“A thorn? What did it look like? The plant, I mean.”
“Well, Mr. Silva said it looked like something he called ‘kudzu,’ but I don’t know what that is. We have plants with similar blossoms at home, and they even have thorns, but they don’t cause anything like Mr. Cook’s reaction.”
“It’s the damnedest thing I ever saw,” Dennis murmured. “One little poke. It’s almost like it left a seed in there and it sprouted something fierce. Already putting out roots!”
Sandra felt a chill. “My God, I think that’s exactly what it’s done! You say these plants were growing up among and around skeletons of some sort?”
“Yes . . . ah . . . ma’am,” Brassey confirmed. “Great big ones.”
“Say,” Silva muttered thoughtfully, “they ain’t no big critters running around on this island! Not most of the time, anyway, except for them big lizard-turtle things, and if these were them, they’d’ve left big old shells layin’ around!”
“You’re saying that the skeletons must have been these shiksak creatures?” Sister Audry asked.
“No way around it,” Silva replied. “I bet those big old shit-sack toad boogers go hoppin’ through that kudzu stuff, get poked, and eventually wind up fertilizin’ a whole new patch of them nasty weeds! God ... dern! I always hated kudzu!”
Sandra sighed and laid Abel’s hand down. “If you’re right—and I’m afraid you are—that finger will have to come off. Immediately. In just the few hours since he was infected, the ‘roots’ have spread nearly to his hand. Those are just the filaments I can see. Deeper down, they might already be
in
his hand.”
“We better get crackin’, then,” Dennis said.
“Right.” Sandra looked at Sister Audry. “Would you and Lawrence please boil some water? Mr. Silva, you still have a small amount of polta paste in your shooting pouch, do you not?”
“Are you absolutely certain we have no other choice? ” asked Rebecca.
The tears in her eyes reflected the candlelight.
“I don’t know that we can be certain without waiting,” Dennis answered her gently. “But if it does what we think it does, I don’t reckon we have time.”
Later that night, Dennis was one of the last to arrange his bedding in the sand. It had been a long day and he was exhausted. As usual, there were plenty of biting, stinging insects to pester him, but he doubted he’d notice them tonight. Captain Lelaa and Lawrence had the guard and he knew he could sleep soundly with them on duty, so he arranged his weapons around himself, scrunched down, and pulled his wool blanket up to his chin. There was often a chill before dawn. Almost as an afterthought, he pulled off the patch that covered his ruined left eye and stared at it for a moment. Hell, a pinky finger ain’t much, he decided. The kid was already resting easier. He laid the patch on his shooting pouch and closed his other eye.
From somewhere nearby he heard a strange sound. Opening his eye again, he raised up to listen. Over there. Sighing, he replaced the patch—no reason to disgust folks—and pulling his cutlass out of the sand, he crept over to where the sound was emanating. He sat.
“What’s eatin’ you, Li’l Sis?” he whispered. “You know you can tell ol’ Silva.”
The muffled crying continued a moment longer before Rebecca managed to control it. “It’s just so awful,” she said at last. “Not just Mr. Cook’s poor hand, although that is bad enough. It’s just . . . everything! This whole day has been dreadful! I don’t know how much longer I can bear it!”
“Now, now. You’re doin’ fine. I bet Abel’ll be just fine too. We’re gonna get outta this jam, I promise.” He cocked his head. “I’m glad Miss Tucker finally laid down the law, though.”
“And that’s another thing! She seemed fully prepared to shoot Captain Rajendra! That can’t sit well with her. She is so kind and gentle! Do . . . do you think she would have done it?”
“Yep. Lookie here, she may be kind and gentle, but she’s a tiger when it comes to you and the Skipper. Hell, when it comes to
any
of us she thinks of as her kin.”
“Do you think it will matter?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause Rajendra and the rest o’ his people . . .
your
people, believed her. Believed you too. You and her is so much alike it spooks me now and then, honest to God. You look alike, act alike, you both got plenty o’ brains, but you got even more guts.” He snorted. “A time or two, that’s got you both in trouble.”
“You think I have ‘guts’?” Rebecca asked, incredulous.
“Yep. Big, long, heapin’ piles of ’em, and you’re gonna need ’em too. I’ll tell you somethin’ else. Havin’ guts is one thing, but bein’ too sleepy to use ’em is another. So why don’t you just squirm on down there an’ shut them little eyes. Ol’ Silva’ll be right here.” He paused a moment, looking out at the surf and the hazy moon beyond. In a quiet, gravelly voice he started to sing:
“Once upon a time the goose drank wine.
The monkey chewed tobacco on the live steam line.
The steam line broke, the monkey choked,
And they all went to heaven in a little tin boat.”
Rebecca snorted a giggle. “What’s that supposed to be, a lullaby?”
A little embarrassed, Dennis shrugged. “Nope,” he said. “Just a stupid song.”
CHAPTER 6
Andaman Island
G
eneral 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.”