The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  They finally got the ship anchored near the former Tengri fort. Danei had gestured at it and said, “Tengri?”

  Charles smiled and made the gun sign, firing many times at the fort, and then grinning very broadly. He was surprised that it was the crew who cheered lustily by stomping their right feet.

  Boats put out from shore with American medics, plus Ezra. Ezra shook Charles’ hand. “I am so glad to see you again, Cadet! This is going to save General Briggs a lot of trouble!”

  “Are Adam and Sally okay?”

  “They never heard or saw a thing; they were upset when the cryppies blamed you for what happened to Denise. We sent them back home a week ago.”

  “I haven’t mentioned it yet, but back there, when the B’Lugi intercepted the pirates -- the pirate leader took one look at the B’Lugi ship and went over the rail and into the ocean a second later. I’d like to think it was too far to swim, but...”

  Ezra nodded and finished for him, “But it may not be.

  “It would be nice to think that the volcano is about to blow and he’ll get it anyway -- but now we have seismologists who have equipment good enough to register earthquakes at the volcano. They report that there are a few tremors, but those tremors don’t indicate an imminent eruption threat. However they were adamant about one thing -- that’s one big volcano, and appears to have been dormant for tens of thousands of years.

  “They say that large eruptions are frequently triggered by earthquakes that cause landslides. It’s like opening a soda pop bottle that has been shaken hard before being opened. It fizzes all over the place. They believe that the planet isn’t very geologically active, but when it gets going, life gets exciting. They agree with the biologists. They think life on this planet has received repeated set backs. Some areas have progressed more than others.

  “They took some readings from a magma intrusion here that they think occurred a billion years ago -- but the magma itself is rock that is six billion years old. The oldest rocks on Earth are four and a third billion years, and you have to hunt for them -- you don’t find them in the first rocks you look at.”

  Charles laughed. “We are way sidetracked!”

  “Yes, that’s because Andie is due here within an hour with Melek and Chaba, and Kris will be here at about the same time with General Briggs and Kurt Sandusky. It will be a lot easier to talk when we are all face-to-face.”

  “Is Diyala coming?” Charles asked, thinking they could cut a couple of people from the translation loop.

  Ezra looked uncomfortable. “Kris says she was reviewing Diyala’s schoolwork with her tutor a few weeks ago. Diyala is particularly interested in history and science. Aside from the very obvious problems that the Arvalans would have with a Tengri listening in, I have to think the B’Lugi would have just as many, if not more.”

  “Oh. I guess that wasn’t such a good idea. I did something a few days ago that I’ll hope you’ll agree with.”

  “Besides giving up the radio?”

  “I still have the radio; I never gave it up. No, Danei was broadcasting full and complete reports home.”

  “You said that; we talked about it.”

  “It wasn’t hard to get her to stop, but the damage was already done. You said that there were Tengri warships headed towards our position.”

  “Yes...”

  “I had her send a report that they had found enough to justify returning, and were now headed southeast, hoping to avoid Tengri ships on the way back.”

  Ezra nodded, and expanded on Charles’ report. “And after that, the B’Lugi stopped trying to talk to their base. The word that I got today was the Tengri have finally figured that out.” Ezra shook his head. “Who could believe that the Tengri have cracked the B’Lugi codes and don’t realize that they are open to the same thing?”

  Charles nodded.

  “Get out the radio,” Ezra told him. “Let’s see how we’re doing.”

  They talked for about a fifteen minutes with various people. Kris, Kurt and General Briggs were on an aircraft over Utah, Andie was on an ATV a few miles north of the rookery, and they had to stop to talk, because Chaba was in another vehicle.

  Danei was patient, but kept being called away to deal with various problems aboard the ship. Finally it was decided to just put everything on hold until everyone was present.

  An hour later a very disparate group assembled on Danei’s gun deck. The cannon ports were open, letting in light and air, although you could still smell the powder smoke from the fighting a few hours before.

  The sailors had set up a long table, made up of several smaller ones, pushed together and covered with a cloth, with simple wooden benches to sit on. General Briggs and Kurt Sandusky were there representing Norwich; Kris, Andie, and Ezra were representing the rookery, Colonel Levi of the IDF, Melek, Captain Milan from the fort and Chaba for the Arvalans; Danei and two of her officers and Charles.

  The general had made a beeline to Charles and shook his hand hard, but not saying anything. Finally, just as they went to sit down the general managed to get his throat working. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you again, Cadet. We’ll talk at length later. You are well?”

  “Well enough, sir. Cuts and bruises. The worst of it you can’t see.”

  General Briggs thanked Danei for rescuing Charles, and Charles reiterated his own thanks and then they got down to business.

  At one point, Chaba told Danei that she had been a slave of the Tengri and that Kris Boyle had killed her master and freed her. The translation was still painfully slow. Danei spoke to Chaba in Tengri, Chaba translated to Arvalan and Melek and Ezra would puzzle out the meaning, with frequent questions back to Danei through Chaba. Then Ezra gave the Americans the English translation as best as he could. And the process in reverse was equally as slow. Still, it went much faster than when it had all been over the radio.

  Perhaps the most difficult part was when Danei wanted to know where everyone was from. She was, she told them, Danei Korei of the B’Lugi, who lived in the southeastern corner of the continent that held them, the Tengri, another country called “Verada” and another country called “Canot.” Of the four nations, the Tengri were the largest, and the B’Lugi the smallest. Many times over the ages the Tengri had tried to eliminate their “weakest” opponent except that half of B’Lugi lands were mountainous and the other half coastal bays. The B’Lugi were the furthest advanced when it came to ship-building and grew up in a centuries-old warrior tradition.

  The Veradan people were the second largest nation and had once shared half of a long river valley with the Tengri. It was a river that rivaled the Mississippi or the Nile in length, and it was extraordinarily fertile and had been the heart of Verada. A thousand years before, the Tengri had launched a sneak attack of a half million men whose sole goal was to drive Verada from the valley. Every male prisoner was slaughtered, the women beaten, raped, and then used to breed more slaves for the Tengri. Nearly a third of the Veradans had died in a month.

  What saved them was that the Tengri hadn’t thought that they could push through the mountains that lined the river valley to the east. That gave the Veradans time to regroup -- and for many thousand B’Lugi mountain fighters to come to their assistance and teach them how to fight in the mountains.

  Two hundred years later someone slipped up among the Tengri and the Canot learned that the Tengri were going to come for them next -- their border with the Tengri lands was a vast and terrible desert.

  The Canot didn’t have many people living in the desert and when the Tengri actually came, the Canot desert dwellers retreated south, destroying wells and water sources as they fled. Less than halfway through the desert the Tengri had to stop, realizing that if they went much further they’d all die of thirst.

  The retreat from the desert of Canot was the worst defeat the Tengri had suffered, since the B’Lugi had driven them from their ancestral lands, and considering the number of Tengri who died, it was their worst defeat, ever. Thous
ands died in the desert from the heat, the thirst, and from Canot desert dwellers who were at home there and who shot longbows from cover, killing many of the Tengri.

  Still, it was a large desert and eventually the Canot couldn’t pursue further north, either.

  For centuries, ever since, there had been a stalemate, with the Tengri trying to lull the others into believing that the Tengri had changed. But, since the Tengri constantly raided all along the three borders to add slaves, no one believed them.

  The Tengri had tried a sea-borne invasion of Canot a hundred years before. They had been about to strike when a huge storm shattered the Tengri fleet. Nine out of ten ships were lost, and an even greater percentage of their soldiers, as the smaller, lighter ships had survived better than the large, clumsier transports.

  Danei was fascinated to learn that Melek and the Arvalans were descendants of those they too called “The Builders.” The Builders had been the first real civilization on the continent, and even after this long, their feats were legendary.

  “It was our greatest shame, our greatest triumph,” Danei told them.

  “We don’t understand,” was the response from Melek.

  What followed next was a geography as well as a history lesson.

  Southeast of the coast of B’Lugi were chains of islands, down to one Danei called “Stefara.” Stefara was the gem of all of the islands, more than a thousand miles south of the mainland. It was rich in raw materials, the ground was fertile, and of course, the climate was wonderful. Nearly a million people lived on the island and the smaller islands around it. It nearly rivaled the capital on the mainland.

  Out of nowhere, the sky turned dark for the B’Lugi on the mainland, and moment by moment Danei explained how the seas rose and swallowed cities and smashed ships. Dust rained down that was feet thick, and the climate was destroyed for years. It rained too much, it was too cold for many crops and the dust choked everything.

  That was when the Tengri went after the Builders. The B’Lugi had been grateful, Danei told them, because they had all they could handle dealing with the effects of the strange weather and were glad that they didn’t have to fight the Tengri any further.

  Eventually, ships went south, trying to see how their comrades fared. Island after island was denuded of vegetation, and then buried under thick coatings of mud and dust. The island of Stefara was gone without a trace, as were all the islands around it. Three million or more of the B’Lugi had vanished without a sign of their passing -- except the bad weather. Between the loss of Stefara and the deaths caused by the tidal waves, and the rain and the famine that followed, more than two-thirds of the B’Lugi had been killed.

  There was a moment of silence. “We should have helped the Builders, anyway,” Danei told them. “We would have, had we known all of those to the southeast were dead. Instead, we took care of each other and turned our heads from what the Tengri did to the Builders. You have no idea how many times over the years we wish that we had joined in common cause with the Builders against the Tengri.

  “The Builders were just that: builders. They weren’t fighters; they learned in the end, but by then it was too late. None of us, not the Veradans, not the Canot, and above all, not the B’Lugi, tolerate slavery. It has become the highest honor a person can claim: Chain Breaker.”

  Melek got up and walked up to Danei and held his knuckles to his forehead, showing the broken chain tattoos. She bowed to him, then buried her head on his chest, sobbing.

  Andie spoke up. “In case anyone can’t figure it out -- the Tengri are bastards who’ve been killing and enslaving people as long as anyone can remember. They have been responsible for tens of millions of deaths, for eternities of servitude.”

  Andie waited patiently until Danei’s head was up, and her tears wiped away. “Ask her if she wants me to show her how to kill Tengri?”

  Clearly, Danei did. Andie gestured for them to go up on the main deck. She found a wooden bucket, picked it up and carried it to the stern and tossed it diagonally away from the ship. Then, without a word, she walked to the shrouds and started up. She got about forty feet off the deck, about two hundred feet from the bucket, which was slowly floating away from the ship. Andie wrapped her arms around the ropes.

  Charles had no idea what she intended to do. He learned that no one had seen Andie Schulz for a long time without a P90. She slid the weapon off her shoulder and lined up on the bucket and there was a “Brrrp” of sound. One bullet was short, and two hit the bucket. After that there were a lot of “Brrps” until the bucket was just floating splinters. Andie put the weapon back over her shoulder and came down much faster than she had gone up.

  Charles was stunned when Andie addressed Kris. “Linda likes her lady buff!”

  Andie took the weapon off her shoulder and offered it to Danei. “Tell her that’s hers. Tell her that I used that very gun to kill a baker’s dozen Tengri not very far from here. Make friends with us and pretty soon, there will be no Tengri.”

  That, of course, led to questions about exactly who the Americans were. Danei could understand that the Arvalans were descendants of the Builders. The slaves of the Tengri had legends that one day the Chain Breakers would come and free them. The Americans? That was a much tougher question to answer.

  During the late afternoon they took a break and Charles sought out Colonel Levi. “Thank you,” he told her. “Words can’t express what I feel.”

  Her eyes gleamed. “This was a proof of principle, Cadet Evans. This device may save other lives, the lives of my fellow soldiers.”

  “Well, if you ever need someone who can vouch for whether or not it works -- let me know.”

  She laughed, and patted his arm. “I’d have broken one of your legs if you didn’t. All governments are reluctant to spend money on the assumption that you have to rescue a prisoner. It means failure up and down the line; politicians hate that. Still, it happens, and we owe people like you -- and our soldiers who have been taken captive -- our best efforts, no matter how embarrassed we are in the first place about how we lost someone.”

  “I know this sounds stupid, Colonel, but you’re a woman. They aren’t letting me see Melea, the woman I was held captive with. I know Danei and the others mean only the very best, but could you find a way to tell Melea that she has to look to the future now, and not to the past? And that she shouldn’t dwell on what they did to hurt her, but on what Danei and the Arvalans will do to help her.”

  Colonel Levi saluted him. “Of course, Evans. Consider it done. One of these days, you really should come to Israel. You will find that most of us speak English and most assuredly we respect people who can keep it together when the world falls apart around them. Israel exists in a sea of enemies; more than once the world has fallen apart around us. We survive by keeping it together.”

  Charles returned the salute, not certain what he wanted to say.

  Later, General Briggs drew him to one side. “We let your parents and classmates know that you’re safe.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You understand that you can talk about what happened in broad, but not the nitty-gritty details?”

  “Nothing about the radio or the UAV,” Charles told him.

  “Exactly. I am so sorry, Cadet; I thought this would be safe. Kris, Andie, Ezra and Kurt warned me that it wasn’t as safe as I thought. I thought they were exaggerating. Their people were safe, after all.” He spat on the ground. “Their people find a safe spot and stay there. They have lots of guards, and they keep sharp. Running you all over the place was a serious mistake.”

  “I don’t think so, General,” Charles told him. “We had a limited time and there is a lot of ground to cover.” He waved at the ship. “I mean, just how do you describe this in an hour or two?”

  “You can’t. I suppose you’re right, but it doesn’t sit well with those that are responsible for your safety.”

  “Sir, if Norwich students wanted a safe life, they’d have gone to junior college. Thi
s is why I matriculated at Norwich, sir. This is the sort of thing I wanted to learn. Here I am, a young man, sitting at a table with some of the most powerful people on this planet, sided by some of the smartest people from mine. People from Norwich are here, helping to decide policy, deciding how to manage multiple crises. I couldn’t ask for more, sir.”

  “Your personal safety,” General Briggs told him.

  “Sir, when you were in combat, were you more concerned with your duty or your personal survival? I can’t believe it was your survival. I didn’t decide on Norwich so I could grow old and sit at a fireplace, telling my children stories of what never was. I want to do something, sir.” Charles waved again at the table where they’d been meeting. “I wanted to do civil affairs before this; now I can’t imagine doing anything else. Andie Schulz, Kris Boyle -- you -- you are all trying to create a better world. I can’t imagine a more noble thing to do with my life.”

  “You want to do civil affairs?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Here or in Iraq?”

  That stopped Charles. “Honestly, sir, I don’t know. I’ve learned a lot in the last two weeks; I don’t think it will matter much where I apply it.”

  “Do you understand that at meetings like this, the leaders exchange personal messages? Requests for information, above and beyond what’s been said -- and they also ask for personal favors?”

  “I’m not surprised, sir,” Charles replied.

  “Danei has asked if you would be available to return to her homeland with her.”

  Charles nearly choked.

  “You wouldn’t be as out of contact as all of that; we do have better radios and NASA tells us that they have rocket we can get through the Far Side door that can orbit a small comsat, given the lower gravity of the planet. One won’t cut it, but a dozen or so would. It might be six months or so until you’re in regular contact with home, but it would be coming.