Distant Thunders (31 page)

Irvin wasn’t much of a practical sailor yet, and he relied heavily on
Simms
’s actual captain, Lelaa-Tal-Cleraan. She reminded him a lot of Silva’s supposed Lemurian sweetheart, Risa-Sab-At, with her brindled fur and quick wit. Unlike Risa, however, Lelaa wasn’t a born warrior, and she hadn’t even seen action yet. Before getting
Simms
, she’d commanded one of the Navy feluccas. She
was
a born sailor, though, and Irvin was learning a lot from her. She’d translated her skill with the fore-and-aft rigged feluccas to the primarily square rig of
Simms
with astonishing ease. She was a good, patient teacher and well liked by her crew. She lacked any of Saan-Kakja’s cuteness factor, but she was young and still handsome in an experienced, practical way. Irvin had every confidence in her, and the two of them had become fast friends.

They tried to keep the Mindanao coast in sight as they worked east-southeast over the next few days. There were islands everywhere, and Lelaa was constantly worried about wind direction, something Irvin, a submariner, had never much considered. Truth be known, he was always more worried about how much water was under the keel and what sort of creatures might be in it. Lelaa was worried too; that was why they hugged the coast—a most unnatural act in a sailing ship. The depths here were unknown, however, and everyone was a little tense as they cruised the edge of the Celebes Sea.

“I like coffee,” Lelaa said, staring into her cup with a surprised, wide-eyed blink. She and Irvin were on
Simms
’s quarterdeck enjoying another pleasant morning. “Everyone says it is vile and they don’t know how you Amer-i-caans can drink it all the time, but I find it heightens my awareness . . . and I have even come to enjoy the taste. Does that make me strange . . . or even more Amer-i-caan?”

Irvin laughed, then took a small sip from his own scalding cup of “monkey joe.” “Well, you’ve been in the American Navy for some time now, and everybody back home would swear the Navy couldn’t function without coffee. I don’t think we could’ve ever won a war without it.”

“You have told me of the great battles in your . . .
our
Navy’s past. Is that how they won? We drink coffee and our enemies do not?”

Irvin laughed again. “Maybe. If the only difference in a fight is that one side is wide-awake and alert, it might tip the balance. There are other variables, though, that coffee alone can’t make up for. Crummy torpedoes, being outnumbered ten to one.” His smile faded. “In the war we came from, we drank a lot of coffee, but it wasn’t making much difference.”

Lelaa took another sip. “I bet it would have, eventually. Maybe in that lost world, it already has.”

Irvin grunted.

The alarm bell at the masthead sounded insistently and everyone’s gaze turned upward.

“Island fish! Island fish! Three points off starboard bow! Two t’ousand yards! It just came up!”

“Clear for action!” Lelaa shouted, gulping the rest of her coffee and passing the cup to Midshipman Hardee. Hardee had been one of the kids on S-19 and had volunteered to return to her. Now sixteen, he was also the oldest boy who’d been aboard her. “Pass the word for Sparks to wind up his gear!”

“Aye-aye, Captain!” Hardee replied, clutching the cup in both hands. He raced away. “Tex” Sheider, also known as “Sparks,” like every communications officer on any Navy ship, scrambled up the companionway from below. He was a small, skinny guy, as many submariners were, and had never seemed to fit his other nickname: Tex. Of course, that didn’t matter either. All that mattered was that he was from Texas. There’d once been another Tex on S-19, but he’d suffocated in the battery compartment.

“Captain,” Hardee addressed Lelaa. “Sir,” he said to Irvin. “I heard the alarm. The guys are winding up the gizmo now.” He looked ahead, trying to see the huge fish. A gray-black hump was just visible from deck now. “I sure hope this works,” he added nervously.

The Anti-Mountain Fish Destruction Countermeasures, or AMF-DIC, after the British version of sonar—with a couple of extra letters thrown in—were a collection of mostly untried procedures it was hoped would scare the humongous, ship-eating beasts away. All had an acoustic pressure element, which they’d learned through experience might be effective. The first line of defense was literally a giant speaker activated by the ship’s communication equipment. A wind-powered generator charged a primitive battery in the “wireless shack” that, when switched through a high-amplitude capacitor, allowed them to boost the output through the simple transmitter Riggs had given them. In this case, instead of routing the jolt of electricity to an antenna, it sent it to a crude speaker mounted firmly to the hull. The result briefly turned the entire ship into a resonance chamber meant to frighten the creatures away.

The second defense, one they knew
could
work when properly applied, was a device most of the destroyermen had been familiar with even though
Walker
and
Mahan
had never been equipped with them. It was a form of “Y” gun that used one of the old muzzle-loading mortars they’d employed in the defense of Baalkpan. A weighted barrel of gunpowder rested upon a rack positioned at the muzzle of the mortar, which allowed them to blast the depth charge into the path of an oncoming mountain fish. They knew the monsters didn’t like depth charges at all, and they believed the “Y” gun would work fine—if it didn’t blow up the ship.

They had a final defense that Jenks had told them the Imperial Navy used at close quarters: an indiscriminate, simultaneous broadside of every gun on the ship. The resulting concussion seemed to disorient the beasts, and although it made them
very
angry, only rarely did they manage to destroy a ship with their enraged convulsions.

“Stand ready to activate your gizmo, Tex,” Irvin instructed. Lelaa nodded. “But wait for the word. I know we want to test it, but if that thing leaves us alone, we’ll leave it alone. Right now it’s just kind of wallowing there, catching some rays.”

“Yeah, but it’s right in front of us. What if it won’t move? Do we go around it, or blast it?”

Lelaa looked at the sky and the set of the sails. “We blast it,” she decided. “If we go around, we will lose speed, and I want us to be as fast as we can be if we are forced to use the gizmo.” She raised her voice. “Signal our consort to lay aft and follow in our wake. Maybe it won’t sense us both. No point in making it feel threatened by our numbers.”

Irvin glanced at her and she shrugged, her tail swishing uncomfortably. “If there were ten of us, I might try it the other way,” she explained, “but with only two, each less than a third its size . . .”

“It moving, Skipper,” came the shout from above. “It know we here! It coming this way!”

Lelaa shook her head and looked at Sheider. “Stand by your gizmo, Tex.” She gestured at the cluster of copper speaking tubes beside the wheel. “I will give the order.”

“Aye-aye, Captain.” With a nervous grin at Laumer, he disappeared below.

The giant was not on an attack run but seemed merely interested or curious, so their closing speed was not that great. Unfortunately, a mountain fish’s curiosity often included tasting what it was curious about. At six hundred yards, Lelaa strode to the speaking tube and repeated, “Stand by.” No one knew what the maximum range of the gizmo might be, but Riggs had figured it would become unpleasant at about five hundred yards. All they would get was one shot every several minutes. In a wind like this, it would take that long for the capacitor to recharge. If Lelaa had any hope of testing the device any closer, she’d have to try it at maximum range first. She started to say, “Fire,” but that seemed inappropriate.

“Light it up, Tex.”

For an instant, there was nothing. Then, with a jarring suddenness that surprised everyone, the whole skip began to tremble, accompanied by a dull bass rumble beneath their feet. The vibration was so intense, it blurred Irvin’s vision. After only a few seconds, the sensation passed.

“What’s it doing?” Lelaa shouted above.

“It pissed!” came the shout. “It swim in circle, go ape! Wait! It coming this way, fast! It pissed!”

“Ready the forward “Y” gun!” Lelaa commanded. The gun was already loaded and prepared in all respects, but Shipfitter Danny Porter tracked the oncoming target and shifted the weapon accordingly. The “Y” gun had no sights—it was an area weapon, after all—but Danny had a good eye and was a good judge of distance. He’d been striking for gunner’s mate, and his surface action station on the sub had been her four-inch fifty.

“Ready when you are, Skipper,” he announced tersely over the voice tube.

“Commence firing when you see fit,” Lelaa said. Her voice sounded calm, but tinny. “Try to drop the bomb right on its nose.”

For a moment, nothing happened. Danny waited, calculating the ship’s slight pitch and the range to the target. He’d been allowed only a couple of tests with the new weapon and was no expert by any means. Suddenly, he stepped back.

“Fire!”

Simms
’s entire fo’c’sle was shrouded with white smoke and a loud, muffled
whump!
jarred the ship. The barrel-shaped bomb emerged from the smoke and tumbled upward into the sky. For a moment, it seemed to defy gravity as it hung there, wobbling, but growing smaller too. Then it began to fall. Everyone was tense, waiting for the plunge. It looked like Danny had missed, or worse, that the bomb might actually hit the back of the creature. Most supposed that if that happened, it might even die, but it would almost certainly lunge ahead and strike the ship before it did. A large concave splash erupted a hundred feet short of the monster, a little to its left. A pressure cap inside the bomb should detonate at about twenty feet. The sensitive nature of the detonator was always a concern when firing the damn things.

The sea spalled into shattered white marble, and almost immediately, a huge cloud of smoke and spray erupted in the charging fish’s path. They saw the beast then, beyond the cloud, practically rear itself out of the water. Another momentous splash followed the first, and they glimpsed massive flukes pounding the sea—away from them!

“It worked!” came Danny’s cry, all the way from the fo’c’sle. A huge cheer erupted, echoed by those on their consort astern. They hadn’t seen anything, but they must have guessed the second aspect of the AMF-DIC defense had been a success.

“Outstanding!” Irvin said, stepping to join Lelaa near the wheel. Lelaa was smiling toothily. “Please accept my congratulations! We’ve got to get a message out right away and let everybody know it works!” Irvin’s exuberance was tempered a few moments later when Tex appeared on the quarterdeck. His hair was singed and his shirt looked scorched. “What’s the matter?” Irvin asked warily, a sick sensation in his gut.

“Transmitter’s cooked. Kaput. All that juice was just too much for it. I
told
Clancy we needed a fuse! But nooo!” Tex shook his head disgustedly. “Damn Boston Mick! I’m gonna cool him off—to dirt temperature! —when we get home! One lousy fuse, but he says, ‘You know how hard it is to make them?’ Not as hard as it is to make a goddamn transmitter!”

“You okay, Tex?”

The smaller, dark-haired man shrugged. “Swell. A little scorched.” He looked at his shirt. “I threw the switch, but the transmitter was already on
fire
, so I stifled it with my shirt. Nearly choked myself to death getting it off. Did you know this was the last shirt I had that was made in the U.S. of A.?”

“I’m sorry, Tex. We’ll get you another one.”

“I want that bastard Clancy’s, if he has one left!”

“What about the receiver?” Lelaa inquired. It was a question Irvin should have asked, but Tex was one of his friends. An old shipmate. One of the few left alive.

“I’ll get in there as soon as the smoke clears, Skipper. I expect it’s fine. It’s just a glorified crystal set. Doesn’t really even need power. If we didn’t short the batteries, we’ll still have juice, anyway. If we did short ’em out, once we get to Talaud and set up the steam generator, we’ll have more juice than we need. For anything.”

“Can you build a new transmitter?” Irvin asked.

“Could be. It ain’t hard, and I’ve got what’s left of Riggs’s design to work from.”

Lelaa looked at Irvin. “I command this ship, but you command the expedition. What are your views? Should we press on, even without two-way communications? This was a hazardous mission to begin with. . . .”

“We press on,” Irvin almost interrupted her. “Captain Reddy knows how hazardous it is, and he knew there was a chance we’d find ourselves out of touch. We’ll press on,” he repeated, “and accomplish our mission. Tex will make a new transmitter. Even if he can’t, we have a job to do. A lot of people are counting on us and I won’t let them down.”

Lelaa smiled. “As I suspected . . . but I had to ask!” She turned to the ’Cat at the helm. “Steady as you go. Our course remains one five zero.”

“One fi’ zero, ayy!”

W
alker
was about to float again. All Baalkpan had turned out to watch the momentous event, it seemed, and no one really cared anymore if the strangers in the bay knew about it or not. It was a time of miracles. So incredibly devastated by the battle that had once raged here, Baalkpan had become a center of industry, connected with most of the known world by wireless communication! People had built aircraft and flown them over this very bay! Aryaal was retaken and Grik
prisoners
were on their way here! In the amazing dry dock, weeks of scraping, welding and riveting, heating and rolling Japanese steel into new plates, and a final, thick coat of red paint had resulted in this collective achievement. Even if anyone had desired to keep
Walker
’s rebirth a secret, it wouldn’t have been possible. There was no question Imperial spies were present. In fact, knowing they would be, Letts had counseled Adar to
invite
the Imperial personnel. Their leaders might feel a little foolish learning the ship they’d been so concerned about had been underwater all this time, but the majority of the Imperial sailors who’d come to watch at least acted as excited as everyone else.