The Far Side (52 page)

The sun sank behind the horizon, and there was still no sign of the Tengri ship.

The next morning the sky was gray and cloudy, first light was delayed a half hour.  Even as visibility increased, Melek could see a ship many miles to the south.  He called out the alarm, and the city woke up.  Soldiers hugged their wives and children and rushed to their duty posts.  The wives hurried their children along to the citadel and up the interminable steps.

Melek was pleased that Ezra stayed with him, but was less pleased that Kris and Andie were there as well.  It took an hour for the ship to approach, and in that time a drizzle of rain started.  It was uncomfortable in the extreme, and the air was much cooler than usual.

The ship came up from the south, even with the watch tower.  Ezra demanded that the two girls descend, and they told him they would when he did.  They were still arguing when the ship turned west and sailed south of the city, staying a mile or more offshore.

Andie looked at it and shrugged.  “They are too far, I think, to range the city.  Be wary if they turn back, closer inshore.  I think they are trying to find out if you have weapons similar to theirs.”

The ship sailed back about a half mile closer and still nothing happened.  The ship turned closer still and headed back west.  “They are nearly within arbalest range,” Melek told them.

“I’m tempted to say to let fly, but you never know what can be useful.  Let’s wait,” Ezra told him.

The ship’s maneuver at the end of that pass was very strange.  At first it headed a little away from land, then turned back towards the land.  “Ahh!” Andie exclaimed.  “Now we want to get down!”

The two girls headed down the steps.  Melek and Ezra looked at each other and then at the approaching ship.  They went down the steps of the watch tower, with Melek ordering all of the men there to descend as well.

“How do you know?” Melek asked Andie.

“They didn’t come closer and they didn’t go further away.”

There was a sudden roar from the Tengri ship and it vanished in clouds of smoke.  Melek shivered, waiting for the destruction of the docks.  From the city came loud sounds as balls smashed into stone buildings.  There were other sounds, some of it falling masonry, but when they lifted their heads, the Tengri ship was showing them her stern, headed due south, away from them.

“Intimidation,” Ezra spoke the single word, looking at Kris, then at Melek.

“I don’t understand.”

“They want you as slaves.  There’s no point wasting good slaves, right?  They gave you lots of time to get the women and children to safety and then delivered a blow that would have pulverized the docks -- we all know it would have.

“This is like coming home one day and finding your worst enemy is playing with your youngest child, knowing he could kill your child if he wished.  Instead, he gets up, smiles at you and walks away.  The goal is to make it easier for you not to resist the next time.”

“I would kill him!”  Melek said.

“Would you really kill a man for playing with a child?” Ezra asked mildly.  “He utters no threats, he doesn’t make demands -- he simply lets you worry about what could happen if you aren’t forever vigilant.  It is designed to make you reluctant to resist, Melek.”  Ezra nodded at the city.  “You might want to resist, but a lot of people will look at the small amount of damage, consider what it could have been -- and tell themselves that the Tengri aren’t so bad after all.”

Chapter 20
:: The Opposite of a Thief in the Night

This time it was a private video conference that Oliver, Helen, Linda, Kurt, and Jacob conducted.  It was well after midnight.

“The bastards have their panties totally twisted,” Oliver told them.  “Sorry, Helen and Linda.  We’re due to get another federal monitor.  Kurt, they have said that you are to prepare to detonate the ammunition and withdraw if any of the three missing people show up.  Regardless of whether or not any of the others are dead or alive.”

“I have been a liberal my entire life,” Helen Boyle said.  “I was appalled at what the feminists permitted Bill Clinton to get away with -- it was the antithesis of everything feminists had fought for.

“I’ve watched as people came to my country and killed our people -- including one very nice gentleman I knew.  Like everyone else, I was intent on making sure they couldn’t do it again.  Instead, the country limited itself to half-hearted gestures and finally forgot those.

“Now -- I don’t know.  The country is like a cancer patient with multiple forms of aggressive cancer.  It’s like each form is trying to outdo the others in killing the patient first.

“I have never heard such politically correct drivel in my life.”

Kurt laughed.  “I won’t ask what you’re talking about, because I can give a half-dozen examples myself.  Look, Jacob and I have come up with a plan.”

“What sort of a plan?”

“We have the radios you sent.  Yes indeed, there are a lot of transmissions of something like Morse code being sent from close by and received who knows where.  We have lines on three stations to the east, and those stations appear to be very strong and fixed.  There is a mobile station that is now north of us -- the big warship is gone, so we think that’s it.  We’re recording all that shit and sending it to NSA.  I wish the fuckers luck!

“What’s going to happen is Jake and Kyle Parsons are going to slip out right after dark.  Kyle is black as the ace of spades, and while he isn’t as tall as the average fucker here, he’s tall enough.  They each have two of our radios, and they will head north, keeping a distance apart.

“Obviously, the black skin will get Kyle killed if the locals here see him, and the white skin gets Jake killed if the invaders see him.  Still, one or the other has a reasonable chance of getting north to see if Ezra, Kris or Andie are alive.  We give them a radio and then see if we can coordinate extracting them.”

The door opened behind Oliver, and a stranger entered and spoke quickly, “Don’t let me interrupt.”

The newcomer was a bulldog of a man -- short, squat, and heavily muscled, his face fleshy without hard lines.

“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass when you leave,” Oliver growled.  “This is a private meeting.”

“My name is Jon Bullman.  I’m here from the government to help you.”

Oliver regarded him levelly, not knowing what to say.

“Of course, you’re not stupid and neither am I.  Most days, I’m a line crew foreman for Con Ed on Long Island, and if someone told me they were from the government and was there to help me, I’d make sure the fucker was the first one up the pole in the tornado.”

Oliver’s expression didn’t change.

“Look, I’m an ex-Marine, a father who has two teenage daughters and a wife who thinks
Desperate Housewives
is risqué.  For the life of me, none of you strike me as total idiots, unlike the morons who sent me here.  I thought I’d sneak in in the middle of the night and get a preview of what’s up.  I had no idea you all were up and about.”

“We’re up and about trying to rescue two teenage daughters and a fellow who works for me,” Oliver told him.

“Good!  Then we’re on the same page.  Is one of those the little girl who climbed a forty-foot pole and rewired a hot 24KV transformer?”

“Something like that,” Oliver said.

“Let me tell you something.  You’re Boyle, right, Oliver Boyle?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been working on power lines since I got out of the Marines after two tours, fourteen years ago.  You know what it takes to climb a forty-foot pole and rewire a hot transformer?”

“No, what?” Oliver asked.

“More balls than brains -- that or one hell of a lot of brains.  You do that trying to rely on luck and you end up fine ash, sifting away on the wind.  I looked at that young lady’s plans for a fusion power device.  Fourteen engineers have been fired from Con Ed in the last few weeks for even hinting they thought the idea could work.  Some of them men I know and trust completely.”

“Exactly what is your point, Mr. Bullman?” Oliver asked.

“The point is, I have two teenage daughters, Mr. Boyle.  I wouldn’t want anything to happen to them, even if they made a simple, stupid mistake.  I stopped being a Marine after Desert Storm One, where the USMC was used as a chess piece to feint out Sadaam.  Trust me, when it comes to stupid bosses, I’ve served all kinds.

“Now, you can include me in the loop, and I’ll tell the assholes back in DC that everything is just peachy, or you can cut me out and I’ll go home to my daughters, safe and sound and tell the assholes in DC that everything is just peachy.”

“And because you’re here to help us, we should trust you?” Oliver asked.

He waved at the video screen with Kurt, Jacob and Linda on it.  “Ask Miss Walsh.  Bannerman432.”

Linda reacted.  “That’s you?”

“The chicken crosses the road to show the possum it can be done.”

Linda turned to Oliver.  “Within limits, you can trust him.  He was one of the marshals for the ten million person  march.”

Jon Bullman laughed.  “You can’t get a more qualified statement of support than that, can you?”

“We’re going to send a party north to see if they can contact my daughter and the others,” Oliver said, eyeing the man carefully.

“Mr. Boyle, like I said, I’m not stupid.  We’re here, and they’re there.  I could run screaming out the door, telling the world that you are doing this -- but exactly what would I accomplish?  If there are nasty bugs there, odds are, they’ve already met them.  Ditto for Kris, Andie, and Ezra Lawson.  No big.  I’m not even going to walk towards the door.”

“And this means we should trust you?” Oliver asked.

“Nope.  This means you shouldn’t assume that I have anything else in my objectives than seeing your daughter, Andie Schulz, and Ezra Lawson home safe.”

Oliver remembered something from a lot of Star Gate episodes.  “SG-2, you have a go,” he said speaking into the radio.

Kurt howled with laughter, Linda smiled tightly and Jake nodded.  “Consider it underway, Mr. Boyle.  It’s midnight where you are and a short bit before sundown here.  Except sundown here isn’t what you expect.  Not with that great honking moon up in the sky!  Did you know we got the 16” Schmidt Cassegrain that Linda had Jo send through?  We have sufficient resolution looking at that planet to see the street lights of a city!”

Jon smiled slightly.  “I imagine in that cave you have a really dark sky.”

“As a matter of fact, these people don’t wander around much in the dark.  We went out and looked.”

“But they do wander around in the dark?”

“Sure -- waving torches and moving like turtles,” Kurt told him.

“Jake and Kyle will be going out now.  We’ll keep you guys apprised.  The code words for the mission are as follows...”

Oliver told them a dozen innocuous words that weren’t very common that would report on that status.  Jake promised that they would keep in close radio contact.

* * *

Kris was feeling more useless than usual as she worked with Ezra and Melek surveying the damage that the Tengri ship had inflicted on Arvala.

Really, when you considered it, it was a pinprick.   Yet, some people had returned from the steps to find a foot-in-diameter hole in their homes.  That was disconcerting, and more so for those who had had personal possessions in the way of the heavy cannon balls.

On the third day after the attack, the city had settled down a lot, when a runner came from the west, nearly exhausted.  The King, they learned, was coming with many men in his army.  Hold the fort!  They were coming very fast and would arrive shortly.

It was kind of anti-climactic, Kris thought.

Ezra had been more sobering.  “You have to understand the nature of autocrats, Kris.  They aren’t used to hearing bad news.  Not only that, some of them make it a religion to kill anyone who gives them bad news, which rather insulates them from the ‘down’ parts of the ‘ups and downs’ of life.

“I’m trying to give Collum’s brother credit for being Collum’s older brother, but Collum is no spring chicken, and there has to be a reason why Collum doesn’t dare command any significant number of men... I’m guessing jealousy on the part of the King.

“But, even so, I don’t know.  This isn’t going to be good news for any ruler.  The only way these people have a chance is to trade land for time, but the land they have to give up first is the land they’ve lived on the longest.  It won’t be easy to do, and if they decide to toss the dice, the odds will be seriously against them.

“If they give Andie and me a chance to improve their weapons, they might survive -- but if they rush into battle, it’ll be over quickly.  Right now they have to avoid a decisive defeat and give themselves time for the rest of the Fingers to get a grip on the new technology.  They should spend decades, but they’ll be lucky to have a couple of years.  To be honest, in spite of the fact that Melek and Collum are our friends, I don’t think they have a chance in hell.”

“Leaving out that if the Tengri establish a base on the southern tip of the East Finger, home becomes impossibly far away?” Kris said bitterly.

Ezra looked her in the eye.  “What we would need to do is the same thing as they’re looking at.  We’d have to sneak south along the eastern coast, get even with the rookery, and then sneak across the peninsula and get in the secret exit -- hoping that the Tengri aren’t smarter than Melek’s people ever were.

“Then, we have to cross our fingers, because if rescue isn’t there or doesn’t come soon, we won’t have been able to carry sufficient supplies to go south and then return north.  We’ll starve to death or have to surrender to the Tengri.  That’s death for me, I’m sure.  And I don’t know about you and Andie, but from my point of view, death would be preferable to life as a house slave.”

Andie figured it out quicker than Kris.  “So, our best chance is if Melek’s people don’t suicide, but retreat west -- and we’d have to follow them, getting further from the cave?”

“That’s about it,” Ezra told her.  “It’s not looking real good, Kris, Andie.  The only thing Melek’s people have going for them is the impossibly long supply chain the Tengri will have.  To be honest, I’d want to think seriously about getting a good plan and tossing the dice myself.  If the Tengri get a foothold, life is going to go into the pits for the Arvalans.  Give the Tengri a really bloody nose and maybe they’ll spend a while thinking about it.”

“And of course, some place to the north are Mardan and the Dralka,” Kris reminded him.  “And that one ship with sails went southwest -- if they were with the Tengri, they’d have gone southeast.  From discussions that Melek had with the father and his friends, they’ve been running with the wrong crowd for a long time.  The father, even subjected to fairly rigorous questioning, maintains that his sons made the modifications to their ship on their own.  He told Melek that they didn’t tell anyone about the changes so they could have a competitive advantage over the other fishermen.”

“That’s BS,” Andie told him.

“I agree.  But only the King can remove the limits to how rough interrogation can be -- Melek is saving the man for the King.”

“So,” Kris asked, “now what?”

“Now I’m trying to get Melek to send as many people west as he can get underway.  This city is truly screwed if the Tengri land a party west of the city and take the cliff tops.  Unless the people of Arvala flee west, the alternatives are east or south, into land that can’t support them, or north into territory where nine out of ten will provide plop for dinosaurs.”

“They could hold the city,” Andie suggested.  “Tobruk, Stalingrad.  Remember the Alamo!”

“Andie, if the city is besieged, most of the people will die, women and children first.  A couple of million people died at Stalingrad -- all of the good guys died at the Alamo.”

Kris shook her head.  “We can’t ask these people to risk that sort of thing.  Not us.”

“No, probably not,” Ezra agreed.  “But on the other hand, we’re in no position to say no if they decide to do it, either.”

“It seems like all the choices suck,” Kris said, despondently.

“Yeah, that’s about it.  On the other hand, think about how Churchill felt after Munich or how FDR felt when he ordered MacArthur to escape from the Philippines.  Just because things look bleak doesn’t mean you should chuck it.  The idea is to hang back, look for openings, and not lose in the meantime.”

He pursed his lips and jerked his chin towards the small house they’d been given to use.  “Over there is my backpack.  Like I said, most of what’s in it is always in it.  However, I heard the word ‘cave’ before I came here, and g’damn!  I know caves!  I brought my night- and low-light gear.  I haven’t used any of it yet.