Distant Thunders

by Taylor Anderson

  Once inside, Shinya removed his shoes and stood. A curtain separated the entry chamber from the rest of the dwelling and he passed through it. Finding the occupant seated cross-legged on the floor, facing a small window overlooking the bay, Shinya bowed at the waist.

  “Commander Okada,” he said in Japanese. “My apologies for disturbing you.”

  Okada turned then. His uniform had been wrecked and he wore a robe not unlike the ones the Lemurian Sky Priests used. He was older than Tamatsu, but had the same black hair, untinged with gray. He regarded Tamatsu for a moment before dipping his own head in a perfunctory bow. “At least you still remember how to behave somewhat Japanese,” Okada observed.

  Shinya felt his face heat. He straightened. “And you, sir, it would seem, have learned to behave somewhat like your Captain Kurokawa.”

  Okada shot to his feet, anger twisting his face. “Still you will compare me to that kyoujin?”

  “You have called me a traitor on several occasions now. If I am, what are you? I did not surrender when my ship sank; I was captured while unconscious. I had no idea any of my countrymen even existed in this world. I made an honorable accommodation with a former enemy to help confront an evil I am quite certain our emperor would despise. Our primary differences with the Americans are political, and not . . . on anything approaching the levels of our differences with the Grik! You condemn me, yet you supported the actions of a man you know the emperor would have never condoned!” Shinya fumed. He couldn’t help it: Okada’s attitude infuriated him and he didn’t understand it. “Perhaps General Tojo would have, but the emperor wouldn’t; nor would Admiral Mitsumasa!”

  Okada seemed to deflate. “I tried to oppose him,” he offered quietly. “I helped Kaufman send a warning.”

  Shinya’s voice also lost some of its heat. “Yes, you did. Moreover, you should be proud you did. I too oppose Captain Kurokawa—and the Grik. I do not and will not fight others who do, nor have I done so. I gave Captain Reddy my parole and had no difficulty fighting the Grik. When I learned of your ship, I faced a choice—a choice I was allowed , by the way—to abdicate my duty to the troops I command, or risk the possibility I might face you and others like you. I was spared that agony, but I would have done it if forced, because those troops would have been aiding Kurokawa and, by extension, the Grik.”

  “You make it sound as though I am guilty of aiding that madman simply because I did not rise openly against him sooner! Believe me, I wanted to! But all that would have accomplished is my death before I had any real chance to make a difference.” Okada looked down. “In the end, it made no difference anyway.”

  “It did,” Shinya assured him. “You gave us warning. Without that, we would not have been prepared.”

  “Prepared to kill our countrymen!” Okada almost moaned. “Do you not see? Perhaps you are not a traitor for what you have done, but I can’t stop feeling like you are, even as I feel like one for doing even less. They were my men!”

  “Yes,” Shinya agreed. “But do not think the decision was less difficult for me. Now, to do nothing further, while those same men are in the grasp of such evil, is impossible for me. Don’t you see?” Shinya waited for a response. When there wasn’t one, he sank to the floor across from Okada, who finally joined him there.

  “What do you want to do?” Shinya quietly asked.

  “I want to go home.”

  Shinya took a breath. “Unless you have knowledge beyond mine of the mystery that brought us to this world, I fear that is impossible.”

  Okada looked at Shinya a long moment, weighing the words. Finally, he sighed. “That is not what I meant. Of course I want to go ‘home,’ but I have no more idea how to do that than you profess to have. No, what I want is to go to that place that should be home. The place your allies at least still call Japan.”

  “Jaapaan,” Shinya corrected. “But why? The Lemurians have two land colonies there—a small one on Okinawa and another, larger one on southern Honshu. They have never, by all accounts, encountered any of our people. On this world, Jaapaan is not Japan. Besides, your knowledge of Kurokawa and the Grik is invaluable to those who oppose them.”

  That was true enough. Thanks to Commander Okada, the humans and Lemurians finally knew more about their enemy now. They still didn’t know what drove the Grik to such extremes of barbarity, but they’d learned a little about their social structure. For example, they now knew that the average Grik warrior came from a class referred to as the Uul, which possessed primary characteristics strikingly similar to ants or bees. Some were bigger than others, some more skilled at fighting; some even seemed to have some basic concept of self. All, however, were slavishly devoted to a ruling class called the Hij, who manipulated them and channeled and controlled their instinctual and apparently mindless ferocity. There seemed to be different strata of Hij as well. Some were rulers and officers; others were artisans and bureaucrats. Regardless of their positions, they constituted what was, essentially, an elite aristocracy collectively subject to an obscure godlike emperor figure. Nothing more about their society was known beyond that. The Hij were physically identical to their subjects, but were clearly intelligent and self-aware to a degree frighteningly similar to humans and their allies. They didn’t seem terribly imaginative, though, and so far that had proved their greatest weakness.

  Shinya persisted. “Don’t you want revenge for what Kurokawa has done to the people under his command? Our people? Can’t you set your hatred of the Americans aside even for that?”

  “I do not hate the Americans,” Okada stated with heavy irony. “But they are the enemy of our people, our emperor. I cannot set that aside. How can you?” Okada shook his head. He didn’t really want an answer to his question. “It is true I had hoped, with Amagi, to work in concert with the Americans against the Grik, because, like you, I recognize them as evil—perhaps the greatest evil mankind has ever known. I never intended an alliance with the Americans, merely a cessation of hostilities. An armistice perhaps. It is not my place to declare peace and friendship with my emperor’s enemies”—he glanced with lingering accusation at Shinya—“and no, I would not have broken the armistice. However, with Amagi, I could have felt secure that the Americans wouldn’t either. In any event, together or independently, we could have carried the fight to the Grik and then inherited this world in the end.” He shrugged. “It is a big world. Whether it was big enough for us and the Americans, in the long run, would have been a test for much later—and at least one of us would have survived the Grik.” He sighed and looked at Shinya. “An imperfect scheme, perhaps, but a less radical . . . departure from my sense of duty than the choice you made.”

  “An impossible scheme,” Shinya stated derisively. “Without the Grik, where would you have been victualed, supplied, repaired? A simple armistice would not have gotten you those things from the Americans and their allies. You would have been at their mercy!”

  “No! With Amagi, I could have demanded! As I am now, a prisoner, I have nothing! Not even honor! I can demand nothing as an equal and I have nothing to even bargain with but what is in my head!”

  Shinya stood, talking down to Okada. “No. Impossible,” he repeated. “I respect what you did, what you tried to do. You could—should be a hero for it instead of a prisoner. But the old world is gone! If you had succeeded in the rest of your plan, if you had tried to dictate terms, to conquer support from the Allies, even I would have opposed you.”

  “Even if it meant killing your own countrymen?”

  “Even if it meant killing every man on Amagi,” Shinya answered quietly. “You say you understand, that you hate the Grik and everything about them. You move your mouth and the right words come out, but you really don’t understand, do you? Even now. The Grik are the enemy of everything alive in this world! They . . . You haven’t . . .” He paused, shaking his head. He could see he was wasting his breath. He did respect Okada, but the man was just . . . too Japanese. He wondered what that said about him?

>   “I will see what I can do,” Shinya said at last. “If you agree to work with the Allies and continue to tell them what you know of Kurokawa and the Grik, I will try to convince them to let you go ‘home.’ Perhaps there you will find the honor you think you have lost. If so, I hope you can live with it. I doubt it, though. I fear for you, Commander Okada. I fear that someday your misjudgment will fade and the honor I still see in you will rise within your heart and demand a reckoning. Because of the blood we spill on behalf of you and uncountable others, you will die a tortured old man, who missed his opportunity to be honorable by mistakenly trying to do the honorable thing.”

  “What would you have me do?” Matt asked the mustachioed man sitting across the table. The table was split bamboo, with a rough, uneven top, and it served Matt as a desk of sorts in the semi-finished chamber known as the War Room. The chamber was one of many in the “new” Great Hall, still undergoing noisy reconstruction. The irregular surface of the desk didn’t really matter much; paperwork was kept to a minimum and consisted of sun-dried skins, like parchment, only not as fine. Usually, the rawhide parchment supported itself well enough to write on.

  “What would you have me do?” Jenks replied. He was dressed in his best, as always now, for these biweekly meetings. He sat stiffly on a stool in his no longer perfectly white uniform, with its ever so slightly tarnished braid. Under his arm was the black shako with braid that matched his sleeves and collar. It was raining outside and sheets pounded against the hastily covered ceiling and the chamber was humid and damp. Jenks’s coat smelled of musty cotton and the half-soaked hat would have added a wet wool and leather odor if the similar wet-’Cat smell hadn’t overpowered it. Between them on the desk was a large decanter of purplish amber liquid and two small mugs. Neither mug had been touched.

  “I know we haven’t often seen eye-to-eye,” Jenks understated, “but I do have my duty. I must return the princess to her family—something you promised to help me do—but I don’t see any measurable degree of preparation under way to accomplish that task.”

  Matt cocked an eyebrow at him. “No? We captured two more of your men spying on the shipyard from a boat they’d hired last night. Don’t tell me we’ve caught them all. Surely you have some idea what we’ve been up to?”

  Jenks sat even straighter and his face went hard. “Do you mean to execute those men, like the one you caught a few weeks ago?”

  “I should hang them,” Matt answered darkly. “I told you what the penalty would be if we caught your men snooping around where they don’t belong. The entire city has been open to them and they’ve been treated well, by all accounts. Better than well. Still, you can’t resist fooling around where you’ve got no business.”

  “If I perceive a threat to the Empire, it is my duty to evaluate it. We have cooperated with every one of your ridiculous requests, languishing here in this place quite long enough for you to prepare an envoy to my people.” Jenks’s eyes widened slightly in genuine surprise. “Somehow, you have convinced the princess to support you in that. In the meantime, all I get from you are delays, accusations, and, I believe, sir, distortions of truth. You have done nothing to alleviate my concerns about your Alliance. If anything, those concerns have grown more acute. And my question remains: will you murder these men like you did the last one?”

  Matt stood, angry. “We didn’t ‘murder’ anyone! The last man we caught had murdered a sentry to get where he was. He was captured and executed as a murderer and a spy! Would you have done otherwise? Please don’t insult my intelligence by telling me you would.”

  Jenks only sighed.

  “Very well,” Matt continued, seating himself again. “The men we caught last night did no such thing, and I doubt they saw much either. I’ll return them to you, but you’d best restrict them to your ship. If I catch them ashore again, they will be hanged!”

  Jenks cleared his throat, calming himself. For some time he sat still, staring at Matt as if appraising him anew. “Just so,” he said at last, with a hint of resignation. “And you have my appreciation and . . . my apology. You won’t see them again. I cannot assure you that there will be no more spies, however.”

  Matt looked closely at the man. He’d spoken the word “spies” with distaste. Did he mean he wouldn’t make that assurance, or couldn’t? This wasn’t the first time Matt got the impression that some things happened on and off Jenks’s ship over which he had little, if any, control. He wondered if the vague admission was a crack in Jenks’s facade, or if he was merely tiring of the aggrieved role he seemed to think was expected of him. By somebody. Matt merely nodded. He doubted he’d get an admission if he continued to press, and he wanted to use Jenks’s comparative openness while he had the chance.

  “I do assure you we’re doing all we can to prepare the expedition as quickly as possible. As I’ve said, a reconnaissance of Aryaal is part of that, and a reconnaissance in force is essential—thus the delay. That has to be our first priority. We need to know what’s going on there before we dare weaken our defenses here. Our estimates of the Grik may be entirely wrong—they have been before,” he added bitterly. “Besides, you’ve been here only a little more than two months. Bradford said it might take a few. My definition of ‘a few’ is three or more. Isn’t it the same with you?” Matt thought he detected the most subtle of smiles flash across Jenks’s face.

  “Indeed. But one can always hope for the best, and ‘a few’ is a somewhat vague expression.” Jenks’s tone hardened slightly. “Just as your notion of what these Grik are capable of seems vague as well. Come, you defeated them badly when last they came. Surely you cannot be as . . . concerned . . . about them as you claim?”

  Matt leaned against the backrest he’d had installed on his stool and regarded Jenks for a moment, rubbing his chin. “Tell you what. I’m about to have an interview with a man who probably knows more about them than anyone alive. Why don’t you join us? You may find it . . . enlightening.” Matt took Jenks’s silence as agreement and rang a little bell. Instantly, the War Room door opened, revealing a small, dark Filipino who eyed Jenks doubtfully. “Juan, please have General Alden and Colonel Shinya escort the prisoner inside.”

  Juan stood straighter, as if at attention. He’d been Walker’s officer’s steward before the war, and he’d since evolved into Matt’s personal steward and secretary. No appointment to that effect had ever been made; Juan just took it upon himself. By sheer force of will, he’d made it stick.

  “Of course, Cap-i-tan,” he said. “Should I bring coffee?”

  Matt hid a grimace at the prospect of Juan’s coffee, or at least the stuff that passed for coffee here. Back when he’d had the real stuff to ruin, Juan’s coffee had been ghastly. With the ersatz beans he now had, it had improved to the point that it was only vile. Still . . . “No, that’s not necessary, but thanks.”

  With a somber bow, Juan closed the door. A moment later it opened again, revealing three other men whom Juan ushered to seats across the desk. All had recently arrived and were soaked to varying degrees. Once they sat, Juan left the chamber, discreetly closing the door behind him.

  “Commodore Jenks, I understand you’ve met General Alden and Colonel Shinya?” There were nods. “Then may I present Commander Sato Okada, formerly of the Japanese battle cruiser we’re stripping in the bay?” Jenks nodded, but Okada continued staring straight ahead.

  “Yes, well. I’ve now spoken with Commander Okada on several occasions and I’ve discovered he prefers to remain aloof from civilities. You must understand that before we . . . came to this world, his people and ours were at war.” Matt’s expression darkened. “Quite bitterly at war, as a matter of fact, and that war almost certainly still rages. Since we rescued him from his sunken ship, we’ve come to an . . . understanding regarding our association. By his choice he remains a prisoner of war. In recognition of the threat posed by the Grik, however, and in exchange for transportation to that region that would have been Japan, he’s willing to answer any quest
ions about the enemy to the best of his ability. He was Amagi’s first officer, and as such had frequent direct, personal contact with the Grik. More than anyone else from his ship, in fact, since his former commander, Captain Kurokawa, forced him to perform most of their correspondence. Okada believes this was mainly a form of punishment, since Kurokawa knew how much he loathed their ‘allies.’ Ask him whatever you want. If you don’t believe me about the menace we all face—your precious Empire as well—you must believe him. He’s as objective a source as you’ll find. You see, he doesn’t like us much either.”

  “Who’s to say the information he gives you is genuine, then?” Jenks demanded. “Perhaps he inflates the threat to discourage you from attacking while his own people are still in their hands.”

  Okada spoke through clenched teeth. His enunciation was careful, if heavily accented. “If this . . . British man doubts my word, I will say nothing to him. I do not even understand why I am here. Surely you have already told him everything I have said. Americans and British are the same. Both are enemies of my emperor. You act in concert and remain as one people, despite your supposed split.”

  “Hmm,” said Matt, “I’m sorry, Commander. Clearly, you don’t understand. Commodore Jenks is no more British than you are.” For an instant, Okada’s facade dropped to reveal an expression of confusion while Jenks sputtered. Matt plowed on. “His ancestors were British, mostly, from what the princess says, but they came to this world the same way we did before the United States even existed. I’ve tried to persuade him to accept the historical bond that’s existed between our two countries for the last few decades, but he professes not to believe it. If he does, he doesn’t care. So don’t think of him or his people as enemies of your emperor; they’re not. Remember your history. When his people last came through here, Japan was closed to them. They knew it was there, of course, but they knew little of the people who inhabited it. They were too busy in China and India.”