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Authors: Taylor Anderson

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BOOK: Blood In the Water
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“You took
prisoners
, General Halik,” Colonel Enaak observed as he reined his me-naak to a stop in front of Halik, Niwa, Shlook, and Yikkit. General Ugla had been wounded in the fighting, but the healers—charged with actual healing now—said he would recover. The others had been waiting for Enaak, and the full company of the 5th that now deployed around them all in the center of the meadow where the last, fiercest fighting had taken place. With very strict instruction, no other Grik approached. Ironically, Svec and Enaak's cavalry had been quite active at the end of the battle after all. In addition to bottling up the primary escape route, they'd swiftly moved their artillery and engaged Shighat's panicking swarms from carbine range to help herd them to their destruction. That they had, essentially, fought at Halik's side to
achieve the victory wasn't lost on any of them, and their feelings about that were . . . complex.

The high mountains to the west were clawing at the sun and the air was cooling fast. Fires were sprouting here and there, the smoke joining the evening haze that had begun to form. “I guess you're going to eat them,” Enaak accused lightly. “Stop that, Aasi!” he scolded his mount, which was snuffling a Grik's head that had been impaled on a spear in front of the Grik delegation. “It's not polite to eat in front of people—or lizards!”

Halik spoke, and Niwa translated. “Your animal might grow ill if it ate that; it is Shighat's head.”

“Really?” Enaak looked closer. It could've been any Grik's head, for all he knew. He'd never seen Shighat and could barely tell any Grik apart, for that matter. Halik was easy because he was just, well, big. Other than things like that, they all looked the same.

“And we did take prisoners,” Niwa confirmed for Halik, nodding at him. “They might eat some,” he confessed. “But not all.” He cocked his head to the side. “It seems no one ever thought to offer surrender to Grik warriors that were in a real ‘jam,' as our American friends might say. It appears that, when properly motivated, they can surrender after all. Actually, it's more like joining a stronger, rival swarm or pack, but the result is the same.”

Enaak blinked and his tail swished behind him. “You don't say? We don't get much news,” he said. “It might've happened before. Geerki kind of surrendered, and the last word we got was that some civilian Grik may have sort of surrendered at Grik City. I'm not sure about that. Interesting, though.” For a long moment, they all just stared at one another, the only sound the creak of leather and the moans of wounded Grik. Finally, Halik spoke, and Niwa interpreted for him.

“General Halik wishes to . . . thank you, Colonel Enaak, and Colonel Svec as well. He is very much aware of what you and your people did for his army this day.”

Enaak blinked a very complex expression that Niwa couldn't catch. He hadn't spent enough time around Lemurians to learn much beyond the basics. “Okay,” Enaak said curtly. “Tell that to the eleven troopers I lost, fighting
with
Grik at my orders.
Don't
tell that to Svec. He lost
twenty, and he's mad as hell at me right now for talking him into this.” He waved. “He's gone off, chasing Grik that got away, on his own hook. I couldn't have stopped him if I wanted to.” He looked hard at Halik, his wide eyes bright in the last rays of the sun. “I damn sure never thought we'd be fighting on the same side,” he almost whispered. Then he shook his head. “I wonder if they'll can me for it? Doesn't matter. My guys died fighting Grik. If you'd lost, we'd have had to fight the same ones anyway. Glad to help, I guess. Better the Grik you know than one you don't.” He leaned forward in his saddle. “The question is, what are you going to do now?”

Halik spoke to Niwa for quite a while, and when he finished, Niwa looked at Enaak with a strange expression. “We may have to meet again, when we can write things down,” he said. “But for the moment, ah, ‘Lord Regent General Halik' desires that I tell you this: the Gharrichk'k Empire, as it is, is doomed, whether you destroy it or not. Whether that doom will even come in our lifetimes, no one can say. The Empire is vast and will not die easily. But even as you flay it from without, it is dying from the inside as he”—Niwa looked at Yikkit—“and others recognize what their race can become if
they
will allow it.” Niwa raised his eyebrows at Enaak. “This is Halik's regency now, from here to Arabia. There will be more fighting as the army nears the populated regions, no doubt, but there can be little left to stand against us. The conquest of Persia
will
occur, and the entire regency shall remain at peace with the Grand Alliance, as long as it remains at peace with us.”

Enaak's eyes had grown ever wider while Niwa spoke. “Halik knows what a
treaty
is?”

“I have explained it to him. But he already understood the concept of agreements between warring powers, as you may recall. He will honor the treaty I described, and I will write the particulars myself.”

“Write all you want,” Enaak said incredulously. “
I
can't sign anything like
that
!” But instead of turning and bolting off like Niwa half expected, he merely sat, scratching the fur under his chin. “But I'll tell you what,” he said at last. “If he really means it, I'll take it to somebody who
can
sign it—along with my opinion that it sounds . . . pretty good.”

CHAPTER
22

Above the Zambezi River
October 11, 1944

A raw dawn found Lieutenant Commander Mark Leedom and the aircrew of his “borrowed” PB-5D bundled gratefully in their peacoats against the high, sharp air. Moments before, as a step in what seemed a fairly momentous undertaking in Mark's opinion, they'd crossed the dingy fan of sediment streaming from the Zambezi river delta into the Go Away Strait, five thousand feet below. Against all expectations, this Zambezi, on this world, had a well-defined entrance, more like the mighty Mississippi than the countless mazes of rivulets, mangrove swamps, and flooded lowlands it “should” have had. That hadn't surprised Mark Leedom. Theirs wasn't the first reconnaissance to reach this far. They were the first to have a plane with sufficient range to probe more than just a few miles inland, however. And that was their mission: to follow the Zambezi as far as their fuel would allow,
in hopes of discovering where the Grik were marshaling whatever fleet they must be preparing to carry their armies back across the strait. So far, it had eluded them, but they knew it had to exist. Even the “civilian” Grik prisoners taken at Grik City seemed to confirm it.

Mark snorted, not nearly loud enough to be heard over the four droning engines above and behind, but he still earned a questioning look from his Lemurian copilot, Lieutenant Paraal-Taas. Paraal was a brown-and-tan-striped 'Cat from B'mbaado who'd flown Hij Geerki down from Madras. That meant he'd—probably—cracked the record for the longest ever nonstop flight on this world. Mark smiled and shook his head, returning to his thoughts.
Not that the Grik prisoners have a helluva lot of information
. All that survived were “Hij,” supposedly smarter than the Uul laborers they'd eaten before they finally surrendered. Geerki was in charge of them and now used them as laborers themselves. Mark had actually been surprised by how smoothly that transition went.
Of course, any one of them would've obediently cut his own throat if a superior told him to. If they put such little value on their own lives, I guess they wouldn't gripe much over a little extra work, now, would they?

Still, everyone knew there were “smart” Grik, but these, Hij or not, knew virtually nothing of the Grik Empire past their shore. They had no idea how big it was, or even vaguely how many inhabited it. A few knew the names of the other two, now abandoned, cities on Madagascar: Ajanga, just a short distance down the west coast, and Ghassgha, a little farther south. That was only because there'd been occasional commerce back and forth, and some had made the perilous trek through the predator-rich jungle between them from time to time. Otherwise, they'd been so completely absorbed in their slavish, almost ant-like lives of servitude to their Celestial Mother, it had apparently never even occurred to them to wonder about the world beyond the Celestial City. But they did agree that the Allies hadn't destroyed a tithe of the ships they'd seen coming and going at their port before the battles that wrested it away.

It's possible,
Mark imagined, glancing down at the clustered, adobe-like warrens constituting numerous small villages bordering the mouth of the river,
that they counted every ship they ever saw, not understanding that ships don't last forever. Even if they just counted how many might've passed through on their way to destruction in other battles, it could've been a lot.
He changed hands on the plane's control stick and
scratched his brow
. But none were ever
built
at Grik City. They all came from somewhere else
. Captured charts aboard half-sunken ships in the harbor had revealed a few details about continental harbors and coastal population concentrations. Even a few shipyards—vast, nightmarish hives of clear-cut timber and ghastly swarms of laborers—had been discovered. Those had been systematically firebombed by marauding Nancys off
Salissa
,
Arracca
, or raiding AVDs. But even as large as those yards were, they couldn't have made all the ships the Allies had already sunk in this war by themselves, not to mention all the machinery, guns, and armor they'd required.
There have to be other places
.

Doubtless, more shipyards and industrial centers still operated in the north, near where Zanzibar ought to be, and beyond. The Allies simply didn't have the capacity to explore or raid that far from Madagascar
or
Madras. They could keep close watch in that direction, though, and the possible existence of shipyards and harbors there was the main reason TF-Alden was keeping its distance from the coast on its way down. But that region would have to wait. Particularly since every single Hij prisoner had heard of
one
place on the African Continent, virtually assured to be a major hub of Grik industry and war-making potential. In most cases, it was the only city name familiar to them at all, beyond their own, and each knew of and revered Sofesshk.

From what they'd gathered, Sofesshk was the most ancient Grik city and it surrounded their holiest shrine, a structure much like the huge, granite, cowflop-shaped Celestial Palace that rose like a dark mountain in the middle of Grik City. There was even reason to believe Sofesshk actually surpassed the Celestial City in size and population. It was the cradle of their civilization, such as it was, and the birthplace of the Celestial Bloodline that had ruled them since the beginning of time. None of the prisoners knew why their Giver of Life had moved her throne to Madagascar; such was beyond their ability or desire to understand. She could do whatever she pleased. But Sofesshk still existed and had remained the heart, if not the capital, of their empire for thousands of years. Geerki had roughly translated an old saying that went, essentially, “All life comes from the Celestial Mother, but all things come from Sofesshk.” The allusion certainly supported the theory that Sofesshk had, at least at one time, been the center of Grik industry. Since all of Geerki's charges agreed that had the Giver of Life escaped her doom, she
would've gone straight to Sofesshk to rule as her ancestors had, chances were, nothing had changed. And the captured charts showed what they
thought
must be Sofesshk, approximately a hundred and fifty miles up the Zambezi River. Hij Geerki hadn't been positive since Hij mariners, though careful draftsmen and obviously more intelligent than the average Hij, were notoriously paranoid about recording place-names.
They
knew the names of the symbols on their charts, after all. Why write them down?

It had always been a supreme frustration to the Allies that, try as they might, they'd never secured a Grik ship captain—or general, for that matter, if you didn't count Orochi Niwa—alive.
Sure,
Mark thought,
we've gotten our hands on a few who weren't exactly dead. They'd been conked out, or trapped under stuff, or something had kept them from knocking themselves off. But they always managed to get the job done, sooner or later. They'd jump in the water, chew off an arm and bleed to death, or just . . . die, somehow
. But their charts sometimes remained, and the drawings showed a major city on both sides of the Zambezi, just downstream from a very large lake that hadn't been on
Walker
's meager chart of the region, or even in a moldy old atlas aboard
Santa Catalina
. It seemed the perfect place to hide a major industrial center—and a fleet.

Mark Leedom looked at the 'Cat beside him, and then contemplated the rest of his crew. Captain Enrico Galay had been a Philippine Scout during the old war. Now he was in Chack and Risa's 1st Allied Raider Brigade. He came because, for the first time, if they saw something worth expending some of their very limited supply of large-format film, they were going to take pictures. A teenage Galay had worked with a photographer for the English-language
Manila Times
, and photography had been an interrupted passion. He'd been a natural to entrust with the Graflex Speed Graphic, which had come to this world with
Mahan
's dead surgeon. It was the only surviving large-format camera they had, and Galay already knew how to use it. There were a lot of other cameras, brought by
Walker
's,
Mahan
's, and S-19's crews, but few still worked and all were cheap, compact, 35- or 46-mm specimens preferred by sailors, and there was little film for any of them. Besides, until they came up with a better way of transferring images than the salt-paper process they'd reinvented in Baalkpan, the larger-format gave more detail for reconnaissance purposes when printed on contact—detail that could be enlarged by Lemurian artists.

Leftenant Doocy Meek, the liaison from the Republic of Real People, had come as an observer for his kaiser, Nig-Taak, despite Captain Reddy's objection. He'd countered that he had orders, and now that Matt had direct communication with the Republic, he wasn't really essential anymore. Leedom thought that was kind of dumb, but he'd used a similar excuse when his XO, Lieutenant Araa-Faan, said he—as Grik City's Commander of Flight Operations (COFO)—didn't have any business making the trip either. His argument that she could run flight ops as well as he was true, but saying he was better suited than she for this mission was probably stretching things. He'd based that solely on the fact that he had more hours in seaplanes, and he did, but only in Nancys. He had a grand total of
six
hours in PB-5s.
Shoot,
he thought humorously,
I've almost doubled that, just since we left Grik City!
And Paraal can take over if we have to make a hairy landing
.

He didn't know the two 'Cats in the waist, whose main duties were to load and unload cargo, help with refueling, and—now—man the two .30-caliber machine guns there. Nor did he know the wireless operator, though the young 'Cat seemed enthusiastic about the trip. Lieutenant Paraal-Taas was the navigator as well as copilot, and Mark would be his own bombardier if they found a target worthy of the three two-hundred-pound bombs under each wing. Normally, the plane would carry a couple more crew, but the wireless operator could man the front top gun and Galay could certainly manage the one in back. There wasn't any point in risking more people than they had to.

Mark wasn't afraid—exactly—and he trusted the big flying boat. The D model, with its stacked radials, fixed wing floats, impressive fuel capacity, and defensive armament, was a major improvement over its predecessors in every respect: speed, range, payload, and reliability. The cockpit was even fairly comfortable with the pilot's wicker seat shifted all the way back. It was the first adjustable seat in any Allied aircraft, making it equally controllable by humans or Lemurians. But the added range the plane afforded them also quite literally allowed them to push irretrievably deeper into trouble than anyone had ever been in an aircraft on this world before. Mark was confident they'd be okay even if they lost an engine, especially now that they'd burned enough fuel to lighten the ship. They'd topped off at a hasty depot established on the southernmost of the Comoros Islands, but that was six hundred miles ago. Sadly, they
couldn't feather the prop if an engine crapped out, but the D model was equipped with a cable brake to the shaft that would prevent it from windmilling and causing even worse drag than a still propeller. If they lost
two
engines, however, or anything else went wrong to force the big plane down, they might as well eat their pistols. Being the very first humans and Lemurians to find themselves on the ground in the middle of a continent at least largely dominated by hungry Grik wasn't the most pleasant thought to contemplate.

“Welcome to Africa!” shouted Doocy Meek over the roar of the engines and the swirl of wind whipping down from the gunner's position above. Mark had noticed before that the man's British accent had been interestingly colored by others over the years. He had thrust his head up between Mark's and Paraal's, and his white-streaked blond beard was split by a grin. “Plan to stay long?”

BOOK: Blood In the Water
11.66Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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