Read Online Distant Thunders by Taylor Anderson - Free Book Online Page B

Salissa ’s entire Marine contingent—after they’d undergone the more rigorous training required of Marines. In many ways, Risa was clearly Silva’s soul mate, just as reckless and fearless and with the same warped sense of humor. The Lemurians hadn’t cared about the rumors surrounding them, rumors Silva and Risa did their best to encourage—only initially—to get Chack’s goat. Now, either they seemed determined to get everyone’s goat—or the rumors weren’t really rumors.
    The addition of Nurse Pam Cross from Brooklyn to the ménage added a measure of disgust, as well as a grudging respect for the gunner’s mate among the human destroyermen. They’d come to accept that Silva might have taken up with a “local gal,” whether anything physical was involved or not. They just assumed, naturally (or unnaturally), that there was. For him to then snatch one of the only available dames did breed resentment, but it was more of a wistful “how does he do it” sort. Lurid speculation regarding how the threesome might . . . interact . . . was probably actually good for morale in a roundabout way, and none of them—Silva, Risa, or Pam—would confirm or deny anything.
    Three soul mates, Matt chuckled to himself, two of whom had to come to another world to find each other. Well, there was nothing he could do about it. He’d once ordered Silva to quit carrying on with Risa, thereby breaking one of his own fundamental rules: Never give an order you know won’t be obeyed. But in almost every other way, Silva had really straightened up. “Silva’s been helping you with ordnance development?” Matt asked Bernard Sandison.
    Bernie grimaced. “Yes, sir. When it suits him. He’s hurting, I know, so I haven’t pushed him yet, but some of his best work has been on ‘toys’ for himself.”
    “Do his ‘toys’ have practical applications?”
    “Oh, yeah, but they’re not exactly priority items. The man’s a diabolical genius when it comes to figuring out new and better ways to kill things, and he does love to try them out. It’s just . . . his priorities are generally more . . . tactical than strategic.”
    Matt allowed a genuine laugh then, at Bernie’s tact. “You mean he concentrates on ‘up close and personal.’ Well, we need that too. Give him his head, but try to run him off for a while. He needs to heal up.”
    “Aye-aye, sir.”
    “Speaking of that, what have you come up with?”
    Sandison shifted on the cushion his wounds made him use. Matt knew the young, dark-haired torpedo officer was highly motivated to please; he still blamed himself for not recognizing the—perfectly good—Mk 10 torpedo among the condemned fish they’d scrounged in Surabaya so long ago. That extra torpedo might have made a lot of difference if they’d known they had it and used it at a different time.
    “Right now we’re rebuilding to some degree. One of the shops took a hit from Amagi and it’s a real mess. None of the machinery was badly damaged, thank God, but we’re still getting a roof back over it. That said, we’ve begun to refine some of the projects we were already working on. I think I can give you guncotton, or gun . . . whatever they use for cotton around here, pretty soon. That’ll give us a high explosive capability for the four-inch guns. We’ve already started making exploding shells with a black powder bursting charge, like the ones they used in the last war. Not as good, but . . .” He paused when he saw the captain’s grim expression. The only four-inch guns they had were on Walker —underwater. They’d salvage the guns, certainly, and maybe the one on the submarine, but they wouldn’t know if they could salvage the ship until she was dry. “Anyway,” he continued softly, “I wouldn’t recommend using it for a propellant charge until we’ve had a lot more practice with the stuff. Better stick with ordinary gunpowder for now. Same goes for small arms. We just about shot ourselves dry,