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’
after a hard liberty! She went toe to toe with Amagi! You seen her
sunk-ass carcass at Baalkpan. You really think them pipsqueak
battleships the goddamn Doms think are
so hot are even close to a match for our ol’ Walker?” He slammed the telescope back in Jenks’s
hand and stormed off, swearing, toward the dock Walker had steamed away from the morning
before.
“Quite an excitable
fellow,” Admiral McClain observed awkwardly.
“Indeed,” Jenks
replied, “but right, more often than not.” He gestured beyond
Walker and his own voice gained
excitement. “And look there, Captain Reddy! I do believe I see the
source of the other green rockets we saw!”
Appearing somewhat
incongruous among all the war-ravaged ships returning to port,
Achilles was just passing beneath the
guns at the harbor mouth. Beside her steamed what could only be USS
Simms. Both looked sharp and fresh
despite their long voyage, and the contrast between them and the
battered prizes trailing behind could not have been more profound.
Two relatively unmarked Dominion transports were towing a pair of
ravaged liners and the Stars and Stripes and the Imperial banner
floated proudly above them all.
“Now that’s what I
call a stylish entrance,” Matt said.