Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark
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- Название:From the Deep of the Dark
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Four of us hard-pressed to tell stem from stern. It’s a good thing the convoy’s brass seem more interested in the spread of food than the conversation.
‘It don’t seem right, Mister Tull,’ Sadly whispered by Dick’s side. ‘All this food laid out and nobody with a care to charge by the plate.’
Dick found it hard to contradict his informant. The main mess of The Zealous had been arranged with linen-covered tables and a sizeable buffet set across its surface. Sailors in white dress uniforms and enough braid to befit an admiral served behind the tables, lifting silver domes to reveal slices of lamb and beef roasted to perfection, meats swimming in their own juices. There were plates with cheeses from every county in Jackals, others overflowing with oranges, grapes and exotic fruit that Dick couldn’t even put a name to. The crew on the ship wouldn’t get to eat like this normally, that was a given. Probably not the officers, either.
All the money it costs for the state to mollycoddle a few rich merchants on this tub, and they’ll still make me scrabble like a swine in muck for a decent pension.
Every few minutes the distant sound of whining stabilisers swelled above the rumble of chattering guests, the flagship’s platform adjusting its angle to match the pitch of the seas she was cutting across. Officers from The Zealous were circulating through the hundred or so guests, making polite conversation with hands steadied on dress cutlasses hanging from their belts. Braying arses. They moved with an easy confidence, as if they were born to command. And in a sense they were. Mill-owners’ sons, wealthy quality, carrying the clout to launch them into an officer’s career in the fleet sea arm. How many of them’ve had to start as a common sailor and work their way up the ranks? How many of them’ve had to pull an honest day’s duties on board this tub? This is what my ancestors fought on Parliament’s sodding side for? To swap one bunch of masters for another? That was Dick Tull all right. Always the tenant, never the landlord. But your ancestors weren’t sitting on a comfortable saddle behind the lines waving an expensive sabre in the air, needled an envious little voice inside him. His ancestors? Just muddy-fingered citizen soldiers, clutching a pike or balancing an old heavy rifle on a tripod as they faced their mirror image across a field. Peasants who happened to be in the pay of gentlemen factory owners rather than gentlemen farmers when the war started.
There was a loud clinking on a glass as one of the officers called for silence. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, honoured guests of The Zealous. Pray silence for Vice-admiral Cockburn.’
Stepping forward, the vice-admiral looked more like a pugilist than a navy officer. Short and stocky, he had shoulders wide enough for his crew to build seats above his lapels and place a sailor on either side to mount the vessel’s watch. Hard, ruthless eyes swept across the convoy’s visiting officers and Dick had no problem imagining his tenacious pursuit of old Blacky across half the world’s seas. The old sod resembled a pitbull, and once a pitbull sank its teeth into your flesh, it never let go until it’d claimed a healthy-sized chunk of meat.
‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of Operation Pedestal. I trust you are finding the wardroom’s hospitality as abundantly in your service tonight as our guns are in your vessels’ safe passage. The majority of you standing here today are merchants, and you do not need reminding that the prosperity of our nation has been built on free trade. That prosperity depends on the free passage of our vessels. But it seems there are some who need to be reminded that we will not suffer its impediment lightly. We lay no claim to what is under the waves. We cast no nets for fish here. We send down no divers to explore for minerals. However, where the Fire Sea has withdrawn, opening up a passage free of the need of firebreakers, we will allow no nation to extend its territorial limits and then demand a bandit’s toll priced in threats for transgressing open waters. We braved these currents when they were threatened by volcanoes and fire, and any enemy who seeks to close them to us now will find that we carry with us fire of our own. Fire enough for all foes foolish enough to play the privateer against our people!’
Polite applause echoed around the mess hall and the vice-admiral circulated through the crowd, shaking hands with a firm grip and making reassuring noises to the commercial masters. Spoken like a reliable little politician on the make.
Jethro Daunt’s beak-like nose appeared to be twitching in distaste. ‘There is something amiss here,’ he whispered.
‘You’re not wrong, amateur. It’s my tax brass being used to fatten up a mob of merchants who don’t need a crumb of it.’
‘No,’ said Daunt, sotto voce. ‘It’s the vice-admiral. He’s a blank to me — his body language, all of the tells that should be in his gestures and his voice, none of them are present. According to my finer intuition, it is as if he doesn’t exist.’
‘You might be having a bad day with that mumbo jumbo you’re taught in the church, but he looks solid enough to me.’ Solid enough to thump a shark unconscious with one hand and make a soup out if it with the other.
‘Synthetic morality is hardly mumbo jumbo,’ protested Daunt. ‘My skills in these matters have never failed me before.’
‘Maybe you’ve eaten a bad prawn,’ said Dick, toying with his greying moustache. He was enjoying needling the ex-churchman.
Sadly clung to his cane, waving away a sailor circling the room with a tray of drinks. ‘I don’t blame you, Mister Daunt. All that pitching and rolling in the launch to get across here. It’s enough to muck up anyone’s plumbing.’
Daunt peered across the room. ‘But it’s only the vice-admiral. Everyone else I’ve observed at the function is reading normally by my faculties. I wonder? I think it’s time that the master of the Purity Queen was introduced to our host for the evening.’
Dick groaned. They were meant to be keeping a low profile on the warship. Just enough for their absence not to be noticed and the Purity Queen ’s position in the convoy fall under suspicion. Having the ex-parson bearding the commanding officer in his own lair just because the amateur’s church senses were running spiky was hardly part of the plan. It wouldn’t take much for Daunt’s ignorance of the smooth running of a u-boat to be called into question, the kind of conversation that would be expected to pass between two nautical masters. Dick was desperately casting for a way for a first officer to divert his skipper without arousing additional suspicions when the ship’s siren sounded and did the job for him.
A voice followed the alarm, reverberating around the room from wall-mounted speakers. ‘General Quarters! All hands, all hands man your battle stations!’
Saved by the bell, except I don’t think this indicates any improvement in my sodding fortunes.
Two officers came running into the mess deck, out of dress uniform, a seriousness of purpose as they whispered to the vice-admiral. He nodded grimly and then departed with one of the pair trotting after him, leaving the task of explaining the situation to the remaining lieutenant. Even the vessel’s stabilisers couldn’t disguise the fact that the warship was picking up speed, the mess slanting upward as the ship rose higher on her aquaplanes. Outside her portholes the spray of stars in the sky flitted past as the flagship pressed on faster, the sounds of water churning under her monstrous propulsion wheels swelling to a crescendo. The assemblage fell into a hush for an explanation. As the strident wail of the alarm dropped away, the silence that replaced it hung heavy enough in the air for the Purity Queen ’s screws to carve slices out of it.
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