“Yes, my Queen!”
Safir paused while a squad of signalmen raced past, unspooling a long roll of wire with little red ribbons tied to it at intervals of about a tail. They had to stop a moment and wait impatiently while the gun’s crews moved their pieces forward by hand. She turned to Colonel Anaara, who’d been pacing along beside her. “The Silver Battalion will ‘stand-to,’ if you please.”
The drums—another of Captain Reddy’s imported innovations—thundered in the gradually fading morning mist as youngling drummers blurred their sticks. Even as the battalion fell in, preparing their bows and spears and locking their shields; while artillery crews rammed fixed charges of canister down the mouths of their gleaming bronze six-pounders and gunners sighted the tubes, the raw, visceral roar of the first mass charge of Grik warriors fell upon them. The Battle of Raan-goon had begun.
Lord General Rolak heard the sound of the Grik charge, the whoosh of arrows, and then the stuttering Ka-burr-Burr-aak of a battery of guns on his left. He could see little, but he wasn’t much concerned. There’d been none of the raucous, thrumming horns, calling and answering like skuggik cries on carrion, so even though he doubted that Safir was completely ready, he expected her to handle this first thrust with little difficulty. The distinctive sound of Grik “infantry” crashing against a shield wall confirmed his confidence that the Silver Battalion had made ready for the charge. The odd trees of the forest muted the sound, of course, but he could tell from experience that the blow had not been a heavy one. Arrows and canister had certainly blunted it as well.
So far, the 5th B’mbaado was not involved, which meant the charge had fallen either on Safir’s center or left. Rolak hoped she’d had time to deploy the follow-up regiments between herself and Captain Garrett’s forces. Even if she hadn’t yet, he doubted she’d have too much trouble. Runners had just reported stiffening resistance—in the form of sporadic attacks—against Garrett’s landing at the port facilities. He had heard horns from there. With any luck at all, most of the enemy was being drawn to those horns even now. Garrett’s landing had been the first, most exposed, and by far the largest in apparent size. He had to make the deepest penetration against the largest known enemy concentration and establish the biggest beachhead. He had two full Baalkpan regiments, one Aryaalan regiment, and one fresh, unblooded Maa-in-la regiment to accomplish this, but he also had the most mobile artillery and mortars. Additionally, General Alden’s 1st Marines would follow on Garrett’s heels and he could call on them if he had to, but supporting him was not their main objective.
Rolak snorted. They’d already discovered one major weakness in the Allied military organization: logistics. At least as far as large-scale expeditionary efforts were concerned. Previously, they’d noticed an annoying disconnect between naval and land forces regarding what equipment and troops should be loaded on what ships and barges, and where those barges should land. A lot of it had to do with preparation and simple sequencing, but the Lemurians (and a few humans) weren’t that good at those tasks yet. Particularly on something of this scale. They had a lot of work to do to improve that situation, and hopefully this “live fire exercise” would highlight the most egregious discrepancies. The worst so far today was that the 1st Marines, which were supposed to land here on the right flank, had instead been mistakenly loaded on barges towed behind Donaghey—towed behind Haakar Faask!
Discovering the error after it was too late to repair had resulted in radical last-minute alterations to the plan. Rolak was glad he hadn’t been there when General Alden learned of the foul-up. A few officers had doubtless become privates or seaman’s apprentices, but really it was not unexpected. They were all amateurs at this sort of thing. They’d practiced numerous landings and even faced a few hostile ones now, but as Commodore Ellis had said, this was different, and their next landing would be even more different still. In any event, now the Marines would have to double-time nearly three miles behind the—hopefully by then—contiguous beachhead, to reach the point where their real mission would begin. In the meantime, there was that right flank Jim had warned them about, just hanging out there.
There might be nothing beyond it, and if there was, he was confident he could refuse the flank with the forces he had. The entire 9th Aryaal was wrapped around, anchored to the river, deployed to do just that, even if it deprived him of close to a third of his own front. The one good thing was that some of the Maa-ni-lo Cavalry meant for Garrett had already arrived here. He would keep it and use it to warn of any threat gathering on his right.
Grik horns blared almost directly to his front. The naval bombardment had paused while the ships sought to maneuver in the clearing morning light, and it sounded like the horns were coming from the area they’d recently been “pasting.” He grinned with the certainty that the guns would resume firing with the same elevation once the ships had rearranged themselves. He glanced at the river and saw that Dowden had finally cleared the snag and was working her way a little farther upstream. While he watched, he saw a cart being wheeled into position beside the tent that had been established as his “See-Pee” (what a strange term, if he translated it correctly) and a small group of ’Cat signalmen began stringing wires from the grotesquely heavy “baat-eries” in the cart to the transmitter already inside the tent. Another haggard, filthy crew of signalmen raced up, panting, with their spool of wire unrolling behind them. Still another crew was hoisting a pole with an aerial attached. Good. If all worked properly—he snorted again—the entire Expeditionary Force would not only have hard communication within itself but wireless communications with the ships—and eventually Big Sal’s planes.
The sound of battle to the left had faded, but the horns thrummed again. This time there were more.
“Lord General!” Colonel Taa-leen of the 5th B’mbaado spoke as he returned. He’d gone to try and view the action. “The assault against the Silver Battalion has failed.”
Rolak nodded. “Did you speak to the Queen Protector?”
“I did, briefly. The enemy came on in ‘the same old way,’ but they did not break as they were slaughtered.” Taa-leen blinked uneasily. “All but a handful were slain, but the Silver sustained heavier than expected losses. Not heavy,” he hastened to add, “but ... more than would usually be expected. I personally viewed the Grik corpses heaped before the shield wall and they do look poor. Not starved necessarily, but ragged and lean.”
“They have a wider range to forage here than was the case on Singapore,” Rolak speculated.
“My assessment as well, Lord General, but the Silver recovered one of their diseased standards. It was the same as some of those taken after the Battle of Singapore.”
“So. We knew they were attempting to evacuate that place before we blockaded it. I would presume they took the better troops first, perhaps even before we cut them off. Some of those may not have been taken all the way to Ceylon, but deposited here instead.”
“Indeed. Which makes it likely we face still more of the vermin responsible for the ... atrocity ... committed against our homes, General, as well as all Jaava.”
Perhaps a dozen horns were sounding now, more stridently than before. They would soon be ready. Dowden and Nakja-Mur opened fire again, and as Rolak watched, mortar teams prepared their tubes. Case shot shrieked overhead and thunderclaps pealed through the trees. Orders swept up and down the line and the three regiments under Rolak’s command, far better prepared than the Silver had been, readied for a much larger test.
“Indeed,” Rolak said, “but that only means they know us better—and even their insane youngling minds may comprehend that fleeing will do them no good.”
The “Raan-goon” harbor facilities were a dismal wreck by anybody’s standards even before Haakar Faask and Donaghey started in on them. They’d been something once, before the Grik planted their next outposts at Singapore and then Aryaal. Nobody really knew much about how the Grik ultimately expanded behind their frontiers. Ceylon was fully integrated into th
e “Grik Empire,” and evidently so was much of India. It was like they’d stopped there for a while, until it was nearly filled up, before pushing on again. Still, Rangoon had been big once, apparently for quite a while. Now it looked a little like the rats were taking over. At least it had. Most of the strange city was now ablaze.
General Pete Alden hadn’t been to the American southwest before, but Grik architecture, at least here, reminded him of a Mexican border town in a western movie. Everything was wood and adobe, though how they kept the adobe from melting under the nearly daily rains was beyond him. Maybe they’d developed some kind of cement? They might mix it with their nasty spit for all he knew. Whatever it was, the adobe didn’t burn, but there was plenty of other stuff that would. Cannon fire still rumbled from the ships, but it was mostly ranging longer now, exploding in the jungle or among the crumbling dwellings that probed into it. A few Grik guns still responded—that had been an unpleasant surprise—but the ones that remained seemed intent on shooting at the ships. Grik gunnery had been notoriously poor ever since they revealed their first cannons, and judging by the relatively light shot they were throwing, these were probably some of those early weapons. They might have been left here or off-loaded from the partially sunken ship. It didn’t matter. As long as they were shooting at the ships, they couldn’t do much damage even if they managed to hit one—and the Grik weren’t using them against his infantry anymore.
Pete took a huge chew of the yellowish “tobacco” leaves and trotted down off the dock where he’d been observing the action. Greg Garrett’s troops had a lot of the crummy city near the docks already, but the 1st Marines were still waiting for him to solidify the link with Queen Maraan’s forces upstream. The Marines had a long trot ahead of them on what promised to be a miserably humid day. They could fight a battle, run three miles or so and fight another, but he didn’t want them to if it wasn’t necessary. Besides, the end-around maneuver might wind up being a lot more than three miles. He joined his troops where they were strung out, resting on the shore under the protection of a high embankment.
“That’s it, fellas,” he said and spat. “Rest up while you can. One of the most important combat skills a Marine can ever learn.”
One of the somewhat dreaded and always poorly trusted me-naaks, or “meanies,” charged down among the Marines, sending several of them scattering. It loped right up to Pete and came to a mud-spraying halt. It stood there, glaring insolently with its tightly trussed, salivaoozing jaws and reptilian eyes. The damn things always reminded him of a cross between a horse-size dog and a crocodile. He looked up and goggled a little to see that the rider was none other than Captain Greg Garrett.
“What the devil are you doing on that monster? I can see it now; when the history of this war gets written, your story’ll be like ol’ Albert Sidney’s, who rode around all day while he was bleeding to death—except in your case, it’ll end with you getting ate by your horse! Don’t you have more important shit to do?”
Garrett chuckled and patted the animal affectionately. “Gracie’s no monster! You’ll hurt her feelings. She’s kind of sensitive. As for what I’m doing on her ...” He shook his head and grinned. “I am from Tennessee! I’ve been riding since I was a kid. Shoot, I was in the Navy before I learned to drive a car! Besides, while I was recuperating and getting back in shape playing Devil Dog with you and your boys, I was also hanging around the Manilo Cavalry learning the monkey drill!”
One of the crudely cast Grik cannonballs moaned overhead, then kicked up a geyser of spray about halfway across the river, just short of Donaghey. Greg didn’t even flinch. Of course, commanding the veteran Donaghey, he’d probably had more Grik cannonballs fired at him than anyone else in the Alliance.
“But what are you doing here ... now? You talked me into letting you command ground troops. Fine. Everybody’s done it but you, and I get it. All the higher-up Navy guys need it on their résumé and we’ll need you at Ceylon, but your troops are over There, and you probably don’t need to be making such a target of yourself.”
“I could make the same argument about you,” Greg warned. “You’re our MacArthur—sorry, make that ‘Black’ Jack Pershing. You’re supposed to be moving the chess pieces, not running around like a rifleman.” He looked pointedly at the ’03 Springfield slung on Pete’s shoulder.
Pete rolled his eyes. “Don’t start that again. I’ve got to be with my Marines to evaluate the new tactics. Rolak and the Queen have done this sort of thing more often than I have. They’ll do fine. All they have to do is hold. I have to see what the enemy does when we change the rules!”
“I didn’t start it again,” Greg reminded Pete. “I came here to report that my guys and gals have everything under control. The battle line’s secure for the moment and we have comm from one end to the other. Your Marines won’t be needed here, and you’re free to go ranting off on your own. You might want to hurry, though. General Rolak says things are starting to build on his right—like you figured. I don’t know if we drew as much down on us here as we’d hoped. Apparently they don’t think much more of their port than we do. Rolak thinks they’re trying to do unto us what we’re planning to do unto them.”
“Well ... why didn’t you just say so?” Pete demanded, turning to his lounging troops.
“One other thing—may be nothing,” Greg said, regaining Pete’s attention. “These buggers we’ve been fighting here are pretty scruffy. Practically skeletons. They fight, but there’s not much fight in ’em. Rolak and Queen Maraan both report the ones they’re up against are skinny, but fit. I don’t know what it means, but I thought you should know.”
Pete Alden nodded thoughtfully. “Form up!” he bellowed, and the drums began to roll.
“Very much as expected, only somewhat more so,” Rolak replied to the signalman who’d requested a status report for Queen Maraan. The signalman ducked back into the tent and the “tele-graaph” key began to clatter. A most remarkable invention, he mused again; instant communication on a battlefield. Throughout his life, signal flags had served well enough, but before this war, his people had never fought battles on such a grand scale. They still used signal flags, but now distance, gunsmoke, and intervening terrain and foliage made them unreliable. He loved the tele-graaph.
The last of the Maa-ni-la Cavalry scouts he’d sent to investigate their flank leaped back over the hastily constructed breastworks. The rider was winded but unharmed, although the me-naak had two of the wickedly barbed Grik crossbow bolts embedded in its right quarter. The scout dismounted, handing his reins to a pair of cavalrymen who’d already returned. With a regretful backward glance at his suffering mount, he raced to stand before Rolak. The me-naak snorted shrilly through its nostrils and tried to smash one of the cavalrymen against its flank with its head when she jerked the first bolt free.
The scout saluted in the Amer-i-caan way he’d been taught, and Rolak returned it.
“Beg to report, sir,’ he said. “Our troop encountered a few Grik as we set out, but most seemed to be running for the port in response to the earlier horns. We left them alone, as ordered, and found a place where we could spread out a little, beyond the thickest jungle, and observe a large enemy camp. The commander there sent out some scouts of his own, and we tried to kill them all in the woods, but I fear we failed. After a while, horns began sounding from the camp itself—you must have heard them—and they just seemed to suck Grik out of the jungle. I presume, with the isolated nature of this Raan-goon, the enemy has dispersed most of his force to forage for itself. That seems consistent with the fact that we encountered almost nothing in the way of wildlife. In any event, a surprisingly large enemy force has assembled on your right front.”
“An excellent report, ah, Corporal,” Rolak said, glancing at the stripes on the hem of the trooper’s black and yellow kilt. “What is your estimate of the size of this force?”
The corporal blinked uncertainty. “Perhaps two thousands, Lord General. More? It was impossible to t
ell for sure, and our presence was discovered, interfering with our estimate. They pursued us very near.” He paused. “We lost two troopers to their crossbows.”
“Very well. Thank you, Corporal. It is not their nature to linger overlong when their prey is in sight. Tend your mount. We might expect their full attention at any moment.” He turned. “Colonel Taa-leen, Colonel Grisa, you heard?”
“Indeed,” replied both officers. They’d arrived nearly as quickly as the scout.
“Signalman,” Rolak called, “acquaint my dear Queen Maraan that we will likely have visitors shortly. I may call on her Black Battalion of the Six Hundred as a reserve if she has no objection and General Alden does not arrive in time.”
“Lord General,” the signalman replied, “General Alden and the First Marines have left the port at the double time.”
Rolak’s response was interrupted by braying, thrumming horns, quite close. An expectant roar thundered in the trees. “Send to Dowden,” Rolak yelled over the sudden cacophony. “‘Concentrate fire two hundred tails—I mean “yaards” forward of our position.’ ” He took a breath. “Mortar teams, make ready! Archers and artillery will commence firing at my command. Lock shields!”
Several Hoosh-KAK! sounds split the incoming tide, and the veterans who’d heard them before called out “Firebombs!” or “Grik-fire!” in two tongues.
“Cover yourselves!” roared Colonel Grisa, and he and Taa-leen attempted to tackle Rolak to the ground and cover him with their own bodies.
Rolak twisted away. “I will stand,” he said. “My old hide is not so valuable that I must squirm in the dirt to protect it.”
Taa-leen got another grip and roughly pulled him down. “With respect, Lord General,” he growled, “your ‘old hide’ covers the mind that will preserve our hides, and mine is quite important to me!”
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