Firestorm d-6

by Taylor Anderson

  Jenks smiled. “Captain Halowell, I have the honor of issuing you a temporary commission in His Majesty’s Navy, incidentally placing you under the jurisdiction of the Articles of War. Congratulations. I presume the commission will be upheld following your inquiry provided you make no effort to ‘lose’ or alter your logs. The judges understand the position Company masters have been in, and they’ve been surprisingly lenient in most matters. Besides, the Navy needs the ships and experienced captains. Now, considering the possibility you’re behind a major enemy fleet, I suggest you make as much sail as you consider safe, sail southwest for several days, then attempt a record passage.” He started to turn, dismissing the two former Company officers, but stopped. “You might arrest your ‘warden’ and anyone else you suspect of being a Company informer, but don’t hang them yourself. Let the court sort it out.”

  Later, back on Walker ’s bridge with Pompey rapidly diminishing astern, Jenks chuckled. “I don’t remember your discussing the disposition of ‘contraband’ with His Majesty.”

  Matt shrugged. “I like Gerald, but I doubt your courts’re much different from ours back home. The ultimate disposition of those people could take months if Gerald doesn’t jump in, and I don’t know if he can yet. In the meantime, we took ’em; they’re ours. They’ll have the same choice we gave the women we ‘bought’ on Respite. They can do what they want. We’ve got other things to worry about right now. Do you think the Doms could put together three big fleets?”

  “I honestly don’t know. It’s possible.”

  Matt sighed. “Well, we can chase only one. Your people on the ‘Enchanted Isles’ and everyone in the Empire are on their own. All we can do is stick to the plan and try to protect the colonies.”

  Jenks looked aft at the distant sail, beginning to blend with the afternoon haze that had consumed the knife-edge horizon of the morning. “I hope they appreciate the ‘Christmas gift’ you’ve given them,” he muttered.

  “Who? Oh, the women on that ship?” Matt shook his head. “Where I come from, freedom isn’t something a man can give; it comes from God. You’re born with it. Sometimes men have to fight to keep others from taking it away, and all too often good men give their lives so that God-given freedom can endure. That’s the gift; blood for freedom. What I did today cost me nothing. It was just right.”

  “I wasn’t talking about those women. Their situation is improved regardless-admittedly more so since your arrival in the Isles. No, I mean my own people… and the freedom you gift them with the blood of yours, human and Lemurian.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Ceylon

  “B oy, this is one hell of a cruddy Christmas!” Greg Garrett grumbled to himself.

  “What?” shouted Pruit Barry, about ten feet away, trying to make himself heard over the roar of heavy guns, the crash of a brisk surf, and the warbling shriek of maybe two thousand charg-ing Grik.

  “I said, I think it’s Christmas!” Garrett yelled back.

  “Oh. Wow.”

  Flocks of crossbow bolts sheeted over the breastworks and an occasional roundshot geysered damp sand high in the air. Ravaged Donaghey, though working hard against the beach under the assault of a heavy sea running at high tide, pounded the attackers racing down the narrow peninsula, scything great swaths in the tightly packed mob. Lieutenant Bekiaa-Sab-At, her white leather armor dingy with mud and stained black with blood, stood. “Muskets, archers, present!” she roared. Slightly fewer than seven hundred sailors and Marines prepared. Most of the Marine muskets had gone to sailors, since they were easier to learn than the powerful longbows, and the Marines already knew how to use those. “Mark your targets!” Bekiaa warned. This wouldn’t be a massed volley; those relied as much on psychological impact as anything else, and here, in previous assaults, they hadn’t been getting their money’s worth for the first time. They were starting to run dangerously low on ammunition, particularly musket balls, and it was better to make each one count. Their arrows were holding out rather better. Details raced out between assaults, braving the frighteningly improved enemy artillery, and retrieved as many arrows from sand and corpse as they could. At least the “Grik fire” bombs hadn’t been an issue. They couldn’t maneuver the heavy, catapult-like weapons within their shorter range-not that they didn’t try at first. Smaller, shorter-ranged versions of the things, carried by packs of troops, made tempting targets and were never allowed close enough to deploy and launch.

  “Commence firing!” Bekiaa screeched.

  A hundred and fifty-odd Baalkpan Armory “Springfields” rattled independently, the dull slapp of heavy balls striking flesh distinct and gratifying. Arrows thwanged and whooshed over the breastworks, the impacts less dramatic, but the resultant wails of agony just as real. Six of Tolson ’s eighteen-pounders, so laboriously retrieved and emplaced, shook the earth and vomited fire, choking smoke, and almost two thousand three-quarter-inch copper balls. The big guns were the primary killers. Firing into the dense, narrow press, they could not possibly miss, and each ball not absorbed by the sand often accounted for multiple Grik. A great, collective moan reached the defenders through the smoke, bu only about five hundred of the enemy did.

  “Shields!” Bekiaa cried.

  Shields came up, many hastily built from Tolson ’s now-shattered corpse, and the remaining Grik slammed into them with unabated ferocity. Though outnumbered now, they still might have broken the line if they’d had the sense to concentrate their blow against a single point. As it was, they simply charged straight at whatever opposed them in whatever direction they were pointed when visibility returned. Bayonets and polished barrels flashed under the relentless sun, and spear- men advanced behind the shields and the grisly, personal slaughter began.

  Greg and Pruit stayed out of it. Both held. 45s in their hands, and Barry had an ’03 Springfield slung on his shoulder. Somewhere on the left, where the sandy spit bordered the river mouth, Russ was supposed to be doing the same; commanding his “section” of the line, but leaving the fighting to his sailors-bolstered by Marines with the proper training for it. Bekiaa had the center, seconded by Graana-Fas, and Greg determined to have a word with her regarding her “proper” place as well. Slowly, the killing subsided, and another hoarse, thirsty cheer began to build, punctuated by the squeals of the last Grik to be slain.

  “Stay here, won’t you, Pruit? I need to have a word with our intrepid young Marine commander,” Greg said.

  “Sure,” said Barry. “Somebody better, or we won’t have her much longer.” The Grik artillery resumed, a shot skating through the sand nearby. “Keep your head down! Their guns aren’t very big, and we drive ’em off every time they try to deploy in front of us, but they’ve got a lot of ’em, and they’re getting better with ’em too.”

  “You bet,” Garrett replied, crouching lower in the trench behind the works and cinching his helmet tighter. He took off at a trot, his right arm extended so he could pat each defender as he passed, saying, “Good job! Good job! We’ll lick ’em yet!” Most glanced back, blinking thanks or encouragement of their own, but he came across far too many who couldn’t hear him anymore.

  Short of Bekiaa’s position he found Jamie Miller, Walker ’s young pharmacist’s mate on another world, and now an able surgeon in his own right. He was working on a Lemurian sailor, one of Tolson ’s, by the name stitched on the Dixie cup lying nearby in the watery bottom of the trench. Two of Miller’s assistants held the ’Cat down while the kid tried to stop the bleeding from a bad neck wound. Greg could tell it was hopeless.

  “When are we going to get some help here?” Miller seethed when the bleeding stopped on its own.

  Greg squatted beside him. “I wish I knew, Jamie. The fleet’s coming as fast as it can. The last position we got would still put them about two days out.” He paused. “You know Clancy’s dead, right?”

  Jamie nodded. The night before, three Grik ships approached under cover of darkness and attacked Donaghey from the sea. It shouldn’t have, but it came
as a complete surprise. Only the enemy’s crummy gunnery saved the stranded ship, and her seaward guns, once alerted, cut them apart. One Grik ship sank, another beached a couple miles to the east, and the third drifted ashore, afire from stem to stern. Even now, her blackened bones were breaking up in the surf. But Donaghey was badly mauled herself. One early, lucky shot, crashed through her comm shack and killed the young radioman while he was sending the evening report. Another of their dwindling “original” destroyermen was lost.

  “Yeah, well, he ain’t the only one,” Jamie snapped. “Counting ‘walking wounded’ still fighting, our casualties are past twenty percent. Not as many from that last attack,” he allowed, “since our protection’s improved, but sooner or later the Grik are going to get their act together.”

  Greg nodded. He had plenty of “combat” experience now, but this was only his second “shore action.” Already he could tell it was a lot different from his last. These Grik were better fed and far more motivated. Even so, he got the distinct impression they were just “locals,” thrown at them because they were closest-militia, basically. If anything, the first “attacks,” while violent and costly, had been even more disorganized and, well, amateurish, than anything he’d heard of before. If they’d thrown better troops at him then, it would probably be all over by now. In the meantime, the Allied defenses had been strengthened considerably.

  Notwithstanding the naval attack, however, the quality of Grik field artillery had improved disproportionately with their infantry, even though Greg’s heavy guns kept it at arm’s length on the “mainland” beyond the broader area where the peninsula touched. He reasoned that artillery was probably beyond the grasp of your everyday Grik, and there must have been a “regular” battery stationed nearby. It had probably taken a day or two for the “Grik brass” to figure out what was going on down here, and he expected better troops, with possibly different tactics at any time.

  “We’ll be fine,” Garrett said. “You’re doing fine. Keep up the good work. I need to talk to Lieutenant Bekiaa.” With an encouraging smile, he hurried on.

  Bekiaa-Sab-At was drinking water from a bottle offered by Marine Lieutenant Graana-Fas. Graana (nobody dared call him “Granny” to his face) was one of Greg’s own Marines from Donaghey, and he’d somehow managed to participate in nearly every Allied action against the Grik. He was second to Bekiaa here out of choice, and Greg wasn’t sure why. Bekiaa had seen some sharp fighting with the creepy-and ultimately strangely benign-“toad lizards” north of Tjilatjap, but until now, that was about it. Maybe Graana saw something in her, as Greg admittedly did. She was certainly fearless.

  “Cap-i-taan Garrett!” she said, handing the bottle back and saluting.

  “Quit that!” Greg said with a smile. “You want some Grik gunner to see, and knock my head off with a cannon ball?”

  Bekiaa chuckled. “No, Cap-i-taan.”

  “Good. And while we’re on that subject, you need to stop hopping around on top of the breastworks and wearing a target for every Grik crossbowman that says, ‘Shoot me, I’m important!’ Is that perfectly clear?”

  “But…”

  “I have tried to tell her,” Graana confided. “I asked if she thinks I would have lasted this long, making such a spectacle of myself.”

  “But you do!” Bekiaa accused.

  “I do not. I lead in a press, in a charge, but never single myself out for the enemy’s sole attention!”

  “Well… but perhaps if I do that, I distract him from another? Maybe many others.”

  “Ah, but who will lead them if you are slain?”

  “You.”

  “Yes,” Graana said, accepting the compliment, “but what of tomorrow? Next week? Next year? If we spend our good commanders a battle at a time, who will lead those future Marines, not yet even under arms, in future battles?”

  “Others will rise.”

  “Yes, but they’ll start at the beginning, all over again, without the benefit of what you might teach. They’ll be doomed to make the same mistakes you and I already recognize as such!” Bekiaa had no response to that.

  “Listen to him,” Greg said. “That’s an order. If you’re going to lead the center, you’re going to take care of yourself. We can’t spare you; either of you.”

  “Ay, ay, Cap-i-taan Garrett,” Bekiaa agreed. Suddenly a runner, one of Revenge ’s machinist’s mates, rushed to join them.

  “Cap-i-taan Garrett!” he gasped, “Cap-i-taan Chaa-pelle’s comp-iments, an’ would you peese joining him on de lef? The Griks is up to some-ting dere!”

  Greg nodded and followed the runner through the zigzag of ditches, finally reaching the extreme left where Chapelle peered over some of his lost ship’s timbers at the broad mouth of the river and the land beyond.

  “Hi, Greg,” he said, gesturing over the embedded planks. “What do you make of that?”

  Garrett raised his binoculars. The morning haze, thick with lingering gun smoke, lay heavy on the calm water in the lee of the peninsula, making it difficult to penetrate to the dense foliage on the other side, maybe half a mile. It looked like large numbers of low, dark shapes were assembling along the distant shore, however.

  “Huh. Looks like they may try to cross. Those must be barges.” He rubbed his nose; the dust and grit got into everything, and he felt a sneeze coming on. He shook his head. “Doesn’t make sense. They have to know we see them. Why let us do that? If they’ve got the sense to try a flank attack, you’d think they’d have the sense to hide it.”

  “Maybe they meant it to come last night or early this morning, and just didn’t get enough grease on the wheel.”

  “Maybe. We’ll see.” Garrett looked to his new left, where the network of trenches extended farther, parallel with this calmer beach. Four of Tolson ’s guns were spaced along it, for just such a possibility. “Be ready to secure this flank. Send somebody good to the other end, but stay here yourself. This might become the center when they try again.” He glanced back up the spit of land to the east, then back across the river. “I wonder what they’re up to,” he muttered to himself.

  “I wonder what they’ll do now,” General Niwa pondered aloud.

  “Indeed,” agreed General Halik. He hissed disgust. “Your instincts were right. You should have come down days ago. Your authority could have prevented this disaster. Never have I seen so many destroyed by so few.”

  “We didn’t know,” Niwa interjected.

  “We should have. The possibility was there, and you saw it more clearly than I,” Halik snorted. “Still I remain but a sport fighter, a ‘tactical warrior.’ That must change.”

  “If you’ll forgive me, you already grasp more than General Esshk ever did.”

  “No doubt General Esshk would agree, but when thought replaces-what is that word? Valor! When thought becomes more important than the valor of the hunter, I fear few of my kind are fully prepared for the consequences.”

  “That’s what we’re here to change,” Niwa reminded. They’d both arrived the previous day, prodded by reports of contact and battle that grew steadily more reliable and frankly, appalling. Lost was any opportunity to capture prisoners, due to the unexpected number of the enemy, and the futile, unordered attacks by local warriors that encouraged the enemy to construct ever-stronger fortifications. Halik had ordered the naval attack upon hearing one of the enemy ships was still in the fight, but it didn’t have the weight to succeed-he saw that now-and he’d revised his plan accordingly. The flank attack was Niwa’s idea, but Halik quickly grasped the advantage. Unfortunately, few others had, nor had they understood the necessity that it be coordinated with the last frontal attack. Now the enemy doubtless saw the barges and knew what was coming. Another coordinated attempt might be made because the enemy had to shield the riverfront approach now. The flank attack, combined with another frontal assault bolstered by Niwa’s guards and better troops, might find a weakened defense, but it would be costly.

  “Perhaps after dark, tonight,�
�� Niwa ventured.

  Halik shook his head. “We’ll never keep the troops focused that long. Few yet understand the idea of defense-that remains one reason attacks upon defensive works are so costly. No, when our new troops join the ravaged remnants to their front, we must strike immediately and carry as many of these locals along as possible when our own make their thrust. They should punch through somewhere.”

  “They should, but such an attack in broad daylight, without even the river fog as a shield?”

  “Many will die,” Halik agreed, “but that can no longer be helped. Perhaps this ‘practice’ will ensure better performance when we meet the enemy’s main attack, wherever it falls.”

  “If we have anything left to meet it,” Niwa grumbled.

  Halik gargled a laugh. “Whatever we lose will be but a tithe against our reserves… and those who survive may learn a lesson. You estimate the enemy numbers at six or seven hundreds, not counting those aboard the ship. I agree. The next attack will go forward with nearly ten times that number, from three directions. They may counter each thrust; in fact, I hope they do, because it will weaken them, not us. They cannot be strong everywhere. But the timing is critical. Losses will be extreme,” Halik acknowledged, “but sometimes, knowledge must be gained with blood. Once gained, perhaps it won’t be forgotten!”

  “I hope not,” Niwa said. “You say we spend but a tithe, but that ‘tithe’ is likely to be shattered. Are a few thoughtful survivors worth that cost?”

  “Yes.”

  Niwa shrugged. “Then go ahead. If you’ve no objection, I’ll watch the waterborne assault. I’m curious how effective it will be.”

  “Very well, but observe only. Do not get swept along. We must not lose you, and I might find myself craving your counsel.”

  Niwa saluted in the Japanese way and with a bow went to join a column of Grik squirming through the coastal jungle, toward the barges.