Crusade

Rasik uncomfortable to rely on Koratin for anything, particularly anything critical to his consolidation of power, but he had no choice. «Perhaps when their repairs are complete, they will go away,» Koratin speculated.

Rasik growled. «Of course they will — to fight the Grik.»

Koratin blinked. «Then that is good! They will be gone from here and things will become as before.» He paused. «We are weakened, true, but we can stand against B’mbaado. In time»

«No!» shouted Rasik. «Don’t you see? As long as they war against the Grik, they will have a presence here! They will never go away as long as the war continues!»

«Is that so terrible? What if the Grik return?»

«Return?» Rasik snorted. «With what?» He gestured eastward. «Have you not seen the carrion beyond our walls? Mere bones now, but the bones of thousands! It will be generations before those losses are made good.» He shook his head. «No, the Grik menace is gone. They won’t return in our grand- younglings’ lifetimes.»

Koratin was not so sure. He proceeded carefully. «I have heard it said they are not like us — in more ways than are obvious. They breed quickly and their kingdom is vast. Some say they are the Demons of Old, come to harry us again, and what they sent here is but a tithe against what they are capable of.»

«Nonsense! You really should let your females tell stories to your young.» Koratin’s devotion to his younglings was no secret, and he often recited tales to them — and others — in open forum. He enjoyed performing, and while he recognized his own failings, he secretly hoped he could atone to some degree by telling tales of real virtue and clear morals to the young. «You begin to believe your own fables,» Rasik accused. Koratin remained silent. «As long as the sea folk war against the Grik, we won’t be rid of them,» Rasik repeated, returning to the subject at hand. He resumed pacing, deep in thought. Then he stopped. «But what if the war was over?»

«What do you mean, Lord King?»

Rasik’s eyes had become predatory slits. «Tell me, Lord Koratin. Do you think those silly sea folk would have the courage to fight without the iron ships?»

«No, Lord King,» Koratin answered honestly.

«Do you believe they’d even consider carrying on without them?» Koratin felt a chill.

«No, Lord King,» he whispered.

Rasik barked a horrible laugh. «So simple!» he said and resumed his pacing, but forrion in one of the chairs around the wardroom table idly fingering a freshly stripped Grik skull, retrieved from the battlefield, while Juan Marcos and Ray Mertz cleared the dishes left by the dinner party. It had been a fine meal, mostly Americanized local fare, but a few purely native dishes had been presented. Bradford wasn’t accustomed to the unusual Lemurian spices and, for the most part, he just stuck to salt. At least salt hadn’t changed, thank God. His morbid trophy hadn’t elicited the excitement he expected when he flourished it at the beginning of the meal. He’d been politely but firmly asked to place it out of sight until everyone had eaten.

Now, most of the diners had returned to their duties or joined the party on deck, leaving only the captain, Sandra, Jim, Keje, and Bradford himself. Without fanfare, the grisly thing reappeared upon the table. «This is the face our own world would have taken if whatever killed the dinosaurs. hadn’t,» Bradford announced muzzily, interrupting the conversation at the other end of the table.

«Probably,» Matt agreed. They’d had this talk before. He began to resume his conversation with Jim.

«But have you considered,» Bradford plowed on, «that maybe this is the way it should have been? Just look at this thing!» he demanded. «Similar brain capacity, large eyes, wicked, wicked teeth! Obviously a far better-adapted natural predator than we!» The rest of the group reluctantly turned their attention to the Australian. He was on a roll, and even drunk, whatever he said was bound to be interesting.

«Well, there’s no doubt they’re intelligent,» agreed Ellis grudgingly, «and they’re certainly better fighters on land than at sea. I don’t see how that makes them ‘better natural predators’ than us. We beat them.»

«Ah,» said Bradford, controlling a belch, «but we beat them with our minds, not our bodies. Only superior technology won the day, in the end. Consider: as far as we know, humanity has not risen on this world. We may be its only poor representatives. Where we come from, man is the greatest predator, but here that’s not the case. Here» — he tapped the skull' this creature — or similar races — might predominate all over the globe.» He shifted his bleary stare to Keje. «Even on the islands that the People control, there are Grik, are there not? You’ve said so yourself.» He paused. «We’ve seen them,» he remembered. «Primitive, aboriginal, but plainly related to the more sophisticated enemy we face.» Keje nodded, peering intently at the man.

«What’s your point, Mr. Bradford?» Sandra asked quietly. The Australian’s fatalistic tone was giving her the creeps.

«It’s quite simple, my dear. We all, myself included, have from the beginning considered the world we came from to be the ‘normal’ one — the ‘right’ one — and this world the aberration.» He blinked. «No offense, my dear Captain Keje.» The Lemurian blinked acknowledgment. «But if you compare just the sheer physical lethality, there’s no way we humans would ever have evolved to become ‘top dog,’ as you Americans so aptly put it, if these creatures had anything to say about it» His belch finally escaped. «Back home, that is. Here, we would have been an evolutionary impossibility. excuse me, please.»

«But what about the ’Cats?» asked Matt. Bradford shrugged.

«They apparently evolved more recently, in an isolated environment — Madagascar, I am quite sure. Two sentient species rising independently, but necessarily separate or it could never have taken place.» He stared at the skull. «At least Idat He was known as a malcontent malingerer and chances were he’d turn up in a day or so. Where could he go?

Matt suddenly realized that Sandra’s small, soft hand had found its way into his own. Clearing his throat, he released her fingers so he could ostentatiously adjust his hat. He glanced around, but the bridge watch all seemed preoccupied with their duties.

«It’s hard to watch them go,» Sandra murmured beside him. He nodded. To the south and east, the sky was clear and the harsh glow of the morning sun touched the wave tops with fire. To the north, however, the sky seemed smeared with a muddy brush. He stepped away from Sandra, heading toward the opposite wing, glancing up through the windows as he walked, until he saw the sky beyond the city in the west-northwest. Across the horizon, a great black mass was forming, as dark as the blackness of night. Wispy stringers of gray and white crawled across it like snakes, or worms. In spite of the morning heat, he felt a chill as Sandra joined him.

«Keje said this was the stormy time of year,» he whispered nervously.

«What’s that?» she asked.

«Something bad.»

Rick Tolson was having the time of his life. He’d always loved the sea — even as a kid, having run away aboard a fishing schooner when he was ten. He hadn’t enjoyed that life, to be honest, but it taught him a lot about the sea and sails and how to be a man. When he returned as a prodigal son, his father arranged for him to spend the summers with the crew of a sixty-five-foot racing yacht named Bee that belonged to a wealthy Chesapeake-area business associate of his. All through high school, the summers found Rick converting the wind into raw speed. While other kids his age worked at gas stations and soda fountains, he got paid (a meager salary) to play, racing against the other sleek play-things of the rich.

He learned everything, and by the time he went to college he’d commanded Bee in several high-stakes races and won, always against newer and faster competitors. In college he didn’t have much time for racing, since he took summer classes as well, but he always had a place aboard the Bee when he went home on weekends. He also joined the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps — against his father’s wishes — and that was how he’d wound up here. He was glad.

Not in his wildest boyhood fantasies had he imagined that a Navy life would put him in command of what was, for all intents and purposes, a square-rigged frigate. Like Stephen Decatur, Isaac Hull, or Porter before Valparaiso, he was living the life of his childhood heroes with the greatest assignment any frigate captain could ask for: independent command. It was a fantasy come true, and he was loving every minute of it. Revenge was fast — by Lemurian standards — and surprisingly well made considering her builders. The Grik had taken her draft directly from the lines of the stout, fast-sailing British East Indiamen, and it was obvious now that they’d captured one centuries before and used it as a pattern — scaled up or down — ever since. Revenge had one major difference, of course. She was armed with twenty guns.