We’ll have to keep our distance, Matt thought as he and Sandra descended the companionway and went forward to the wardroom.
“Boats!” he exclaimed when he saw Chief Gray sitting on a chair beside a clearly miserable Diania. He’d wondered where the Super Bosun was. Gray looked up, probably horrified he’d been caught like this. One hand was holding a bucket, the other tentatively patting the sick girl’s back. Diania’s face was in the bucket, her trembling hands holding wet, dark hair out of the way.
“Oh, you poor dear!” Sandra exclaimed, rushing forward. She looked at her pharmacist’s mates. “I thought she was doing better!”
“She was,” one said, but then gestured around. Diania wasn’t the only human female puking in the wardroom. “I guess it come and go,” the ’Cat said with a slightly superior air. Sandra was annoyed. All the ’Cats had been just as sick the first time they rode Walker in a storm. She knelt in front of Diania.
“Are you all right?” What a stupid question.
“Aye’m,” came a muffled croak from within the bucket. “I’ll be back tae me duties soon enu…” The bucket thundered.
“Boats,” Matt said softly, “you’re damage-control officer. You need to be… You’ve got other duties.”
“Aye, sir,” Gray grumbled. “An’ I was doin’ ’em too, when I came through here an’ seen this. I ain’t never seen so many broads… blowin’ tubes, as it were, all at once. It was… terrible! I had to do somethin’ to stop the leaks.”
Sandra snapped her fingers at a PM. “You! Relieve Mr. Gray this instant! He does have other duties, and right now, this is yours!”
Gratefully, Gray surrendered the bucket, but paused, electrocuted, when Diania grabbed his hand.
“Thankee,” she mumbled, her red-rimmed eyes peering up at him. “Ye’re not sich a beast as ye make out. I’ll nae fergit!”
Gray retrieved his scalded hand.
“I’ll, uh, get on down to, ah… make sure…”
Matt shooed him off. When Sandra was sure Diania and the others were receiving proper care, they got the coffee they’d come for and headed aft.
“Chief Gray seems almost scared of Diania,” Sandra said as they neared the airlock to the forward fireroom. She’d rarely been in there before.
“Can you blame him?” Matt asked. “He was married once, you know, and it didn’t go well. They had a kid, but he was probably lost on Oklahoma, last we heard. At Pearl.” Matt frowned. “All Gray’s ever had out of… obligated relationships is pain. He never even shacked up with a Filipino gal. I’m sure he’s visited his share of… professional ladies over the years, some just as young as Diania, but that’s not what she is, and he doesn’t know how to handle it. He won’t take advantage, but with her stalking him like the hunting dame her name sounds like-” He snorted. “I’d be scared too. He’s old enough to be her grandpa!”
“You really think she’s stalking him?” Sandra asked, amused.
“Don’t you?”
“Maybe. I know she admires him. I also know age shouldn’t matter, not here-certainly not with them. Consider their respective backgrounds; both somewhat monastic, and Diania never expected the opportunity for an ‘obligated’ relationship of any sort, other than practical slavery.” Sandra smiled. “Diania’s an adult, over twenty, I’m sure, even if she doesn’t know exactly. Mr. Gray obviously cares for her. I think they’d be good for each other.”
They cycled through into the forward fireroom and passed between the large bunkers that filled the space where the number one boiler used to be.
“’Ten-shun!!” cried a Lemurian snipe.
Matt quickly called, “As you were!” before he could disrupt anything. “Lieutenant,” he greeted Tabby when she appeared before him.
“Skipper,” she said. “We fixin’ to get them damn Japs?”
“I hope so. Any serious problems?” Matt knew better than to ask if there were any problems at all. There were plenty of nuisance issues he already knew about, and Tabby would dutifully recite each one if she thought that’s what he wanted.
“Nothing new not already in report,” Tabby said. “I’ll keep screws turnin’ as long as you keep holes outta my spaces!”
Matt chuckled. “I’ll do my best.”
“Uh,” Tabby paused. “Spanky have the deck?”
“He does.”
“He on aft deckhouse when we fight? On auxiliary conn?”
“That’s right.”
“You… you tell him I ask he be careful?”
“I sure will, Lieutenant,” Matt said. “Carry on.”
“Yes, indeed,” Sandra said cheerfully as they moved aft. “And Mr. Gray is worried about his stalker!”
“Damn it,” Matt muttered. “Nothing I can do about it, but this is exactly the sort of thing that proves that women-females of any sort-just don’t belong on warships!”
“Of course we don’t,” Sandra soothed with a grin. Matt rolled his eyes.
The sea remained just as vigorous when they came on deck through the forward hatch of the aft deckhouse. Everywhere they’d been, they’d stopped a moment and asked a question or passed an encouraging word. The 25 mm mounts were manned by wet ’Cats and men. The ship always took a lot of water across the deck here. Matt waved at the crews when they stood from behind the shelter of the steel tubs. Jeek and Chief Gunner’s Mate Paul Stites met them at the galley beneath the amidships deckhouse.
“I was looking for you, Chief Jeek,” Matt said, blowing misted seawater off his lips.
“Cap-i-taan?”
“If that is Hidoiame up ahead, we’ll likely have to have the ‘Nancy’ over the side.”
Jeek nodded sadly. “We just got her too.”
“I know, and I hate it. But the last thing we need is a burning plane on deck.”
“Ay, ay, sur.”
Matt turned to Stites. “What have you got?”
“Uh, yes, sir. Two things. First, Mr. Campeti has arrested Lanier.”
“ Arrested? My God, what’s he done now?”
“Well, most of the mess attendants and such are shell handlers and on gun’s crews when we go to battle stations…”
“So?”
“Lanier wouldn’t turn half a dozen of ’em loose until they stowed his damn Coke machine. He’s done it before, and the fellas are always late to their stations, but Campeti’s sick of Gunnery always bein’ the last to report-and him and Lanier got into it. Lanier said his machine was more important than any damn gun, and when Campeti said it was a useless piece of…” Stites glanced at Sandra. “Anyway, Lanier took a swing.”
“A swing?”
“Yes, sir. I saw it myself. Course, it was kinda slow and Mr. Campeti dodged it fine-but there was a lot of weight behind that punch and Lanier sorta capsized.”
“Was he hurt?”
“No, sir, but he landed on Juan, uh, Mr. Marcos, and snapped off that wood leg of his. That’s why there’s a problem.”
“Okay.”
“Well, the fellas’ll need fed before we go into action”-Matt always insisted on that, and Stites continued-“and since Juan’s in dry dock, he can’t run the galley-”
“So Campeti can’t clap Lanier in irons like he deserves,” Matt finished.
“Yes, sir-I mean, no, sir.”
“I see.”
In an odd way, Matt was actually enjoying this. Once again, he might soon be responsible for all their lives, but this… complaint harked back to a simpler time, before the war here, before the Squall, before the war back home. Even before the tardy, frantic, prewar readiness exercises when many of his duties involved just riding herd on a shipload of rambunctious… boys. He had to stifle a nostalgic smile. He stepped closer to the galley window where he was sure Earl Lanier had been listening.