Devil's Due (Destroyermen #12)(89)
Sandra stepped to a cistern near the gate that the Grik kept filled with hot, greenish water. Her clothes were filthy rags and her hair was a frazzled, grimy, knotted mess. Her skin had turned to old, dark leather, and her lips were cracked and covered with sores. With a glance at the Grik guards beyond the gate, she filled a battered cup with water and gulped it down. It tasted horrible, but hadn’t harmed them so far. She scooped another cupful and carried it to the shack where Adar lay in the shade. He’d gotten a little better—Kurokawa wasn’t exactly starving them—but his recovery was slower than Sandra would’ve liked. She knelt beside her friend and held the cup to his lips. The fur on his face around them had gone white.
“I can manage just fine,” Adar objected, reaching for the cup. “I’m not a helpless youngling.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Gunny Horn said, joining them. He was followed by Lange and the other two Lemurians. Both were Repub crew-’Cats off SMS Amerika. One was Ru-Fet, and the other was Eaan-Daat. Horn had long ago dubbed them Ruffy and Eddie, and if either resented the humanizing nicknames, they’d grown to accept it. The third Lemurian sailor had died anyway, giving sad credence to Sandra’s excuse for moving them. Only Diania remained outside for the moment. It was their only way of allowing the ladies a little privacy at the slit trench serving as their latrine. The Grik could watch, of course, as could anyone else, but the prisoners didn’t care about them. Only their friends were people with sensibilities worth protecting.
“I will soon be fit,” Adar disagreed. “But you should not exert yourself,” he scolded Sandra, nodding at her abdomen. Even as she’d thinned, her belly had finally begun to noticeably grow. “You are—what?—five months along now? If I’m not mistaken, that is more than halfway there. If you were Mi-Anakka, it would be nearly time to begin the birth rites.” Lemurians were born after about seven months and their infants were almost as helpless as humans. Utterly hairless, they even looked much the same—with tails, of course. But the final two months were considered critical to the health of the mother, particularly from a nutritional standpoint, and she was often confined and even ritualistically fed. The final rites of welcoming the gift of life from the Maker were performed by a Sky Priest. Adar blinked regret. “With so little to eat, I fear for you and your youngling, and . . . if you allow me the honor, I’d much rather welcome your new life to a place of freedom.”
“Nobody but you, Adar,” Sandra assured, then forced a smile. “You’re the only Sky Priest around.” She shook her head. “And we’ll be out of here before then. Besides,” she added dryly, “I eat pretty good. There’s nothing like ‘goop soup’ twice a day, with a few bones thrown in to chew on.” Goop soup was what they called their daily, unchanging fare. For all they knew, it was the same thing the Grik ate—made of Grik. They preferred not to think about that. Diania stepped into the shack with an embarrassed glance at Gunny Horn. That was their cue to return outside. The sun was falling toward the horizon, and it was time to take their meager bedding down.
“He’s not doing so hot,” Horn whispered, following Sandra out. Lange was behind him. Both men had grown long black beards, but Lange’s had a lot of gray. They’d become much thinner too, though Horn’s muscles hadn’t faded as much. Like Sandra, Diania, and the surviving ’Cat sailors, he tried to keep in shape. They all hoped eventually they’d get their chance to make a break. When it came, they had to be ready. The exceptions were Adar, of course, and Becher Lange. Lange was a strong, brave man, but the destruction of his ship and the way she’d died had almost destroyed him. He hated himself for not dying with her—and Kapitan von Melhausen, whom he’d loved like a father—but his hatred for their murderers was even more intense. Instead of pushing him, however, it was consuming him. Still, though his strength might be ebbing, his mind was sharp.
“Chairman Adar is fine,” he said dismissively, crouching with a stick to draw in the sand. “Now, I have been thinking about the antiaircraft guns that fired at your swift scout plane that observed the bay.” One of those guns was very close, just a few hundred yards away, but remained hidden from view by a dense band of jungle. “I believe they’re large Grik muzzle-loaders, perhaps hundred-pounders, taken from the ironclads being rebuilt as aircraft carriers. That would give them quite a few.” He scratched in the dirt. “I imagine interesting, complicated carriages, perhaps a type of barbette, which would not only facilitate rapid pointing and training at a high angle, but also absorb their recoil. They might also allow for rapid reloading, if they can depress the muzzle between shots.”
Horn studied the sketch in the fading light. “Might be possible. ‘Complicated’ is right, though. Recoil and elevation would be the trick, muzzle-loaders or not. I wonder how they do it. Some kind of twisted-rope torsion arrangement like Grik bomb throwers use? ‘Hydropneumatic’ means ‘heavy machinery, with tight tolerances.’” He shrugged. “But they’re building airplane engines, so they’ve got that. Still, I think you’re right. They were shooting pretty fast, but not as fast as a breech-loader.” The AAA was just one of many things they’d speculated on since the P-40-something was seen. They believed its pilot had done some serious damage to one of the airfields, because they’d watched the distant column of smoke for two entire days. But they’d also seen the modern aircraft Gravois must’ve arranged rise and give chase, so they feared the “something” might’ve been caught. Particularly when the planes, minus one, returned so quickly.