Distant Thunders (7 page)

He began to call on Matt, but briefly wondered
what
to call him. “Supreme Commander of All Combined Allied Forces” seemed much too stiff and unwieldy for everyday use. Matt had refused the rank of aahd-mah-raal for reasons of his own, but even though there were other aahd-mah-raals now, and many captains, there was no question who was in charge. Adar supposed it didn’t matter. There was only one Captain Matthew Reddy. That was how Adar addressed him now, summoning him to speak: “Cap-i-taan Reddy, if you please. Before we begin this discussion in earnest, what was your impression of our visitors?”

Matt appeared thoughtful for a moment. “My initial impression,” he began, “was much like Chief Gray’s. I thought they were a pack of arrogant jerks. In fact, the more we talked with them—with Jenks, anyway—the stronger that impression became. If I’d had time to think about it, I’m not sure I’d have let them send off a ship.”

“What would you have had us do?” Bradford retorted, sensing a reprimand for his compromise. “Hold them hostage? We were not in much of a position to do that. Or were you thinking of holding the girl against her will?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Courtney. Of course not. But the girl doesn’t want to go with them; she wants us to take her home. We might have used that as leverage to keep all their ships here. As it stands, they’ll know about us, and where we are, long before we’re ready to send an expedition to meet them.”

“Do you consider them a threat?” Adar asked.

“Sure. Why not?” Matt sighed. “Mr. Chairman, I consider everyone not in this room a threat, because only these people, and those they represent, have
proven
they’re not. Do I think these ‘new’ Brits’ll swoop down like the Grik and attack as soon as they know where we are? No. Jenks acted like they had other problems besides us, although neither Rebecca nor O’Casey seems to know what they are. Something that’s sprouted up since the two of them have been gone? Maybe.” Matt shrugged. “And I don’t think they’re a threat like the Grik, either. They certainly don’t eat people, and I don’t think they’re much interested in our real estate. They may see us as a rival, though, which we might be soon enough.” He looked down at Sandra. “To be honest, based on the technology we’ve seen, in the months it’ll take them to get back to wherever they came from and return here with a sizable force—if that’s their intent—we’ll have enough of the new weapons we’ve planned that we’d paste them good. The thing is, they’re a threat in the sense that they’re a distraction. Just the possibility that they’ll send a fleet is enough to pin some of our resources here and in the Philippines when we should be chasing the Grik before they catch their breath.”

“No one wants to destroy the Grik more than I, but is haste truly so important?” Adar asked.

“Yes, Mr. Chairman. It’s essential.”

“But you won’t be ready to pursue them for months. These weapons you speak of, this ‘technology,’ won’t be ready for some time.”

“True, but we can,
must
, mount
some
operations fairly quickly. And when the new stuff’s online, I’d rather use it against the Grik.”

Adar nodded. “It seems, then, that we have several imperatives: First, keep the pressure on the Grik; keep them off balance, as you’ve said. Perhaps we might accelerate the departure of our new Expeditionary Force. Second, we must treat with this Jenks and keep him satisfied that we truly are preparing an expedition to return his lost princess. Try to befriend him and avoid alienating him. Finally, once we do return the girl to her people, we must do everything we can to make friends with them, not only for the benefit of our war effort, but—and I notice you did not mention this—to alleviate the ‘dame famine’ that afflicts your human destroyermen.” The lack of female companionship for Matt’s men after an entire year had created what Silva had coined a “dame famine.” In the pre-war Asiatic Fleet, it would have been considered extraordinary for the men to “do without” for a couple of weeks.

Matt shifted uncomfortably. “What you say is true, Mr. Chairman. All of it. To accomplish everything you described would be ideal. Lifting the dame famine would sure be a help, too, but I didn’t want to mention it, to seem selfish. . . .”

“Nonsense. To . . . abstain as long as most of your people have is unnatural, and cannot be good for them. Rest assured, that imperative is as essential as any other, as far as I am concerned.”

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman.”

“Now, let us continue with how to accomplish the goals laid before us. Aahd-mah-raal Keje; what of the Navy?”

Keje rose with some difficulty. His leg was stiffening up. He should have been using a cane or something, but he’d refused. “The Navy, Mr. Chairman, doesn’t exist, for all practical purposes.
Donaghey
is fit for sea, as are some of the prizes, but it will be weeks before
Tolson
can sail. The shipyards survived major damage in the fighting—I believe the enemy meant to take them intact—so the new construction is proceeding almost uninterrupted. We have abundant hardwood laid up from when we cleared the killing fields around the city. It has remained covered and is drying well. Perhaps we will complete this ‘kiln’ thing Mr. Brister has begun. The yards are already working around the clock”—he grinned quizzically at Matt as if wondering if he’d used the phrase appropriately—“and the keels for six more modern warships have already been laid.” His grin became eager. “This technique of ‘mass production,’ where all the parts for each ship are made to a particular plan and any one of them will fit each ship, is truly a wonder. It speeds production amazingly.”

Letts nodded. “I’m glad you approve and I’m glad it’s working. We’ll use the same technique for just about everything, eventually. As soon as we’ve settled on the various plans”—he winced—“and overcome the . . . reluctance of some of our craftsmen.” He looked at Matt and explained. “We’ve always been amazed by Lemurian ingenuity, and their structural design techniques are beyond anything any wooden human navy ever launched, but they aren’t used to blueprints. They just make ’em the way they’ve always made them. The quality of their craftsmanship is beyond debate, but master shipwrights dominate the shipbuilding industry and they’re jealous of their status. They don’t much approve of just anybody being able to look at drawings and knock something up.”

“Understandable, I suppose,” said Matt, “but they’re going to have to get used to it.” He nodded at Saan-Kakja. “The finalized plans for our first steam frigates have already been sent to Manila, but you’ll probably run into some of the same problems.”

Saan-Kakja bowed and replied in her almost little-girl voice, “The plans were accompanied by my personal command that they be followed to the letter. I have allowed some innovation within the design parameters, as you suggested, but there will be little variation.”

“Fine,” said Matt. “Don’t want to stifle new ideas, but we need a lot of good ships more than we need a few perfect ones.” He turned to Keje and his expression softened. “What about
Big Sal
?”

Keje frowned. “She is refloated,” he grumbled. “A simple matter of pumping her out. However, the damage to her upper works was . . . extreme. Your . . . bizarre . . . idea might not only be the best means of returning her to the fight, but the single realistic one as well.” He sighed. “I mourn my Home and yearn for her to be as she was, but I might as well yearn for the Grik to leave us alone of their own accord. I fear, with her conversion, our way of life will be altered forever. Will other Homes be changed as well? Will they even
be
Homes anymore, or forever become dedicated weapons of war? What of the wing clans? There is already resistance. How will I sort that out? I also confess that I find it exceedingly strange to rebuild her as a . . . conveyance for weapons that do not yet exist.”

“They’ll exist,” Ben Mallory assured him. “It’s going to take time, but there’s no question we can do it. Also, knowing the way you ’Cats like gizmos, I bet there’ll be less resistance than you expect.”

“You’ve settled on a design, then?” Matt asked.

Adar watched as the conference increasingly shifted from his grasp. He didn’t mind. In fact, it was as he’d hoped. Captain Reddy had been somewhat withdrawn since the loss of his ship, but the man was made for command. The situation required that someone step up and take it, and he was the best one for the job. Adar had set the policies, the goals they’d work toward; it was up to his Supreme Commander and the rest of his staff to decide how to implement those policies.

“Sir,” Mallory replied, “we’ve come at this from every angle and run into problems with just about every design.” He grinned. “I’d love to have P-40s, but that’s just not going to happen. Right now, I’m leaning toward a variation of the old Navy-Curtiss, or NC, flying boats.”

“Flying boats?” Matt asked, eyebrows raised. “I thought we’d decided to raze
Big Sal
to a steam-powered flattop. Use her as an aircraft carrier.”

“She’ll still need to be flat to carry and maybe even launch the planes—like the old
Langley
—but we’ll fit her with cranes to lift the planes out of the water. See, the problem is wheels. That, and it would be nice if the aircrews could set the planes down if they’re damaged. If they don’t float, we’re going to lose a lot of guys. Sure not going to fish many out of the drink.”

“I see what you mean, but why not floats
and
wheels?”

Mallory scratched a scar under his bearded chin. “Well, believe it or not, Skipper, there’s no rubber. I know, it would be all over the place around here back home, but Courtney says even then it wasn’t indigenous. Whether anything like it exists somewhere else, who knows.” He paused and glanced at the blank faces around him. Of course, Lemurian faces were always blank, but none of them spoke up. “Anyway, there’s nothing like it here. Given enough time, we’ll probably come up with a synthetic, but our refining capability just isn’t that far along yet, and frankly, I don’t know how.” He looked at Bradford, who shook his head.

“ ’Fraid not. As Mr. Mallory has suggested, I know there has been some success making a synthetic rubber from petroleum, but I haven’t the faintest idea how it’s done.”

“So in the short term,” Mallory continued, “we’d be better off using rigid wheels and some sort of shock-absorbing arrangement. I still think floats are the way to go, though. At least for now.” He shook his head. “Believe me, Skipper, I wish that wasn’t so. Floatplanes add a lot of problems. They’ll likely be bigger, heavier and slower. Payload will be less and they’ll have greater power-to-weight requirements. More complicated, too. Basically, like I said, NC flying boats . . . Nancys.”

Matt grimaced. “I was proud when I heard we flew those things across the Atlantic—little before my time—and
Walker
was even one of the picket ships before she joined the Asiatic Fleet. But if I recall, only one of ’em made it all the way.”

“We’ll make ’em better. We have stronger, lighter materials to work with. Hell, most of a British Hurricane is made of wood, and they’re pretty good fighters. The toughest thing in the air might be those British medium bombers—what are they . . . or were they? Hell, I can’t remember.”

“Wellingtons,” Bradford supplied, rolling his eyes at the young pilot.

“Right. They may be slow, but they can take punishment. They use the same kind of diagonal bracing the ’Cats use on their big ships. We can do that too. Even the engines shouldn’t be too hard. We off-loaded all the machine tools from
Walker
and
Mahan
before the battle and we’ve been building new machines hand over fist. Maybe we can even get the lathes and stuff off
Amagi.
Then there’s the submarine, with all her tools and steel—if we can salvage it. We’ll make the engines of iron, but flute the cylinders to save weight. Water cooled, if we can cast the crankcases as well as I think we can . . .”

“Very well,” said Matt, almost laughing. “I see you’ve given this some thought. Have you considered, however, that if the planes have floats and fly off a Navy ship, they can’t possibly be part of the Air Corps? All the crews you train to fly them will have to be naval aviators!”

“Hey! Wait a minute!” Mallory shouted good-naturedly, but he was laughed down. They needed the humor but after a moment, Matt sobered.

“Madam Minister of Medicine?” he asked stiffly. Sandra looked up at him with a small smile for the title, but realized Matt had already begun to retreat into his funk.

“Better,” she said. “We still have a lot of wounded, but I think the vast majority have turned the corner. A lot have already returned to duty”—she glared at Ben and Bernie—“although some shouldn’t have. The Lemurian’s polta paste continues to work miracles.” She referred to an antiseptic, analgesic, viscous paste made from the still somewhat mysteriously prepared by-products of seep fermentation. Seep was a less refined version of the substance made from polta fruit and was a popular spirit and strong intoxicant. The analgesic properties were fairly straightforward, but Sandra still didn’t know why it fought most infections so well. Neither did the Lemurians. They’d had no concept of germ theory when the destroyermen arrived, but they’d had the paste since before recorded history and knew it worked. Before the Squall that transported them here, Sandra had heard of experiments with a type of mold being used to fight infection. She wondered if the same principle was at work here. She didn’t know and couldn’t even begin to guess without a microscope, but the stuff was a lifesaver that beat sulfonamide all hollow.

“How’s Mr. Garrett? And did Silva report to you like I told him?” Matt asked.

“Mr. Garrett’s wounds are healing nicely; he just had so many. It’s a miracle he survived. Same with Silva, but even though Mr. Garrett’s unhappy just sitting around, he does behave. Silva, as you know, is less reasonable. He swooped in for a moment and let Pam Cross patch him up again, but she was going off duty and he took off with her. Frankly, I think she and Risa can make him take it easy better than I ever could.” She sniffed, and while others laughed, she noticed a ghost of a smile reappear on Matt’s face.