His voice became a whisper. “It was a fiasco. I was on my feet again, sort of, and we’d determined to take back the ship. We didn’t really even need a plan. With him and his stooges gone, we just armed ourselves and waited for him to return and be placed under arrest. He had twenty men with him, about a third of the crew, as security. They were all armed to the teeth, but we didn’t think a shot would be fired when we made our move. They weren’t going to actually get any water, just find it if they could and then we’d organize the best way to get it to Mahan, or get Mahan closer to it. At least that was the plan he told us. I think he was looking for a place to stop—to build shelter and stay.”
Ellis’s expression became angry. “That would have been fine with me, and good riddance! If only he hadn’t . . .” He shook his head. “Anyway, we waited and waited, and they . . . just didn’t come back. The whole place was a jungle and we couldn’t see a thing as soon as they left the beach. A few times, we thought we heard shots, but it might’ve been the surf. Night fell and we could still see the boats dragged up on the beach but no sign of anybody.”
He looked around at the expressions of those listening and saw their horror. He looked down at the table. “We couldn’t go ashore in the dark,” he muttered quietly and glanced back up. The horror remained on their faces, but there was also sympathy for him, for the decision he’d been forced to make. A part of his soul might have even felt a surge of relief at the absence of condemnation, but it was far too small a part to provide him any solace. He condemned himself enough as it was. “I left twenty men on board the next day, about half of whom were fit for duty. There was no way I was able to go tromping through that jungle, so I stayed on the beach with Pam Cross—one of the nurses—and one other man. I—” He stopped and looked at the bosun’s mate beside him. “Frankie led the party inland.”
“Mr. Steele?” Matt prompted.
Frankie looked at the captain with tortured eyes. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He’d been twisting the hair of the beard on his chin—hard—for the last several minutes.
“Uh, we followed the trail they made about three miles into the jungle, kind of skirting along the southern slope of a big mountain or volcano that’s right in the middle of the place, see? Hadn’t seen a thing up till then but tracks. Then, all of a sudden . . .” He gulped from the cup of coffee that Juan had placed, unnoticed, by his elbow. “There was a clearing, kinda, and one of the guys picks up a canteen and there’s blood on it, see?” He closed his eyes. “There was blood all over the place! A boot, a couple o’ hats, a few shell casings . . . nothing else but a bigger trail leading toward the other side of the island, with blood on it too, in places.” He covered his face with his hands, then ran his fingers up through his hair, knocking off his hat. He didn’t even notice.
“But that wasn’t the worst of it. I sent one of the guys back to the beach to tell Mr. Ellis what we found and the rest of us pushed on. The island’s about eight or ten miles wide there and we never would’a made good time if it wasn’t for the size of the trail they left. Close to noon, we heard the sound of surf and eased out to the edge of the jungle overlooking the beach on the southwest side of Nias and we seen . . . we seen them lizard ships! Dozens of them, beating down to southward! You could see they’d been ashore, lots of ’em, and their cook-fires were still smoking.” He cleared his throat and licked his lips. When he spoke again, his voice was a whisper.
“I, uh, went out on the beach alone to take a look around and I looked into one o’ them fire pits. There was bones in that pit, Captain. Human bones. They were all gnawed up like—” He couldn’t continue. He just sat there, twisting his beard and staring at the tabletop. No one said a word, each alone with the mental image Frankie Steele had conjured in their minds.
Finally, the tough, Bronx-born bosun’s mate met their stares and his eyes were red and tears threatened to spill. “Them lizard bastards ate my friends,” he grated. “I transferred out’a Walker to help Mr. Ellis, Skipper, but them guys was still my shipmates.” He shuddered. “I want to kill ’em all!”
Matt nodded. At that moment he knew with complete certainty that all the rhetoric he’d used to justify this expedition—this war—to his allies and his own people hadn’t been merely rhetoric. It was clear, blinding truth. The things he’d seen in Revenge’s hold had been proof enough of that, but ghastly as it was and as much as he liked Lemurians, the war he’d committed Walker and her people to had still been mainly the Lemurians’ war. There’d always been something of a disconnect, particularly among some members of the crew. Most of the men who felt that way, few as they were, kept their opinions to themselves. All knew they had a stake in the fight, but a few of the more mercurial hadn’t been sure exactly what it was—aside from food and fuel for fighting.
Matt had recognized his own hypocrisy when the human skull had elicited a deeper response in him than all the other atrocities he’d seen, but a fair portion of that could be explained by his fear and uncertainty about what that skull implied. Now he knew. If Revenge herself hadn’t been there that day, she had acquired the skull from a ship that had. As a trophy? A curiosity? Or as something to use as a guide to look for more? Whatever the reason, it was immaterial now. Walker was already in it and he’d have supported his allies to the hilt regardless. But now it had become profoundly personal. It was Walker’s war now, and Mahan’s too, just as much as anybody’s. When the details of this conversation filtered through the ship, as he was sure they would, even the few who’d wondered why Walker had to get involved would have their answer.
“What happened then, Mr. Steele? Did it look like all of Kaufman’s party had been . . . eaten?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Steele said, shaking his head. “We pulled out pretty quick. The lizards ambushed Kaufman closer to our side of the island, and I was afraid they knew where Mahan was, so we headed back in a hurry.” A shadow crossed his face again as he spoke. “About halfway back, we came under attack ourselves. Leroy Bennet was bringing up the rear and some kind of lizards, kind of like Griks but different . . . like Grik . . . what’s the word, Mr. Ellis?”
“Aborigines,” Jim supplied somberly.
“Yeah, Grik aborigines got him. Just tore him apart!” He sighed bitterly. “Well, we got some of them too. I don’t know how many, a couple dozen I guess, but they just kept comin’. Behind us, in front of us, through the jungle on the sides. It was a running fight all the way to the beach. We lost four more guys to the bastards before we made it to the boats!” The tears were streaming now and he wiped at them with a tattered sleeve.
“They were armed with bronze swords and hatchets,” Ellis said. “I think they were the ones that originally captured Kaufman’s party and they sold or traded them to the other . . .” He hesitated and curled his lip with hatred. “More advanced lizards.
“Anyway,” he continued, “by the time we made it back to Mahan with the remainder of Mr. Steele’s party, the ships he saw were rounding the point to the south.” His eyes gleamed. “We didn’t even try to run. We just went right at them! Fire control was still out, but we had the number two and number four guns operating fine in local control. Number one would fire, but the recoil cylinders were damaged and still leak like a sieve.” He shrugged. “We also had the machine guns amidships and the three-inch. We probably shouldn’t have fought them, but we wanted to. In the end, we destroyed five of their ships and crippled God knows how many—at least twice that number.” He paused, reflecting, and they could see the satisfaction that that part of the story had given him. “I wanted to destroy them all, but we needed to conserve ammunition. So much of ours had been damaged by flooding.” He shrugged again. “So we blew through them and headed south-southeast, making smoke. Finally wound up here and didn’t have the fuel to keep on.”
His brow furrowed. “The locals didn’t receive us too kindly at first. The Surabayans were fighting the Madurans, and when they got over their initial shock both sides thought we were here to help
the other. When they figured out that wasn’t the case, both sides tried to get us to help them against the other and all we could do was sit there and try to stay afloat.” He smiled wryly. “ ’Course, it was amazing how fast they made up after the lizards got here and they had somebody else to fight besides each other. Both sides started being pretty nice to us after that too, for what good we could do.”
“What were they fighting over?” Gray asked.
“Close as I can tell, that snotty little prince that was in here with Rolak wanted to marry, or mate, or whatever they do, with the queen on Madura. They call the island B’mbaado, by the way. Anyway, she’s a looker by their standards, I understand, and they call her the ‘Orphan Queen’ of the island.” He grinned. It was a fragile grin, but it was real. “She also thinks Prince Rasik-Alcas is a walking turd.”
Sandra shook her head. “The political situation here seems entirely different from what we’ve encountered elsewhere.”
Ellis nodded and looked at Matt. “It’s pretty different, from what little I could tell by meeting your ‘commanders,’ Captain—or should I call you Commodore?” The tentative grin grew. “Admiral? Congratulations on your promotion, by the way.”
Matt grunted noncommittally.
“The setup here seems pretty feudal to me,” Ellis said, “like Europe five hundred years ago. Lords and ladies and knights and such. Peasants too, of course. There are distinct social classes.”
“We can sort all that out later when we have the time,” Matt said. “I just hope our people and theirs can get along.” He leaned forward. “What kind of shape is Mahan in, Jim?”
“Not good.” Ellis’s grin faded and he raised the Coke to his lips and took a sip. Matt saw that in spite of the conversation and the fact it had veered from the trauma they’d suffered on Nias, Jim’s hand was shaking and the mouth of the bottle tinked against his teeth. “She’s in no shape to fight, or even move, for that matter. We’re real low on four-inch-fifty and ammo for the machine guns. No torpedoes, but you knew that. We still have a full load of depth charges.” He shook his head and snorted. “Maybe we can use the explosives in them for something? Anyway, the condensers, refrigerator, radio . . .” He shrugged. “All shot. We’ve been burning wood in the number one boiler so we keep up enough steam pressure for electricity to run the pumps, but that’s about it.”
“We can fix that,” Matt assured him. “Is the number two boiler still up?”
“Yes sir. I wouldn’t let them burn wood in that one—boy, it sure fouls everything up”—Matt avoided Spanky’s triumphant glare—“and I guess I kept hoping . . .” His voice trailed off and he paused, looking at Matt with shining eyes. “You mean you have fuel?” He caught himself and looked around. “Of course you do. You’re here! But how?”
Matt smiled as he saw hope begin to reanimate his friend. “We have allies, Mr. Ellis, as well as friends. As do you now. Mahan’s bunkers will be full just as soon as we can arrange it. I suggest you douse the fires in number one and start cleaning it out as a first order of business, as soon as you can make steam with the other. I want Mahan shipshape and ready to move as soon as possible. You’ll have all the help you need.” He glanced quickly at his watch. “I wish I could come over and have a look at her myself. Battered as she is, she’d still be a sight for sore eyes. But I doubt I’ll have time . . . today.” He looked up and his eyes held a savage gleam. “Today, I have a battle to fight!”
The sky in the east had begun to take on a pinkish tinge, blurring the stars, when Matt stepped out of the launch onto the long, low dock. His eyes burned and felt sticky with fatigue, but he felt a sense of anxious excitement nevertheless. He’d been awake for more than twenty-four hours, fought a battle, and found Walker’s long-lost sister. Still, he felt as though some sort of postponed retribution was at hand. A part of him whispered he was out of his depth, that he had no business directing a land engagement. But he was a historian and he’d studied the great battles of the past. That was probably as good a qualification for this type of fight as any other. What’s more, for the first time, he’d be going into a fight with a pretty good idea of what he faced. The Grik were fearsome warriors and if they were allowed to mass, they’d outnumber his force more than four to one. What made him able to feel, as well as radiate, a sense of calm confidence was the fact that the enemy couldn’t mass too effectively here on their right flank. They occupied only a narrow strip of land between the Aryaalan fortress and the swampy-banked river. Also, fearsome as the enemy was, they fought as a mob. Today they would face well-drilled and disciplined soldiers who were highly motivated to destroy them.
Chief Gray stepped across from the launch behind him and Matt gave the Bosun a wry, grateful smile, then looked around with a confused sense of déjà vu. He had never set foot on Aryaalan soil before, but he’d spent time in Surabaya. Of course, nothing except the longitude and latitude was the same. Even the geography was different. The great wharves and piers that had once altered this coastline into a major seaport didn’t exist. The Aryaalans weren’t seagoing folk, and there was only this one dock to service their small fishing fleet and the occasional ferry to Madura. The dock and the immediate vicinity were crowded with troops still off-loading from the ships of the battle line.
Feluccas, launches, and small boats of every description came and went as fast as they could, and Lemurian NCOs scurried about, pushing and shoving their charges into some semblance of order by squads and companies. The apparent chaos didn’t dishearten him. New to all this as they were, the Lemurian force began to coalesce at least as quickly as he’d seen human troops do before. He glanced at the brightening sky. Now all they needed was a little more time. Behind him, he heard Sandra shouting at her orderlies as they transferred medical supplies and equipment ashore. Her first order of business would be to establish a hospital, or surgery, to tend to the wounded that would be arriving very shortly. She wasn’t shouting in frustration or anger, but merely to be heard over the turmoil, and her calm voice helped, as usual, to bolster his self-confidence. Ahead through the throng, he caught sight of Lieutenant Shinya. Lord Rolak and Chack were beside him, and he was gesturing for a company commander to move his troops out of the assembly area toward the barricade that was lost in darkness.
Wide-eyed, furiously blinking Marines and Guards parted before Matt as he strode toward the Japanese officer. Shinya and Chack both braced to attention and saluted as he drew near, and he saw Rolak cast an appraising eye upon the gesture as he returned it. “Lieutenant Shinya, Bosun’s Mate Sab-At,” Matt said in amiable greeting.
“Captain,” they chorused in return.
“How goes the deployment?”
Shinya glanced at Lord Rolak with a hint of exasperation before he spoke. “A little noisier than I would have liked,” he grumbled, “but so far there’s no sign the enemy has reacted to our arrival. The Second Marine Regiment relieved the locals at the barricade as soon as they arrived and threw out a picket force a couple of hundred yards. The Grik are moving, but they seem to be focused on preparing to assault the fortifications.”
“As I said!” interrupted Rolak. “If you have truly come to help us, then I ask you . . . no, I beg you to come inside the walls and help us face this attack!” He gestured around. “With the forces you have brought, Aryaal would be secure and the enemy would pound himself to pieces against our defenses!”
“That may be,” Matt said as quietly as he could over the tumult, “but that would only result in maintaining the status quo.” He paused, realizing that Chack had stumbled on the term during his translation. “The current situation. We didn’t come here merely to help you hold your city, Lord Rolak. We came to destroy the Grik. We can’t do that by assuming a defensive posture.” He waved toward the blackness of the bay. “How long do you think it’ll be before another fleet arrives? Some did escape. They’ll return with larger and larger forces until, even with our help, Aryaal will fall. We must not allow that to happen. Not only for your
sake, but for our own.”
He looked around them at the army as it took shape. A barge had arrived next to the pier loaded with four light artillery pieces—six-pounders—mounted on “galloper” carriages with big wheels and two long shafts instead of a heavy trail so they could be either pulled by draft animals or easily maneuvered by hand. Marines worked feverishly to place ramps so they could bring the guns ashore. Another barge with a similar cargo waited to unload behind that one. Matt had every confidence the training and tactics that Alden and Shinya had hammered into the Marines and the Baalkpan Guard would make the difference against the Grik horde, but eight guns broken up into four two-gun sections advancing behind the shield wall would certainly help.
“You must trust us, Lord Rolak,” Shinya said. “This army has been trained to fight in the open. Baalkpan does not have fine walls such as yours to shield her people and so we’ve not learned to rely on such things. I mean no disrespect,” he added hastily, “but by necessity, we carry our wall with us when we fight. For this reason, we can also carry the fight to the enemy.”
“But—” Rolak stopped and blinked in consternation. “If that truly is the case, and you’re so sure of victory, then what are we to do? Aryaalans must be part of this fight! Were you not listening to me before? Battle is not a sport for spectators to enjoy! Even the contingent of B’mbaadans would rail against merely watching you fight the battle we’ve earned with our suffering these last months!”
Matt grinned at him. “Don’t worry, Lord Rolak. There’ll be plenty of fighting for all, but you’ll have to come out to do it.” Rolak blinked at him, a mixture of question and intrigue. Matt summoned a mental image of the map of the city Lieutenant Mallory had drawn. He should have asked Rolak for one with more detail, but he believed the one in his head would suffice for their current purposes. “Garrison your walls as lightly as you can. The initial Grik onslaught will probably fall on you—in fact, I’m counting on it. Gather a reserve force, as large as you can spare, near the main south gate. Did you see the bright red ball of fire that flew high in the air and burst just as the battle began on the bay last night?”
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