Iron Gray Sea: Destroyermen (30 page)

“Could be.”

The demonstrations continued, with Silva and Risa, then Abel, Stuart, and even Lawrence putting various pistols through their paces. Most of these were junk in Silva’s view, or required too much potential machine time and handwork to make. A nice revolver based on the Single-Action Army Colt Russ Chapelle had discovered aboard
Santa Catalina
, and intended to give to the Skipper, was very accurate, but got out of time after two cylinders were fired. Silva thought it had potential, but the guts needed work. A copy of a Mauser “Broomhandle” in.45 ACP fired once, then locked up. Probably the best was a copy of Silva’s beloved 1911 Colt. It was a pretty thing, he had to admit. The slide was color case hardened, and the frame was a kind of purplish blue. A few machining shortcuts had been taken, but it felt right in his hand. Firing quickly but carefully, he managed to empty three magazines on target before it started getting tight and failed to function. Abel and Lawrence both fired others like it until they too started having problems. Dennis figured the pistols might be
too
well made, in a sense, and needed more “slop.”

During these exhibitions, Bernie, Ronson, and their strikers continued fooling around with the torpedoes. The small-arms demonstration at an end, Ben Mallory and a couple of his pilots wowed the crowd with modest stunts in the ever popular P-40s overhead, while Silva took charge of the four-inch-fifties. As acting gunnery officer, he merely designated the targets and gave the command, “Commence firing in local control!” After that, he appraised the quality of the gun’s crews drill as much as the performance of the weapons. On the whole, he was pleased. The crews were young recruits who’d never seen combat, but they were well trained and confident.

Walker
’s old number four gun performed well with the new shells, just as Bernie said it would. It had been tested quite a bit already, and the people of Baalkpan were used to its rushing crack and the associated pressure. Dennis frowned when he saw a couple of the shell casings had indeed cracked, but was satisfied, particularly by the much-improved explosive force of the new “common” shells and the glorious shocks of distant spume they threw up in the bay. The new gun did fine as well—at first—with the black-powder shells provided. Accuracy was good, and several of the farthest targets were destroyed before the left recoil cylinder split on a seam and the right fill plug blew out, both spewing oil all over the gun and its crew. The spectators laughed and cheered, but even then, Silva—who’d avoided a dowsing—wasn’t disappointed. The gun worked and so did the mount. None of the elevating and training gear had failed. The new telescope sights made with Imperial lenses seemed as good as the old ones. A recoil cylinder was just a pipe. They could make better pipes. He gave the command to cease firing and secure, and over the rumble of the people nearby, he heard a new, different sound.

“What the hell’s that?” he demanded as a tiny aircraft blew past overhead. It sounded like a giant mosquito, but even as little as he knew about airplanes, he noticed several things at once. The craft was an open-cockpit, single-seat monoplane with a smallish radial engine, and it had fixed landing gear—with wheels!

“People of Baalkpan and the Grand Alliance, the Air Corps presents the P-1 Mosquito Hawk!”

Dennis guffawed; he couldn’t help it. “Skeeter Hawk my ass! That’s a homemade, pint-sized ‘Fleashooter!’”

“You’re right,” confirmed a female voice behind him in a flat, distant, tone. “That’s Colonel Mallory’s latest; a pursuit ship for the carriers. He says it’s a scaled-down cross between a P-36 Hawk and a P-26 Peashooter.”

“Pam!” Dennis said, turning to face the short, dark-haired woman.

“What? No ‘sugar pie’? No ‘honey dew’?” she asked sarcastically in her strong Brooklyn accent.

“No,” Silva answered simply.

“I oughta hate your guts.”

“Yep. Why don’t you?”

Pam took a deep breath and let it out. Around them, all eyes were on the little plane as it swooped low over the shore and snap-rolled to the right, over the water. “’Cause I can’t, that’s all. You’re a jerk, a turd, the worst asshole in the world, for not comin’ back to me when you were supposed to—not even comin’ to
see
me when you finally got here, but . . . did you know Sister Audry thinks you’re some kinda Holy Warrior called to ‘smite’ our enemies?”

Dennis blinked. “Hell, no! Huh. Maybe that explains why she was so nice to me the other day. All my hee-roin’ musta impressed her after all, back when we was marooned. She really thinks that?”

“Yeah . . . an’
I
don’t know what to think anymore.”

“
You
don’t believe that stuff!”

Pam shook her head. “I told you I don’t know what to believe,” she snapped. “But maybe you did help out more where you were than you would have back here. At first I figured you just like the damn war too much to leave it, but she talked a little sense, and I guess it’s not my place to judge whether you were ‘called’ by God or some goofy sense of duty.”

“Hey, don’t knock the war, doll,” he said, trying to keep his tone light. “It’s the only one we got.”

“Damn you! Can’t you ever be serious? About anything?”

Dennis looked around and saw that Risa, Abel, Stuart, and Lawrence had moved a short distance away, clearly leaving them to hash this out in relative peace while the crowd enjoyed the antics of the new plane.

“Bein’ serious can get a fella in a lotta trouble,” he admitted softly.

The small plane performed a barrel roll that caused the spectators to cry out, and Dennis pointed at it. “Colonel Mallory in that thing?”

“Probably. He’s like you in that way. Always jumpin’ in the fire when he doesn’t have to.”

“Somebody has to.”

“But why does it always have to be guys I care about?” Pam flared, loud enough for Risa to hear, and she came to embrace her friend.

“Because you, like I, are drawn to the sort who care enough about you—and the cause we fight for—to do their duty as they see it, no matter what,” Risa murmured.

Tears came then. “Are you tryin’ to tell me this big dope stayed away because he
cares
for me?”

Risa looked at Dennis and blinked discomfort. “Of course he did, my sister. He cannot protect you here . . . and ultimately, neither can Col-nol Maal-ory.”

“But I don’t
want
protection!” Pam whispered into Risa’s fur, then paused. “You know, that’s what Sister Audry said too.”

The new plane dove toward the bay, and with a grumbling stutter, bullet geysers erupted around yet another target barrel, and amid more thunderous acclaim, the odd little pursuit ship pulled up and raced back toward Kaufman Field. When Silva looked back to where Pam and Risa had been, they were gone.

“Dames are nuts,” he muttered, “all of ’em.” He moved toward the torpedo mount. “Hey, Mr. Sandison! What’s with the Fleashooter?’ I thought we needed rubber before we got anything with wheels.”

Bernie was adjusting the depth controls on the torpedoes with a ratchet, setting them to run at five feet. “We’re starting to get a little rubber from Ceylon. We’ll get more in India. Colonel Mallory began testing the ’Skeeters with leather tires, but when we were coming up with the recoil cylinders for the guns, he came by and had us make Oleo struts to take the shock on his gear.”

“What did he use for guns?”

“Basically, Blitzer Bugs mounted in the wheel pants, with long magazines following the struts up and through the wings. All they need is light springs for the followers, since they’re pushing the cartridges down. They work pretty good.”

“Forty-five-ACP
airplane
guns?” Silva asked doubtfully.

Bernie sighed in exasperation. “Sure. What are they gonna shoot at? Creeping zeps and packs of Grik.” He waved at the sky. “There aren’t any Zeros up there, and the Flea—I mean, the Mosquito Hawk—can even outrun that damn Jap spotting plane if it ever shows up again. Besides, the principle of the Blitzer Bugs should work with bigger stuff, like thirty-ought six, when we get around to it.” He rolled his eyes. “You’d’ve
known
all this if you’d been here, instead of running loose in the east! Now leave me alone. I’ve got ‘fishy’ stuff to do!” he added angrily. Silva stepped back and watched while the strikers started slathering lard all over the first torpedo, already poised at the rear of the left tube.

“I’ve been watching them,” Abel offered at his side. “The first one is the ‘cold’ torpedo, and it utilizes only compressed air that operates a three-cylinder engine to turn the counter-rotating propellers. That is all very straightforward, but the complexity of the guidance system is most fascinating and impressive!”

“They ain’t got a warhead on the end of that thing, do they?” Silva asked.

“No. It is a practice head, they called it.”

“Good. Let’s ease back a little, just the same. C’mon, Larry. It’s been my experience that torpedoes are more dangerous to them around ’em than they are to who you’re shootin’ at!”

“I want to watch what they do,” Lawrence objected.

“You can watch with us from back a ways. Like Mr. Sandison said, let’s leave him be.”

Small motor launches loaded with several observers each eased into the watery range at predetermined distances, while the crowd talker described the first weapon as a Mk-I cold-air torpedo and proudly described the complexity of the device. Bernie finally stepped back and ordered that it be pushed the rest of the way into the barrel of the tube. The gyro had been set for a simple, straight run. When the weapon was fully inserted to the spring-loaded stop, a striker removed the propeller lock and closed the circle door just like he’d done it a hundred times. Finally, he inserted a big brass cartridge into the firing chamber at the top rear of the tube, gently closed the little door, and stepped back to Bernie, presenting him with a lanyard attached to the hammer.

The torpedo had no warhead, but the air flasks were the first of their kind made on this world and were stoked beyond a thousand PSI. They’d tested them, of course, but Bernie didn’t want anyone on the mount when the charge went off and all that air tried to dump into the complicated little engine under somewhat stressful acceleration. He didn’t
think
anything bad would happen, but there were an awful lot of pieces to fly in all directions if it did.

“Ready!” he cried, stretching the lanyard and looking nervously at the suddenly silent grandstand. By prior arrangement, Adar stood and made a grand, throwing-away gesture.

The impulse charge detonated with a hollow, muffled
boomp!
and the slimy torpedo squirted from the tube with a high-pitched skirl of air, followed by a billowing cloud of white smoke. It
splapp
ed noisily into the water and vanished from sight, but a surge of bubbles rose to the surface in a gratifyingly straight line.

Bernie, Dennis, and nearly everyone near the mount raced to the water’s edge to watch the bubbling wake. Deadly flasher fish and other finned . . . things . . . leaped into the air or churned away from the weapon’s path. Swirling lizard birds took notice of the disturbance in the water and angled down, swooping and pacing the trail of rising air. The torpedo
was
going straight—but it was clearly also going disappointingly slow. It seemed to take forever to reach the first boat stationed two hundred tails offshore, and when they raised a little flag signifying its passage, Bernie looked at his watch.

“Eight, maybe ten lousy knots!” he ground out, barely heard over the happy cheering and shouts from the spectators.

“Least it’s runnin’ true,” Dennis consoled, “and those ’Cats on the boats’ll be able to tell us if its runnin’ at about the right depth.”

Bernie brightened. “Yeah. And I knew it would be slow compared to the hot air torp.” He grinned tentatively. “I think it works!”

The second boat raised a flag at four hundred tails, and Bernie confirmed his initial speed estimate, but he was in a better mood by then. Finally, the eight-hundred-tail boat waved its flag but heaved out a net with a marker that indicated the torpedo had come to a floating, exhausted stop. The net would snare the wallowing weapon and mark its position. They wouldn’t have used it if the propellers were still turning.

“Kind of pitiful,” Bernie muttered aloud, “but it proves all the really complicated stuff works.”

The second torpedo was prepared, with Ronson shadowing the strikers like an expectant mother. Externally, the “Mk-2” looked exactly the same, but the starting lever would complete a circuit instead of opening a valve. It was loaded and made ready just like its predecessor, but this time Ronson took the lanyard. At the same signal from Adar, the electric torpedo leaped into the bay, but there were no bubbles this time. The crowd cheered, then waited expectantly. Ronson snatched his binoculars to his eyes, staring at the first boat. But there was no flag.

“Maybe they just didn’t see it,” he said. “That’s part of the point. It’s supposed to be hard to see . . . and it should be faster than the first one. Maybe it went by before they were looking for it.”

“Hey, Ronson,” Silva said.

“What?”

“I see it.”