“It wasn’t that bad,” Matt deflected. “Besides, I had the best doc in the world.” He winked at Sandra. “Prettiest too.”
“Of course, of course! But . . . you are better?”
“Sure,” Matt said with a hint of suspicion. “I said so, didn’t I?”
“Indeed. I merely asked because I wouldn’t want anything to prevent the lovely mission you’re planning! Things are somewhat at a standstill in the East, I’m afraid, at least until sufficient forces have gathered at the Enchanted Isles to mount a creditable invasion of the Doms.”
“I thought you were set on going to the Enchanted Isles—the Galápagos,” Matt said with a smile.
Courtney’s bushy eyebrows approached one another. “As you once said, it’s not the same place here. And by all accounts the bloody Doms haven’t left much to explore. It will be hustle, bustle, hurry up and wait for some time while enough troops are sent to sink the isles. High Admiral Jenks and General Shinya are planning raids to gain intelligence, but they’d never let me tag along.”
Matt shook his head. He’d been discussing those raids with Jenks via wireless.
“I’ve far better prospects for exploration and honest excitement if I accompany you,” Courtney continued.
“And maybe better prospects of getting killed as well,” Matt said with a wry grin. “But you’re welcome—if my mission ever even happens.”
“Nonsense,” Courtney snorted. “And of course the mission will proceed. Adar is a most sensible creature, and anyone can see the advantages from a strategic point of view. Your mission would doubtless relieve some of the pressure on General Alden! He’s in quite a desperate situation, I understand.”
Matt nodded grimly.
“Well. If our dear Adar lacks certainty regarding your scheme, for some unfathomable reason, I shall speak to him myself!”
“Still the ambassador,” Sandra chuckled.
Courtney frowned. “No, my dear, and no strategist either. But as empirical observer—oh! Please do pardon the pun—I’m as convinced as anyone that we can’t simply react to the actions of our enemies. We must keep them off balance and force them to react to us!”
“Damn straight!” Gray agreed.
“In any event,” Courtney continued, his expression still grave, “I’ve done my bit as ambassador and had quite enough of it, I assure you. I’m not cut out for politics. I was most hesitant to leave our dear Governor-Empress, of course, but Prime Factor Bates has everything well in hand. Besides, I’m confident that any remaining traitors in the Empire have far more reason to fear the Governor-Empress than the other way around.” He paused thoughtfully. “In addition, I was not insensitive to the necessity that the reorganization and reforms underway in the Empire should have an entirely Imperial face. As it is, the vast majority of the people there have come to embrace them—particularly after all that has happened: the murders of Governor-Emperor Gerald McDonald and his sweet wife, not to mention most of the rest of the government that remained after the Dom-inspired coup attempt! Then there’s this confounded new war with the Dominion, of course!”
He smiled sadly at Sandra. “You have quite an inquisitive mind, my dear. Do you not find it tiresome how these dreadful wars constantly prevent our uninhibited study of the wonders this world has laid before us?”
He stopped suddenly, blinking. “Oh! Where was I? Yes! As I was saying, I consider it essential that we, by which I mean the Western powers in the Grand Alliance, not appear to be propping up a weak Imperial government and taking advantage of the mere girl—as many there see her—who runs it. We’re the steadfast allies, but beyond those articles we negotiated regarding the institution of indenture, we must not be seen as meddling in the domestic affairs of the Empire!”
“Were you meddling?” Matt asked.
“Perhaps just a bit—as you know. And for a tense time our Marines and naval personnel did prop her up, I suppose. But as the new Governor-Empress herself insisted to me, she must be allowed to spread her wings, as it were, and rule her empire in deed as well as name.”
That phrase suddenly struck Matt as familiar; then he remembered Chairman Adar had said much the same thing in a message sent to all commanders—that he meant to be Chairman of the Grand Alliance in more than name, and from now on, he’d make all major strategic decisions and take the heat when things went wrong. It sounded like his intentions were noble, and after Matt had been out of pocket so long, he knew he couldn’t make all the strategic decisions anymore. As he’d said many times, somebody had to be in charge all the time, somebody in a position to see the big picture. But could Adar really see it from Baalkpan? Matt just hoped it was truly Adar talking, and the Chairman hadn’t been influenced to get just a little tactical by Commander Simon Herring.
In fact, Adar’s new stance was the reason Matt’s plan wasn’t complete. He was preparing as if Adar would give him the go order and fully expected him to, but for the first time, the order hadn’t come as a matter of course.
“So, Courtney,” he said, “basically, Empress Becky threw you out.”
“Not at all,” Courtney denied. “But I was . . . somewhat prominent in the aftermath of the dreadful events that resulted in her rise to power.” His expression grew troubled. “She has suffered terribly, and though I’m confident my assistance and personal regard afforded her some comfort, a coldness has settled within her, I fear. It’s as though she’s actually pushing away those who care most about her—Sean Bates made note of it as well—and doesn’t want the love and comfort we tried to give.” He stooped suddenly and raised the package he’d brought from the plane. “A case in point,” he said, removing the bright cloth and displaying the contents of the cage.
“Petey!” Sandra gasped.
“Petey,” a little voice tentatively confirmed. A small, brightly hued creature stirred and gazed at them. It looked like a lizard, and was a little bigger than a parrot, but colored like one. Also, instead of wings it had a finely furred membrane stretched from just behind its little hands back to its hindquarters. The then Princess Rebecca had adopted the little tree-gliding reptile while marooned on Yap Island, a place Dennis Silva still called Boogerland.
“I can’t believe it!” Saan-Kakja exclaimed. “She loves that ridiculous creature!”
“Yes, she does,” Courtney agreed grimly, “which makes my point. She said she must ‘dispense with childish thoughts and attachments,’ and in her position could no longer go about with a pet lizard draped around her neck. There may actually be something to that. She will not remain sequestered, as other female successors to the throne have done before, and Petey’s constant presence—which he would insist on—would likely only aggravate certain . . . antebellum factions. She practically forced the little bugger on me, and asked if any of her friends would care to entertain the ‘greedy little thing.’ Greedy little thing indeed! She doted on him!” He looked at Saan-Kakja and Sandra. “I believe this act was a cry for help—a kind of help I cannot give, I’m sad to say.” He held the cage out to Saan-Kakja, but the Lemurian high chief backed away.
“I cannot care for it!” she objected desperately. “I do not keep pets! I . . . I wouldn’t know what to do with it!”
“Just feed it fairly often and it will be quite happy, I assure you!”
“Eat?” asked Petey, suddenly less despondent.
Chief Gray’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t keep pets. Few ’Cats do. But there’s critters like him runnin’ around Maa-ni-la now. Some common . . . well, housecats, we’d call ’em, have jumped ship from our Imperial visitors too. I’ve seen a couple.”
“You’ve seen creatures like Petey . . . here?” Courtney demanded, suddenly intense.
“Well, yeah, I guess. I don’t know about exactly like him, but close enough.”
“Why?” Matt asked.
“Yes, why?” Meksnaak insisted in turn. He’d begun to interpret human “face moving” to some degree, but in this case he caught Bradford’s tone of voice. “Wh
y does this concern you so?”
Courtney looked coldly at Meksnaak. There was no love lost between the two. “I’m always concerned when an invasive, destructive species is introduced into an ecology that cannot defend against it.” He scratched his nose. “I doubt that is the case here, however. Housecats are nowhere near the top of the local food chain! Tree-gliding creatures like Petey, however . . .” He paused. “Blast! I’ve been around the little devil for months, and it never occurred to me to name his species! Gluttonous maximus . . . minimus might not be inappropriate. The thing is, though, if there are more creatures from Yap running . . . or gliding about here, then it follows that there have been unauthorized voyages there!” He looked at Matt. “We declared that place off-limits for a very good reason, you’ll recall!”
Matt scratched his chin. “Yeah. I take it you haven’t sent anybody, Your Excellency?” he asked Saan-Kakja.
“Never!”
“I’ll ask Chairman Adar if he did—without telling me.” He shrugged. “Not that he has to . . .” He doesn’t have to, he said to himself, but why wouldn’t he? The thought was troubling.
Sandra reached over and took the cage from Bradford. “I’ll take him,” she said with a worried frown.
“Oh. Well, back to the empress,” Courtney said. “I do hope Sister Audry will be some comfort to her. She asked for her specifically, you see.”
Sister Audry was a Dutch Benedictine nun originally stranded on Talaud Island with Irvin Laumer and the rest of the survivors of S-19. She’d been sent to escort the children of diplomats, senior officers, and other luminaries when the antiquated sub fled Surabaya in the Old War. The surviving children—Abel Cook was one—were almost all midshipmen or -women now. Despite some alarming allusions to Catholicism practiced by the Dominion, Rebecca had grown to like and respect Sister Audry and thought she might be the key to subverting the perversions of the Doms. Her first chore was to go among the Dom prisoners of war on New Ireland and discover if exposure to the True Faith might break their devotion to what it had been twisted to here.
“I hope so too,” Matt agreed. “The good sister ought to be on Respite Island by now, as a matter of fact. She’ll be in the New Britain Isles soon enough, and I’ll ask her what she thinks about how Rebecca is . . . adapting.”
“Come!” Saan-Kakja said. “We will go to the Great Hall. Though he won’t admit it, I can see that Cap-i-taan Reddy is tiring. We will resume our discussion there.”
“Eat?” Petey asked a little more forcefully.
“I’m sure we can find something for you soon,” Sandra assured the creature.
Courtney gestured at it. “You know, for such an, um, aerialist, I was surprised to discover he is somewhat given to airsickness! I wasn’t sure he’d survive the flight.” Courtney’s eyebrows rose. “He made a dreadful mess in the plane, and I was quite convinced he would die, until he seemed to grow accustomed.” He lowered his voice. “In fact, I was rather looking forward to dissecting him—but only if he died naturally, of course! And I’d never have told young Rebecca.”
“Eat! Goddam!” Petey suddenly shrieked.
“You may still get your chance at him,” Sandra said with a smirk. “Maybe I understand a little better why Rebecca had to get rid of him!”
CHAPTER
3
////// Grik India
General Halik’s HQ
“I s that the new enemy weapon?” demanded General Halik, commander of all Grik land forces in the “officially” reconquered Regency of India. His yellow eyes and reptilian stance were intense. General Orochi Niwa, formerly a lieutenant of the Special Naval Landing Forces aboard the doomed Japanese Imperial Navy battle cruiser Amagi, had entered the strange ruins they’d commandeered as a command post south of the Great Lake. He was carrying a long, slender object of bright, slightly rusty steel and battered wood.
Niwa nodded. “One of them,” he replied shortly, gazing about with curiosity as usual. The ruins were truly ancient, their once ornate nature blurred by uncounted centuries of neglect. He speculated again about whatever lost civilization once inhabited the place. But the Grik conquest of India occurred so long ago that the builders were not remembered and Niwa would likely never know any more about them.
Halik hissed ironic frustration and beckoned him near. The enemy had many new weapons, and only Grik numbers and Halik’s and Niwa’s strategies had created the recent victory—if it could be called that. “Stalemate” was perhaps a more appropriate word, and if that somehow satisfied the new Lord Regent-Consort and General of the Sea Hisashi Kurokawa, it couldn’t satisfy General Halik.
A makeshift roof kept out most of the rain that never seemed to ease. Halik and his immediate staff were infinitely more comfortable than his Uul warriors besieging the army of the “prey,” but he was heartily sick of his circumstances. He was immune to hardship but was a creature of action, and the weeks of delay since the great battles that established this current unsatisfactory situation made him short-tempered, even with Niwa.
General Niwa said no more, but raised the object in question and placed it atop the heavy-lined maps on the table Halik leaned against. He made no response to Halik’s tone either; he’d grown to accept it. But Halik knew as he peered at the weapon that Niwa wouldn’t speak again as long as he sounded like he was feeling sorry for himself. It is odd, Halik reflected, that he and I have grown so close, learned each other so well, when our physical forms are so different that we can barely even speak each other’s language. They could understand each other, but could form the other’s words only with extreme difficulty. The result wasn’t worth the effort and left them both feeling foolish.
Halik had initially likened his attachment to the alien creature to those transient . . . fondnesses that occasionally occurred between warriors in the heat of battle, but he’d never felt it this strong before or had it remain so long. Niwa often called Halik “my friend,” and Halik had parroted the term, but he’d begun to learn what the still ill-defined word truly implied. Niwa was Halik’s friend! He’d never had anything like a friend before, and, despite their differences, their strange—perhaps even unnatural—kinship was quite real. He’d come to believe the equally real understanding they shared might well be unique. In addition, both of them had grown apart from their own people, their own species in many ways, and though the concept of friendship remained a complicated thing for Halik to grasp, he knew he felt more . . . comfortable with Niwa than with any other being of any form.
“This is the weapon you described!” Halik said, his tone less severe. He traced the long, wood-and-metal thing with a claw. He’d seen some of the enemy’s weapons before; far more advanced than those entering service with his own army, particularly the more elite members of the Hatchling Host—Grik-designed from birth to understand the concept of defense and trained as an army instead of a mob of mindlessly attacking warriors. Elements of that new army had been deployed far earlier than intended, but even now held the enemy bottled up in the rocky gap that followed the flow of the river feeding the lake. They fought well despite their youth, and obeyed even complicated orders amazingly well, but their weapons, large-caliber—roughly four-fifth’s of an inch—tanegashima-style matchlocks, were primitive and unreliable—particularly in the rain!—compared to the enemy weapons he’d seen.
“What makes this one different, better than the others?” Halik asked. “It looks the same as the rifle muskets we captured from the force we destroyed beyond the pass. And these were found there also?”
“Some few were found there as well,” Niwa confirmed. “The enemy obviously tried to destroy as many as they could—at the end. And it is the same as the others in many ways. Most of the parts are identical. But though the rifle muskets you saw right after the fighting were formidable and advanced enough, compared to what . . . we have, these are even better.” Niwa’s brows knitted. “With all the other advances the enemy has made, I would not have been surprised to see them eventually, but that
they have them so quickly is a dreadful surprise indeed.” He paused. “The Americans and their . . . Lemurian friends”—even Halik couldn’t really consider their enemies “prey” anymore—“had smoothbore muskets when we first engaged them on Ceylon. Even before that campaign ended, their marksmanship made me suspect they had rifled some of their arms—a technique I described that forces their projectiles to spin, like fletching does a crossbow bolt . . .”
“Which makes them more accurate,” Halik finished for him.
“Indeed,” Niwa agreed, then gestured at the rifle on the table. “But this is a step, simple on its face, that not only increases the effectiveness of rifled weapons manyfold, but deeply concerns me regarding the enemy’s capabilities—and the level those capabilities are likely on the very brink of becoming.”
“You can see the future by gazing at a single weapon?” Halik asked skeptically.
“In a sense,” Niwa replied, and took a breath. “I was not here for the fighting beyond the pass, and did not even know these new weapons existed at first, since they were simply gathered with the others. They do look much the same. The supreme difference is not what they look like or what they do, but how swiftly they do it—and how quickly the enemy has put them in the field!” Niwa picked up the weapon and cocked the hammer back. “For the most part, this is exactly the same weapon the enemy has carried since Ceylon. It was probably even made from those”—suddenly, he raised a small lever and the top of the barrel at the breech flipped forward on a hinge—“only this one has been made to load self-contained ammunition from the back!” Fishing in his pocket, Niwa produced several shiny brass things and inserted one in the back of the weapon, closed the top of the barrel, and fired a thundering shot into the earth at his feet! Quickly, he recocked the hammer, flipped open the breech—which somehow launched a smoking brass cylinder over his shoulder—loaded again, and fired another shot. To emphasize his point, he did it a third time before laying the smoking rifle back on the table.
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