The Lemurian who'd spoken was Anai-Sa, High Chief of Fristar, one of the Homes that had been in Baalkpan Bay since before Walker arrived.
He seemed young for his rank, with a jet-black pelt and a spray of white whiskers surrounding his face. His green eyes were intent. Besides his heavily embroidered kilt, he wore only a multitude of shimmering golden hoops around his neck and upper arms. His people were "far rangers" who rarely entered these waters. Their "territory" was most often the South China Sea, but Grik pressure had pushed them south. He was also the most outspoken of the "why don't we just sail off where there are no Grik" crowd.
Keje spoke in reply. "I would have you hear the words of Cap-i-taan Reddy of the Amer-i-caans, and High Chief of Waa-kur. He is High Chief of an independent clan and has as much right to speak as anyone here.
More, to my thinking, since he saved my Home from the Grik. The Amer-i-caans have helped us prepare for this time with no concern for personal gain." Keje stood before the silent group, looking out among them. He said nothing about Walker's brief sortie two weeks before that destroyed two more Grik ships. All were aware of it, even if they hadn't been there yet, and boasting sometimes detracts from self-evident truth. Besides, the last thing Matt wanted was everyone thinking Walker would save them all.
As Keje suspected, there were murmurs of protest. Not because the humans weren't People, but because their ship was so small and sparsely populated. Would they grant "Home" status to fishing boats too?
Keje squared his shoulders and placed his hand upon the scota at his side. "I declare Cap-i-taan Reddy is my Brother as surely as any High Chief, and I offer combat to anyone saying he does not deserve to speak."
These last words came in a growl.
There was some very unusual body language in response to this threat, and some glanced to see Nakja-Mur's reaction. He merely stared at Keje's back across steepled claws with his elbows on his knees.
"These Amer-i-caans come from far away, and know more about war than we. Before they came to help us, they were engaged in a struggle that defies belief. Their wondrous ship was just one of perhaps hundreds, and they modestly tell me theirs was but the smallest and least powerful Home to fight in that unimaginable conflict! Yet it prevailed!"
Matt winced at Chack's translation. Okay, so much for not bragging. Besides, they'd "prevailed" in the sense that they'd survived, but that was the only appropriate context for the word. Keje grinned at him ironically.
"Would you speak to them, my Brother? Perhaps you can sway them.
I'll tell them your words."
Matt nodded. For his plan to work, they had to see the threat. But they also needed hope. How would he scare them into joining the fight without scaring them away? Particularly since the plan he was forming was risky, to say the least. The irony of the situation struck him like a slap. He remembered how unfathomable he'd thought admirals and politicians were. Particularly within ABDA. Why they made the decisions they did mattered only insofar as they affected his ship, his crew, and himself. Suddenly he was standing in similar shoes and found them most uncomfortable. He stepped to Keje's side and cleared his throat.
"I really don't know if we can defeat them," he said simply. Keje looked at him sharply, surprised by the dour opening, but Matt had stressed the word "we."
"I don't know much about them at all. Nobody does; not even where they come from, or what kind of society supports their warlike nature.
We're probably outnumbered. Their ships aren't as large as yours, but they're much faster, and each carries nearly as many warriors as yours since their ships aren't Homes. They carry no families that we know of, and they grow no food. They're meant for one thing only: to transport warriors to battle." He paused. "That should be both an advantage and a disadvantage to them. They can pack a lot of warriors into their ships, but they have to keep supplied or they can't stay in our territory long. One thing we do know is they're a long way from home." He shrugged. "They raid for provisions—Chill-chaap proves that—but even that takes time from offensive operations, and the more there are, the bigger that problem becomes.
"That's about all we know about their strategic situation, though. We don't know what they want or why they're here, beyond an apparent hunger for conquest. We have no real idea what their `grand strategy' is. Their efforts so far have not seemed well coordinated, although Keje tells me they're better now than in the past. The best I can figure, they have several independent task forces on the loose, looking for us, and they hope to eventually overwhelm us with numbers. That's also the historical model recorded in your Scrolls.
"We too have advantages and disadvantages." Matt looked at the faces staring impassively back.
"And what are our advantages, beside the ability to simply leave them behind again?" The black-furred Lemurian's voice dripped sarcasm.
Matt regarded him coldly. "Courage is one," he answered, returning the green-eyed glare. "Thoughtful courage, not the wild-ass, charge-tanks-with-horses kind." There was absolutely no context for the statement, but somehow they grasped his meaning. All present knew, at least by description, the abandon with which Grik fought. Their attack was like a school of flasher-fish. Maybe they employed tactics, but once they came to grips, it was individual mindless ferocity.
"We also have Walker," he said matter-of-factly, "and nothing they have can match her speed and the range of her weapons. We'll have more weapons soon. Cannons, sort of like Walker's, that'll fit on your ships. But most of all—I hope—we're smarter than they are. Smart enough to use their strengths against them. And if their strengths become weaknesses . . ."
He shrugged.
"Frankly, our biggest disadvantage is ignorance." There were hostile murmurs at that. The closest Lemurian word to "ignorance" was precariously similar to "stupidity." He continued hastily on. "That's a disadvantage I'm personally sick of . . . for a lot of reasons, and one I plan to correct. It's our biggest disadvantage because of how much bigger it makes our other problems." He counted on his fingers. "First, there might be five or ten of their ships in the Java Sea right now, but we don't know. We don't know if they're part of a probe or a real push. The Scrolls describe a slow escalation, but is it just starting, or has it reached its peak? We don't know.
Our ignorance makes it impossible to formulate a strategy to totally defeat them." He motioned Benjamin Mallory forward. "Lieutenant, when you saw the aftermath at Tjilat—Chill-chaap, did you speculate on the nature of the Grik attack?"
"Yes, sir. It's hard to say, but I got the impression they made an amphibious assault, coordinated with an attack overland through the jungle."
"What makes you say that?"
"Well, it's just a guess. We didn't really study the battlefield, if you know what I mean, but the corpses in the jungle were in groups. Not really scattered around. Like the inhabitants were running away and ran into the Grik. Not like they were chased down and caught. It was just . . . the feeling I got."
Matt nodded. "That seems consistent—the multipronged attack. Like the tactic they used against Big Sal. Attack as many places as possible to split your defenses. That might even be an example of their overall strategy, writ small. If so, that shows us another one of our problems. We're way too scattered out. I know that's how you've always lived, but you've got to pull together. Believe me, we know about being all alone when the world is falling on us! The only way to defend against that sort of attack is to mass our forces. Keep them as united as possible and work together as best we can. But where do we mass? We can't do it everywhere—that defeats the purpose." He looked measuringly at Nakja-Mur. "We could mass at Baalkpan—fortify the city and build a wall around it, with fighting positions and maybe even cannons. We could clear the jungle around it and make a killing ground that even the Grik would fear. In fact, I think we should. But it'll take time, and that's a luxury we may not have. We don't know how much weight's behind them. It also surrenders all initiative to the enemy and sounds too much like what happened last time, if you ask me. Anyway, it all still boils down to: we just don't know!"