“Just the one we start with,” Ruik said, “if he’s not dead too now. The one whose horse I shot, he run for coach.” He pointed. “He take fresh horse, I bet. We never catch him.”
Princess Rebecca shaded her eyes. “We won’t, but perhaps they might!” Some distance beyond the coach, charging up from the city, was a squadron of Horse Marines, the Imperial standard flying at the head of the column.
“Aye, here’s the Marines-just in time!” Bates muttered sarcastically. He looked at the Lemurian. “The boy?”
“Dead,” Ruik replied, blinking regret.
“He was loyal,” said the princess, “and we never even knew his name.”
“We’ll find it out,” Sean promised her.
“I just… something just occurred to me,” Ruik said, his English beginning to return to normal. “Those Marines that are coming so fast. Why are they coming at all? Nobody can see us from the city.”
“Maybe the shots were heard?” the princess speculated doubtfully.
“Nay,” Sean said, his brows knitting. “We’ve been shootin’ all mornin’. That’s what we came here to do. The lieutenant’s right; somethin’s afoot. P’raps they already know what this was all about.”
CHAPTER 14
Grik India
March 12, 1944
First Fleet “Northern” Allied Expeditionary Force
“Would you look at that!” Colonel Billy Flynn blurted when Captain Bekiaa-Sab-At led him to the vast open clearing and he viewed the… extraordinary sight before him. He wasn’t the only one staring. Many of his Rangers had already fanned out to secure the discovery, and most of them were gawking as well. The First Amalgamated and elements of the 6th Maa-ni-la Cavalry were responsible for screening the northern flank of II Corps’ leapfrog advance along the western road toward the looming, sawtooth escarpment ahead. The objective was another major crossroads beyond the mountain gateway on the more open land beyond that had been identified by reconnaissance flights as a potential marshaling area for significant Grik forces. The enemy might infiltrate through the forest, but they could only move artillery and massed troops by road.
Unfortunately, the time it took to secure the frontiers around Madras, and the recon required to confirm or amend Allied strategy previously based only on captured Grik maps and Hij-Geerki’s notions, had delayed any “lightning” thrusts to seize that next strategic crossroads. The Grik command had likely used that time to catch its breath. In several respects, maybe that was a good thing. The “Northern” AEF had needed a breath itself after the sporadic but fierce fighting that punctuated the consolidation, resupply, and reorganization required after the improved but still chaotic aftermath of the invasion. Also, the enemy had reacted to the capture of Madras as hoped, and sent most of its known armies northeast. This allowed III Corps and the newly constituted V Corps (together constituting the “Southern” AEF) to cross the narrow land bridge from Ceylon with little resistance, and secure that vital approach. The Cavalry-heavy V Corps was now racing north across a relatively open coastal plain to link up with Rolak’s I Corps as it began its push south. Hopefully, the V would take the Grik assembling to oppose Rolak in the rear.
The Allied High Command, from CINCWEST on down, was pleased with the campaign so far. Not only had they avoided a bloody smash-up at the crossing; they believed they’d dispersed the enemy into smaller, more manageable packets. They’d done the same with their own forces of course, but the Allies’ superior training, discipline, weapons, and growing cohesion should justify that risk. The Allies had uncontested control of the air after destroying a few snooping Grik zeppelins, and the rest, wherever they were, seemed reluctant to come up. Ultimately, they also had the only real deepwater port on the east coast firmly in their hands, and they were just now coming to grips with what an important industrial center Madras had been for the enemy. The sheer tonnage of enemy shipping and stockpiles of coal, timbers, and plate steel they’d captured was mind-boggling. The plate steel was an ominous discovery, but correspondence from Courtney Bradford had predicted that much of the enemy’s entire coal reserves would be in northeast India, and losing Madras had to hurt them.
Consequently, however, along with the element of surprise, II Corps’ ability to move quickly had also been lost. It couldn’t simply march down the rough road in column, so scout regiments were tasked with the difficult chore of moving forward through the dense forest on either side of the broad dirt “highway” one at a time, until they found defensible positions or land features where they forted up in the old Roman style. Only then did their opposite number do the same. Once the flanks were secure, General-Queen Protector Safir Maraan brought her corps up the road. It was a drawn-out process that slowed the rapid advances they’d made following the invasion, but only the Grik knew all the forest pathways that might allow them to strike a longer column in the flank. This way, they hoped, the corps as a whole would maintain greater cohesion and more rapid internal lines of support, and could rush troops to any major point of contact with the enemy.
“I already have looked at it, sir,” Bekiaa responded dryly, blinking mild frustration. “That is why I thought you would wish to.”
“Jeez,” Flynn murmured, ignoring her tone. “I bet no damn Grik ever built that.”
They’d seen some very weird things since the landing at Madras almost three weeks before; things unlike any they’d encountered yet. Again, the Grik noncombatants-if there really was such a thing-had fled or been slaughtered, but there were giant, furry, buzzard things, kind of like flying skuggiks, that had “cleaned up” the countless Grik dead. They were almost as big as the dragons Second Fleet had encountered, but they had beaks instead of toothy jaws and avoided anything alive. There were deadly snake… things… in abundance, much to their unpleasant surprise, most of which lived in the trees instead of on the ground. They had short, grasping claws along their bodies that allowed them to cling tightly to trees and limbs instead of drooping about. Lemurians as a race weren’t accustomed to snakes and only a few had ever seen one. Courtney Bradford actually suspected that the rare snakes described to him were probably transportees themselves, since there were so many things that would happily root them up and eat them. Rhino pigs would keep them off Borno, for example. Regardless, Lemurians instinctively hated anything that looked like a snake, and God knew how much ammunition they’d wasted before fire discipline had been restored.
Other new discoveries included bizarre gliding and tree-leaping rodents that infested the forests as thickly as insects, and there were tiny hummingbird-like creatures that behaved like mosquitoes. Added to the real mosquitoes, the needle-nosed little devils contributed significantly to the misery of the Allied troops.
They saw very few large animals besides Grik-and the adolescent Griklets that had apparently been released to harass them once again. As on Ceylon, it grew evident that without the Grik, there was a big hole in the local food chain. Almost nothing substantial or easy to catch had been seen, leaving everyone to wonder again what the Grik ate besides one another-and their enemies, of course. Hij-Geerki had been a “frontier clerk,” basically, and though he’d been to Ceylon and had given them some useful information, he’d never been in a position to explain how large populations of his species fed themselves in older, more established parts of its empire. It was well-known that frontier and expeditionary Grik relied on “prey” and even each other for sustenance, but he had no idea what else they ate in the sacred ancestral lands. Prey-of any sort-had to be scarce and, obviously, no species could rely entirely on itself for sustenance, particularly when it needed more numbers, not less.