Matt laughed. “He hit me with a list and swore he’d stick to it, but I guess I don’t really care what he brought as long as it stays out of the way.” He shook his head, watching as they left the feluccas and fishing boats in their wake. “God, it feels good to be moving again!”
“In case you didn’t notice, we were moving along pretty well on Achilles in that Strakka!” Chack said dryly.
“Mmm. That was quite the thrill ride, but we were being pushed. It’s nice to move that fast on our own!”
They talked amiably until they passed below Fort Atkinson and the report of a gun interrupted their conversation. Then another.
“A salute,” Gray said. The guns kept firing. As the number mounted, Matt turned to Gray, who was staring expressionlessly ahead. When they finally stopped at nineteen, Matt’s tone was ominous.
“Nineteen guns? You told them to do that! Are you out of your mind? That’s nuts… and think of the wasted powder!”
Gray looked at Matt. “Yeah, Adar asked and I told him. And it ain’t nuts! The Secretary of the Navy gets that many, and if you ain’t at least that, what are you? You’d better dip the flag or you’ll disappoint the boys an’ girls in the fort.”
Walker turned north-northeast after clearing the point batteries and islands beyond. Sprinting at the glorious speed of twenty-six knots, she reached the refinery island of Tarakan at dawn the next morning. The growth was beginning to reestablish itself after the vicious but comparatively small battle once fought there, and the ensuing great fire that had ravaged the place. To Matt, it still seemed a little odd to see the Stars and Stripes flying over an island where not a single human currently dwelt. All the workers there were ’Cats-Navy ’Cats, and thus Americans- still… Walker topped off her bunkers and sped on.
A week before Walker sailed, they’d heard the news of Simms ’s fate, when a lone felucca returned to Paga- Daan, Saan-Kakja’s brother’s home. The transmission had told how Simms was approached and destroyed without warning of any kind. Worse, a felucca under the command of Saan-Kakja’s brother himself was also destroyed. Other than a few of Simms ’s crew who’d apparently rowed Captain Lelaa over to Ajax to confer with the hostage takers, there were no other survivors. Saan-Kakja was in a frenzy, understandably, but she was also ready to declare war on the Empire of the New Britain Isles. Matt had to send his personal assurance that the Empire itself might not be to blame, and they’d secured a strong alliance with at least one element of the Imperial Navy. He then had to beg the Paga-Daans to replenish Jenks’s ship when it arrived instead of firing on it. Things were spiraling out of control and, for Matt at least, the all-important war in the west had assumed an almost back-burner status. Meanwhile, he spent more time trying to smooth things over between his Allies than he did running his ship-all while pursuing the criminals who had taken Sandra, the princess, and at least three more of their people. Those hostages might now include Simms ’s captain.
Just as they turned west to cut across the Moro Gulf of the Celebes Sea, they received confirmation that Achilles had indeed reached Paga-Daan and had her fuel replenished. A subsequent transmission from Achilles - O’Casey had apparently finally figured out the device he’d been given-asked why the Paga-Daans had been so unfriendly. Matt had Palmer send a message that explained the new situation-and the Paga-Daans immediately replied that they had not been rude to Jenks. Matt finally summoned Bradford and put him in charge of the diplomatic situation and insisted that it had been his job in the first place.
Walker steamed on, her repaired sonar blasting the depths before her. The sonar had been a major concern, but all the delicate equipment had been above water in the charthouse, so it hadn’t been as difficult to fix as originally feared. They’d installed a pair of the “Y” guns-thanks to Simms, they knew those worked-but it was good to be able to cross deep water at speed. With Bradford finally dealing with diplomacy, Matt was free to drill his crew and get his ship ready to fight.
“Sound General Quarters,” Matt said for the third time that day, and cringed. Of all the things no one had thought to repair, the general alarm was becoming the most obvious. Everything else seemed to be working fine so far, but the alarm, always ill-sounding, now reverberated through the ship like a goose being choked underwater. Despite the comical sound, the crews immediately sprang to their stations. The automatic response had already returned to Walker ’s veterans, and her new draft was quickly picking up the pace.
Fred Reynolds was the talker (he had to have something to do when he wasn’t fussing with the plane) and he began to call out readiness reports from the various stations.
“Engineering reports manned and ready,” he said. “Main battery is manned… and mostly ready. They’re still having a little trouble figuring out who stands where on that Jap gun-I mean, number four.” He quickly recited the rest of the litany. Matt noticed that the young ensign visibly paled when he reported for the plane-dump detail. Matt hoped it would never come to that, but if the plane ever caught fire or was otherwise interfering with the performance of the ship or crew in battle, they had to be ready to throw it over the side. He glanced aft and almost barked a laugh. Once again, he saw a pair of ’Cat mess attendants solemnly, carefully, carrying the Coke machine forward to the companionway under Earl Lanier’s fierce, watchful supervision. Apparently, Earl was determined that providing for the iconic machine’s safety should become as instinctive as any other preparation for battle. It had been severely wounded in action before, and after Earl lovingly and painstakingly restored it to health, he wasn’t going to risk it again.
“Lookouts, machine guns, and damage control, all manned and ready. All stations manned and ready, Captain!” Reynolds finally reported.
“Very well,” Matt said, controlling his voice and looking at his watch with a dissatisfied frown. The time had actually been pretty good, but he had to maintain appearances. “Secure from General Quarters. Continue steaming as before but maintain condition three. I want a few fingers close to a few triggers. There are sea monsters out there, after all.”
“Aye-aye, Skipper. Secure from General Quarters and maintain condition three.”
In the short bustle that followed, while the crew secured their helmets and other gear, and men and ’Cats slid down the ladder from the fire-control platform above the wheelhouse, Courtney Bradford appeared on the bridge. “How invigorating!” he wheezed after the effort of climbing the steps aft. “The old girl seems as good as new and ready for a scrap! It does my heart a world of good, I must say. It feels almost like old times!”
Matt turned to look at Bradford. “You weren’t here for the old times, back before the war. We had some damn good men and we’ve lost an awful lot of them since, but the few who remain, from Walker and Mahan, and a few from S-19, have become something a little more than just damn good men. With them, and their Lemurian shipmates, this old can probably has as good a crew as any four stacker ever had!”
“Quite,” Courtney agreed. “I have always noted how, in the various navies I’ve grown familiar with, each crew contains all the wildly different varieties of specialized skills to operate and maintain their ship at sea and on far-flung deployments. Oddly, however, I’ve also seen how the men who possess those skills set themselves apart from one another as distinctly as, well, different races sometimes do. Aboard here, all those different skills have become wonderfully diffused through necessity. Your crew has become much better educated than is the norm, Captain Reddy, and they have accomplished that feat largely on their own.”
“You’re right, but they’ve had a lot of help,” Matt said. “These ’Cats! They’re smart as a whip, but teaching them stuff has helped all the fellas. I’ve often heard it said that teaching makes a smart man wise. I’m not sure that’s true in a classroom, but out here?” He shrugged. “It sure shows you what you don’t know, and in our situation, you’d better find an answer. Chances are, somebody has one. That’s what’s caused your diffusion of skills.” He waved his hand. “There’ll always be rivalries. The ‘snipes’ and ‘apes’ wouldn’t have it any other way, but that’s good for morale. The thing is, after all we’ve been through and what this crew went through to get this ship back in action, there’s probably not a deck ape aboard who couldn’t lend a competent hand in the firerooms if it came to that. And vice versa. They might gripe, but they could do it and they would.”
“Speak for yourself, Skipper,” said Chief Gray, joining the pair. “Spanky’s still mad that I missed most of the slop work. Says I’m banned from the engineering spaces! Hell, I wouldn’t go down there to piss on him if he caught fire!”
“You see?” Matt said, laughing. “Boats, you’re the exception that proves the rule!” He shook his head. “What does that mean, anyway? What a stupid thing to say.”
“Indeed,” Bradford agreed, lowering his voice. He glanced around as if checking to see who was in earshot. There weren’t many secrets aboard Walker, not anymore, but Bradford had learned that his theories and observations were sometimes prone to… upset sensitive ears. Some of those sensitive ears were already somewhat
