This tedious, circuitous route was intended to allow them to avoid the abyssal depths of the Celebes and Sulu seas-and the monstrous creatures that dwelt there. Among those they were trying to avoid was one so huge it actually posed a significant threat to ships as large as Lemurian Homes. “Mountain fish” they were called by some, or “island fish” by others. Whichever it was, it made no difference. The name was not idle exaggeration. Matt had never seen one, nor had anyone who’d been aboard Walker since the Squall. Jim Ellis and the crew of Mahan swore they’d been chased by one when that ship attempted to cross to Ceylon while under the deluded command of the now lost Air Corps captain named Kaufman. Mahan was badly damaged at the time, and could barely make fifteen knots. Ellis still insisted the fish nearly got them, and was convinced only the shoaling water discouraged it. Impossibly big and fast. The Lemurians were just as insistent that if the thing had indeed caught Mahan, if it was mature, it could certainly have seriously damaged or even destroyed the three-hundred-foot destroyer-iron hull or not.
They had a few “surprises” if they met a mountain fish on this trip, but Captain Reddy hoped they wouldn’t be needed. Discovering whether they worked was important, particularly in the long term, but making it to Manila and securing an alliance was of first importance, and they couldn’t risk damage to the ship before that was achieved. Bradford was disappointed, and Matt was anxious to complete their mission, but so fander e="3"›“It’s an important mission,” Keje said. He and Adar had approached unnoticed. They were both given the privileges of officers aboard his ship, and hadn’t asked permission to come on the bridge.
“I know. And it’s a good idea. We’re going to need all the help we can get to beat the lizards once and for all. I hope we can stir some up.” He smiled with little sincerity and lowered his voice so only his Lemurian friends could hear. He knew they were at least as passionate about their task as he. “I guess I’m just a little antsy.”
“Antsy,” tried Keje. “It means nervous, but not afraid, correct?”
“Sort of.”
“Hmm. A new word to add to a new phrase I learned from Mr. Braad-furd today. He just said he came up here to speak to you about his new liz-aard.” He wrinkled his nose. “What a stench! Must he dismember his toys so close to the galley? Mr. Laan-ier has threatened his life! In any event, he told us you did not even notice his presence, that you were in a ‘brown study,’ whatever that might be.”
“Is it much like ‘antsy’?” Adar asked.
Matt’s smile turned genuine. “Maybe a little. I think ‘brown study’ is more like ‘thinking disturbing thoughts.’ Add ‘antsy’ to it, and I guess that’s a pretty good description.” He sipped his coffee and grimaced. It had grown cold.
“I am ‘antsy’ as well,” Adar confessed. “Reports from home are reassuring, yet… perhaps too reassuring?”
Matt nodded. “The farther we get from home, the more I think how unlike the Grik it is for them to just sit pat and goof around. Their warriors might be mindless killing machines, but there’s a brain behind them, something that aims them and turns them loose. Those Hij. Just think of the logistics required to support a force their size, to equip it and build the ships to move it.” He shook his head. “I just can’t shake the feeling that they’re up to something.”
They finally knew a little about their enemy now, thanks to the charts, logbooks, and other papers they’d captured aboard their various prizes. They’d even taken a few of the enemy alive for a change, although no information had been forthcoming from them. They’d seemed insane, but with no comparisons they couldn’t confirm that. Regardless, the prisoners all died within days of being placed in captivity, either from the wounds that let them be captured, or other unknown causes. But some information had been gleaned. They’d discovered before, to their horror, that a lot of Grik formal correspondence was printed in English. Whatever bizarre language they spoke, English seemed their official or liturgical written language, much as Latin served the ’Cats. For the Grik, however, English was a captured language they’d probably adopted of necessity to make sense of the information they’d captured with the East Indiaman so long ago. Matt felt a twinge when he thought about how those ancient British mariners must have been persuaded to reveal their secrets. Latin was given to the Lemurians willingly, from two other East Indiamen that decided to sail east instead of west, after all three came to this world the same way Walker had. They’d apparently used Latin so only approved information could be funneled to the ’Cats, and not just anybody aboard could communicate with them. Fortunately, the westbound ship had been stripped of her guiv›
Nothing yet, Cap-i-taan,” hailed the muted, yowly voice of the Lemurian lookout in the mizzen-top above. Lieutenant Greg Garrett, former gunnery officer of USS Walker, now captain of the brand-new sailing frigate USS Donaghey, could barely discern the speaker from the predawn gloom, but knew the lookout’s eyesight was much better than his own. With watchers at all three mastheads, the little flotilla of refugee-laden barges would undoubtedly be seen as soon as it pushed off from shore. He paced the length of the darkened quarterdeck. The almost entirely Lemurian crew went about their duties professionally, quietly, leaving him room to pace and think. He paused for a moment by the smooth, polished rail and peered intently at the hazy shore. Donaghey was hove to, with nothing to do but wait, less than two miles from the treacherous breakers.
The ship was Garrett’s first command, and he loved her for that, but he also loved her classic lines and intrinsic beauty. He was highly conscious of the singular honor of being named her first commander. Those given the “prize ships” could never quite get over who made them. The barbaric nature and practices of their previous owners, and the acts performed aboard them, tainted them forever, regardless of how well they were scrubbed. They’d been found adrift, mostly, damaged by Walker ’s guns during her escape from Aryaal and the battle that cost them Nerracca. Boarding parties faced ferocious, if uncoordinated defenders, but some of the Grik “survivors” went into an apparently mindless panic Bradford called “Grik Rout,” and simply leaped over the side. No one would ever know for certain how many defenders there’d actually been. Hundreds were slain in the brutal fighting aboard the several ships, but more met their fate in the sea, and the water around the ships had churned as the voracious “flashies” fed. Allied losses had been high, particularly when they fought to rescue any Lemurian “livestock” they found chained in the enemy holds. Just as when they first captured Revenge, the sights they saw in those dark, dank abattoirs prevented the ship’s new owners from ever being able to love them.
No such stigma clung to USS Donaghey, and her people loved her unreservedly. She was larger than the prizes, with a more modern and extreme hull configuration that, combined with her more efficient sail plan, made her considerably faster than the enemy ships. She was a true frigate too, being armed with twenty-eight precious, gleaming guns.
Unfortunately, she was one of only three such ships likely ever to be built. She was considered a transition, a stopgap. Future variants would combine steam and sails and therefore sacrifice some of their purity and grace. But this was war, and one took every advantage one could when the consequence of defeat was extinction.
They’d bloodied the enemy at Aryaal and in the following actions, but if the charts they captured showing the extent of the enemy holdings were to be believed, the Grik could quickly replace their losses. They apparently bred like rabbits, and according to Bradford’s theories, their young reached mature lethality in about five years. If the remaining Americans and their allies were to have any chance of survival-not to mention victory-they needed innovation. That was why there were so few humans in Garrett’s crew. Combined, the surviving destroyermen from Walker and Mahan numbon, he’d also been entrusted with the safety of the headstrong Queen Maraan, who’d personally gone ashore to gather her people, and Pete Alden, once a simple sergeant and now the commander of all allied land forces, who’d accompanied her. Safir Maraan could usually take care of herself. She was a charismatic leader and a skilled warrior in her own right, but those were the very qualities that made her too precious to risk. At least, as far as Garrett was concerned. Not to mention that he personally liked her quite a lot, and she was betrothed to his friend Chack-Sab-At. In spite of a clear understanding of her important role, Safir Maraan remained committed to an oath she’d sworn to personally rescue the people she’d left behind, no matter the cost. To her, no role could supersede that of queen protector of B’mbaado.