Firestorm d-6

by Taylor Anderson

  Still no reason to drag me off, he thought mopily. I ain’t Ordnance. Prob’ly just tryin’ ta get me out an’ around again, he suspected. Ever’body figgers a fella can’t be happy ’less they’s around other folks all the time. Must think I’m pinin’ away without Gilbert an’ Tabby around. He snorted. He did miss them, like a brother or sister, but he wasn’t pining. As far as he knew, to this day, nobody but Tabby-probably-knew he and Gilbert actually were half brothers… or quarter brothers… whatever. He sometimes got their precise degree of bastardy confused. They had the same mother, but different fathers; neither of whom ever married their mother. Isak didn’t really blame either man; his mother had the face of a moose and the voice of a hog… but she’d been a good dame.

  “Just me,” he said to the musket-armed ’Cat sentry as he stepped aboard the ship. He flicked a salute aft and padded forward in the gloom until he stood on the fo’c’sle amid the anchor chains that came in through the hawseholes. The wood beneath his feet was no longer spongy and rotten; it was hard and new. Most of the old ship had been repaired, he realized with a touch of pride. Soon, decked out in all her new goodies, she’d be out of the dry dock and back in the war. Well, in the war, anyway-a different war for her. He sighed. Santa Catalina would probably also be the last “normal-size” ship in this dry dock. They were almost finished with a pair of new floating dry docks, like those they’d been building in other places. The new dry docks wouldn’t last forever, but they were… portable, and they’d handle anything but a Home-or a carrier-and that was what this first, biggest, dry dock would be devoted to from now on.

  He looked around. From where he stood, nobody was in sight. There was work underway aft, and on the adjacent dry dock wall, but no one could see him. His trip ashore hadn’t been a complete waste. He’d had an opportunity to stop by and see his new “business partner,” a Lemurian called Pepper, down at the Busted Screw. Pepper had been Lanier’s mate in Walker ’s galley, and the two had established the Busted Screw, or “Castaway Cook,” during Walker ’s resurrection and refit. Pepper ran the joint alone now, with Lanier away, and the place was usually jumping. For Isak’s purposes, Pepper had cousins everywhere, including some involved in all the various projects-cousins who didn’t care about human “habits,” but more important, could keep their yaps shut. Isak had been engaged in an ongoing project he wanted to keep to himself. His stop by the Screw that day had left him in possession of the most recent “fruits” of that venture. Inconspicuously, he fished his tobacco pouch and a little hand-carved pipe from his pocket. With another look around, he stuffed the pipe and held a lit Zippo over the bowl.

  “Ooo-hoo-ook!” He coughed when the first smoke entered his lungs. He blew it out and trid again. He still coughed, but this time it wasn’t so bad. “Outta practice,” he gasped-and took another puff. This time he didn’t cough, and, with a dreamy expression, he let the smoke drain lazily from his nostrils. It was vile and raunchy beyond anything he’d ever used, even in the Philippines, but it could be smoked! He’d finally succeeded! He’d performed the greatest technological feat of the age! The yellow, waxy, Lemurian tobacco was almost universally chewed now, usually dried and mixed with something like local molasses, but up until now nobody had figured out a way to smoke it without becoming almost instantly, violently ill. “Yur-eeka!” he wheezed.

  “What the hell are you doin’ out here?” demanded a gravelly voice behind him. Isak almost squirted his pipe over the rail.

  “Nuffin’,” he chirped, trying to hide the smoldering pipe in his hand.

  “Nothin’ my ass,” growled Dean Laney, drawing closer. “You been holdin’ out on ever’body! You sneaked out here to smoke a cigarette you’ve been hoardin’ all this time. What’s the matter with you? There’s fellas that’d choke you to death just to breathe your last, smoky breath, and if you don’t share, I’ll be one of ’em.”

  “I ain’t smokin’ no cigarette!” Isak stated, seemingly oblivious of the cloud around him in the dank murk.

  “Like hell! I can smell it!”

  “You can? What do you smell?”

  “A cigarette, you freaky little dope! Give it over!”

  “An’ it smells like a cigarette?”

  “Say, you’re even squirrelier than usual tonight. Sure, it smells like a cigarette ’cause it is one. Maybe not a good one, but I don’t care! Fork it over!”

  Isak suddenly jammed his pipe under Laney’s nose. “ There’s yer cigarette, you big, fat, lumpy turd!” he jeered, “’an that’s the last whiff o’ Isak Rueben’s ‘Patented Sweet Smokin’ Tobacco’ yer ever gonna get, if you lay one fat, turdy finger on me, hear? Ha! I’m goin’ in the smokin’ tobacco bizness. Cigarettes, see-gars, a nice arrow-matic pipe blend. Hell, I’ll be the first tobacco magnet in the world!”

  It’s ‘magnate,’ you bonehead,” Laney said, but he grabbed Isak’s hand and held the pipe close to his face. “Damn, that smells good. How’d you do it?”

  “No way! I tell you, and you’ll swipe the process. If you think I done all this work so you can skim off the cream, you’re stupider than you look.”

  “Watch that mouth!” Laney growled, his grip tightening on Isak’s wrist.

  “You watch yours, fatso, an’ leggo my arm if you don’t want my new comp’ny motto to be ‘Heavenly Smokes for Ever’body but Laney’!”

  CHAPTER 14

  New Ireland

  M ajor Chack-Sab-At loved horses. Before he and his mixed “division” came ashore at the New Ireland town of Bray the night before, he’d never ridden an animal in his life; not a brontasarry, a paalka, and certainly not one of the terrifying me-naaks, or “meanies,” the Fil-pin cavalry used. He’d never had occasion to ride the first two, and he had no inclination to ride the latter. With his background as a wing runner of the People, he’d never imagined a reason to climb atop any animal before, but a Marine Major commanding almost two thousand troops needed mobility, and he’d been introduced to horses. He was entranced by the novelty of the experience. To sit upon so large a creature-that had absolutely no desire to eat him-and with which he could actually communicate after a fashion, gave him a feeling of warm benevolence toward the animal. He’d never understood the human preoccupation with “pets”; no Lemurian did. But though he was given to understand horses weren’t exactly pets, he began to grasp the attraction of “having” a companion animal that could think for itself to a degree. He’d heard a great deal about “dogs” and understood humans were particularly fond of them, but none existed in the isles. There were small cats, which did bear a vague resemblance to his people but no more than the pesky forest monkeys did to humans (or again to his own people). He finally knew where the human “Cat-monkey-Monkey-cat” diminutive for his People came from but he didn’t mind, despite the fact that he’d seen no evidence the little cats that roamed wild on New Scotland even had brains… but horses! He patted “his” animal on the neck.

  He suspected by its twitchy responses to the distant, muffled booming that it was growing nervous. Chack doubted the hundred-odd horses attached to his “division” were alone in that. Many of his troops-virtually all the Imperials-had never faced combat. The first of his two regiments was composed of the remnants of his platoon from Walker and the Marine contingents from Simms, Mertz, Tindal, and the oilers. Some were hardened veterans, and he counted heavily on them to steady the two hundred completely green Imperial Marines attached to the regiment. The second regiment was almost entirely Imperial, but had a lot of the men who’d fought at the Dueling Grounds. All were “marching to the sound of the guns” in a sense, because the wind brought the heavy reports of the New Dublin defenses about fifteen miles east, over the Sperrin Mountains, and deposited the sound in such a way that it seemed to lie before them.

  Chack knew it was an illusion, but there were enemies ahead, moving to resist “Major” Blair’s assault on the “Irish” town of Waterford on the banks of Lake Shannon. Blair had landed four days before, south of the west-coa
st town of Cork, just as planned. The landing caught the inhabitants completely by surprise, and, after a short, sharp action, the town was in Allied hands. Blair was greeted as a liberator by the inhabitants, cheering and weeping with relief. Cork was a fishing village of indentured females, mostly, but several hundred “True Irish” Company troops and a contingent of Dominion “Salvadores” had been billeted there, going about their grisly “pacification, conversion, and reeducation” process. Hundreds in the town had already been slain and their bodies carried away. This last act had been just as cruel and apparently irrational as the murders themselves.

  In any event, the plan seemed to be working. Blair’s capture of Cork had drawn rebel troops from Easky, Bray, and Waterford down upon him, and he met them with prepared positions in Cork and on both sides of a pass through the Wiklow Mountains. Not only had he been punishing the enemy severely, he’d drawn all attention other than that focused on the fleet offshore of New Dublin, and Chack’s division had virtually strolled ashore at Bray. The reception there was similar to the one Blair received except there’d been no fight at all. The “garrison” had gone to Waterford in response to Blair’s attack at Cork. Chack’s most immediate problem after landing had been convincing the locals that he and his Lemurian troops weren’t “demons” and were there to help-and to keep them from lynching ayone suspected of collaborating with the Doms. His division had swelled by several hundred “auxiliaries” who knew the island intimately and who, regardless of their former leanings or associations with the Company, were practically rabid to destroy the murderous Doms.

  Chack now had a great deal of experience with “plans,” but he was increasingly optimistic. Nobody knew what the enemy had at New Dublin. Doubtless, the bulk of the Dom troops and rebels were there, but their attention was fixed for now, and Chack’s scouts reported no effort to force the bottleneck between the northern Sperrin Mountains and the sea. As far as they knew, only whatever enemy troops might be in the western “panhandle” city of Belfast were unaccounted for.

  Major Alister Jindal, commander of the Imperial regiment and Chack’s exec, galloped up alongside the shorter ’Cat and stopped his horse. Chack couldn’t help but marvel at the man’s horsemanship-and the animal’s willing cooperation.

  “Good aafternoon, Major Jindal,” Chack said pleasantly. He liked Jindal, and the two had worked well together in preparation for this operation. Some Imperials still had reservations about the Alliance, and a few were openly antagonistic toward the Lemurians in particular, refusing to serve with them and unwilling to take orders from them under any circumstances. Governor-Emperor McDonald couldn’t fire them all, but he could put them to use where their attitudes wouldn’t be a distraction. Jindal was a good friend of Blair’s and perfectly prepared to accept Chack’s more experienced command.

  “Good afternoon, Major Chack,” Jindal said, grinning. Chack had halted his horse under the shade of a massive tree of some kind; it looked much like a Galla, except for the leaves. Despite the wind that brought them the sounds of battle to the east, it was hot and sultry in the valley between the two craggy mountain ranges, and the dense forest harbored more than enough moisture to make the day oppressive. He’d been watching his division pass by. The Lemurian Marines wore one uniform, but probably represented every member of the Alliance. Some “artiller-ists” in the uniforms of various Army regiments walked or trotted alongside their paalka-drawn guns. The “tried and true” split-trail six-pounders were still moved by a single animal, but the new twelve-pounder field guns used a single stock trail and limber hitched to a team of paalkas. Horses pulled the Imperial artillery, and Chack considered that a waste. Even in the Empire, horses were rare, and paalkas were stronger, if slower. He foresaw a thriving horse/paalka trade.

  Imperial Marines in their red coats with yellow facings marched side by side in column with Lemurian Marines in their white leather armor and blue kilts. Black tricorns and shakos contrasted with polished bronze “doughboy” helmets. The colorful nature of the force gave a festive impression, but there was no doubt it meant business. The Lemurian Marines had grown accustomed to war and the associated hardship and discipline. Even in this foreign land with its strange creatures and people, they knew what to do, even if the enemy was different. The Imperials didn’t have the experience or training, but they were motivated. Nearly all the Marines, Lemurian and human, were armed with muskets; Imperial flintlocks and “Baalkpan Armory” caplocks were all brightly polished and glittered silver as they swayed to the marching cadence under the hot afternoon sun.

  “It’s a lovely sight,” Jindal said, mirroring Chack’s thoughts.

  “It is,” he agreed. “Lovely, stirring… and terrible all at once.”

  Jindal hesitated. “I’m… glad you’re here.”

  Chack looked at him, surprised. His tail flicked alongside his right leg. That was one problem with riding horses. The saddle made his tail very uncomfortable, and he was constantly adjusting his kilt to maintain his modesty. Lemurians didn’t care as much about such things as humans, but even among them, it was undignified to run around with one’s “ass hanging out.”

  “I’m not,” he said with a snort. “As you may have gathered, I consider this something of a ‘sideshow’ in a more important war… but it has become part of that war, regardless.”

  “All the more reason I’m glad you’re here,” Jindal said.

  Chack barked a laugh. “Thank you for that. It’s nice to be appreciated!” His tone grew somber. “And in truth, I don’t mind it much. I’ve developed my own… dislike… of these ‘Doms’ and their Company rebel… tools.”

  “I can imagine!’ Jindal blurted. Blair had described the action at the Dueling Grounds in considerable detail.

  Chack’s attention was diverted by a figure on a horse, racing toward them on the opposite side of the column. The animal jarred to a stop, and he was amazed to see Lieutenant Blas-Ma-Ar sitting atop as if she’d been riding horses all her life.

  “Make way,” she shouted, and forced the horse through the marching troops. Reining in before Chack and Jindal, she saluted.

  “How did you learn to control that animal so?” Chack demanded.

  “I practiced, sir,” she answered simply. “Beg pardon, but scouts have encountered enemy pickets on the road ahead.” She paused. “They could have brushed them aside, but they left them be, per your orders. They were probably seen.”

  “Any contact with Blair yet?”

  “No, sir.”

  Chack considered and wished again they had the new field communications equipment First Fleet had deployed. Soon they would, reportedly with the arrival of Maaka-Kakja. They’d managed only about five miles the night before, and they’d pushed on early that morning with little sleep. So far, they’d made eight or nine miles that day, but with the heat and humidity, he wasn’t sure his division was ready for a major pitched battle without some rest. “Let’s have a look,” he decided. “Stay back, Major Jindal, but push more scouts ahead on the flanks. We need to coordinate with Blair-and make sure there’s nothing moving up on the left. We want to draw defenders out of New Dublin, but not many, not yet.” His tail swished impatiently. “I do wish we had some ‘air,’ as Captain Reddy would say.” He shook his head. “Not for a few days yet, according to the last reports, so we’ll just have to muddle along the old-fashioned way for now.” He looked around at the confining forest alongside the road. “Be ready to go from column into line,” he said. “It will be hard, but do the best you can. The terrain should open up soon, closer to the town, I believe. If you have no word from me by then, deploy the troops at that point, regardless. But watch the flanks!” He nodded at Blas. “Come,” he said. “Show me.”

  They trotted forward, Chack a little unsteady on his mount, parallel to the marching infantry and creaking guns. A sudden flurry of shots echoed in the woods ahead. Instead of dying away, however, such as would have happened if it had been just more pickets and scouts, the shooting in
tensified.

  “It would seem someone has run into someone else,›

  “What are you doing, sir?” Blas asked.

  “I want to go forward and see what’s happening, but I don’t want this animal shot!”

  “Major, we’re on the verge of a ‘meeting engagement’ as General Alden would call it. For the first time, we’re stumbling into a battle we know almost nothing about. You must stay on your horse so you can move quickly from one place to another. That’s why you have him!”

  “But…” He looked at the horse. “ He didn’t volunteer to fight

  … did he?”

  “Do paalkas volunteer?” Blas retorted. Chack started to reply that it wasn’t the same, but Blas had already moved forward. The firing ahead continued to build; dull, thumping crackles of musketry. The troops around them on the road started to trot in response to orders shouted in two languages. The column began shaking out into a ragged line in the trees, facing south, and NCOs shouted and shoved men and ’Cats into position. Chack glanced behind him and saw the rest of the column had ground to a halt. Blas is right, he thought, patting the horse again. I have to stay mounted and find out what’s happening. He urged the horse forward with his heels.