The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  “We’d appreciate -- I’d appreciate -- any help you can give us,” Ezra told her steadily. “Andie will appreciate your help in the form of spendable gold and Kris will just grin ear-to-ear.”

  She nodded, and motioned to one of the others who spoke into a radio of his own.

  “I am, Sergeant, Colonel Irina Levi, of the IDF, on detached duty with Mossad. You wouldn’t want to spread that around.”

  “I never talk about business.”

  “I don’t either. A few years ago I reached a crossroads in my career. I was told I could become the first Israeli astronaut -- a dream my father had for me since I was a toddler -- or I could go in the direction I have. My pilot colleagues were -- contemptuous -- of my choice. Do you know what happened to the man who went in my stead into space?”

  Ezra shook his head.

  “He was aboard Columbia when the space shuttle broke up on reentry. I, on the other hand, have killed more than a hundred Palestinians who were been raining rockets and mortars on my country. I never regretted my decision before the accident and I don’t regret it now.”

  “Will it affect your decision if I tell you that I couldn’t do that? I stopped being able to put a target designator on them, either.”

  “Have you ever seen the movie ‘Twelve o’Clock High?’” she asked and Ezra shook his head.

  “Look it up and watch it. There is nothing wrong, Sergeant, in getting tired of the killing. It is inhuman not to.”

  “But you haven’t,” Ezra told her.

  “That is because my husband and my two baby daughters were under one of those rockets when it came down, Sergeant. I am no longer human.”

  * * *

  Charles spent his waking hours trying to make himself understood to Melea, and she worked with him to help him learn their language. It was clear that the only reason she did it was fear; she was lethargic and downtrodden. More brow-beaten than he’d ever seen another person.

  At first it was agonizingly slow. He was lucky to come up with one word an hour, and those were usually some of the simple ones. Still, he pressed and she tried her best.

  Meals were infrequent -- beatings were much more frequent. More than once a meal for Melea including being fondled and once the man simply took her in front of Charles.

  Charles had had his attitude change totally when he had realized what had happened to Denise. He was no longer shocked by the brutality of his captors and finally understood the underlying apathy of the woman. There was no hope -- there was this, each and every day, with no hope of escape except death. Once she mimed strangling herself, but he saw that chain she had wasn’t long enough to do the job.

  It was that realization that drove him in the following days.

  There was nothing else, really, that he could do. He owed it, he figured, to Denise to even the score. He added Melea to the score and then recalled the stories that they had spoken of about the slave room in the Rookery. The Norwich cadets had been taken inside the chamber and allowed to look around. At the time, he’d been half-bored. He’d never be half-bored again at a briefing!

  On the third day of his captivity, his throat was scratchy and he felt like crap. It would be ironic, he thought, if he was the first human to catch an Arvalan disease. Except he was pretty sure it was just the garden variety sore throat. The best thing was that his captors decided that sunlight would fix him up, and they started bringing Charles and the woman up on deck for an hour in the early mornings. They were kicked and prodded, if they didn’t work on language, but it was better than before and he could be glad of that.

  It was the eighth day that things changed. He’d been sick for several days with typical flu or strep symptoms, he thought, exacerbated by bad treatment and bad food. He eventually started to recover and the leader had kicked him awake and counted the days again -- evidently they didn’t give you time off to be sick.

  After the leader made that clear, the bastard raped Melea again, laughed and walked away.

  Charles tried to say something soothing to Melea, but she simply stared into the distance. For a while he was afraid she’d gone over the edge, but finally she was talking again.

  They were brought up on deck for on that eighth day and he’d tried to talk about the sea and sky with Melea. That seemed to suit her. It was only after a half hour on deck that he noticed the small ball lodged in the wood of the rail near where they sat. He leaned over and looked at it, and frowned. Half of it appeared to be clear acrylic plastic with what looked like an ear bug inside. The other part was opaque. It didn’t look at all like something Arvalan, and so he’d pulled it off the railing to look at it more closely.

  There were small spikes in a tetrahedron, and it was an exercise in caution not to prick himself with one. There was a very prosaic arrow on the clear piece, almost assuredly pointing in a direction to twist. He looked around. Melea was humming something softly to herself, their two minders were talking about something and Charles had a feeling it was a debate about who got to rape Melea next.

  He twisted the cap and it promptly came off, and sure enough, in it there was an ear bug. He slipped it into his ear quickly, using the ear on the off side of his body. There was a small red button underneath where the ear bug had been housed that was labeled simply “Talk.”

  How such a thing could exist, he couldn’t imagine. How it came to be where he’d found it was equally unimaginable. He pushed the button. “Evans,” he whispered.

  A woman’s voice said dryly. “Goodness, Cadet! You actually have a brain! I’m impressed. Wait one!”

  Then Ezra’s voice came through the bug. “You okay, Charles?”

  “Yes, Mister Lawson.”

  “Hide this, take out the ear bug. One of those two bastards might notice. Is the girl okay?”

  That startled Charles. How could they possibly know who was around?

  “I don’t know. They rape her at least once a day. She’s pretty close to the edge, I think.”

  “Then, for now, don’t let her know about the radio. Later, Charles! We’ll talk again after dark. Hang tight!”

  He’d already observed that Arvalans loved their sleep and even those who had night duty frequently dozed off. Waiting until everyone was asleep took the patience of Job, but he managed to survive the rest of the day without going crazy. A good thing, too.

  “Evans,” he said again, when he was sure he was the only one awake.

  “Cadet Evans,” the woman’s voice came again, “I am Colonel Irina Levi, the Israeli Defense Force. You are on the receiving end of highly classified technology developed to rescue Israeli soldiers captured by our enemies. I assure you, that you will never, ever want to even hint, even in your most private conversations with your best friend that such things exist. Now, here is Sergeant Lawson.”

  Ezra’s voice came on. “Cadet Evans -- I don’t know what to say.”

  “I never heard a thing. One second Denise and I were in bed, then bam! I was on the floor and being gagged and tied. It wasn’t until they removed my blindfold that I realized what had happened to Denise.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “No one could lose that amount of blood and live,” Charles told him. “Tell me I get to kill some of these assholes.”

  “That’s a tougher problem. Do you understand that you suffer from being on the wrong side of a three feet by six foot logistics bottleneck? We could get the UAV that’s following you through only by taking it apart. And we had to take apart the support equipment as well.

  “We can talk, but Cadet -- as for reaching you, you might as well be on the moon.”

  “I understand. They thought I could show them how to work the Barrett. They nearly killed me before I convinced them that it’s out of gas. Then they brought me a box of scrap metal and wanted me to build them another one.”

  “You’re shitting me!”

  “No! I field-stripped the Barrett and showed them that there was a difference in shapes. Their boss is now having the woman teach me
their language.”

  “You say she can’t be trusted?”

  “Ezra, I’d like to say yes she could, but God alone knows how long she’s been a slave. They rape her in front of me every day or so. She’s lethargic. I don’t know if she’d give me up to get better treatment for herself or not.”

  “Then you had better not trust her.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Learn the language. This transmitter isn’t much good. It’s got only thirty-six hours of juice and then it’s dry. It took a special miracle, obviously, to deliver it to you!”

  Charles could only nod. He could just as easily not been curious that morning. If it had arrived while he was sick, he wouldn’t have noticed, much less cared.

  “So, I’m supposed to hang tight?”

  “Yes. How long did they give you to learn the language?”

  “Four of their six-day weeks.”

  “Well, I did pretty good at learning the language when I had to. If push comes to shove, we can spend a little juice and I can give you a quick briefing. It would be better if you had a pad and paper, but that might make them curious.”

  “We’re headed southwest,” Charles told the older soldier.

  “Yes. We have an asset that was up yesterday. It’ll over fly over you tonight, and explore further along your base course. Patience, Cadet -- don’t do anything rash. Keep doing what you’ve been doing.”

  Charles laughed low. “The one thing I’m more intent on, more than anything else, is payback. Nothing is going to get in the way of that!”

  “One last thing; do you understand that Denise’s coworkers first thought that the person who killed her was you?”

  “I swear -- she was...”

  “I know, I know. We understand. That said, now they too understand what’s happened. They called on the radio today and told me that the unknown radio source has been moving steadily west. It was southeast of the Fingers, moving steadily westwards. It wasn’t until the last couple of days that we realized that you’re there. We have no idea who that is, who’s transmitting, and we can’t hear who they’re transmitting to, which is odd.

  “Maybe they are broadcasting on a wing and a prayer,” Charles told him.

  “Then they’d be better off shutting their traps. The Tengri know there’s a hostile ship out there, and they are vectoring ships towards them. A half dozen of their frigates and two larger ships.

  “Have you heard anything from anyone other than that ship?” Charles asked.

  “No, we’re pretty sure you are with Rangar’s pirates... which makes them roughly Arvala’s technology level. Have you seen any crossbows?”

  “There’s one, but the guy guards it as closely as if it was his girlfriend.”

  “Things like that, Cadet Evans -- those are important observations. They tell us what their interpersonal relationships are like and how their troops are equipped. What else do you know?”

  “I’ve never heard the boss addressed by name, and he’s definitely the boss -- everyone else is scared of him. He seems knowledgeable about running the ship, too. I see him most days by the ship’s wheel.

  “Ezra, they put a dog collar and a chain on me.”

  “Yeah, we saw. Patience, Cadet. We’re working night and day trying to find a way to get to you.”

  Charles blinked. Of course they were! So why hadn’t Ezra said something sooner? Well, duh! It was self-evident, right?

  He shivered. He didn’t trust Melea and these bastards could torture him at any time. At this point in time Charles couldn’t reveal much more than someone was planning on coming... and Ezra had no intention of revealing any more than that!

  “I understand why you can’t talk about it, Ezra,” he said levelly.

  “I figured, but...”

  “Ezra, I field stripped the Barrett. I have no faith that they’ve been able to keep the parts straight and not to have fucked them up. If you would, when you come, please bring me another and some more mags. A lot more mags.”

  “You’ve got it, brother! Now, you rest. Save your strength and the radio. Good luck, Charles.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The woman’s voice spoke up. “We have to take the bird a little out of relay range, Cadet. Don’t try to talk to us until just before dawn; don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from us until tomorrow night.”

  Chapter 35 :: Rescued

  Ezra looked at the Israeli colonel. “What’s this?” he said, when he saw her looking at a printed picture that had come from her laptop.

  “Come,” she said, beckoning. She turned to one of the technicians. “The enhancements on screen three please.”

  Ezra stood next to her, and the PC laptop screen lit up. At first he wasn’t sure what he was seeing; it was hard to make out much more than a vague outline in the haze. “A mountain?” he said eventually.

  “A mountain,” she agreed. “Shel, the next photo.”

  She turned to Ezra. “That first picture was taken shortly after dawn yesterday morning. At nightfall they were fifteen or sixteen miles closer. This is how it looked then.”

  The picture sharpened, and he could see it was a large, cone-like mountain in the distance.

  “It looks like a volcano,” Ezra said idly.

  She snorted. “Perspective is one of the first casualties of operation of these cameras, Sergeant. At nightfall that mountain was more than thirty miles away. And it towers over the horizon -- a horizon that is further away than on Earth. My computer says that mountain is thirty or forty thousand feet tall -- although there are too many assumptions to be very accurate.”

  Another picture, still clearer, showed.

  Ezra swallowed. “That’s a lot of mountain,” he told her.

  “And here it is at sunrise today.”

  It was much clearer, and no longer fit in one camera frame. He whistled.

  “Yes,” the colonel agreed dryly. “I understand that the Arvalans don’t know about volcanoes or earthquakes.”

  “Not so far as Andie or I could figure,” he told her.

  Colonel Levi ran her finger over the mountain, well down the flank. “These look like clouds,” she asserted. Ezra agreed that they did indeed look like clouds.

  She zoomed in at the peak. “If those are clouds, what are these?”

  “These” were darker and angrier, and seemed to be coming up from the peak.

  “Oh my!” Ezra said mildly.

  “Talk to your people back on Earth. We need some seismometers here yesterday,” she told him bluntly. “That looks like a huge volcano, and I suspect that it’s not smoking fine Hawaiian ganja.”

  She motioned to the controls. “Right now, I’m moving the bird further south -- I hope Cadet Evans doesn’t desire to talk to us until sunset, because the bird is unlikely to be back in position until at least then. I want to get a little closer still in daylight.”

  Ezra hastened off to call Jake back at the rookery and then Andie up in Arvala. The reception wasn’t good, but it was good enough.

  Andie’s reaction was atypical Andie Schulz. She listened for a few moments and sighed. “I wish I had a couple of clones; it would make life so much easier. The Arvalans are getting close to launching their first frigate; there are still problems with the first cannons they poured, there’s trouble with the steam engine that Hank built for their steam dozer... and I want so much to be there to make sure we get Charles back... And I wouldn’t mind seeing the pictures of a five-, six-, or maybe even a seven-mile high volcano.

  “On top of everything else, I’m spending money like water. If I don’t watch out, I’m going to come crashing down financially, because the price of copper is half what it was. Some clever person in Arvala has noticed if he lowers the price of gold he’s willing to pay for copper, he gets more copper for the same amount of gold. The bugger has discovered speculation.”

  “Bummer,” Ezra said with feeling.

  “Right now, of course, there will be some relief when some
one gets some more gold in from further west that they will sell for a higher price, but the fact is that for every Arvalan there are six thousand people back on Earth. Copper is a precious metal here, with few other uses besides coinage and jewelry, and the market for jewelry isn’t terribly elastic, unless the price drops. I might add our copper speculator is still charging market prices for the copper he sells.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Ezra asked.

  “Keep me posted; keep General Briggs, Linda Walsh and Kris posted. I’m sending Linda back there for the time being to act as Jake’s deputy and see if she can expedite faster shipments through the Far Side door.”

  “Roger that, then,” he told her.

  The Israeli colonel motioned to Ezra when he came back to the controls for the UAV. “We can finally see the base of the mountain now. We have low light capability for the camera and we can see what amounts to a small town. If this was a Palestinian camp, I’d say we were looking at eight hundred to a thousand of them.

  “The ship won’t make landfall until tomorrow afternoon, and they may slow down further. There are a lot of rocks in the bay there; I imagine they navigate that only in the daytime. The UAV is headed back to the ship. We have, by the way, detected another ship off to the east. It’s currently tacking to the south, ostensibly ‘away’ from the island, but they are coming on fast.

  “Too fast, really. If they kept on the tack they’re on all night, just before dawn they’ll be on the rocks. Nine chances out of ten that mountain is making a hell of a dimple in the local crust, and there is deep water all around that island. I’m pretty sure that the water here usually shoals gradually, so they may be surprised. Or, they may tack. If they do tack, shortly after sunrise, they may well be in visual range of Cadet Evan’s ship.

  “Your signals people tell me that that ship is almost certainly an unknown. It’s possible they know about these pirate folk, just as it’s possible that they don’t. We’ll be in range of Cadet Evans in about an hour after local sunset. I hope he hasn’t been too upset at the loss of contact.”