and some portion of this army live to fight another time.” He put his hands behind his back. “General Halik, there are.. . some things… General of the Sea Kurokawa admires about your Uul. He admires what he calls their ‘discipline,’ their willingness to do anything they’re told, within the context of their understanding. Tell them to charge into certain death and they do-because few have any real con- cept of death, what it means, and that it will happen to them. They are told and they obey. We once watched hundreds dive into the water to assist with repairs to Amagi, my lost ship. They were torn to shreds by the fish. They finally managed the simple task set them, but hundreds died to accomplish what might have been achieved with no loss had any real thought been given to the assignment. Kurokawa believed that was discipline, but it wasn’t.” He paused. “I don’t know if you’re ready to discuss what I think it was, but it wasn’t discipline.”
He pointed down at the battle. “Those… creatures and their Americans have true discipline! They move and fight as a team, like a machine-and not the way your laborer Uul behave, with no thought or understanding of what they do. Our enemy, each and every one of them that performed that admirable maneuver to evade your trap, knows what is expected of them, knows they can die-they are as intelligent as you or I, it seems; yet even though they’re likely terrified, they do their duty. That is discipline! The contrast between that and your average Uul couldn’t be more striking.
“Now we’ve begun to form troops with a measure of understanding for what they do. Some are even afraid, I think; yet they don’t ‘turn prey,’ as you put it. They begin to know, as you once did, yet still they do. We must preserve that!”
Halik hissed a long sigh, looking to the west where a great column of smoke rose above Colombo. “I will end this, if I can. Some will not retreat; others will turn prey at last, once they show their backs to the enemy…”
“Perhaps.” Niwa stared down at the milling, dying army. “Perhaps not. If so, you can’t help that. Save what you can.”
Halik raised his voice. “The horns will sound the ‘gathering’ call!” He listened as his order was obeyed and the horns boomed along the crest, answered by others on the far slope. Almost immediately, the Grik horde, savagely depleted, began to stir; to disengage.
“See?” Niwa said with satisfaction. Greater, stricter “horn” training had been one of his own contributions. The horns not only told the warriors what to do, they gave them direction and ensured them that “someone” was watching over them, leading them. The sound of the horns gave them something to cling to when they were confused. “They’ve learned that well enough. Their obedience to the horns has become even stronger than their urge to attack-or break!”
“What now? Will the enemy pursue?”
Niwa glanced at the sun nearing the horizon. “I think not. He’s been mauled as well. He’ll expect us to move to the relief of the city, and if it has truly fallen as the message suggests, he’ll move to intercept us. I recommend we retreat north, as quickly as we can. We may have time to destroy some of the factories and other facilities, but I submit our greatest imperative is to save as much of the Army, this one and that to the north, as possible; to prevent a rapid enemy advance across to India. The factories may be here, but the things that feed them are there. You must decide on which side of the land bridge to try to stop them. Once that’s done, you must also decide if we should stay, or if it’s time to leave at last, to pass what we’ve learned to others.”
“It will be as you advise,” Halik hissed. “I will decide that last question when the time comes.”
“Jesus, they’re pullin’ back!” Colonel Flynn gasped, pausing his attempt to pound a stuck “Minie” bullet down the fouling choked barrel of his Baalkpan Arsenal rifled musket. A few of his Rangers also paused to look, to realize what he said. They’d never had a chance to throw up a proper breastworks, but they’d improvised one during the battle with the bodies of the Grik dead. Those with shields had tried to protect the firing line from the hail of crossbow bolts, but the killed and wounded in almost every engaged regiment approached thirty percent. Naturally, the Rangers and the 9th Aryaal had been hardest hit, being in the center, and the 1st Amalgamated had been forced into close combat with their slightly slower-loading rifles. Flynn vaguely suspected there’d always be a place for the “buck and ball” smoothbores as long as the fights remained such close-quarters affairs.
The Grik had paused about two hundred yards away after their most recent rush was blunted. Even they had to rest a while, though their attacks had been unnervingly well coordinated for a change. Their ranks remained disorganized, but they seemed to have adopted the concept of successive “surges” that allowed those most closely engaged to fade back and be replaced by others at the point of contact. This allowed them to keep the pressure up far longer-and more exhaustingly-than ever before. The change was a… chilling development. Finally, they’d pulled back en masse beyond what they must have considered “musket shot,” apparently to sortthings out a bit. They weren’t out of range of the new rifles-or canister from the artillery, of course. For the last ten minutes, the Grik just stood there and took it as if unsure what to do while the battered II Corps obligingly poured it in. Flynn had been wishing for the hundredth time he had one of Hij Geerki’s “recall” horns, when suddenly the things began to thrum in the valley, and the massive Grik swarm began obediently withdrawing.
He was stunned. Never had the Grik just backed away from contact-never. In the past, they always either fought until they died, or ran. This was completely new. Alden hadn’t reported seeing anything like it during his march up the coast.
“Jumpin’ Jehosephat! They’re licked!” Billy paused, his eyes widening. “And they know they’re licked! Goddamn! Let ’em have it! Pound’em! Don’t let ’em just walk the hell away!” The firing around him redoubled, and he tamped the misshapen projectile the rest of the way down the barrel. Putting a copper percussion cap on the cone at the breech, he thumbed the hammer to full cock, aimed into the departing mass, and fired. The recoil of the weapon wasn’t really all that bad-unless one had already fired it a couple of hundred times. His shoulder felt as if somebody had been whacking it with a baseball bat. “Mortars, damn it! Hit ’em now, while they’re bunched up!”
“We’re out of bombs!” someone hollered. “More are on the way, but we have none now!”
Flynn swore and looked around. “Corporal, gimme some water!” he cried to a ’Cat hurrying by with a bucket. The corporal paused while Billy threw some salty-tasting water at his mouth with the floating cup, then spat some down the barrel of his rifle. “Ghaa!” he said, spitting out the foul remainder. He plugged the muzzle of the weapon with his finger and tilted it in a seesaw motion so the water would slosh back and forth in the bore. “Musta been an artillery sponge bucket!” he said, spitting again and pouring the black water from his rifle onto the ground. He placed a piece of cloth over the muzzle and ran it down with his jag-shaped rammer head. Withdrawing the rammer, he stuck it in the ground at his side, and the now-soggy, blackened cloth fell away. He popped two percussion caps and blew down the barrel, then snatched another paper-wrapped cartridge from the box at his side and tore it open with his teeth.
The firing around him was diminishing, except the artillery, which was now shooting the lighter spherical case-he could tell by the report. White puffs cracked and blossomed over the retreating enemy, spraying shell fragments among them, but still they moved away-as a mob certainly, but a controlled mob.
“It is over, Col-nol Flynn,” said a familiar voice behind him. He turned and quickly saluted Safir-Maraan, throwing most of the powder in his cartridge at his face. Self-consciously, he wadded the torn paper around the bullet and dropped it back in his cartridge box.
“Aye, uh, General,” he said. Regardless of her various other titles, on the battlefield, she was “general” first. “It looks that way,” Billy added. He reached up and pulled the helmet off his head, revealing his thinning mat of sweaty red hair. He started to slick it back but was shocked to see how badly his hand had begun to shake.
Safir took a deep breath and almost gagged herself. The stench of the morning had grown exponentially worse with the addition of the mangled corpses all around and the fog of smoke that clung near the blood-drenched ground. Her normally resplendent silver-washed armor was stained with red turning to black, and her black cloak was torn and tingeed th shiny reddish patches. Knowing her, she’d probably been right up on the line with a musket and bayonet at some point, Billy thought. Not the best place for a corps commander!
“But they retire in… I think you say ‘good order’?” she said huskily, holding her hand over her mouth. “Oh, surely this is the stench of the unlighted void! I barely noticed it before.” She fumbled for her water bottle and took a long swig. “Odd, the things one perceives immediately after these ‘new’ battles-at least I’ve found it so,” she almost whispered. She composed herself and gestured toward the retreating Grik. “I do not like to see that.”
“Me neither,” Billy agreed, stunned to see even an instant of weakness from the indomitable Safir. “It was a hell of a fight, but we’d turned the corner-even if there was a bunch more than I thought at first. Sorry about that. It’s hard to count ’em when they’re all wadded up. Anyway, any battle in the past, we would’ve about wiped ’em
