Matt shrugged. “I like Gerald, but I doubt your courts’re much different from ours back home. The ultimate disposition of those people could take months if Gerald doesn’t jump in, and I don’t know if he can yet. In the meantime, we took ’em; they’re ours. They’ll have the same choice we gave the women we ‘bought’ on Respite. They can do what they want. We’ve got other things to worry about right now. Do you think the Doms could put together three big fleets?”
“I honestly don’t know. It’s possible.”
Matt sighed. “Well, we can chase only one. Your people on the ‘Enchanted Isles’ and everyone in the Empire are on their own. All we can do is stick to the plan and try to protect the colonies.”
Jenks looked aft at the distant sail, beginning to blend with the afternoon haze that had consumed the knife- edge horizon of the morning. “I hope they appreciate the ‘Christmas gift’ you’ve given them,” he muttered.
“Who? Oh, the women on that ship?” Matt shook his head. “Where I come from, freedom isn’t something a man can give; it comes from God. You’re born with it. Sometimes men have to fight to keep others from taking it away, and all too often good men give their lives so that God-given freedom can endure. That’s the gift; blood for freedom. What I did today cost me nothing. It was just right.”
“I wasn’t talking about those women. Their situation is improved regardless-admittedly more so since your arrival in the Isles. No, I mean my own people… and the freedom you gift them with the blood of yours, human and Lemurian.”
CHAPTER 9
Ceylon
“B oy, this is one hell of a cruddy Christmas!” Greg Garrett grumbled to himself.
“What?” shouted Pruit Barry, about ten feet away, trying to make himself heard over the roar of heavy guns, the crash of a brisk surf, and the warbling shriek of maybe two thousand charg-ing Grik.
“I said, I think it’s Christmas!” Garrett yelled back.
“Oh. Wow.”
Flocks of crossbow bolts sheeted over the breastworks and an occasional roundshot geysered damp sand high in the air. Ravaged Donaghey, though working hard against the beach under the assault of a heavy sea running at high tide, pounded the attackers racing down the narrow peninsula, scything great swaths in the tightly packed mob. Lieutenant Bekiaa-Sab-At, her white leather armor dingy with mud and stained black with blood, stood. “Muskets, archers, present!” she roared. Slightly fewer than seven hundred sailors and Marines prepared. Most of the Marine muskets had gone to sailors, since they were easier to learn than the powerful longbows, and the Marines already knew how to use those. “Mark your targets!” Bekiaa warned. This wouldn’t be a massed volley; those relied as much on psychological impact as anything else, and here, in previous assaults, they hadn’t been getting their money’s worth for the first time. They were starting to run dangerously low on ammunition, particularly musket balls, and it was better to make each one count. Their arrows were holding out rather better. Details raced out between assaults, braving the frighteningly improved enemy artillery, and retrieved as many arrows from sand and corpse as they could. At least the “Grik fire” bombs hadn’t been an issue. They couldn’t maneuver the heavy, catapult-like weapons within their shorter range-not that they didn’t try at first. Smaller, shorter-ranged versions of the things, carried by packs of troops, made tempting targets and were never allowed close enough to deploy and launch.
“Commence firing!” Bekiaa screeched.
A hundred and fifty-odd Baalkpan Armory “Springfields” rattled independently, the dull slapp of heavy balls striking flesh distinct and gratifying. Arrows thwanged and whooshed over the breastworks, the impacts less dramatic, but the resultant wails of agony just as real. Six of Tolson ’s eighteen-pounders, so laboriously retrieved and emplaced, shook the earth and vomited fire, choking smoke, and almost two thousand three-quarter-inch copper balls. The big guns were the primary killers. Firing into the dense, narrow press, they could not possibly miss, and each ball not absorbed by the sand often accounted for multiple Grik. A great, collective moan reached the defenders through the smoke, bu only about five hundred of the enemy did.
“Shields!” Bekiaa cried.
Shields came up, many hastily built from Tolson ’s now-shattered corpse, and the remaining Grik slammed into them with unabated ferocity. Though outnumbered now, they still might have broken the line if they’d had the sense to concentrate their blow against a single point. As it was, they simply charged straight at whatever opposed them in whatever direction they were pointed when visibility returned. Bayonets and polished barrels flashed under the relentless sun, and spear- men advanced behind the shields and the grisly, personal slaughter began.
Greg and Pruit stayed out of it. Both held. 45s in their hands, and Barry had an ’03 Springfield slung on his shoulder. Somewhere on the left, where the sandy spit bordered the river mouth, Russ was supposed to be doing the same; commanding his “section” of the line, but leaving the fighting to his sailors-bolstered by Marines with the proper training for it. Bekiaa had the center, seconded by Graana-Fas, and Greg determined to have a word with her regarding her “proper” place as well. Slowly, the killing subsided, and another hoarse, thirsty cheer began to build, punctuated by the squeals of the last Grik to be slain.
“Stay here, won’t you, Pruit? I need to have a word with our intrepid young Marine commander,” Greg said.
“Sure,” said Barry. “Somebody better, or we won’t have her much longer.” The Grik artillery resumed, a shot skating through the sand nearby. “Keep your head down! Their guns aren’t very big, and we drive ’em off every time they try to deploy in front of us, but they’ve got a lot of ’em, and they’re getting better with ’em too.”
“You bet,” Garrett replied, crouching lower in the trench behind the works and cinching his helmet tighter. He took off at a trot, his right arm extended so he could pat each defender as he passed, saying, “Good job! Good job! We’ll lick ’em yet!” Most glanced back, blinking thanks or encouragement of their own, but he came across far too many who couldn’t hear him anymore.
Short of Bekiaa’s position he found Jamie Miller, Walker ’s young pharmacist’s mate on another world, and now an able surgeon in his own right. He was working on a Lemurian sailor, one of Tolson ’s, by the name stitched on the Dixie cup lying nearby in the watery bottom of the trench. Two of Miller’s assistants held the ’Cat down while the kid tried to stop the bleeding from a bad neck wound. Greg could tell it was hopeless.
“When are we going to get some help here?” Miller seethed when the bleeding stopped on its own.
Greg squatted beside him. “I wish I knew, Jamie. The fleet’s coming as fast as it can. The last position we got would still put them about two days out.” He paused. “You know Clancy’s dead, right?”
Jamie nodded. The night before, three Grik ships approached under cover of darkness and attacked Donaghey from the sea. It shouldn’t have, but it came as a complete surprise. Only the enemy’s crummy gunnery saved the stranded ship, and her seaward guns, once alerted, cut them apart. One Grik ship sank, another beached a couple miles to the east, and the third drifted ashore, afire from stem to stern. Even now, her blackened bones were breaking up in the surf. But Donaghey was badly mauled herself. One early, lucky shot, crashed through her comm shack and killed the young radioman while he was sending the evening report. Another of their dwindling “original” destroyermen was lost.
“Yeah, well, he ain’t the only one,” Jamie snapped. “Counting ‘walking wounded’ still fighting, our casualties are past twenty percent. Not as many from that last attack,” he allowed, “since our protection’s improved, but sooner or later the Grik are going to get their act together.”
Greg nodded. He had plenty of “combat” experience now, but this was only his second “shore action.” Already he could tell it was a lot different from his last. These Grik were better fed and far more motivated. Even so, he got the distinct impression they were just “locals,” thrown at them because they were closest-militia, basically. If anything, the first “attacks,” while violent and costly, had been even more disorganized and, well, amateurish, than anything he’d heard of before. If they’d thrown better troops at him then, it would probably be all over by now. In the meantime, the Allied defenses had been strengthened considerably.
Notwithstanding the naval attack, however, the quality of Grik field artillery had improved disproportionately with their infantry, even though Greg’s heavy guns kept it at arm’s length on the “mainland” beyond the broader area where the peninsula touched. He reasoned that artillery was probably beyond the grasp of your everyday Grik, and there must have been a “regular” battery stationed nearby. It had probably taken a day or two for the “Grik
