Iron Gray Sea: Destroyermen (50 page)

“Wull . . . what about Colonel Mallory? Ain’t you two a item? What’ll he say?”

“He left,” Pam said harshly, “just like you have a dozen times. He doesn’t own me,” she snapped ironically, and Silva winced. “Nobody can tell me what I can or can’t do anymore, except a superior officer—an’ I damn sure outrank
you
. Adar said I could go, an’ so did Mr. Letts. We ain’t short o’ doctors anymore neither.”

“You outrank
me,
Lieutenant,” Abel Cook observed as neutrally as possible.

Pam shook her head. “I’m medical officer. You command the expedition.”

Without thinking about it, Cook looked at Silva. He might be in command, but everyone, including Adar, knew who was in
charge
. After a long moment, Silva shrugged, his one eye narrowed to a slit. “Suit yerself, doll,” he grunted, and turned to carry his ammo crate to the ferry. “Let’s get this circus on the road,” he growled over his shoulder.

Maa-ni-la
April 3, 1944

“By the Heavens above,” Saan-Kakja murmured in sick sorrow as USS
Walker
(DD-163) crept closer to the Navy dock at the Advanced Training Center on Maara-vella. “How often can that poor ship sustain such damage and survive?” she pleaded.

Chack-Sab-At stood beside her, summoned from some training exercises his special Marines had been undergoing. He didn’t trust himself to speak. Isak Rueben was there as well, with the floating dry dock
Walker
’s escorting frigate had summoned, and Ambassador Lord Forester had accompanied Saan-Kakja from Maa-ni-la. Also present were General Ansik-Talaa of the new Fil-pin Scouts, Colonel Busaa of the coastal artillery, and quite a few troops and medical personnel who’d rushed down from the hospital and barracks in the booming military town.

Walker
was low by the head and had a decided list to port. Gaping holes yawned wide just behind her tall, dingy, half-submerged number, and on the fo’c’sle just forward of the bridge. The bridge structure itself looked warped and disheveled, and the canvas on the rail around the fire-control platform was shredded. Water streamed from within the ship in solid torrents and splashed alongside, and more water ran from temporary hoses attached to auxiliary pumps and coursed along the deck. The forward funnel looked like a ruptured pipe, and the aft funnel was even worse. Smoke streamed only from number two, so the boilers in the aft fireroom had to be cold. The main blower behind the bridge still rumbled, but with an exhausted, hurting gasp. The whole ship looked diseased with rust.

Yet
Walker
still lived, and her torn battle flag streamed to leeward on the stiff breeze off the nearby mountains. ’Cats in whites stood on the leaning fo’c’sle with lines in their hands, contrasting sharply with the rust, smoke stains, and faded gray paint. The number one gun—all the ship’s guns, Saan-Kakja now saw—were clean and trained fore and aft, and men and Lemurians were on the bridgewing, amidships deckhouse, and fire-blackened aft deckhouse. It was from there, Chack finally told her, that the ship was being conned.

Isak Rueben took the pipe from his mouth and exhaled a stream of rank smoke that smelled like burning leaves and ammonia. He coughed.

“Just as long as her crew can take it, an’ as often as we got the stuff—an’ the gumption—to patch her back up, Yer Excellentness,” he said with uncharacteristic forcefulness. Saan-Kakja looked at the odd, scrawny man and saw tears on his cheeks.

“You are right, of course,” she agreed firmly, but deep down she still wondered.

The tired old ship was finally secured to the dock, and corps ’Cats streamed up the gangplank as quickly as it was rigged. Soon,
Walker
’s wounded started coming ashore, helped along or carried on stretchers. Earl Lanier’s stretcher required extra, somewhat sullen bearers, and he waved imperiously as the space alongside the battered ship continued to fill. “Boats” Bashear was still swaddled in bandages, but he strode down the gangway unassisted. There was a sudden commotion aboard
Walker
as Chief Gray’s distinctive, comforting bellow gathered a side party, and amid a twitter of pipes, another stretcher came down the gangplank with Sandra and Diania anxiously pacing it and Juan Marcos clomping along behind on a crutch that replaced his wooden leg. Saan-Kakja and her party had been staying out of the way, but now they moved forward. Sandra saw them coming, and for just an instant, Saan-Kakja caught the slightest hint of the anguish that lay behind Sandra’s eyes. Rushing forward, the High Chief of all the Fil-pin Lands wrapped her arms around the taller woman and held her in a tight embrace.

“He’s going to be all right,” Sandra managed through the tears of relief and appreciation that began to flow. She sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as those gathering around, but she repeated herself with more certainty. “He’s going to be all right.”

Saan-Kakja looked down at the unconscious man on the stretcher, the man who meant so much to them all—not just because they needed him, but because they loved him.

“I have no doubt,” Saan-Kakja agreed, her mesmerizing, gold and black eyes beginning to fill. “Let us get him to the hospital, and then you must rest and refresh yourself!”

* * * 

Matt was dreaming, sort of. He was awash in seep, and the differently refined version of the analgesic, germ-fighting paste that had been used to treat his wounds had left him almost comatose in appearance, but somewhat aware as well. Seep was a popular intoxicant in reasonable doses, but they’d learned it performed much like morphine when used in large amounts. Like the paste, seep also apparently had some antibacterial properties, because it killed off a lot of the good bacteria in one’s innards as well as the bad, and often left heavily dosed patients with a bad case of the “screamers.” He hated that. He also hated the sick, unreal, helpless feeling it gave him.

He felt himself being carried out of the wardroom and heard the Bosun’s pipes. He knew he was being brought ashore and
Walker
was safe at last. He even heard the voices of Sandra and his friends as they gathered round, and he was pleased, in a kind of disassociated way. But then, for a while, he . . . left.

“You’ve got an awful strange setup around here, Matthew,” Orrin Reddy told him, staring out at the sea. Somehow, Matt was back on New Ireland, and he’d been walking along the rocky, secluded northern coast under the warm sunshine where he’d taken a quick trip to visit his cousin.
Orrin!
Of all people to find in this goofed-up world!
Orrin and a flight of
Maaka-Kakja
’s Nancys had been helping scour the island of any remaining Grikbirds after the fearsome battles that snatched it back from Dominion control. He’d been conked on the head and wasn’t flying, but he would remain there as long as any of his pilots did.

“It
is
strange,” Matt agreed, “in a lot of ways.” He grinned. “But not much stranger than finding you here.” Orrin chuckled. He looked good, considering what he’d been through. Matt had been amazed to hear the kid had shown up on this world, and still marveled at the coincidence of it. Orrin had been his favorite cousin, more like the little brother he never had, and they’d been close before his uncle and aunt took Orrin and his five brothers and sisters off to California. That had been in . . . ’thirty-two? Right before Matt entered the Naval Academy. He’d heard Orrin joined the Army Air Corps in ’forty-one and hoped to be assigned to the Philippines, where he and Matt would be close. Orrin even arrived in the Philippines while Matt was still there, but they never had a chance to get together. Either Matt had been on maneuvers or Orrin had been busy with training and readiness exercises. Then, just a few weeks later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, and
Walker
was ordered south to Java.

“Honestly,” Matt continued, “when I had time to think about it, I figured you’d been killed fighting the Japs. So many planes were lost so quickly, I knew the odds weren’t in your favor. The slaughter of the Air Corps was
why
the Navy had to leave the Philippines. We were sitting ducks.”

Orrin nodded with a frown. “I know. And I nearly
was
killed more times than I care to think about.”

Matt said nothing to that. The same was true for all of them now. “In retrospect,” he said instead, “I shouldn’t have been
that
amazed you made it here. On the scale of amazing things I’ve seen or learned over the past couple of years, that doesn’t really even make the chart. But I’m glad to see you.”

They talked of many things that day. There was a lot of reminiscing, and they both considered what a tough war it must have been for the Reddy clan back home. They talked about the situation on this world, as Matt knew it, and Matt noticed how the war here was increasingly becoming Orrin’s war, as much as anyone’s. Then they talked about the old war, as Orrin knew it.

Matt was appalled by the treatment Orrin and other POWs had suffered at the hands of the Japanese, and equally horrified by the atrocities inflicted on the Filipinos, whom the Japanese supposedly invaded to liberate. He’d never really liked the Philippines when he was stationed there—hadn’t much liked
Walker
back then, or the Asiatic Fleet in general, but he’d hated being run off. And then to hear what the Japanese had done after they left . . .

“Our Jap guards crowed a lot about their successes,” Orrin explained, “which were depressingly frequent at first,” he admitted. “Then they started to clam up and things got worse for us, if that’s possible. Things started to go sour for them after the Coral Sea and Midway, and Guadalcanal. They didn’t crow about those, and most of what we heard about them was smuggled in by Filipinos to boost our morale.” He grinned. “But the first really good news we got was that Jimmy Doolittle had bombed Tokyo itself!” He looked seriously at Matt. “That was right after we heard the Asiatic Fleet had ceased to exist. I hated to hear that.”

He kicked a black rock, and his grin returned. “Anyway, Doolittle’s stunt wasn’t much more than a poke in the eye, see? But it caused the Japs to take forces from their advancing fleets to beef up the defenses around the home islands, so the strategic effect was all out of proportion to the tactical one. Besides, it drove the Japs absolutely, fanatically nuts, and gave us a shot in the arm when we heard.” His face turned grim. “In spite of the increased beatings and sometimes ridiculously petty mistreatments.” Orrin had told Matt that the front line Japanese pilots and troops were first-class fighting men, but the prison guards acted like capricious, sadistic children with deadly weapons.

Matt wasn’t surprised by Doolittle’s stunt. Doolittle had been a national hero long before the war, and Orrin, in particular, had practically worshipped the man when he and Matt were kids together. The son of a sailor, Matt had rooted for the Navy in the air races, but he still admired Doolittle immensely.

“You know, I wonder,” Matt said absently, “if we could figure out a way and a reason to pull a stunt like Doolittle’s here.” He slapped his cousin on the back. “I think I’m going to keep that in my back pocket. I don’t believe— You said they made him a general? I don’t think General Doolittle would mind!”

* * *

Matt woke up in a white-painted, plank-wall room. A light breeze stirred the green curtains in the window, and at first he had no idea where he was. Then he remembered.
Why on earth did they put green curtains in here?
he asked himself. Yuck.
They must’ve thought it was regulation or something
. He sighed. His mouth was dry and he began to realize he hurt all over. His eyes were full of gummy goo and he wondered if he could get somebody’s attention. He heard an abrupt snort beside him and turned his head to see Isak Rueben sleeping in a chair beside the hard bed he was lying on. Isak’s head was tilted back, his mouth open, and Matt realized he’d been making those snorting sounds for some time.

“Chief Rueben,” he managed to say. “Wake up, Chief.”

Isak raised his head and blinked, then looked at Matt. He jumped to his feet, knocking the chair over with a loud crash. “Why, Cap’n Reddy! You’ve woke up at last! I’ll . . . I’ll run fetch somebody!” He darted from the room like a minnow.

“Not exactly the face I’d hoped to wake up beside,” Matt murmured grumpily.

“Which face is that?” came Sandra’s soft voice, almost beside his ear. He turned his head toward her and looked into her eyes.

“Yours is better,” he said, and smacked his dry lips. Sandra was fully dressed but lying beside him on the skinny bed, with maybe a foot of it to herself. He wondered how long she’d been there.

“Chief Rueben had the duty,” she answered his unasked question, “but when I came to check on you, he was asleep and I didn’t want to wake him.”

“My ship?” he asked, and she nodded. “He helped Spanky get her in the floating dry dock.” She grinned. “And argued with Tabby like they were married the whole time.” Sandra screwed her face up and tried to recreate Isak’s weird voice. “You may be a engineerin’ loo-tinnit now, Tabby, but I recollect when you was pilin’ brontasarry turds on top o’ each other! This is
my
 . . . GD dry dock!”