By then, the sea battle had completely broken apart into widely separated duels between individual ships. Jenks was at a loss to explain the lack of any reports or dispatches from the fighting, but hoped it was a sign that the Imperial Fleet had managed to cut off any enemy retreat. It stood to reason, since the battle had lasted so long, so close to the island, with invasion now out of the question. If that was the case, the enemy would have been caught between the fleet and the crushing harbor defenses-but also in the path of any vessel bearing word.
Roughly two hours before dawn, Fitzhugh Gray was quietly escorted into the room by a Marine and a dark-skinned, matronly woman bearing a lamp. The woman gazed sternly at Matt and Jenks and checked on the sleeping Ruth. Clucking, she draped a light shawl across Ruth’s shoulders and eased into a chair behind her. Gray slumped exhaustedly into another chair, earning a disapproving glare of his own. He glared back, and then shrugged.
“Hell of a day,” he whispered gruffly.
“Yeah. Day and night,” Matt replied. “You okay?”
“Sure. A couple scratches. I should’a paid more attention to that jumped-up leatherneck Alden when he was passin’ out bayonet lessons.”
“Sorry I haven’t been down to see the fellas,” Matt said.
Gray waved it away. “You been busy, Skipper. Ever’body knows where you are, and what you been doin’.” He looked at Jenks. “A full-blown, man-sized war is a hell of a thing, ain’t it?”
It was a jab that went back a long way, but Jenks wasn’t offended. He’d now seen this kind of war himself before. “Yes, Mr. Gray. Yes, it is. Murdering noncombatants has never been our way, but like yours, it seems my people have now had a dose of a kind of war in which there are no noncombatants.”
There just weren’t any words after that, and they sat in silence for a while, staring out to sea through the opening for the telescope. The firing tapered off until it had all but stopped, but something suddenly flickered in the far distance, in the southwest, and Matt stood. “That looked like a flare!” he said.
“Yes,” said Jenks. “Or a rocket. A distress rocket, I fear.” He paused. “We both use them, you know.”
Another distant flash lit the night. A green one.
“That was a rocket!” Matt said excitedly. “One of ours! It’s a ‘here I am’!”
Two more green rockets soared into the night, even more distant, followed by gun flashes.
“What the…?”
“Skipper! It’s our guys! Achilles and Simms!” Gray insisted. “Has to be! I bet they were in communication with Walker and saw something. She sent up her ‘here I am’ and said ‘if it ain’t me you see, hammer it’!”
The Governor-Emperor’s eyes fluttered. “What is it?” he asked, drymouthed, smacking his lips. “What did I miss?”
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.