If I have anything to say in the matter, and I do, she thought, and sipped at a Long Island merlot. Martha Cofflin, nee Stoddard, had given her and Swindapa a palate education over the last decade or so, as wine became available again. Educated Jared as far as she could, too, she thought. The chief had had blue-collar beer-and-whiskey tastes like hers before the Event, and was more set in them. Cooking had been her hobby since her teens, along with the martial arts, and that inevitably meant at least a little exposure to the grape. Leaning back a little she studied the faces of the commanders over the rim of her glass.
Victor Ortiz was telling a story about an expedition to the Far East, to Sumatra-one of those odd local cultures; in this one everything inland was holy and everything that came from the sea debased. One of his crew on a party sent into the interior swore they had spotted what sounded like an ape-man of some sort…
And the dawn came up like thunder out of China 'cross the bay, she quoted to herself. She'd never done more than touch on those islands, in the Eagle's early round-the-world survey. She'd read the logs and reports-
Good bunch, she thought, weighing faces and souls. Hard workers, smart, plenty of guts. This war's different from anything else we've done post-Event, though. We're not skirmishing, or giving some local chief a thrashing for getting nasty with a trader.
They'd already had a staff briefing, and conversation was more general than shop-everyone here knew the others well. The officer corps of the Republic's miniature military was too small for anything else.
"I'd like to leave a force here," she said after a while. They'd be leaving the Merrimac and her collier anyway; the big ship was too badly damaged to be allowed anywhere near a fleet action, and her cargo wouldn't be useful until they had a secure base near Tartessos. "Pass those peas, please… Say a platoon of your Marines, Jim." The brigadier nodded thoughtfully.
"I'd assumed you would, Commodore," he said. "Hmmm. Walking wounded, perhaps?"
"That would do. And some volunteers from the auxiliaries."
"I don't think there will be any lack of those who'd rather face solitude than salt water," he said, and the laugh spread around the table. "With a couple of heavy mortars on the tip of the peninsula, we can interdict the entrance to the harbor. For the landward side… yes, sixty or seventy riflemen, a Gatling, and a fieldpiece would do nicely. It won't weaken our land force 'nuff to speak of, ma'am."
The dessert brought a few exclamations; chocolate cake was a rarity even for the well-to-do these days, and she'd sprung for the ingredients out of her own pocket before the expedition left. Alston hid a smile at the look of unfeigned eager delight on Swindapa's face; that direct childlike openness was one of the things she'd fallen in love with, and it would stay with her partner all her life.
We American-born could do with a little more of it, she thought. She hoped a dash of that Fiernan trait would survive in the bubbling cultural stew that Nantucket had become.
"Gentlemen, ladies," she said after the stewards had cleared away plates and cutlery and set out coffee, cocoa, and brandy. She took a deep breath; no sense in trying to sugarcoat it. Everyone here knew the hungry sea in all its moods. "We'll be sailing tomorrow on the morning tide. I don't think there's any point in waiting for the Farragut or her collier any longer."
Plenty of grim looks at that. She nodded and went on: "We'll have to assume that the Farragut and the Severna Park are lost. With them, we've lost a good proportion of our fighting power."
"Y algunos hombres buenos," Ortiz murmured.
Alston inclined her head in acknowledgment.
"Yes," she said gently. "That too, Commander Ortiz."
The wounded man raised his bandaged head and his brandy glass. "Gary and I…"
Yes, she remembered. Trudeau was his protege. And their wives were sisters.
His mouth quirked, giving his darkly handsome face a raffish expression beneath the head-swathing linen wrappings. "There was that Javanese chief who decided he could hassle the wimpy foreign traders." A chuckle. "We strung up the hijo de puta by the ass-end of his own loincloth, from the gateway in the palisade 'round his village, left him yelling and screeching to the crowd, and then had quite a party…" The brandy swirled in the glass, glinting in the lamplight, and he brought it to his lips. "To fallen comrades."
"Fallen comrades," everyone murmured again, and there was a moment's silence.
"We'll miss the Farragut and her crew badly," Alston said when it ended. "However, we still have a number of advantages. This is the only chance we have this year to break the blockade of the Straits of Gibraltar; and we have to do that to support our forces in the Middle East."
"It's a risk, ma'am," one of the captains said soberly. "The Tartessians lost heavily this spring, but they're not short of timber or shipwrights, and for inshore work they don't need navigators. They'll have been building as fast as they can lay keels and cast guns. A big risk."
"Indeed it is, Commander Strudwick." She stood, and raised her glass. "Therefore, I give y'all a final toast for the evening. I give you Montrose's toast."
Silence fell, broken only by the slight creak of the ship moving at her anchors and feet on the deck overhead. Everyone who went through Brandt Point knew those words and their maker.
"He fears his fate too much-" she began softly.
Other voices joined her, ringing louder, triumphant:
"… and his desserts are small.
Who will not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all."
"Here they come again!" Private Vaukel shouted. Somewhere down the line a man raised another cry:
"Ten! This is the tenth time!"
Vaukel could feel the heat from the barrel of his Werder through the wood of the forestock, and his right thumb was scorched where it met the metal as he pushed home another round. The weapon was kicking a lot harder, too, as fouling clogged the barrel. None of that mattered, as the enemy rose up from behind a ledge of rock and the tumbled bodies of their own dead and charged, shrieking. It was as if the dead themselves arose at Barrow Woman's command, or the very earth came up in a wave to bury him. The sun was nearly down, but it lit the metal of their spears and axes blood-red, and gleamed on eyes and teeth.
"SsssssSSSSAA! SA! SA! SsssssSSSSAA!"
"Volley fire present, fire!"
The rifle kicked into the massive bruise that covered his right shoulder, but the pain seemed to be happening to someone else.
"Independent fire, rapid fire!"
His hand scrabbled at the barley sack beside him and came up empty; someone thrust a packet of shells under his hand, and he saw out of the corner of his eye that it was Chaplain Smith with a sack slung around his neck, traveling down the firing line.
He ripped it with his teeth, spilled the bright brass on the burlap, and thumbed a round home, fired, fired again, again, once every three seconds. Rifles were going off in a continuous rippling crash to either side of him, and along the south face too; ladders went up against the hospital roof and Islanders fought Ringapi along the edge. The ground ahead of him swarmed with dimly seen figures and bright edges, the air filled with yowling war cries and screams of pain. Slingstones and arrows went by overhead in a continuous stream, and flung spears; some of them had bundles of blazing oil-soaked wool wrapped around them. The air he sucked in through parched nose and throat seemed thin and insubstantial, stinking of burned sulfur and shit and blood and burning oil.