can for the hurt.” He paused and caught the eye of the steadiest-looking throttleman. “I gotta scram, so you’re in charge for now. Keep these guys cool down here,” he admonished, then launched himself up the ladder to the main deck above. If the aft fireroom was full of steam, he didn’t dare open the air lock and let it in.
On deck, he was greeted by a hellish scene, grown all too familiar. Steam and smoke swirled up from the starboard side, filling the deck.’Cats ran back and forth, some hauling hoses, others just running, screaming, their fur scorched black. The Japanese antiaircraft guns hammered his ears and the number three gun added its smoke to the mix even though its crew couldn’t see and had to be suffering in the choking air. That was Pack Rat’s gun now, and he knew the Lemurian gunner’s mate would never leave it. The Dominion liner lay to starboard, a little aft now, and even through the heavy haze caused by burning wooden ships, he saw it had been riddled with holes. Another comparatively feeble broadside blossomed from its side, punishing Walker further with a few more hits. Spanky felt the shot strikes pound through his shoes like trip-hammer blows, but he also noted several small splashes in the sea alongside. Not all the enemy shot was penetrating, he realized. Maybe not even most. Thank God. If it was, after the blows he’d felt, they’d already be sinking. The ship had slowed almost to a stop, however, and was beginning to wallow in the swells.
He ran into Jeek, directing his division in throwing a curtain of water on the smoke, trying to get it to lay. Reynolds was probably still in the wardroom with Kari. Jeek yelled that he had no idea whether there was fire under all that smoke, but he wasn’t letting it anywhere near the aft deckhouse where the last plane and all the aviation fuel was stored. Spanky repeated what he’d said to Bashear about corpsmen, but Jeek just looked around and shrugged. Spanky raced on, under the amidships gun platform on the port side of the galley, headed for the bridge, but was brought up short by Earl Lanier, calmly sitting on his precious Coke machine and eating a sandwich.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Guardin’ my machine!” the fat cook snarled. “What’s it look like? All my mess attendants is on report! Bastards didn’t stow my baby below before this fracas, they just hauled ass to their battle stations! I had to drag it around here from the other side by myself!”
“Why aren’t you at your battle station?” Spanky demanded.
“I am! Why ain’t you at yours?”
Shaking his head, Spanky resumed his sprint. At least Earl was doing something. His usual battle station was in the head.
It was awful on the bridge. The new battle shutters covered the windows, so there wasn’t much broken glass, but at least one shot had come through the thin side plating of the starboard bridgewing and plowed up the wooden strakes in its passage. The chart table was shattered and twisted askew, and the handle had been sheared clean off the engine room telegraph. The damage to the bridge wasn’t what caught his eyes at first, however.
Four bodies lay on the shattered strakes. Norm Kutas was alive, but had splinters running up the backs of his legs, all the way to his buttocks. A pair of ’Cat pharmacist’s mates had already arrived and were trying to get him on a stretcher. Ed Palmer, hair scorched and face blackened, seemed okay otherwise, though winded. Two ’Cats were obviously dead, their blood dripping through the strakes from terrible wounds, and the brave Lemurian talker was still at the wheel, holding it in an iron grip even though she no longer controlled the ship. Others began to arrive, grabbing bodies and carrying them away, but none touched Frankie Steele.
Frankie had somehow dragged himself up against the forward bulkhead. He wore a curious expression on his pale face, staring down at the stumps of both his legs, gone above the knees. To Spanky’s amazement, he spoke.
“Hey, Spanky,” he said, almost whispering. “Skipper gives me the keys, and what’s the first thing I do? I wrap her around a tree.”
“Oh, Frankie,” Spanky said hoarsely, kneeling beside him. “Even the Skipper’s banged her up a time or two. You know that.”
“Yeah. But not like this. Not stupid.” Slowly, he looked into Spanky’s eyes. “An’ we just got her fixed up from the last time!” He paused. “Mr. Ellis! Where’s Mr. Ellis?”
“Jim’s fine,” Spanky said softly. “Just busy is all.” Jim Ellis was on the other side of the world.
Frankie smiled. “Good man. He’ll be a swell skipper for Mahan, once he settles in.” His chin slumped slowly to his chest and he was gone.
“Goddamn,” Spanky said, and stood. He looked at Minnie. “Are you fit for duty?” he demanded. Shakily, she nodded. “Then get back to your station! Mr. Palmer, I presume by your presence that you have no more pressing duties, so you have the conn. I have the deck. Talker? Replacements to the bridge, and inform Mr. Bashear to relinquish the conn. I expect he’s got other things to do. What’s the status on the boilers?” He patted his chest. “And somebody get me some binoculars!”
For the last several moments, there’d been no incoming fire. Taking the offered binoculars, Spanky strode onto the bridgewing and scanned around to determine why. He saw with satisfaction that their primary tormentor was low in the water and beginning to abandon. A few good hits with the Jap 4.7 at the waterline had probably settled her hash. The transports still lay ahead, obscured by a growing fogbank of smoke, but they’d gained some distance, bright sparks in black smoke soaring high from their stacks. They hadn’t turned away, however-not yet. They seemed intent on finding protection behind another pair of liners approaching Walker from the west. The number one gun barked and bucked, and a round shrieked away to explode in the fo’c’sle of one of them, but Spanky couldn’t tell if it did much good. A ’Cat pounced on the smoking brass shell as it fell to the deck from the opened breech. He tossed it in a nearby basket almost full of other dingy, blackened cartridges.
Spanky picked his way across the shattered strakes to the port bridgewing. More liners were approaching from the port quarter. Damn. He needed steam! For a moment, he wondered where the enemy frigates were. They had to be faster, and should have been all over him by now. He shrugged. Gift horses were rare critters. “Steam?” he demanded again.
“Finny report now, daamitt!” the talker replied, frustrated. Spanky couldn’t stop a small smile. “He say boilers okay, but main steam line and feed-water pipe is shot. Smoke uptakes too. An’ there’s oil an’ water in the bilge from leak somewhere…”
“Tell Finny I don’t give a damn what’s wrong, only how long it’ll take to fix-and what he needs to do it! Does he need people?”
“Almost all firemen in forward fireroom okay, they cram in air locks on both sides. He got them. Actually, Tabby got them…” The talker paused. “Tabby on the horn.”
“Spanky Skipper now?” came the tinny question. No drawl was present.
“Aye,” the talker replied.
“Then tell Spanky to fight ship! I fight mess down here! Finny bypassed three an’ four. Spanky lucky to have number two back, soon as pressure builds again! I fix the others as fast as I can, they fixed when they fixed! Spanky don’t get no more holes in my poor ship! He hear?”
Spanky rolled his eyes and nodded.
“He hear,” confirmed the talker.
“What’s the pressure on number two?” Spanky asked.
“Ah, eighty and rising,” Palmer replied, “but… there’s still nothing getting to the engine room!”
“Crap. Finny must’ve shut everything off. Get Tabby on it ASAP. We gotta move.” He stepped outside and glassed around again. “Okay, tell Campeti to have the number one gun concentrate on the transports with fire control assistance. All others will stay on the advancing warships in local control. Aim for their bows, tear ’em up!”
“Comm-aander,” said the talker, “lookout reports Taas-itus and Euripides have fought through enemy frigates, trying to join us here!”
“Is that so? Well, that explains the frigates. Tell Campeti to keep firing, but watch his targets! We might have friendlies out there shortly.”
The battle off Scapa Flow became a race for position. By all rights and reasonable expectations, it should have been over; the Dominion plan had been thwarted in the sense that there was now no way they could still land troops with surprise, and surprise had been the key to success. Unreadable signals flying from a large, distant liner confirmed that the enemy understood this as well, because even as the Dominion warships jockeyed to reconsolidate and reform, the surviving transports-minus one more that Walker had disabled-finally drew away to the west. Walker ’s lookout confirmed that Imperial ships of the line, “battle waagons,” were finally out of the harbor and forming up as well. Fully two-thirds of the Dominion ships were heading for them, trying to cut them
