Iron Gray Sea

CHAPTER 16

Baalkpan

March 15, 1944

Dennis Silva walked with Bernie Sandison and Ronson Rodriguez at the head of a virtual army of young torpedo techs and strikers, ordnance ’Cats, EMs, and other “sparky” types. Lawrence trotted exuberantly alongside Silva, his crested head swiveling rapidly back and forth, taking in all the changes to the city. Within the column were carts piled with weapons, tools, and crated ammunition, and it snaked its way through the crowded, festive pathways toward the area between the vastly enlarged new fitting-out piers and the massive shipyard.

Dennis was still stunned to see how packed, bow to stern, the piers were, with completing ships of all descriptions. There was Santa Catalina, smoke coiling above her funnel, looking almost predatory with all the armor and weapons they’d lavished on her. Silva hadn’t seen the ship before-and had fluttery feelings when “her” P-40s thundered over-head-but he’d been told she looked like the old Asiatic Fleet destroyer tender Blackhawk.

Maybe once, he decided with a critical eye. The lines are still similar. Most of the cargo booms are gone, though, and she looks kinda… tough now.

His gaze wandered as he walked. He was particularly amazed by the monstrous, almost Home-size floating dry docks fitting out at a completely new facility in the far distance across the bay. These weren’t the same as the ones he’d seen under construction when he left. Those were finished now, and already in use either here or elsewhere. The new class was a powered, self-propelled variety that could steam wherever they were needed, and even fight!

The original permanent dry dock had even more smoking engines around it, and the place was wreathed in a perpetual cloud of steam. A brand-new carrier was taking shape inside the now concrete- reinforced, ’Cat-made canyon, and mighty wooden cranes were poised over mountains of bright timbers like impossible insects. He’d known concrete was in the works. Many of the ingredients were abundant in the highly volcanic region, and they’d been cooking limestone for acetylene. He’d heard that was related somehow. But to see it already in use… His eyes strayed to a pair of the old floating dry docks, side by side, and sure enough there were S-19 and the salvaged remains of Walker ’s sister, Mahan! The wrecked destroyer and practically wrecked sub were both in the process of becoming something maybe a little different from what they’d been, though major alterations on S-19 had only just begun with Irvin Laumer’s arrival a few days before. Not much to see there yet but a nearly stripped pressure hull. But Mahan! He couldn’t believe it. He wondered how they’d managed to fish her up. Almost half the damn thing had been blown off, but she was beginning to look kind of like her old self again! Maybe shorter…

“Silva!” Bernie snapped-maybe the third time.

“Whut?”

“That nasty, creepy thing you use for a brain must be off on the moon! Listen up, and quit woolgathering! You and Risa will be the first ones at bat with all the new small arms, after Adar says his piece. I’d order you not to screw it up-with half the city watching-but then you’d probably start the show by seeing if you can whiz farther than you can shoot!”

Silva shrugged. “Maybe I can…”

“ Please don’t screw it up!” Bernie groaned. “I’m asking you, damn it! I’m nervous enough as it is without worrying about you! And whatever you do, don’t carry on with Risa out in front of everybody! Besides… everything else, she’s a Marine and an officer now!”

Silva grinned and patted the sling that supported his new “Doom Stomper.”

“No sweat, Mr. Sandison! I’m your man! I’m still feelin’ mighty friendly and a-bleeged! Besides, shootin’ stuff is what I do! Me and Cap’n Risa’ll shoot off the good stuff, an’ show ’em why the junk won’t work.” Clearly, Silva had already formed strong opinions about some of the experimental weapons. “Relax,” he continued. “Torpedoes and… other things… are what you do. It ain’t like you got to sell the stuff!”

Bernie stopped, wordless for a moment, and the whole column ground to a halt behind him. “That’s exactly what we’re here to do today!” he finally insisted. “We have to decide what weapons and systems to devote our resources to, then sell them to the guys and gals who’ll make them-as well as those who’ll have to bet their lives on them! We all bitched about the useless crap the Navy gave us to fight the Japs: the crummy torpedoes, the dud shells. Stuff that cost lives! Now we’re the ones responsible! All this time, we’ve been making do, but the time’s come to put some real weapons in the hands of our people, and I’ll be damned if one sailor, soldier, flyer, or Marine gets killed because something doesn’t go off when they’re counting on it!”

Silva arched an eyebrow. “Zat what yer workin’ on, off in the jungle east o’ town? Real weapons?”

Bernie stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bull flops. I seen some o’ the brightest ordnance ’Cats we got headin’ down a trail at first light yesterday, an’ they didn’t never come back. They all get ate, an’ you forget to mention it? What’re you doin’ off in there you can’t tell me about?”

Bernie looked at him. “I wouldn’t tell you I had a hangnail!” he said, then paused. “Look,” he almost whispered, “you try to fool everybody, but you’re not stupid. Of course we’ve got secret stuff going on-you sniffed it out easy enough. Must be the way your mind works. Anyway, some things-big things-have to stay secret now. The war’s changing. We’ve got Impies and all these women running around. Who’s to say not one of ’em is a Dom spy? It would still be tough for the Grik to spy on us, but we have to stay tight-lipped about things here that somebody who gets deployed might blab to a Jap interrogator-or a Grik who understands English!”

Silva nodded. “No sweat, Mr. Sandison,” he murmured back. “I won’t blow. You workin’ on anything that might interest me?”

Bernie hesitated, then shook his head. “No.”

“Then I don’t care what it is.” Something caught his eye and he grinned.

Ensign Abel Cook and Midshipman Stuart Brassey appeared and hurried to join them as several paalka-drawn carts, heavily laden with fresh meat, took the opportunity to cross ahead of the stalled column.

“Good morning, Commander Sandison. Commander Rodriguez,” Cook said in his vestigial, high-class British accent, and saluted. “Hiya, Dennis.”

“Mornin’, Mr. Cook,” Silva replied, stressing Abel’s new status. “Mr. Brassey!” Cook’s freckle-tanned face reddened, and Brassey smiled uncertainly.

“’Ister Cook!” Lawrence tried to repeat, and saluted as well.

“Lawrence,” Abel managed, then turned back to Bernie. “Ah, may we assist in some way, sir? We have no other duties, at least until we report back to Mr. Letts in the morning.”

“Sure, kid… I mean, Mr. Cook,” Bernie said, catching on to Silva’s unexpected reminder that despite a degree of informality among them all that harked back even to their Asiatic Fleet days, distinctions between officers and enlisted men must always be maintained.

“Thank you, sir,” Abel and Stuart chorused, stepping into the column that was now waiting for the meat carts to pass.

Dennis suddenly did a double take and then trotted over to an old Lemurian, swatting a paalka clear of the pathway with a long, dried bamboo shoot. “I’ll catch up, Mr. Sandison!” he called behind him. “I gotta talk to this guy a second.”

“No screwin’ around!”

“No, sir.”

“Hey, Moe. What’s up?” Silva asked the ancient ’Cat. Moe looked good for his age-whatever that was-and was still just as tough and sinewy as Dennis remembered. Now, in addition to the ragged kilt he usually wore to town, he also wore dingy rhino-pig armor with sergeant’s stripes.

Moe looked up at him. “Si-vaa,” he said. “Where you been? Lotsa huntin’ to do.”

“Oh, I been here and there.” Silva answered. He waved at Santa Catalina. “Heard you went on a little jaunt yourself.”

“Damn weird place,” Moe nodded. “Weird critters too. Glad I back here.”

Silva gestured at the heaps of meat on the carts. “I see you ain’t run outta pigs. They gettin’ harder to find?”

“No. We kill all we want. They make more.” He shook his head.

“Look. They’re sendin’ me and Larry and the kids over there-you remember them-up the river, north, into Injun Jungle Lizard territory. We’re s’posed to say howdy to ’em. You wanna go?”

“No,” Moe answered truthfully, but then twitched his ears at his stripes. “But I Army scout now. They make me go, an’ I been helpin’ plan the trip.” He shrugged like he’d learned to do and gazed northward. “We go up there, we gonna die, I betcha.” He grinned. “But I old. Gonna die soon, anyway!” He laughed at Silva and swatted the paalka again. “See you around, Si-vaa!”

A grandstand had been erected near the water overlooking the old seaplane ramp, and it was packed to overflowing. Nearby buildings were covered with ’Cats and women as far away as the Screw in one direction and the main dry dock in the other. Sailors and yard workers lined the rails of the completing ships, and others skylarked in the masts and rigging. Below the grandstand, beside the ramp, with deep water in front of it, was Walker ’s refurbished number-one torpedo mount. Some distance to the rear of the triple-tube mount, resting securely fastened on cradle trucks exactly like the one Silva remembered from Walker, were three long, shiny cylinders with rounded noses in front, and four fins and two propellers at the back. Compressors and large accumulators for charging the air flasks were close at hand. Whatever the things were actually capable of, they sure looked like torpedoes to Dennis.

“Nice fishies, Mr. Sandison. Do they work?”

“God, I hope so,” Bernie whispered, then raised his voice. “The torpedo division will assume their posts!”

Dennis was surprised to see Ronson join a crew beside one of the weapons.

“We’re trying three kinds,” Bernie explained. “Two are reverse-engineered Mk-14s like that wadded-up fish we carried around so long. The only difference is one’s hot and the other’s cold. You’re probably thinking the ship’s sailed on that one, but we’re not talking the same ranges here-yet. If the cold fish can do the job for now, it’ll save a lot of effort.”

Dennis wasn’t sure exactly which ship Bernie meant. He didn’t much care about torpedoes and didn’t trust them. He firmly believed you should never send a fish where you could send a bullet, and though nobody knew what kind of ships the Grik were working on, he hadn’t seen anything on this world since Amagi that needed a torpedo. His attention was already focused on something else.

“The other one uses the same gyro, Obry gear, everything,” Bernie continued, unaware he’d lost his audience. “But Ronson talked me into letting him try an electric motor and batteries in place of the air flask.” He shook his head. “I think it’ll work eventually, but I’m afraid our batteries just aren’t there yet.”

“The only thing I care about is if the damn things’ll go off,” Silva said absently but darkly.

“Yeah, they’ll go off,” Bernie assured him. “They’re contact exploders all the way, no horsing around.”

“Good,” Silva said, still distracted.

About forty yards from the torpedo mount, on the old ramp itself, was Walker ’s glisteningly restored number four, four-inch-fifty gun. Mounted beside it, bolted to a similar concrete pedestal, was an almost exact replica of it, except the mount was taller and more reminiscent of the Japanese 4.7s they’d salvaged. Bernie had told Silva to expect it, but he hadn’t had time to come down and see the thing. He’d been too busy familiarizing himself with the small arms. Now he knew he truly was looking at a dual-purpose four-inch-fifty!

“I’ll be derned,” he said. “Ain’t that a pretty thing? What did you make her out of?”

“All our modern weapons are made of Jap steel, from Amagi.” Bernie shrugged. “Not sure how good it is, but it’s better than what we can make so far. Somebody calculated that we salvaged enough steel off her to make every single rifle and pistol used by everybody on both sides in the Great War. I find that hard to believe, but there’s a lot-and we can use local iron in projectiles and nonordnance applications. We are making some steel of our own now, like I said, and we’re doing it by the book-but there’s no way to know if it’s really worth a damn, since Laney’s the closest thing we’ve got to a metallurgist. He worked in a steel mill for a while before he joined the Navy.”

“Got fired, I bet,” Silva quipped.

Bernie shrugged. “Probably. I wish Elden hadn’t got himself killed. He really knew stuff.” He brightened. “Spanky does too, but until he gets back, Laney’s the expert. We’ve had to do a lot of guessing and experimenting with heat treating and stuff.”

“I know heat treating-on small parts an’ springs an’ such,” Silva said, and Bernie glowered.

“All the more reason why…” He stopped and sighed. Silva had long ago taught what he knew about making springs and case hardening. That knowledge was widespread now. Silva knew nothing about making steel for heavy ordnance. “Well, for now, the new breechloading guns like that one will still use the black-powder shells we’ve been making, to keep pressures down. They’re basically wrought iron-or wrought Jap steel.”

“It is a four-inch-fifty? Why didn’t you standardize on the four-point-seven? We’ve actually got more of those scattered around, and I guess you could eventually convert the four-inch-fifties.”

“We thought of that,” Bernie admitted. “We’ve got salvaged Jap gun directors and everything, but production on ‘our’ shells was already so far along and performance being so close, we figured it would be easier to line the four-point-sevens when the time came. You got us on this lining kick with your Allin-Silvas, and it made sense.”

“Sure,” Silva nodded. “And you can reline ’em when the bores are shot out.”

“You got it.”

The rumble of the crowd softened when Adar, High Chief and Sky Priest of Baalkpan and Chairman of the Grand Alliance, stood from his seat at the center of the bleachers. Near silence was achieved when he raised his arms. As always, he still wore his old “sky-priest suit” as the humans called it. It was deep purple with a scattering of embroidered silver stars across the shoulders and hood, which today was thrown back, revealing his gray fur that glistened like silver in the morning sun. Beside him, Alan Letts stood as well, his whites almost painful to look at. Other high-ranking members of the Alliance flanked them, and also stood as a group.

“Who’s the skinny guy there by Mr. Letts?” Silva asked. “In the officer suit.”

“New guy,” Bernie replied. “Name’s Herring. Commander Herring, he made a point of rubbing in at first. He came in from Manila with a couple China Marines, an Aussie, and some Dutchman Colonel Mallory grabbed up. They were off Mizuki Maru, poor devils. That one was ONI, and Letts tapped him for the same job around here, once he decided he was on the level.”

“Our very own snoop brain, huh?”

“Looks like.”

“A fella like that might come in handy,” Silva probed.

“He might,” Bernie answered, noncommittally. “I’ve only talked to him a few times. Kind of an odd, Ivy League sort. The first time I saw him, he was poking around the powder-blending tower, asking a bunch of screwy questions, and he hadn’t even joined up yet!”

“What about the Grumpys? They goin’ to Alden?”

“The Marines?” Bernie asked, rightly suspecting another one of Silva’s odd, often unexplainable nicknames. “I snatched one of them, a corporal, for Ordnance. He’s kind of a snot-like a Marine version of Laney-but he earns his keep. I think Letts is sending the other one, a gunny named Horn, with you.” Bernie looked around. “He might be around here somewhere, or maybe he’s at the drill field.”

“Gunny Horn,” Silva said, brows knitting. “ Arnie Horn? Big guy, black hair?”

“I don’t remember his first name, but that sounds like him. I swear, Silva! Did you know everybody on the China Station?”

“Most everybody that’d been there a while,” Dennis replied, reflecting.

“Well… if he’s who you think he is, is he a problem?”

“No. Shouldn’t be. Arnie’s a right guy. I just figgered he croaked-and I owe him one.”

“One what?”

“Oh, nothin’, sir.”

Adar began to speak and his voice carried in that strange, Lemurian way. “We are gathered here, at the first Torpedo Day celebration, to behold the latest wonders wrought by our fine technicians to smite the evil foes of peace and freedom! Even as those foes grow in numbers, so does our capacity to slay them!” A thunderous cheer ensued that was quieted only when Adar raised his arms again. “Today we will view the performance of new weapons that the forces of the evil Dominion or even the Ancient Grik Enemy cannot possibly be prepared to face, and some of them are already in the hands of our precious troops, or en route to them. Their force will be felt!”

Another great cheer built and slowly died away.

“Yet we will also see the future! Experimental weapons that are not yet ready for battle, but soon will be! Bear in mind that as the day progresses, you may see some few contrivances that do not perform as hoped. Do not be disheartened by such setbacks or scorn those who suffer them, but honor the effort and remember: the greatest triumphs are built on the adversities encountered and defeated beforehand!”

There was some laughter mixed with the cheering this time, and Bernie’s face turned red. “All right, Silva. You’re almost up. Get ready. I’ve got to oversee the final preparation on my ‘fishies.’”

“You bet, Mr. Sandison.”

At that moment, two loudspeakers Dennis hadn’t noticed before suddenly squealed raucously, like maddened rhino pigs, until the piano prelude to “Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar” defeated the feedback and delighted the assembly, many of whom tried to sing along with the harmonizing Andrews Sisters. The recording was rough; it was a big favorite at the Screw and had nearly been played to death. New phonographs had been built, copies of Marvaney’s original, but the ability to broadcast was new. He looked at Ronson.

“Yeah,” the former electrician’s mate said. “And we’ve got real radios now too, even if they’re big as a steamer trunk. And our tubes are the size of cantaloupes! We’re shrinking everything as fast as we can, and pretty soon we’ll have VHF radio-telephone-TBS sets-for every ship in the Navy! A dozen sets should be arriving at First Fleet any day. Mr. Riggs based them on our old HT-Four on Walker. The good thing is, we can actually use them since they’re short-range, line of sight only. Not likely to be picked up by anything the enemy might have.” He looked around conspiratorially. “We’re working on Huff-Duff too, so our planes’ll be able to find their carriers or airstrips if they get lost, and also detect enemy transmissions!”

Silva blinked. “That’s swell, Ronson. Sounds like you sparky guys have been busy as a buncha little bees!” He grinned and shuffle-danced away, in time with the music, toward the carts. There he met Risa, already sorting through the weapons.

“Hi, doll,” he said. “Wanna dance?” Risa spared him a grin as she selected one of the new Baalkpan Arsenal Allin-Silva “conversion” muskets and a cartridge box. This specimen, like all the new rifles they were issuing, had been built as a breechloader. Conversion kits consisting of new barrels with breechblocks already attached and altered hammers were being sent out as quickly as possible for installation in the field. The old barrels were to be returned for conversion by lining the barrels and installing the breechblock.

Silva chose one of the muzzle-loading rifled muskets and a cartridge box, just like those still in the hands of all the home troops, and many of those deployed elsewhere. With the vast scope of the war, it would take time to equip everyone with the new rifles, and most of the troops with Second Fleet in the east still had smoothbores. At a glance, all the weapons looked identical, but Risa’s had a trapdoor at the breech into which fixed, metallic cartridges could be inserted.

“Wanna race?” she challenged.

“What do I get if I win?”

Risa’s grin faded, and she blinked regret. “You can’t win, Dennis. Everything is different now.”

“Yeah.”

The music ended, and a Lemurian with a speaking trumpet that magnified his already powerful voice explained to the spectators that they would now compare the accuracy and rate of fire of the old rifles against the new. Floating targets had been placed in the bay at one hundred, two hundred, and three hundred tails, and other targets dotted the seascape at intervals that reached beyond easy view. Silva and Risa were both well-known warriors of extraordinary skill, he continued, but skill alone, and certainly size (Silva made two of Risa) would make little difference when all Allied troops were armed with the wondrous new weapons.

Everyone knew the Allin-Silvas weren’t Springfields or even Krags, but they also knew they were a big step in the right direction. Enough of the troops in the crowd remembered when the Grik were defeated with virtually no firearms other than crude cannon. And the new rifles might not be repeaters, but the big fifty-caliber bullet on eighty grains of powder had been proven even deadlier against large beasts than the. 30–06 Springfields and. 30–40 Krags. The lower-velocity and much heavier bullets of the. 50–80 afforded them better penetration against the dangerous animals in the vicinity-and they inflicted gruesome, charge-stopping wounds on Grik. That was more important than flat trajectories to people accustomed to fighting berserk enemies at close range.

At the sound of a whistle, the competitors commenced firing. Silva was good with the muzzle loader, no question about it. Each shot he fired rang off the iron gong and caused the float to bob. But it was very quickly apparent that he was outclassed. Risa also hit every target, the butt slamming against her muscular shoulder with each booming crack, but she’d already moved to the second target by the time Silva loaded his second shot! She finished with all her targets before he fired his last shot at the first. Without a word, she handed him her rifle. He flipped the rear sight up and shot at a target bobbing in the bay about five hundred tails away. He operated the weapon almost mechanically, recocking the hammer, flipping the breechblock open and ejecting the empty, smoking cartridge. Inserting a new one, he closed the breech, raised the rifle, and fired again. Even offhand, he hit the distant, swaying gong four out of five times.

The crowd cheered and stomped enthusiastically at the demonstration. The superiority of the new weapon was clear, and by exchanging rifles, Silva and Risa showed just how little adjustment the troops would have to make. Ostentatiously, and to instill the conscientious need to do so, the pair then gathered their empty brass off the ground and the speaker explained that it could be washed and loaded again.

They next selected two more weapons off the cart. The first was Silva’s heavy Thompson. He inserted a twenty-round magazine, racked the bolt back, and fired at the first of several barrels floating about forty tails offshore. A cloud of white smoke erupted around him, since these were some of the shells loaded with black powder. He stitched the barrel, but many of his later shots went wild as the smoke obscured his aim.

“Suckers kick a little,” he muttered ruefully as he squirted gri-kakka oil in the action around the bolt and inserted a magazine loaded with their dwindling Rock Island ball. “Raises the muzzle more than I’m used to.” He stitched the barrel again with the old world military ammo. This time, he kept all the rounds on target and left the barrel sinking amid a swarm of splinters. After the appreciative applause, the talker announced that he would now use ammunition made entirely-brass, bullet, powder and all-at the Baalkpan Arsenal!

Silva inserted the third magazine, the bolt already back, and aimed at another barrel. This string of twenty shots left the smoking-hot barrel at the same apparent velocity and even better accuracy. There was a little more smoke, but it was dark and probably came from the burning lube on the lead bullets. The bullets themselves may not have penetrated both sides of the barrel, but they shattered it even more thoroughly when they deformed on impact. Silva lowered the scalding weapon with a grin amid happy cheers.

“Yes, friends!” the talker said. “We have now matched the amazing, less-smoking ammunition the first Americans brought us here! But as wonderful as that is, there are few of the Thompson guns. How will that help the Alliance as a whole?” Risa stepped forward with an odd cylindrical device with a pistol grip, a thin wooden butt stock, and a skinny barrel with a tall front sight. She inserted a standard Thompson magazine into a rectangular well forward of the triggerguard, and pulled back a large knob located on the side of the tubular receiver.

“Cap-i-taan Risa-Sab-At will now demonstrate the Baalkpan Arsenal Blitzer Bug!”

The “Blitzer Bug” was the simplest thing in the world; basically, a pipe with a barrel on one end that fired from a spring-loaded open bolt. Originally called the Bug Sprayer during development, because it kind of looked like one, Commander Brister had suggested that it would be most useful in a Kraut-like blitz assault, and the name just naturally evolved. It was fully automatic only, so far, and fired very fast as long as the trigger was depressed. To make it shoot only once or twice required serious practice. That was of little concern today, when the idea was to impress.

Risa clutched the weapon tight against her shoulder, holding the pistol grip and the magazine, and leaned forward as she aimed down the sights and squeezed the trigger. There was a long, raucous buuuurp! And the third barrel was blown apart. Risa grinned hugely and held the weapon up while the crowd erupted once more.

“How was it?” Silva asked, muttering in her ear.

“You were right. It’s a handful,” she replied, still grinning. “It took all my strength to keep it on target. I think it will be very wasteful of ammunition.”

“Yeah, but maybe in the right hands, like these commandos Chackie’s workin’ up in Manila, they might shine.”

“Could be.”

The demonstrations continued, with Silva and Risa, then Abel, Stuart, and even Lawrence putting various pistols through their paces. Most of these were junk in Silva’s view, or required too much potential machine time and handwork to make. A nice revolver based on the Single-Action Army Colt Russ Chapelle had discovered aboard Santa Catalina, and intended to give to the Skipper, was very accurate, but got out of time after two cylinders were fired. Silva thought it had potential, but the guts needed work. A copy of a Mauser “Broomhandle” in. 45 ACP fired once, then locked up. Probably the best was a copy of Silva’s beloved 1911 Colt. It was a pretty thing, he had to admit. The slide was color case hardened, and the frame was a kind of purplish blue. A few machining shortcuts had been taken, but it felt right in his hand. Firing quickly but carefully, he managed to empty three magazines on target before it started getting tight and failed to function. Abel and Lawrence both fired others like it until they too started having problems. Dennis figured the pistols might be too well made, in a sense, and needed more “slop.”

During these exhibitions, Bernie, Ronson, and their strikers continued fooling around with the torpedoes. The small-arms demonstration at an end, Ben Mallory and a couple of his pilots wowed the crowd with modest stunts in the ever popular P-40s overhead, while Silva took charge of the four-inch-fifties. As acting gunnery officer, he merely designated the targets and gave the command, “Commence firing in local control!” After that, he appraised the quality of the gun’s crews drill as much as the performance of the weapons. On the whole, he was pleased. The crews were young recruits who’d never seen combat, but they were well trained and confident.

Walker ’s old number four gun performed well with the new shells, just as Bernie said it would. It had been tested quite a bit already, and the people of Baalkpan were used to its rushing crack and the associated pressure. Dennis frowned when he saw a couple of the shell casings had indeed cracked, but was satisfied, particularly by the much-improved explosive force of the new “common” shells and the glorious shocks of distant spume they threw up in the bay. The new gun did fine as well-at first-with the black-powder shells provided. Accuracy was good, and several of the farthest targets were destroyed before the left recoil cylinder split on a seam and the right fill plug blew out, both spewing oil all over the gun and its crew. The spectators laughed and cheered, but even then, Silva-who’d avoided a dowsing-wasn’t disappointed. The gun worked and so did the mount. None of the elevating and training gear had failed. The new telescope sights made with Imperial lenses seemed as good as the old ones. A recoil cylinder was just a pipe. They could make better pipes. He gave the command to cease firing and secure, and over the rumble of the people nearby, he heard a new, different sound.

“What the hell’s that?” he demanded as a tiny aircraft blew past overhead. It sounded like a giant mosquito, but even as little as he knew about airplanes, he noticed several things at once. The craft was an open-cockpit, single-seat monoplane with a smallish radial engine, and it had fixed landing gear-with wheels!

“People of Baalkpan and the Grand Alliance, the Air Corps presents the P-1 Mosquito Hawk!”

Dennis guffawed; he couldn’t help it. “Skeeter Hawk my ass! That’s a homemade, pint-sized ‘Fleashooter!’”

“You’re right,” confirmed a female voice behind him in a flat, distant, tone. “That’s Colonel Mallory’s latest; a pursuit ship for the carriers. He says it’s a scaled-down cross between a P-36 Hawk and a P-26 Peashooter.”

“Pam!” Dennis said, turning to face the short, dark-haired woman.

“What? No ‘sugar pie’? No ‘honey dew’?” she asked sarcastically in her strong Brooklyn accent.

“No,” Silva answered simply.

“I oughta hate your guts.”

“Yep. Why don’t you?”

Pam took a deep breath and let it out. Around them, all eyes were on the little plane as it swooped low over the shore and snap-rolled to the right, over the water. “’Cause I can’t, that’s all. You’re a jerk, a turd, the worst asshole in the world, for not comin’ back to me when you were supposed to-not even comin’ to see me when you finally got here, but… did you know Sister Audry thinks you’re some kinda Holy Warrior called to ‘smite’ our enemies?”

Dennis blinked. “Hell, no! Huh. Maybe that explains why she was so nice to me the other day. All my hee-roin’ musta impressed her after all, back when we was marooned. She really thinks that?”

“Yeah… an’ I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“ You don’t believe that stuff!”

Pam shook her head. “I told you I don’t know what to believe,” she snapped. “But maybe you did help out more where you were than you would have back here. At first I figured you just like the damn war too much to leave it, but she talked a little sense, and I guess it’s not my place to judge whether you were ‘called’ by God or some goofy sense of duty.”

“Hey, don’t knock the war, doll,” he said, trying to keep his tone light. “It’s the only one we got.”

“Damn you! Can’t you ever be serious? About anything?”

Dennis looked around and saw that Risa, Abel, Stuart, and Lawrence had moved a short distance away, clearly leaving them to hash this out in relative peace while the crowd enjoyed the antics of the new plane.

“Bein’ serious can get a fella in a lotta trouble,” he admitted softly.

The small plane performed a barrel roll that caused the spectators to cry out, and Dennis pointed at it. “Colonel Mallory in that thing?”

“Probably. He’s like you in that way. Always jumpin’ in the fire when he doesn’t have to.”

“Somebody has to.”

“But why does it always have to be guys I care about?” Pam flared, loud enough for Risa to hear, and she came to embrace her friend.

“Because you, like I, are drawn to the sort who care enough about you-and the cause we fight for-to do their duty as they see it, no matter what,” Risa murmured.

Tears came then. “Are you tryin’ to tell me this big dope stayed away because he cares for me?”

Risa looked at Dennis and blinked discomfort. “Of course he did, my sister. He cannot protect you here… and ultimately, neither can Col-nol Maal-ory.”

“But I don’t want protection!” Pam whispered into Risa’s fur, then paused. “You know, that’s what Sister Audry said too.”

The new plane dove toward the bay, and with a grumbling stutter, bullet geysers erupted around yet another target barrel, and amid more thunderous acclaim, the odd little pursuit ship pulled up and raced back toward Kaufman Field. When Silva looked back to where Pam and Risa had been, they were gone.

“Dames are nuts,” he muttered, “all of ’em.” He moved toward the torpedo mount. “Hey, Mr. Sandison! What’s with the Fleashooter?’ I thought we needed rubber before we got anything with wheels.”

Bernie was adjusting the depth controls on the torpedoes with a ratchet, setting them to run at five feet. “We’re starting to get a little rubber from Ceylon. We’ll get more in India. Colonel Mallory began testing the ’Skeeters with leather tires, but when we were coming up with the recoil cylinders for the guns, he came by and had us make Oleo struts to take the shock on his gear.”

“What did he use for guns?”

“Basically, Blitzer Bugs mounted in the wheel pants, with long magazines following the struts up and through the wings. All they need is light springs for the followers, since they’re pushing the cartridges down. They work pretty good.”

“Forty-five-ACP airplane guns?” Silva asked doubtfully.

Bernie sighed in exasperation. “Sure. What are they gonna shoot at? Creeping zeps and packs of Grik.” He waved at the sky. “There aren’t any Zeros up there, and the Flea-I mean, the Mosquito Hawk-can even outrun that damn Jap spotting plane if it ever shows up again. Besides, the principle of the Blitzer Bugs should work with bigger stuff, like thirty-ought six, when we get around to it.” He rolled his eyes. “You’d’ve known all this if you’d been here, instead of running loose in the east! Now leave me alone. I’ve got ‘fishy’ stuff to do!” he added angrily. Silva stepped back and watched while the strikers started slathering lard all over the first torpedo, already poised at the rear of the left tube.

“I’ve been watching them,” Abel offered at his side. “The first one is the ‘cold’ torpedo, and it utilizes only compressed air that operates a three-cylinder engine to turn the counter-rotating propellers. That is all very straightforward, but the complexity of the guidance system is most fascinating and impressive!”

“They ain’t got a warhead on the end of that thing, do they?” Silva asked.

“No. It is a practice head, they called it.”

“Good. Let’s ease back a little, just the same. C’mon, Larry. It’s been my experience that torpedoes are more dangerous to them around ’em than they are to who you’re shootin’ at!”

“I want to watch what they do,” Lawrence objected.

“You can watch with us from back a ways. Like Mr. Sandison said, let’s leave him be.”

Small motor launches loaded with several observers each eased into the watery range at predetermined distances, while the crowd talker described the first weapon as a Mk-I cold-air torpedo and proudly described the complexity of the device. Bernie finally stepped back and ordered that it be pushed the rest of the way into the barrel of the tube. The gyro had been set for a simple, straight run. When the weapon was fully inserted to the spring-loaded stop, a striker removed the propeller lock and closed the circle door just like he’d done it a hundred times. Finally, he inserted a big brass cartridge into the firing chamber at the top rear of the tube, gently closed the little door, and stepped back to Bernie, presenting him with a lanyard attached to the hammer.

The torpedo had no warhead, but the air flasks were the first of their kind made on this world and were stoked beyond a thousand PSI. They’d tested them, of course, but Bernie didn’t want anyone on the mount when the charge went off and all that air tried to dump into the complicated little engine under somewhat stressful acceleration. He didn’t think anything bad would happen, but there were an awful lot of pieces to fly in all directions if it did.

“Ready!” he cried, stretching the lanyard and looking nervously at the suddenly silent grandstand. By prior arrangement, Adar stood and made a grand, throwing-away gesture.

The impulse charge detonated with a hollow, muffled boomp! and the slimy torpedo squirted from the tube with a high-pitched skirl of air, followed by a billowing cloud of white smoke. It splapp ed noisily into the water and vanished from sight, but a surge of bubbles rose to the surface in a gratifyingly straight line.

Bernie, Dennis, and nearly everyone near the mount raced to the water’s edge to watch the bubbling wake. Deadly flasher fish and other finned… things… leaped into the air or churned away from the weapon’s path. Swirling lizard birds took notice of the disturbance in the water and angled down, swooping and pacing the trail of rising air. The torpedo was going straight-but it was clearly also going disappointingly slow. It seemed to take forever to reach the first boat stationed two hundred tails offshore, and when they raised a little flag signifying its passage, Bernie looked at his watch.

“Eight, maybe ten lousy knots!” he ground out, barely heard over the happy cheering and shouts from the spectators.

“Least it’s runnin’ true,” Dennis consoled, “and those ’Cats on the boats’ll be able to tell us if its runnin’ at about the right depth.”

Bernie brightened. “Yeah. And I knew it would be slow compared to the hot air torp.” He grinned tentatively. “I think it works!”

The second boat raised a flag at four hundred tails, and Bernie confirmed his initial speed estimate, but he was in a better mood by then. Finally, the eight-hundred-tail boat waved its flag but heaved out a net with a marker that indicated the torpedo had come to a floating, exhausted stop. The net would snare the wallowing weapon and mark its position. They wouldn’t have used it if the propellers were still turning.

“Kind of pitiful,” Bernie muttered aloud, “but it proves all the really complicated stuff works.”

The second torpedo was prepared, with Ronson shadowing the strikers like an expectant mother. Externally, the “Mk-2” looked exactly the same, but the starting lever would complete a circuit instead of opening a valve. It was loaded and made ready just like its predecessor, but this time Ronson took the lanyard. At the same signal from Adar, the electric torpedo leaped into the bay, but there were no bubbles this time. The crowd cheered, then waited expectantly. Ronson snatched his binoculars to his eyes, staring at the first boat. But there was no flag.

“Maybe they just didn’t see it,” he said. “That’s part of the point. It’s supposed to be hard to see… and it should be faster than the first one. Maybe it went by before they were looking for it.”

“Hey, Ronson,” Silva said.

“What?”

“I see it.”

“Where?!”

Dennis pushed the binoculars down, about the same time chittering laughter erupted in the stands.

“Oh, goddamn!” Ronson spat when he saw his torpedo floating on the surface about forty yards away, its slowly turning propellers pushing it directly back at them like a chastened dog.

“Better luck next time, Mr. Rodriguez!” Silva said with theatrical solemnity.

“I… I don’t get it. It must’ve shorted out.”

The launch of the third torpedo, the “Mk-3” was the last event of the day, and everyone knew it was supposed to be a somehow more advanced version of the first, so a lot was expected. All preparations were apparently the same as those previous, but as a “hot” torpedo, it was equipped with a fuel source-kerosene-that would send a jet of flame into the air flask as the resultant hot, expanding air and kerosene exhaust gushed into the motor. Theoretically, this would generate exponentially greater pressure, speed-and heat, of course. That was how it worked on the Mk-14 torpedo they’d copied in most ways except the engine. They were experimenting with turbines for the short-lived torpedoes, but like the batteries, they weren’t there yet. After the directional and depth performance of the Mk-1, however, Bernie was emboldened to think the Mk-3 was “it,” and with yet another signal from Adar, he confidently pulled the lanyard.

The tube boomp ed again and the fish lashed out into the water, leaving a far more energetic trail of steamy froth behind.

“’Ook at her go!” Lawrence cried excitedly. Compared to the first two, the Mk-3 was indeed going like a bat out of hell. Bernie was the first to notice that the wake looked a little… wobbly, though, and his fingers clenched his binoculars more tightly. Nearly to the first boat, the torpedo suddenly porpoised, almost leaping out of the water for an instant before diving under the boat and the erratically waving flag.

“Now!” a striker shouted.

“Maybe thirty knots!” Abel cried in response. He’d been looking at his watch and hadn’t seen the surprising caper. At perhaps three hundred tails, the torpedo jumped again, significantly off track to the left, and this time it looked like a leaping fish, the sun glinting sharply off its polished body. It fell back in the water with an enormous splash and a crazy corkscrew of foam. Seconds later, a large, steamy bubble exploded on the surface close enough to rock the second boat and nearly toss several of the observers into the bay.

“Wow,” Ronson gushed, and Bernie rounded on him.

“I’d say that one went hot, crooked, and abnormal as hell,” Dennis quipped, “but between it and the first, it looks like you’re circlin’ the right tree, Mr. Sandison!”

Bernie spun to face Silva, enraged and embarrassed, but when he didn’t see the mocking expression he’d expected, he took a breath.

“He’s right,” Ronson said, waving toward the standing, cheering spectators. “And everybody knows it but you! Sure, it’s not perfect. Mine sure wasn’t! But it did work… mostly. And you’ll figure out what didn’t.” He grinned and pointed at the torpedo mount, smoke still hazing the third tube. “Just think: by the time the Skipper gets back with Walker, we can put that back on her-and stick fish in it too!”