by E. E. Knight
"When we're at sea, I'll try Lieutenant Post first."
"The man's a drunk, my David, or he would be in command of the marines instead of you."
"Yes."
"How will you explain their absence to the captain? You told him the Coastal Marines were supplying a team of scouts, showed him fake orders."
"We'll use your Grogs. I'll tell him your laborers can perform the job. Besides, the men like having a few Grogs around to do the dirty work. Will they do what you say?"
"They're Gray Ones—brutes. They obey me; it is easier than thinking. On paper, they are a combat-ready team, but I've never seen them shoot. When they are done working the ship, they were supposed to be moved inland. But a request from the Coastal Marines would outweigh such a trifle. The Kurians have many to take their place."
"Better get them ready as soon as we reach the Thunderbolt. I'll have a word with the Chief, and we'll be under way by dawn. The radio is going to break down, as well. We can't be too careful."
The Thunderbolt, tied up to the dock, did not live up to her name. She looked like the swaybacked old icebreaker that she was, new coat of paint and polished fittings or no. Her 230-foot length had a high prow, a deep well deck, and her castle amidships. Just below the bridge in the bow was the five-inch gun, her main armament. On the other side of the castle, a twenty-millimeter Oerlikon looked like an avant-garde sculpture under its protective cover. Valentine's marines were responsible for it and the four 7.62-millimeter machine guns in action. They lay ready to be placed in the mounts on either side of the ship, more or less at the corners of the upper deck of the square main cabin.
As she was now configured, she carried four commissioned officers and seven warrant officers, supervising divisions of forty-five Coastal Patrol crewmen and thirty-four Coastal Marines. Usually she patrolled with a higher proportion of CP, fewer marines, and more space for all concerned, but she had been modified to carry troops this trip. The captain had made no secret of their mission. A nest of "pirates and terrorists" on the island of Jamaica had been bold enough to trouble the continental coast. The Thunderbolt and crew was to "capture, scuttle, or burn" the pirates' ships and destroy their base. The gunboat had little to fear in return: she could stand off and sink the pirates in their harbor or on the sea, for the sail-driven brigands had no gun to match the five-inch cannon, and nothing short of naval gunfire, mines, or torpedoes could penetrate the icebreaker's hull.
Whatever her hoped-for glories, the Thunderbolt looked dismal enough in the predawn gloom as she waited in her berth. A light burned at the entry port at the end of the gangway, and a glow from the bridge revealed the outline of the officer of the watch.
Valentine and Ahn-Kha walked up the gangplank.
A duty officer came to attention. "Mr. Rowan, sir," the CP said with just enough briskness to prove that he had not been sleeping. The man did not acknowledge Ahn-Kha.
Valentine looked forward and aft. Ahn-Kha's labor team lay in a snoring heap at the stern. Frowning, he turned on Ahn-Kha.
"If your gang is going to sleep like that on deck, you might as well get them some bedding," he said. "You have permission to get it out of ship's stores."
"Sir, thank you, sir," Ahn-Kha said, giving a quick bow.
The duty snorted. "Hope they wash it afterwards. We got enough bugs already."
For'ard, Valentine saw the red glow of a cigarette. The Chief sat on a stool, his legs up on the rail and an ankle comfortably cradled in a machine-gun mount, watching the rain fall. In a complement of more than eighty, Valentine's confidants consisted of the Grog next to him and the Chief by the rail. He moved forward. Obviously the Chief was waiting for him to return.
"Good evening, Captain Rowan," the Chief murmured as Valentine approached. The Cat paused and rested his elbows on the rail, looking out at the drizzle. Chief Engineer Land-berg, like Valentine, had a strong dash of Native American blood in him, giving his title an ethnic twist which he bore with good humor. Though not a tall man, he had a wide wrestler's torso supported by pillarlike legs. Unlike his body, his face was soft and rounded, a textbook example of the kind of face described as "apple-cheeked." The Chief had been an informer for Southern Command since his youth, but until this run limited his service to simple intelligence-gathering.
The rain had washed the air clean of the usual fetid river odors. All Valentine could smell was the vaguely metallic tang of the ship, new paint, and the Chief's burning tobacco.
"What's the matter, Chief, can't sleep?" Valentine looked back over his shoulder. The sentry probably couldn't hear them over the weather, but no sense taking chances.
"No, the sound of rain on this biscuit tin keeps me awake sometimes, so I just come up and watch it fall."
"How's that fuel pump coming? I'd really like to get under way. The men are getting anxious."
Landburg looked up, swallowed. Valentine gave him a nod.
"They are, huh?"
The engineer pinched his lower lip between thumb and forefinger when overhauling a problem. He would pull out his lower lip then release it so it hit his upper Up and teeth with a tiny plip. "Well, I reckon good news shouldn't wait"—plip. "I got sick of waiting on the part, so I found something I could modify with just a little machining. I'll try it out right now, if you want"—plip—"and we can let the captain know if it works. These delays have been driving the old man nuts."
"Good work, Chief."
Valentine exhaled tiredly and left the Chief to finish his tobacco and thoughts. He was committed now. By this time tomorrow, he would be at sea, with only Ahn-Kha and the Chief set against the captain and crew, backed up by the Kurian system that controlled them. Were it not for the rocksteady support of Ahn-Kha, as imperturbable as a mountain, and the Chief's wily aid, his quest would have foundered long ago.
He climbed one of the metal staircases running up the castle side to the bridge and asked the watch officer to call him at dawn, and retired to his shared cabin. Originally only he and the captain were given their own cabins, but after he saw the crowded conditions on board, he invited Lieutenant Post to share his cabin. Post got quietly drunk each night, duty or no, and Valentine felt for him after hearing some of the gibes hurled with casual viciousness by the other wardroom members.
He looked down at Post, a sleeping ruin of what must once have been a physical archetype of a man. His six-three frame didn't fit on the bed, from his salt-and-pepper hair to rarely washed feet, breathing in the restless, shallow sleep of alcoholic oblivion. As usual, he hadn't bothered to undress before turning in, and would attend to his duties tomorrow in a wrinkled uniform, permanent stains marking the armpits and back. Post ignored even the captain's comments about his appearance, but in some fit of contrariness shaved each morning after Valentine had once privately mentioned over coffee that he would have a terrible time keeping his marines clean shaved if his lieutenant sprouted three days' worth of stubble.
Valentine sat on his untouched cot and began to remove his shoes. Above him, a railed shelf held his meager collection of books. Father Max's gilt-edged Bible—the old Northern Minnesota priest had raised him after his family's murder, and died of pneumonia while he was training Foxtrot Company. The Padre had willed the aged tome to him. It had arrived while he and Duvalier were seeking the Twisted Cross on the Great Plains. Next to the Bible were his battered old Livy histories, brought down when he first joined up with the Cause eight years ago. He owned copies of Clausewitz's On War and a Chinese Army translation of Sun Tzu, volumes he'd had to study at the military college in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, as he'd been studying for his commission. His American Civil War histories were next: Sam Wafkins's Company Aytch and Frisch's Lincoln: Leadership to Liberty. Then came his little collection of fiction. Water-ship Down, its yellowed pages stitched together and ironically rebound in rabbit skin—given to him as a welcome-home gift by the craftsman, a Wolf named Gonzalez who'd survived their ill-fated courier mission to Lake Michigan in 2065. Next to it, and in much bett
er shape, was a recent hardcover of the complete set of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Then there was his latest acquisition, a copy of Gone with the Wind bought at a New Orleans bookstore. He'd seen his fellow infiltrator Duvalier reading it last year while he was undergoing Coastal Marine training in Biloxi, Mississippi. Shocked to find her so deep into such a brick of a book, he'd made some comment about the four-color cover. "Ever read it?" she asked. When he admitted that he hadn't, she told him not to offer an opinion out of ignorance. Sensing a challenge when he heard one, he sat down with it his first free day, intending to mock it and her—but within twenty minutes was so captivated that he went out and treated himself to a bottle of cognac to enjoy with the epic.
The rest of the shelf held mostly unread Kurian propaganda and service bulletins.
There was a quiet knock at the door.
"Naturally," Valentine said to himself and two hundred pounds of alcoholic stupor a leg's length away. He rose and opened the door.
A twelve-year-old boy in a uniform two sizes too big for him stood in the corridor. The crew called him and his twin brother Peaone and Peatwo, being identical twins sent to sea in the care of their uncle, one of the petty officers. The captain, sick of not being able to tell them apart, flipped a coin and had all the hair shaved from Peaone's young head. Under a messy shock of sun-white hair, Peatwo looked up at Valentine with piercing blue eyes.
"Sir, the captain's passing the word for you, Mr. Rowan. He wants to see you in his cabin."
'Tell the captain I'm coming."
"Aye aye, sir," Peatwo said, turning and moving six feet up the passageway toward the captain's door. The captain was not the sort of man to just knock on the wall or come himself.
Valentine retied his boots, wishing he had had just five minutes out of them. He walked the short distance to the captain's cabin. He smoothed out his uniform unconsciously and knocked.
"Come," a sharp voice answered.
Captain Saunders fancied himself a species of tough old seahawk, but to Valentine, he seemed more like a rather aged rooster. The heavy wattles hanging under his chin were hardly hawklike, and the full head of gray hair that was the captain's pride and joy was brushed up into a bantam's pompadour. Perhaps something hawkish flickered in the stare of his hard hazel eyes, between which a beak of a nose matching that of the mightiest of eagles, if not a toucan, arched out in its Roman majesty.
"You passed the word for me, sir?" Valentine asked. The captain was in one of his work-all-night fits, and Valentine tried his best to look alert.
"Ahh, Captain Rowan. Are the marines ready to go to sea?"
"Of course, sir."
"Good. You'll be glad to know we'll be leaving in the morning—the fuel pump is repaired. I had to light a fire under the Chief, but if properly motivated, the man can work wonders."
Valentine blanked his expression. He looked around at the small day cabin. The captain sat behind a massive desk that must have been brought in sections, then reassembled. It dwarfed the other chairs in the room. A few pictures, all of Captain Saunders in various stages of his career or of ships he had officered, decorated the walls. "Glad to hear it, sir. The waiting has been hard."
"It's finally over. Keen to get to sea, I hope? Ready for the smell of burning sail?"
"At your order, sir. One thing though, sir. I still haven't had any luck finding a reliable team of rangers. Something must be going on inland. I've tried through channels and I've tried out of channels, but all I can find are kids or old men," he said, more than half-telling the truth for once. "The Grog labor team is a combat squad on paper. I'd like to just keep them, sir."
"What about quartering them? We're crowded enough— the men won't share with Grogs."
"We can rig some kind of shelter in the well deck, sir. Tents would do."
Captain Saunders thought for a moment. "Very well, they can eat the leftovers. Stretch the stores. I understand Grogs aren't too particular. Put that foreman of theirs in charge of squaring them away. I'd like to depart at dawn, and you'll be welcome on the bridge at six a.m. We'll take her out right after breakfast."
Close to two hours of sleep! Valentine sagged in relief. "Thank you, sir."
"One thing, though, Captain Rowan. I'd like you and the exec to do a final weapons inventory. You'll do your marines and the small arms locker, and he'll cover the heavy weapons. Wouldn't want to reach Jamaica and find your men's rifles had been left dockside by accident. 'For the want of a nail,' am I right?"
"Yes, sir." Valentine said, the prospect of sleep evaporating like a desert mirage. "Speaking of small arms, I had to give over my revolver for barter for some parts the Chief needed. I'll need a new pistol from the ship's arms."
"Rowan, you have to learn to throw your weight a little more. Greasing palms with your sidearms ... Still, if it helped get us to sea, I'm grateful. Anyway, get that inventory done. That was item one, business. Item two is pleasure: I'd like your company at dinner tonight. A tradition of mine, to celebrate the beginning of what we all hope will be a successful cruise. Mr. Post is invited, too, of course. Number One uniforms, please. That will encourage your lieutenant to clean himself up."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," Valentine said.
"That's all for now. See to your men, Rowan."
"Aye aye, sir." Valentine shut the cabin door softly behind him and began his day's work.
He hardly noticed the ship pulling away from the dock and moving downriver, so busy was he with final preparations. The executive officer, Lieutenant Worthington, started on the heavy weapons inventory then begged off as the engines were turned over to attend to duties on the bridge.
Valentine, who had little to do with the actual handling of the ship, was glad to be rid of him and offered to finish Wor-thington's part of the barely begun job. The exec, though two years older than he, had not seen much action and assumed Valentine to be a man of vast experience, to be a captain of marines in his mid-twenties. He had the annoying habit of wanting particulars of the various real—and faked—incidents in Valentine's "Captain Rowan" dossier. Valentine did not wish to discuss the faked events out of fear of slipping up on some detail, and the memories of the real incidents seen from the sidelines in the service of Kur troubled him too much to want to talk about them for the entertainment of a callow fellow officer.
Inventory and inspection done, he just had time to change into his best uniform before dinner.
Naturally, the dinner began with a toast over the cloth-covered folding table that had been set up for the meal. Worthington raised his glass of wine, an import brought all the way from Western Mexico. The captain and exec sat opposite each other, stiff in their crisp black uniforms, the captain's solid-gold buttons engraved with illuminati eye-and-anchor. Valentine and Post in their brass-buttoned navy blue filled the other places on the square table.
"The Thunderbolt, Queen of the Gulf," Worthington intoned as they raised their glasses. Saunders sipped with a connoisseur's thoughtful appreciation; Post drained his glass in a single motion; Worthington barely tasted his. Valentine took a welcome mouthful, grateful just to be off his feet.
The wine hit him hard, and he fought to keep from falling asleep in his soup. A winter salad followed. The captain and the exec did most of the talking, discussing the pilot's navigation of the treacherous, shifting sandbars at the mouth of the Mississippi and the balance of the stores on the ship. Valentine was content to eat his main course, a fresh filet of Texas beef smothered in onions and mushrooms, in exhausted silence. Post, who had been encouraged by Valentine to mend his best uniform and press it to celebrate the freedom of being at sea and away from the humid air of New Orleans, finished the bottle and started on another of less illustrious vintage.
"Captain Rowan?" Captain Saunders's voice broke in through the mists of Valentine's fatigue.
"Sir?" Valentine asked, looking to his left at the captain.
"Lieutenant Worthington asked you a question. About the Grogs?"
"My
apologies, Lieutenant," Valentine said, bringing himself back to the dinner with an effort. "I'm not myself tonight. What was the question?"
"Seasickness, Captain Rowan?" Worthington asked, a smile that was half sneer creeping across his face. "We're still on the river."
"Probably."
"I just wanted your opinion on Uncle's Grogs," the exec continued. "We were really hoping for some rangers for the inshore scouting work." The men on the ship called Ahn-Kha "Uncle," and Ahn-Kha was too well mannered among their enemies to correct them. In the Ozark Free Territory, he would have flattened someone who could not be bothered to learn to pronounce his name correctly.
"Uncle says that they are combat trained. I'll vouch for his word."
"It's your responsibility, of course," Captain Saunders said.
By now Valentine knew that the phrase was Saunders-speak meaning that if the Grogs failed in some way, the blame would be passed to Valentine.
"I'm sure we can keep them busy on the ship," the exec said. "I've never had any experience with Grogs in combat. I've heard they leave something to be desired."
"Properly armed and with a decent leader, I'll put them up against anyone," Valentine said. "I've seen them in action, once they sink their teeth into a fight, the only way to stop them is to kill them." He did not add to the speech that his experience mostly came from fighting against the Gray Ones, rather than with them.
"But as scouts, Rowan, as scouts?" the exec asked.
"Like dogs who can shoot guns. Fine marksmen. Good eyes and ears. Not a whole lot smarter than a dog, though. Decision making isn't their forte; they'll come back and hoot at you to let you know they've found something. Uncle can make more sense out of their tongue than I can."
"Very well, Captain Rowan," Saunders said. "That settles my mind, knowing you are confident in the matter. I'm sure they'll be an asset."
The rest of the evening passed in the captain telling stories to his captive audience. Valentine leaned back in his chair, keeping his eyes open while his brain turned itself off. He shifted his gaze to Post, who had restricted his conversation to a few polite phrases during dinner. His lieutenant remained silent, failing to murmur appreciatively at Saunders's yarns. Post finished the second bottle of wine before turning to the brandy.