Chapter 930 – First Contact

The team members smoked and chatted in small groups, preparing to sleep. A few organized the day's survey data by firelight. But as night fell, suspicious growling sounds drifted from the darkness.

To ensure the group passed the night safely, the survey team had built up a roaring bonfire and set trip-wire signal mines around the perimeter. Soldiers and team members took turns on watch, constantly feeding fuel to the flames.

In the darkness, they caught glimpses of beasts prowling stealthily around the camp, slinking through the brush. The two military dogs barked intermittently. But the night passed peacefully. By five o'clock the next morning, everyone was up and ready to move.

After conferring, Qian Shuixie and Liu Zheng decided against retracing their steps. Instead, they would take a different route down the mountain to observe more of the local terrain.

They hacked their way down Dagou Mountain, rested briefly, then pushed inland along a small river. Being summer, the water ran high and swift. Liu Zheng thought the agricultural conditions here far surpassed Lingao's—the water resources alone were much richer. No wonder Wu Nanhai and his people dreamed of this "Treasure Island" every day.

The survey team marched along the riverbank. Free of dense vegetation, their pace quickened considerably. Shortly after eight o'clock, the two military dogs leading the column suddenly erupted into furious barking.

"Attention—enemy activity!" Qian Shuixie shouted. "All units, alert!"

Even as he spoke, he swiftly clicked off the safety of his submachine gun, unfolded the stock, and dropped to a half-kneeling firing position.

Before his voice faded, a chaotic roar erupted from the grass and trees. Then, fifty or sixty nearly naked natives—waving weapons and howling—charged violently from the brush.

Qian Shuixie pulled the trigger the instant he saw dark brown figures lunging from the grass.

"Back to back! Open fire!" he roared without looking back.

The Special Reconnaissance Team had drilled thousands of times. Every tactical movement had become instinctive.

Gunfire erupted around him. Acrid gunpowder smoke assaulted his nostrils. The stock tapped lightly against his shoulder—the recoil of the .22 caliber submachine gun was minimal, and Qian Shuixie easily controlled the muzzle climb. His second burst knocked down a native clutching a spear and shield.

Qian Shuixie had participated in many shooting competitions and training sessions, firing at countless human-shaped targets, but he had never shot at a living person. At first, his fire was somewhat panicked, but he quickly mastered his emotions, steadied his body, and constantly shifted his aim, harvesting the charging ambushers with three-round bursts. Under the gunfire, men stumbled and fell; others let out great howls and turned to flee into the deep grass.

Though the .22 LR was a low-power police round, against nearly naked targets at less than fifty meters, it produced a one-sided slaughter. The gunfire lasted fewer than two minutes. The riverbank had become a bloody charnel house—over twenty corpses and dying men lay scattered across the stones. The ambushers had vanished completely.

"Cease fire!" Qian Shuixie shouted.

The gunfire stopped. A deathly silence fell over the riverbank, broken only by wind rustling through grass and branches.

"Are they natives?" Liu Zheng was still shaken. Though a veteran trekker with some military training, his reaction to sudden situations was much slower. He had only managed to draw his Glock 17 and fire two rounds before the battle ended. The enemy had vanished as swiftly as they had appeared. The survey team members didn't dare chase recklessly into the grass; they maintained their hastily formed circular defensive formation.

Qian Shuixie nodded. "Definitely."

He scanned the riverbank. All was quiet. The two military dogs were snorting, eager to give chase, but they had stopped barking—indicating the enemy had gone far.

"Check casualties!" He lowered the muzzle of his submachine gun.

"No casualties," the NCO replied.

"Recover shell casings!" Qian Shuixie stood, his finger off the trigger but still outside the guard, ready for any sudden development. "Search the battlefield!"

Hot shell casings were collected into specialized bags by designated personnel while team members covered each other as they inspected the bodies on the riverbank.

All the dead were male. By the standards of this era, they could be called tall, sturdy, and strong—aesthetically pleasing physiques quite unlike the imagined short, wretched appearance of Austronesian natives. Nearly all had pierced ears with massive wooden plugs.

"These must be the Takau people," Qian Shuixie said.

The corpse at his feet lay face down on the river pebbles; the water flowing beneath had turned red. These men were almost naked. Aside from small woven-rattan and wooden shields, they had virtually no defensive equipment.

"These should be javelins." Qian Shuixie examined the weapons his team had collected. Most were ordinary bamboo or wooden spears. Some bamboo javelins were thin and flexible; he weighed one in his hand and found the balance quite good. Thrown in a volley, they would inflict considerable damage. Besides these, there were a few stone axes and crudely forged iron knives—probably traded from the mainland. Qian Shuixie doubted the tribe possessed any smelting capability.

"Why did they ambush us?" Liu Zheng was still somewhat shaken.

"We're strange outsiders. To them, that means dangerous enemies." Qian Shuixie reflected that this was true not just along the constantly contested coast of seventeenth-century Taiwan, but even in the deep backwoods of twenty-first-century America, where intruders might not receive a friendly reception.

They examined the bodies carefully but found nothing else of note. Qian Shuixie had hoped to find a salvageable captive whom they could treat and turn into a cooperative ally—or at least learn more about the local natives. But the few who hadn't died instantly had severe wounds and expired one after another before long.

Qian Shuixie noted the distance between the ambush site and their marching path along the riverbank—less than fifty meters on average. If the enemy had possessed decent bows and arrows, they could have opened fire first. A rain of arrows—even from soft bows with bamboo shafts—would have caused some injuries. Mixed with javelins, his side would certainly have suffered casualties.

It seemed the Dutch choice to campaign in winter made excellent sense. At least in winter, there wouldn't be man-high grass for enemies to hide in.

Another takeaway was the great utility of dogs. The dogs had detected the ambush before the point man did, and in this wilderness terrain, their rapid pursuit capability far exceeded that of slow-moving infantry. According to Dutch experience, the most useful assets for punitive expeditions against local natives were horses and dogs—similar to Spanish experience in the Americas.

If they had a military dog unit of dozens of animals, whether for scouting or pursuit, the dogs would prove highly lethal against natives lacking protection and proper weapons.

Qian Shuixie returned to the formation. Chandler reported that the Haitian was calling, inquiring about the gunfire.

He took the walkie-talkie handset. "We encountered an attack by local natives... No, no casualties. The enemy fled. Looks like they had been watching us for a while."

After this attack, Qian Shuixie decided not to advance further inland. Having taken such a devastating loss, the other side would either be frightened into hiding or gather more warriors to seek revenge. If several hundred men truly came, in this complex terrain his dozen-plus soldiers would still be at a disadvantage.

Because of the attack, the survey team abandoned deep inland penetration. Qian Shuixie led them along the coastline instead, ensuring they could receive support from the Haitian at any time.

They concentrated their efforts on surveying the terrain around Dagou Mountain and Dagou Harbor—measuring water depth, mapping planned roads into the Kaohsiung Plain.

During this period, local natives didn't engage the survey team again. Liu Zheng had hoped they might send someone to establish contact. Nearly all colonists and pioneer teams venturing into savage lands had experienced such a progression: attacked, repelled, negotiation, exchange of gifts, discovery of collaborators. But they operated in the area for four or five days, and no natives ever approached the temporary camp near the river mouth.

Liu Zheng had intended to establish preliminary cooperative relations through contact with the natives, thereby gaining freedom of movement in tribal territory. After all, he had studied the historical records left by the Dutch before setting out. The major aboriginal tribes in the Tainan area were locked in conflict—the Sinkan tribe and the local Takau had land disputes and armed clashes. The Sinkan people had eventually become accomplices of the Dutch.

The Dutch had exploited conflicts between native tribes in Taiwan, acting as arbitrators and allies, constantly "inciting the masses to fight the masses." Liu Zheng felt the Transmigration Group would inevitably employ the same tactic to gain a foothold here. The easiest conflict to exploit was between the Takau and Sinkan. Striking at the Sinkan would indirectly weaken Dutch power, preventing them from expanding into the Kaohsiung Plain. Tayouan was only two days' journey from here, less than forty kilometers in a straight line. After the Christmas Campaign of 1635, the Dutch had expanded their territory to the Kaohsiung Plain, settling Fujian immigrants in the area to cultivate the land.

However, all of this depended on finding a suitable liaison. Liu Zheng himself didn't have the courage to go find the local natives alone. Taiwan's indigenous peoples all practiced head-hunting; if he went looking for them himself, his head might very well end up as a dried trophy on a wooden stake in some native village.