everyone thinking Walker would save them all. As Keje suspected, there were murmurs of protest. Not because the humans weren’t People, but because their ship was so small and sparsely populated. Would they grant “Home” status to fishing boats too?
Keje squared his shoulders and placed his hand upon the scota at his side. “I declare Cap-i-taan Reddy is my Brother as surely as any High Chief, and I offer combat to anyone saying he does not deserve to speak.” These last words came in a growl.
There was some very unusual body language in response to this threat, and some glanced to see Nakja-Mur’s reaction. He merely stared at Keje’s back across steepled claws with his elbows on his knees.
“These Amer-i-caans come from far away, and know more about war than we. Before they came to help us, they were engaged in a struggle that defies belief. Their wondrous ship was just one of perhaps hundreds, and they modestly tell me theirs was but the smallest and least powerful Home to fight in that unimaginable conflict! Yet it prevailed!”
Matt winced at Chack’s translation. Okay, so much for not bragging. Besides, they’d “prevailed” in the sense that they’d survived, but that was the only appropriate context for the word. Keje grinned at him ironically.
“Would you speak to them, my Brother? Perhaps you can sway them. I’ll tell them your words.”
Matt nodded. For his plan to work, they had to see the threat. But they also needed hope. How would he scare them into joining the fight without scaring them away? Particularly since the plan he was forming was risky, to say the least. The irony of the situation struck him like a slap. He remembered how unfathomable he’d thought admirals and politicians were. Particularly within ABDA. Why they made the decisions they did mattered only insofar as they affected his ship, his crew, and himself. Suddenly he was standing in similar shoes and found them most uncomfortable. He stepped to Keje’s side and cleared his throat.
“I really don’t know if we can defeat them,” he said simply. Keje looked at him sharply, surprised by the dour opening, but Matt had stressed the word “we.”
“I don’t know much about them at all. Nobody does; not even where they come from, or what kind of society supports their warlike nature. We’re probably outnumbered. Their ships aren’t as large as yours, but they’re much faster, and each carries nearly as many warriors as yours since their ships aren’t Homes. They carry no families that we know of, and they grow no food. They’re meant for one thing only: to transport warriors to battle.” He paused. “That should be both an advantage and a disadvantage to them. They can pack a lot of warriors into their ships, but they have to keep supplied or they can’t stay in our territory long. One thing we do know is they’re a long way from home.” He shrugged. “They raid for provisions-Chill-chaap proves that-but even that takes time from offensive operations, and the more there are, the bigger that problem becomes.
“That’s about all we know about their strategic situation, though. We don’t know what they want or why they’re here, beyond an apparent hunger for conquest. We have no real idea what their ‘grand strategy’ is. Their efforts so far have not seemed well coordinated, although Keje tells me they’re better now than in the past. The best I can figure, they have several independent task forces on the loose, looking for us, and they hope to eventually overwhelm us with numbers. That’s also the historical model recorded in your Scrolls.
“We too have advantages and disadvantages.” Matt looked at the faces staring impassively back.
“And what are our advantages, beside the ability to simply leave them behind again?” The black-furred Lemurian’s voice dripped sarcasm.
Matt regarded him coldly. “Courage is one,” he answered, returning the green-eyed glare. “Thoughtful courage, not the wild-ass, charge-tanks-with-horses kind.” There was absolutely no context for the statement, but somehow they grasped his meaning. All present knew, at least by description, the abandon with which Grik fought. Their attack was like a school of flasher-fish. Maybe they employed tactics, but once they came to grips, it was individual mindless ferocity.
“We also have Walker,” he said matter-of-factly, “and nothing they have can match her speed and the range of her weapons. We’ll have more weapons soon. Cannons, sort of like Walker’s, that’ll fit on your ships. But most of all-I hope-we’re smarter than they are. Smart enough to use their strengths against them. And if their strengths become weaknesses…” He shrugged.
“Frankly, our biggest disadvantage is ignorance.” There were hostile murmurs at that. The closest Lemurian word to “ignorance” was precariously similar to “stupidity.” He continued hastily on. “That’s a disadvantage I’m personally sick of… for a lot of reasons, and one I plan to correct. It’s our biggest disadvantage because of how much bigger it makes our other problems.” He counted on his fingers. “First, there might be five or ten of their ships in the Java Sea right now, but we don’t know. We don’t know if they’re part of a probe or a real push. The Scrolls describe a slow escalation, but is it just starting, or has it reached its peak? We don’t know. Our ignorance makes it impossible to formulate a strategy to totally defeatthem.” He motioned Benjamin Mallory forward. “Lieutenant, when you saw the aftermath at Tjilat-Chill-chaap, did you speculate on the nature of the Grik attack?”
“Yes, sir. It’s hard to say, but I got the impression they made an amphibious assault, coordinated with an attack overland through the jungle.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, it’s just a guess. We didn’t really study the battlefield, if you know what I mean, but the corpses in the jungle were in groups. Not really scattered around. Like the inhabitants were running away and ran into the Grik. Not like they were chased down and caught. It was just… the feeling I got.”
Matt nodded. “That seems consistent-the multipronged attack. Like the tactic they used against Big Sal. Attack as many places as possible to split your defenses. That might even be an example of their overall strategy, writ small. If so, that shows us another one of our problems. We’re way too scattered out. I know that’s how you’ve always lived, but you’ve got to pull together. Believe me, we know about being all alone when the world is falling on us! The only way to defend against that sort of attack is to mass our forces. Keep them as united as possible and work together as best we can. But where do we mass? We can’t do it everywhere-that defeats the purpose.” He looked measuringly at Nakja-Mur. “We could mass at Baalkpan-fortify the city and build a wall around it, with fighting positions and maybe even cannons. We could clear the jungle around it and make a killing ground that even the Grik would fear. In fact, I think we should. But it’ll take time, and that’s a luxury we may not have. We don’t know how much weight’s behind them. It also surrenders all initiative to the enemy and sounds too much like what happened last time, if you ask me. Anyway, it all still boils down to: we just don’t know!”
Nakja-Mur raised his bearded chin from his fingertips. “Could we defeat the Grik in such a manner?” he asked.
Matt hesitated. “No. We could prevent defeat for a time, but we couldn’t win. While we sat behind our walls and fought them and killed them, and bled them white, we’d only grow weaker, while they would send more Grik. Just as it’s written in your Scrolls. Eventually, they’d wear us down. The only way to win is to attack!”
There were incredulous cries. “Attack them? Attack where? We do not even know where they come from!” shouted the black-furred High Chief. Others yelled questions and comments as well: “We could harry their ships, but will they fight if we bring a large enough force to defeat them?” cried one. “We certainly can’t catch them if they run!” “What will happen to Baalkpan if we leave it undefended?!” another asked. “He was talking about mass. Mass where?” “What’s ‘mass’?”
Matt listened to the uproar for a few moments longer. Finally, he spoke loudly a single word.
“Ignorance!”
Keje repeated it in the same tone. The tumult abruptly stopped and all eyes turned to the captain of Walker.
“Ignorance,” he said again. “I’m getting pretty tired of it myself. Let’s see if we can enlighten ourselves.”
Even Keje blinked surprise. “How do we do that, my Brother?”
“We mass.”
Keje was confused. “But you just said… they are spread out, they are faster-we can’t mass here and wait for them all to find us, and we certainly cannot mass together and chase them down!”
“No, but we can mass defensively and let a few come to us. I don’t want all of them until we know how many they are. And we won’t do it here.”
“I thought you said we should attack,” said Nakja-Mur.
“Think of it as a ‘defensive’ attack. It won’t be easy and it sure as hell won’t be safe, but if it works, we ought to learn a lot about our enemy at long last.”
“My people will have nothing to do with such madness!” huffed Fristar ’s High Chief.
