by John F. Carr
Suddenly, there was a faint noise in the brush. Sergei reached into his duffle, and pulled out his handgun, shifting it to a pocket. He rose and began to walk toward the latrine, trying to act like nothing was amiss. But as soon as he was among the trees, he circled back. Sure enough, there was a gang of men arrayed around the camp, readying for an ambush. Sergei picked a spot behind a fallen tree, set a row of cartridges on the tree in front of him, screamed loudly to warn the camp, and began to fire. He emptied his pistol quickly, flipped it open and dumped out the empties. He thumbed in the new cartridges, closed and spun the cylinder. He turned to scan behind himself, and it was a good thing he did, because two of the bandits had gotten behind him, and as he fired at them, he heard the whistle of shots passing close-by, and slapping against the tree trunks around him. Then he ducked behind a tree as he realized that some of those shots were coming from the camp. Gunfire was gunfire, whether it came from friends or foes.
When the shooting stopped, they checked over the bodies. The bandits were a pathetic bunch. They were whipcord thin, their faces covered with sores, and with gaps in their teeth, obviously suffering from vitamin deficiencies and malnutrition. The steamboat crew stripped them of their weapons and whatever pitiful belongings they had, both as restitution for the attack, and to keep the firearms out of the hands of compatriots that might still be lurking in the woods.
After that encounter, which fortunately left only two of the passengers with minor wounds, Sergei could do no wrong onboard the vessel. They all felt they owed him their lives, and he found there was not much he could do without receiving offers to help.
One evening, as the boat made its careful way upriver through the faint light of a waning dimday, Sergei lay on the bow, resting his head on his bundle, thinking about Moira, and the folks back at Harp’s. This world was a harsh one, with more than its share of hardships, and hard people. But despite that, it was also populated with good people who wanted to do the right thing, and make a good life for themselves and their friends. Their music and their friendships, shared drink and shared food, brought simple beauty to a life hard enough to drive many to despair.
The preacher was right, greed and power would soon bring woe to this fragile frontier civilization. Sergei vowed to finish his mission as quickly as possible. And if Moira would have him, he vowed to send word back to Russia that he was resigning his commission, and do what he could to make a new life here. He had trouble keeping his mind off her, her blue eyes, the smell of her hair, the feel of her touch. He was no boy, a man of experience, but this woman whom he had never even slept with made him feel like no other woman ever had.
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It took twenty days of travel to get to the headwaters of the Jordan. Hours before they arrived at Oasis Town, they could see the dormant volcano that stood to the north of it. An impressive sight. It was far broader than it was wide, a shallow cone with the top appearing to be sliced off. Sergei wondered if there was a lake inside that cone. He had seen mountains that looked much like it in western Siberia.
But while the mountain was impressive, the town at its base did not appear to be worth the price of the long journey. It was carved out of the heavy forests that cloaked the hills, and most of the buildings were on the south side of the river. The north side was reserved for those in the employ of Dover Mineral Development, and that restriction was enforced by hard-eyed men with automatic weapons.
There was a vertical launch space shuttle in a flat field a few hundred yards away from the buildings on the north bank, a squat cone with broad landing legs. A small industrial building next to the landing field looked like it was set up to separate water into its oxygen and hydrogen components, refrigerate and compress them, and fuel the rocket for its return to orbit. Someone was flying in and out of here directly, which suggested space travel outside CoDominium channels and knowledge. A tightly controlled ferryboat ran on a cable from one side of the river to the other.
Sergei and the preacher found themselves in Purity on the south bank; where some bars and mercantile establishments had set down to earn money off the miners. The biggest attraction in the village was a bath house, which offered baths in naturally heated mineral water, evidence that perhaps the volcano to the north was not completely dead. After their long journey, many of the steamboat’s passengers gave the baths a try, and came out smelling clean, but a bit sulfurous.
A Dover Mineral man met with Sergei, and asked him what he intended to do during his stay. When Sergei told him about his plans as a hunter, the man gave him a crude map of the area, with most of it, especially the land to the north of the river, marked off as restricted areas.
Sergei found a bunk in a small rooming house, while the preacher found someone to take him in and sponsor his ministry. Some of the passengers got jobs in Purity, while the rest got jobs working for Dover Mineral. While Sergei spent most of his early days in the town hunting where he had been directed to, he knew those marked off areas were where he would find the goal of his quest.
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About three T-weeks after he had arrived, during the dim starlight of a truenight, Sergei made his move. The tightlipped miners gave no indication of what had been found to the north, but their strict silence spoke volumes. One night in one of the bars, two DMD security guards had beaten a talkative drunk to within an inch of his life, without any repercussions that were obvious to Sergei. He had always considered the FSB a ruthless bunch, but these Dover Mineral men put the Russian security services to shame.
Sergei had constructed a small raft and poled his way across the river just above town. He wore a camouflaged suit, constructed of burlap sacks with local vegetation woven into the coarse brown material. This obscured his silhouette, and made him difficult to see from even a few meters distance. His face and hands were mottled with mud of varying colors. The night vision goggles over his eyes, however, would help him see those who could not see him. Most of his gear was left behind, and he carried only his weapons and a small rucksack with ammunition, his data device, and some rudimentary provisions.
When he made it to shore, Sergei concealed his raft and moved carefully through the brush. The buildings were silent and dark. He picked one in particular that had looked like an office, and was able to jimmy his way into a window. There was a bank of desks at the far side of the room, and each desk had a lid that was closed by a heavy lock. Sergei leaned his rifle against the desk, pulled a long hooked pick from his pocket, and soon had the lid on one of the desks open.
His night vision goggles blurred, and he was having trouble figuring out what he was seeing. He pushed the goggles up on his forehead, and pulled out a small hand-cranked flashlight with a red lens, which he held cupped tightly in his hand, pointed at the desk. And there he found the answer to the secrecy and the violence, glittering in the faint light.
It was a bowl full of shimmer stones, reflecting the light of his flashlight back in a hypnotic, pulsating glow. One of the most valuable jewels ever discovered. They had been all over the news before he had left the Earth, the ultimate bauble of the rich and powerful. No one knew exactly where they came from, although much of the speculation centered on the colony worlds of the CoDominium. Certainly the Earth was so well explored and cataloged that such a treasure would not have waited so long to be discovered.
This bowl alone represented enough money to buy a dozen luxury ocean liners or a fully armed space cruiser. Sergei reached in and pocketed one of the stones as proof. He had his answer, much more quickly than he had ever imagined. He closed and locked the desk, and drew out the data device Fyodor had obtained for him. He needed to gather as much information as he could. But then he heard the scratching of a key in the lock at the doorway.
Someone must have heard something, seen the glow of his flashlight, or perhaps this building was guarded by some sort of more high tech alarm system. Sergei dove out the window just as the room was bat
hed in the harsh glow of electric light, and a voice bellowed, “Stop where you are.”
He ran quickly toward the woods, followed by a spray of bullets. He felt a sting on his leg and an impact on his shoulder, but now was no time to stop. He had to get out of here, and get out of here fast. He pulled his night vision goggles over his eyes, and ran quickly into the night, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the pursuers he knew would soon be following.
Sergei cut west, along the lower slopes of the volcano. An alarm was sounding behind him, powerful lights were coming on, and men were swarming out of barracks buildings like a swarm of angry bees. Soon there was a group of them hard on his heels, or at least close enough that they felt like they were on his heels, firing randomly into the woods in front of themselves.
He came to the crest of a ridge, and realized that he would have to fight. Fight, but then run again. He picked three good sites to fire from, a good route between each, and an escape route. Sergei crouched behind a rock, his first firing position, used the bolt to lever a round into the chamber of his rifle, and sighted as best he could with his goggles on. He was going to have to use instinct as much as he used his sights.
As he waited for the first pursuer to appear, Sergei remembered an argument he once had with an old naval Kapitan, a friend of his father’s. The man argued that on frontier worlds, with their sparse supplies, it would be best to equip soldiers with bolt action rifles. That way, the old man said, they would think before they pulled the trigger, and not waste ammunition in a promiscuous manner. Sergei wished the old man were here now. He wondered how he would feel to be alone with his bolt action rifle, facing a company of men with automatic weapons, men who, from the way they were firing, seemed to have unlimited supplies of ammunition.
Sergei held his breath as the first man appeared on the hillside, climbing quickly. He squeezed off a round, and without even pausing to see if it hit, rolled left and scrambled to his second firing position. A spray of bullets erupted from his pursuers, pinging off the rock. Sergei paused, got another man in his sights, and fired off another round. This time he scrambled to the right, ran past his original firing position, and halted at a third position. Again, return fire came in, although this time it appeared to be the fire of men shooting from cover.
More slowly this time, he saw two men creeping carefully up the hillside. He sighted in on the closest one, and squeezed off a third shot. Again, he spun and ran off at an angle, angry bullets whizzing behind him. Any more shooting from him, and they would have time to flank him and pin him down. With any luck, they would be so careful moving in on his position, he would be long gone before they realized that he had given them the slip. He didn’t know what casualties he had left behind him.
For practical reasons, he hoped he had left men wounded. Dead men could be left where they laid, but the wounded required tending, and would help tie down his pursuers.
Sergei moved swiftly, and drew on all of the woodcraft of his long military career. After setting his ambush, he didn’t fire again, but instead went to ground three times in as many hours as search parties passed close to his hiding place. He wondered again what had given him away back at the camp. It might have been something someone had heard or seen, or perhaps an alarm system. It was difficult to remember that among the simple technology of the frontier lurked modern devices of the highest complexity. He certainly felt like he owed his life to his night vision goggles. He never would have been able to move so fast in the inky blackness of truenight without them.
He moved generally to the northwest, but kept his path random, following the ground contours and avoiding ridgelines. He thanked the Lord that there were no horses, or especially dogs, in the Dover Mineral encampment. The former would have allowed his pursuers to get ahead of him, while the latter would have allowed them to track him much more effectively. The heavy forests worked in his favor, giving him plenty of cover, but allowing him to move quickly. He ran until he felt he could run no more, and then kept on running.
It was forty hours before he stopped to rest, and then only for a short catnap. Two times he had slipped into a streambed, once moving north, and the other moving south. Both times he’d had to kill a large animal, the first time a muskylope and second a spiny boar, putting their corpses in the streams to draw off the razor fish and other fresh water predators.
He lived off the vitamin supplements and dried salted meat from his rucksack, while the streams allowed him to replenish his canteen. His socks were wet, and his feet were blistered. He was tired to the edge of stupidity, one step away from a mistake that might cost him his life. His running had long since slowed to a stumbling walk.
Eighty hours into his escape, during the full light of a brightday, he paused for a full eight hours of sleep, curled under the branches of a broken tree. During his recon, he had left behind much of his equipment, and lacked the sleeping bag and ground cloth that would have made his rest comfortable, but he still slept like a dead man. He awakened to the sound of a helicopter in the distance. He hadn’t realized there were any such aircraft outside of Castell City—yet another example of the resources available to his pursuers. Fortunately for him, there were enough large animals in these woods to make it difficult for his pursuers to distinguish the form of a man, even if they had thermal imaging and other devices at their disposal. The helicopter reminded him that at this point, lighting a fire would be suicide.
Twenty hours later, he paused again to check his wounds. The leg wound was just a graze, the shoulder wound more serious, with the bullet entering his arm just above the triceps muscle, and exiting the front. Fortunately, he had bought antibiotic cream and tablets in Castell City, and was able to treat the wounds effectively. If they festered, and became infected, it might slow him down enough to cause his death.
Signs of his pursuers began to wane, and he hoped it was because the trail was getting cold. At one point, he had a pursuer in his rifle sights, only a hundred meters below him on a hillside. He did not take a shot, deciding that there was too much of a chance that the man would not be alone. Later however, he wondered again if he had lost his edge, if his distaste for violence might cost him dearly.
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Three T-weeks went by, with him still sleeping furtively, but with a more reasonable sleep cycle. He had a fairly good map, and some navigational information in his data device, and he plotted his path across the forests north of the Jordan to Castell City. No river travel for this trip, for now he had to avoid the company of others. His raw feet and his wounds began to heal, and he swapped his socks and bandages frequently, washing them whenever possible. He took a few chances with local vegetation, and found some nuts and tubers that provided some sustenance.
He also set up snares before sleeping, and sometimes woke to find breakfast in those snares. At night he dreamed of sitting at Harp’s, drinking a beer, and talking to Moira. Or dreamed of burying his head on Moira’s shoulder, kissing her, lying beside her, dreams so real he often awoke feeling around to see if she was there.
He wondered again what she would say if he returned, no, when he returned, and offered her a new life at his side. Occasionally, he would come across the shimmer stone in his pocket, and remember his mission.
Sergei stood on a rock that protruded from a steep slope. The forests had thinned as he gained elevation on a line of high hills. He was able to look back to the southeast, along his escape route. There was no sign of pursuit at this point. He looked forward, scouting his path for the next day. There was a large open plain to the north—he would have to tend to the south to keep under the cover of the forest. There had been no rain for the last few days, and he saw no sign of water, which was a little bothersome, as he was running low. If he didn’t find a stream before the end of the next day, he might be getting thirsty soon.
Sergei suddenly realized that he had quite a bit of room on his data device, marked his position, snapped a few pictur
es, and recorded some verbal observations. He might as well keep a log of his journey. There was no sign of civilization in any direction, and Sergei thought he might be treading where no man had stood before. The records might someday do someone some good, give them ideas of areas that would be habitable, and which were not worth visiting.
Sergei had another thought. Perhaps he could guide people out here himself. Like someone from a historical book, a scout and an explorer. An honest profession, but one where he could use his skills to good advantage. He smiled as he climbed down, using the rifle as a walking stick to steady himself on the slope.
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After six T-weeks, Sergei began to see other people—a hunting camp, a few farms, and a small settlement. He had been spending nearly every waking hour walking at a punishing pace, and had put about 1,500 kilometers between himself and the Dover Mineral encampment—roughly halfway back to Castell City, although his journey was far from following the path of a crow’s flight.
He still kept out of sight of others, but decided it was time for a rest. He also needed to do something about his appearance. He built a small camp, improving a rock overhang with a small lean-to. He killed a couple of muskylopes, a T-week apart so he wouldn’t waste the meat, skinned them, and filled a rock hollow with water and oak leaves to tan the hides. He had enough thread in his pack to fashion a serviceable leather tunic and breeches. He also left the fur on one hide to fashion a warm cloak for sleeping during the truenights, chilly even during the summer.
He used his small pair of scissors to trim his beard, and shorten his ponytail, with the blade of his knife serving as a crude mirror. Now he looked more like a hunter than a fugitive, and he trapped and skinned a score of small furry beasts called firewalkers. When he felt ready, he restarted his journey, and stopped at a small settlement to trade his firewalker skins for some provisions.