Distant Thunders (28 page)

“My people will return!” Rasik hissed. “They will return now that I have driven the Grik away!”

“You didn’t drive them away,” Matt retorted harshly, unable to stomach Rasik’s lies any longer. “ ‘Your’ people did!” He paused. “
They
did it, Rasik, and they
have
returned! They’ve come back to scour this city and make it their own again. They left you, sure enough, but they left you here to die.”

“You did that!” Rasik screeched.

“Yeah, I did, and I’m sorry. I should have killed you then, like your people said I should!”

“Guards!” shouted Rasik, turning toward “his” Grik.

“Wait!” yelled Matt, in Lemurian. “You say you think they’ll understand me?” he quickly asked Rolak.

“Yes, lord . . . if you are careful about your accent!”

Matt ignored the jibe. “You . . . you Grik warriors,” he said carefully. “Listen to me. This creature is evil. . . . Do you know what that means?” Rasik prepared a shouted retort, but Rolak waved his sword point to regain his attention. “He has led you down a false path, a dark path . . . a wrong path. He does not want what is best for you, only for himself. He sacrificed his own people to his selfishness and he’s ready to do it again. To sacrifice you.” Matt rubbed his eyes, hoping he was getting through. “If you try to fight us, you will die. That’s the truth. You won’t even get any of us.” He nodded toward the Marines covering each of the creatures. “If you put your weapons down and come with us, you’ll be well treated; I promise! You’ll never be ‘prey,’ and you’ll never have to be afraid again. I’m the commander of the forces that defeated you to begin with, the forces that defeated your Invincible Swarm and finally drove your people from this city. I have the power to make this promise, and it
is
a promise! Think of it! Plenty of food, nothing to fear”—he looked at Rasik—“and no more dying at the whim of a wild, unfeeling traitor. A traitor that made prey of his own people and would do the same to you!” There was total silence. “
Think
on it!”

Suddenly, with what almost sounded like a whimper, a sword fell to the floor. Then another. Incredulous, Rasik squirmed on his throne to see, but anything he might have said was silenced when Rolak’s blade caressed his neck. The rest of the Grik weapons hit the floor with a cacophonous crash and Matt felt a wild feeling of relief . . . and something else.

“Goddamn,” muttered Gray. “Skipper, you just talked to Grik!”

I just talked to Grik!
Matt screamed to himself.
What does it mean? What
can
it mean?
Quickly but carefully, since no Grik was ever unarmed, the Marines rounded up the prisoners—
Grik prisoners!
—and led them from the chamber. Matt took a deep breath and looked around. Pete still seemed speechless, as shocked as he was, and Jenks—he’d forgotten Jenks was even there—was looking at him with a very strange expression. He turned back to Rasik.

“Well,” he said. “Left to die again. Somehow, you just don’t inspire much loyalty,
King
Alcas!”

“Am I to die?” Rasik asked. His madness seemed to have passed with his illusion of power and his eyes had grown wide with fright.

“Just as soon as it can be arranged,” Matt promised him.

“I would
so
enjoy killing him, my lord,” Rolak crooned.

“Me too, but we need to do it right. For now, we’ve got a hell of a mess to clean up around here,” he said grimly. “Then we’ve got to decide what to do next. Maybe even learn something from our prisoners.” He stopped and shook his head. He needed time to wrap his mind around that. He wished Bradford were here! Or Lawrence. Maybe Rebecca’s companion would have some insight. “I want to push on toward Singapore, see what things are like there. Maybe we can take it back too. For some reason, the enemy seems to be abandoning his forward outposts. Anyway, we’ll be stuck here for a little while. There’ll be plenty of time for a trial for ‘His Majesty’ and we’ll boost morale for his former subjects with a proper, first-class hanging.” He glanced at his watch and turned to leave. “Carry on, gentlemen.”

“Wait!” cried Rasik. Matt kept walking. “
Wait!
” Rasik screeched with the voice of a terrified youngling. Matt paused in the doorway.

“What?” he snapped. “I’ve got a lot to do, and as far as I’m concerned, you’re to blame for most of it. We might have
saved
some of those people out there on poles if it wasn’t for you, damn you! The sooner you’re dead, the happier I’ll be!”

“After I’m dead,” Rasik said, gaining a little control over his voice, “you will never know what I found while I wandered in the wilderness!”

“What you found?”

“Yes. I think you might find it quite interesting . . . possibly even worth my life.”

“
C
ontact!” Ben Mallory shouted, warning Tikker that things were about to happen. Fast. They’d just completed the exhaustive, perhaps even mildly paranoid checklist he’d devised in the naive hope he’d somehow managed to foresee every glitch and imponderable characteristic his “creation” might throw at them. In spite of his excitement, Ben was more than a little nervous. He knew airplanes—particularly the high-performance pursuit planes he’d trained in—but in spite of the workmanlike proficiency he’d gained in the old PBY Catalina, he’d known it had a lot of idiosyncrasies he’d never figured out. Most of them probably had to do with its being a seaplane. His takeoffs and landings had never been all that hot, and that still bothered him. Now he was about to try to fly a seaplane that, essentially,
he’d
designed, without the benefit of any of the cumulative wisdom that had gone into the Catalina. Maybe “nervous” wasn’t really the right word.

The water of the bay was a little restless, with a light, uneven chop, but the wind was right and the sky seemed docile enough. The X-PB-1, as he referred to the plane, or “Nancy,” as everyone else had taken to calling it, after his first, ill-considered description, floated in the middle of the bay where it had been towed by
Mahan
’s launch, and all the area for a good distance in every direction had been cleared of harbor shipping. Other boats bobbed at regular intervals, ready to race to their aid if something . . . unpleasant happened. Ben hoped it wouldn’t. Experiments had shown that if they crashed into the water, even in the bay, they had a life expectancy of between four and six minutes before the “flashies” arrived and tore them to shreds. Of course, they had to survive the crash itself before that little tidbit of information would be relevant.

Ben was unhappy about the seemingly universally accepted moniker. The plane hadn’t ultimately wound up looking anything
like
a Nancy—one of the NC, or Navy-Curtiss, flying boats. It still looked more like a miniature PBY to him, although a comparison to a Super-marine Walrus was probably even closer. He was damned if he’d even mention
that
.

“Contact,” Tikker confirmed, while Ben stood precariously and turned toward the propeller. He felt as if he were attempting the feat in a canoe. He almost fell when an errant wave bounced the port wing float and slapped the starboard float against the sea.

“Jeez!” he chirped, trying to brace himself. He reached back and grasped one of the blades. At least he felt confident about the propeller. They’d “tracked” it while the engine was on the stand, and run it at different RPMs to check for resonant vibration and balance. The first one flew apart and nearly killed “Mikey” Monk, but they quickly improved the design. Bernie and Campeti finally came up with a scheme for a machine like a Springfield stock carver that they could use to make perfect props every time, as well as musket stocks. He pushed the blade up as high as he could reach, then brought it down with all his might. Much to his gratification, his prototype engine coughed instantly to life, and with a burbling, liquid fart, the propeller blades blurred before him. His back screamed in agony as he pulled something important trying to keep from falling into the prop.
Improvement number one
—he winced
—some kind of rail behind the cockpit for the pilot to hang onto so the engine doesn’t eat him!

Painfully, he turned and tried to get in the seat, but tripped on the stick and sprawled forward, across the windscreen. The stick poked him savagely in the crotch. He had no idea what kind of sound he made over the suddenly coughing engine, but doubted it was very manly. Aft, behind the motor, Tikker sprang up like . . . well, a cat, and hosed fuel at the carburetor with one of
Mahan
’s bug sprayers. The engine farted again, ran up, then started to cough. Somehow, Ben managed to form an objective thought:
Okay. Have to figure out a whole new start-up procedure.
He slid down into his wicker seat and for a moment just sat there, gasping sympathetically with the motor while trying to remember where the throttle was through the waves of pain. His vision cleared as the tears evaporated and he pushed the suddenly visible throttle knob forward. Tikker had been keeping the engine alive with the bug sprayer, but now it caught and settled into a healthy-sounding rumble.

Before he could grab it, Ben’s six-page checklist flew past his face, into the prop, and showered Tikker with confetti.
Oh, well
, he thought.
Saves me the effort of tearing it up
. He settled in his seat, getting a feel for things, and put the control surfaces through their paces once more. So far, so good. The engine had settled down and sounded swell. He felt the plane begin to accelerate slightly beneath him and glanced up.
That’s funny
.
What’s the launch doing there?
The boat was racing straightaway, almost directly in front of him.
Oh. Damn. There’s the city, too!
The plane must have bobbed around in a circle while he was concentrating on getting it started and staying alive. He pushed the right rudder pedal to the floorboard, and the plane began turning south again, completing the circle it had begun on its own.
Enough
, he thought.
The vaudeville show’s over. Time to get this crate in the air!
He yelled for Tikker to hang on, but doubted the ’Cat heard him. He realized improvement number three was some kind of voice tube so he could communicate with his air crew.

Pointing roughly toward the mouth of the bay, he advanced the throttle. The propeller became invisible and the awkward-looking craft picked up speed.
Okay, fairly responsive
.
Let’s give it some more!
He pushed the throttle to the stop. His creation had no flaps. The PBY hadn’t had any and he’d hoped they wouldn’t be needed. It was a seaplane, after all, and runway length shouldn’t be an issue. He’d hoped. “C’mon,” he muttered. The engine roared behind him, a little quieter now, and the prop was spinning—disconcertingly close—as fast as it could. The plane increased speed until it began to skip across the top of the water, but he couldn’t seem to get it up. “C’mon!” he yelled, pulling back a little on the stick. The nose came off the water, but he
felt
it catch the wind! “Whoa!” he yelped, pushing back on the stick just a bit. His heart raced and he wondered how close he’d come to flipping the plane on its back.
CG
—center of gravity
—is too far aft. I was afraid of that
, he thought.
Too much ass in her britches, like a P-39
. He wondered why he’d done that. Was he trying to make a pursuit ship out of a floatplane? Chances were she’d be pretty nimble, but he was growing more concerned about the plane’s stability. He concentrated on holding the stick where it was, still building speed
. Might need flaps after all
, he thought.

Suddenly, amazingly, the hull left the water and the contraption was in the air! He risked a glance back at Tikker, but the ’Cat was whirling madly on the crank that retracted the wing floats. He looked to the side. Sure enough, the floats were coming up—slowly.
Damn. Need a little more mechanical advantage there
. The floats had seemed to come up fast enough when they tested them, but that was on dry land, with no drag.
Number five
.

Once the plane was off the water, it practically rocketed into the sky. Again, he wondered if there was some seaplane mystery he was unaware of. He eased back on the stick and knew they had enough thrust at last to keep the nose from trying to flip them. He’d actually foreseen that to a degree, and intended that the high-mounted engine should counteract just such a tendency. He hadn’t had any real formula to base his calculations on, but it seemed to be working . . . sort of. That might have been what kept them down so long too, though.
Oh, well, that’s what test flights are for!

He wiped his goggles and realized he was soaked. There’d been enough spray to wet him down pretty good. He’d never gone blind, per se, but a larger windscreen was in order. He’d also have hated to get this wet anywhere but in the tropics. Cold still might be an issue, depending on the ceiling.
Number six.
He started climbing and banking slightly left, intending to ease back toward the city. Slowly, his tension began to ebb. He’d done it! He’d designed and helped build the first airplane ever constructed on this world! A euphoric feeling began to take hold. He’d done it, and he was flying! When the old PBY folded up and fell into the bay during the battle, he’d never dreamed he would survive, much less fly again! He let out a whoop.

He didn’t have an altimeter, but thought he was probably about two thousand feet up when he steadied the plane and aimed it at Baalkpan. With any luck, they’d have altimeters soon. There wasn’t that much to them, and right then, anything seemed possible. He glanced at his instrument panel. They’d salvaged a few instruments from the Catalina and put them on the prototype whether they had realistic expectations of re-creating them or not. They had to know what the plane could do. All the new planes would have a few easy instruments: a compass, an artificial horizon—or clinometer, as the Navy types liked to call it. An airspeed indicator was easy to do. Several temperature gauges would be supplied: one for the crankcase and others for each cylinder head. An oil-pressure gauge had already been successfully tested and was in production. The fuel gauge, at present, was the time-honored floating stick bobbing up and down through a hole in the gas cap. The fuel tank was in the wing above and behind him and he could keep an eye on the “gauge” with a little mirror. They’d need more eventually. They already
had
more than most pilots relied on in the Great War. Ben fiddled with the stick. A little tight, he decided, and he’d like some trim tabs, but overall, the only real problem was a tendency to pitch.
CG, again
. He already hated the propeller so close behind his head. Maybe they needed to turn the engine around. Make it a pusher . . .