Into the Storm d-1

by Taylor Anderson

  “He mate? He marry me!” Risa squealed happily. “He Sab-At clan now!”

  “Never!” seethed Chack. Sandra’s hand now covered her mouth in earnest, but Matt couldn’t tell if she was hiding shock or laughter.

  “My God, Silva, I swear! If you’ve done anything to damage our relationship with these people, or if you forced… God! Are you insane? I’ll hang you!”

  “Skipper, I’ll swear on a Bible or Marvaney’s record stack-whatever you say-”

  “You lie!” shouted Chack.

  “He no lie!” Risa purred. “Nobody mad but silly Chack. People no mad. People no… embarrassed? By mate! Si-vaa love Risa!”

  The shore party, those that could, eased away. Chack’s ears were back and his tail swished like a cobra. He looked about to strike. Matt was preparing another volcanic response when Sandra tugged his sleeve and whispered in his ear. He looked sharply at her and was incredulous when he saw her nod.

  “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” he promised darkly. “Mr. Chack, please escort your sister to her Home. At the very least, she seems. .. indisposed.”

  “But… Aye, aye, Cap-i-taan.”

  “What about my weddin’ night?” Silva moaned, and Matt turned to him.

  “My orders were that all personnel be back aboard by 0100. Since you had no special permission, you may not stay ashore to… consummate your ‘marriage,’ nor may you do so on my ship! USS Walker is not a honeymoon barge!” He paused. There was one way to find out if Sandra was right. “Tomorrow I’ll speak to Keje and Nakja-Mur and discover what further process, if any, is required to finalize your and Risa’s… nuptials. Perhaps a joint ceremony?”

  He was rewarded by a marked widening of Silva’s surprisingly sober eyes. Getting even with Chack was one thing, but he wouldn’t enjoy the consequences of including his captain in the joke.

  “Nighty night, sugar-lips!” Silva said, and gave Risa a kiss, which she returned with evident relish.

  God, I hope it is a joke! Matt thought with a shudder.

  After Chack stiffly led his sister away and a suddenly docile Silva was carried to the ship, Matt removed his hat and rubbed his eyes. “Jesus!”

  Sandra laughed. “Is this the way it always was with these guys, back in the Philippines?”

  “No! Well, yeah, but… yeah.” He smiled.

  “I told Chack to watch his back.” Sandra chuckled. “I wonder when he’ll figure it out?”

  “I wonder if it’s over!”

  “You don’t think he really…?” Sandra gasped.

  “If we’re not surrounded by angry ’cats with torches in the morning, I’m going to pretend it never happened. But I guarantee Silva won’t have the last laugh!” For a moment, the pier was empty again, but the electric tension between them was damped. Just as well.

  Sandra cleared her throat. “Earlier, you said you had an idea. What was it?”

  “What? Oh. Well, let me see if I can put my thoughts back together!”

  CHAPTER 7

  What, then, would you have us do? How do we defeat them if the Ancient Ones could not?” The speaker was the High Chief of one of the great Homes. Seven of the huge vessels now floated in Baalkpan Bay, and all their chiefs, as well as a large number of senior “officers,” were present in Nakja-Mur’s Great Hall for this long-awaited council. There were even representatives from several smaller “land colonies.” Gatherings on such a scale were rare, usually happening no more than once or twice a decade, and there was no official mechanism for summoning one. As far as Matt could tell, it might be as simple as shouted words from passing fishermen: “Big meeting at Baalkpan. Come if you want.” Without better communications, that was probably exactly how it happened.

  Great Gatherings were usually occasions for festivities, games, trade, and socialization. They were also times for crowded, prosperous Homes to branch off. To build new Homes and form new clans. It was a time that the People on their solitary wandering Homes looked forward to with pleasure and anticipation, wondering where and when the next would be held. But this one was different. All were aware of the seriousness of the growing threat, and those present, at least, seemed willing and even eager to discuss their next move. Few agreed what that move should be, however.

  The Lemurian who’d spoken was Anai-Sa, High Chief of Fristar, one of the Homes that had been in Baalkpan Bay since before Walker arrived. He seemed young for his rank, with a jet-black pelt and a spray of white whiskers surrounding his face. His green eyes were intent. Besides his heavily embroidered kilt, he wore only a multitude of shimmering golden hoops around his neck and upper arms. His people were “far rangers” who rarely entered these waters. Their “territory” was most often the South China Sea, but Grik pressure had pushed them south. He was also the most outspoken of the “why don’t we just sail off where there are no Grik” crowd.

  Keje spoke in reply. “I would have you hear the words of Cap-i-taan Reddy of the Amer-i-caans, and High Chief of Waa-kur. He is High Chief of an independent clan and has as much right to speak as anyone here. More, to my thinking, since he saved my Home from the Grik. The Amer-i-caans have helped us prepare for this time with no concern for personal gain.” Keje stood before the silent group, looking out among them. He said nothing about Walker’s brief sortie two weeks before that destroyed two more Grik ships. All were aware of it, even if they hadn’t been there yet, and boasting sometimes detracts from self-evident truth. Besides, the last thing Matt wanted was everyone thinking Walker would save them all. As Keje suspected, there were murmurs of protest. Not because the humans weren’t People, but because their ship was so small and sparsely populated. Would they grant “Home” status to fishing boats too?

  Keje squared his shoulders and placed his hand upon the scota at his side. “I declare Cap-i-taan Reddy is my Brother as surely as any High Chief, and I offer combat to anyone saying he does not deserve to speak.” These last words came in a growl.

  There was some very unusual body language in response to this threat, and some glanced to see Nakja-Mur’s reaction. He merely stared at Keje’s back across steepled claws with his elbows on his knees.

  “These Amer-i-caans come from far away, and know more about war than we. Before they came to help us, they were engaged in a struggle that defies belief. Their wondrous ship was just one of perhaps hundreds, and they modestly tell me theirs was but the smallest and least powerful Home to fight in that unimaginable conflict! Yet it prevailed!”

  Matt winced at Chack’s translation. Okay, so much for not bragging. Besides, they’d “prevailed” in the sense that they’d survived, but that was the only appropriate context for the word. Keje grinned at him ironically.

  “Would you speak to them, my Brother? Perhaps you can sway them. I’ll tell them your words.”

  Matt nodded. For his plan to work, they had to see the threat. But they also needed hope. How would he scare them into joining the fight without scaring them away? Particularly since the plan he was forming was risky, to say the least. The irony of the situation struck him like a slap. He remembered how unfathomable he’d thought admirals and politicians were. Particularly within ABDA. Why they made the decisions they did mattered only insofar as they affected his ship, his crew, and himself. Suddenly he was standing in similar shoes and found them most uncomfortable. He stepped to Keje’s side and cleared his throat.

  “I really don’t know if we can defeat them,” he said simply. Keje looked at him sharply, surprised by the dour opening, but Matt had stressed the word “we.”

  “I don’t know much about them at all. Nobody does; not even where they come from, or what kind of society supports their warlike nature. We’re probably outnumbered. Their ships aren’t as large as yours, but they’re much faster, and each carries nearly as many warriors as yours since their ships aren’t Homes. They carry no families that we know of, and they grow no food. They’re meant for one thing only: to transport warriors to battle.” He paused. “That should be both an advantage
and a disadvantage to them. They can pack a lot of warriors into their ships, but they have to keep supplied or they can’t stay in our territory long. One thing we do know is they’re a long way from home.” He shrugged. “They raid for provisions-Chill-chaap proves that-but even that takes time from offensive operations, and the more there are, the bigger that problem becomes.

  “That’s about all we know about their strategic situation, though. We don’t know what they want or why they’re here, beyond an apparent hunger for conquest. We have no real idea what their ‘grand strategy’ is. Their efforts so far have not seemed well coordinated, although Keje tells me they’re better now than in the past. The best I can figure, they have several independent task forces on the loose, looking for us, and they hope to eventually overwhelm us with numbers. That’s also the historical model recorded in your Scrolls.

  “We too have advantages and disadvantages.” Matt looked at the faces staring impassively back.

  “And what are our advantages, beside the ability to simply leave them behind again?” The black-furred Lemurian’s voice dripped sarcasm.

  Matt regarded him coldly. “Courage is one,” he answered, returning the green-eyed glare. “Thoughtful courage, not the wild-ass, charge-tanks-with-horses kind.” There was absolutely no context for the statement, but somehow they grasped his meaning. All present knew, at least by description, the abandon with which Grik fought. Their attack was like a school of flasher-fish. Maybe they employed tactics, but once they came to grips, it was individual mindless ferocity.

  “We also have Walker,” he said matter-of-factly, “and nothing they have can match her speed and the range of her weapons. We’ll have more weapons soon. Cannons, sort of like Walker’s, that’ll fit on your ships. But most of all-I hope-we’re smarter than they are. Smart enough to use their strengths against them. And if their strengths become weaknesses…” He shrugged.

  “Frankly, our biggest disadvantage is ignorance.” There were hostile murmurs at that. The closest Lemurian word to “ignorance” was precariously similar to “stupidity.” He continued hastily on. “That’s a disadvantage I’m personally sick of… for a lot of reasons, and one I plan to correct. It’s our biggest disadvantage because of how much bigger it makes our other problems.” He counted on his fingers. “First, there might be five or ten of their ships in the Java Sea right now, but we don’t know. We don’t know if they’re part of a probe or a real push. The Scrolls describe a slow escalation, but is it just starting, or has it reached its peak? We don’t know. Our ignorance makes it impossible to formulate a strategy to totally defeatthem.” He motioned Benjamin Mallory forward. “Lieutenant, when you saw the aftermath at Tjilat-Chill-chaap, did you speculate on the nature of the Grik attack?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s hard to say, but I got the impression they made an amphibious assault, coordinated with an attack overland through the jungle.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, it’s just a guess. We didn’t really study the battlefield, if you know what I mean, but the corpses in the jungle were in groups. Not really scattered around. Like the inhabitants were running away and ran into the Grik. Not like they were chased down and caught. It was just… the feeling I got.”

  Matt nodded. “That seems consistent-the multipronged attack. Like the tactic they used against Big Sal. Attack as many places as possible to split your defenses. That might even be an example of their overall strategy, writ small. If so, that shows us another one of our problems. We’re way too scattered out. I know that’s how you’ve always lived, but you’ve got to pull together. Believe me, we know about being all alone when the world is falling on us! The only way to defend against that sort of attack is to mass our forces. Keep them as united as possible and work together as best we can. But where do we mass? We can’t do it everywhere-that defeats the purpose.” He looked measuringly at Nakja-Mur. “We could mass at Baalkpan-fortify the city and build a wall around it, with fighting positions and maybe even cannons. We could clear the jungle around it and make a killing ground that even the Grik would fear. In fact, I think we should. But it’ll take time, and that’s a luxury we may not have. We don’t know how much weight’s behind them. It also surrenders all initiative to the enemy and sounds too much like what happened last time, if you ask me. Anyway, it all still boils down to: we just don’t know!”

  Nakja-Mur raised his bearded chin from his fingertips. “Could we defeat the Grik in such a manner?” he asked.

  Matt hesitated. “No. We could prevent defeat for a time, but we couldn’t win. While we sat behind our walls and fought them and killed them, and bled them white, we’d only grow weaker, while they would send more Grik. Just as it’s written in your Scrolls. Eventually, they’d wear us down. The only way to win is to attack!”

  There were incredulous cries. “Attack them? Attack where? We do not even know where they come from!” shouted the black-furred High Chief. Others yelled questions and comments as well: “We could harry their ships, but will they fight if we bring a large enough force to defeat them?” cried one. “We certainly can’t catch them if they run!” “What will happen to Baalkpan if we leave it undefended?!” another asked. “He was talking about mass. Mass where?” “What’s ‘mass’?”

  Matt listened to the uproar for a few moments longer. Finally, he spoke loudly a single word.

  “Ignorance!”

  Keje repeated it in the same tone. The tumult abruptly stopped and all eyes turned to the captain of Walker.

  “Ignorance,” he said again. “I’m getting pretty tired of it myself. Let’s see if we can enlighten ourselves.”

  Even Keje blinked surprise. “How do we do that, my Brother?”

  “We mass.”

  Keje was confused. “But you just said… they are spread out, they are faster-we can’t mass here and wait for them all to find us, and we certainly cannot mass together and chase them down!”

  “No, but we can mass defensively and let a few come to us. I don’t want all of them until we know how many they are. And we won’t do it here.”

  “I thought you said we should attack,” said Nakja-Mur.

  “Think of it as a ‘defensive’ attack. It won’t be easy and it sure as hell won’t be safe, but if it works, we ought to learn a lot about our enemy at long last.”

  “My people will have nothing to do with such madness!” huffed Fristar ’s High Chief.

  Nakja-Mur stood, a little shakily, Matt thought. “You may leave whenever you wish, then,” he said. “My people don’t have that choice.” He looked at Matt. “My people… I… have never known war, but I will support this plan of yours whatever it might be. I do not want the Grik coming here.” He smiled sadly. “You may have all the paint or whatever else you want if you can prevent that.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” Matt replied, glancing around the hall. “But what we both need most right now are more warriors. ‘Mass’ means numbers.”

  Sergeant Pete Alden, United States Marine Corps, stared at the “mass” of trainees flailing at one another with clumsy enthusiasm and padded-point practice spears. Some were really trying, and the “Marines” did their best to instruct them. But to most of the newer recruits, it was still mostly a game. He cursed. Before now, the training had gone relatively well with the smaller groups he’d been dealing with. He’d applied a familiar regimen even if the exercises were different from his own experience. The rush of recruits since the Grik ship sailed right into Baalkpan Bay changed all that.

  His carefully chosen, elite Marines were broken up to form a cadre of NCOs as the militia (now “Guard”) swelled dramatically. Even warriors from some of the ships started to attend the drills. That was all well and good, but Parris Island had never seen a less likely draft, and he (who’d never been a drill instructor) now faced the impossible task of turning this collection of instinctively individualistic merchants, shopkeepers, fishers, and sailors into an army. And he had just a few weeks to do it. Right now, if
he reconstituted his Marines, he could field two regiments of fairly well-trained, disciplined troops-and that’s what he’d likely do for the captain’s upcoming expedition. If they were successful, he would resume the training after they returned as veteran NCOs. Not just bright trainees who’d grasped the theory but couldn’t yet teach from experience.

  The warriors who came to train were accustomed to working together, but otherwise they were a pain in the neck. As “warriors” already, they had their own way of doing things. They understood that discipline was required in order to fight together-which the land folk didn’t-but the close-order drill and concerted complexity of the captain’s new/ancient tactics were too much trouble. Alden was having some trouble with them himself. He was a grunt, a fighting Marine, and he fully understood the concept of mass. But in his Marine Corps, standing shoulder to shoulder and hacking at enemies close enough to smell their breath was crazy. He had no problem with a little hand-to-hand; he was even pretty good at it. Like many Marines, he was an artist with a bayonet-when it was attached to his holy Springfield. The dogma pounded into him as a recruit was one of accurate, long-distance riflery, backed by a bayonet and the will to use it. Standing toe to toe and hacking away was for last-ditch defense or final assault. Not for the whole damn fight.

  There weren’t enough Springfields, however. Hell, there were barely enough for Walker’s crew. Some of the better Lemurian NCOs had Krags, but his army would fight with swords and spears. For those to work, you had to be right in your enemy’s face. Only shield walls and deep, disciplined ranks might give them an edge over the Grik. The captain said the shield wall and discipline set the Romans apart from the barbarians. Alden understood, but it still struck his subconscious mind as nuts. He’d have to get a feel for the new tactics too.

  No Springfields, but they did have archers. In fact, every soldier was an archer of sorts. The front-rank spearmen carried longbows over their shoulders to use until the enemy came to grips-which wouldn’t take long on land, considering the close confines and thick vegetation hereabouts. The problem was it took a long time to get really good with a longbow. He’d just as soon have everyone stick with the crossbows they were used to, even if they weren’t as fast and didn’t shoot as far. It didn’t take an expert to use one of those. But his front rank couldn’t wield a sword or spear while swinging a heavy crossbow, so if he wanted standoff capability, longbows it had to be. Crossbows could still be employed by females or anyone too small or weak for the shield wall. Lemurian females weren’t necessarily weak, but they had the same… encumbrances that sometimes made longbows difficult for their human counterparts. Many of Alden’s best spearmen were poor archers, but he made them practice every day. Most were improving.