Devil's Due (Destroyermen #12)(8)
“Let me die!” Adar groaned, slightly louder, and Kurokawa thrust his round face near the drawn Lemurian’s. “If you die, she dies, ape-man,” he snapped. “I have little enough reason to keep her alive as it is, apparently. So if you care for her, you’ll recover.”
“Lady Saandra,” Adar gasped as they carried him into the darkness. “How could you? I was so close!”
“Shush, Mr. Chairman!” she said sternly, then lowered her voice to a whisper when she kissed the matted fur on his cheek. “We’re not finished yet!”
The guards took Adar away, and Kurokawa and Muriname stepped back inside. For just a moment, there was no one within earshot. “What you said,” Diania hissed at Sandra, “aboot Captain Reddy. Ye didnae mean it?”
“I wish I did,” Sandra answered, her voice the merest murmur. She sighed silently. “No, he’ll come,” she said with sad certainty. “He’ll have to, and not just for us. He’ll do it for Baalkpan Bay, and however many other ships and people we lost.” She nodded at Savoie’s malignant shadow in the gloom. “And he can’t leave that behind him, in the hands of a maniac, to come after him at its leisure. But I was right about the other part. He’ll do it smart. And he’ll end Kurokawa this time, no matter what it takes. Or costs.”
CHAPTER 1
////// Baalkpan, Borno
October 20, 1944
“God, I miss Idaho,” mumbled Alan Letts, the newly appointed Chairman of the United Homes, staring at the sloshy, muggy Baalkpan afternoon. He’d never thought he’d miss how cold it got in Stanley, or Grand Forks, North Dakota, either. That was another place he considered home after spending half his childhood there. But it was rarely anything but hot—and wet—in Baalkpan, the capital city of the new Union he’d helped build. The daily shower had finally passed and he and his wife, Karen, the assistant minister of medicine, stepped outside the main entrance to the Allied Naval Hospital east of the Great Hall. That was Karen’s principal domain, and between her long hours and his crazy schedule, Alan sometimes gloomily suspected their little daughter, Allison Verdia, was the only child they’d ever get the chance to make. But at least he could see his ”youngling” and ”mate,” which was a hell of a lot more than most could say these days. So many younglings had at least one parent deployed, sometimes both. Alan tried to prevent the latter, but that had been a losing proposition from the start. Lemurians made no distinction between sexes when it came to military service, and that was probably the only reason they’d had the numbers to survive. But new regulations decreed that pregnant females returned home, period, and he tried to keep them as trainers as long as possible.
Even so, there were a lot of orphans running around. The youngest went entirely naked, scampering about on all fours as often as not, their frizzy tails held high. A pack of them dashed through a puddle, splashing water and mud, before rocketing up a heavy wooden pier supporting an old-style aboveground structure built in the time before genuine fortifications protected the city from large predators—and invading Grik. The younglings flowed through a window, raising alarmed, angry voices, then skittered down another pier to vanish in the bustle of the city. Alan laughed at the sight, but supposed it wasn’t really funny. Lemurian younglings were boisterous by nature and their antics were well tolerated by adults. In the past, however, they’d been equally well supervised. That was no longer the case, and they now ran in packs almost as wild as Griklets. Alan tried to be philosophical about it. At least they didn’t swarm all over people and eat them like Griklets. But even as they were losing an entire generation to the war, Alan feared they might lose the next one, too. Culturally, at least.
“Mind your shoes,” Karen scolded, as Alan carefully negotiated the planks laid down to the paalka-drawn carriage outside the hospital. “And at least try to keep from making mud pies in your best whites! Maybe I don’t have to clean them anymore”—she flapped her own clean but dark-stained apron for emphasis—“but somebody does. And it’s a chore nobody needs!”
Alan had been caught by the rain while visiting wounded ’Cats and men; something he did every week. And he didn’t mind that the deluge had delayed his busy schedule, heartrending as it often was to speak with the shattered victims of this terrible war, or simply view those who couldn’t even hear him. It also filled him with hope that, despite their pain, so many Lemurians—and humans from the Empire of the New Britain Isles, for the most part—remained so dedicated to the cause. Indeed, most were eager to return to the fight, regardless of how . . . unlikely that might be in many cases. They’ll get back in somehow, Alan promised himself—as he’d promised them—even if they never see the front again. We need instructors, engineers, and shop foremen who’ve been at the pointy end and seen what works. We may’ve lost their direct combat skills, but we can’t afford to lose their experience. God knows we need them.
“I’ll try,” Alan assured, stepping into the carriage and nodding at the ’Cat Marine on the front seat, holding the reins. The Lemurian made a curious chirping sound and whipped the reins. Moaning rebelliously, the paalka squished forward. Alan swayed, still looking at Karen and the hospital behind her. The hospital wasn’t as large as the great factories now crowding the Baalkpan waterfront, once so charming with colorful, bustling bazaars and brisk commerce, but it was the biggest building past the Great Hall, in Baalkpan proper. That was a source of pride, as well as sadness. It said a lot about how committed “his” people were to helping those who served them. His expression turned stony then, because as much as his visits to the hospital inspired him, they also renewed his resolve to exact vengeance against those who’d caused so much suffering in the first place. All of them, he secretly swore, with a fresh stab of furious grief over the sinking of SMS Amerika, and two-thirds of the wounded she carried, by the shadowy League of Tripoli. Some of Amerika’s survivors had finally reached Baalkpan, and between their accounts and what Matt sent from Grik City, they had a better idea of what happened—and of what the League was, even if its motives remained obscure. Three wars now? Alan mused grimly. No, not yet. Not if we can help it. We can barely handle the two we’ve got. But there’ll be a reckoning.