Later that night, Dennis was one of the last to arrange his bedding in the sand. It had been a long day and he was exhausted. As usual, there were plenty of biting, stinging insects to pester him, but he doubted he’d notice them tonight. Captain Lelaa and Lawrence had the guard and he knew he could sleep soundly with them on duty, so he arranged his weapons around himself, scrunched down, and pulled his wool blanket up to his chin. There was often a chill before dawn. Almost as an afterthought, he pulled off the patch that covered his ruined left eye and stared at it for a moment. Hell, a pinky finger ain’t much, he decided. The kid was already resting easier. He laid the patch on his shooting pouch and closed his other eye.
From somewhere nearby he heard a strange sound. Opening his eye again, he raised up to listen. Over there. Sighing, he replaced the patch-no reason to disgust folks-and pulling his cutlass out of the sand, he crept over to where the sound was emanating. He sat.
“What’s eatin’ you, Li’l Sis?” he whispered. “You know you can tell ol’ Silva.”
The muffled crying continued a moment longer before Rebecca managed to control it. “It’s just so awful,” she said at last. “Not just Mr. Cook’s poor hand, although that is bad enough. It’s just.. . everything! This whole day has been dreadful! I don’t know how much longer I can bear it!”
“Now, now. You’re doin’ fine. I bet Abel’ll be just fine too. We’re gonna get outta this jam, I promise.” He cocked his head. “I’m glad Miss Tucker finally laid down the law, though.”
“And that’s another thing! She seemed fully prepared to shoot Captain Rajendra! That can’t sit well with her. She is so kind and gentle! Do… do you think she would have done it?”
“Yep. Lookie here, she may be kind and gentle, but she’s a tiger when it comes to you and the Skipper. Hell, when it comes to any of us she thinks of as her kin.”
“Do you think it will matter?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause Rajendra and the rest o’ his people… your people, believed her. Believed you too. You and her is so much alike it spooks me now and then, honest to God. You look alike, act alike, you both got plenty o’ brains, but you got even more guts.” He snorted. “A time or two, that’s got you both in trouble.”
“You think I have ‘guts’?” Rebecca asked, incredulous.
“Yep. Big, long, heapin’ piles of ’em, and you’re gonna need ’em too. I’ll tell you somethin’ else. Havin’ guts is one thing, but bein’ too sleepy to use ’em is another. So why don’t you just squirm on down there an’ shut them little eyes. Ol’ Silva’ll be right here.” He paused a moment, looking out at the surf and the hazy moon beyond. In a quiet, gravelly voice he started to sing:
“Once upon a time the goose drank wine.
The monkey chewed tobacco on the live steam line.
The steam line broke, the monkey choked,
And they all went to heaven in a little tin boat.”
Rebecca snorted a giggle. “What’s that supposed to be, a lullaby?”
A little embarrassed, Dennis shrugged. “Nope,” he said. “Just a stupid song.”
CHAPTER 6
Andaman Island
General Pete Alden, former sergeant in USS Houston ’s Marine contingent, stood in USS Dowden ’s captain’s quarters staring at a map on the bulkhead. Captain Greg Garrett of Donaghey and “Commodore” Jim Ellis sat at the table behind him with General Muln Rolak, Safir Maraan, and several other officers. How times had changed. Jim had originally been Matt’s exec on Walker, and Garrett had been the gunnery officer. Rolak and Queen Maraan had been bitter enemies, but were now as close as a father and daughter might be. All were waiting for Pete to speak.
“You know this is nuts, right? ” he finally pronounced, raking his dark hair back from his forehead. He still kept the hair burred short everywhere but on top.
“I thought it was possible you might think so,” Ellis said, grinning through his light brown beard. “That’s why I wanted your opinion.”
“Well, there it is. I just don’t see how we can run along and leave that nest of snakes at our backs, sitting right on top of our supply lines.”
“But they are not,” Safir Maraan pointed out, her silver eyes reexamining the map. “With Aan-daa-maan as our forward staging area, we can watch this Raan-goon place closely enough. As long as we control the sea, the forces trapped there can do nothing but slowly starve. They cannot affect our campaign against Ceylon.”
Rolak grunted. “I fear I must agree with General Aal-den,” he said. The scarred old warrior pointed at the Malay Peninsula. “With a little initiative-something we have learned the enemy leadership, their Hij at least, is capable of-this force at Raan-goon might attempt to threaten our new base at Sing-aa-pore. We know that when we took it from them, some Grik managed to escape from there as a cohesive force. They were not all ‘made prey,’ as they call it. They may have traveled as far as Raan-goon by now. With no other purpose, they might even attempt to return.”
“Right,” Alden agreed. “We know at least some didn’t break, and according to Okada and some other stuff we’ve seen, we know they aren’t ‘destroying’ all their troops that chicken out anymore.” He shook his head. “Still don’t know what to think of that. I wish we could’ve figured out a way to talk to those goofy Griks that Rasik was using for bodyguards.”
“Evidently we could talk to ’em. They just couldn’t talk to us,” Jim pointed out. He shrugged. “We sent ’em back to Baalkpan hoping Lawrence could figure out a way to communicate-but he’d already been swiped with the rest by that bastard Billingsley. I’m sure the pointy heads back home will keep working on it, but I don’t know that it’ll make any difference to us. They were just Uul warriors, and I doubt they were privy to the grand strategy of the Grik High Command!”
“Maybe so,” Pete agreed, “but we have learned one important thing from them. We always assumed that when they went nuts, or experienced Bradford’s ‘Grik Rout,’ they were just ruined. Maybe they are for a while. Over time, though, it seems like they kind of get over it. Worse, when they do, it’s like they’re smarter somehow, like somebody flipped a switch and turned their brains on. Like… whatever happens to turn Uul into Hij… happens.” He shook his head in frustration. He knew his words were inadequate, but the meaning should be clear. “That really gives me the creeps,” he added.
“A ‘Hij’ switch,” Garrett said thoughtfully. “You know, there’s a precedent for that.” The others looked at him. “Lawrence himself,” he said. “Remember his story? He told how he was ‘raised’ on an island separate from ‘Tagranesi’ society, where he and all his young lizard buddies just ran loose for a while. He didn’t know how long. All they had was a kind of cadre of instructors or mentors to keep them in line and teach them stuff and try to guide them out of savagery. Their final exam was a trip to some other scary island where they faced their primal fears and learned self-sufficiency.” He shook his head. “He never would talk about it.”
“I have heard Mister Braad-furd propose a similar theory,” Rolak said, “but you present it in a… more understandable way.”
Garrett grinned, and for a moment he looked like a kid again instead of the experienced Naval officer he’d become. “Well,” he admitted, “Courtney did influence my thinking. He probably has the whole thing in his head, but it can be tough to keep up with what he’s saying sometimes.” Everyone laughed at that.
“He does tend to tack back and forth,” Rolak agreed. “A brilliant mind, but there may perhaps be too much in it at once, on occasion.” There was more laughter at Rolak’s tact.
“Okay, so we call it ‘the Hij switch.’ I don’t care,” Alden continued, relentlessly returning to the subject at hand. “My point is, we can’t ignore it. That makes things even spookier if you ask me. Bad enough that a Hij captain or colonel or whatever they are might have reached Rangoon with a coherent report of the tactics we used to seize Singapore. Add in some wild Griks that might’ve flipped their switch. If they’re not killing ’em anymore, what if they just throw ’em back in the pool with a bunch of regular Griks? That might be bad enough, but what if a Hij general actually listens to ’em? They might wind up with a lot more insight about us than we have about them, and we’d be right back at square one again.”