"Come on in if you're long legged, blue eyed and blond," just slipped out and he almost said 'oops'. 'Those damned Scott's made good whiskey' was his next thought.
What came back delighted him, he just loved a good sense of humor, "Well, I've got two out of three covered. Does a bottle of Macallan Estate make up for height?" then in walked a young woman holding a bottle of whiskey in one hand with a chair in the other.
Beyond the possible was his only thought, a first in the bush. "Well sheet, I've died and gone to heaven! Home delivery of single malt in the bush by a woman no less!" just slipped past. He was finding it difficult to contain his humor.
He saw her eyes twinkle then she gave a short laugh as she held up the bottle. "Universal currency in the bush isn't it?" then she handed it over.
He stood, accepted the bottle and looked at it, checking it was real and not something he was dreaming. "Thank you so much. You really didn't have to but I appreciate it very much indeed. I'm Mike," he put his hand out. He didn't say, 'as I'm sure you know,' but he was damn sure she did.
She shook it with a strong grip he thought, "Kate," she said looking him squarely in the eyes with not a hint of surprise, "mind if I join you for an hour or two?"
He just laughed out loud. "Sure, sit, enjoy the fire. Thirty years I've been camping here, there, just about everywhere and you're the second to say damn near the same thing. Do you know the other person?"
He saw her smile and nod. There was something definite about her, something that said she was very much in control and aware of everything around her.
"I do," she smiled as she looked at him, a cheeky smile he thought. Then she 'nailed it' by saying, "However I'm completely human."
No one else, other than who he suspected she was could have said that. That 'let the cat out of the bag' as he was thinking that most likely very few knew of Resident or that he was from a long ways off. Those words also resolved his other question; 'had what Resident predicted come true? Was a new person, a new genus of person in existence and what would they be like.'
A quick glance at Kate said 'short' was what the new genus was like as she sure was short. And blonde.
"I came to just talk and maybe get a perspective from someone who can keep a secret." She had the hint of a smile about her face yet she was serious.
Before he could think any more his mouth led with, "A few of these single malts and I'll keep the secret from myself, whatever it was!" to which she chuckled.
“Mike, being able to talk to someone who knows the secret is good. Who else can I talk to?”
---oOo---
A sit in the chair, in the bush, absolutely no demands on her time and an amusing and charming person to share the night with; this was starting to really please her. She didn’t often get a chance to laugh, so much of her life was serious but Mike had a way with him that did it.
Resident had said Mike was an 'alternative thinker' which she took to mean he was not constrained by social norms, spoke his mind and didn't care all that much if he offended. She could deal with that.
“Mike,” she said slowly, “I came to meet you but also to get perspective. You know about Resident and Companion yet you’ve not revealed that secret. Same for me I hope. Tell me, if you were me, what would you do?”
Mike sat back in his chair also. He took his time answering as there was no point in rushing anything. Rushing in the bush, camping, that would be a sin.
“Kate. What can you do? That’s the real question. You’re just one person, I’m wondering what you can possibly do.”
She’d faced that so many times in the past it was growing massively ‘old’ however it was to be expected.
“Sorry Mike but I reject the premise so totally.” She looked at him firmly, “I can promise you I have achieved already yet I know I have so far to go.”
“Let me tell you. You’ve heard of the butterfly principle? Well history is littered with single people who’ve made a huge difference, usually in a bad way. Imagine if Hitler were assassinated early, or Stalin, or Pol Pot.”
“Mike,” she said slowly, “I need you to accept that I can estimate and analyze everything around me deeply. I’ve created systems, computer programs, and have a system with raw data collected automatically and fed into it constantly. It’s goal is understanding, through massive data analysis and prediction.”
“Just one country?” he asked as that was common.
She shook her head slowly, “No. Globally. A lot of the data is automatic injected, a lot is subscribed from clipping services. I work globally.” She was looking into his eyes deeply. “Seriously Mile, we process billions of bytes of raw text monthly, we warehouse it, we build models and use it daily. We search for trends.”
“OK,” said Mike, “tell me then, if you can, what’s a prediction? Something tangible.”
“Well, since you can keep a secret,” she said slowly, “in my life time I will develop then market an energy source that will solve our bulk raw energy needs. I’ll create a company to make and market it that will last long past the end of my life and become the biggest, anywhere. Those are things that will happen in the future. Right now I’m building influence, creating a support network. Mike, I can pick up the phone and call any leader on the planet and they’ll listen carefully to me and consider my needs. I have influence already. Tell me, what should I want Mike? Answer me that.”
“The President? You could call him?” Mike was looking surprised.
“Yes he would. He might argue and refuse but he would give me serious consideration and think twice about rejecting me.” She looked at him and nodded slowly.
“Why? Why would he do that now Kate?”
She sighed. “Mike, what is the one thing every President wants more than anything else?”
He shrugged, “Re-election. That drives them insane.”
She shook her head slowly, “No. It is how they are remembered. With my capabilities I offer them something they can’t get anywhere else; success. With me, I can shape their perceptions, I can deliver. They know it, I know it, we have a deal going.”
He laughed out loud, “The more I see of you, the less you look like the demure little girl who walked into the clearing. I take it you get some blow-back on that. I can’t imagine it’s all sweetness and happy trails.”
She rolled her eyes. “You have no idea how annoying I’ve had to be. I go to bed some nights ashamed of myself.” She chuckled, “But I get over it.”
---oOo---
Chatting with Mike had been pleasant. "I was told you were good company." She put her hand out then a smaller version of Companion shot out from the bush to lean against her leg, "His name is Cat," she said.
He laughed out loud, this was looking more and more insane he was thinking. "Two by two they come. Hello Cat, come, enjoy the fire."
He watched as Cat gave him a grin, gave him a head butt in the leg, accepted a pat for his trouble then sat by the fire, flopped, then just zoned out. "Nothing beats a fire Kate. Can I get you anything?"
She smiled even more, "Thanks Mike, but I just had dinner."
He watched as she sat on the chair then seemed to relax back into her chair, sinking down into it, almost becoming one with it.
He sat as well but made sure that the new bottle of Macallan Estate was put safely where it would not be kicked and not too close to the fire. They sat for a few minutes watching the fire. He glanced at her. She seemed, just like Cat, to be really enjoying the fire, letting the flames warm her face and if anything put her into a nearly trance like state.
Maybe that answered the question. It was not a man thing. Looking at Kate he saw the same zoned-out expression he suspected he wore at times.
Sitting by the fire, looking into the flames, looking at the past, the present and trying to see the future in their flickering. It was a person thing and even Resident had done it. Maybe it was a part of being alive then, part of having a brain and being able to dream and think.
Then the
y talked. They talked for hours. It was the best night he'd had in years.
---oOo---
Second Interlude
Mike was enjoying life.
Resident and Companion had given him a new perspective on space now that he knew there were definitely ‘people out there’ and he had met them, or at least one of them. Plus companion. Resident was right, it was impossible to think of Companion as an alien with that body shape.
He worked, he went camping, he enjoyed life.
He kept his eyes on the papers, news and events, scanning for whatever might happen that would hint at Kate or Resident. Some things did happen that he couldn’t credit to either of them though.
Mexico went through a melt down for a while, some noises were made about deteriorating international relations.
Then it went quiet. The secretary of state got involved for a while so everyone assumed he’d sorted it out.
---oOo---
A Good Offer
Tangewa Makkimo had just a small army, only about five thousand but what they lacked in numbers they more than made up for with brutality and a callous disregard for human life. Such was the way in their part of the world.
Worse, 'Tangie' as he was called, was erratic and unstable to the point of insanity. What could be laughed off one day with a chuckle would on another day bring forth torture then a slow death.
Tangie really didn't care about anything other than himself and his capricious ways which was, eventually, his downfall. It started a year prior when he decided he needed to increase the size of his army. They way he did this was to capture a whole village then quickly kill everyone too old or too young to join his army. When he then asked who wanted to swear allegiance to him he got a positive response.
After repeating this process a few times Tangie, for some reason known only to himself, decided he needed a presence on the world stage. He had a need to be noticed so he fixated on what he thought would be the best way to do that.
Tangie's first 'demonstration' was to lob petrol bombs into the American Embassy in Kinshasa. He quickly followed this up with two repeats each a week later and gleefully took responsibility for it.
Then for the fourth event he changed his tactic. His first three attacks each prompted a rapid response by US Marines and their local security contractors. Each of his attacks had been limited and somewhat superficial with no damage to people or property, but they did get attention.
His fourth attack was exactly the same, initially. It used the same number of petrol bombs thrown the same way and with the same lack of effect. This time, half an hour later when the results were being inspected, a dozen of his fighters who looked initially like spectators, uncovered then fired rocket propelled grenades into the forecourt and into the embassy itself.
The damage, injuries and loss of life was significant. With this attack, Tangie gained the immediate attention he desired. It also set events in motion that he did not properly foresee and could never have guessed at.
---oOo---
The jungle is never silent unless something terrible is about to happen. Even then, the sound of a tree moving fractionally in the wind, the sound of leaves or branches falling or the sound of the wildlife both big and small fills the silence.
Into that gentle sound, even at its lowest, the sound of a person sitting very still, motionless, blends in perfectly. Without movement, camouflaged, sitting small and silent, a person is impossible to see in the dappled light.
For that person, sitting very still, very quite, every single day, might be difficult but when the alternative is to be hacked into little pieces then thrown into the river, it becomes easier. Practice makes it easier too. After doing this for a few years it becomes second nature to almost stop the brain whilst watching the jungle, whilst looking for any change that might signal an intruder.
Missing an intruder was a real fear, or far worse. It was the biggest terror anyone could imagine. That would bring down on the unfortunate person and those around him a retribution, a punishment that went a lot further than anyone would otherwise believe. It would not be just any punishment either, it would be the kind of event that left a lasting lesson to those who survived, a life long lesson, an example and a motivation.
An example always had to be made. That was the fate of anyone, man, woman or child who did not follow Tangie’s orders to the letter but even when they did, the outcome was never certain.
Tangie’s memory was variable but his temper with his irrational erratic behavior were quite constant. Being part of Tangie’s 'tribe' as he called it was like living on a precipice, never knowing when you'd be pushed over the edge.
So, survival meant sitting still and very quiet for much of the day with just a few scraps of food for sustenance. Even without Tangie’s promise of retribution, it was still an important job. He had an area to watch. If someone came into the area he did not know, someone who looked like any kind of a threat, then his job was to throw his two hand grenades at them then run like the wind back to camp.
He was a third world smart land mine, Tangie had said solemnly. A land mine who could tell the difference between friends and not-friends. A land mine only ten years old, small, lonely, uneducated but a land mine none the less.
His was an important job.
---oOo---
For the Recon Marines, speed was bad in any infiltration against an entrenched enemy. Bad means death; death from discovery, death from capture and torture, death from any number of possibilities but usually triggered by making a mistake and speed is the best friend of mistakes on covert insertions.
The alternative to speed was a slow stealthy approach. Stealth is good but stressful, stealth takes longer and has its own terrors. It means that time taken to do anything and hence time available for discovery is greater but if you're not discovered, no one knows you are there and that is good. The goal is to glide in completely unseen, perform the task, then leave as quickly and quietly as possible.
This 'perform task' phase is where it usually gets tricky as quite often it's not possible to cover up things like explosions or rifle reports. These are quite incompatible with stealth.
---oOo---
Everything had been good till they got within two miles of their target zone. The closer they got, the more likely discovery was, the more dangerous it would be. For the last mile they would take greater care, move slower, blend into the jungle even more deeply.
They had not been making a sound, keeping to the shadows, moving carefully without any jerky movements, being extremely careful of their footing, now it was even more important.
Just like in their training, they were ghosts in the jungle. Silent, deadly, ghosts.
A mile was about the outer limit of where they could 'take the shot' from through the jungle with reasonable certainty. A mile in the jungle, with the huge noise from the fifty cal sniper rifle would mean that the muzzle blast and enormous noise would appear to come from everywhere, not from a single point source. This was a significant survival feature.
The McMillan fifty cal rifle, a superb sniper rifle, could make a reliable and solid tactical shot out to maybe two and a half times that distance but through the jungle, with eddying winds, a moving target; a mile was a much more do-able distance especially if you only got one shot. However, if that one shot hit its mark, a second shot was completely unnecessary.
Everything had gone well which was to be expected against a seemingly disorganized opponent comprising barely armed semi-civilians drafted into a rag tag army.
The problem, they knew, was that there were a lot of them, possibly thousands. Plus they were not centralized but spread out all over the area. That made it more difficult as they had to be even more careful of their infiltration. It was easily possible they would blow the mission by just walking round a tree into a group of Tangie’s army asleep, or eating, or resting. Not even in ambush. They could be unlucky but taking their time and doing it carefully reduced that risk. They were as near to invi
sible as it was possible to get. Ghosts.
Only a few dozen minutes from setting up for the shot it happened.
Out of nowhere a grenade had arced through the air, followed by a second which had bracketed them.
Throwing themselves down flat on the ground, and being spread out, meant that injuries were less than could be expected but the golden cloak of silence and secrecy was well and truly gone. A grenade in the quiet jungle in the dead of night saw to that.
If their ears had not been ringing, they would have heard the small running feet dodging round trees, jumping obstacles, tearing through the jungle as if it were perfectly lit.
Recon Marines trained hard for missions such as this; this was a mission any Recon Marine would cherish as the kind that fit their skill set to the letter.
Training also included when the mission went to hell, when they had to, quite literally, run for their lives. Just like now.
The old saying was "Hard training made easy missions," was being tested to the full.
Now, running as quickly as they could was difficult in the dark jungle when they had two injured team mates to support but they made good progress even so.
They ran in a single file, the team leader at the front, the two injured members in the middle each with a supporting team member, then a trail member. Just six of them which they had thought, initially, was about double what was required for this tasking.
As they ran they knew they were making noise, exposing themselves, but it couldn’t be helped. All through the jungle they heard the shouts, the random gunfire and the occasional explosion behind them. All of that made them very aware they were being pursued by Tangie’s army and their blood was up.
Tangie’s army knew their quarry was close; each and every one of his army wanted to be the one to present Tangie with the head of an intruder. Favor with Tangie was everything, life itself.
Running was also as dangerous as hell when you factored in that at any moment someone could spring up from a hidden position, throw two hand grenades then evaporate back into the jungle. Just like before.
The Camper: First Contact and the Planet Tamer (The Stellar Universe Book 0) Page 13