Firestorm d-6

by Taylor Anderson

“Okay. I’m just a supply guy, remember, but if we’re right about why, then we have to figure how. Our planes combed this joint from top to bottom, and we’ve had a good idea where all their major troop concentrations are, or where they were headed, for a while. As of right now, all they have unengaged is a really big wad up north around that land bridge that splits Palk Bay from the Mannar Gulf, see? I’d bet my last Navy pencil they don’t have what it takes to pull what they did today against Second Corps-and still keep what they’ve got in front of us.”

  “But it is there!” General Taa-leen interrupted. “The fliers watch constantly. They bomb! They see!”

  “Maybe they see what the enemy wants them to,” Alan said softly. “Throughout our advance, we’ve only ever seen a few ‘civilian’ Grik-besides those…” He shuddered and took a breath. He hated the young, feral Grik. A pack had ganged up on him while he was alone at night, using the latrine! Only his 1911 had saved him from a terrible and ignominious end. “Those Griklets,” he said, finishing the thought. “But we know they exist. They’ve either been rounded up and herded before us, or refugee’d out on their own. Anyway, where are they?”

  “You think whoever this sneaky Grik commander is, has dumped them in with his warriors facing us, to swell their apparent numbers?”

  “I do.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Pete said, staring at his friend. “You really do!”

  “I said so, didn’t I?”

  “Rolak?”

  The old Lemurian warrior stared out at the Marines surrounding the tent. The rain was passing and the sun already glared down.

  “I have to agree with Mr. Letts. His reasoning is sound, particularly in light of what has transpired today. It would seem the enemy commander is clever, and that bodes ill for the future, but fortunately for us here, now, his army cannot match him. I believe we have a grand opportunity.”

  Pete grunted. “Yeah… I hate it for more reasons than I care to name, but I guess it does make sense. God help us if we’re wrong.”

  “God help us if we’re right, in the long haul,” Letts said. “They’ve always had us outnumbered, but our noodles gave us an edge-even if we’re making up most of what we do as we go. Cancel that advantage and…” He shook his head.

  Pete glanced at the wide-eyed aide who’d brought the message. “Send to Admiral Keje,” he said. “Request the whole damn fleet move up and start hammering Colombo. All air to focus on the Grik formations in front of us and in the city; firebomb the hell out of them! Hold back enough to assist Second Corps in the valley, if requested, but remind them there’re some scary plane-swatting weapons there. Maybe in front of us too.” He looked at the faces around him. “Return to your commands, bring everything up! Lord Rolak, you and Alan stay here. There’s not much to plan; our standard ‘march up and piss ’em off’ play ought to do it, but we need an order of battle and to make sure everybody has what they need.”

  “Okay,” Alan said, praying very hard they were right after all. “When do we start the dance?”

  Pete looked at his watch. “Dark in nine hours. If ‘General Grik’ isn’t stuck all the way in with Second Corps, he might try "›“ove something back. If he does it in daylight, we can cut him up from the air, once he’s in the open. We can’t stop him in the dark, so… we need to make sure he has nothing to come back to before the sun goes down. We’ll have to hustle, but everything’s nearly in place now.” He looked up. “We go in two hours. Start the bombardment in one. Ships offshore now will begin simultaneously, and the others can join in as they arrive.”

  “Some won’t be here for hours, General,” Alan said.

  “That’s okay. Reasonable care should be taken to avoid the docks and manufacturing facilities we’ve pinpointed from the air, but the latecomers’ll still have plenty to shoot at. I want Colombo-the disgusting, puss-filled sore it is on this world-turned into a gravel pit.”

  “Ah, should we pass the word to try to take any prisoners?” Alan asked.

  “What for? We don’t eat them! Oh never mind, I know what you mean. Orders are don’t kill any Japs you see, and try to catch a few hon- chos in fancy clothes so we can find out more about ‘General Grik,’ and what else might be up. Besides that, take no risks to secure prisoners! In other words, don’t kill ’em if they throw themselves at your feet, but for God’s sake, cut their claws and bind their jaws-and kill ’em anyway if they twitch while you’re doing it.”

  General Halik snarled with fury and literally flung the abject messenger away from him, drawing his sword as he did so.

  “If you kill messengers that bring ill tidings, soon you’ll have none willing to bring you any, ill or good,” General Niwa said mildly. “Your messengers are not Uul, after all. They are… fairly valuable.”

  “N’galsh, that… traitor!… has fled the city with the cream of the cadre we’ve spent these long months forming! He didn’t even test them against the enemy-he just took them and ran away!”

  “Can you blame him? Honestly? He’s no general. I told you one of us should have remained behind.”

  Halik and Niwa were standing near the crest of the highland range overlooking the cauldron of death the valley below had become. Both were filthy and a little scorched by a firebomb that landed nearby earlier in the day, destroying several large guns and roasting their carefully trained crews. Unlike the first such weapons they’d seen deployed in the south, these detonated on impact. The enemy revised and adapted their tools so quickly!

  It was late afternoon now, and even Halik had long since wished he could end this battle. He wouldn’t have started it at all, if he’d been able to properly communicate with the forces on the northern slope. He’d been forced to rely on rote memorization of the “plan,” based on “you see this, you do that.” Even now, few of his Firsts of a Thousand (Niwa called them colonels) were willing to exercise initiative, even if they could. Now, having insisted Niwa accompany him here, he’d compounded that error by insisting he remain by his side. Had it been nerves? Insecurity? Halik suspected so. This had been his first real test, and he’d wanted the Japh with him… but then he’d ignored almost all his advice! He wasn’t really angry at the messenger, or really even N’galsh. N’galsh had done the only thing he knew to do. Halik was angry at himself.

  “You speak truth, General Niwa,” he said, sheathing his blade and staring at the smoke-choked abattoir below. He couldn’t see much from where he stood, but even after the long hours of figheverhe enemy guns still thundered as frequently as they had all day, and the stutter of their “muskets” only wavered when the diminishing horde fell back out of range. Even then, curiously, some of the enemy small arms continued firing-and taking a toll-far beyond what he knew their own new “muskets” were capable of hitting anything. None of his “special” warriors armed with the things were down there, of course; they remained an elite guard for him and Niwa, but after their first blooding in the south, and what he’d seen here, he knew they were the future of this war.

  “Call them back; end this,” Niwa said softly. “They’re not yet what we would make of them, but they’re becoming good troops, General. None I’ve seen have run as prey, even in the face of that impenetrable wall of fire. They are beginning to revert, however, and many are bunching up rather badly. The enemy planes will likely return, and their mortars…”

  “Yes, yes! I know all that! It’s just… hard! In this one day, we’ve lost everything! With a single ‘plan,’ all is undone!”

  “No, my… friend. Nothing is undone. As I’ve said many times, we’ve accomplished our mission here. We learned about the enemy, and he’s learned little new of us. Even more important is what we ’ ve learned about us! It’s long been an axiom among my… species that one often learns more from failure than success; more from defeat than victory. Not least among those lessons, I think, is that defeat is possible, even likely, if one has never seen its signs before.”

  “There are ‘signs’ all around us!” Halik snorted.
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br />   “Indeed. You’ve seen much that doesn’t work today: too rigidly adhering to a plan, assuming that plan is too clever for the enemy to divine, overconcentration of command-all these and many more you won’t do again-if you and some portion of this army live to fight another time.” He put his hands behind his back. “General Halik, there are.. . some things… General of the Sea Kurokawa admires about your Uul. He admires what he calls their ‘discipline,’ their willingness to do anything they’re told, within the context of their understanding. Tell them to charge into certain death and they do-because few have any real con- cept of death, what it means, and that it will happen to them. They are told and they obey. We once watched hundreds dive into the water to assist with repairs to Amagi, my lost ship. They were torn to shreds by the fish. They finally managed the simple task set them, but hundreds died to accomplish what might have been achieved with no loss had any real thought been given to the assignment. Kurokawa believed that was discipline, but it wasn’t.” He paused. “I don’t know if you’re ready to discuss what I think it was, but it wasn’t discipline.”

  He pointed down at the battle. “Those… creatures and their Americans have true discipline! They move and fight as a team, like a machine-and not the way your laborer Uul behave, with no thought or understanding of what they do. Our enemy, each and every one of them that performed that admirable maneuver to evade your trap, knows what is expected of them, knows they can die-they are as intelligent as you or I, it seems; yet even though they’re likely terrified, they do their duty. That is discipline! The contrast between that and your average Uul couldn’t be more striking.

  “Now we’ve begun to form troops with a measure of understanding for what they do. Some are even afraid, I think; yet they don’t ‘turn prey,’ as you put it. They begin to know, as you once did, yet still they do. We must preserve that!”

  Halik hissed a long sigh, looking to the west where a great column of smoke rose above Colombo. “I will end this, if I can. Some will not retreat; others will turn prey at last, once they show their backs to the enemy…”

  “Perhaps.” Niwa stared down at the milling, dying army. “Perhaps not. If so, you can’t help that. Save what you can.”

  Halik raised his voice. “The horns will sound the ‘gathering’ call!” He listened as his order was obeyed and the horns boomed along the crest, answered by others on the far slope. Almost immediately, the Grik horde, savagely depleted, began to stir; to disengage.

  “See?” Niwa said with satisfaction. Greater, stricter “horn” training had been one of his own contributions. The horns not only told the warriors what to do, they gave them direction and ensured them that “someone” was watching over them, leading them. The sound of the horns gave them something to cling to when they were confused. “They’ve learned that well enough. Their obedience to the horns has become even stronger than their urge to attack-or break!”

  “What now? Will the enemy pursue?”

  Niwa glanced at the sun nearing the horizon. “I think not. He’s been mauled as well. He’ll expect us to move to the relief of the city, and if it has truly fallen as the message suggests, he’ll move to intercept us. I recommend we retreat north, as quickly as we can. We may have time to destroy some of the factories and other facilities, but I submit our greatest imperative is to save as much of the Army, this one and that to the north, as possible; to prevent a rapid enemy advance across to India. The factories may be here, but the things that feed them are there. You must decide on which side of the land bridge to try to stop them. Once that’s done, you must also decide if we should stay, or if it’s time to leave at last, to pass what we’ve learned to others.”

  “It will be as you advise,” Halik hissed. “I will decide that last question when the time comes.”

  “Jesus, they’re pullin’ back!” Colonel Flynn gasped, pausing his attempt to pound a stuck “Minie” bullet down the fouling choked barrel of his Baalkpan Arsenal rifled musket. A few of his Rangers also paused to look, to realize what he said. They’d never had a chance to throw up a proper breastworks, but they’d improvised one during the battle with the bodies of the Grik dead. Those with shields had tried to protect the firing line from the hail of crossbow bolts, but the killed and wounded in almost every engaged regiment approached thirty percent. Naturally, the Rangers and the 9th Aryaal had been hardest hit, being in the center, and the 1st Amalgamated had been forced into close combat with their slightly slower-loading rifles. Flynn vaguely suspected there’d always be a place for the “buck and ball” smoothbores as long as the fights remained such close-quarters affairs.

  The Grik had paused about two hundred yards away after their most recent rush was blunted. Even they had to rest a while, though their attacks had been unnervingly well coordinated for a change. Their ranks remained disorganized, but they seemed to have adopted the concept of successive “surges” that allowed those most closely engaged to fade back and be replaced by others at the point of contact. This allowed them to keep the pressure up far longer-and more exhaustingly-than ever before. The change was a… chilling development. Finally, they’d pulled back en masse beyond what they must have considered “musket shot,” apparently to sortthings out a bit. They weren’t out of range of the new rifles-or canister from the artillery, of course. For the last ten minutes, the Grik just stood there and took it as if unsure what to do while the battered II Corps obligingly poured it in. Flynn had been wishing for the hundredth time he had one of Hij Geerki’s “recall” horns, when suddenly the things began to thrum in the valley, and the massive Grik swarm began obediently withdrawing.

  He was stunned. Never had the Grik just backed away from contact-never. In the past, they always either fought until they died, or ran. This was completely new. Alden hadn’t reported seeing anything like it during his march up the coast.

  “Jumpin’ Jehosephat! They’re licked!” Billy paused, his eyes widening. “And they know they’re licked! Goddamn! Let ’em have it! Pound’em! Don’t let ’em just walk the hell away!” The firing around him redoubled, and he tamped the misshapen projectile the rest of the way down the barrel. Putting a copper percussion cap on the cone at the breech, he thumbed the hammer to full cock, aimed into the departing mass, and fired. The recoil of the weapon wasn’t really all that bad-unless one had already fired it a couple of hundred times. His shoulder felt as if somebody had been whacking it with a baseball bat. “Mortars, damn it! Hit ’em now, while they’re bunched up!”

  “We’re out of bombs!” someone hollered. “More are on the way, but we have none now!”

  Flynn swore and looked around. “Corporal, gimme some water!” he cried to a ’Cat hurrying by with a bucket. The corporal paused while Billy threw some salty-tasting water at his mouth with the floating cup, then spat some down the barrel of his rifle. “Ghaa!” he said, spitting out the foul remainder. He plugged the muzzle of the weapon with his finger and tilted it in a seesaw motion so the water would slosh back and forth in the bore. “Musta been an artillery sponge bucket!” he said, spitting again and pouring the black water from his rifle onto the ground. He placed a piece of cloth over the muzzle and ran it down with his jag-shaped rammer head. Withdrawing the rammer, he stuck it in the ground at his side, and the now-soggy, blackened cloth fell away. He popped two percussion caps and blew down the barrel, then snatched another paper-wrapped cartridge from the box at his side and tore it open with his teeth.

  The firing around him was diminishing, except the artillery, which was now shooting the lighter spherical case-he could tell by the report. White puffs cracked and blossomed over the retreating enemy, spraying shell fragments among them, but still they moved away-as a mob certainly, but a controlled mob.

  “It is over, Col-nol Flynn,” said a familiar voice behind him. He turned and quickly saluted Safir-Maraan, throwing most of the powder in his cartridge at his face. Self-consciously, he wadded the torn paper around the bullet and dropped it back in his cartridge box.


  “Aye, uh, General,” he said. Regardless of her various other titles, on the battlefield, she was “general” first. “It looks that way,” Billy added. He reached up and pulled the helmet off his head, revealing his thinning mat of sweaty red hair. He started to slick it back but was shocked to see how badly his hand had begun to shake.

  Safir took a deep breath and almost gagged herself. The stench of the morning had grown exponentially worse with the addition of the mangled corpses all around and the fog of smoke that clung near the blood-drenched ground. Her normally resplendent silver-washed armor was stained with red turning to black, and her black cloak was torn and tingeed th shiny reddish patches. Knowing her, she’d probably been right up on the line with a musket and bayonet at some point, Billy thought. Not the best place for a corps commander!

  “But they retire in… I think you say ‘good order’?” she said huskily, holding her hand over her mouth. “Oh, surely this is the stench of the unlighted void! I barely noticed it before.” She fumbled for her water bottle and took a long swig. “Odd, the things one perceives immediately after these ‘new’ battles-at least I’ve found it so,” she almost whispered. She composed herself and gestured toward the retreating Grik. “I do not like to see that.”

  “Me neither,” Billy agreed, stunned to see even an instant of weakness from the indomitable Safir. “It was a hell of a fight, but we’d turned the corner-even if there was a bunch more than I thought at first. Sorry about that. It’s hard to count ’em when they’re all wadded up. Anyway, any battle in the past, we would’ve about wiped ’em out. This retreatin’ crap, instead of just runnin’ away, gives me the creeps.”

  “I feel ‘creeps’ as well,” Safir admitted. “We must report this immediately.” She looked at him. “Thank you Col-nol,” she said sincerely. “I admit, I didn’t know what to think of you and your Amaal-gaa-mated before today. You are a strange man, originally from a very strange craft! But your and Col-nol Grisa’s regiments likely saved my entire corps today when you ‘smelled a rat,’ as Lieutenant Saaran-Gaani put it. You have my most profound appreciation.”