For an instant, Sandra thought Kurokawa actually was going to lose it; order the guards to kill her then and there, and maybe march out and shoot all her friends with the pistol at his side. With tremendous effort clear to see beneath his purpling face, however, he slowly brought himself under control. Finally, he nodded. “I believe you,” he ground out. “And that’s fortunate for you”—he nodded at Diania—“and your servant as well. I must consider this for a time. All you have said. Until then, at least, you’ll not be harmed. Or molested!” he commanded, raising his voice so his order would carry to the guards who brought them. “I gave my word,” he added under his own breath, “and I’m not a monster!”
Suddenly striding around the desk, he beckoned at someone in the adjoining room. There were words, then a rustling, scraping sound. To Sandra’s astonishment, two more guards dragged a third form into the room by its arms and seated it on a chair. There, apparently unable to rise or do more than hold his head up, sat Chairman Adar.
“Oh my God!” Sandra cried, rushing to him despite the efforts of her guard to hold her back. She knelt in front of the Lemurian leader, a new fury rising that threatened to explode when she saw her friend’s face. Adar was about forty, the same as his lifelong friend “Ahd-mi-raal” Keje-Fris-Ar. That wasn’t particularly old for Lemurians, who generally lived about as long as humans, but Adar looked very old now, to Sandra’s searching eyes. Always thin, he’d become practically emaciated, his gray fur matted, and silver eyes dull as he regarded Sandra without apparent recognition. He still wore what his Amer-i-caan friends had dubbed his Sky Priest suit, with silver stars embroidered on the hood and shoulders, but it was just as torn and dingy as the Lemurian wearing it. Sandra wheeled to glare at Kurokawa.
“What’ve you done to him?” she roared. Kurokawa actually blanched, but his face purpled again and his eyes bulged enormously. “Only I demand here, Minister Reddy,” he snapped, using her medical title within the United Homes and the Grand Alliance. He glanced at Muriname, however. “But the General of the Sky assures me nothing has been done to him—beyond subduing him and the others’ continuing, misguided resistance. Other than that, he simply won’t eat. Nor will the other ape-men. Gunnery Sergeant Horn and Kapitan Leutnant Lange both say his people”—he nodded at Adar—“cannot thrive in captivity. Is this true?”
“Of course it’s true!” Sandra stated, and it was—to a degree. But she’d never expected this. She immediately decided Adar was literally starving himself to death to keep the Japanese from using him against his people, and the ’Cat sailors were doing the same to corroborate his excuse. In a way, it was brilliant, and she suddenly wished she could get away with something similar. But that won’t work with us, she knew, or for Horn and Lange.
Kurokawa frowned. “I find that difficult to believe. The League has held ape-man prisoners before,” he informed Sandra, startling her, but he hesitated before going on, an uncertain expression joining his frown. “At least some survived to teach League spies their speech.” He pointed at Adar. “He was the leader of your alliance, after Captain Reddy, of course,” he said harshly. “And though I’m inclined to believe, as he insists, he’s of little value as such now—no doubt my radio operators can learn his language as easily from you as him,” he threatened, “I may yet make use of him and do not want him to die. You’re his doctor. Save him.”
Sandra was still absorbing the implications of the fact that the League had Lemurian prisoners. The Allies transmitted in code groups, but had always felt secure using Lemurian for voice communications. No wonder the League knew so much! Her mind whirled. “You’re keeping him—all the others—in the same kind of cell as us?” she demanded of Muriname.
“Yes, but . . .”
“Then that’s your answer!” Sandra snapped scornfully. “The League must’ve kept their Lemurians confined in the open. They can’t stand the kind of captivity you’ve had them in for long, and will die no matter what I do! Why do you think the Grik never keep Lemurian prisoners, or eat them as quick as they can when they get them?” She felt fairly safe asking that. Kurokawa must’ve seen that for himself when he commanded all the Grik in India. Still, he snorted, and even Muriname looked skeptical. “Look at him!” Sandra thundered. “Do you think he’s faking?”
Kurokawa clasped his hands behind his back and appeared to think furiously. Finally, he barked at Muriname in Japanese.
“We will prepare a . . . compound,” Muriname said grudgingly, as if trying to envision how that would work in his mind. As far as Sandra had seen, they didn’t have barbed wire. “Your men, Lange and Horn, will construct a shelter within a fenced area we will build,” he continued, “with space out of doors.” He frowned. “We’ll have to put you all in it together,” he warned. “Such a place will require constant guards, and we can’t spare enough to watch you separately.”
Sandra shook her head. “I don’t care. They’re our friends. They won’t take advantage of us,” she added, knowing Muriname, at least, might very well attempt it. He might even have been counting on their isolation to facilitate that. Sandra shuddered at the thought that three hundred other men probably had the same idea. Much as she loathed him, Kurokawa was hers and Diania’s only protection from that. For now. She looked back at Adar and finally saw a spark of recognition in his eyes.
“No,” he rasped, barely audible. “You must not do this. I love you, Lady Saandra, but I want to die. I need to die!”
“What more do you require?” Kurokawa demanded, thankfully misinterpreting Adar’s meaning, and possibly alarmed by his determination. He’d helped create the Grik suicider flying bombs, but apparently even he considered Lemurians to be more like people than the Grik. Or possibly the fact that four of them obviously preferred a terrible, lingering death to what he must’ve considered a benign incarceration even appealed to his ideal of the Bushido Code he expected his men, if not necessarily himself, to follow. Or maybe he really did hope to use Adar.
“Fresh air, food, sunlight, and at least the illusion of space around them. That’s the only thing that’ll save them now.”
“Very well,” Kurokawa grunted, looking at Muriname. Then he repeated Sandra’s own earlier thoughts, almost to the letter. “See to it. After all, they cannot escape. Where could they go?”
“Let me die!” Adar groaned, slightly louder, and Kurokawa thrust his round face near the drawn Lemurian’s. “If you die, she dies, ape-man,” he snapped. “I have little enough reason to keep her alive as it is, apparently. So if you care for her, you’ll recover.”
“Lady Saandra,” Adar gasped as they carried him into the darkness. “How could you? I was so close!”
“Shush, Mr. Chairman!” she said sternly, then lowered her voice to a whisper when she kissed the matted fur on his cheek. “We’re not finished yet!”
The guards took Adar away, and Kurokawa and Muriname stepped back inside. For just a moment, there was no one within earshot. “What you said,” Diania hissed at Sandra, “aboot Captain Reddy. Ye didnae mean it?”
“I wish I did,” Sandra answered, her voice the merest murmur. She sighed silently. “No, he’ll come,” she said with sad certainty. “He’ll have to, and not just for us. He’ll do it for Baalkpan Bay, and however many other ships and people we lost.” She nodded at Savoie’s malignant shadow in the gloom. “And he can’t leave that behind him, in the hands of a maniac, to come after him at its leisure. But I was right about the other part. He’ll do it smart. And he’ll end Kurokawa this time, no matter what it takes. Or costs.”
CHAPTER 1
////// Baalkpan, Borno
October 20, 1944
“God, I miss Idaho,” mumbled Alan Letts, the newly appointed Chairman of the United Homes, staring at the sloshy, muggy Baalkpan afternoon. He’d never thought he’d miss how cold it got in Stanley, or Grand Forks, North Dakota, either. That was another place he considered home after spending half his
childhood there. But it was rarely anything but hot—and wet—in Baalkpan, the capital city of the new Union he’d helped build. The daily shower had finally passed and he and his wife, Karen, the assistant minister of medicine, stepped outside the main entrance to the Allied Naval Hospital east of the Great Hall. That was Karen’s principal domain, and between her long hours and his crazy schedule, Alan sometimes gloomily suspected their little daughter, Allison Verdia, was the only child they’d ever get the chance to make. But at least he could see his ”youngling” and ”mate,” which was a hell of a lot more than most could say these days. So many younglings had at least one parent deployed, sometimes both. Alan tried to prevent the latter, but that had been a losing proposition from the start. Lemurians made no distinction between sexes when it came to military service, and that was probably the only reason they’d had the numbers to survive. But new regulations decreed that pregnant females returned home, period, and he tried to keep them as trainers as long as possible.
Even so, there were a lot of orphans running around. The youngest went entirely naked, scampering about on all fours as often as not, their frizzy tails held high. A pack of them dashed through a puddle, splashing water and mud, before rocketing up a heavy wooden pier supporting an old-style aboveground structure built in the time before genuine fortifications protected the city from large predators—and invading Grik. The younglings flowed through a window, raising alarmed, angry voices, then skittered down another pier to vanish in the bustle of the city. Alan laughed at the sight, but supposed it wasn’t really funny. Lemurian younglings were boisterous by nature and their antics were well tolerated by adults. In the past, however, they’d been equally well supervised. That was no longer the case, and they now ran in packs almost as wild as Griklets. Alan tried to be philosophical about it. At least they didn’t swarm all over people and eat them like Griklets. But even as they were losing an entire generation to the war, Alan feared they might lose the next one, too. Culturally, at least.
“Mind your shoes,” Karen scolded, as Alan carefully negotiated the planks laid down to the paalka-drawn carriage outside the hospital. “And at least try to keep from making mud pies in your best whites! Maybe I don’t have to clean them anymore”—she flapped her own clean but dark-stained apron for emphasis—“but somebody does. And it’s a chore nobody needs!”
Alan had been caught by the rain while visiting wounded ’Cats and men; something he did every week. And he didn’t mind that the deluge had delayed his busy schedule, heartrending as it often was to speak with the shattered victims of this terrible war, or simply view those who couldn’t even hear him. It also filled him with hope that, despite their pain, so many Lemurians—and humans from the Empire of the New Britain Isles, for the most part—remained so dedicated to the cause. Indeed, most were eager to return to the fight, regardless of how . . . unlikely that might be in many cases. They’ll get back in somehow, Alan promised himself—as he’d promised them—even if they never see the front again. We need instructors, engineers, and shop foremen who’ve been at the pointy end and seen what works. We may’ve lost their direct combat skills, but we can’t afford to lose their experience. God knows we need them.
“I’ll try,” Alan assured, stepping into the carriage and nodding at the ’Cat Marine on the front seat, holding the reins. The Lemurian made a curious chirping sound and whipped the reins. Moaning rebelliously, the paalka squished forward. Alan swayed, still looking at Karen and the hospital behind her. The hospital wasn’t as large as the great factories now crowding the Baalkpan waterfront, once so charming with colorful, bustling bazaars and brisk commerce, but it was the biggest building past the Great Hall, in Baalkpan proper. That was a source of pride, as well as sadness. It said a lot about how committed “his” people were to helping those who served them. His expression turned stony then, because as much as his visits to the hospital inspired him, they also renewed his resolve to exact vengeance against those who’d caused so much suffering in the first place. All of them, he secretly swore, with a fresh stab of furious grief over the sinking of SMS Amerika, and two- thirds of the wounded she carried, by the shadowy League of Tripoli. Some of Amerika’s survivors had finally reached Baalkpan, and between their accounts and what Matt sent from Grik City, they had a better idea of what happened—and of what the League was, even if its motives remained obscure. Three wars now? Alan mused grimly. No, not yet. Not if we can help it. We can barely handle the two we’ve got. But there’ll be a reckoning.
“And put on your hat!” Karen admonished, raising her voice and gesturing at the sky. The sun was stabbing through the clouds, raising steam from the sodden ground. Alan Letts had a very fair complexion and burned easily. He didn’t spend as much time outdoors these days and sometimes forgot to protect himself.
“Yes, dear,” he called back dutifully, quickly adjusting his high, tight collar and plopping the white hat on his head. “I’ll see you and the girls tonight,” he added, finally sitting as the carriage lurched onto the main, gravel-mixed street. For all the younglings running loose, even more had been adopted by females working in the shipyards or factories, both Lemurians and expat Imperial women. Some families with the wherewithal, still intact because they ran businesses essential to the war effort and weren’t allowed to fight, had adopted half a dozen or more. Alan and Karen had taken two themselves, both female, and treated them as their own. They would’ve taken more, but their duties already required that they have a nanny—a young, one-armed Marine veteran of the Battle of Raan-goon named Unaa-Saan-Mar—with three younglings of her own. For the first time, he noticed the many furry Lemurian faces watching from the newly built ground-level shops and porches lining the road, their amused but respectful blinking still coming as a surprise.
They actually enjoy that I’m henpecked! He realized with a mental snort. Then he reconsidered. But maybe that’s why they’ve accepted me. It makes me more a person to them, regardless of what . . . species I am. Alan still found his official status as the leader of the new, wildly diverse nation they’d built a bit overwhelming, and more than a little unbelievable. True, he’d been accepted as acting chairman during Adar’s absence, and the members of the Grand Alliance, including the Empire of the New Britain Isles and the Republic of Real People, which hadn’t joined the Union, were accustomed to that. He even thought he’d done a good job, under the circumstances, managing the logistical side of the war effort in particular. But he’d never dreamed he’d be practically drafted into the job for real, after Adar fell into enemy hands.
It might’ve been easier to understand if he’d just been acclaimed High Chief of Baalkpan. He was well-known there, and even—as were all his surviving shipmates from USS Walker, USS Mahan, and S-19, to various degrees—beloved. They’d saved the city, after all. But the fact they’d also, literally or by extension, saved Aryaal, B’mbaado, B’taava, North Borno, Sembaakpan, Sular, Austraal, Chill-Chaap, the Shogunate of Yokohama (which included the tragic village of Ani-Aaki), and all the Filpin Lands—not to mention the eleven seagoing Homes that had joined the Union—apparently hadn’t been lost on anyone. Though still amazingly fractious (particularly in the case of Sular, which still argued over representation after all the seagoing Homes joined as a single, relatively high-population state), the various Homes had apparently recognized the validity of some version of the old axiom “Never change horses in the middle of the stream.” Or war.
It also probably helped that Alan came from the one Home or Clan that every other had to materially support and considered most impartial: the “Amer-i-caan Navy Clan.” It not only protected everyone, but most of its members now came from every clan or Home. They swore allegiance to its flag and a constitution that had served as a guide for the one adopted by the Union, but though their loyalty to its high chief—Captain Matthew Reddy—was unquestioned, everyone knew they remained loyal to the United Homes as well. In addition, every Union warship belonged to the Amer-i-caan Nav
y Clan except those designated as reserve, such as Salaama-Na or Salissa (CV-1), and an increasing number of auxiliaries entering service. It was no longer required that all sailors join the Amer-i-caan Navy Clan forever, but officers must in order to be commissioned. Regular sailors’ oaths would be allowed to expire (if they wanted) when the war was over and they went home. But the Marines practically belonged to Captain Reddy. The Navy Clan also had a few land possessions, such as the islands of Tarakaan, Midway, and Andamaan. And there was a “daughter” colony being built at a place it called Saan Diego, so far away that it was literally on the bottom of the world as far as most were concerned. Even that didn’t cause disputes, because all contributed solely to the maintenance of the navy and would never become independent Homes.
Alan often wondered to himself if the mishmash they’d put together would survive the war. He also worried that the unusual powers he’d helped reserve for the Navy Clan might be abused by some future high chief after they were gone. He hoped not. He hoped the tradition of selfless service Matt and the others had established at such a terrible cost would last a very long time. Either way, though, for now at least, the Amer-i-caan Navy Clan—as the one most responsible for the conduct of the war—had to remain a very slight “first among equals,” even as it truly was viewed as the most neutral when it came to disputes among other Homes.
He stuck two fingers in the collar at his neck and pulled. Damn thing’s getting tighter as I sweat! he grumped to himself. What the hell was wrong with my khakis? It was his wife’s idea that he always wear his best whites in public. Despite his complaints, he supposed it made sense. He was the chairman—practically president, for God’s sake!—after all. He should try to look the part. And at least whites don’t show sweat like khakis, he conceded. But maybe most important, the uniform’s a good recruiting tool. We need more people than ever to crew the ships and fly the planes we’re building, and fill the ranks of our armies.
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