CHAPTER 6
Andaman
Island
General Pete Alden,
former sergeant in USS Houston’s Marine
contingent, stood in USS Dowden’s
captain’s quarters staring at a map on the bulkhead. Captain Greg
Garrett of Donaghey and “Commodore” Jim
Ellis sat at the table behind him with General Muln Rolak, Safir
Maraan, and several other officers. How times had changed. Jim had
originally been Matt’s exec on Walker,
and Garrett had been the gunnery officer. Rolak and Queen Maraan
had been bitter enemies, but were now as close as a father and
daughter might be. All were waiting for Pete to speak.
“You know this is
nuts, right? ” he finally pronounced, raking his dark hair back
from his forehead. He still kept the hair burred short everywhere
but on top.
“I thought it was
possible you might think so,” Ellis said, grinning through his
light brown beard. “That’s why I wanted your opinion.”
“Well, there it is. I
just don’t see how we can run along and leave that nest of snakes
at our backs, sitting right on top of our supply
lines.”
“But they are not,”
Safir Maraan pointed out, her silver eyes reexamining the map.
“With Aan-daa-maan as our forward staging area, we can watch this
Raan-goon place closely enough. As long as we control the sea, the
forces trapped there can do nothing but slowly starve. They cannot
affect our campaign against Ceylon.”
Rolak grunted. “I
fear I must agree with General Aal-den,” he said. The scarred old
warrior pointed at the Malay Peninsula. “With a little
initiative—something we have learned the enemy leadership, their
Hij at least, is capable of—this force at Raan-goon might attempt
to threaten our new base at Sing-aa-pore. We know that when we took
it from them, some Grik managed to escape from there as a cohesive
force. They were not all ‘made prey,’ as they call it. They may
have traveled as far as Raan-goon by now. With no other purpose,
they might even attempt to return.”
“Right,” Alden
agreed. “We know at least some didn’t break, and according to Okada
and some other stuff we’ve seen, we know they aren’t ‘destroying’
all their troops that chicken out anymore.” He shook his head.
“Still don’t know what to think of that. I wish we could’ve figured
out a way to talk to those goofy Griks that Rasik was using for
bodyguards.”
“Evidently we
could talk to ’em. They just couldn’t
talk to us,” Jim pointed out. He shrugged. “We sent ’em back to
Baalkpan hoping Lawrence could figure out a way to communicate—but
he’d already been swiped with the rest by that bastard Billingsley.
I’m sure the pointy heads back home will keep working on it, but I
don’t know that it’ll make any difference to us. They were just Uul
warriors, and I doubt they were privy to the grand strategy of the
Grik High Command!”
“Maybe so,” Pete
agreed, “but we have learned one
important thing from them. We always assumed that when they went
nuts, or experienced Bradford’s ‘Grik Rout,’ they were just ruined.
Maybe they are for a while. Over time, though, it seems like they
kind of get over it. Worse, when they do, it’s like they’re smarter
somehow, like somebody flipped a switch and turned their brains on.
Like . . . whatever happens to turn Uul into Hij . . . happens.” He
shook his head in frustration. He knew his words were inadequate,
but the meaning should be clear. “That really gives me the creeps,”
he added.
“A ‘Hij’ switch,”
Garrett said thoughtfully. “You know, there’s a precedent for
that.” The others looked at him. “Lawrence himself,” he said.
“Remember his story? He told how he was ‘raised’ on an island
separate from ‘Tagranesi’ society, where he and all his young
lizard buddies just ran loose for a while. He didn’t know how long.
All they had was a kind of cadre of instructors or mentors to keep
them in line and teach them stuff and try to guide them out of
savagery. Their final exam was a trip to some other scary island
where they faced their primal fears and learned self-sufficiency.”
He shook his head. “He never would talk about it.”
“I have heard Mister
Braad-furd propose a similar theory,” Rolak said, “but you present
it in a . . . more understandable way.”
Garrett grinned, and
for a moment he looked like a kid again instead of the experienced
Naval officer he’d become. “Well,” he admitted, “Courtney did
influence my thinking. He probably has the whole thing in his head,
but it can be tough to keep up with what he’s saying sometimes.”
Everyone laughed at that.
“He does tend to tack
back and forth,” Rolak agreed. “A brilliant mind, but there may
perhaps be too much in it at once, on occasion.” There was more
laughter at Rolak’s tact.
“Okay, so we call it
‘the Hij switch.’ I don’t care,” Alden continued, relentlessly
returning to the subject at hand. “My point is, we can’t ignore it.
That makes things even spookier if you ask me. Bad enough that a
Hij captain or colonel or whatever they are might have reached
Rangoon with a coherent report of the tactics we used to seize
Singapore. Add in some wild Griks that might’ve flipped their
switch. If they’re not killing ’em anymore, what if they just throw
’em back in the pool with a bunch of regular Griks? That might be
bad enough, but what if a Hij general actually listens to ’em? They
might wind up with a lot more insight about us than we have about
them, and we’d be right back at square one again.”
Commodore Ellis
leaned forward. “You’re right,” he agreed reluctantly. “That
is a spooky thought. So far, they’ve
always had numbers on their side, but their inflexibility and
predictability has been their greatest weakness, while our
flexibility and initiative has been our greatest strength. We’ve
never been more than a step or two ahead of them
technologically—the Japs see to that—and there’s no reason to think
any advantage we have now will last very long. That’s been my
reason to keep pushing as hard and fast as we can.” He interlaced
his fingers on the table before him. “But. Right now we’re in kind
of a holding pattern. We’re consolidating our position here on
Andaman.” He paused. “Ought to call it something else,” he said
absently. “On our world, this one big island was several smaller
ones that used to be, basically, a British prison.” He shook his
head and went on. “Anyway, we’re building fortifications and
warehouses and generally setting up shop, but we’re not really
pushing just now. We don’t have the forces to move on Ceylon yet,
not until Big Sal and the other new
ships and troops join the fleet. The whole show’ll be Keje’s after
that.” He sighed. “You know, it’s tempting to leave him with it. I
always wanted the Navy for a career and dreamed of being an
admiral. Now I’m not so sure. It’s a lot easier to command a ship
and fight her than send others out to do it.”
“You’ve already
proven you can fight a ship superbly,” Safir said
quietly.
“Yeah, if you don’t
count losing her in the end,” he said with a brittle, false
cheerfulness, “and I didn’t do too well at first. I had a good
teacher.”
“We all did, Jim,”
Garrett reminded him. He scratched his chin, looking at the map.
“I’ve got to say that Pete’s convinced me, though. We’re just spinning our wheels, aside
from stomping on the occasional Grik supply ship. Not many of those
anymore. I think they’ve finally figured out that somebody’s
beating up the mailman. We can’t move on Ceylon until the rest of
the fleet arrives, but we can do something about Pete’s nest of
snakes. If we leave them alone too long, maybe they will just
wither on the vine, but they might cook up something behind us
instead.”
Jim Ellis looked
around the cabin at his commanders. Not all were present, of
course, but these represented everyone. Pete still stood beside the
map, but the rest were nodding, as if to themselves.
“Okay,” Jim said.
“We’ll do Rangoon. I never really wanted to leave it for Keje to deal with, and
you’ve presented good arguments. Actually, I have another, maybe
even better, one. We’ve developed a lot of new tactics and
equipment since Singapore. Not everybody has ’em yet, but this’ll
be our first action with the new muskets in any numbers. I also
hope, if Keje gets close enough by the time we’re ready, we might
use a little of his ‘air.’ We might need this to work some of the bugs out of things
before we hit something like Ceylon. That’s going to be the biggest
thing we’ve ever done, and I’d personally like to be confident that
everything works like we hope it will before we jump in with both
feet.” He looked at Pete. “This’ll have to be different from
Operation Singapore Swing. We need a lot more than a raid, but we
don’t want to get ‘stuck in,’ if you know what I mean. We don’t
need the territory right now.”
“Yes, Commodore,”
General Alden replied. The relaxed discussion among friends was
over. “It just so happens that I’ve been working on a plan.” There
were a few chuckles. “Again,” he continued, “owing to the somewhat
different topography we often encounter . . . here . . . the depot,
outpost, fortress, or whatever they call it that we’ve been
referring to as Rangoon isn’t exactly where the ‘old’ Rangoon was.
The main river empties out a little farther down the coast, closer
to what we’d call Kynonkadun. Weird, I know, but that’s where they
are and it’s a pretty good anchorage. The problem we ran into with
Singapore was that we just assumed the strait would block the enemy
from escaping—not that we were that worried about it at the time.
Trouble was, while the strait’s still there, it’s narrower than it
ought to be, due to lower sea levels, but it’s also deeper, cut out
by a hell of a tidal rush. Turned out there wasn’t a causeway, but
they’d strung barges across for their hunting parties and
such.”
“But what does that
have to do with Raan-goon?” Rolak asked.
“Just this: this
time, we don’t want any of the bastards getting away.”
Garrett whistled.
“Tough fighting.”
“Maybe. Definitely at
first, as always, but my . . .” He paused. “Well, my spies say we
might actually have them outnumbered this time. If we can sneak
upriver, land, and then push them south, they’ll only have two
places to go—the sea, or that nasty, swampy country west across the
mouths of the Irrawaddy.”
“What is that?” Safir
asked.
“A maze of
tributaries that open into the Western Ocean,” Jim
explained.
“Are they still there
. . . here?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Jim.
“Before I sent Chapelle and Tolson to
join Mr. Mallory’s expedition to Chill-chaap, he cruised off the
Burma shore to map it and see if we wanted Rangoon. That’s when he discovered the Grik
outpost. He said the place was a primordial, miserable, swampy hell
with, quote, ‘absolutely Gi-Goddamn-Gantic brontasarry-like things
romping in the shallows.’ ” He stopped and looked at Pete and
Garrett. “Our first look at continental creatures,” he said,
arching an eyebrow. “Well, we’d already ‘taken possession’ of
Andaman and confirmed Port Blair was still a decent anchorage, but
with water shallow enough to keep the mountain fish away. It didn’t
take a lot of thought. Disease-ridden swamp, full of God knows
what, swarming with Grik, or beautiful tropical island with white
sandy beaches. There’s a few weird critters here, and lots of
gri-kakka in the channel, but plenty of room and, for some reason,
no Grik.”
“But these
‘trib-u-taaries’ are still there?” Safir asked again.
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry if I
didn’t answer your question clearly. My point was that they are,
and they’re even worse than they ‘ought’ to be. More of them, worse
terrain, and full of scary monsters even the Grik can’t relish
tangling with.”
“Good,” Safir Maraan
replied with satisfaction. “It sounds like an excellent place to
drive them!”
Rolak looked at her.
“Yes, and a dreadful place to chase
them. Do not let yourself grow overenthusiastic, my
dear.”