Distant Thunders (8 page)

Silva’s antics were as legendary as they were infamous. He’d carried on what sometimes appeared a genuine affair with Chack’s own sister, Risa-Sab-At. Risa had been captain of
Salissa
’s forewing guard, but now they’d amalgamated all the various guards into fewer unified commands. She was now captain of what would become
Salissa
’s entire Marine contingent—after they’d undergone the more rigorous training required of Marines. In many ways, Risa was clearly Silva’s soul mate, just as reckless and fearless and with the same warped sense of humor. The Lemurians hadn’t cared about the rumors surrounding them, rumors Silva and Risa did their best to encourage—only initially—to get Chack’s goat. Now, either they seemed determined to get
everyone’s
goat—or the rumors weren’t really rumors.

The addition of Nurse Pam Cross from Brooklyn to the ménage added a measure of disgust, as well as a grudging respect for the gunner’s mate among the human destroyermen. They’d come to accept that Silva might have taken up with a “local gal,” whether anything physical was involved or not. They just assumed, naturally (or unnaturally), that there was. For him to then snatch one of the only available dames did breed resentment, but it was more of a wistful “how does he do it” sort. Lurid speculation regarding how the threesome might . . . interact . . . was probably actually good for morale in a roundabout way, and none of them—Silva, Risa, or Pam—would confirm or deny anything.

Three
soul mates, Matt chuckled to himself,
two of whom had to come to another world to find each other.
Well, there was nothing he could do about it. He’d once ordered Silva to quit carrying on with Risa, thereby breaking one of his own fundamental rules: Never give an order you
know
won’t be obeyed. But in almost every other way, Silva had really straightened up. “Silva’s been helping you with ordnance development?” Matt asked Bernard Sandison.

Bernie grimaced. “Yes, sir. When it suits him. He’s hurting, I know, so I haven’t pushed him yet, but some of his best work has been on ‘toys’ for himself.”

“Do his ‘toys’ have practical applications?”

“Oh, yeah, but they’re not exactly priority items. The man’s a diabolical genius when it comes to figuring out new and better ways to kill things, and he does
love
to try them out. It’s just . . . his priorities are generally more . . . tactical than strategic.”

Matt allowed a genuine laugh then, at Bernie’s tact. “You mean he concentrates on ‘up close and personal.’ Well, we need that too. Give him his head, but try to run him off for a while. He needs to heal up.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

“Speaking of that, what have you come up with?”

Sandison shifted on the cushion his wounds made him use. Matt knew the young, dark-haired torpedo officer was highly motivated to please; he still blamed himself for not recognizing the—perfectly good—Mk 10 torpedo among the condemned fish they’d scrounged in Surabaya so long ago. That extra torpedo might have made a lot of difference if they’d known they had it and used it at a different time.

“Right now we’re rebuilding to some degree. One of the shops took a hit from
Amagi
and it’s a real mess. None of the machinery was badly damaged, thank God, but we’re still getting a roof back over it. That said, we’ve begun to refine some of the projects we were already working on. I think I can give you guncotton, or gun . . . whatever they use for cotton around here, pretty soon. That’ll give us a high explosive capability for the four-inch guns. We’ve already started making exploding shells with a black powder bursting charge, like the ones they used in the last war. Not as good, but . . .” He paused when he saw the captain’s grim expression. The only four-inch guns they had were on
Walker
—underwater. They’d salvage the guns, certainly, and maybe the one on the submarine, but they wouldn’t know if they could salvage the ship until she was dry. “Anyway,” he continued softly, “I wouldn’t recommend using it for a propellant charge until we’ve had a lot more practice with the stuff. Better stick with ordinary gunpowder for now. Same goes for small arms. We just about shot ourselves dry, I’m afraid, and black powder won’t work worth a hoot in the automatic weapons. At least not the BARs, thirties and fifties. They gum up too fast.

“That brings up another problem: brass. I’ve got brass pickers combing everywhere looking for spent shell casings. We’re okay on the four-inch guns, and the shells for those are big enough to turn more on a lathe, but we’ll have to extrude small-arms brass and . . . I really just don’t know how. We can reload what we’ve got; make it work pretty well, in fact. Before we lost power, we made molds and swages for thirty-, forty-five-, and fifty-cal with grease grooves. We can make bullets out of solid copper, tin, or lead with a gas check of some kind, so they’ll work with the fast-twist rifling. Lubed copper bullets work fine in the Springfields and Krags with a slow rate of fire. You can use ’em in the Thompsons and the 1911s too, but they get really filthy. And like I said, when the brass is gone, it’s gone—unless we can figure out how to make more.”

“I knew about all that stuff,” Matt said, “and we’ll see what we can do about power. Mr. Riggs, I’ll get to you directly. But what about other stuff, Bernie? The ‘new’ weapons you mentioned?”

“Yes, sir. Personally, I’d love to have torpedoes, but that’s going to take a while longer. We’ve still got the propulsion body of the condemned torp with the crumpled warhead and we’re reverse-engineering that, but the precision required . . .” He sighed. “We’re just not there yet.”

“What can you give me?”

“Exploding four-inch shells and bombs, sir. Lots and lots of bombs. Pretty powerful ones too, eventually—if the guncotton works like I expect.” He glanced at Mallory. “I know the bigger ones might not do us a lot of good until we have something to drop them from, but when we do—”

“Don’t build them before I find out how much weight the planes’ll carry!” interrupted Ben.

“Don’t worry.” Bernie grinned. “We’re working on little ones first, like mortar bombs. In fact, that’s what they are.” He nodded at Alden. “Pete—the General—and Campeti came up with the idea. Real mortars—the ‘drop and pop’ kind. Way safer, lighter, deadlier, and with a lot longer range than the ones we’ve been using. No reason you couldn’t drop ’em from an airplane, though.”

“Very good,” Matt complimented him, “but that still leaves us, in the short term, with a dwindling number of small arms when what I want is more.”

“Yes, sir. I’m afraid our best short-term option is still a musket of some kind, like you said. That’s one of the things Silva’s been fiddling with, although his idea of a musket—”

Matt interrupted. “But I’ve also said I’m not sure muskets really give us much advantage.”

Pete Alden spoke up. “Skipper, I think they will. You’re worried about arrows reloading faster and being about as accurate. Normally, that would be true. You’re also thinking they’re not much advantage over what we’ve got, but what about the enemy? They don’t use longbows. I don’t think they can. They’re just not built for them, so they’re stuck with crossbows, which take about as long to load as a musket and they’re not as deadly. Besides, they’ll be an improvement in another respect: right now, all our spearmen have to carry a longbow as well. Once they have muskets, with socket bayonets, they can shoot and stick with the same weapon. There might also be a psychological effect on the enemy. Maybe they’ll flip and go into one of Bradford’s ‘Grik rout’ fits after a single volley. I’m not counting on it, but they
will
be better than what we’ve got. As to the accuracy issue, as lame as our industry is right now, that’s going to improve. We can already make the barrels much better than they did in the seventeen hundreds, and eventually, smoothbores can be rifled. . . .”

Matt was nodding. “I see what you mean, Mr. Alden. Very well. You’re the infantryman and I’ll defer to your judgment. I guess we have to be prepared to backtrack a bit before we can leap ahead. At least see what you can do about preparing for simple breechloaders, if you can.” He took a breath and looked at Bernie, decision made. “For now, if muskets are what we can do, that’s what we’ll do.” He paused for a moment and glanced uncomfortably around the chamber. “What about . . . that other thing we talked about?”

Sandra gave him a stormy look, but remained silent. She’d clearly already stated her opinion.

Bernie’s eyebrows knitted. “You mean . . . the gas?” Matt nodded and Sandison frowned, glancing at Tamatsu Shinya. He sighed. “Making the stuff isn’t that big a deal. Mustard or chlorine is dangerous, but not hard. The problem is dispersal—and dispersing it far enough away from
us
, but close enough to the enemy. Wind would always be a factor.” He hesitated. “Some may not be all that concerned about ethical issues, as far as the Grik—”

“
I
am concerned about the ethics of such weapons,” Shinya interrupted sharply.

Matt looked at him and shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “Believe it or not, Colonel Shinya, so am I. So is everyone here. Maybe not for the sake of the Grik, really; I wish God would stomp them all like bugs, but gas is just
wrong
. Using the stuff would take us and our friends to a level almost as bad as the Grik—a level I don’t want to be on and I don’t want our Lemurian allies to ever see.” He took a breath before continuing, now directing his words primarily at Adar, who’d shown an interest in the “wonder weapon.” “Gas kills everything. Indiscriminately . . . horribly. It’ll kill animals, Grik, ’Cat prisoners—and any of Shinya’s people who might be working for the Grik under duress. I
will not
gas ’Cats or men—even Japs who
aren’t
working for the enemy against their will.”

Matt rubbed his eyebrows. “I know it may be hard for you to understand, Mr. Chairman, but I grew up around guys who somehow survived gas attacks in the Great War and . . . well, ‘survived’ isn’t the best way to put it; ‘lingered in misery’ is probably better, and they only got a little of the stuff. Honest to God, much as I hate them, it would turn my stomach to gas even the Grik. I’d rather burn them alive. We’re going to have to think about this a lot more.”

The chamber grew quiet for a moment and Adar was genuinely taken aback by the intensity of Matt’s evident revulsion toward what seemed, by description, such an effective and efficient weapon.

“Moral issues aside,” Matt continued soberly, “even if we made gas and solved all the problems with delivering it, how do we protect our troops? Unfortunately, we
do
have to think about it and we
do
have to solve that problem, at least. Does anyone honestly think this Kurokawa wouldn’t give gas to the Grik if he thought it would benefit him? He’s helped them in every other way. Like Ben said, we don’t have any rubber, and even if we did, how do you make a gas mask for a Lemurian?” Matt shook his head. “There’s no Geneva Convention on this world, governing this war, but we have to decide right now that if we
ever
make gas, it won’t be used willy-nilly. Won’t be used
at all
unless we’re in a jam so tight we don’t have any choice.” He shrugged and Sandra grasped his hand. He looked at Adar. “That’s how I feel, and that’s the deal.”

Adar said nothing. He had no choice but to agree, but he was perplexed. Clearly, Captain Reddy was extremely sensitive about the subject; all the humans seemed to be. Gas must be a terrible weapon indeed if one was willing to sacrifice the lives of one’s own troops to avoid using it.

“We don’t even know if Kurokawa and any other Japs are left,” said Captain Ellis, speaking for the first time. He’d been Matt’s exec on
Walker
before the Squall and had commanded
Mahan
on her suicidal dash. He was currently without a ship, but he was one of Matt’s best friends, and Matt was always interested in what he had to say. “We know the Grik ‘rescued’ a lot of survivors off
Amagi
,” he continued, “but they might have eaten them, for all we know.”

“Perhaps they did,” Shinya grudgingly admitted, saddened by the possibility, but glad they’d changed the subject. “Our prisoner thinks otherwise however.” He referred to Commander Sato Okada, the lone survivor the Allies had taken into custody. Matt still hadn’t talked to the new Jap directly; he’d been too busy. It was probably time he did, but he honestly wasn’t sure how to approach the interview. Shinya had spoken with the prisoner at length and the man was a font of information about Captain Hisashi Kurokawa and the Grik—he hated them passionately and yearned for their destruction—yet unlike Shinya, Okada hadn’t put the “old war” behind him. He’d been willing to cooperate with the Americans against the Grik, and if he’d been able to arrange such cooperation before
Amagi
was destroyed, he would have. That didn’t mean he was willing to
ally
himself with the enemies of his emperor. Wounded by Kurokawa in the battle, he’d hidden from the Grik “rescuers” and allowed himself to be taken by the Americans and their allies for the sole purpose of supplying information about their common enemies: the Grik—and Kurokawa. Beyond that, as a Japanese officer and a prisoner of war, he had no other reason to live.

Shinya continued. “Okada says this Regent-Consort Tsalka, and their General Esshk are different from other Grik. They may have taken the lesson of their defeat to heart. He believes if they themselves are not killed for their failure, they will try to preserve as many Japanese as they can to help prepare for . . . well, what we are preparing for: our next meeting.” He looked at Matt somewhat accusingly. “As Captain Reddy knows, there was a minority faction aboard
Amagi
already . . . frustrated with Kurokawa’s command in general, and his association with the Grik in particular.”

Matt nodded at Shinya, accepting blame for not telling him he knew some of
Amagi
’s crew were unwilling to aid the Grik. But it hadn’t made any difference in the end, as he’d known it wouldn’t. With
Amagi
coming for them, they couldn’t pick and choose those aboard her they might kill. Shinya knew that, and he also knew that, by not telling him, the captain had been sparing Shinya’s own conscience. Nevertheless, his point was sound and heartfelt.