Campeti crouched beside one such crate, the lead-painted lid prized off, shuffling thoughtfully through a sheaf of pages. Stites was poking around in the cluster of carefully swaddled, white-painted Baalkpan bamboo tubes protecting the ammunition, and Silva sat on the deck with one of the heavy, gleaming, fixed cartridges on his lap, fingering the waxed-paper seal at the nose of the projectile where the similarly carefully shipped fuses would be inserted. They were surrounded by nearly the entire ordnance division, as well as many onlookers. “Looks like a sculpterin!” Silva said, beaming. “And we don’t even have to put ’em together.” “Prob’ly don’t trust us to,” commented Stites. “Yeah, this reads like a novel,” Campeti agreed, waving the spec sheets. “It looks like ol’ Bernie’s done us proud, though. Get a load o’ this! He’s detailed everything they put into these beauties. There’s bagged—he calls it ‘Explosive B,’ for ‘Baalkpan,’ or maybe ‘Bernie’!—charges in the shells on top of a priming charge.”
What do You think about Iron Gray Sea: Destroyermen?
