Iron Gray Sea d-7

by Taylor Anderson

  CHAPTER 14

  Grik India

  March 12, 1944

  First Fleet “Northern” Allied Expeditionary Force

  “Would you look at that!” Colonel Billy Flynn blurted when Captain Bekiaa-Sab-At led him to the vast open clearing and he viewed the… extraordinary sight before him. He wasn’t the only one staring. Many of his Rangers had already fanned out to secure the discovery, and most of them were gawking as well. The First Amalgamated and elements of the 6th Maa-ni-la Cavalry were responsible for screening the northern flank of II Corps’ leapfrog advance along the western road toward the looming, sawtooth escarpment ahead. The objective was another major crossroads beyond the mountain gateway on the more open land beyond that had been identified by reconnaissance flights as a potential marshaling area for significant Grik forces. The enemy might infiltrate through the forest, but they could only move artillery and massed troops by road.

  Unfortunately, the time it took to secure the frontiers around Madras, and the recon required to confirm or amend Allied strategy previously based only on captured Grik maps and Hij-Geerki’s notions, had delayed any “lightning” thrusts to seize that next strategic crossroads. The Grik command had likely used that time to catch its breath. In several respects, maybe that was a good thing. The “Northern” AEF had needed a breath itself after the sporadic but fierce fighting that punctuated the consolidation, resupply, and reorganization required after the improved but still chaotic aftermath of the invasion. Also, the enemy had reacted to the capture of Madras as hoped, and sent most of its known armies northeast. This allowed III Corps and the newly constituted V Corps (together constituting the “Southern” AEF) to cross the narrow land bridge from Ceylon with little resistance, and secure that vital approach. The Cavalry-heavy V Corps was now racing north across a relatively open coastal plain to link up with Rolak’s I Corps as it began its push south. Hopefully, the V would take the Grik assembling to oppose Rolak in the rear.

  The Allied High Command, from CINCWEST on down, was pleased with the campaign so far. Not only had they avoided a bloody smash-up at the crossing; they believed they’d dispersed the enemy into smaller, more manageable packets. They’d done the same with their own forces of course, but the Allies’ superior training, discipline, weapons, and growing cohesion should justify that risk. The Allies had uncontested control of the air after destroying a few snooping Grik zeppelins, and the rest, wherever they were, seemed reluctant to come up. Ultimately, they also had the only real deepwater port on the east coast firmly in their hands, and they were just now coming to grips with what an important industrial center Madras had been for the enemy. The sheer tonnage of enemy shipping and stockpiles of coal, timbers, and plate steel they’d captured was mind-boggling. The plate steel was an ominous discovery, but correspondence from Courtney Bradford had predicted that much of the enemy’s entire coal reserves would be in northeast India, and losing Madras had to hurt them.

  Consequently, however, along with the element of surprise, II Corps’ ability to move quickly had also been lost. It couldn’t simply march down the rough road in column, so scout regiments were tasked with the difficult chore of moving forward through the dense forest on either side of the broad dirt “highway” one at a time, until they found defensible positions or land features where they forted up in the old Roman style. Only then did their opposite number do the same. Once the flanks were secure, General-Queen Protector Safir Maraan brought her corps up the road. It was a drawn-out process that slowed the rapid advances they’d made following the invasion, but only the Grik knew all the forest pathways that might allow them to strike a longer column in the flank. This way, they hoped, the corps as a whole would maintain greater cohesion and more rapid internal lines of support, and could rush troops to any major point of contact with the enemy.

  “I already have looked at it, sir,” Bekiaa responded dryly, blinking mild frustration. “That is why I thought you would wish to.”

  “Jeez,” Flynn murmured, ignoring her tone. “I bet no damn Grik ever built that.”

  They’d seen some very weird things since the landing at Madras almost three weeks before; things unlike any they’d encountered yet. Again, the Grik noncombatants-if there really was such a thing-had fled or been slaughtered, but there were giant, furry, buzzard things, kind of like flying skuggiks, that had “cleaned up” the countless Grik dead. They were almost as big as the dragons Second Fleet had encountered, but they had beaks instead of toothy jaws and avoided anything alive. There were deadly snake… things… in abundance, much to their unpleasant surprise, most of which lived in the trees instead of on the ground. They had short, grasping claws along their bodies that allowed them to cling tightly to trees and limbs instead of drooping about. Lemurians as a race weren’t accustomed to snakes and only a few had ever seen one. Courtney Bradford actually suspected that the rare snakes described to him were probably transportees themselves, since there were so many things that would happily root them up and eat them. Rhino pigs would keep them off Borno, for example. Regardless, Lemurians instinctively hated anything that looked like a snake, and God knew how much ammunition they’d wasted before fire discipline had been restored.

  Other new discoveries included bizarre gliding and tree-leaping rodents that infested the forests as thickly as insects, and there were tiny hummingbird-like creatures that behaved like mosquitoes. Added to the real mosquitoes, the needle-nosed little devils contributed significantly to the misery of the Allied troops.

  They saw very few large animals besides Grik-and the adolescent Griklets that had apparently been released to harass them once again. As on Ceylon, it grew evident that without the Grik, there was a big hole in the local food chain. Almost nothing substantial or easy to catch had been seen, leaving everyone to wonder again what the Grik ate besides one another-and their enemies, of course. Hij-Geerki had been a “frontier clerk,” basically, and though he’d been to Ceylon and had given them some useful information, he’d never been in a position to explain how large populations of his species fed themselves in older, more established parts of its empire. It was well-known that frontier and expeditionary Grik relied on “prey” and even each other for sustenance, but he had no idea what else they ate in the sacred ancestral lands. Prey-of any sort-had to be scarce and, obviously, no species could rely entirely on itself for sustenance, particularly when it needed more numbers, not less.

  Another new mystery had taunted them in Madras. Mixed with the usually simple adobe Grik architecture they’d grown accustomed to, were ancient, far more sophisticated ruins that didn’t make any sense at all. So far, they’d discovered only tantalizing fragments, incorporated directly into Grik construction, but now Flynn gazed at a granite cliff face adorned with strikingly ornate ruins carved from the living rock. His first impression was of a temple of some sort, and arched entryways surrounded by crumbling columns extended deep into the cliff. His second impression was that it was very, very old. Only when his focus expanded and he began to digest the entire scene did he begin to form a possible answer to one fundamental question about the Grik, at least the “locals.”

  The ruins they’d found had been incorporated into another structure as usual, but in this case it formed one wall of an immense, recently cut, tree-staked pen that nearly filled the clearing. Inside the pen, shuffling and lowing, their ribs becoming visible along their sides, were hundreds of large, greenish gray beasts with long tails and oddly duck-shaped heads. They were actually bigger than the Asian elephant-size brontasarries in Baalkpan, and maybe two-thirds the size of a super lizard. Their hind legs were much larger than their forelegs, and they stumped around, cowlike, mostly on all fours, vainly rooting at the dirt for something to eat.

  Me-naak mounted cav ’Cats eased forward, their slathering mounts snorting and sniffing, but the penned animals showed no fear. Some merely raised their large heads and gazed disinterestedly at the new arrivals. Flynn was glad to have cavalry, even if meanies gave h
im the creeps. They were a pain in the ass to feed; worse than medieval heavy horse, he suspected, because there certainly wasn’t any forage for the dedicated carnivores and they always seemed tempted to forage on his troops. Oddly, they obeyed their riders about as well as any horse Flynn had seen, and even appeared to bond with them to a degree. Sometimes, in a capricious fit, they might try to eat one, but that was rare.

  The point that struck him then was that whatever they were, meanies were obviously predators-yet the penned… whatever the hell they were weren’t afraid of them. That meant there likely weren’t any large predators around, other than Grik of course, and hadn’t been for a very long time. Also, since the pen had to have been made by Grik, the creatures inside apparently didn’t consider them predators either, in the traditional sense.

  “My God,” Flynn exclaimed. “Dino-cows. They’re cattle for slaughter, I’ll bet. Orderly!” he shouted back down the trail Bekiaa brought him. A young ’Cat scampered up, slate and chalk in hand. They had paper now and ink, but it was simpler and more economical for orderlies to carry the older tools. First, not all of them could read or write English. And second, their dispatches would be transcribed before transmission or distribution.

  “I tripped on a root,” the near youngling apologized, blinking too fast for Flynn to decipher the meaning. “I thought it was snake!”

  “Caap’n Bekiaa!” cried a Ranger sergeant who trotted up and slammed to attention, tail straight.

  “What have you found?”

  “There is rolls of leaf fodder, stored in those… cave holes, an’ a… gizmo for diverting spring water to the pen, but no sign of Griks here for days.”

  “Get this out,” Flynn snapped, suddenly terse, and the orderly ’Cat poised his chalk. “Have discovered more goofy ruins of non-Grik origin. More important, we’ve found a big… herd of large animals, apparently corralled as live rations for the enemy. Most of the structure enclosing the animals is of recent construction, and I must therefore assume a large enemy force is nearby.” He rubbed his eyes. “Maybe they were expecting us to stick to the road and we took ’em by surprise. The caretakers here probably weren’t fighting Grik, anyway.” He looked at his orderly. “Forget that part, write this: “Recommend Air Corps keep a lookout for similar sites. Placement may give clues about enemy plans.” He looked at Bekiaa. “They can’t count on us or each other for rations until after the fight, and they’ll damn sure need something to tide them over if they want to gather up anything big enough to face us.” He paused a moment, then nodded at the orderly.

  “Run on. Get that to the Division runners as quick as you can, then get back here.”

  “Yes, sur!”

  “You think they eat these things all the time?” Bekiaa asked, gesturing at the pen. “Scuttlebutt says the flyboys been seein’ dino herds on the high plains we’re headin’ for, specially round water, but nothing in the woods or coastal plains.”

  “Maybe the Grik live mostly down here, but herd these things down from up there. Who knows? Maybe they raise ’em and just let ’em graze up high.” Flynn waved at the trees. “Flyboys can’t see crap down in these woods from above. There could be a million Grik within five miles of the damn road at any point.”

  “But… no dino-cows were in Maa-draas.”

  “Maybe not, but I bet if somebody looked again, they’d find pens where they’d been.” He shook his head. “Or maybe they just carted in the meat. Killing something that big in the middle of a city might drive all the Grik there wild!”

  “Then what about the bones? We should have found bones.”

  “I may not be Courtney Bradford, but I know a thing or two. There’s lots of industrial uses for ground or powdered bone-and, hell, maybe they eat that too. The point is, if I’m right, the Air Corps should be able to tell us soon.” He looked at the pen again, then back at the sergeant. “Form a detail to feed and water those damn things, then tell Captain Saachic some of his cav ’Cats are going to have to learn to be cowboys. I want them all herded to the rear. Whether we can eat ’em or not, I’m not leaving them here for the Grik.”

  The next morning, the Rangers returned to the road near a narrow lake just west of 3rd Division and the rest of Safir’s II Corps. They were moving to shoot the gap through a rocky, wooded pass bordered by a swift, steeply falling river and high, jagged crags. They were joined by the 1st Battalion of the 2nd Marines, as Flynn had requested, and were screened by Captain Saachic’s company of the 6th Maa-ni-la Cavalry. An hour after daybreak, they proceeded to do what they’d been doing all along: leaping forward to establish a defensive position to support the 1st Sular (this time), and another company of the 6th. The difference was that Flynn’s leap would also be a reconnaissance in force at the end of a longer limb, and the 1st Sular and 6th Maa-ni-la would follow almost immediately. In the confines of the gap, the only avenue for support was from the rear, so Safir would bring the rest of the Corps through as quickly as she could. No one had forgotten the near-catastrophic ambush this new Grik commander had laid for them on Ceylon, so Safir didn’t mean to leave any real spaces between the various regiments for the enemy to exploit.

  The river formed an impassable barrier on the south side of the gap, snug against the sheer cliff it had carved through the ages. The gap on the north side of the river was strewn with great, undermined boulders but was reasonably wide, enough that the troops could negotiate most of it in a series of block formations instead of long columns. Against the Grik, massed firepower was still the only defense. Any open-order advance was suicide. The rise in elevation was significant, but fairly consistent. There was good visibility to the front and behind, at least where the road was straight, and though it couldn’t guarantee there were no Grik on the high, forested ridges, the Air Corps assured them they would face no artillery.

  As usual, it was a hot, grueling day, and the rough, rocky, uphill passage made transporting their wagons and artillery difficult. Paalkas had hooves, but they weren’t hardened against this type of terrain, and many were lamed. Those too far gone to heal quickly were butchered for the cavalry. Others moaned and squealed in pain loud enough to be heard over the tumbling water, but labored on as if they somehow knew what awaited them if they gave up. Even the cavalry’s me-naaks weren’t immune to injury. None were lamed, but they did grow testy.

  Pairs of Nancys occasionally rumbled by overhead, sometimes low enough to drop weighted messages with streamers attached. These would be carried back to Division HQ, but the pilots rightly thought Flynn needed the results of their forward observations first. Some of the messages disturbed him. Apparently, once they’d been told what to look for, the Air Corps had increasingly begun to notice odd clearings in the forest. Where before pilots might have been content to report that no Grik were seen, now they reported the clearings as possible corrals, whether dino-cows were present or not. Flynn was compiling his own mental map of the sightings and the picture practically confirmed, if he was right, that there were a lot of Grik in the area.

  Nothing of the enemy had been seen on the more-open plain beyond the pass, but the patrol patterns the Nancys flew didn’t allow them to scout more than about twenty or thirty miles ahead. Twice Flynn sent requests for special flights to scout beyond that, hopefully as far as the Corps’ next objective. More planes eventually flew by, and he hoped they’d gotten the word.

  Hours passed in the thick, humid heat within what was quickly becoming known as Rocky Gap, before advance scouts reported they were nearing the western end of the pass.

  “Captain Saachic!” Flynn shouted. “Take your company forward, if you please, and scout the flanks as they broaden out. Then find us and the Sularans a couple of good places to park. You know what to look for. Remember, it may take a couple days for the entire corps to move up, so high ground would be nice. Feel free to detail a couple of platoons to begin laying out the position.”

  “Yes, Colonel,” Saachic replied, whirling his mount. His orderly, mounted beside him,
blew a series of shrill calls with his whistle.

  The gap gradually widened, and the daylong tension caused by the confining passage began to ebb. A breeze stirred the regimental flags for the first time that day, and even if it was hot, it was welcome. Flynn didn’t know what he’d expected to find beyond the pass-maybe some kind of prairie, the way it had been described. It was a grassland, but the trees hadn’t surrendered to it entirely. They stood singly or in clumps amid and atop gently rolling hills. They didn’t look much different from the trees in the forest below, but the tall, straight trunks were bare much higher up and were topped with bright green leaves several shades lighter than the dark, thick grass. A line of denser trees followed the river that receded in the distance. In Flynn’s mind, it was beautiful country.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Bekiaa admitted beside him. “Maybe north Saylon is kind of the same, but the trees are different. Only at sea have I ever felt the world was so… big.”

  “Yeah,” Flynn agreed. “There’s an awful lot of sky up there, and these craggy, hilly, mountainy things we passed through turn into real mountains to the south. See?” He pointed.

  One of Saachic’s troopers galloped up and halted, his me-naak blowing. “Caap’n pick two hills,” he said, pointing north, then south. Flynn looked. Both were about the same size, but were a little farther apart than he would have preferred. As the rest of the corps moved up it would fill the space in between and have two solid anchors, however. When they advanced again, the leapfrogging would no longer be necessary. They should be able to rely on conventional scouting in the relatively open land ahead.

  “Okay. We’ll take the northern position, as usual. Ride back until you meet the next company of the Sixth and lead it up. You can show ’em where to go. The First Sular won’t be far behind us.” He paused, looking out at the lovely landscape. Pretty land. Two perfect hills just a little too far apart… He shook his head. Getting paranoid. He knew he’d faced this new Grik general before, and the bastard was sneaky. He hated his guts but had to admire him too, compared to other Grik generals they’d faced. He rubbed his bristly chin, introspective. He wasn’t really a colonel, after all. His only infantry experience prior to this was as a corporal a quarter century ago. Maybe I should’ve stayed with Mr. Laumer and that goddamn sub, he thought.