“It’s settled, then,” Lange said. He and the two ’Cat sailors hurried to dig up their weapons. They weren’t much. Over the weeks, they’d removed an assortment of the sharpened stakes around their stockade, carefully reweaving the bindings so their absence wouldn’t be noted. Then, at night, they sharpened them further with stones the Japanese sailors had thrown, before hiding them for the day. Moments later, Lange and his companions returned with the sandy wooden spears and quickly distributed them. Sandra’s, Adar’s, and Diania’s were thinner, lighter, than the others, but Fitzhugh Gray had taught them what to do. Horn’s, Lange’s, and the other ’Cats’ were longer and heavier, and Horn had showed them how to handle them like rifles with bayonets. There were only two guards, as usual, and against normal Grik their odds would be good. But these had muskets with real bayonets, swords, and armor. Of course they also had the terrifying teeth and claws every Grik was born with. Armed with spears and determination the prisoners should still have a slight edge, but it was unlikely all, or even most, of them would survive.
Sandra hesitated. “I should use the pistol,” she said. She’d kept it secret, even from her friends, for quite a while. What they didn’t know they couldn’t spill. But when they’d started making weapons and planning what to do when the time was right, she’d revealed the little Colt and suggested it might give them an advantage.
“You could,” Horn hedged, “but how effective will a few rounds of three eighty be against two armored Grik? And what about the noise? There’s gonna be noise—nothing we can do about that—but screaming never seems to get much attention.” Grik fought among themselves all the time, at least these Grik did, and sometimes, for reasons they barely understood, one of their guards might be tossed in the moat. There was plenty of screaming then. “Shots’re different, though,” Horn continued, “and might raise alarm when nothing else will.”
“Agreed,” Adar said, looking intently at Sandra, “and re-gaard-less how the breakout goes, I will feel better knowing you have a final defense, for you and your youngling.”
“That’s settled, then,” Horn said, and with a last glance at the distant fighting, as if for inspiration, he grasped his spear more tightly and nodded at the others. “Let’s get it done.”
Quickly, most of them hid behind the stockade on either side of the gate, relying on the Grik’s poor night vision for concealment. Then, standing in full view, Lange and the two women began to scream at one another. Ordinarily, the guards wouldn’t care. But Lange’s experience as a tramp merchant sailor in the Far East, before joining the Hamburg-America Line, and some recent polish speaking with Toru Miyata, gave him enough Japanese that the guards—subject to Japanese orders all the time, and commanded specifically to keep Japanese sailors from the compound—should react. They wouldn’t know how a Jap got past them, but their first inclination—it was hoped—would be to get him out. Sure enough, illuminated by torches at the end of the land bridge, the guards turned to stare. When they did, Sandra and Diania began to fight Lange and scream more desperately for help. The “fight” consisted of exaggerated pushing and shoving, but the guards probably didn’t know why the Japanese had wanted in so badly in the first place. They only knew they weren’t supposed to be there. Together, they trotted over the land bridge, opened the gate, and rushed inside.
“Now!” Horn roared, jumping up and thrusting his spear as hard as he could. To his horror, the sharpened tip touched a square of iron sewed to the leather tunic and turned. The blow slammed the closest guard into the second, however, and there was a moment of confusion while the rest of the prisoners attacked, instantly realizing what had happened, and aiming their spears for necks, eyes, armpits. But the guards were good. They battered the thrusts away, apparently unsure how to react. Sandra recognized their predicament at once. “They’re here to keep us from escaping, but also to protect us!” she shouted, driving forward with Lange and Diania. “Don’t give ’em time to decide which is more important!”
Apparently, they already had. One knocked Lange’s spear away and slammed a musket butt in his chest, doubling him over with a gasp. Sandra’s and Ruffy’s spears found its neck just as it spun and drove its bayonet in Eddie’s side. The ’Cat shrieked horribly but wrenched at the musket as he fell, tearing it away from the Grik—which was also squealing as twisting spears in its throat ground savagely deeper and Adar’s spear probed for its eyes. Horn had launched himself at the other Grik, pounding it to the ground. Both had ahold of the musket, and Horn was pushing down. He wasn’t trying to choke the guard as much as keep its snapping jaws from tearing out his face and throat—all while kicking and squirming to stay inside its flailing back legs and the claws that could rip him open. Diania, fearful of stabbing Horn, had finally positioned her spear in the armor gap down the guard’s side and lunged forward with all her surprising strength, piercing its belly.
It roared in agony, flailing even more madly, almost launching Gunny Horn. Somehow he held on, but yelled in pain when a wicked back talon raked his thigh. Diania, screaming too, her small voice a piercing wail of rage, worked the spear inside the Grik, slamming it back and forth with the speed and force of a steam piston. Blood jetted up the shaft, ruining her grip, and frothy, ghastly smelling blood sprayed Horn’s face. Slowly, the guard’s struggles began to ease, but its hand somehow found the wrist of the musket, its finger the trigger. The percussion cap exploded brightly in Horn’s face when the musket fired, the tongue of flame at the muzzle actually scorching the other guard in the back. Its spine turned to exploding salt and it dropped as if the big lead ball had severed the strings of a reeling, screeching marionette. Lange, still gasping loudly, had retrieved the other musket from Eddie’s corpse and rammed the bayonet in the throat of the Grik still snapping feebly at Horn’s face. It finally convulsed and lay still, and Horn rolled off in the sand. Instantly, Diania was kneeling beside him, her tears dropping on his face.
“No! Adar!” Sandra said, her voice rising in alarm, almost panic. “No!” she shouted. Horn scrambled to his feet and he and Diania joined the rest, already gathered around another form lying in the sand.
“It seems I’ve finally fought my first—and last—baattle, my dear,” Adar’s distinctive voice met them. Still so calm, so gentle, but painfully strained. Sandra had bunched up his battered robe and was holding it against his chest.
“The ball that killed that one passed through and hit Adar,” she explained, visibly calming herself, but her voice was brittle. “It’s probably not deep; was nearly spent.”
“Good,” Lange said, getting his breathing under control. “We must leave at once. We can carry him.”
Horn leaned hard against him. “Just shut up, you,” he hissed. “We have a couple minutes. Not like we need to pack. We got these muskets. Let’s strip the Grik for ammo and other weapons.”
“No,” Adar told Sandra, and coughed. It was like she was the only one with him now. “I’ve always studied anaat-omy as well as the Heavens. My friendship with Courtney Braad-furd increased my interest in the first to the extent . . . It grieves me to say that I feel . . .” He coughed again, more raggedly, and blood darkened the fur on his chin. “The baall went deep enough.” He raised his hand and touched the tears streaming down Sandra’s cheek. “It does not grieve me to die, you know. I will soon join my friends, my aan-cestors who’ve gone before, high in the Heavens. And have no fear: I will share the final victory with you, watching from above.” He managed a smile. “I only grieve for you and your pain, because I know you’ll miss me. As will Cap-i-taan Reddy and my brother Keje. Alaan Letts is my son, his daughter mine as well. Remind him, remind everyone of my love, my thoughts for them. You know the rest as well as I, and . . . There is not time to name them all.” His hand dropped to her belly. “I may meet this one before you, my dear. I think I hear him whispering to me even now.” His silver eyes glistened in the torchlight from across the bridge. “Yes, he,” Adar pronounce
d confidently, “though it might be a female—with Cap-i-taan Reddy’s voice. But it saddens me I will never hold him until the day he joins us all in the sky. Still, I can perform a final duty.”
Sandra couldn’t speak, couldn’t even tell him not to speak, to hold on, to save his strength—all the usual platitudes. None mattered now, because he was right. Hot blood was washing across her hand behind his back and the ball hadn’t been spent until it knocked the spear from her hands. If it hadn’t hit Adar first . . . The tears and darkness clouded her vision and she desperately wanted to see him clearly one last time. She shook the tears from her eyes but it didn’t help.
“Maker of All Things,” Adar began, staring upward now, his voice growing thicker, weaker. “We thaank you for this life you gifted us, this soul you made and gave a fraa-gile form. As you instructed it to do good in your name while among us, so shall we remind and admonish it, so that when it returns to you, its maker, you will be pleased with what it has become.” He looked back at Sandra and managed a real grin. “Thaat’s it,” he said. All Lemurian prayers were very brief and to the point; something he and Sandra had discussed before. She snorted wetly. She’d echoed the prayer with her own and was amazed how equally well it applied to this good person lying in her arms as it did to the life inside her.
“Thank you,” she murmured. Weakly, Adar reached for her face again and she clasped his furry hand and held it to her cheek.
“It doesn’t hurt a great deal, and I’m sure you could save me under . . . other conditions.” Adar’s voice had become a whisper she could barely hear. “As it is,” he continued, “I will ask a final favor. You know I have few real differences with my esteemed colleague, Sister Audry, and her Chiss-chin faith. One is fairly profound, however, the one about vengeance. I believe the Maker has more to occupy Him than righting the wrongs his people do, at least until they stand before Him. I still believe He brought you to us to help with that, but then, as always, He left it to us to present the evil ones for His judgment. So I ask you to avenge me, avenge Amerika and the helpless ones aboard her. And my last request to you and . . . Cap-i-taan Reddy . . . is to . . . finish . . .”
Adar was gone. He hadn’t completed what he wanted to say, but Sandra knew what it was: finish the job, win the war, make the world safe for his people—of whatever race and species. It was all he’d worked for, almost since the day they met. Gently, she laid him in the sand and straightened. “You’ll have your revenge, Adar,” she told him. “We all will. And somehow, some way, we will finish the job!”
Diania touched her, breaking the spell. “We haftae go, Lady Sandra!” she insisted. Sandra nodded, covering Adar’s pathetically frail, lifeless form with his tattered robe. “We’ll be back for you,” she murmured. Then, standing, she strode toward where the others had gathered behind the stockade, just inside the gate. Horn was peering out.
“I should’ve used my pistol,” she said to no one in particular.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s go.”
“Wait!” Ruffy warned, pointing at the woods where the trail leading to the compound disappeared. A double line of torches was approaching at a trot. “More Grik!” he said. They’d waited too long. There were at least twenty of Kurokawa’s personal guards coming for them, just as they’d expected, and no way they could bolt now without being seen.
“Well, shit,” Horn said, quickly loading the musket. It was the one that killed the Grik—and Adar. Lange’s was still loaded. “How many rounds in that little three eighty?” he asked Sandra.
“Seven.”
“You pretty good with it? I mean, can you wing a few? Between me an’ Lange, we might knock down a few more. Give you and . . . I mean, us a chance to make a break.”
“I’ll try,” Sandra said, knowing what he’d started to say. She also knew it was hopeless. The Grik were in the open now, halfway to the gate. The leader had noticed the guards were gone, the gate stood open. He snapped something and the column stopped.
“Get ready!” Horn said, voice tensing as he slid the bloody musket over the palisade.
The clearing roared with the up-close, thunderous crack of rifles and the frantic stutter of several automatic weapons firing at once, and the tree line to their left lit up with bright muzzle flashes. The Grik danced and jerked as bullets tore them apart. Bodies dropped and sprawled on the ground, some flailing, others still, amid a downy haze of blood spray, clattering weapons, and scattered torches. In seconds it was over except for a few quick bursts that stilled moving, moaning forms. To everyone’s surprise, the first rescuers that appeared, kicking through the dead, looked like more Grik, even down to their dress. Then they saw a couple of Lemurians and two humans trotting toward the compound, weapons ready.
“You there, Gunny?” came a distinctive, inimitable voice.
“My God! Silva!” Horn exclaimed, standing up. In the light of the torches on the land bridge, Dennis’s face split into that particular gap-toothed grin that defined his personality so well—and that few enemies ever survived.
“I ain’t a god, Gunny. Leastways, not that I know of. An’ nobody ever called me one before.” He paused, apparently considering. “Unless you count—”
Sandra stood. “Chief Silva.” She managed a smile at Stuart. “Mr. Brassey, and Lawrence as well, of course. We’re very glad to see you,” she said earnestly. “You could’ve come at a slightly better time . . . but I’m grateful and won’t complain, as long as you stow your banter for later. I assume we need to move?”
“Yes’m,” Silva agreed. “Right smart too. Griks yonder at the airfield’ll be closest with the mostest, but even if we can take ’em, we don’t want tangled up. There’s a few more projects on my wish list tonight—I mean, this mornin’.”
“Which way?” Sandra asked.
“Right down the throat o’ the snake,” Silva said, pointing at the trail the Grik emerged from. “It’s the right direction, an’ except for these lousy boogers”—he kicked a dead Grik in the snout—“anybody else’s liable to be headed the other way, toward the harbor. Shouldn’t meet much till we get near it ourselfs.” The rest of the prisoners had stepped out to join them, those without weapons gathering the Grik’s.
“We have a couple extra Blitzers for you ladies, if you like,” Stuart Brassey said, his young voice cracking in an attempt to sound mature and gallant.
“Thank you . . .” Sandra peered at the bars sewn to his collar. “Captain Brassey! Congratulations. And your troops?”
“The First North Borno, ma’am, under Major I’joorka—which, along with Chack’s Brigade, is landing in the south as we speak.”
Sandra and Diania took the offered weapons and they started to move.
“Hey,” Silva asked. “Where’s ol’ Adar, an’ the other ’Cat? We sneaked up close enough to see ’em yesterday evenin’.”
“Dead,” Sandra replied hollowly. “That’s why your timing could’ve been better. Ten minutes earlier . . .” She shook her head and patted Silva’s arm. “Thank you.”
Silva hung back with Horn just a moment while Brassey led their team and the prisoners toward the trail, Lawrence, with Pokey trailing, already casting ahead. Dennis would bring up the rear in case of pursuit, but for a moment he stared at the compound. “In there, huh?”
Horn nodded, unseen. “Yeah.”
“We heard a shot. I should’a known you’d make a barehanded break, like a dumb-ass, when you of all people should’a known we’d come get you when the time was right.”
“It was Lady Sandra’s idea.”
“No shit?” Dennis sounded offended. “She should’a known, even more than you!”
Horn snapped back. “Yeah? Well we didn’t know, see? How could we? You don’t know what it’s been like.”
“Okay, okay,” Silva said, looking back at the compound. When he spoke again, his voice was . . . different, rougher somehow. “I’ll s
wan. Ol’ Adar now too. I’ll swan,” he repeated, then seemed to shake himself. “Let’s go. It’s a damn bad start to a busy day—an’ it ain’t even started yet!”
“What’s the plan?” Horn asked as they turned and jogged after the others.
“It’s a doozy. You’ll love it,” Dennis replied, giving Horn a handful of ship’s biscuits to munch on. Horn stuffed one in his face.
“So, as usual,” he mumbled, spilling crumbs, “you’re making it up as you go?”
“Kinda.”
“Works for me,” Horn agreed, swallowing. Then he chased the dry food with a swig from Silva’s canteen. “Especially since I may have an idea or two you haven’t thought of. Call them pre-considerations to the inexpressible.”
“You an’ your weird words,” Dennis complained. “Okay, spill ’em.”
“At least my weird words are real,” Horn retorted.
Eventually they caught up with the others and jogged with Brassey, Sandra, Diania, and Lange, who’d hung back with the Khonashi rear guard. Lange was already gasping, taking deep gulps from a canteen someone gave him, but the rest were bearing up. Of course, they’d only just begun a near-five-mile run.
“What’s the plan?” Sandra asked, echoing Horn’s earlier question.
“It’s a doozy. You’ll love it,” Silva repeated.
Horn snorted. “I’m going for Savoie—and that goddamn frog admiral, Laborde. He’ll be on her, guaranteed.”
“I don’t think . . .” Brassey began.
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