Devil's Due (Destroyermen #12)(31)
“I understand yer bitterness far better than ye may comprehend,” he said at length, and Meksnaak glared at him, blinking astonished denial. “Aye,” Sean assured. “This is me first time here, o’ course, though Her Highness spent a good while among yer folk, an’ described the city—and you—quite well. An’ ye fergit I lived in Baalkpan before it became like Maa-ni-la now is, so I know well what’s been lost.” He took a long sip of nectar while Meksnaak absorbed that. “The beauty of the New Britain Isles has been spoiled just as surely in many ways, by the same rapid industrialization. Its major isles, New Britain, New Ireland, an’ New Scotland—all part of what Captain Reddy called the Hawayee where he came from—have all been torn by war as well. Both against the bloody Doms an’ ourselves. Count yerself fortunate that, from that at least, Maa-ni-la’s been spared.”
Meksnaak rubbed his chin, blinking thoughtfully. “I knew all that,” he confessed, “but had not much cared, to be honest.” He waved a hand. “The Grik are terrible and must be stopped. I know that now. Even before we joined the Alliance, the city was flooded with refugees. A sure sign that war snapped at their tails. I finally agreed we should aid Baalkpan, lest we stand alone in the path of that scourge.” He looked intently at Bates. “But refugees also came from the East, to escape your nation,” he emphasized, referring to the women fleeing the indentured servitude that had prevailed. “And war pushed them as well. So I’ve reluctantly concluded that your fight is one we cannot ignore either, Sir Sean. It is just . . . much harder to fear a threat as unimaginably distant as the Dominion—on the very bottom of the world!—or to summon the same urgency to confront it in my heart.” He snorted. “Particularly since we never believed it possible to even stand only as far to the east as your islands lie. I still find that a wonder. How can ‘down’ change directions?” He shook his head. “Courtney Braad-furd once tried to explain, but it seems so unnatural!”
“I understand how ye feel. Ye should travel. I believe the notion grows easier to accept with experience. But the war—our war against the Dominion, as ye’ve referred to it—has only remained distant because we’ve kept it so,” Bates reminded gently.
“That is what my dear Saan-Kakja insists,” Meksnaak agreed, then stiffened on his cushions. In that moment he reminded Sean more of Adar than ever before. “But I cannot travel. I wonder that you can. We are both in much the same boat, as you say.”
“I cannae follow my Governor-Empress ta war, as I long ta do,” Sean agreed, “but in her stead, I can an’ must keep the alliance strong. Comin’ here ta meet ye at last is part o’ that, as I see it.”
“I have no desire to see the war my high chief rushed to join.” Meksnaak almost shuddered. “But my soul understands why she went. Her people are in it, so she must be with them, sharing their perils and hardships. It is one of the things that will make her a great high chief—if she lives.”
“Me Governor-Empress feels the same, no doubt, an’ if we win, her line an’ rule’ll never be challenged again. If she survives,” he added grimly, echoing Meksnaak’s sentiment. His gaze had drifted out to sea as he spoke, but now turned back to the Lemurian. “Sure,” he said, “I want things, above an’ beyond what ye’ve already gifted: more of the new gasoline engines ye use in yer torpedo boats, to start. We havenae made ’em yet, an’ there may be weapons o’ mutual interest they’ll let us build. An’ more ammunition for the machine guns we’re startin’ ta build on yer patterns. We’re makin’ some, but we’re just now gettin’ production of fifty-eighty ammunition for Allin-Silvas an’ forty-fives for the Blitzers runnin’ smooth. We havenae enough thirty caliber ta even test the guns we make as yet. I need a thousand things, Lord Meksnaak, an’ have a lengthy list. But most of all, with us both ‘in the same boat,’ left behind to fight the war at home against sarpent-tongued skuggiks, wi’ interest for naught but themselves . . .” He finished his nectar and frowned. “An’ with the lasses we care about most in all the wide world beyond our protection, it just seemed ta me that ye an’ I have far too much in common not to be great friends.”
CHAPTER 4
////// Mahe Island
Aboard USS Tarakaan Island
Three utterly massive ships were securely moored in the center of the picturesque bay on the northeast side of Mahe Island. One was USNRS Salissa (CV-1), the very first aircraft carrier in the Allied arsenal. Rebuilt from one of the great, thousand-foot-long seagoing Homes after her near destruction in the Battle of Baalkpan, she could carry up to eighty aircraft and had been the backbone of Allied naval aviation in the West. Her high chief and the ranking naval officer at Mahe was Ahd-mi-raal Keje-Fris-Ar, a bearlike Lemurian with a dark, silver-shot, rust-colored pelt. He was also Matt Reddy’s dearest Lemurian friend.
Anchored beside her was the nearly as massive USS Andamaan, a protected troopship rebuilt from a captured Grik ironclad battleship, or BB. She didn’t look much different than she had under her previous owners except she only had two funnels now, all that were required by her better boilers and engines. And her armored, angled sides, once pierced for many huge muzzle-loading smoothbores, were now covered by a hundred stacked, gasoline engine–powered landing dories. Four DP 4″-50s squatted in tubs at the narrow peak of her casemate, as did several protected machine gun nests.