Iron Gray Sea: Destroyermen (6 page)

“You think I should ride a . . . flying machine?” Forester asked, eyes widening. His aide, Lieutenant Bachman, began to form a protest, but Forester gently silenced him.

“Yes, Your Excellency. I do.”

“Well. Indeed . . .” Forester considered. “Tell me, Captain Reddy: has an Imperial citizen ever ridden one of your flying machines?”

“Not to my knowledge, Your Excellency. I believe you’d be the first.”

“Splendid. In that case, I simply must, I suppose.”

With the meeting adjourned, the wardroom quickly emptied. It was hot in the compartment, even with the portholes open, and the wind direction prevented much air from coming in. The smell of sweat was so all pervasive, no one noticed it anymore. The musty-smelling ’Cats shed all the time, however, and Spanky rocketed up the companionway at the end of the short passage in the middle of a sneezing fit. Even Juan left, herding ahead of him a pair of mess attendants laden with trays of cups. All that remained were Matt and Sandra, smiling comfortably at one another across the wardroom table.

“We’re alone,” Sandra murmured.

“Scandalous,” Matt replied with a grin. “I left standing orders that we’re
never
to be left unsupervised, for the slightest instant.”

“I guess the whole gang’s on report now,” Sandra said, standing, and walking slowly around the table toward him.

“Trust me,” Matt warned, mock serious, “they’ll be severely punished.”

Sandra slid onto the chair beside him and gave him an only mildly inflammatory kiss as his arms went around her.

“We better get back to work,” he mumbled. “This is exactly why I said we should split up from now on. Can’t have us carrying on like a couple of teenagers all the time.”

Sandra giggled. “Hey, buster, this is
my
office!” The wardroom served as a surgery in battle.

“Then quick: throw me out, woman! Before the crew gets the wrong idea!”

Sandra giggled again, and Matt smiled. He knew she thought she sounded ridiculous when she did that, but he loved the sound. Finally, she sighed.

“Gets
wise,
you mean. Of course, in spite of us trying to fool them, they knew about us before
we
did.” She snuggled against him. “I
feel
like a teenager,” she admitted. “I guess you’re right, though,” she added wistfully. “Once we’re married, we’ll see even less of each other than we do now. Even if your silly regulations didn’t prevent mates from serving aboard the same ship, I don’t think that shoebox you call a stateroom would be big enough for both of us.” She kissed him again. “And after we
are
married, nothing will ever keep us apart again.”

“When we’re not apart,” Matt added glumly. She knew what he meant.

“I think you’ll have plenty to look forward to,” she whispered wickedly. “The sailor home from the sea will always be a happy man.”

He chuckled, but then looked at her. “I’m happy now. Only . . .”

“Only what?”

“Well . . . are you absolutely sure you want to go through with it? I mean, it’ll be tough sometimes. Maybe . . . Maybe we should wait until the war’s over, you know.”

Sandra’s face grew stormy. “Now, you listen to me, Matthew Reddy! You may be king of the sea, but as soon as you asked me to marry you, and even said
when
, that put me in charge of the whole operation, see?” She smiled, but her eyes were moist. “If you wanted it different, a chance to weasel out later, you shouldn’t have asked me right in front of the Governor-Emperor, half our allies, and all the crew!”

“I don’t want to weasel out!” he protested.

“You’d better not. Not only would it make me sore—it might wreck the Alliance! The Governor-Emperor wanted to marry us in New Britain, in the cathedral, with more bells and whistles than any wedding I ever heard of! Even Adar was a little put out that we wouldn’t wait until we got back to Baalkpan. He wanted to throw a big party, even though ’Cats aren’t big on formal weddings. But you promised me a honeymoon! On Respite! The governor there, Radcliff, is already gearing up for a pretty big deal, probably almost as big a wedding as His Majesty would have managed. You are
not
going to leave me at the altar like a dope. . . .” Tears threatened to spill, but she shook her head and dashed a sleeve across her eyes. “Not after all this time, after all we’ve been through!” Her voice took on a hint of bitterness.

“This war is
never
going to end, Matthew. Don’t you see? Someday, we’ll beat the Grik and the Doms and whatever else comes along. I don’t doubt that anymore. . . . But I know you. You’re not just fighting
them
. You’ll fight the whole damn world until it’s a safe place for the people you care about to live in peace and freedom!” She dried her eyes. “Okay. That’s the way it is. That’s who you are, and as much as I hate it sometimes, that’s also why I love you so much. I DO love you, but you’ve made me wait an awful long time. I’m thirty, now, Matthew,” she said, “and yes, maybe I want kids. Mainly though, I want you, for however often . . . or however long I can have you.”

“Okay!” Matt defended lightly, deliberately misunderstanding her mood. “It’s your operation, like you said. I wasn’t trying to weasel out.”

CHAPTER
2

////// Baalkpan, Borno

Headquarters “Home” of the Grand Alliance

February 22, 1944

C
ommander Alan Letts carefully negotiated the muddy ruts along the Baalkpan pathways. Deep trenches marked the passage of heavily laden “brontasarry”-drawn trucks that transported the increasingly sophisticated machinery built in the heavy-industry park. The trucks churned along at a regular, previously undreamed-of pace, bound for the burgeoning shipyard that continuously gouged at the dense jungle frontier north of the city. Baalkpan had always been a port city, but now the shipyard sprawled like a fattening amoeba wherever the land touched the bay.

“Watch your step, for God’s sake!” croaked Commander Perry Brister, picking his way alongside Alan. “You get in the middle of that, you’ll be done.” The former
Mahan
engineering officer’s voice didn’t match his young face and dark hair. It had been ruined when he commanded the defense of Fort Atkinson during the desperate battle against the Grik that once nearly consumed the city. He pointed at a bawling, long-necked beast about the size of an Asian elephant dragging another wheeled cart in their direction. “Smushed or buried,” he grated darkly.

“No sweat,” Letts said, but slowed his pace.
Someday,
he thought,
if the demands of war ever give us a chance, we’ll have to do something about these damn roads.
They were “repaved” constantly by the almost daily rains—and brontasarry-drawn graders—but the ruts weren’t as bad as the goopy slurry between them churned up by the massive, stupid beasts. A man—or Lemurian—could get stuck and maybe
die
in that.

There could be no break in the pace of operations and wartime production, however. Baalkpan—and the young Alliance it led—was only just beginning to hit a stride that might keep up with the demands of an increasingly global war. There could be no slacking off for any reason for the foreseeable future.

The irony’s almost funny,
Letts thought. Once, on another world, he’d been supply officer aboard USS
Walker,
and even by his own definition he’d been the poster boy for all slackers. One could have argued at the time that the world of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet was already quite different from the rest of the Navy, but that held absolutely zero relevance now. Here, Alan Letts had reinvented himself and was proud of what he’d become and accomplished. He was Chief of Staff to Captain Matthew Reddy and, by extension, a remarkable Lemurian named Adar, who was High Chief and Sky Priest of Baalkpan, and “Chairman” of the Grand Alliance of all Allied powers united beneath (or beside) the Banner of the Trees. Also, even more ironically, Alan had become Minister of Industry for the entire Alliance.

With the recent, more independent additions to that alliance, he wasn’t quite sure how
that
post would shake out, but he’d keep doing the job here regardless. He’d recently returned from a stint at the “pointy end,” where he’d served as chief of logistics for First Fleet. Initially, he’d gone because he felt guilty. His new sense of responsibility, likely heightened by the birth of his daughter, made him feel as if he’d skipped out on his shipmates and their Lemurian friends by staying in such a cushy berth so long. He realized now what an idiot he’d been. He’d seen firsthand what this war—at least on the “Grik Front”—had become, and he hadn’t chickened out. But he’d realized with blinding clarity that the reason he’d actually made a real contribution in theater was because he was a bean counter, not a warrior, and what the various expeditionary forces needed as badly as warriors were more bean counters.

He’d raced back to Baalkpan at the end of the Ceylon Campaign to recruit as many ’Cats—and, frankly, ex-pat female “Impies” escaping their indentured lives—as he could, to establish a Division of Strategic Logistics within the Ministry of Industry. There wasn’t an awful lot of extra labor just loafing around the city, and though hundreds had arrived, he’d had to move fast on the Imperial women because the institutions they’d fled were already breaking down and the “supply” might dry up. The women that arrived in Baalkpan were almost universally illiterate, but though the quality varied, they already spoke a variety of English. A common language that used many of the “right” words for things was key to getting the division up and running
now
. Alan and his shipmates had awkwardly learned to get by in Lemurian, but Adar had decreed that
his
People, at least those from his city in the War Industry, learn English. They had to. There’d never
been
Lemurian words for most of what they made. Understandably, that was taking time—and most ’Cats who spoke English already
had
jobs. The destroyermen who’d wound up on this world had already faced one kind of “dame famine.” Alan feared another sort.

And now this!

“Hey,” Letts said, as he and Perry tried to keep themselves—and, just as important, their new shoes—from sinking in the mud. “You’re Minister of Defensive Works and all that stuff. Roads are part of that, right?”

“Sure, and I’ll get right on it, soon as you give my engineers a few days to do the job,” Perry groused. Both knew there was nothing Brister could do, but the banter was obligatory—and neither had anything else to say. They were headed for the Castaway Cook, a sort of café started by
Walker
’s irascible cook, Earl Lanier, that had evolved into the more or less official Navy and Marine club for what promised to be an . . . interesting meeting.

Two P-40s—
P-40s!—
thundered by overhead, almost wingtip to wingtip, the sound of their Allison engines rivaled by the cheering of Lemurian laborers in the shops and beneath the awnings bordering the muddy pathway. Letts grinned, watching the predatory aircraft climb, banking west out over the bay. As much as he’d accomplished, he couldn’t take much credit for the “Warhawks”; their rescue from the old
Santa Catalina
, beached in a Tjilatjap (Chill-Chaap) swamp, was primarily due to the herculean efforts of others, most notably a former Army Air Corps lieutenant named Benjamin Mallory. Like them all, Ben had stepped up to fight an unimaginably terrible war on this opium-dream earth. He was a colonel now, in charge of the whole Army and Navy Air Corps of the entire Alliance.

“Is Ben going to meet us there?” Brister asked.

“Not at the Screw. He’s supposed to meet us all at the Parade Ground,” Alan confirmed. “Unless he was in one of those things”—he gestured at the diminishing shapes in the sky—“and that was his idea of putting in an appearance.” Both men chuckled, but they couldn’t hide their uneasiness from each other.

“I wish the Skipper was here,” Brister blurted at last, voicing what both were thinking. But Captain Reddy was hopelessly far away, and as Chief of Staff this really was Alan’s job . . . but nobody had ever expected he’d have to deal with anything like this. “Or even Adar. How come Adar isn’t coming?”

“I tried to get him to,” Alan sighed, “but we both figured, finally, that this is something I better try to sort out before he gets involved.” He shrugged. “It’s not really his problem . . . yet. He’ll do what he has to, though, if we can’t square it away.”

“How are we going to do that?” Brister asked flatly. There it was. And Alan had no idea.

“The same way we’ve handled everything,” he said more firmly. “We wing it.”

Brister snorted uneasily. “So that’s why Ben’s coming, huh?”

* * * 

The Busted Screw—the decidedly unofficial but more common name for the Castaway Cook—was usually a busy place, and it was jumping when Letts and Brister arrived in time for the midday rush. Traditionally, ’Cats ate only twice a day, but the human destroyermen had arrived among them accustomed to three meals (of some sort) each day, at about the same time. That was a tradition the hardworking ’Cats in the defense industry and military were quickly adopting. Cafés like the Screw were all over the city now, catering to the various Army regiments, but only Naval and Marine personnel (with some notable exceptions) were “permitted” to sit at the benches around the tables or sidle up to the bar beneath the broad roof of the Screw. It was a raucous place, particularly at times like this. Besides the noisy patrons (allowed only the admittedly superior chow during daylight duty hours), no matter how exclusive a joint it was considered, there were no walls and all the noises of the busy bayside activities could be watched and heard.

Letts and Brister went to the centrally located bar and tried to spot their target through the bustle. Despite the sensitive situation, Letts was beginning to think he should have just sent a detail of Marines to escort the newcomers to the War Room in Adar’s Great Hall, and to hell with the consequences. He was very busy and irritated that they hadn’t reported there when they first arrived, as expected . . . but, then, they didn’t
legally
have to, did they?

“Where are they, Pepper?” Brister shouted at the slender ’Cat with white-spotted black fur behind the bar. Pepper was the proprietor of the Screw, at least while Lanier was deployed, and he probably knew more about the state of the Alliance than any living being in Baalkpan. It was ridiculous to presume that he, at least, didn’t already know who they were here to see. He probably knew why too, whether the newcomers had blabbed or not.

“Over there,” Pepper shouted, motioning with his ears at the farthest table, barely protected by the roof.

Yeah,
Letts decided.
He knows something’s cockeyed
. He’d seen the Lemurian’s concerned blinking. “Thanks.”

“You wanna eat?” Pepper asked, coming around the bar and following a few steps while Letts and Brister made their way between the tables.

“Later,” Letts said. He wasn’t very hungry just then, and needed to get the new arrivals away from the Screw as soon as he could.
There.
He saw them now. Five men sitting alone at a table surrounded by ’Cats who looked at them occasionally, blinking curiosity. “Damn,” he said aside to Brister. “They look like hell.”

“They all do, those that survived. The Japs really put them through it,” Brister replied.

Letts said nothing. The condition of the men could make this even harder. He took a breath and crossed the remaining distance to the table, where he stopped and waited until the men noticed his presence.

“Which of you is Commander Herring?” he asked as courteously as he could. They all wore dungarees they’d been issued in Maa-ni-la before Saan-Kakja tossed the very hot potato they represented at Alan, but none wore any rank designations.

With a grimace of pain, likely from aching joints, one of the skinny men stood. “I’m Commander Herring,” he said softly. “Commander Simon Herring, United States Navy.”

Letts looked at him. The two were about the same height, but Herring’s graying hair established him as at least a dozen years older than Alan’s twenty-five, though it was hard to tell. The ordeal he’d endured had doubtless aged him.

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Alan replied. “I’m Commander—or Lieutenant, jg, if that’s how you prefer to look at it—Alan Letts. And this is Commander—Lieutenant—Perry Brister. Might I ask that you and your companions follow me? Maybe we can find someplace a little quieter to talk.”

“That’s fine, Lieutenant,” Herring said, “as long as you don’t mean ‘more private.’ Right now, I don’t want to go anywhere my friends and I might just . . . disappear.”

“Sir, I strongly resent the insinuation. . . .”

“Resent all you want,” Herring said. “But maybe you can forgive me if, after what we’ve been through and under the circumstances, I’m a little careful.”

“The parade ground surrounding the Great Hall is as public as it gets,” Brister ground out, “but it’s quiet. It’s a military cemetery now, see?”

* * *

The Parade Ground Cemetery that occupied the space around Adar’s Great Hall and the mighty Galla tree around which it was built seemed sparsely populated at first glance. Only about four hundred actual graves occupied a relatively small portion of the vast area at the center of the city. Looks were deceiving. Lemurians much preferred cremation to burial, but a surprising number, Navy ’Cats mostly and a few Marines, lay beneath simple markers alongside their human comrades. They’d ended up more devoted to their shipmates than to tradition. Less than half the humans lost from
Walker
,
Mahan,
and S-19 actually rested there either; many had been lost at sea or died too far away to be brought to this place. For now. Many hundreds of names had been engraved into a great bronze plaque, however, and like the cemetery itself, there was plenty of room for additions. Another, separate plaque, with
thousands
of names representing the people and crew of
Humfra-Dar
, a Lemurian Home that had joined the American Navy and been altered into a carrier (CV-2), had recently been emplaced. The bronze was still shiny, the names still bright.

The cemetery was a quiet place for reflection in the middle of the bustling city, and there were benches here and there in the shade of bordering trees. Ben Mallory was waiting for them when they arrived, gazing grimly at
Humfra-Dar
’s plaque. The scenes and memories that haunted his eyes and hardened his features warred with his otherwise boyish face. He’d known every flyer on
Humfra-Dar
and personally trained many of them. He turned at their approach.