example. Perhaps not as… sharply defined an example as Mr. Silva, but.. .”

“Mr. Bradford,” Rebecca continued, “I know Mr. Cook and consider him something of a friend.” The boy’s blush deepened, if that were possible. “You should remember we spent the better part of a year as castaways together. I also know he is barely older than I, and through no fault of his, I expect I have seen considerably more combat. Lawrence and I were aboard Walker during the final fight with Amagi, if you will recall.”

Speechless, Bradford glanced about. Only then did he see Lawrence himself, coiled in the sand like a cat where the sun could still reach him, staring back with what could only have been an amused expression. He was panting lightly, and immediately Bradford’s mind shifted gears, wondering why Lawrence would lie in the sun… and pant… so close to shade. He shook his head.

“Besides,” Rebecca said, ending the argument with her tone, “Mr. Silva did not bring me here; I brought him. He is still in some considerable pain from his wounds, you know, and a measured amount of seep helps alleviate that.”

“Right,” Silva said, resuming his search behind the counter as if he’d lost something. “I’m here for a medical treatment prescribed by medical treaters! I’m on limited, excyooged-excused duty.” He vanished again entirely, groping on the floor.

“He’s also quite incredibly bored,” whispered Rebecca. “Captain Reddy said he must remain here when the expedition to Aryaal departs. He was not pleased. He understands, with Mr. O’Casey forced to remain in hiding and Billingsly’s spies on the loose, that someone suitably menacing must watch out for me. But… he was not pleased.”

“Where the devil did it go?” came Silva’s muted mumble.

“Say, what is he looking for down there?” Bradford asked quietly.

Rebecca shrugged sadly. “It could be anything, but usually it’s his eye.” She shook her head at Bradford’s expression. “He has not lost his mind, but he is in danger of losing direction.” She spoke louder. “And he has clearly had quite enough seep!”

They needed a break from the daily rains, Gilbert Yeager thought. The sun rode overhead, but it wouldn’t do much about the humidity. Make it worse, maybe. Didn’t matter. The pyres had long since ceased, but black smoke piled into the hazy sky, and the industrial smoke they were making now, combined with the humidity, made every breath an effort. He coughed. Damn, he wished he had a cigarette.

He sighed and took a pouch out of his pocket, stuffing some of the yellow leaves within into his mouth. Chewing vigorously, he tried to get through the waxy, resinlike coating to the genuine tobacco flavor within as quickly as he could. “Gotta be a way to clean this stuff off,” he muttered. So far, everything they’d tried to remove the coating so the leaves could be smoked had failed. The native tobacco could be chewed, but it was practically toxic when lit.

The nearest sources of the choking smoke were a pair of crude, but functional locally made boilers. They’d been leveled atop layer upon layer of good firebrick on the once damp shore, but they’d long since cooked all the moisture from the ground around them. They roared and trembled with power in the red light of their own fires that seemed to diffuse upward around them. Dozens of ’Cat tenders tightened or adjusted valves, checked gauges, or scampered off on errands at the monosyllabic commands of another scrawny human, Isak Rueben.

The boilers powered several contraptions-none exactly alike, since each was virtually a handmade prototype-that chuffed along amiably enough, their twin pistons moving methodically up and down. Gouts of steam added even more humidity to the air with every revolution, but at least it was honest steam-not the useless, invisible kind the sun cooked out of the ground. The end use of each machine was a series of shafts, or in one case, a piston-pitman combination. One was a small, prototype ship’s engine they were testing for durability. The others spun large generators in crudely cast casings that supplied ship-standard 120 DC electricity to various points.

More engines were under construction that would eventually supply electrical or mechanical power to the pumps that would drain the nearby basin. The mechanical pumps were of a remarkably sophisticated Lemurian design. The electric ones were, like everything else electrical, experimental models Riggs, Letts, Rodriguez, and Brister had conjured up. If Gilbert had any money and if anyone would accept it, he’d lay every dime that the electric pumps would croak the first time they tried them.

Tabby, the gray-furred ’Cat apprentice to the two original Mice, ran lightly up behind him and playfully tagged him on the shoulder, then scampered to where Isak was standing. Hands in his pockets, Gilbert sauntered over to join them. “How they doin’?” he asked, when he was near enough to be heard over the noise.

“Fair,” Isak replied skeptically. “Fair to middlin’. They ain’t turbines,” he accused no one in particular, “but they’re engines. Least we got a real job again.”

Gilbert nodded. They’d finally trained enough ’Cat roughnecks to take their places in the oilfields, both near Baalkpan and on Tarakan Island. The relief was palpable to them both. They hated the oilfields. Their time in the oilfields back home was what drove them into the Navy in the first place. They’d become firemen, and that was all they really wanted to do. Everyone called them the White Mice, because before the event that brought them here, they never went anywhere but the fireroom and they’d developed an unhealthy pallor as a result. They actually resembled rodents, too, with their narrow faces and thin, questing noses. Nobody ever liked them before, but now everyone treated them like heroes-which they were-Tabby included. First, they’d designed the rig that found oil when the ship was completely out. Then they’d managed to maintain enough steam pressure to get Walker to the shipyard after the fight. They were remarkably valuable men, but all their popularity hadn’t changed them much. Everyone liked them now, but they still didn’t like anybody, it seemed. Except for Tabby.

They’d originally treated the ’Cat like a pet, even though she’d proven herself in the fireroom. She’d even saved both of their lives at the end, by pulling them out of the escape trunk as the ship settled beneath them. Now she was one of them, another Mouse, even if she didn’t look anything like one.

“I think they swell,” Tabby said, referring to the engines in a passable copy of their lazy drawl.

“Yah, sure… for a myoo-zeeum. They’re a hunnerd years outta date.”

“Buildin’ a pair of ’em with three cylinders, triple-expansion jobs-ten times as big-for Big Sal, I hear,” Isak said.

Tabby’s eyes blinked amazement. “Be somethin’, to be chief of that.”

“You expectin’ a promotion?” Gilbert asked accusingly. “Hell, they’ve made gen’rals an’ ad’mrals outta ever’body else, why not you?”

“I never be aahd-mah-raal,” she retorted, angry enough to let her language and accent slip. She looked at the engine. “But chief be nice.” She turned on Gilbert. “But only if you two be chief-chiefs.”

The two men remained apologetically silent for a moment. It was their version of abject contrition. Finally, Isak spoke: “Bosun been to talk to you two?” he asked. Gilbert and Tabby both nodded. “One of us gots to go on the mission they’re cookin’ up, he says, since they’re takin’ the first new steam frigates.” He pointed at the engine. “They’ve got one like that, only bigger. That’s why we been testin’ it to failure.” He grunted. “Least this time they’re lettin’ us decide.” He looked at Tabby. “An’ this time she’s in the pool as deep as us. Metallurgy aside, Tabby prob’ly knows these jug jumpers better than us. Bosun’d have to find a three-sided coin to make up his mind.”

“You just said it,” Gilbert accused. “It don’t matter what we decide. They’ll keep her here just because o’ that!”

“Maybe we oughta go ahead an’ tell ’em we’re sorta related after all,” Isak murmured. “Tell ’em we can’t bear to be apart.” He snickered at his own remark. He and Gilbert had never let on that they were half brothers. There was a certain resemblance often remarked upon, but usually in a mocking fashion. Besides, their last names were different. They’d never told anyone, because not only did they have different fathers, but their mother never married either man. In a sense, they figured that made them each kind of a bastard and a half. Things like that didn’t seem to matter as much to them as they once had, but they still saw no need to brand it on their foreheads. “Hell, if it comes to it, I’ll go,” Isak said. “Kinda got the wanderlust flung on me the last time they busted us up.”

“You didn’t do any wanderin’,” Gilbert accused. “You just stayed on that damn island while me and Tabby went a-wanderin’.”

Isak nodded. “Yep. That’s what I mean.”

“Well,” said Gilbert, clearly relieved, “just don’t get ate.”

With a look around the noisy ordnance shop to make sure no one was paying any particular attention, Dennis Silva clamped the brand-new musket barrel in the mill vise. The barrel was made of relatively mild steel plate, about three-eighths of an inch thick, taken from Amagi ’s superstructure. Dennis figured they could ultimately salvage enough of the stuff from Amagi alone to make millions of barrels, if they wanted. The plate had been cut and forged around a mandrel, reamed to its final interior diameter, and turned to its finished contour. Finally, it was threaded and breeched. It was a simple process really, with the equipment they had, but it had just been perfected, and only a few of the barrels were complete. Dennis figured the odds were about even that Bernie would have a spasm when he noticed one missing.

So far, the Captain and “Sonny” Campeti hadn’t insisted that Dennis return to his duties full-time-they must have understood he had issues to sort out: some physical, a few domestic. He doubted their forbearance would last much longer. He was malingering, in a sense, and even he was beginning to feel bad about that. There was a lot he could be doing, after all. Should be doing. But he was a blowtorch. He’d go full-blast while there was fuel in the tanks, but when they were empty, they were empty. He’d needed this time to refuel, not only physically, but mentally-to put the “old” Dennis Silva back together. The time was just about right, and if the truth were known, he was actually starting to get a little antsy to return to duty. Besides, he had some ideas.

Carefully focusing his one good eye on the neatly scribed lines he’d drawn on the breech end, he cranked the table up and powered the mill. The cutter spun up and he turned a valve that started misting it with the oily coolant Spanky had devised. Slowly, he turned the crank in front of him. The cutter went through the breech like butter and he turned the other crank on the right side of the table and pulled the cutter back through the breech, widening the gap. Half a dozen more passes gave him the rectangular opening he wanted in the top of the barrel’s breech.

“Oops,” he mumbled happily, “I guess this barrel’s ruined!”

He brushed the chips away and replaced the cutter with another that would leave a rounded, dovetail shape. He measured the depth, traversed the table, and made a single pass at the front of his rectangular cut. Changing the cutter again, to one with a slight taper, he made a final cut at the breech. Looking closely to make sure he’d hit all his lines, he switched off the machine and removed the barrel from the vise.

“God damn you, Silva, what the hell are you up to now?” came an incredulous bellow. A lesser mortal might have at least flinched just a bit despite the almost plaintive note to the shout.

“Goofin’ off,” Dennis replied mildly. “Cool your breech, Mr. Sandison. Ol’ Silva’s just keepin’ hisself ‘occupied,’ like you said.”

For an instant, Bernie was speechless. “Cool my breech? You just hacked a hole in the breech of one of my new musket barrels and you tell me that?” He looked almost wildly around. “Where’s Campeti? If you won’t listen to me, maybe he can control you! In fact, I want him to hang you!”

“Why’s ever’body always want to hang me?” Silva asked, as if genuinely curious. “Calm down, Bernie, you’ll hurt yourself. You ’cumulated a extra hole or two in the big fight yourself, if I recall. If you start leakin’, Lieutenant Tucker’s gonna get sore, and she’ll have the skipper down on you. He’ll make you take a rest, and you’ll be countin’ waves in the bay at the Screw while Campeti runs this joint. Besides, just ’cause I’m goofin’ off don’t mean I’d dee-stroy a perfectly good musket barrel without a pretty good reason.”

Bernie paused and took a breath. Silva was right. He was a maniac, but when it came to implements of destruction, if he wasn’t actually a genius, he was at least a prodigy of some monstrous sort. He still had his “personal” BAR, and was one of the few people allowed to run around with such a profligate weapon and a full battle pack of precious ammunition. His new favorite weapon however, that he carried just about everywhere he went, was of an entirely different sort. Bernie glanced at the thing where it leaned near Silva’s workstation with the bag of necessary equipment it required.

It had begun life as an antiaircraft gun aboard shattered Amagi, a Type 96, twenty-five millimeter. The breech had been damaged in the battle and the flash hider shot away, so Silva “appropriated” it during one of their early trips to the wreck to salvage anything that remained above water. He told Sandison what he was doing, and the still painfully wounded (like nearly everyone) torpedo officer and Minister of Ordnance gave his blessing to the project. For most of his life, before joining the Navy, Silva had just been on the loose. For a time however, he’d worked for an old-school gunsmith near Athens, Tennessee. In that part of the country, even in the mid-thirties, many guns they worked on were old-fashioned muzzle loaders, even flintlocks. His time there was probably what made him strike for the ordnance division in the Navy. In any event, he’d learned a lot about “old-timey” guns, so Sandison gave him the flintlock from the shortened musket O’Casey had when they rescued him.

Silva turned the Type 96 barrel down as light as he thought was wise on one of the lathes, breeched it, and fitted it to a crude stock. Then he made a hollow-base. 100-caliber bullet mold like a Civil War Minie ball, so the bullet would expand and take the gain-twist rifling. He still worked on it now and then, dolling it up, but what he had was a massive weapon, weighing almost thirty pounds, with a five-foot barrel. It was amazingly accurate with its quarter-pound bullet, but the recoil was so horrifyingly abusive, nobody but Silva had ever even fired it. Probably no human but Silva could fire it more than once without serious injury. He called it his Super Lizard Gun, and was anxious to test it on one of the allosaurus-like brutes. He never wanted to go up against one of those incredibly tough monsters with a. 30-06 again.

“So,” Bernie said resignedly, “show me why you shouldn’t hang. And this had better be something useful!”

“Sure.” Silva held up the barrel he’d altered. “Alden wants muskets, and that’s fine. That’s what we can do right now, so that’s how we go. What you’re making- we’re making-is basically an old muzzle-loading Springfield. You settled on cap instead of flint because they’re simpler and we can make the caps. Good call. Might want to make a few flintlocks for scouts, explorers, or such in case they wind up out of touch for a while-they can find flint if they run out of caps-but that’s beside the point. You’re also startin’ out with smoothbores because we haven’t built a rifling machine yet, and with the way Griks fight, a good dose of buck ‘n’ ball is just the ticket. Again, fine. The main thing right now is to get guns with bayonets in the hands o’ the troops. Eventually, we can take the same guns and rifle ’em, use Minie balls just like ol’ Doom Whomper over there. Everything’s great, and we move the ’Cats from fightin’ like they did in Roman times to the 1860s.

“But the skipper wants breechloaders, and that got me thinking. Everybody seems to figure that means, all of a sudden, we hafta jump from the old Springfields to the kind of Springfields we brought with us, our ’oh-threes. That’d be swell, but it’s a lot bigger jump than folks would think, and it’s bigger than we hafta make.”

“It is?”

“Yeah. The Army-our old Army-had the same problem once. After the

… War Between the States, they had millions of muzzleloadin’ Springfields, see? Thing is, everybody was startin’ to go to center-fire breechloaders. Even f… likkin’ Spain. Whaddaya do? This fella named Ersky Allin-er somethin’ like that-had sorta the same job as you. Anyway, he figured a way to make center-fire breechloaders outta all them muskets, and it was a cinch!” Silva brandished the barrel again, then fished around on a bench covered with strange-looking objects he’d been working on. He picked something up. “He, this Allin fella, cut the top outta the breech, like I just done, and screwed and soldered this here hinge-lookin’ thing to the front of the gap.” Silva held the object in place. “The thing on the other side of the hinge is the breechblock-we can cast ’em a lot easier than I milled this one out!-and the firin’ pin angles from the rear side to the front center!” He held the pieces together and the breechblock dropped into place with a clack!

“I ain’t pulled the breech plug out and milled the slot that locks the thing closed, but again, it’s a simple alteration. You cut a barrel, put this on, then grind the hammer to where it hits the firin’ pin square. All else you gotta add is a easy little extractor!”

Bernie’s eyes were huge. “Silva, you are a freak-show genius!”

“Nah. Maybe Ersky Allin was, though.”

Bernard Sandison looked at Dennis. “How did you do this? I mean, how did you know about this?”

Silva shrugged. “I had a couple over the years. First rifles I ever owned. Sometimes huntin’ was the only way a fella could stay fed, what with the Depression, and you could buy one surplus at just about any hardware store, or order one from Monkey Wards or Bannerman’s for a few bucks.”

Bernie shook his head. His childhood and Silva’s had been… different. “What did they shoot? And how…?”

“That’s another neat thing. You’re forgin’ these barrels on a five-eighths mandrel. Once you ream ’em out smooth, they’re about sixty-two-caliber or so. You go ahead and build yer riflin’ machine and rifle forty-five- or fifty-caliber liners to solder in the old barrels and then chamber ’em! Simple as pie. The first Allin guns they put liners in were fifty-seventy. When they started building rifles like this from the ground up instead of convertin’ ’em, they made receivers for ’em an’ did ’em in forty-five-seventy. That’s a forty-five- or fifty-caliber bullet on seventy grains of powder. Black powder, just like we have now. Both had a pretty high trajectory, but they’d stomp a buffalo to the ground. Probably a lot better for critters around here than a thirty-aught-six. Big and slow gives you big holes and deep penetration. Small and fast gives you small holes, and maybe not so deep penetration. If you’re too close, light bullets, even copper jacketed, just blow up on impact and never hit anything vital.”

Oddly, Bernie noticed that when Silva was talking ballistics, he didn’t sound as much like a hick, but he’d already begun tuning him out. Silva had just solved one of the biggest problems he’d expected to face over the next year or so. It had bothered him for a number of reasons. He’d felt a little like everything they did before they came up with “real” weapons was sort of a wasted effort. Silva’s scheme might not give them truly modern weapons, but they were leaps and bounds beyond anything they were likely to face. But what about cartridges?

“These fifty-seventies and forty-five-seventies, what were they shaped like? The shells?”

“Straight, rimmed case,” said Silva, grinning. He knew what Bernie was thinking. One of the problems they faced with making new shells for the Springfields and Krags they already had, not to mention the machine guns, was the semi-rimless bottleneck shape. “Even if you haven’t solved the problem of drawing cases-which I figure you will-you can turn these shells on a lathe if you have to.”

Bernie beamed. “I swear, Silva! Why didn’t you just tell me you wanted a musket barrel? I’m going to see you get a raise out of this. .. or a promotion, or something! Take the rest of the day off. You’re still technically on leave anyway. Go hunting or have a beer! Kill something; you’ll feel better!”

“Raise won’t do me any good, an’ I don’t want no promotion. All I answer to is you, Campeti, and the skipper anyway. You can call ’em ‘Allin-Silva’ conversions, if you want, though.”

“You bet! Do whatever you want! I have to talk to the skipper!” With that, Bernie rushed away with the still-dripping barrel and trapdoor arrangement in his hand. Silva watched him go. “Whatever I want, huh?” Silva said, eyebrow raised.