“I never be aahd-mah-raal,” she retorted, angry enough to let her language and accent slip. She looked at the engine. “But chief be nice.” She turned on Gilbert. “But only if you two be chief-chiefs.”
The two men remained apologetically silent for a moment. It was their version of abject contrition. Finally, Isak spoke: “Bosun been to talk to you two?” he asked. Gilbert and Tabby both nodded. “One of us gots to go on the mission they’re cookin’ up, he says, since they’re takin’ the first new steam frigates.” He pointed at the engine. “They’ve got one like that, only bigger. That’s why we been testin’ it to failure.” He grunted. “Least this time they’re lettin’ us decide.” He looked at Tabby. “An’ this time she’s in the pool as deep as us. Metallurgy aside, Tabby prob’ly knows these jug jumpers better than us. Bosun’d have to find a three-sided coin to make up his mind.”
“You just said it,” Gilbert accused. “It don’t matter what we decide. They’ll keep her here just because o’ that!”
“Maybe we oughta go ahead an’ tell ’em we’re sorta related after all,” Isak murmured. “Tell ’em we can’t bear to be apart.” He snickered at his own remark. He and Gilbert had never let on that they were half brothers. There was a certain resemblance often remarked upon, but usually in a mocking fashion. Besides, their last names were different. They’d never told anyone, because not only did they have different fathers, but their mother never married either man. In a sense, they figured that made them each kind of a bastard and a half. Things like that didn’t seem to matter as much to them as they once had, but they still saw no need to brand it on their foreheads. “Hell, if it comes to it, I’ll go,” Isak said. “Kinda got the wanderlust flung on me the last time they busted us up.”
“You didn’t do any wanderin’,” Gilbert accused. “You just stayed on that damn island while me and Tabby went a-wanderin’.”
Isak nodded. “Yep. That’s what I mean.”
“Well,” said Gilbert, clearly relieved, “just don’t get ate.”
With a look around the noisy ordnance shop to make sure no one was paying any particular attention, Dennis Silva clamped the brand-new musket barrel in the mill vise. The barrel was made of relatively mild steel plate, about three-eighths of an inch thick, taken from Amagi ’s superstructure. Dennis figured they could ultimately salvage enough of the stuff from Amagi alone to make millions of barrels, if they wanted. The plate had been cut and forged around a mandrel, reamed to its final interior diameter, and turned to its finished contour. Finally, it was threaded and breeched. It was a simple process really, with the equipment they had, but it had just been perfected, and only a few of the barrels were complete. Dennis figured the odds were about even that Bernie would have a spasm when he noticed one missing.
So far, the Captain and “Sonny” Campeti hadn’t insisted that Dennis return to his duties full-time-they must have understood he had issues to sort out: some physical, a few domestic. He doubted their forbearance would last much longer. He was malingering, in a sense, and even he was beginning to feel bad about that. There was a lot he could be doing, after all. Should be doing. But he was a blowtorch. He’d go full-blast while there was fuel in the tanks, but when they were empty, they were empty. He’d needed this time to refuel, not only physically, but mentally-to put the “old” Dennis Silva back together. The time was just about right, and if the truth were known, he was actually starting to get a little antsy to return to duty. Besides, he had some ideas.
Carefully focusing his one good eye on the neatly scribed lines he’d drawn on the breech end, he cranked the table up and powered the mill. The cutter spun up and he turned a valve that started misting it with the oily coolant Spanky had devised. Slowly, he turned the crank in front of him. The cutter went through the breech like butter and he turned the other crank on the right side of the table and pulled the cutter back through the breech, widening the gap. Half a dozen more passes gave him the rectangular opening he wanted in the top of the barrel’s breech.
“Oops,” he mumbled happily, “I guess this barrel’s ruined!”
He brushed the chips away and replaced the cutter with another that would leave a rounded, dovetail shape. He measured the depth, traversed the table, and made a single pass at the front of his rectangular cut. Changing the cutter again, to one with a slight taper, he made a final cut at the breech. Looking closely to make sure he’d hit all his lines, he switched off the machine and removed the barrel from the vise.
“God damn you, Silva, what the hell are you up to now?” came an incredulous bellow. A lesser mortal might have at least flinched just a bit despite the almost plaintive note to the shout.
“Goofin’ off,” Dennis replied mildly. “Cool your breech, Mr. Sandison. Ol’ Silva’s just keepin’ hisself ‘occupied,’ like you said.”
For an instant, Bernie was speechless. “Cool my breech? You just hacked a hole in the breech of one of my new musket barrels and you tell me that?” He looked almost wildly around. “Where’s Campeti? If you won’t listen to me, maybe he can control you! In fact, I want him to hang you!”
“Why’s ever’body always want to hang me?” Silva asked, as if genuinely curious. “Calm down, Bernie, you’ll hurt yourself. You ’cumulated a extra hole or two in the big fight yourself, if I recall. If you start leakin’, Lieutenant Tucker’s gonna get sore, and she’ll have the skipper down on you. He’ll make you take a rest, and you’ll be countin’ waves in the bay at the Screw while Campeti runs this joint. Besides, just ’cause I’m goofin’ off don’t mean I’d dee-stroy a perfectly good musket barrel without a pretty good reason.”
Bernie paused and took a breath. Silva was right. He was a maniac, but when it came to implements of destruction, if he wasn’t actually a genius, he was at least a prodigy of some monstrous sort. He still had his “personal” BAR, and was one of the few people allowed to run around with such a profligate weapon and a full battle pack of precious ammunition. His new favorite weapon however, that he carried just about everywhere he went, was of an entirely different sort. Bernie glanced at the thing where it leaned near Silva’s workstation with the bag of necessary equipment it required.
It had begun life as an antiaircraft gun aboard shattered Amagi, a Type 96, twenty-five millimeter. The breech had been damaged in the battle and the flash hider shot away, so Silva “appropriated” it during one of their early trips to the wreck to salvage anything that remained above water. He told Sandison what he was doing, and the still painfully wounded (like nearly everyone) torpedo officer and Minister of Ordnance gave his blessing to the project. For most of his life, before joining the Navy, Silva had just been on the loose. For a time however, he’d worked for an old-school gunsmith near Athens, Tennessee. In that part of the country, even in the mid-thirties, many guns they worked on were old-fashioned muzzle loaders, even flintlocks. His time there was probably what made him strike for the ordnance division in the Navy. In any event, he’d learned a lot about “old-timey” guns, so Sandison gave him the flintlock from the shortened musket O’Casey had when they rescued him.
Silva turned the Type 96 barrel down as light as he thought was wise on one of the lathes, breeched it, and fitted it to a crude stock. Then he made a hollow-base. 100-caliber bullet mold like a Civil War Minie ball, so the bullet would expand and take the gain-twist rifling. He still worked on it now and then, dolling it up, but what he had was a massive weapon, weighing almost thirty pounds, with a five-foot barrel. It was amazingly accurate with its quarter-pound bullet, but the recoil was so horrifyingly abusive, nobody but Silva had ever even fired it. Probably no human but Silva could fire it more than once without serious injury. He called it his Super Lizard Gun, and was anxious to test it on one of the allosaurus-like brutes. He never wanted to go up against one of those incredibly tough monsters with a. 30-06 again.