Devil's Due (Destroyermen #12)(20)

“It is ’ery strange,” Lawrence agreed, his tone less than cheerful as well, as he flapped at the mayflies with his tail plumage or tried to shoo them from his face with his dangerously clawed left hand. He kept the claws on his right hand carefully trimmed so he could handle cartridges for the Allin-Silva rifle slung over his shoulder. He spoke English and Lemurian almost perfectly, as long as he avoided words requiring the lips he didn’t have. How he managed many other sounds remained a mystery. He wasn’t Grik but was of the same species, if not race, and the long, sharp teeth lining his jaws should’ve made almost all human or Lemurian speech impossible. Somehow, he did it with his tongue or even in his throat. Courtney Bradford wasn’t sure, and Lawrence wasn’t about to sit and hum—or whatever—while the Australian naturalist stared in his open mouth. His unhappiness was inspired by the fact that he was also wearing whites. Others like him, the Khonashi from North Borno primarily, had joined the Alliance and even the Union, but they were all Army and wore the standard tie-dyed, camouflage combat smock he preferred himself. There were no standard-issue whites to fit his form, and Juan Marcos had quickly knocked out a set. If anything, the one-legged Filipino was too good a tailor, and the uniform covering Lawrence’s orange-and-brown-tiger-striped feathery pelt was considerably tighter than he preferred. Much too tight to fight in.

Silva stopped a moment to stare, shaking his head and swatting at bugs. To the south, beyond the nightly bombed, daily improved dockyards, was a razed area that had been the warrenlike maze of wood-and-mud huts housing tens of thousands of upper-class Grik Hij. All that was gone, the materials used to construct defensive works. What remained, except for the scars left by zeppelin raids, was a great green grass field, well fertilized by eons of Grik dung—and the blood spilled to take the place and keep it. There was grass everywhere now, in fact, which everyone found curious. There hadn’t been a single patch this side of the Wall of Trees when they conquered the Celestial City, and even Hij Geerki couldn’t get a satisfactory explanation from the several thousand civilian Grik prisoners he had laboring around the city in exchange for food—and life. The closest he’d come was to note a general consensus among his workers that the Celestial Mother—killed by Isak Reuben during the fight to take the “Cowflop”—didn’t like green. That may’ve been true. Courtney Bradford, also the closest thing they had to a sociologist (among so many other things), theorized it was probable she’d had her subjects pluck each blade of grass as it emerged as a constant, daily reminder to obey her every whim. That made the most sense to Silva. Picking grass was her version of having the hands chip paint whether it needed it or not, or make a constant “clean sweep down, fore and aft.” It had been busy work, to keep the masses in check.

Protruding over four hundred feet above the fresh sea of grass was the Celestial Palace, irreverently dubbed the Cowflop. And it looked more like a stupendous heap of manure than anything anyone should call a palace. In reality, it was more like a huge, dark granite pyramid, with rounded corners and a mashed-down top. The interior was like a warren as well, or some nightmare maze. Silva and Lawrence (and Petey too, though he’d literally just been along for the ride) had been part of the team that took it, and that had been a rare fight indeed. Both were wounded; Silva too badly to go on, and Lawrence enough that he’d been unable to help much at the end. They were fit for duty now, largely due to the analgesic, antiseptic paste that was one of many things made from the ubiquitous polta fruit. Silva’s favorite was an intoxicating fermentation called seep, though he still preferred Lemurian beer for “wettin’ his whistle.” They’d also recently returned from a lengthy rehab tour, consisting of a jaunt across central Madagascar, where they met new Lemurian friends among the Shee-ree, a tribe left behind during the ancient exodus of other ’Cats from the island. And, of course, they’d capped off their convalescence with a fierce battle against a support base for an army of infiltrating Grik.

In the distance, past the Cowflop, was a wooden stockade out of an opium dream. It was practically a mountain range made of thousands and thousands of monstrous Galla trees that walled off the city from the amazingly hostile jungle beyond. Galla trees had become an almost holy symbol to Lemurians since they’d been forced to flee their ancestral home, and many considered their use for such a thing the height of sacrilege. Others, like Chack’s sister, Risa, were more philosophical. The barrier had saved them from a recent Grik attempt to retake the city, and she considered it fitting that all the stupendous effort the Grik exerted to erect the great wall, who knew how long ago (Galla trees were extremely resistant to rot), had contributed to the slaughter of thousands of Grik.

Grass was growing on the wall of trees now too, and thousands of canvas pup tents were arrayed at its base. Indeed, tents were everywhere—far more than they had troops to fill. Safir Maraan’s II Corps had been cutting and sewing them like crazy out of huge stores of canvas captured in Grik warehouses. Hopefully, they’d need them eventually, and that was one thing, at least, that wouldn’t have to be shipped in, taking the place of more vital cargoes. The tents surrounded the bay on every hand, even providing shelter for their Grik prisoners on the west side of the bay. More important at present, however, the surplus tents more than doubled their apparent numbers. The ones closest to the harbor each sheltered two men or ’Cats. Those farther out might be occupied by one, and the farthest probably had only a company of troops to stir the fires and be seen moving among enough tents for a battalion.