“Yes.”
“So, how was he taught to hunt?”
“Cooperatively. Much like our own people would, if they had to for survival, and weren’
A few days earlier it would have seemed very strange if Gray and Shinya even said “good morning.” Now, when the equally bedraggled Japanese officer sat heavily beside him and offered his canteen, Gray nodded his thanks.
“Mr. Bradford will scold us cruelly,” Shinya said softly. Gray grunted and took a sip. The island’s jungle was gone now, all of it. He wasn’t even sure what had set the fire, but there’d been no stopping it this time, not in the midst of battle. He hacked hoarsely and spit dark phlegm.
“I guess he shoulda taken specimens while he was here after all,” Gray deadpanned.
In reality, most of the island’s species would survive; enough escaped the conflagration to the beach to ensure that. It wouldn’t take long for foliage to return with almost daily rains. The herbivores would take a serious hit, and when they grew scarce the carnivores would too, but enough would survive. Lightning, if nothing else, had surely burned the island before. The important thing was that the well was mostly intact, even after being struck by a few round shot, and Isak and his crew were repairing it. Also, somehow, the Stars and Stripes still floated above the island on a makeshift spar, salvaged from the mostly intact Grik ship beached in the shallows. Rooting the last enemies out of it was how they lost Clark.
The Battle for Tarakan had been a desperate, grisly affair. For the first time Lemurians had stood under a terrifying, if mostly ineffectual bombardment. Then the enemy swarmed ashore. They’d been outnumbered at least three to one, and the fighting had been almost as bad as Gray remembered on the plain below Aryaal’s walls. Almost. This time they’d had prepared defenses and trenches, making it possible to reinforce weak spots. Still, it had been bad, and their own losses were nearly thirty percent. Nothing compared to the Grik, whose losses were total, but that didn’t matter at all like it might if they’d been fighting a human foe… or any foe that deserved the slightest speck of compassion. When the attacking force was destroyed, the exhausted Marines mounted an assault of their own on the ship in hopes of taking it intact, and predictably, as before, the cornered Grik fought like fiends. But the stranded ship was flooded, and all they’d accomplished was the capture of some Grik armaments.
“Their cannons are incredibly crude,” observed Shinya, as if reading his thoughts. “The bores are rough, and so is the shot. No wonder so many burst when fired.”
“Yeah, and they’re made from crummy iron too. But it is iron, damn it. We sure need to be working on that.”
Shinya nodded, then spoke reflectively: “They relied heavily on those guns. We’ve given them an appreciation of artillery, at least. I believe they expected theirs to perform as well as ours. That might have made the difference. There were far more of us waiting to greet them than they expected.”
Gray matched Shinya’s predatory grin. Both men had fought hard, and the battle had been desperate; hand- to-hand at times. More than once each had now saved the other’s life. They’d both been through the crucible of Aryaal, but they hadn’t been back-to-back then. They might never be friends, but they’d finally developehen. They s of bitter strife, they felt… comfortable with each other.
The general alarm began sounding again, and Gray saw Shinya close his eyes briefly before rising.
“First Marines,” he yelled, “stand to!”
Gray painfully rose to join him while exhausted, bandaged ’Cats shuffled into formation as quickly as they could. “What the hell now,” he growled, looking at the distant ’Cat atop the makeshift tower.
A runner sprinted to them, gasping. “More sails,” he reported breathlessly, “in the north.”
“North?! How many?” Gray demanded.
“Four, sir.”
“Well, that tears it,” Gray spat disgustedly.
“Perhaps not,” Shinya observed. “Our one major advantage over the Grik is their tactical inflexibility. Their strategy can be cunning, but they seem unwilling to change basic procedures. Four, did you say?” The runner nodded. “Most unusual. The Grik usually come in multiples of three-I have no idea why; ancient hunting traditions, perhaps? Regardless, with few exceptions, we’ve always seen them in groups of three, or in their hundreds. Four seems atypical.”
Gray looked at him thoughtfully. “Maybe. I hope so. One way or the other, we’ll know before long.”
“I’ll be goddamned,” Gray murmured. The four ships approached rapidly, the fitful breeze giving way to a stiff easterly, but they’d been coming up fast already. Columns of gray-black smoke pouring from tall funnels between their masts explained how. That alone was sufficient proof they weren’t Grik, or if they were, the war was already lost. They were long and black with sleek clipper bows, and Gray had seen others just like them as a kid: old then, and obsolete, but occasionally still in use. They were transitional ships, much like the next generation the Americans planned, relying on both sail and steam, and paddle wheels churned the water at their sides. What attracted his attention more than anything, however, were the flags at their mastheads. He wasn’t a historian like the skipper, or a knowledge nut like Courtney, but he’d heard enough of their conversations with their ’Cat allies about the “tail-less ones” of old or “the Others who came before” to catch some details now and then. One such detail had been what flag the ancient East India Company visitors would have flown. That was how he knew what he was looking at now: a flag with red and white stripes, strangely similar to his own, but with the familiar Union Jack where forty-eight stars ought to be. “I’ll be goddamned,” he repeated.
“Friends of yours?” a Marine lieutenant asked hopefully.
“No,” Gray said absently, “never seen ’em before.”
The ships hove to while they watched, and the largest lowered a boat into the sea. It was filled with red- coated soldiers, and some others in white coats. Probably officers. “No,” he repeated, “but let’s see if we can keep them off our list of enemies. Spruce up your Marines aong and ' width='1em'›Jenks’s mustache worked as his jaw clenched tight.
“And another thing,” Gray growled. “If you hang around here, you best watch yourselves, because if you’re not here to help us, you won’t get any help in return. There’s a shit-storm of a fight coming against those things”-he waved at the Grik bodies-“that’ll make this look like a picnic spat. You don’t want to get caught in the middle of it.”
Jenks took a step back, his surprised expression clouding to anger. “Is that a threat, sir?”
“No. Just fact. And a word of advice,” Gray said, looking at the Marines. “These ain’t ‘Ape Folk,’ or the simple ‘tribesmen’ your granddaddys abandoned to fend for themselves against a threat they knew would come someday.”
Jenks stroked his mustache and regarded Gray more carefully. The contradictory ranks had confused him, and the mostly white-haired, powerfully muscled man in torn, bloodstained khakis and a battered, floppy hat must have significantly greater status among these… Americans than boatswains did in his own navy. Amer-i-caans- Americans! Colonials from the far side of the world! Ridiculous! He hadn’t put it together before. And what were these “United States” the man referred to? Still, he clearly spoke a warped version of English. Could it be the sacred Mother Country on that distant, long-ago world had allowed her squabbling American colonies to pretend they were a nation? Impossible, yet… evidently true. He considered himself something of a historian, and he’d always been fascinated by the histories of the pre-Passage world their founders left behind. Yes, he could see a parallel between how his own empire had abandoned this region of savages and how that other empire might have done the same. Might that not have made the “simple” American “tribesmen” into something more formidable one day? He wondered briefly if it might be better to destroy this “buffer” than leave it in place.
“Very well, then. I can see we shall be the best of friends. I take my leave and wish you joy in tidying up after your ‘spat.’ ” Captain Jenks tossed a casual salute at the flag and turned back to his boat.
Long after the oars began propelling the boat back through the surf to Achilles, Gray stood trembling with rage.
“Well,” said Shinya at last, “that is just how I would have recommended keeping them off our ‘enemies’ list. Perhaps we can cement our friendship with some parting gifts. Some round shot, perhaps?” Gray thought he was mocking him until he saw Shinya’s deadly serious expression.
Captain Reddy wiped sweat from his eyebrows with his sleeve and took a long gulp of cool water. Juan had brought a carafe to the bridge, filled from the refrigerated scuttlebutt on the side of the big refrigerator on deck. It was unbearably hot, and ever since the wind came around out of the east, there was only the slightest apparent breeze-even as they charged west through the Celebes Sea at twenty-five knots. Keje and Adar stood beside him
