He nodded; dysentery happened, no matter how careful you were about clean water and food. Then he dictated a message for reinforcements-and as a wish rather than a hope, a request for air support-to Hattusas HQ. The ultralights were overstretched as it was.
"Sir, should you be staying here?" Barnes asked. "We may be cut off."
"It's where the action is," O'Rourke said absently, looking around again. "Hmmm… Captain, how are we fixed for these barley sacks?"
"Tons of it, sir. This was a forward supply collection center. The storehouse is full of boxed dog biscuit, too."
He looked around, scowling. The hospital's got to be inside the perimeter. That leaves us with this goddamned east-west rectangle of wall to hold-inefficient. The walls were very long relative to the area within.
"Then run another breastwork, here"-he drew a line in the dirt with the tip of his boot, extending it across the last, eastward third of the rectangle, the one that included the storehouse. "We'll need a fallback position. And a last-stand redoubt in the center of the space it encloses, using all the barley sacks you have left over-nine feet high, with a firing step."
"And the Gatling, sir? There?"
"No, plunging fire isn't effective against a massed attack," O'Rourke said, shaking his head. "We'll use it to cover the largest field in front of the gate here and shift the rifles to…"
After he'd finished, he noted Hantilis staring at what the Marines had accomplished, working on the field entrenchments. It was fairly impressive; they'd turned an enclosure that might have done a good job of keeping goats out into something resembling a miniature fort.
"How they work!" the Hittite said, in a mixture of English and Babylonian, amazement clear in his tone. "I have never seen even slaves beneath the overseer's lash toil so!"
"And you won't," O'Rourke said dryly. "A slave-his tools are his enemies and he delights in idleness; to destroy your goods is his pleasure. On the Island, a free man's pride is in the work of his hands, and all honest work is counted honorable-to employ such a one is to profit, even if the wage be high. A slave just eats your food and dies."
Hantilis frowned, something his heavy-boned face made easy; the Islander could see him turning the thought over in his head. Then he shook it aside for now.
"Can we stop the enemy here?" he asked. "My King prepares for war, but he must have time."
"We're buying time," O'Rourke said. "That's what expendable means, boyo."
"Sam, we needed that ship," Jared Cofflin said. "Sorry, but there is a war on."
Emma Carson stayed quiet. Quiet as a snake, Jared thought. Heard a snake bit her once. The snake died. A little off-balance here in the Chief's House, though; she wasn't a frequent guest.
Sam Macy nodded unwillingly. "Wish you could have taken something besides the Merrimac, Jared," he said. "Or given me some warning. The Republic's paying fair compensation, but I had a buyer lined up"-who was confidential information, of course-"and it isn't going to do my reputation any good having to back out. Reputation's my stock-in-trade, as much as plank and beam."
Macy was a short thick-bodied man of Jared's age, most of it muscle despite an incipient pot. His gray-shot black hair was still abundant, though, and he'd added a short spade-shaped beard back when shaving got difficult, and kept it after hot water, soap, and straight-edge razors became available again. Before the Event he'd been a house-building contractor; since then he'd become something of a timber baron in the limitless forests over on the mainland, that leading his firm naturally to interests in shipyards and ships, and occasionally to operating ships until the right price was offered.
"It was there, and the less warning, the less likely word is to get to the enemy," Jared said. "The Arnsteins are pretty sure they've still got some eyes here. We can move information more quickly, Tartessos doesn't have radios, thank God. Yet. But there are ways for them to communicate."
Macy nodded. "Well, if you let the Inquirer amp; Mirror have the story eventually, so everyone knows it was… what's the word…"
"Force majeure," Martha supplied helpfully.
"Right."
"Mmmmn-hmm," Cofflin said, nodding an affirmative.
"What the hell did you want her for, anyway?" Macy said. "She's a good ship, weatherly and fast-but I thought there were ample transports? The buyer was looking into opening a regular private trade with Anyang."
"State secret," Cofflin said. "We need her; leave it at that."
It made him a little uneasy to use phrases like that, but it worked. The abortive Tartessian invasion this spring past had frightened and enraged the entire population. It was also a pity he had to put a spoke in the wheel of those plans for trade. Policy was to encourage private enterprise, wherever possible. He'd detested the period of absolute emergency right after the Event when he and the Council had to run everything, handing out rations and assigning work. Each step toward normalacy since had been a relief, and his greatest ambition as head of government had been to become as irrelevant as he could to as many people as possible. He didn't like the way the war was making them lose ground.
"Filthy war," Macy said, as if echoing his thought, and everyone nodded.
Emma Carson cleared her throat. "Now, Chief, I'm on the board of Chapman, Charnes amp; Co.," she said.
Jared nodded noncommittally. The Carsons were Chapman and Charnes nowadays; they'd bought in with profits made in the mainland trade and managed the firm shrewdly. Those initial profits hadn't been too scrupulously made, and there had been trouble with the Indians over their habit of including free firewater as a bargaining tool; the mainlanders were fully capable of realizing they'd been diddled when they sobered up. The Carsons had loudly demanded that the Republic's military enforce those debts; he'd refused and got the Meeting to back him. Neither of them had enjoyed the clashes over that.
Carson went on carefully: "We were the buyers for Sam's ship-wanted to see how she'd do on a shakedown cruise across the pond to Alba, before we sent her really far foreign."
Macy snorted. "Emma, you wanted to take possession in Westhaven because you could sign up a crew cheaper there than you could here in Nantucket Town or the outports," he said. He looked back at Jared. "Chief, I still say we should have a law saying that the crews of Nantucket-flagged vessels have to be citizens. Registered immigrants, at least."
"Sam Macy," Carson said, exasperation showing in her tone-they had this argument every time they met in public- "I don't think we should be copying… what were they called? The Navigation Acts, the ones the British had before the Revolution."
Jared and Martha caught each other's eyes and nodded slightly. "Let's save that for the Town Meeting," Martha said dryly.
Carson's reply was equally pawky-cynicaclass="underline" "Ms. Cofflin, you know as well as I do that if all four of us agree on something, we can get it through the Meeting. I presume that's why we're all here now."
"Mebbe. Do we agree on a wartime compromise on the immigration laws and the income-tax rate?" Jared Cofflin said, leaning back; the delicate cup and saucer looked absurdly small in his big gnarled fisherman's hands. I suppose it was inevitable we'd get political parties.
The unity they'd had right after the Event was lifeboat politics. That didn't keep him from being nostalgic about it. He'd been a small-town boy too long to imagine that Nantucket would ever be without its share of homegrown gullible idiots and nosy-parkers. Or smart bastards like the Carsons untroubled by excessive ethics and ready to manipulate both types of natural-born damned fools.