by Patty Jansen
“I can get rid of them,” Sheydu said, putting her free hand in her jacket’s pocket. I bet she could, too.
A small truck was coming up the road. It drove across the patch where the gyrocopter stood and parked next to it. Another five men came out of the cabin, and a further six out of the back compartment.
It looked like we were outnumbered.
Well, shit, what was this about?
Junco had reached the first group of men and was talking to them. They were too far away for me to follow the conversation. It didn’t sound friendly.
We waited.
Assess, plan, carry out, that was Sheydu’s motto.
My team watched and waited for an opportunity.
Meanwhile, a second and third quad bike arrived, and parked next to the other one. Each bike carried two additional young men, who went over to where Junco was still arguing with the youths.
A stiff breeze came up, blowing dust over the desert plain. The young man closest to me grabbed his hat that was about to blow off. He squinted at me over the top of the cloth tied over his nose and mouth. He eyed my clothing—still the jacket I’d brought from Barresh—my hair, my belt—if he was looking for weapons, that was the wrong place. I judged him to be no older than twenty. Maybe I could distract him.
I said, “Do you want to know where we’re from? I can show you pictures.”
He didn’t react. It was not that he couldn’t understand me. Isla had a large English component. He would understand at least some of my words.
He just stared at me, holding his gun with dusty hands that were the mark of someone who did manual work.
I tried again, “We were just at the old spaceship factory. Do you know anyone who used to work there?”
Again, no reply. He now avoided looking me in the eye.
The group with Junco had split up. One man shouted in our direction. Crap, where was Junco? I couldn’t see him anywhere.
“Where is our guide?” I asked.
An older man jerked with his weapon. “Walk,” he said, his voice like a bark.
The truck backed up the path. The back cargo doors were open.
They wanted us to go in there? Then take us where?
Sheydu made a hand signal to Reida and Anyu. Be ready. What for, I didn’t know.
Ynggi’s large eyes roved the countryside. He did wear clothes and shoes today, so he would be able to run, if needed.
Except where would we run? Who were these men and what did they want?
I didn’t want to run.
All our equipment was in the gyrocopter except for the items we carried with us.
I saw Junco, just about to get into the gyrocopter. He was walking alone, although a man with a gun stood on a hill watching him.
Then a thought: Junco hadn’t led them to us, right? Deliberately visited this “one more tourist spot” and told them to ambush us here?
I felt cold.
He didn’t seem the type.
He probably had his business to consider, and having his customers kidnapped would look bad for his image.
I hoped.
It wasn’t looking good. He reached the door to the gyrocopter’s cabin, opened it and got in.
He was about to take off with our stuff. This didn’t look good, not one bit.
Sheydu and Anyu glanced at each other. Veyada made a hand signal. Reida looked aside.
I mentally prepared myself to grab my weapon strapped under my shirt.
The truck came closer, turned a half circle and parked so that the back doors faced us.
We bunched closer together.
A man came out of the truck’s cabin, and went to open the back doors, but one of them kept blowing shut with the blustery wind, so a second person had to show him where to secure the door.
But a bigger gust of wind yanked the door loose again. It hit the truck with a thud, narrowly missing the shoulder of one of the men. They scrambled to secure the door, and one of the others yelled something about not being stupid.
Sheydu took this moment of distraction as our opportunity. She dug something out of her pocket and lobbed it into the back of the truck. A man yelled, another slammed the back door shut. They both ran away.
Too late. The vehicle exploded in a ball of fire.
Veyada grabbed me by the arm, and we ran, dodging falling debris.
We ran off into a gully, and found the three electric quad bikes there.
Evi jumped on one of them, Anyu climbed behind him, and then Sheydu jumped on another bike, pulling me with her onto the back seat. Veyada secured the third bike with Ynggi and Reida.
“What about the gear in the gyrocopter?” I asked Sheydu.
“We’ll worry about that later.”
Hopefully, Junco could salvage it.
Fortunately, I had my reader with all the information we had collected in the pocket of my jacket. I’d learned my lesson well and truly on previous occasions.
We set off through a canyon. Since we had taken control of all their vehicles save the truck, which was out of action, the men had to follow on foot.
“Amateurs,” Sheydu called. Her voice sounded smug.
I said, “Well, let’s wait until we get to safety. There might be elephants.”
And the big question was how we were going to get out of here.
Chapter Fourteen
The three bikes made good speed over the rocky ground.
We followed a bumpy path which ran along the top of the canyon.
We churned through deep sand and zig-zagged between sharp rocks. Several times we had to backtrack to find a better route.
I asked Sheydu where we were going, but she said only that we needed a safe base so we could meet up with the aircraft. I hoped that Junco would still be coming. How would he know where we were?
I judged it best not to disturb her with my silly questions.
They would have a plan. There was always a plan.
We arrived on the outskirts of the town, and along a deserted and dusty street, found a business that serviced trucks. A vehicle was sitting outside the office.
Reida, on the first bike, screeched to a halt in the yard. Sheydu also stopped the bike, jumped off and tried one of the truck’s doors. It was locked, but Reida solved that problem.
He climbed in.
All those hours he spent running simulations of different types of technology were paying off in big spades.
Meanwhile, people had moved inside the business’ office. Someone had figured out that we were not the vehicle’s owners.
Too late.
We all piled in, with Veyada next to me, Nicha and Anyu in the back and Evi in the cargo compartment.
As we left the yard, a woman ran out of the office. She stopped in the middle of the road and pointed a weapon at us.
I yelled at Reida, “Watch out! Swerve!”
Too late.
A loud bang echoed in the street. A bullet ricocheted off the back of the truck’s frame with a ping.
Sheydu cursed.
The truck moved as Evi was doing something in the back. There was a thud of a metallic and heavy object hitting the ground. The rear vision mirror showed me coils of fencing wire rolling and coming loose on the road.
We had pursuers—a man on a motorbike who dodged the wire with ease.
Reida got the vehicle up to maximum speed. He was not an experienced driver. At an intersection, he turned left, took the corner short, veered onto the wrong side of the road, almost hitting someone on a bike. That person was then almost hit again by the motorbike pursuing us.
We had come into the town’s main street, with shops on both sides and people milling about talking to each other. There were pedestrians, older citizens, mothers with children, dogs. People stopped whatever they were doing to watch us.
We made it through without hitting anything—phew—turned lef
t again onto the wrong side of a divided road that went downhill. A vehicle coming up the hill honked at us and then turned around as we passed.
We raced down the hill, onto a bridge that spanned the canyon. On the left side was the deep abyss of the canyon, on the right the lake. As Sage had said, the water was a vile green colour, with salt-encrusted lines evidence that water levels had once been higher.
Up the other side.
Along the road stood a sign that read:
Warning. You are entering Native Land. No Access to main roads from here.
Oh crap.
A bit further, we hit a checkpoint with a closed gate across the road. A man sat in a white cubicle, to collect a toll or check a pass or something.
Reida veered to the side—again the wrong side—of the road and turned the truck in a big circle. I was going to have to talk to him about road sides and that this was not New Zealand, the only place where he had driving experience.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Reida took us back down the hill. With solid rock walls on both sides, there was nowhere else to go. The motorbike and car had both stopped in the middle of the road, but Reida did not slow down. He made directly for the motorbike and when the rider ran off, steered the truck in between the bike and the road edge. The truck side-swiped an old traffic sign. In the screeching noise, I thought I could hear the discharge of Evi’s gun, but I wasn’t sure, and I lost sight of the road when Reida made a sharp left-hand turn into a narrow turnoff.
This road had eroded badly, with crumbling surface and big potholes, and sand mounds encroaching on the verges. The lake was to the right, visible as glimpses in between the rock formations.
Anyu in the back was yelling coordinates at someone in Coldi. Likely someone from the register.
The team had abandoned all efforts to remain covert and had pulled out the emergency plugs.
The road ended in another abandoned car park, with behind that, a low building with wide verandas. A white-painted walkway led from the veranda across the rocks. It didn’t quite reach the water, but another such walkway did, and provided mooring spots for a handful of boats.
Damn, it was a marina, even if most of the jetties now lay dry.
Reida stopped the truck.
“What are we doing here?” I asked.
“Waiting for a pickup,” Veyada said. He opened the door. “Get into the building. Take everything out of the vehicle.”
“What? Did you just contact someone from the Coldi register and can they come all the way here?”
Sheydu replied, “They could, if they wanted to, but we don’t want to create that much trouble yet. We’ll see if this works.”
I followed the team to the building. I had no idea what the “this” was that Sheydu referred to.
The door into the building was locked, but one kick from Reida solved that problem.
We entered what looked like a function room or dining room, with tables and chairs stacked up in the corner. There was a bar directly opposite the entrance. The entire right wall was taken up with windows overlooking the lake—vile green with white-encrusted edges.
Sheydu, Anyu and Reida set up a virtual security perimeter by placing monitoring devices pointed at strategic directions: the road, the lake, and the area behind the building, where a narrower, much rougher road continued alongside the lakeshore.
Evi and Reida took up strategic positions on the corners of the veranda with Evi’s heavy-duty gun, which he clipped to the railing.
We made an inventory of all our other weapons. Sheydu was unhappy with the result. We should have taken all the gear out of the gyrocopter, she said. I agreed.
It was as close as I had ever heard Sheydu come to admitting she had made a mistake. Had we been wrong to trust Junco? Was he a victim as well?
Then we pulled out a table and some chairs and waited.
The sun was beating down and a hot wind had come up.
Anyu and Reida went to the veranda facing the lake with their receivers. Sheydu went out, holding her gun, and spoke with them. Their voices drifted in through the window.
After a while, Sheydu came back in and sat next to me at the table. I had to admit I was starting to feel hungry and was of a mind to check if there was a kitchen in this place and if so, if there was anything edible in it.
“Did anyone from town follow us?” I asked.
“Yes. They’ve set up camp between the rocks over there.”
She waved her hand at the opposite end of the abandoned car park, where the truck that had brought us here stood all alone.
“They’re probably waiting for reinforcements, and if I have to make a guess, those will come from the military base nearby. So we don’t have much time before we face trouble from that direction.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
“Junco has the aircraft.”
“Do you expect him to turn up?”
“It looks bad for his business if we don’t return from our excursion. He and the other fellow Sage will try to give us a hand.”
“I wish I could share your confidence. There were a lot of those young guys. They could easily intimidate Junco. He doesn’t live here anymore and is not part of their community.”
“No, but he has his son and needs money from his business. He lives alone with his son. He needs to be there. He needs the money tourists pay him. The boy can’t do much for himself.”
She showed me an image of Junco’s son. There was a lot more wrong with him than his inability to walk. He sat on the veranda of a house, strapped into a chair, his mouth open, looking cross-eyed at the ceiling.
I felt vaguely ill. I didn’t really want to know as much as this, especially not from Sheydu, who came from a society where disabled children were second-class citizens.
“Where did you get this?” I asked.
“He gave it to me. He wanted wheels for the boy like Larrana’s.”
Damn yes, that was true. “But do you think he’ll be able to control the chair like Larrana?”
She shrugged. “Junco says the boy can do more than people expect. My point is he wants this chair. He’s not going to abandon us.”
“But even if he can get Sage to help him, he’s by himself.”
“You didn’t think we were here by ourselves, did you?”
Well, no, but I’d assumed that the surveillance she’d hinted at previously was safely tucked away in orbit, watching us from a distance.
“You don’t have any military people following us, do you?” A vague horrified feeling crept into my stomach.
“Just some trustworthy locals.”
“From this town?”
“No, from the city.”
Of course. They were already in contact with the register and someone had followed us since we had arrived here, probably under direction of the military satellites. Some Coldi person with loyalty to Amarru whose loyalty was to Ezhya and through Ezhya, to me. I still had to get used to the fact that I warranted this sort of action these days.
“Was that who Anyu was talking to then?”
“Oh, that is not related to our immediate situation. But an Exchange satellite was passing over and there was a brief window of connectivity. It’s an observation satellite, not designed for communication, so the window was very short. She intended to do the usual thing—pass our details, log our trip—but found rather more chaos than she expected.”
“Chaos?”
That cold feeling again. Something had happened. In my mind, I heard that distant rumble again. A bit like thunder, but not quite the same.
“This is about the sound we heard last night?”
“Maybe. This is what we’ve been able to gather so far. It’s not complete, and we wouldn’t speak of this outside security except in an unusual circumstance.” And this, clearly, was such a circumstance. “Something has happened in
the way of an attack. Several towns have seen unrest and destruction overnight and there is great instability in the region.”
“Towns? Region?” I loved it when Sheydu was vague, but I also knew why she did it: during their training, it was hammered into Coldi security personnel to not speak aloud of suspicions until they were proven correct. It was indeed unusual that she spoke of it. She must be really worried or discomforted through the lack of communication.
And I became worried, too. “We need to get back to the rest of our association.”
“Yes.” A truer word was rarely spoken.
We had finished our brief excursion, which, all things considered, felt rather trivial now. If some political situation was about to blow up, I wanted to be nowhere near it, and the quicker we could get onto a flight out of Los Angeles, the better.
Sheydu continued, “Some people are going to provide help very soon. That is to get us out of this spot and back to the others. I don’t know what we will do when we join up. Hopefully, they will have a better idea of what’s going on.”
Another reason she had left the others in the hands of a group of highly capable people, which included Telaris, who spoke Isla. Damn, I really wanted to know what this was about.
“Do we know who is causing all this trouble? Is this an extension of existing conflicts?”
“Nothing is known at the moment. I have not wasted any resources trying to find out. I want to be out of here first.”
Fair enough. But help was taking a while to turn up. Meanwhile, the hostile town youth appeared to have come closer, and they had been joined by others, older men.
Several figures in dark clothing stood on the road next to a vehicle. None of them wore uniforms, but all of them were heavily armed.
I’d read about bands of heavily armed civilians patrolling the streets or marching in convoy to show their solidarity, but found it very hard to comprehend. In Barresh and on the gamra island, you could only carry weapons if you held specific permits and jobs. I’d thought those regulations were lax, because authorities in Barresh never checked permits unless a weapon had been fired.
The gear worn by these men was something on another level altogether. It was heavy-grade, military-style stuff. Where did they even get it?