Settling upon the protesting stool, Keje leaned on the rail before him and watched the labor far below on the forward “flight deck.”
“Aadh-mah-raal,” said Captain Atlaan-Fas, “we have received a wireless message from Lieutenant Mark Leedom, Tikker’s executive officer. He will arrive within two hours with our new medical officer, Nurse Lieutenant Kaathy McCoy. Captain Tikker has been working his flight crews very hard and begs you to allow him to fly a sortie to meet Lieutenant Leedom’s plane.”
“Outstanding,” Keje replied. “I assume that if Nurse McCoy is joining us, Nurse Theimer’s-I mean, Letts’s-youngling must be thriving.” He shook his head. “Most curious that human females change their names when they mate.”
“Not terribly curious,” Atlaan objected. “Our younglings often follow the names of their fathers.” He grinned. “It is certainly not the most significant difference between our peoples!”
Keje huffed a laugh. “No concerns for the mother?”
“Surely not, or Nurse McCoy would not be joining us.”
All Allied transmissions the evening before had been virtually dedicated to the happy news that “Allison Verdia Letts” had been born into this world at last. Congratulations were returned from the far reaches of the world, from Commodore Ellis in the Western Ocean to a late-night message from Captain Reddy in the Eastern Sea, relayed through Manila. Chairman Adar had proclaimed that this day, October 3 by the American calendar, would henceforth be “Allison Verdia Day,” in honor of the first human youngling born among the Lemurian people. May there be many more.
“Very well,” Keje replied. “It is time we tested the new launching system, at any rate. Captain Tikker may take a single flight of planes. We will have plenty of time to recover the aircraft before dark.” Keje grinned, and glanced port and starboard at the two new steam frigates pacing his Home. One was USS Kas-Ra-Ar, named for his lost cousin and the first frigate of that name destroyed during the Battle of Baalkpan. The other was USS Scott. Everyone believed that a frigate was a far better monument to the heroism of Walker ’s lost coxswain than a motor launch. “You may also grant his request to ‘play’ with our escorts when he returns!”
“Aye, aye, Aahd-mah-raal.”
Captain Jis-Tikkar, or “Tikker” to his friends, glanced to his right, over his shoulder, to make sure the rest of the ships of “B” flight were still where they were supposed to be. He was mildly amazed to see that they were. Somehow, in the twisted way of things that seemed to have become the norm, he was Salissa ’s “Commander of Flight Operations,” or “COFO,” in general, and commander of Salissa ’s air wing of, eventually, forty planes, in particular. Officially, the wing was the “1st Naval Air Wing,” composed of the “1st and 2nd Naval Pursuit Squadrons,” and the “1st, 2nd, and 3rd Naval Bomb Squadrons.” Evidently, the officious, confusing, multiple names of the elements under his command were the result of a compromise between Major Ben Mallory and the Navy types that predominated. If it didn’t make much sense to him yet, he presumed that it would eventually, when other “wings” were operational.
His own lofty new status was gratifying, he supposed, but it still struck him as astounding. Granted, he’d become a good pilot and had learned he actually had a gift for teaching. He was also the most “experienced” Lemurian aviator in the entire world. But it hadn’t been that long ago when Ben Mallory had actually forbidden him to touch the controls of the battered PBY Catalina they’d finally lost in the Battle of Baalkpan. Well, he’d improved. Everyone had. This first draft of “Naval Aviators” from the growing “Army and Navy Air Corps Training Center” outside of Baalkpan was composed of raw but competent pilots. Tikker was proud of them, proud of the role he’d had in training them.
Calling the group of four aircraft he now led “ ‘B’ flight, 1st Naval Pursuit Squadron” didn’t make any sense at all, however, and Tikker wasn’t sure it ever would. He and Ben both hoped it would, eventually, but at present, each of his “Nancy” flying-boats was identical, regardless of its designation. Of course, even if some planes were ultimately specially designed to chase something down and shoot it out of the sky, as far as they knew, there was nothing else in the world’s skies for them to “pursue.” Yet. Tikker and Ben both worried that that wouldn’t always be the situation, and Ben, at least, wanted some kind of organizational structure already in place. Just in case.
Tikker was a “believer,” but he shrugged mentally. Right now he didn’t really care. He was flying, and that’s all that mattered. The “improved” Nancys, or “PB-1Bs” as Mallory preferred to call them, were showing themselves to be pretty good little airplanes. They were easy to build and maintain and the ridiculously simple power plant was reliable and powerful enough for anything they would ever need a Nancy to do. They weren’t fast (by Ben’s standards), but they were maneuverable-while being forgiving at the same time-something Ben always said was hard to achieve. Tikker had the flying bug in a big way, and if they could only invent a seat that was comfortable for a ’Cat with a tail, he would have no complaints about the planes at all.
He was also pleased that he could report that the new hydraulic catapult worked even better than anyone expected. The fundamental mechanism was simple-if leaky and extremely messy-but the means of launching aircraft without landing gear had required unexpected imagination. They’d settled on a wooden “cradle truck” that accelerated forward, supporting the fuselage of a Nancy until it reached the end of the flight deck. At that point, the truck slammed to a stop and tripped a release hook. Tikker had to admit, it scared him half to death when the machine literally flung his plane into the air in front of the ship. The acceleration was extreme, and he was amazed it didn’t break any of the planes. The contraption might need a little adjusting to take some of that initial jolt out of it, but it beat lowering the planes over the side one at a time with the big crane and then having them take off in possibly dangerous seas. They still had to land on the water, but they could then simply motor into one of the huge bays that opened in Big Sal ’s sides, from which she’d once launched her gri-kakka boats. If they ever launched every plane on the ship, that wouldn’t work, but they could still hoist out the extras with the crane.
He glanced again to make sure his flight was keeping up, then spoke into the voice tube beside and a little behind his head.
“Hey, Cisco,” he called to his copilot/engineer/observer in the aft cockpit. Cisco’s real name was Siska-Kor, but like nearly everyone in the Naval Air Corps, she had a nickname now. “We’re going to gain some altitude. Send that we’ll climb to five thousand and maintain formation.”
“It will be cold up there,” came the tinny, windy reply.
“Not that cold,” Tikker assured her. He realized they were going to have to get some proper flight suits for the air crews. Right now they wore little more than the regulation Navy kilt and T-shirt, with goggles for the primary pilots. They needed goggles for everyone, but the glass industry in Baalkpan was having fits and starts and they were still using salvaged glass from Amagi. Cisco was right, though-it would be chilly. He’d never really known what cold was until he flew. He wasn’t even sure what the Nancy’s “service ceiling” was, since he’d always been too cold to reach it.
“Besides, Lieutenant Leedom is a ‘hotshot.’ A natural. Strange for a sub-maa-reener, I guess, but he’s liable to try to intercept us, and I bet he and Nurse McCoy are wearing warmer clothes!”