“That’s swell, Jeek,” Reynolds said. “Any structural damage?”
“She wet inside and out,” Jeek admitted. “Some glue come loose on inside.” He brightened. “But glue dry again, pretty day!”
Reynolds looked at him. “You better clamp those places!” he said sharply, but Jeek grinned.
“Just joke. She tight. No water get inside. Only motor wet. It outside.”
Reynolds stopped, noticing something he hadn’t seen before. There were a lot of small patches in the plane’s skin, where the flight crew had covered bullet holes. Most had been painted over and were barely noticeable. One, however, on the nose, right in front of the windscreen, had a circle around the patch with a big O and what looked like an upsidedown N.
“What’s that?” he demanded.
Jeek shrugged. “You bring plane back full of holes from bad guy guns, that fine. Lots of work to fix, but fine. You shoot hole in own plane”-he gestured at the nose-“not fine. From where you sit, numbers say NO. Maybe you remember not shoot own plane no more!”
Reynolds’s ears reddened. “That wasn’t my fault, damn it!” he said defensively. “They were shooting at us, I was shooting at them! All I had was a damn pistol!”
“You get ‘carried away,’ ” Kari agreed. “You almost shoot us down yourself!”
“I did not! Get rid of it!”
“No!” Jeek said, grinning.
“Who’s in charge here, you or me?” Reynolds demanded.
“You in charge of division,” Jeek said, “but I in charge of plane.”
Their argument was interrupted by a volley of musket fire aft, near the fantail. Kari jumped. “What’s that?”
“Them Marines,” Jeek said scornfully. “They shoot bullets at shields-see if bullets go through.” He shook his head. “Ever-body shootin’ holes in own stuff. Crazy.”
“Well…” Reynolds hesitated. “What do I tell the Skipper?”
“Give me two, three day, this Naancy fly just fine.” He peered at Reynolds. “You lucky you got me an’ this flight crew ’stead o’ those on big ship. We know shit.”
“Yeah, lucky,” Reynolds reluctantly agreed. “Just get that stupid sign off the nose, will ya?”
Spanky McFarlane stumped painfully down the companionway. He’d been to see Tabby several times, and each time she looked worse. He half expected to find her covered with a sheet. He met Chief Tindal in the passageway, returning from having the dressing on a badly bashed elbow changed. Both men made way for two ’Cat stretcher bearers carrying another ’Cat, swaddled in bandages, aft.
“He okay?” Spanky asked.
“Sure,” Miami replied. “Just a few scrapes and some singed hair. Got a free pass from the doc to goof off a couple o’ days.” He nodded at the bearers as they passed. “They’re just taking him to his rack in the ‘guinea pullman.’ ” Gingerly, the Lemurians carried the stretcher up the companionway stairs.
“Actually, he ain’t good,” Tindal said when the patient was out of earshot. “He’ll prob’ly look like he’s got mange when his fur grows back, but he’ll make it. Selass wouldn’t have let him go otherwise. Wardroom’s only for the worst cases left. We got to clear it out.” He gestured aft. “His mates’ll take good care of him now.” Seeing Spanky’s expression, he added, “Only two borderline cases left.” He didn’t need to say that Tabby was one of them.
Spanky sighed and nodded. “See what you can do about number three, will ya? Start tearing it down as quick as you can. I know we’re short firemen, at least for a while, but it ain’t like the old days, you know? Back then, if we had two good boilers, that meant we had a spare. Only two leaves us nothing extra anymore, ’specially with that Brit hulk in tow. Get with Bashear and shanghai some of his apes with boiler experience if you have to.”
Tindal raised a brow. “He gonna squawk?”
Spanky shook his head. “Nope. Besides, we got all of Chack’s Marines to help topside. Not many of them have ever even been in the fireroom.” He started to move along, but Miami put a hand on his arm.
“Look,” he said, “for what it’s worth, everybody knows how you feel about Tabby.” Spanky started to cloud up. News of the “kiss” Tabby had laid on him was all over the ship in a matter of hours. Miami shook his head. “And I, at least, know you ain’t ‘sweet’ on her. She’s a swell dish for a ’Cat, but she’s a ’Cat, and some things just ain’t meant to be. But I also know she ain’t just a ‘fireman’ to you neither. I don’t know what she is. She ain’t nobody’s ‘pet,’ unless she’s ‘teacher’s pet’ and you’re the teacher. Maybe she’s like a kid sister or stepdaughter or somethin’. My point is, whatever she is to you, let her see it for once. So what if she’s sweet on you? God knows why she would be, but what difference does it make to you? Knowin’ you care about her, in whatever way, might make a lot of difference to her.”
Spanky nodded. This was a side of Miami Tindal he’d never seen. Maybe it was new. It seemed like everybody revealed new sides all the time these days. “Thanks,” he said. “Now go get with Bashear.” Turning, he advanced toward the embroidered wardroom curtain.
The next morning, Walker ’s dead went over the side in the traditional flag-draped way, with the traditional service. Tabby wasn’t among them… yet… and only time would tell if there’d be another funeral service aboard the old destroyer in the coming days. Spanky’s visit had seemed to perk Tabby up, despite the nature of their ultimate conversation. She’d been adamant that, if it came to that, she wanted whatever kind of service any other destroyerman would receive under the circumstances, and she was convinced that her Lemurian comrades who’d already perished would agree. Not for the first time, Matt wished they’d brought a Sky Priest along. He didn’t feel right leading the brief Lemurian chant of supplication after the traditional service, but Jeek, of all people, had volunteered to lead a sort of “nondenominational” version. The chant was different for land folk and sea folk. Matt still found it odd when a minority of Lemurians, including a few of the Marines-such as Corporal Koratin-participated only in the Christian service. Once an Aryaalan noble, Koratin had been a convert to Sister Audry’s teachings. The proceedings at an end, Walker increased speed, straining against the towline rigged to Achilles. During the brief pause, there’d been splashes alongside the Imperial frigate as well.
The weather remained fine, with a steady westerly breeze. Icarus easily kept company, and slowly, as Achilles pieced new masts and yards together from her remaining stores and as much as Icarus could spare, she bent new canvas and more and more of the drag came off the towline. On Walker, carpenter’s mates built a new launch, scavenging as much of the wrecked one as they could. The little two-cycle engine seemed okay, but the propeller shaft was bent and they had to straighten it. Safety chains were rerigged and parted stays were spliced. Within a few days all the serious damage but the blown boiler had been attended to, and Gray, the ever-present, looming Super Bosun, even had details chipping and painting again. He was damned if Walker would steam into her first Imperial port with rust streaks down her sides “like wet makeup on a cheap Nor-leens whore.” Even as evidence of the beating the ships took from the Strakka disappeared, however, hope that Ulysses would turn up began to fade. She might well have been driven far off course and proceeded independently to their destination, but Jenks said her master, Achilles’ own third lieutenant, would have made every effort to rejoin them. He feared she’d been lost with all hands.
They began to encounter land of a sort. Small, desolate, apparently lifeless atolls scoured of any vegetation were the first they saw. Wireless communications had been restored with Achilles and Jenks counseled Captain Reddy on the most beneficial bearings. Other islands began to appear, first with a few lonely trees, then with veritable jungles and even a few humps and hills that suggested more substance to their foundations. Courtney Bradford wanted to visit them, of course, but he lost considerable interest when Jenks advised that the main reason they sustained no settlements out of Respite was a lack of reliable fresh water. They’d already passed the island, far to the northwest, to which O’Casey and the princess had been bound, and Jenks, who was something of a naturalist himself, assured Bradford that it was the only place they’d neglected that might have truly interested him. The islands they steamed among did sustain life, however.
Birds began pacing the ships, swooping among the masts and generally, as usual, defecating all over the decks. For the first time since coming to this world, real “honest” birds not only predominated but seemed almost universal. They were strange creatures, with many of the characteristics of the “lizard birds,” such as elongated, toothy mouths instead of beaks, and almost ridiculously long tail plumages like peafowl, but they were entirely feathered and had wide, broad wings. They seemed designed to soar for long distances and snatch prey from near
