Iron Gray Sea: Destroyermen (12 page)

“Yes,” Chack said, “and we know where they must be!”

“
If
Okada was right and they really did set up around where Sapporo ought to be . . . Damn, I need a chart!” Matt said. The Imperials knew almost nothing of that region. “Governor Radcliff, could I trouble you to send a runner to my ship? Or maybe to Lieutenant Haan’s
Finir-Pel?
His charts may be more up to date than
Walker
’s. If we can compare where
Hidoiame
was last seen to where we suspect her base might be, maybe we can catch her before she scoots!”

“What are you talking about?” Sandra suddenly demanded, looking at Matt with stormy eyes. “
You’re
not going after her!” The Imperials around the table were visibly shocked by her outburst, but Matt just looked at her. “It’s not that you shouldn’t go or I don’t want you to,” Sandra continued. “That’s true enough. But I
forbid
it because you
can’t
!”

“You
forbid
?” Matt demanded, eyes wide.

Sandra stood and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “Yes! As Medical Officer of USS
Walker
and Minister of Medicine for the Allied Powers, I declare you, your ship, and her crew unfit to pursue
Hidoiame
! None of you are sufficiently recovered from your wounds, physical and psychological, and you have neither the strength nor material means to accomplish the mission!”

“Shit!” murmured Silva, too loud again, in a tone that showed admiration for her angle, if not her message. “Look at her go!” The Bosun, face purple, made a savage “cut it” gesture at him.

“I and I alone am the judge of whether or not my ship is fit for action!” Matt said coldly.

“And I say that if you intend to pursue
Hidoiame
at this time without the rest your crew needs and the refit your ship requires, then your judgment must be impaired by exhaustion, Captain Reddy! You can’t be everywhere at once. You and your crew, your ship, have been too close to the fire for too long, and sooner or later it’s going to burn you up! You know that yourself, but if you can’t see that going after
Hidoiame
will turn ‘sooner’ into
‘now
,
’
then you can’t be thinking clearly! She’s a new ship—faster, heavier, and better armed! How close would you have to get to even damage her with the primitive shells you’ve been forced to use? All that time while you’re trying to close,
Walker
will be taking fire. And it won’t be cannonballs—it’ll be high-explosive shells, accurately delivered, to kill your crew and your ship!”

Sandra’s argument was beginning to take its toll. She was right, and Matt knew it.
Walker
had a full load of ammunition for her main battery, all but the Japanese 4.7-inch dual-purpose that had replaced her own damaged number four gun on the aft deckhouse. They had almost shot it “dry,” and other ships and installations armed with the rest of
Amagi
’s salvaged secondaries had priority for resupply. The black-powder four-inch-fifty shells
Walker
had taken east and that supply ships had begun stockpiling for her at almost any friendly port she might touch, had worked better than they had any right to expect, but they just didn’t have the range to go up against
Hidoiame
. But the rogue Japanese destroyer they’d left Okada to deal with had proven she was just too dangerous to run loose anymore. If they didn’t catch her now, how would they find her later? What if, God forbid, she managed to make it all the way to join Kurokawa and the Grik?

“Aah, Cap-i-taan Reddy?” said Raada-Nin reluctantly. “My manifests include supplies dispatched for the . . . main-tin-aance of your ship. Among those supplies is a quantity of ammunition for your main baat-tery.
New
ammunition.” He blinked apology at Sandra, but he couldn’t keep it secret.

“New?”

“Ay, Cap-i-taan. From Mr. Saan-dison in Ord-naance.” He fished in his belt pouch and extended a letter. “This is from him to you. I would have left it for you had we already off-loaded and sailed for New Bri-taan Isles, but may-be you look at it now?”

Wordlessly, Matt took the letter and read.

To: Captain Reddy, CINCAF, HCAC, and CO USS Walker (DD-163)

From: Lt. Cmdr. B. Sandison, Acting Minister of Ordnance

Dear Skipper,

I don’t know if this will find you, but if it does, I hope it finds you well and already on your way home. You’ll be glad to hear that we’ve finally solved the guncotton issue and I’m really kind of embarrassed how easy it was once we quit trying to make it so hard. Evidently, cellulose is cellulose, to a larger degree than I had imagined. Anyway, we now have some four-inch-fifty shells I think you’re going to like. I won’t go into all the tech stuff here—some is stenciled on the crates and there’s more for Campeti in an insert pamphlet—but basically, pressures look good (17.4 tons). I’m sure glad we didn’t fork over the copper rods for making the pressure disks! Who knows what kind of “copper” they are, and how to duplicate it! We tested the shells in Old Number Four, as we call her (she’s shipshape again, by the way), and S-19’s deck gun. I’m happy to report that the trajectories matched book specs. There’s still something screwy with the burn rate or the alloy we’re using for the brass shells is a little off, because sometimes (around 10 percent) they split, but no chamber damage has been observed.

The projectiles aren’t armor piercing—what’s out there to pierce?—and we stuck with the old, specified 1.1-pound black-powder bursting charge, but the projectiles are the proper 33-pound iron with brass bearing bands. They shoot straighter, hit harder, and pack nearly the same wallop our old HE did. I think you’ll like them.

I’ve sent close to a full load out with Lieutenant Raada-Nin. He has orders to leave half at Respite and take the other half to Scapa Flow if you don’t meet. More are already at Manila, along with all the specs to start production on them, as well as the Jap secondaries scattered around.

Other projects are proceeding in every department, and I hope to have some very pleasant surprises for you soon.

Respectfully,

B. Sandison

Lt. Cmdr.

USNR

Still without speaking, he handed the letter to Sandra, who scanned it incredulously. “So?” she demanded harshly, tossing the sheet toward the Bosun. “What difference does that make? Maybe you’ve got better ammunition now. What chance will that give you?”

“An
even
chance,” Matt replied, “and that’s better than usual.”

“Even,” Sandra snorted. “Right. That’s like saying an old man is ‘even’ with a teenager because he can spit just as far.”

“Lady Sandra!” Emelia gasped. She was not above such disputes with her husband, but never like this, in front of others, and she was keenly aware of the presence of all the Imperial men—something Sandra seemed to have forgotten.

Sandra suddenly looked around at the uncomfortable or disapproving stares, and realized with sick certainty that her outburst had doomed her cause. If only she’d waited, tried to reason with Matt in private, she may have stood a chance. But now she’d backed him into a corner, in front of men—their allies—who would think him weak if he conceded to her . . . and they
could not
think the Commander in Chief of All Allied Forces was weak. The Lemurians would understand how crazy it was for Matt to risk himself and his ship like this unless the situation was utterly desperate. The whole Alliance could crumble if something happened to him; he was still the primary unifying force. But as much as she knew the Imperials respected and honored Matt as a warrior and even as the savior of their country, they had a strong emperor again, and a country with a long tradition of unity. They just wouldn’t get it yet, wouldn’t
think
that way. . . . It was then that she caught the very distressed expression on Ambassador Forester’s face.
Or would they?
She thought.

“The young lady may have a point, you know,” Forester said in a soothing tone. “Granted, her outburst was . . . unseemly, but the traditions of the Americans are different from ours and it is understandable if she is upset. We were discussing her wedding just a short time ago, after all.”

Sandra’s ears burned at the thought they would believe that was her primary motivation, but she kept her mouth shut.

“I know little of
Walker
. Her design is foreign to me. But even I can see that she has suffered serious damage that cannot all be repaired here. Is it wise to risk her and her brave, valuably experienced crew to destroy a single ship?”

“No,” Matt himself agreed honestly, “but wise or not, I don’t see a choice.”

“Keep sendin’ planes after her. Bomb her to scrap, I say,” said the Bosun.

“And lose how many? Six already tried, and four were lost without even scratching her paint. That’s eight precious flyers we can’t afford to lose.” Matt shook his head. “
Walker
’s more important to me than to anybody, but in many respects, this war has passed her by almost as thoroughly as our war against the Japs did. She’s not going to decide this one either, Boats. Not by herself. Lieutenant Tucker’s right about
that
. Sure, she might as well be a battleship in a surface action against
what we’ve seen
, but air power will most likely be the tipping point. In the meantime, though, it’s not even close to ‘even’ for whatever
Hidoiame
runs into. Apparently, not only did she destroy
Mizuki Maru
, but two feluccas and a frigate. That’s close to seven hundred people she’s killed, beyond her previous . . . atrocities.”

“One of our big carriers with
Amagi
’s secondaries could take her,” the Bosun speculated.

“If it could draw her in,” said Chack, “but it would never catch her. An entire wing of ‘Naan-cees’ could overwhelm her defenses and probably sink her. . . .”

“But the losses would be terrible,” Matt repeated, “and the question’s moot anyway. Saan-Kakja’s building two more flat-tops for deployment to the east, but though they’ll be heavily armed with conventional weapons—muzzle-loading cannon, and big ones too—they’re still limited to a couple of thousand yards, tops. Besides, neither of them will be ready for sea sooner than three months from now. That’s too long.”

“So you’re going to do it,” Sandra stated. It wasn’t a question.

“No choice. I wish we’d been close enough to do it when we first heard about her, but all our major ports and strategic outposts are well enough armed to protect themselves, and besides, we had other priorities.” He shrugged. “And I thought Okada would handle her.” He was silent for a moment, and everyone saw the thoughts colliding behind his eyes.

“Hell!” he said suddenly. “I hate it how things sneak up on me! I just realized that she represents another, more pressing threat I hadn’t even thought of before. She had an oiler in tow when she came through her squall—or whatever it was—so we’ve been thinking she’d just hole up. But what if the oiler wasn’t full? What if she’s starting to run low on fuel, or what’ll she do when she does? The longer she’s on the loose, the sooner that’ll happen. If she’s based where we think she is, she can’t even drill for oil like we did because there isn’t any there. She can’t take it from any of our facilities or set up shop nearby without us knowing it . . . and she can’t even know everywhere we are!”

Matt’s face turned even grimmer as he looked around the table. He saw Chack blinking furiously in thought.

“That means this bad Jaap will have only one other way to sustain himself, at least in the short term,” Chack murmured, his tail swishing behind him.

“Right,” said the Bosun thoughtfully. “She’ll have to go after our ships like a g—dad-blasted pirate! Take oil from the steamers, probably the food and supplies from other ships in the pipeline, headed either way. She might already be doing it!”

“That Jap tin can’s a major threat to our shipping lanes, all around the Fil-pin lands, at least,” Matt confirmed. “With her range advantage and speed, she might as well be the
Graf Spee
!”

“And us without the old
Exeter
to chase her down,” Gray agreed, oblivious that most of those present had no idea what he was talking about. He remembered when he and his captain had watched the Japanese sink the famous British cruiser, almost effortlessly.

“Yeah . . .” Matt’s sigh was almost a groan. “This
Hidoiame
can cripple our overall war effort, on both fronts, whether she’s become Kurokawa’s stooge or not.” He paused. “Lieutenant Raada-Nin, would you mind taking Chief Gunner’s Mate Stites out to look at these new shells?”