Iron Gray Sea: Destroyermen by Taylor Anderson Page A

High Chief and Sky Priest of Baalkpan, and “Chairman” of the Grand Alliance of all Allied powers united beneath (or beside) the Banner of the Trees. Also, even more ironically, Alan had become Minister of Industry for the entire Alliance.
    With the recent, more independent additions to that alliance, he wasn’t quite sure how that post would shake out, but he’d keep doing the job here regardless. He’d recently returned from a stint at the “pointy end,” where he’d served as chief of logistics for First Fleet. Initially, he’d gone because he felt guilty. His new sense of responsibility, likely heightened by the birth of his daughter, made him feel as if he’d skipped out on his shipmates and their Lemurian friends by staying in such a cushy berth so long. He realized now what an idiot he’d been. He’d seen firsthand what this war—at least on the “Grik Front”—had become, and he hadn’t chickened out. But he’d realized with blinding clarity that the reason he’d actually made a real contribution in theater was because he was a bean counter, not a warrior, and what the various expeditionary forces needed as badly as warriors were more bean counters.
    He’d raced back to Baalkpan at the end of the Ceylon Campaign to recruit as many ’Cats—and, frankly, ex-pat female “Impies” escaping their indentured lives—as he could, to establish a Division of Strategic Logistics within the Ministry of Industry. There wasn’t an awful lot of extra labor just loafing around the city, and though hundreds had arrived, he’d had to move fast on the Imperial women because the institutions they’d fled were already breaking down and the “supply” might dry up. The women that arrived in Baalkpan were almost universally illiterate, but though the quality varied, they already spoke a variety of English. A common language that used many of the “right” words for things was key to getting the division up and running now . Alan and his shipmates had awkwardly learned to get by in Lemurian, but Adar had decreed that his People, at least those from his city in the War Industry, learn English. They had to. There’d never been Lemurian words for most of what they made. Understandably, that was taking time—and most ’Cats who spoke English already had jobs. The destroyermen who’d wound up on this world had already faced one kind of “dame famine.” Alan feared another sort.
    And now this!
    “Hey,” Letts said, as he and Perry tried to keep themselves—and, just as important, their new shoes—from sinking in the mud. “You’re Minister of Defensive Works and all that stuff. Roads are part of that, right?”
    “Sure, and I’ll get right on it, soon as you give my engineers a few days to do the job,” Perry groused. Both knew there was nothing Brister could do, but the banter was obligatory—and neither had anything else to say. They were headed for the Castaway Cook, a sort of café started by Walker ’s irascible cook, Earl Lanier, that had evolved into the more or less official Navy and Marine club for what promised to be an . . . interesting meeting.
    Two P-40s— P-40s!— thundered by overhead, almost wingtip to wingtip, the sound of their Allison engines rivaled by the cheering of Lemurian laborers in the shops and beneath the awnings bordering the muddy pathway. Letts grinned, watching the predatory aircraft climb, banking west out over the bay. As much as he’d accomplished, he couldn’t take much credit for the “Warhawks”; their rescue from the old Santa Catalina , beached in a Tjilatjap (Chill-Chaap) swamp, was primarily due to the herculean efforts of others, most notably a former Army Air Corps lieutenant named Benjamin Mallory. Like them all, Ben had stepped up to fight an unimaginably terrible war on this opium-dream earth. He was a colonel now, in charge of the whole Army and Navy Air Corps of the entire Alliance.
    “Is Ben going to meet us there?” Brister