Blood In the Water (22 page)

“Then climb aboard my deviant innovation, General Yikkit, and welcome,” Halik said at last, releasing his sword hilt and grasping the rail above. “It seems we have a great deal to discuss, you and I.”

CHAPTER
13

Aboard the NUS
Congress
The Caribbean
September 29, 1944

“And this device actually facilitates communication, without direct contact by wire, even beyond the horizon?” Captain Ezra Willis asked, amazed, gazing at the transceiver Fred Reynolds and Kari-Faask had removed from their plane. He, Hudgens, and several other men were gathered with the young aviators, standing around a long table in
Congress
's gun room. Fred equated the term with “wardroom” in his navy. He was the only one seated at the table, but Kari was beside it, rigging out the tripod legs on the hand generator that she'd stand on while cranking the handles. Fred had opened the wooden case protecting the wireless set and was tinkering with it while their hosts gaped at the contraption in fascination. Captain Willis was a portly, hawk-beaked man, and he'd honored Lieutenant Hudgens's pledge to treat them well, much to Fred's relief.
Not just for his and Kari's sakes, but for the sake of their mission to make friendly contact. Willis had also been very grateful for the Dom prisoners they'd given him, though he hadn't revealed exactly why they were so important.

The confined space was beneath a skylight, so there was plenty of illumination even without the gimbaled oil lamps, but the skylight was closed so they could speak in private, and the room was close with the cloying scent of burning fish oil, mildew, damp wood, and sweaty wool. So potent was the combined bouquet, Kari's own distinctive musty sweat odor went unremarked and apparently unnoticed. Of course, their hosts might've just been being polite. Fred still didn't know what to think about that. In contrast to Captain Anson's relatively caustic personality, his apparent countrymen seemed to have surprisingly good manners. At least their officers did. The common sailors were just as earthy and profane as any sailors he'd known, but
Congress
's officers, at least, seemed determined to impose a measure of civility aboard their ship—and perhaps the whole savage world around them. And it didn't strike Fred as a false affectation.

Around them, the ship creaked as it churned through a rising sea and the engine thumped the deck beneath their feet like a great iron heart. The sea coursed down the sides, hissing and bumping against the stout wooden hull in a relaxing, reassuring way that Fred had grown to associate with a well-found, healthy ship. The “New Americans” (what else was Fred going to call them?) immediately recognized the wireless set's detachable keyboard, but the rest was a mystery to them. Fred had been right: telegraphy was used by these people, as was a lot of the technology the destroyermen had introduced to the Lemurians. They were in fact on roughly the same technological level now—with a few big exceptions.

“Sure,” Fred replied. “That's why we call it ‘wireless.' It'll need a wire antennae rigged as high as we can get it for best results, but we don't need direct contact. The only questions then would be if there's anybody listening, and if it's working right. I don't think it's busted,” he added worriedly. “It seems okay. But I just know how to operate it. I don't really know exactly how it works, and I can't make one.” He nodded at Kari, who was winding the handles of the generator experimentally. “She's better at all that stuff than I am.”

“Indeed?” Captain Willis inquired, studying Kari over his long nose.
“Most interesting. I confess, I grow more pleased that we made your acquaintance with each passing day.” This was the third day since they'd met, and
Congress
had lingered in the lagoon through the night of the first, making small repairs to the prize and carefully taking the hard-used Nancy floatplane aboard. Afraid they'd screw something up, Fred hadn't shown them how to disassemble the plane, or even told them it could be done. Consequently, loading it hadn't been easy, and they'd had to shift all the ship's boats and two of her guns. The guns were of great interest to the aviators. The ship mounted only twenty of them, but they were big, and they were
rifled
. Rifling its large-bore muzzle-loaders was something even the Alliance hadn't gotten around to. After that, Fred and Kari were fed—and gently questioned—in the Captain's great cabin, aft. Much to their relief, it had actually been a very pleasant and reassuring meal. Neither missed the significance of the fact that they were dining with the captain and his senior officers, while the Dom prisoners were locked away below.

They set sail the following day, in company with their prize, for a tactfully undisclosed destination. All the while, Fred and Kari continued to ask—and answer—questions. They described the war in the West (or East, depending on how one looked at it), between the Alliance on the one hand and the Grik and Doms on the other. They also related how
Walker
came to be on this world, as well as other events from the “old” world prior to that, which
Congress
's crew found endlessly fascinating. In return, Willis, Hudgens, and the rest of
Congress
's crew, growing more comfortable with their visitors, returned the favor and gave Fred and Kari a brief summary of the postarrival history of the New United States.

“How far will the signal carry? What is the, ah, range, I suppose?” Captain Willis asked.

“Pretty far,” Fred allowed. “
Really
far, like thousands of miles, if the conditions are just right.”

“What conditions?” Hudgens asked, disappointed. “You mean to attach conditions to the information you reveal?”

Fred blinked at him. “No! Nothing like that.
Weather
conditions, atmospherics, even time of day . . .” He paused, seeing how that would require more clarification. “No mystery, and no witchcraft, I promise. I'll try to explain. But let me ask a couple of things first,” he said.

“Certainly,” Willis agreed politely, sitting on a chair beside the table. “I will answer if I am able.”

“You told us, finally. . . .” Fred grinned and sighed. “Frankly, the mystery's been eating me alive ever since we met Anson,” he confessed, “that your ‘new' US covers a little more territory than the states I remember as Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama. It's got a president, a ‘congress.'” He waved around him at the ship. “The works. We've even got a rough idea how things went for your, uh, ‘founders,' back in 1847, though we're still unclear why the Doms call you ‘Los Diablos del Norte,' and why you're still fighting them after all this time—besides them just being assholes who want to take over the world.” He shrugged. “We were fighting guys like that where we came from, and maybe that's all it takes, but why do they hate you so bad?” He looked at Kari. “There's no reason not to tell us that, or pretty much anything. Apparently, we're the only ones in the whole hemisphere who
don't
know, and our people will eventually find out on their own. And if you don't want us to tell them, all you have to do is, well, keep us, I guess. Why not spill it?”

Kari blinked rapidly at him, thinking maybe he'd gone too far, especially with his suggestion about “keeping” them. But Captain Willis merely regarded him more seriously, steepling his hands in front of his face. “Lieutenant Hudgens, would you, please?”

Hudgens nodded. “Of course, Captain.” He looked at Fred and Kari. “I do not know what ‘Oklahoma' is. I assume you mean the territories north of the Red River? But they call us ‘Los Diablos' because, weak as we were when we arrived aboard three small transports—one of them wrecked—with barely a brigade of infantry, a few batteries of light guns, and meager supplies, we—our grandfathers—conquered Dominion territory as far as the Valley of Mexico.” He looked reflective. “Perhaps ‘liberated' is a better term. We were not met as conquerors by the vast majority of people we encountered at first. The Dominion has changed little since that time, and you have seen the oppression its citizens endure.”

Fred and Kari looked at him, wide-eyed.

Hudgens held up a hand and frowned. “We couldn't keep what we had taken, of course, once the Dominion mobilized against us. They'd apparently been focused westward, on the Empire of the New Britain Isles, we now believe, preparing to launch an attack across the sea. That
is why we met so little initial resistance. When they turned their full might upon us, our roughly eighteen hundred men were faced by tens of thousands. We held the great city for a time, a city that may have no equal on this world, but ultimately had no choice but to withdraw to the north.” He smiled. “But we didn't leave empty-handed. Like the Imperials in that regard at least, we did evacuate sufficient . . . ‘brides' to ensure future generations, along with many thousands of civilians who sought our protection from the monsters in the wilderness . . . and a retribution we never expected.”

He took a long, sad breath. “Tragically, at the time, our people had no idea what kind of
human
monsters truly infested the Dominion. They knew they weren't, well, ‘at home' anymore, and that something extraordinary had happened to them; they were alone, and there were strange, deadly creatures at every hand, but the ordinary people seemed normal enough. Militarily, the Dom army was not dissimilar to the Mexican Army our forefathers had been sent to fight. But culturally, their leaders . . .” He looked at Fred and Kari in turn. “I believe you have some experience with that.” He found a chair as well. “After we abandoned our gains, the Doms did so as well, scourging all the land between where we settled across the Rio Grande, to a point just north of the Pass of Fire you say our Captain Anson only recently revealed to you. All the land between, including the Valley of Mexico itself, and excepting only a few fortified coastal cities, was abandoned. Worse, the land was
exterminated
of human life, as if it and anyone living there had been contaminated by us. It remains a largely dead, uninhabited buffer between us to this day.”

“Wow,” Fred breathed. “But I guess that's consistent. They meant to wipe out everybody in the cities of Guayak and Puerto Viejo if they beat us there. They said so. And they did wipe out all the civilians in Chimborazo. At least those were the early reports we got before we flew off, looking for you.” He looked at Hudgens. “But that doesn't explain why you didn't team up with the Imperials.”

Hudgens shifted uncomfortably. “You should know, the Empire was expansionist even then. They had already established colonies on the California coast. We were few and militarily weak. And even as we grew in population and power, we continued to encounter new threats.” He glanced at Willis. “Some we overcame. Others . . . linger. In any event,
we considered it best to remain hidden from the Empire and observe. There were some rather extreme social differences between us as well. You may have noticed that the Empire treats its women . . . poorly. We treat them as the ladies, the mothers of our civilization that they are,” he said somewhat proudly. He smiled. “And as you heard Don Emmanuel say, they do keep us ‘polite.' In addition to that, however, the Imperials have grown ever closer to the Dominion in recent years, economically codependent in most unpleasant ways, using women as their basis of trade.” He paused and raised an eyebrow. “Is it true what you said, that within a few years of our, ah, ‘departure' from our old world, our nation was torn apart by a terrible civil war?”

Fred nodded. “Yeah. It was awful. North against South. Worst war we ever fought.”

“I suppose the institution of slavery was a factor—the fuse at least, if not the only cause,” Captain Willis grumbled, noting Fred's nod. He spread his hands on the table. “Our forefathers faced similar tensions in the early years, with factions desiring to enslave a percentage of the people under our protection. They and others we met over time. The majority wouldn't have it, whether they had originally hailed from northern or southern states, and the movement quickly faltered, thank God. But we saw varieties of slavery within the Imperial territories spreading across California. For that reason and others, we feared the Doms and Imperials would eventually unite against us. We were actually surprised to learn, through our observers in the Imperial colonies, that they were at war!”