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"Well," he observed with a seraphic smile, "at least you guys will have that much in common."
CHAPTER TWELVE
"Oh, they have more than that in common," Eleanora O'Casey told the people gathered in Hooker's once again crowded wardroom just over three hours later. "Much more, in fact."
The problem of prize crews had been partially solved. The five surviving pirate ships had been provided with skeleton crews drawn from all six of the flotilla's schooners, along with a few of the K'Vaernian infantry who knew the difference between a bow and a stern. Then Hooker,Pentzikis,Sea Foam, and Tor Coll had headed northwest, closehauled and throwing up foam, while Snarleyow and Prince John (busy stepping a new foremast) kept company with Tob Kerr's Rain Daughter and the captured Lemmaran vessels. It was fortunate that the flotilla had brought along replacement spars as deck cargo aboard Snarleyow. Replacing Prince John' s mast wouldn't be a problem, but Roger wasn't at all sure that they'd be able to replace the rigging of both dismasted pirates, as well. Whether repairs could be made or not, however, he felt confident leaving Snarleyow and Prince John to look after things while the rest of the flotilla tried to run down the rest of the convoy the pirates had captured.
The current meeting had been called to try to resolve some of the problems that they would face taking or "recapturing" the remaining ships. In addition, Roger and Pahner were in agreement that it was also time to consider what problems might be anticipated following landfall. As part of that second objective, the meeting would also serve to bring most of the core of the command staff up to date—as far as possible, at least—with the mainland political situation.
"Go ahead," Pahner said now, pulling out a bisti root and cutting off a slice. "I've gotten bits and pieces of what we're sailing into, but you might as well tell everybody else."
"Of course." Roger's chief of staff pulled out her pad and keyed it on line. "First—"
"A moment, please," Cord interrupted. "While all of us—" a waving true-hand indicated the humans, Diasprans, and Northerners crowding the compartment "—will understand you well enough, my ... benan will not. She must be aware of this as well."
"Oh, that's okay, Cord." O'Casey smiled with more than a hint of mischief. "We girls already hashed all this out. She's up to date."
"Ah," Cord replied stoically. "Good."
O'Casey waited a moment to see if she could get any more of a rise out of the shaman, but he only sat impassively. After several seconds, she smiled again—a bit more broadly—and continued.
"The pirates in the area, as Captain Kerr already informed us, are called the 'Lemmar.' Actually, I suspect that the term as he uses it isn't exactly accurate. Or perhaps it would be better to say that it isn't completely accurate. He seems to be using it as a generic ethnic term, but as nearly as I can tell, 'The Lemmar' appears to be a political unit, as well—similar to the Barbary Sultanate on Earth or the Shotokan Confederacy. It's based on raiding, high-seas piracy, and forced tribute. As for our particular lot of Lemmar, we captured charts and logs from two of their ships, and we've got a good fix on our position, the position of the raid, and the probable route the prize ships will be taking on their way home. So we should be able to find most of them and chase them down. The little local fillip is that, as I'm sure everyone noticed, the Lemmar don't care to be taken prisoner."
A fairly harsh chuckle ran through the compartment at her last sentence. The fighters in the wardroom had been through too much—Diaspran, Vashin, and human, alike—in the last year to really care if someone wanted to be suicidal. If that was their society's choice, so be it; the group that had taken to referring to itself as The Basik's Own would be happy to oblige local custom.
Which didn't mean that they were blind to the tactical implications of the situation, of course.
"That's going to cause some problems retaking the ships," Kosutic pointed out after a moment, "considering the fact that they apparently don't care to allow any of their prisoners to be liberated, either. Should we even try to retake the prizes if the Lemmar are going to slaughter any captured crewmen before we get aboard? Will the mainland culture prefer to have their ships and no crews? Can we navigate them to the mainland with no crews? And is there any political payoff to retaking the ships if we get all of their crews killed in the process?"
"From what I've gleaned from Pedi, there should be both a political and financial payoff," O'Casey assured her. "The ships are, technically, the property of the Temple, but if they're taken on the high seas, fairly 'universal' salvage rules apply. If we return them, we'll be in for at worst a percentage of their value. And the supplies they have on board were apparently very important to establishing the Temple's presence on one of the formerly Lemmaran islands. The local priestdom has put a lot of political capital into that project, so helping save it from utter disaster should be viewed well, unless there's some odd secondary reaction."
"So retaking the ships would be a politically positive action?" Pahner said. "I want to be clear on that."
"Yes, Captain," O'Casey said. "I won't go so far as to say it would be 'vital.' But failure to act could be construed as being less friendly—and certainly less 'brave'—than taking action would be. In my professional opinion, barring clear military negative factors, it should be considered highly useful in making positive first contact with the mainland culture."
"Okay," Pahner said. "We'll discuss means later. But getting most of the ships and getting them intact may be hard."
"They'll have scattered," Roger mused aloud. "We'll have to find them first. Then figure out how to take them without getting all of the original crews killed."
"What about the Lemmar?" O'Casey asked.
"What about the Lemmar?" Roger asked in return. His response evoked another general chuckle, and the chief of staff nodded and turned to the next item on her list.
"In that case, I'd like to talk about what we'll call 'The People of the Vales'—the Shin, that is—versus the valley culture, or the Krath. I'll also offer some speculation as to where the cultures come from. Julian will discuss the purely military aspects later.
"The Shin are a fairly typical upland barbarian culture. They're centered around small, fertile valleys—the Vales—each of which has a clan chief, or 'king.' All of them are nominally independent, with a few of them allied to each other—or involved in blood feuds—at all times. There's a 'great king' or war leader, in theory, at least, but his authority is strictly limited.
"We do have a contact with the Shin," the chief of staff pointed out, nodding at the female Mardukan who'd taken a position beside Cord. The Shin would have sat behind the shaman, but with him already sitting behind Roger, there simply wasn't room. It had occasioned a certain amount of negotiation when they first entered the cabin.
"And the straight-line distance from the valley entrance to the spaceport is shorter through the vales," the chief of staff continued. "On the other hand, given the information thus far developed, we're more likely to encounter difficulties passing through the vales than if we stay in the valley."
"Those blood feuds," Pahner said.
"Precisely." O'Casey nodded. "The clans are constantly feuding. We would—could—presumably make contact with and get help and passage from the Mudh Hemh clan, but if we did, we'd automatically find ourselves at war with the Sey Dor clan. There's also a 'cross-valley' dichotomy that Julian will discuss. But it shouldn't affect us."