Ruth. Clucking, she draped a light shawl across Ruth’s shoulders and eased into a chair behind her. Gray slumped exhaustedly into another chair, earning a disapproving glare of his own. He glared back, and then shrugged.
“Hell of a day,” he whispered gruffly.
“Yeah. Day and night,” Matt replied. “You okay?”
“Sure. A couple scratches. I should’a paid more attention to that jumped-up leatherneck Alden when he was passin’ out bayonet lessons.”
“Sorry I haven’t been down to see the fellas,” Matt said.
Gray waved it away. “You been busy, Skipper. Ever’body knows where you are, and what you been doin’.” He looked at Jenks. “A full-blown, man-sized war is a hell of a thing, ain’t it?”
It was a jab that went back a long way, but Jenks wasn’t offended. He’d now seen this kind of war himself before. “Yes, Mr. Gray. Yes, it is. Murdering noncombatants has never been our way, but like yours, it seems my people have now had a dose of a kind of war in which there are no noncombatants.”
There just weren’t any words after that, and they sat in silence for a while, staring out to sea through the opening for the telescope. The firing tapered off until it had all but stopped, but something suddenly flickered in the far distance, in the southwest, and Matt stood. “That looked like a flare!” he said.
“Yes,” said Jenks. “Or a rocket. A distress rocket, I fear.” He paused. “We both use them, you know.”
Another distant flash lit the night. A green one.
“That was a rocket!” Matt said excitedly. “One of ours! It’s a ‘here I am’!”
Two more green rockets soared into the night, even more distant, followed by gun flashes.
“What the…?”
“Skipper! It’s our guys! Achilles and Simms!” Gray insisted. “Has to be! I bet they were in communication with Walker and saw something. She sent up her ‘here I am’ and said ‘if it ain’t me you see, hammer it’!”
The Governor-Emperor’s eyes fluttered. “What is it?” he asked, drymouthed, smacking his lips. “What did I miss?”
CHAPTER 30
Scapa Flow
Dawn broke on a dreadful scene in the harbor of Scapa Flow. A pair of splintered Imperial “battlewagons” limped in first and tied up at the main Navy dock, barely able to remain afloat. Both were dismasted, and their pumps sent bloody water gushing down their sides from the scuppers. Steam and smoke filled the air, their guns’ muzzles were gray with dry fouling, and the wood around their ports was spattered black. Wounded and dead were carried ashore while the crews and mostly female yard workers labored to get ahead of the leaks. There were a few wailing women and some of the “usual” scenes, but many women, like their Lemurian counterparts, merely rolled up their sleeves and set to with a will. They carried moaning bodies and hacked at tattered cordage, cleared lanes through splintered timbers and corpses for canvas hoses and bucket brigades, and helped rescue men trapped beneath wreckage. They worked without being told and took instructions without complaint.
“They act almost like free women,” Gray growled. He, Matt, and Jenks had finally received word, signaled by the forts, of the “victory,” and they’d rushed to the docks along with High Admiral McClain and his staff to catch the first reports. Admiral McClain looked at Gray strangely, but Jenks nodded.
“Yes, well, as I’ve said, things are different here on New Scotland. Those are Their ships, Their men.”
“You could probably get every woman in the Empire to act that way if it was ‘their’ country,” Matt said.
Jenks looked appraisingly at the admiral. “I expect you’re right, Captain Reddy. Who knows what changes this war may bring?”
Chack and Sergeant Blas-Mar met them there in their bloodstained armor. Chack still wore his dented steel helmet and Blas-Mar’s bronze version had a new, deep, lead-smeared dent of its own. The ball that did it probably knocked her silly, but except for a stained bandage on her neck, she seemed unhurt. Stites emerged from the growing crowd, two rifles slung. He handed one to Chack. “I found your old Krag,” he said. “Be sure and get all that blood off the metal. Bring it to me. ..” He paused. “Later, and I’ll patch that gash in the hand guard. The nick in the barrel won’t hurt nothin’.”
“You come from the hospital?” Gray asked. A church near the dueling ground had been turned over to Selass for the Lemurian wounded, but the Governor-Emperor had decreed that she be given access to any hospital and that any suggestions she might make were to be considered Imperial edicts.
“Yah,” Stites said, shifting a wad of yellowish leaves in his mouth. “We ain’t lost nobody else. Corporal Koratin’s bad, but ‘Doc’selass’ says he’ll likely make it.” He looked at Matt. “She had to take Juan’s leg off.”
“I know.” Matt stared at the harbor mouth. Other ships were beginning to come in. “Doc’selass?” he asked at last. Stites had pronounced it “Doxy-lass.”
“Yeah, well, she earned it. And I don’t mean it the way you might think. That Bradford said it comes from a Greek word for knowing stuff and teaching-which I guess a regular doxy does too… Anyway, she’s been teaching them Brit doctors up a storm.”
“Where is Bradford?”
Stites shrugged. “Old Silva’d say he’s been ‘sankoing’ around, but that ain’t quite true. He was at the hospital most of the night, tryin’ to help out. Even talked Spanish to some of the Dom wounded the ‘corps’Cats’ was patchin’ up-guy speaks more languages than a Chinese tailor-but he jumped up and went to see the Emperor about the time I left. Said he was a ‘pleni-potency’ or somethin’, not a doctor, and he had his own job to do.”
“Oh, Lord,” Matt said, and contemplated that off and on over the next several hours while they watched the Imperial Fleet-what was left of it-return to port. It was true, though, he finally decided. It was time for Bradford to go to work. Right then, Matt had other concerns. Every Imperial ship was damaged to some degree. It had been a hell of a fight. A lot of the “liners” had serious damage to their paddle wheels despite the heavy wooden boxes that encased them, and Matt felt at least a little vindicated regarding his insistence on screw propellers for the Allied fleet. A couple of Imperial ships with sound propulsion had badly battered Dominion warships in tow, with the Imperial banner streaming above the red ensign of the enemy, but apparently, not many Dom ships had surrendered. Matt still didn’t know if that meant they’d escaped or been destroyed. As time went by, however, with no sign of Walker, the scene in Scapa Flow; all the drama, horror, relief, and even the dawning jubilation of victory, faded to insignificance as the fiery fist of anxiety for his ship continued to tighten its grip on his heart.
“My God!” Jenks exclaimed, staring through his telescope. He looked at Matt and handed the instrument over without a word.
Just becoming visible beyond the gaggle of limping Imperials, USS Walker steamed into view. Matt had never seen his ship return from a desperate battle; he’d always been aboard her. But now he knew how his people-and he unconsciously included the Lemurians in that category-must have felt every time he brought her in. She looked like a floating wreck. Several gaping holes were visible in her starboard side, surrounded by dozens of deep dents that ran her entire visible length, and she had a slight list to port. Water gushed over the side, and even a couple of auxiliary pumps were running, the hoses pulsing with pressure and adding to the torrent returning to the sea. The splinter shield on the number one gun was knocked askew, and the starboard bridgewing rail stood naked where the side plating had been battered in. The searchlight above her fire control platform was completely gone, leaving only the tangled rail and twisted conduits.
Matt absorbed the initial impact of what he saw, then began to observe details. At least two boilers were operational, judging by the smoke curling from her dented and shot-pierced funnels. There were no bodies strewn on her deck and “apes” were hosing blood and other debris from her fo’c’sle. Much of the junk included shattered wood and charred canvas that had to have come from other ships. The battle flag still stood out, straight and proud near the top of her foremast, and all the smokestained guns were trained fore and aft. In addition, the old girl’s heart was still as strong as ever, because the only reason she seemed to strain at all was because of the two savagely mauled Imperial frigates she was towing in her wake.
Jenks must have mistaken the expression on Matt’s face when he lowered the glass and unconsciously handed it to Gray. “I’m so sorry,” he said.
Gray looked away from the glass he’d raised and glared at Jenks, eyes red. “What the hell for?” he demanded savagely. “She ain’t sinkin’. Sure, she’s taken a few dents an’ a little smut, but I seen her look worse the mornin’
