Distant Thunders (58 page)

Jenks continued. “I am given to understand that you do not imbibe strong drink aboard your Navy’s ships, Captain Reddy. Perhaps that is not a bad policy. In case you might consider an exception, I did bring a very mild, dry port to commemorate our rendezvous. There is just enough for a single short glass for all present, and I intended it as a means for proposing a toast.”

Matt nodded. “In that case, Commodore, I’ll allow an exception. It’s not unheard-of in situations like this when ‘foreigners’ are aboard. Juan, would you be good enough to fetch glasses?”

A few minutes later, glasses had been positioned and filled by Juan’s expert hand. Jenks raised his glass. “It is customary at this time for our most junior officer to offer the first toast to the governor-emperor. I do not expect you to participate, under the circumstances, but I do beg you to give His Majesty the benefit of the doubt in this matter. It is his own daughter who has been taken, after all.”

“Very well,” Matt agreed. “The benefit of the doubt . . . for now.” One of Jenks’s midshipmen stood, and all those present, everyone, stood with him.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “His Majesty!”

All, including Matt, took a sip. The port was interesting, fruity, Matt decided, and as mild as Jenks had promised. He held out his own glass. “The Grand Alliance, and the United States Navy!” All drank again, but Matt noticed there was the slightest hesitation among a few of the Imperial officers. Inwardly, he sighed.

Jenks held forth his glass. “Hear, hear!” he said forcefully. “And a most formidable Navy it is. We have joined together to embark on a venture essential to both our nations.” He paused. “May it ever be thus: that we will forever cooperate as friends, and never meet as enemies!” On that, Jenks emptied his glass, and with no hesitation at all, everyone else in the wardroom followed suit.

 

 

“Captain!” Reynolds exclaimed excitedly. “Lookout reports surface contact bearing one two five degrees! It’s a sail, Skipper! More than one. He says it looks like three or four!”

“Course?” Matt snapped.
Sails! Here?
Other than Billingsly, who else would be in these waters? According to Jenks, they were still a considerable distance from the closest Imperial outpost. Possibly
four
ships! Could others have
joined
Billingsly?

Reynolds relayed the course request and stood, waiting anxiously for several minutes before the lookout in the crow’s nest replied, “Almost reciprocal, Skipper. Lookout estimates contact course is two eight zero! Four ships for sure, sir, under sail!”

“Well,” said Courtney Bradford, “of course we all presume those are Imperial ships? If not, personally I’d be willing to lay a wager to it.”

“What makes you so sure?” Gray asked. “ ’Specially after all that stuff you were goin’ on about the other day.”

Bradford looked oddly at Gray. “Why, I will gladly wager my . . . my
hat
that they are indeed Imperials, coming in response to the ship and message Jenks dispatched when he first arrived in Baalkpan! Considering the time it would have taken that ship to travel to the Imperial homeland, spread the word, outfit another expedition . . . that expedition would be about, well,
here
by now!”

Gray looked at the bizarre sombrerolike hat hanging from Bradford’s hand (he wasn’t allowed to wear it on the bridge) and shook his head. “I wouldn’t want that nasty thing as a gift. ’Sides, when you put it that way, you’re probably right.”

Matt was already convinced. He’d forgotten all about the ship Jenks was allowed to send away, with news of the princess’s survival and rescue. He rubbed his chin, looking at Reynolds. Oh, well, he’d promised. Besides, there were other good reasons. “How do you like the sea, Ensign?” he asked.

Reynolds studied the swells. “Looks fine, Skipper. You’ll need to heave to and set us down in the lee. The hard part, actually, will be moving away so we’ll have the wind again—without sucking us into the screws.”

Matt sighed. Another danger he hadn’t really thought of. “Very well. Sound General Quarters and call your division. Have Mr. Palmer signal
Achilles
that we’ll reduce speed and await your report.”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

After all stations reported manned and ready, Reynolds announced shipwide: “Now hear this, now hear this! The Special Air Detail will assemble and make all preparations for flight operations!” Those members of the Special Air Detail not stationed at the plane as part of the Plane Dump Detail during GQ sprang from their various battle stations and hurried to their new posts. Matt had decided that the ship would always be at general quarters whenever the plane was launched or recovered so everyone would be at their highest state of readiness in the event of an accident. It was then easier to call the larger air detail from their normal battle stations, which, with the exception of the designated observer, were all close by. Observers came from Lieutenant Palmer’s comm division.

“Mr. Reynolds, you are relieved,” Matt said, gesturing for Carl Bashear to take Fred’s headset. Kutas was at the helm, so Fred couldn’t hope for better ship handling.

“Aye-aye, sir! Thank you, sir!” Reynolds said, and slid down the stairs behind the pilothouse. Hurrying past the galley under the amidships deckhouse, he heard the diminutive Juan Marcos and the monstrous Earl Lanier still arguing about the night before. He chuckled. He didn’t care—he was going to fly! His division, almost entirely ’Cats, had already cleared the tarps from the plane and were arranging the tackle to the aft extended davit when he arrived. This Nancy was his own personal plane, the one in which he’d finished his training. It was one of the new, improved models, infinitely better than Ben’s prototype. It looked incredibly frail, but Fred knew appearances were deceiving. He’d botched a landing or two, and it had held together under stresses he’d have thought would tear it apart. He had confidence in the plane and himself. Shoot, he had almost thirty hours in the thing! He climbed up to the cockpit and, as always, looked at the large blue roundel with the big white star and smaller red dot with a mix of pride and a sense of incongruity. The roundel contrasted well with the lighter blue of the wings and fuselage/hull, and all the colors looked right, but the contraption they covered was, while in his eyes a thing of beauty, still strange enough to cause a disconnect between its shape and the familiar colors. He shrugged and climbed in. “Who’s my OC?” he shouted, referring to his observer/copilot.

One of Ben’s improvements, besides turning the engine around, had been installing auxiliary controls for the observer. It only made sense. Observers didn’t have to be pilots—yet—but they had to be familiar with the controls and able to demonstrate at least rudimentary flying skills. Of course, their main job was to observe and transmit those observations via one of the small, portable CW transmitters (originally meant for airplanes) that all the new transmitters in the Alliance were patterned after. There was no battery—Alliance-made batteries were still too heavy—but the “Ronson” wind powered generator and a voltage regulator the size of a shoe box gave them all the juice they needed with little weight. An aerial extended from a faired upright behind the observer’s seat to the tail.

Fred looked aft and saw Kari-Faask scrambling into her position. She was a niece of the great B’mbaadan general Haakar-Faask, who’d died so bravely in a holding action against the Grik. Kari wasn’t quite as bold and fearless as her uncle, but Fred knew she had plenty of guts. She never made any bones about the fact that she was afraid to fly, for example, but she went up anyway and performed her duties without complaint. Also, despite her still somewhat stilted English, she had a good fist on the transmitter key.

“You okay with this, Kari?” Fred called back to her.

“I good. You be good and no crash us!” she hollered back.

Reynolds could tell
Walker
was heaved to by the sudden wallowing sensation. He quickly checked the function of all the control surfaces and shouted down to the chief of the air detail, “All right, Chief, pick us up and swing us out! Set us down with plenty of slack but don’t cut us loose until the engine starts, hear? And keep an eye on those line handlers!”

The Nancy lifted. ’Cats strained at the taglines to keep the plane from swinging with the rolling motion of the ship. Reynolds knew Ben had been hoping to construct some kind of catapult, a sort of abbreviated version of what
Amagi
had had, but there just hadn’t been time. Now Reynolds better appreciated Ben’s scheme. It wouldn’t have made any difference with recovery, but with a catapult, they could have just flown right off the ship. A couple of times, the Nancy swung dangerously close to the davit and Fred clenched his eyes shut, expecting a splintering crash, but somehow, fairly quickly, the plane was over the water and headed down. Now the only immediate concern was giving the plane enough slack that the roll of the ship wouldn’t yank her back out of the water and smash her against
Walker
’s side.

Suddenly, Reynolds felt the independent motion caused by water under the plane. There’d been no thump or splash at all. “Switch on!” he yelled, and Kari leaped up to lean against the little railing that kept her body away from the prop. Reaching as high as she could, she grabbed a blade and yanked it down. There was a cough, but nothing else. She repeated the process and was rewarded by a loud, muffled fart and the blades blurred before her. Reynolds advanced the throttle while she fell back into her seat and strapped herself in. This was the signal for the detail on the ship to pull the tagline pins that released all ropes from the plane. Kicking the rudder hard left, Reynolds advanced the throttle still more to gain some distance from the ship.

“All right!” Reynolds shouted, tension ebbing away. “We’re on the loose!” Behind them, the ship slowly eased forward, exposing them to the westerly breeze. Turning the Nancy’s nose into the wind, Reynolds advanced the throttle to the stop. The new liquid-cooled engine was heavier than Ben’s makeshift prototype, but the power-to-weight ratio was actually a little better. It stayed uniformly cooler too, which could be good and bad. They’d need better spring technology before they could do a proper thermostat. The big, exposed radiator behind the cockpit also negated any potential speed increase, but having flown a couple of times in the prototype, Fred liked “his” Nancy a lot better. Unlike Ben, Reynolds had also quickly figured out a major secret to seaplane flying. Maybe it was because he’d had no preconceptions and just did what came naturally, but he’d amazed Ben on his third flight by “bouncing” his plane into the air off a wave top with half the speed and in a third of the distance with which Ben had ever managed it. Ben had been flabbergasted, amazed, annoyed, and proud all at once. After he got Fred to first figure out what he’d done, and second explain—and ultimately show it to everyone else—the practice became SOP.

Fred used the procedure now, and within moments of his applying full power, the plane was in the air. “Whooee!” he shouted, banking low over the water. He gradually pulled back on the stick. The Nancy’s CG was still just a little aft, and Ben had constantly pounded it into them not to fool around with the stick, particularly at low altitude. Slowly, the plane climbed. In the distance, about ten miles away, he saw
Achilles
. He knew no one on the Imperial ship had ever seen a man fly, and he was tempted to cruise over and buzz her. He resisted the impulse, realizing it probably wasn’t appropriate to goof around in the air the first time the skipper let him fly. He grinned, thinking about what it would be like—Ben had told him of the chaos he’d caused on
Ajax
that one time. Shaking his head, he banked a little sharper and flew back toward
Walker
, gently waggling his wings as he flew over.

In all the wide expanse of the world around them, there was nothing but sea. He’d never flown over the empty ocean before, at least not beyond sight of land, and it made him a little queasy. Worse, it was a dull, humid day and the higher he flew, the more difficult it became to tell where the sky and the horizon met. He looked at his clinometer and steadied his wings. As far as he could see, there was no sign of land at all. Just the hazy, grayish sky and the hazy blue sea below.
Achilles
and
Walker
were there, of course, and that comforted him, but the only other things in view were the distant ships the lookout had spotted. It was time to get to work.

“Definitely four ships,” he shouted to Kari through the speaking tube, knowing she would report it, although by now
Walker
and
Achilles
would probably know that already. There were no ships beyond those, however, and that would be news. He reported that as well. Closer and closer to the unknown ships he flew, gaining altitude. Still nothing beyond them but maybe an atoll or something. He couldn’t tell for sure, and it might even have been a distant squall. But the four ships were clearly alone. “Tell ’em they’re sailing steamers, like
Achilles
. . . and
Ajax
. All have those paddle box things on their sides. When we get a little closer, I’ll take her down a little and see if we can get a look at their flags. They’ve
got
flags; I can see that much from here.”

A short time later, he was kiting a few thousand feet above the strange ships. He still couldn’t see what flag they flew, but they must have noticed him. He couldn’t tell if his flying machine had caused any consternation below, but they were taking in sail, and puffs of smoke began streaming from their tall, slender funnels.

“Say, Kari,” he shouted, “I don’t know what it means, or if they’re reacting to us or our ships, but they’ve lit their boilers. Seems that would mean they want to be able to maneuver. Better send that; then we’re going down for a closer look.”

“Yes, I send,” Kari said. “But stay out of musket shot! If they Jenks people, they muskets are no as good as our new ones, and no
near
as good as you rifles, but they plenty good shoot holes in this ‘crate’ you get close enough!”