Blood In the Water (33 page)

“Not any longer than we absolutely have to, this trip,” Mark shouted back. “We're only here on business. I hope to come back when I can stay longer. See the sights.”

Meek nodded southward. “My people're less than six hundred miles that way. They'll be coming as well, before long. We'll get together an' see all the sights in this sodding, dreary place.”

“I look forward to it.”

Captain Galay squeezed up alongside Meek. “I take it you didn't want any pictures from back there,” he stated, referring to the villages they'd passed. “Looks like they've put up a few big guns where the river starts to narrow a little.”

Leedom shook his head. “I saw 'em, but they haven't changed since Nancys off
Big Sal
scouted the coast. The cartographers have 'em pretty well plotted on the maps they're making at HQ. Don't waste film on stuff like that, and just draw pictures if you see more of the same.” He turned slightly to look at Galay. “You've just got two more film packs. That's a total of eighteen pictures you can take. Orders were to take two shots of anything worthwhile because the developing process still has kinks.”

Galay was nodding. “I know, and nobody out here has ever done it before. Have to follow the directions they sent. Good thing the process isn't much different from what I'm used to. I won't screw it up”—he grinned, his dark eyes sparkling—“as long as you get me back in one piece.
But that just leaves nine shots, for all intents and purposes, if we stick exactly to orders.”

Mark thought about it. “We'll see,” he said at last. “If we start running into lots of important-looking things, we'll see. Just make sure you keep drawing pictures, to back you up.”

“You bet, Commander. I'm heading back there now, with my pencil behind my ear. Just let me know in plenty of time to get the camera ready.” Galay backed away, and then teetered toward the observation windows in the waist. Mark glanced aft and saw the 'Cats were staring down, making drawings of their own. Galay must have told them to do that, and it was a good idea.

“How did you get nabbed for this in the first place, Commander?” Meek asked him, genuinely curious. “Flying, I mean. Word is you began aboard the submersible that was lost at Second Madras.”

Mark nodded. “Yep, I did. Here, anyway. I was a torpedoman, striking for . . . well, it doesn't matter.” He grinned. “I guess I always wanted in the air, though. My first rating in the Navy was Airship Rigger, of all things, but the Navy had already done away with the big, rigid jobs that made me sign up. Nothing but gasbags—blimps—by then. So, this idiot buddy of mine talked me into subs. Don't know why it never occurred to me to try to become a naval aviator. It just didn't. Anyway, I learned to fly right after Fred Reynolds, and here I am.”

“A higher rank than he, if I'm not mistaken.”

Mark shrugged. “His bad luck . . . and mine, I guess. I'm a lot older, not that it matters, but until recently, we've been flying—and losing pilots—on this side of the war a lot more. I guess I've seen more heavy action than he has, though I sure wouldn't trade it for what he's been through. And maybe him being younger matters after all, the way he and Kari-Faask just flew off on their crazy lark to God knows where, on a hunch.”

“Like we're doing now?” Meek asked innocently, but Mark shook his head.

“Not the same at all. We know what we're looking for, we've got a pretty good idea where it is, and we're going to do our damnedest to get back!”

“Glad to hear it, Commander,” Meek said, then with a pat on Leedom's shoulder, he disappeared aft. Mark and Paraal grinned at each other and flew on.

For the next hour or so, the river squirmed and twisted lazily beneath them, its width averaging about a third of a mile. They saw few dwellings of any sort for quite a while, no doubt because it was clear that the land often flooded. There were great herds of beasts, however, too distant to easily describe, apparently roaming freely among the clumps of forest that topped low mounds of higher ground. Huge swarms of flying things, also too low and indistinct to identify, surged across the landscape like fast, dark clouds.
In that sense,
Leedom supposed,
this place is still kind of like I always imagined Africa
. He'd known it was a continent of contrasts, just like any other. There were jungles and deserts, certainly, but he'd always pictured the broad savannas, teeming with game.

“Co-maander,” said Paraal suddenly, pointing forward. Mark looked. Instead of narrowing, as they'd expected, the river was broadening out once more.
That doesn't make much sense,
he thought.
Sure, this world isn't exactly like the one we left behind
—
the sea level's lower, for one thing. There probably really is at least a little “ice age,” just like Courtney Bradford says.
That was fairly obvious, considering the relative temperatures everywhere but in the tropical zone. It was probably
hotter
than they remembered at the equator, but colder everywhere else.
But with lower sea levels, the Zambezi ought to be smaller. . . . Shouldn't it?
He thought about that.
Unless a wetter inland climate poured enough rain upstream over the eons to dig the river deeper. Or maybe the Grik keep it dredged
. That was a disturbing thought.

He gradually noticed something else as they flew. There were habitations along the riverside again, growing larger, more congested. There were ships now too. Most were anchored close to shore, but some were tied to docks along the south side of the river, alongside large warehouses like they'd seen at Grik City. A few ships were underway, sailing westward, mostly. Then Mark saw the first steamer. It was a double-ended side-wheeler unlike any Grik ship he'd seen before, chuffing across the river from south to north. Progressively more docked steamers appeared, and at least a few were the massive ironclad dreadnaughts they'd grown so familiar with, but there weren't very many of those. Certainly not enough to constitute an invasion fleet bound for Madagascar. He frowned.

“Look ahead there!” Paraal said, pointing.

“We've found a city, all right—a real one,” Mark said with a slight
edge. They had indeed. Abruptly growing out of a brownish morning haze, and stretching a great distance, mostly to the south, sprawled a city far larger than Grik City itself. As they passed the outskirts over the city proper, Mark began to wonder how many Grik were down there.
Tens of thousands, at least,
he imagined.
Maybe hundreds of thousands—all looking up at us by now, at the strange noise in the sky. The big, fat, loud bird. Probably wondering what it tastes like
. The thought gave him the creeps.

“Whoa! What's that?” he asked, banking slightly toward the north side of the river. The city looked . . . different there, and a broad tributary of the river abruptly veered north as well. There was also something else, something familiar. “Are you drawing all this?” he shouted back behind him.

“Sure!” Galay replied. “I don't know if anybody will ever know
what
I drew, though. Even me. It's kind of bumpy and shaky in this thing for making masterpieces. Any pictures yet?”

“Not yet, but pretty quick. Better get the camera ready.”

It was soon apparent that the architecture on the north side of the river was quite different from any they'd ever associated with the Grik. There was an almost geometric angularity, not only to the structures themselves, but to the way they were arranged. Real streets, probably paved in stone, or possibly brick, crisscrossed one another just as they would have in any modern, well-planned urban area. Most of the buildings appeared to be constructed of stone or brick as well, without the dingy, muddy look Mark had grown accustomed to. There were the ubiquitous adobe structures, true, but even those looked more . . . refined, better finished. And there was genuine ornamentation! Granted, most seemed to consist of awnings, flags, and banners, with dark “Grik red” predominating, but even that was unusual for anything other than Grik ships. This high, it was hard to tell, but there even seemed to be a little architectural decoration on some of the buildings. No columns or domes, nothing like that, but just . . . superfluous things, like ledges and protrusions.
Maybe like gargoyles,
Leedom fancied. The comparison to a “modern” city struck him as particularly weird, however, since the part on the north side of the Zambezi also practically radiated an impression of profound antiquity.

The rigid angularity was subtly eroded, and despite the dense habitation
evidenced by the throngs of Grik they now saw, filling the streets and looking up, there were crumbling ruins here and there. Most telling was the single massive structure that quickly dominated their attention. Confirming their conviction beyond any doubt that this was, indeed, Sofesshk, was a great monolithic structure rising in the center of what Leedom had already dubbed “Old Sofesshk” in his mind. Like a mountainous, round-topped, soft-cornered pyramid, it did indeed resemble a slightly smaller version of the Celestial Palace in Grik City on Madagascar, down to the very color of the stone it was constructed with. This “Cowflop” looked so ancient, however, that Leedom had to wonder if the corners, even the top, had once been sharp. Given the distinct geometry of the city around it, he suspected they might have been. Hij Geerki had told him his translation for the structure, and Mark tried to remember what he'd said.
Oh yeah, the “Palace of Vanished Gods,” or something like that
. He snorted.
No wonder their gods took off, if the Grik had them living in a giant cow patty
.

“You can take pictures now, Captain Galay,” he said. “Just a few, though, and try to get as much of the city in each one as you can. I'll circle the Cowflop so you can get different angles, then we'll head across the river. Save most of your film for when we get to that lake beyond the city. We can always take more pictures on the way back.” He
hoped
they could, at any rate. So far, nobody had shot anything at them, but he doubted that had as much to do with capability as surprise.

He finished his wide orbit of Old Sofesshk while Galay worked his camera, then flew across the river, above “New Sofesshk.” The contrast was striking. The structures there were typical Grik, like really crude pueblos, stacked haphazardly all around and on top of one another. And they stretched for miles. Considering how many Grik had inhabited Grik City, he reluctantly revised his previous estimate upward exponentially. He now suspected there were upward of a million of the damn lizards in Sofesshk. Not all would be warriors, maybe not even most . . . but there'd be a lot.

“I took four pictures,” Galay reported from aft, his normally exuberant voice somewhat subdued. “Eight total, now. You think I should get more?”

“No. That's plenty. We're heading west, toward the lake.” Leedom eyed the wide tributary leading north, but decided against following it yet. Maybe on the way back. They
knew
there was a lake to the west.

The confluence of the rivers—and they soon realized there was yet
another
tributary, angling northwest—created a virtual lake all by themselves. And they finally saw, if not actual shipyards, at least heavy industrial and repair facilities on the outskirts of the city. Smoke streamed from tall, lumpy towers more like crayfish chimneys than proper smokestacks, rearing high alongside numerous large, squat structures. More of the massive dreadnaughts and cruisers were moored nearby, amid clusters of tall, gangly cranes. Leedom wasn't ready to go lower for a better look, but the ships looked different from others they'd seen. Paraal glassed them with his Imperial telescope and confirmed they were “weird,” but couldn't say how. They'd get a closer look later.

The first response to their presence came in the form of a gaggle of zeppelins, rising from a broad field southwest of the factories. Probably more than a dozen were beating their way into the sky. Paraal pointed them out.

“They're no threat,” Leedom said. “Vulnerable as they are coming up, we could probably shoot them all down by ourselves. But that's not our job today. Not yet,” he added. Then he frowned, doubting this could possibly be the source for all the zeps that came at Grik City every night. It was just too far, and they hadn't seen a field big enough to gather them all together.
But maybe they build them here
? “Take two pictures back toward that industrial park and zep strip, Captain,” he hollered back. That would leave them just eight shots, Mark realized uneasily. Doocy Meek wedged himself between him and Paraal once again. His earlier grin was gone.

“I don't like the look of it,” Meek shouted. “I saw Grik City before it was destroyed, and it was intimidating enough.” He pointed his thumb back over his shoulder. “But there's heavy industry back there, on a scale—if not sophistication—similar to that found in a few Republic cities. Close to what's been described to me of Baalkpan. I never dreamed the bloody
lizards
could have a city that big, and it can't be the only one, can it?”

Leedom looked at him, concerned. Not for Meek, but what he'd tell his kaiser. “Getting cold feet?”

Meek shook his head. “Not in the least. I'm convinced that the Grik menace will only grow and must be destroyed. But Kaiser Nig-Taak and General Marcus Kim need to know that, whatever they estimated they'd face when they start their show, they'd better double it.”

“Coming from you, that might help,” Leedom replied seriously. “One of Bekiaa's biggest frustrations is that your people just don't seem to get how many Grik there are, or what it'll be like fighting them.” Major Bekiaa-Sab-At was doing all she could to prepare the Republic's Legions for what they'd face. She'd reported that the Republic was—finally—“all in,” but retained deep reservations about what they expected that to entail. “And I wouldn't worry as much about their industry as I would about how many warriors they can crank out.” He jerked his head aft, indicating the zeppelins and dreadnaughts. “If that's the best they can do, build big-assed targets like those back there, I figure we've still got the edge.”