Chapter 162: First Contact

The team members were also smoking and chatting in twos and threes, preparing to sleep. A few were organizing today’s survey data by the firelight. However, as night fell, they heard a suspicious roar.

To ensure that the group spent the night safely, the survey team lit a blazing fire and set up trip-wire signal mines around the camp. The soldiers and team members took turns keeping watch, constantly adding a large amount of fuel.

In the darkness, they seemed to see some wild beasts coming out of the bushes and sneaking around the camp. The two military dogs had also barked. But the night passed peacefully after all. The next day, they all got up at five o’clock in the morning, ready to set off again.

After consultation, Qian Shuixie and Liu Zheng decided not to take the path they came on, but to take another path down the mountain so that they could see more of the local situation.

After hacking their way down from Takau Mountain and taking a short rest, they advanced inland along a small river. Because it was summer, the water was abundant and the current was swift. Liu Zheng thought that the agricultural conditions here were much better than in Lingao—the water resources alone were much richer. No wonder Wu Nanhai and his group were always thinking about this “treasure island.”

The survey team marched along the riverbank. Without the dense vegetation, the team’s speed was greatly increased. At around eight o’clock, the two military dogs at the front of the team suddenly barked wildly.

“Attention, enemy contact!” Qian Shuixie shouted. “All units on alert!” He quickly released the safety on his submachine gun, opened the shoulder stock, knelt down, and prepared to fire.

Before his voice had faded, a chaotic roar erupted from the grass and woods. Then, fifty or sixty almost naked natives, waving their weapons and shouting, rushed out from the grass and woods.

Qian Shuixie pulled the trigger the moment he saw some dark brown figures pounce out of the grass.

“Back to back, open fire!” he roared without looking back. The special reconnaissance team had undergone countless drills, turning all tactical movements into instinctive reactions.

Gunshots erupted around him, the acrid smell of gunpowder filling his nostrils. The stock of the gun lightly bumped his shoulder. The recoil of the .22 caliber submachine gun was very small, and Qian Shuixie easily controlled the muzzle jump. The second burst of fire brought down a native armed with a spear and a shield.

Qian Shuixie had participated in many shooting competitions and training sessions and had shot all kinds of human-shaped targets, but he had never shot a living person. At first, his shooting was a bit flustered, but he quickly controlled his emotions, steadied himself, and constantly moved the muzzle, using three-round bursts to mow down the charging ambushers. They staggered and fell amidst the gunfire. Some let out loud cries and turned to flee into the deep grass.

Although the .22LR was a low-power police cartridge, at a distance of less than 50 meters, shooting at almost naked living people turned into a one-sided slaughter. The gunfire lasted for less than two minutes. The riverbank had become a bloody slaughterhouse, with more than twenty corpses and dying men lying scattered about. The ambushers had disappeared completely.

“Cease fire!” Qian Shuixie roared. The gunfire stopped, and the riverbank was suddenly silent, with only the sound of the wind blowing through the grass and branches.

“Are they natives?” Liu Zheng was still in shock. Although he was a seasoned backpacker and had received a lot of military training, his reaction to a sudden situation was much slower. He had only managed to fire two shots from his Glock 17 before the battle was over. The enemy disappeared as quickly as they had arrived. The members of the survey team did not dare to rashly pursue them into the grasslands and still maintained the circular defensive formation they had just formed in an emergency.

Qian Shuixie nodded. “Definitely.” He scanned the riverbank. It was quiet all around. The two military dogs were sniffing the air, eager to give chase, but they were no longer barking, which meant the enemy had gone far.

“Check for casualties!” He lowered the muzzle of his submachine gun and asked.

“No casualties,” the NCO replied.

“Collect the shell casings!” Qian Shuixie stood up. Although his finger was off the trigger, it remained within the trigger guard in case of another emergency. “Search the battlefield!”

The hot shell casings were collected into a special bag by a designated person. The team members covered each other as they began to check the bodies on the riverbank.

All the bodies were male. By the standards of this timeline, they were tall, strong, and well-built, with a good physique, not at all like the short and wretched appearance of the Austronesian natives he had imagined. It was just that everyone had pierced ears and wore huge wooden plugs.

“These are probably the so-called Takau people,” Qian Shuixie said. A body at his feet lay face down on the pebbles of the riverbank, and the river water flowing beneath it was stained red. These people were almost naked, and apart from small rattan and wooden shields, they had almost no means of defense.

“This should be a javelin,” Qian Shuixie said, looking at the weapons collected by the team members. Most were ordinary bamboo and wooden spears. Some of the bamboo javelins were thin and soft. He weighed one in his hand and felt that the center of gravity was well-balanced. If thrown together, they would have considerable lethality. In addition, there were a few stone axes and iron knives—very crude, probably imported from the mainland. Qian Shuixie did not think they had any smelting capabilities.

“Why did they ambush us?” Liu Zheng was still a little shaken.

“We are unfamiliar outsiders. To them, we are dangerous enemies.” Qian Shuixie thought that not to mention 17th-century Taiwan, where there were constant bloody conflicts on the coast, even in the poor and remote areas of the inland United States in the 21st century, one would not necessarily be treated with kindness.

They carefully examined the bodies but found nothing else worthy of mention. Qian Shuixie had originally wanted to see if there were any prisoners who could be saved, treated, and used as guides—at the very least, they could learn more about the local natives. However, the few who were not killed instantly were also seriously injured and soon died.

Qian Shuixie noted the distance between the ambush site and the riverbank where they were marching—the average distance was less than fifty meters. If the enemy had decent bows and arrows, they could have opened fire first. A volley of arrows—even soft bows and bamboo arrows—would have caused some injuries. If they had also used javelins, his side would definitely have suffered some casualties.

It seemed that the Dutch had good reason to choose to fight in the winter. At least in the winter, there would not be such tall grass for the enemy to hide in.

Another thing was that the dogs were very useful—the dogs discovered the enemy’s ambush earlier than the scouts. And in this kind of wilderness terrain, the dogs’ rapid pursuit ability was much more agile than that of the slow-moving infantry. According to the Dutch experience, the most useful things for fighting the local natives were horses and dogs—which was similar to the Spanish in the Americas.

If they had a military dog team of dozens of dogs, whether for scouting or pursuit, it would be very lethal to the natives who lacked protection and weapons.

Qian Shuixie returned to the team. Chandler reported that the Haitian was calling, asking what the gunfire was about.

He took the microphone of the walkie-talkie. “We were attacked by the local natives… No, no casualties. The enemy ran away. It seems they have been watching us for a long time.”

After this attack, Qian Shuixie decided not to advance further inland. After suffering such a heavy loss, the other side would either be scared out of their wits or they would gather more able-bodied men to seek revenge. If a few hundred of them came, in the complex terrain, his dozen or so men would still be at a disadvantage.

Due to the attack, the survey team no longer ventured deep into the inland. Qian Shuixie led the team along the coastline instead, so that they could get support from the Haitian at any time.

They concentrated on surveying the terrain and topography of Takau Mountain and Takau Port, measured the water depth, and also surveyed the planned road into the Kaohsiung Plain.

During this period, the local natives did not have any more conflicts with the survey team. Liu Zheng had originally hoped that they would send someone to contact them—almost all colonists and pioneers who went deep into the wilderness had experienced this process: being attacked, repelling the attack, negotiating, exchanging gifts, and finding a guide. But they were active in the local area for four or five days, and no natives ever came to the temporary camp near the mouth of the river.

Liu Zheng had originally wanted to establish a preliminary cooperative relationship with the natives through contact, and then obtain the freedom to operate in the territory of their community—after all, he had studied the historical materials left by the Dutch before he set out. There were conflicts between the major aboriginal communities in the Tainan area. The Xinkang community and the local Takau community had land disputes, and armed conflicts had occurred between them. The Xinkang people eventually became accomplices of the Dutch.

The Dutch in Taiwan used the contradictions between the aboriginal communities, acting as arbitrators and allies, constantly “inciting the masses to fight against the masses.” He felt that the transmigrators would have to do the same to gain a foothold here at the beginning. The easiest contradiction to exploit was the one between the Takau community and the Xinkang community. By attacking the Xinkang community, they would also indirectly attack the Dutch power, preventing them from expanding to the Kaohsiung Plain. Tayouan was only a two-day journey from here, and the straight-line distance was less than 40 kilometers. After the Christmas campaign of 1635, the Dutch expanded their territory to the Kaohsiung Plain and settled Fujianese immigrants in this area to reclaim land.

However, all of this depended on finding a suitable contact person. Liu Zheng himself did not have the courage to go and find the local natives alone. The natives of Taiwan had the habit of headhunting. If he went to find the natives himself, his head might very well become a dried trophy on a wooden stake in a native village.