Taylor Anderson - Rising Tides

“I never tire of looking at your delightful youngling!” Adar practically gushed, leaning forward to stare at the squirming, cooing creature. They’d already kicked around a few more of Adar’s concerns about the economic revolution, and they’d settled into a simple, friendly visit. Adar stopped by several times a week now, mostly for that very purpose, and Alan suspected the chairman needed the break. Adar’s own residence was within the Great Hall itself, so he was never truly off duty even at home.

“Neither do I,” Letts confessed, “but the… smell gets old. Ah

… Karen?” he said, raising his voice.

Karen Theimer Letts swept into the room and snatched the child away. “There’s no law that says you can’t change a diaper now and then,” she scolded.

“I do!” Alan replied in his defense, “but I can’t do it here, in front of the Chairman!”

Karen harrumphed, but Adar saw a smile on her face as she retreated from the room.

Letts sighed, his eyes following the pair. “You know,” he said softly, “in spite of everything, these last few months have been the happiest of my whole life.”

“All the more reason why I do not understand this request of yours,” Adar said, just as quietly. They were resuming a conversation that wasn’t for Karen to hear… yet. “I do not know how I would ever manage without you. If you join First Fleet now, all we have accomplished, all we have set in motion, might be undone.”

“We’ve already been over this,” Letts insisted. “I’m not ‘essential’ here anymore. Brister, Riggs, or even Sandison has a better handle on this economic stuff than I do, and with their greater combat experience, they’ll be better advisors on defense. My staff can easily take up the logistical slack around here.” He paused. “Besides, you read General Alden’s report. Logistics on the sharp end is a mess. They do need me in the fleet, and… damn it, I’ve been on the sidelines almost from the start! It isn’t right and it’s not fair!”

“Fair? To whom?” Adar almost snapped. “Fair to you?”

“No! It’s not fair to all the guys who’ve been putting their lives on the line while I sit here, nice and comfortable, with a wife I love and a kid I adore! It’s eating me alive! I’ve done some good work here,” Alan admitted. “I’m not complaining about my job. It’s just.. . It’s time for me to ‘pitch in,’ to ‘do my part.’ ” He rubbed his eyes. “We don’t know what’s going on in the east yet. Captain Reddy’s helped the Imperials win a battle, but that’s all we really know. What’s next? There’s a real mess out there, and we may have a whole other war on our hands! In the meantime, General Alden and Admiral Keje are building for their push against Ceylon!”

“All the more reason you should remain here!” Adar argued. “Coordinating logistics for two possible fronts should be at least twice as difficult!”

Letts shook his head. “There’s nothing we can do for Captain Reddy; any help he gets will have to come directly from Saan-Kakja, not through here-and Saan-Kakja’s got problems of her own, after that damn volcano went off. That’s going to make it even harder on First Fleet, because who knows when we’ll get the promised reinforcements?” He shrugged. “That might sort itself out over time, as the Fil-pin Lands get over their current emergency. If we get sucked into a full-blown war in the east, it’s liable to be a Navy show for the most part, at least for a while. Saan-Kakja is better situated to support that. The war in the west is about to become increasingly land-oriented, though, and that’s where I need to be! We can’t afford another logistical fiasco like the one at Rangoon. We can’t afford the lives it might cost.”

Alan let that sink in for a moment before he continued. “Ceylon will be the biggest stunt we’ve ever pulled, maybe bigger than Baalkpan. Surely our biggest offensive to date. If, God forbid, it all falls in the pot and I’m not there, how will I live with myself?” He gestured in the direction Karen had taken Allison. “How will I look Them in the eye, when I might have made a difference?”

Adar shifted in his chair, but said nothing. After a while, he steepled his hands, elbows on his knees, and stared long and hard at Alan with his large, penetrating eyes. “I will consider it,” he whispered at last. “In the meantime, please do concentrate on helping get Aracca out of the dry dock.” He chuckled, in his Lemurian way. “Major Mallory pesters me constantly about putting Saanta Caat-alinaa in there to retrieve the rest of his toys from her hold. He fears she will sink beside the dock! Moving his great, heavy boxes to the still incomplete ‘airstrip,’ is proving quite a chore as well!”

USS WALKER -Scapa Flow

“It’s official, Skipper,” Ed Palmer said, handing over a sheet of the yellowish Imperial paper. It was a report via Government House forwarded straight to Matt. “Two Imperial frigates tried to enter the harbor at New Dublin and take possession of the Dom ships that escaped the battle and wound up there. The frigates were fired on by the forts! There was no damage, and they lit out, but New Ireland’s either been occupied by the Doms-or they’ve thrown their hat in the ring with ’em.”

Matt had been leaning on the rail by the signal lockers behind the pilothouse, surrounded by Bradford, Spanky, Chack, and the Bosun. All were staring aft at the repairs underway. Sparks jetted from torches, and lines and hoses littered the deck. Almost all the hull damage was on the starboard side, and scaffolds had been rigged to straighten plates and rerivet seams near the waterline. When that work was finished, they’d turn the ship and continue upward from the safety of the dock. (Even if the local variety of flashies weren’t as big, or apparently as insatiable, as those within the Malay Barrier, they were still damned dangerous, and there’d been a lot more in the neighborhood since the battle.)

They had all the help they needed. Walker had actually been given priority over the Imperial ships in the yard, but she had plenty of hands with the arrival of Simms, and local technicians and specialists were better employed fixing Imperial damage. Some of the female yard workers still tried to do anything they could. They wanted to help. Chief Bashear finally told them to get scrapers, chippers, and brushes and turned them loose with paint cans. The portside had barely been touched, since TaciTus had absorbed most of the shot fired from that direction. They could paint there until the starboard side was ready.

Spanky was a hero-again. He’d fought Walker brilliantly after power was restored, and through speed and maneuver he’d savaged most of the Dom ships that Tacitus and Euripides had protected Walker from-then worked tirelessly to save them in turn. Matt finally forced him to accept that he was Walker ’s de facto exec. Either Tabby could handle engineering or she couldn’t. Which would it be? Reluctantly, Spanky admitted she was “better than most” engineering officers he’d known, and if he “helped her out” now and then, she could probably “manage.”

The new Nancy had been assembled and lowered over the side to keep it safe and out of the way, but Reynolds was in no shape to fly it. He was banged up and needed a rest, but his worst injury was mental. He blamed himself for Kari-Faask’s critical condition, and even if she lived, Matt wasn’t sure the young flier would bounce back. Maybe he should talk to him. He knew all too well how it felt when someone died because he’d made a mistake. Ultimately, he would order the kid to fly if he had to-they needed recon now more than ever-but it was important for Reynolds to snap out of it on his own… if he could.