“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 defeatthem.” 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!”
Nakja-Mur raised his bearded chin from his fingertips. “Could we defeat the Grik in such a manner?” he asked.
Matt hesitated. “No. We could prevent defeat for a time, but we couldn’t win. While we sat behind our walls and fought them and killed them, and bled them white, we’d only grow weaker, while they would send more Grik. Just as it’s written in your Scrolls. Eventually, they’d wear us down. The only way to win is to attack!”
There were incredulous cries. “Attack them? Attack where? We do not even know where they come from!” shouted the black-furred High Chief. Others yelled questions and comments as welclass="underline" “We could harry their ships, but will they fight if we bring a large enough force to defeat them?” cried one. “We certainly can’t catch them if they run!” “What will happen to Baalkpan if we leave it undefended?!” another asked. “He was talking about mass. Mass where?” “What’s ‘mass’?”
Matt listened to the uproar for a few moments longer. Finally, he spoke loudly a single word.
“Ignorance!”
Keje repeated it in the same tone. The tumult abruptly stopped and all eyes turned to the captain of Walker.
“Ignorance,” he said again. “I’m getting pretty tired of it myself. Let’s see if we can enlighten ourselves.”
Even Keje blinked surprise. “How do we do that, my Brother?”
“We mass.”
Keje was confused. “But you just said… they are spread out, they are faster-we can’t mass here and wait for them all to find us, and we certainly cannot mass together and chase them down!”
“No, but we can mass defensively and let a few come to us. I don’t want all of them until we know how many they are. And we won’t do it here.”
“I thought you said we should attack,” said Nakja-Mur.
“Think of it as a ‘defensive’ attack. It won’t be easy and it sure as hell won’t be safe, but if it works, we ought to learn a lot about our enemy at long last.”
“My people will have nothing to do with such madness!” huffed Fristar ’s High Chief.
Nakja-Mur stood, a little shakily, Matt thought. “You may leave whenever you wish, then,” he said. “My people don’t have that choice.” He looked at Matt. “My people… I… have never known war, but I will support this plan of yours whatever it might be. I do not want the Grik coming here.” He smiled sadly. “You may have all the paint or whatever else you want if you can prevent that.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Matt replied, glancing around the hall. “But what we both need most right now are more warriors. ‘Mass’ means numbers.”
Sergeant Pete Alden, United States Marine Corps, stared at the “mass” of trainees flailing at one another with clumsy enthusiasm and padded-point practice spears. Some were really trying, and the “Marines” did their best to instruct them. But to most of the newer recruits, it was still mostly a game. He cursed. Before now, the training had gone relatively well with the smaller groups he’d been dealing with. He’d applied a familiar regimen even if the exercises were different from his own experience. The rush of recruits since the Grik ship sailed right into Baalkpan Bay changed all that.
His carefully chosen, elite Marines were broken up to form a cadre of NCOs as the militia (now “Guard”) swelled dramatically. Even warriors from some of the ships started to attend the drills. That was all well and good, but Parris Island had never seen a less likely draft, and he (who’d never been a drill instructor) now faced the impossible task of turning this collection of instinctively individualistic merchants, shopkeepers, fishers, and sailors into an army. And he had just a few weeks to do it. Right now, if he reconstituted his Marines, he could field two regiments of fairly well-trained, disciplined troops-and that’s what he’d likely do for the captain’s upcoming expedition. If they were successful, he would resume the training after they returned as veteran NCOs. Not just bright trainees who’d grasped the theory but couldn’t yet teach from experience.
The warriors who came to train were accustomed to working together, but otherwise they were a pain in the neck. As “warriors” already, they had their own way of doing things. They understood that discipline was required in order to fight together-which the land folk didn’t-but the close-order drill and concerted complexity of the captain’s new/ancient tactics were too much trouble. Alden was having some trouble with them himself. He was a grunt, a fighting Marine, and he fully understood the concept of mass. But in his Marine Corps, standing shoulder to shoulder and hacking at enemies close enough to smell their breath was crazy. He had no problem with a little hand-to-hand; he was even pretty good at it. Like many Marines, he was an artist with a bayonet-when it was attached to his holy Springfield. The dogma pounded into him as a recruit was one of accurate, long-distance riflery, backed by a bayonet and the will to use it. Standing toe to toe and hacking away was for last-ditch defense or final assault. Not for the whole damn fight.