She turned back to the microphone, keyed the button on the side, and held it to her mouth. “Please, patience. I will send a messenger to you.”
Carter was staring at her, openmouthed. “You are nuts. I can’t fly this thing.”
“You can, and you will, or I will kick your ass when I catch up to you. Low and slow, don’t get tangled in the trees.” She looked at him, hoping he was up to it. He’d have to be. She needed information.
She spun on her heel and was out the door. In the cargo bay, the dog came bounding up, and she hustled him into the cabin and shut the door. “Keep the dog in there,” she yelled through the door, and then cranked open the hatch, spinning the wheel that levered the clamshell doors open.
Wind blew the dog’s straw all around her, and she snatched a harness and shrugged her way into it, snapping it around her. It had a large metal ring sewn into it on the front and back, for lifting. If Carter got close enough to her.
She attached another harness onto the clip at the end of the line, to grab it easier. Then, she hooked on herself and, leaning way out over the hole in the floor, mashed the big green button on the control attached to the end of the line. She leaned back, leaned a little more, and then she was out, clear of the Dutchman, and descending.
A glance over her shoulder told her she might get wet, and as she spun, another glance at the boat told her they were pointing guns at her. Great.
Not that they’d have much of a chance to hit her. But still she didn’t like it. The Dutchman was drifting, going to pass over the ship, so she waited, arresting her descent by releasing the green button so the cable stopped spooling out.
Waited, waited, and then, with about ten feet to go, she reached up, grabbed the cable and hauled, lifting her weight enough for her left hand to free the clip, and then slid, releasing the cable as she fell onto the little poop deck of the ship.
She landed on her feet, amazed. The men on the deck gaped at her. She watched the Dutchman slide by above and, satisfied the cable missed the ship’s rigging, she turned to them.
She smiled, bowed. “Please, I must speak with your captain,” she said, in Chinese.
A man stepped forward. He was not Chinese. White. European. American. He had sandy blonde hair and a short, well-trimmed beard, and wore a red silk robe open at the collar. She saw tattoos there, through the curly blonde chest hair. Military, she thought. A scowling bulldog on his right pectoral. Marines. He carried a handgun, not aimed at her, but not aimed away from her either. He scowled at her.
“Who,” he said, in perfect American English, “the fuck are you?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Days passed, and they rolled west through a wide land. They stuck to what must have been a major highway at one time. Overgrown with trees and bramble, they drove this road from dawn until sundown, a good ten or twelve hours. It was wearying, as even riding in the stabilized cage was jarring over the rough and crumbled road.
They saw no one. Gold suspected watchers, though, and more than once she saw smoke in the distance. Cook fires or larger burnings, such as charcoal making or brush clearing. At night, once, she saw a fire on a distant hill, clearly a campfire. There were people here, but they hid from Truck, who was making a terrible racket as they rumbled and hissed and clawed along the roadbed.
They were making, maybe, ten or fifteen miles per hour. Less, sometimes. They drove west, which was the right direction, but Gold knew there were mountains in western China, some of which were very tall, and which led into the Himalayas. She did not want to wind up there and spend a year or more getting unlost.
“We need a map,” she said to Uncle, as they drove. Li and she were wearing headscarves again, as there was a gentle wind from behind them, blowing the dust of their passage back around them. Gold didn’t like that, it was conspicuous, but it couldn’t be helped. Truck was large, and he would make a cloud of dust wherever they went. She preferred to travel more stealthily. They were trading stealth for a constant seven or eight miles an hour. It would take them a year to reach Baikonur this way, but even longer on foot.
“I do not need a map,” Uncle announced. “It is forty-seven hundred kilometers to Baikonur from Changsha. We are on the correct road, which was once a highway. If we follow this road for eight hundred more kilometers…”
Gold cut him off. “There are mountains, Uncle. They will be impassable.”
“Truck will…” Uncle started, but she cut him off again.
“It will stop Truck. Mountain roads require maintenance, which no one has done for centuries. The roads are blocked. We should go north, and loop south through the plains.”
“This will add significant distance to our journey,” Uncle said. “We will be better off…”
Li cried out and pointed ahead of them. Gold shielded her eyes, saw nothing at first near, then in the middle distance, but then, in the distance, she saw what Li was pointing at. Dust. A large column of it. Men.
“We have company, Uncle. There appears to be a large party moving towards us, on this same road,” she said. She reached for the gun, checked its magazine and safety. She arranged the spare magazines in the bag and tucked one into her belt. She checked her knife. It would be a while before the men reached them. “There is a large dust cloud on the road ahead. They probably saw Truck’s cloud and assumed they were being invaded.”
“They are being invaded,” Uncle said. “By us. But we should be able to scare them off.” Truck ground to a halt.
“I hope so,” Gold said, eyeing the approaching dust cloud. “It looks like they are out in force. Maybe a hundred or two hundred men, I am guessing.”
“Truck will frighten them,” Uncle said confidently. “We will wait for them here. Perhaps we will even learn something.”
“I hope so,” Gold said again. She flipped open the lid of the cage, to have an unimpeded exit route should things go badly.
They waited. The column of men approached, slowly. The dust cloud grew thicker as they approached, and then, Gold could discern moving shapes. Shapes she knew. Shapes out of a long-ago nightmare of disease, death, and despair.
“Horsemen,” she said. “This is bad.” She felt herself trembling. It is normal, she told herself, to feel fear. She unsheathed her knife and gave it to Li.
“Be brave,” she told her. Uncle translated. Li nodded soberly. She mimed stabbing herself.
Gold shook her head. “It won’t come to that,” she told her. If it comes to that, I will do it myself, she thought, but didn’t say. Li, too, was trembling.
She pulled herself up onto the top of the cage, then crouched a little behind it. There was cover there, in case they had archers. But she had heard Silver talk of these people’s ancestors and their prowess with the bow from horseback. She felt exposed, no matter where she crouched.
The column looked split as it approached Truck. Into three forks. One to the left, one to the right, and one straight towards them. She watched them approach, calculating. There were, it looked, three hundred riders. Sixty or seventy in each flanking fork, she guessed. Leaving a hundred and fifty riders in the main force.
They could charge, with Truck. They could attack. It would not end well for them, she figured. The riders would scatter. She might get a dozen if she were lucky. Maybe five or six would fall, trampled or lamed. Truck might get a few with his long, reaching arms. But then, it would be a chase, and they would, if Silver had not been lying, face arrow after arrow as they tried to flee. It was, she reasoned, hopeless to fight.
That left diplomacy. Gold was capable. She had negotiated many, many treaties and agreements in her time. Sometimes against similar odds. Sometimes she had lost too. She did not want to lose here. Women suffered in defeat by such men; she knew all too well. She looked at Li, who was stuffing a bag with the scarves, for bandages, Gold realized. She did not want to lose here.
So, she waited. The horsemen surrounded Truck, but they stayed well back. They looked well-disciplined, if she was any judge.
She noted their spacing, their quick, decisive maneuvers. These men lived on horseback. They were Mongols; she decided. It made sense. Why shouldn’t whatever survived of China fall to whatever was left of Mongolia? It didn’t matter, but she mentioned it to Uncle.
“Yes, I know the horse lords by reputation. Dreadful reputation. None have ventured this far south, that I know. The Han chieftains do not tolerate it.” He sounded wistful. “You know, I never got to go to Mongolia, back when I was alive.”
“Have you since?” she asked, watching the riders. They had bows, but they were all unstrung, that she could see. That could change quickly, though. She glanced up towards the front of Truck, when a knot of riders trotted their horses forward. One of them, he made an angry gesture, a short, choppy wave, and all but one rider reined up and hung back. The other two approached.
“I have, just now. For a week, camping by a little stream. It was very relaxing,” Uncle said. “There, two weeks that time, with the Khan. An elaborate simulation.”
She looked at the box, which was absurd. “You are serious?” she said, although almost before she asked, she knew the answer. She watched the riders instead. They were almost within shouting distance.
“Afraid so. Time runs differently for me than for you,” Uncle said. “Mostly when talking to you I am waiting for you to form your next word.” He sounded sheepish. “So, I wander around.”
“Well, don’t fucking wander around when we’re talking with this guy,” she snapped. “You can see him?”
“As long as he stays within Truck’s eyes’ reach, I can see him,” Uncle said, pedantically.
“Apply your mind to the problem of how to placate this group,” she snapped. “In between my words.”
The riders approached, slowing to a walk. Gold kept her hands visible. She knew there were archers among them who could skewer her. A man and a woman. The man was broad and wore a leather duster, with vaguely Napoleonic tailoring. Gold braid even, she noted. He was Chinese, looked Chinese anyway. The coat looked old, the leather dull and cracked. And the gold braid looked a little spotty. The woman hung back a few lengths and wore a gray hood and cloak. Gold only glanced at her, but she looked young and rode well.
“Greetings, great Khan,” she said, smiling pleasantly. “Translate.”
Uncle’s voice, in Chinese, came out of Truck.
The man looked up at her. He calmed the horse. Gold noted he stayed just out of Truck’s reach. She had seen Truck throw objects, though. Truck was dangerous, beyond his immediate grasp. He kept junk, found debris, mostly. He was always dropping the odd bit of concrete or rusted hunk of metal in his bed as they traveled. There were a few old engine blocks, chunks of masonry jutting jagged iron, or rusty rebar tangles. Gold didn’t doubt Uncle could toss that junk at enemies.
The man said something at length, watching Gold the entire time. His eyes flitted to the cage, pausing, Gold thought, for a just a moment to linger over Li. Then back to Gold. He finished his speech.
“He thanks you for your greeting,” Uncle said. “He wants to know who you are, where you are from, and why you are trespassing through the Unit’s territory.”
“Should I know this Unit?” Gold asked.
“I have never heard of them, but the word is English; Unit,” Uncle stated. “What should I tell him?”
“Tell him…” But she stopped as the woman had spurred her horse forward. She raised a hand.
“Is that English?” the rider cried out. “Are you speaking English?”
“I speak English,” Gold said to her. “What is your name?”
“Lt. Abigail Kolton,” the woman said, peeling back her hood. Her face, smooth and unlined on the left, a hideous mass of scar tissue on the right. Fresh, to Gold’s eye. The swollen tissue partially covered what looked like a plastic or ceramic skull. The eyes under her heavy, gnarled brow were bright, though. “Second Platoon. United States Marine Corps. Are you our relief?”
“Afraid not,” Gold said.
“Good,” the woman said, grinning. “Because I never believed that shit.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“I am called Silver,” she said, calmly eying the man. “It’s surprising to me to meet an American, here.”
“American?” He snorted, peering at her. “You’re not from Command, are you?”
She shook her head. “On my own, I’m afraid.”
He spat over the gunwale. “That’s a fucking U.N. blimp. Haven’t seen anything like that for a long time,” he said. “You from the U.N.?”
“I don’t think the United Nations exists anymore,” she said calmly. “Not for, as you said, a long time.”
He studied her, taking in her clothes, her gear. The blue rappelling harness. He shook his head. “Who are you?”
“I told you, my name is Silver.” She smiled. “Now, if you could put the gun away, we can…”
He pointed it at her. “This gun?” He smiled, his face twisting in malice. “Make you nervous?”
“Guns make me nervous,” she said. “Especially when people who should know better point them at me. Look, I just want to talk with you, trade a little information, find out where we are.”
He bristled. “Where? You’re in my land, now. Mine. I took it.” His face contorted, multiple emotions breaking the surface in quick succession. Anger, resentment, fear. There was fear there. “What information?”
One of the other men, wielding a musket tipped with a long spike, stepped forward. The man barked a command in Chinese, followed with another. Stay back, I will speak to her. Be ready to kill her. The crewman stepped back, but didn’t lower his weapon. The gunman looked at her again.
“You understand me?” He asked, raised eyebrows.
She nodded. His Chinese was good. Fluent, she thought, but with a strange accent to her ear.
“Good. You come in here to my boat, you answer my questions.” He licked his lips. “This is my territory, all around here.” His chin swiveled. Everything. “My turf. No encroachment. That’s the way. That’s the rule.”
“I am passing through, looking for information, that’s all.” She spoke very calmly, not making any sudden movements.
“Information,” he said, “is power.” He shifted his grip on the weapon, steadying it with both hands. A shooter’s stance, braced for accuracy, legs spread slightly, knees bent. “And I ask the questions, got it?”
“Ask away,” she said, raising her hands slightly, palms out. I am helpless, an unarmed woman. “I will tell you what I know.”
“Who do you work for?” He asked again.
“Nobody. Myself.” She said it again, calmly. She could tell he didn’t like this answer, his jaw muscles flexed and bunched.
“That,” he said, “is bullshit. Nobody…” He shook his head. “Nobody works for nobody. Fuck, nobody speaks English anymore but us, and you show up here, in that. The United fucking Nations?” He laughed, a note of hysteria in his voice. He pointed with his jaw to the sky, where the Dutchman looked to be making a long, clumsy turn. “You’re from command, aren’t you? Got orders for us?”
“You’ve been here a long time,” she said, guessing, but knowing it to be true.
His eyes went round. “You do know, don’t you?” He licked his lips. “You’re a spy? That it?”
“Not a spy,” she said. “Just a good guess.” She smiled slightly. Friendly. I want to be your friend, she hoped she signaled. Not a threat. “Want me to keep guessing?”
He just stared at her. “Who are you?” he asked again, almost in a whisper.
“You’re a soldier,” she said. “You’ve been here a long time. Left here, I’m guessing. Left behind.”
His nostrils flared. “You don’t know anything,” he said. “You don’t know me.”
“Fair enough,” she said quickly. “I don’t know you. But I want to. Why don’t we put the gun away and talk about it?” She smiled again. He glanced up. She followed his gaze, back to the Dutchman, which was coming around, for wha
t looked like another pass near the ship. Carter keeled hard over, the little gondola at a steep, twenty or thirty-degree angle. He would pass down the port side of the ship, from fore to aft.
“I ain’t telling you shit,” he said. “You’re staying with me. Tell them to stay away from my ship.”
“I can’t tell them anything. No radio,” she said. “Sorry.” He glanced at her, at the word, then back up at the blimp.
“No radio?” He was torn, she could see. The blimp, he decided, was the priority. He fired a shot in the air. “STAY AWAY!” he yelled. “GET THE FUCK AWAY…”
Silver had seen enough. She dropped, sweeping her right leg out and twisting away from him. As she hit the deck, her shin slammed into his left knee, hard. He began to tumble, and she snatched at his robe, pulling him into her fall, up, and over her. He rolled. She rolled with him, coming up on top. She landed her knee, patella to sternum, hard in his chest, and she raked her nails down his face. He grunted, making an ah sound, but kept fighting her.
She fought for the gun. Her left hand found his right wrist and twisted it. She threw her weight into the twist, bringing her core muscles into it. He was strong, but she was also strong, and knew her body well. His wrist flopped in her grasp, and she tore the gun away. She leaped back, up off him, just in time to dodge a bayonet thrust from a crewman. She smashed the gun like a club in the crewman’s face, and he went down, hands to his broken nose. Behind him was another, and behind him still more. Silver braced herself.
There was a thump, and the ship shuddered. Silver looked down. A hole in the ship's side billowed white smoke. She heard the pop pop pop of small arms fire. A musket flared, aimed at the Dutchman. The soldier was struggling to rise, and she locked eyes with him. “Bitch,” he said, crouching. He had a dagger in his hand, which she hadn’t seen before. It had a short, broad blade and looked very sharp.
He held it low, flat, parallel to the deck. She watched his eyes. The deck shuddered again, then a ripping, tearing sound as a fully automatic weapon unloaded. Carter had found her gun cabinet and was shooting as he passed the length of the ship. The deck shuddered again as a grenade exploded amidships.
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