by Patty Jansen
The disgusting water had made my skin itchy. My wet clothes still smelled of the algae. I put them in the waterproof bag which the hosts had also helpfully provided.
The algae crap had already dried in a film of silk-like filaments over the panel of my weapon. I took it into the main cabin of the craft, hoping that someone would have a maintenance kit.
Of course, Sheydu did. She even offered to service the weapon for me, but I said it was my stupid fault that it had gotten wet, and also that I should practice my maintenance skills now and then.
Sheydu didn’t believe in faults or karma, but the second part of my argument made enough sense for her to just nod at me and tell me to call her if I needed any help.
I found a seat in the back of the craft, letting its familiar feel come over me.
I folded out the seat’s table, opened the maintenance kit, took out all the tools and little bottles with solvent, cleaning fluid and oil, unfolded the outside of the kit so it became a work mat.
Then I levered the barrel off the main body, took off the handgrip, the charge chamber and the control panel. There was water in all of them.
I spent the next while drying, cleaning, polishing and testing.
Our rescuers offered me some water and a few snacks. I didn’t realise just how hungry and thirsty I’d been, not having eaten since breakfast.
The woman’s name was Marisol, I learned from Nicha, who came to watch me perform my delicate task for a bit. Her male companion was her brother, and his name was Clay. I asked what their Coldi names were, but Nicha doubted there were any. Both had lived in Los Angeles all their lives, and they owned the house we were going to use as refuge. Apparently the rest of my team were already there.
They were third-generation immigrants. I didn’t even want to ask for their clan. They would have truly lost touch with Asto clan politics.
But they were still on the register, which had to mean that they remained sympathetic to our cause, right?
I finished cleaning the weapon and put it back together and closed the maintenance kit back up. I was reasonably convinced no permanent harm was done, but I’d only know for sure tomorrow, when the control panel would have dried out enough that it was safe to be turned on.
Sheydu didn’t even get angry or anxious about it, she said when I presented my work for her final approval. Stuff like this happened, she said. That’s why she always made sure someone in the team had a spare. Adequate and timely maintenance solved most of the world’s technical problems.
I looked out the window. The sun had sunk close to the horizon, spreading an orange glow over the landscape as the light hit the dusty atmosphere side-on.
The members of my team were all busy. I let them do their things, reconnect to their networks, hear all the news. I was sure I would hear more about it when they could establish connections and talk to a few people.
I tried to reach any media accessible to me, but I couldn’t get onto the Exchange news. It had been available on and off for the last few days. Since the referendum had come out in favour of Earth joining gamra, the Exchange had set up a formal news channel which should be available worldwide, but evidently, was not. I was surprised that I couldn’t even get it in this Asto-made craft.
Nicha said that it was because all communication was shut down in the region until they could establish where the attacks came from and how they had been coordinated.
All air travel was also suspended.
Well, crap.
“Certainly, you can still fly out of the country?” I asked.
Nicha didn’t know.
Marisol didn’t know either.
I went on a hunt for extra information. But it seemed like most of the news services had stopped publishing about the attacks, even respected services like World Newspoint. Its front page mainly stated how people could get assistance if they needed any. How localised was their service, anyway?
I scrolled through different services, some I knew about and others I didn’t.
None of the services mentioned anything of note about the attacks. All had published information about where people could get help, and where the young and brave could sign up for the armed forces. Precious little was said about what had happened where and who was responsible.
Was this the normal way the news in this part of the world dealt with upheaval? Or were they just that jaded about conflict?
I remembered reading an article that discussed the role of the media in the Second Civil War, when news outlets had been accused of whipping up public anger by publishing articles that took liberties with the truth for the sake of getting attention.
One particular article had led to widespread rioting and many deaths over something that was, essentially, a lie.
From that moment on, authorities had used gag orders to stifle news in volatile situations.
Of course, those could also be misused, and they frequently were. Apparently the Dixie Republic once detained a bunch of farm workers from America Free State. The workers started a riot which spilled over to other farms and districts until America Free State used its military to force Dixie Republic to return their citizens.
The only way citizens of either country could find out about it was to follow the rogue news services in Mexico which attempted to broadcast news the old-fashioned way across the border.
Meanwhile, authorities could do as they pleased.
In the case of skirmishes between the countries—which happened quite often—the news services would simply stop reporting so as not to give the enemy the opportunity to gauge the effectiveness of their actions.
It was a quaintly old-fashioned world.
Meanwhile, travel was suspended. Offices were closed. Shops were closed.
Damn it. I could really use some anti-allergic cream, because my skin was breaking out in an itchy rash.
I looked out the window and thought I could see the border: a heavy fence that ran like a scar across the landscape, with dusty fields on one side and equally dusty wilderness on the other. A road led to the border but stopped there, and the part on the side of America Free State was half covered in sand dunes, and the paving got lost under decades of dust and feeble attempts at revegetation.
Damn, I was so itchy.
Sheydu was sitting with the others, discussing something over the screen. It didn’t sound terribly good from what I picked up. No Exchange coverage at all. No one knew what was going on. The local news could not be trusted.
I told Sheydu how our rescuer had spoken about “aliens”.
Marisol told us how she and a friend had driven across Los Angeles to pick up the other half of our team, and that they had seen lots of evidence of damage and explosions. Many large buildings were on fire.
But they had seen no evidence of fighting. They’d seen no attackers, alien or otherwise.
Clay told us that America Free State produced their own missiles, but why they would fire them into Mexico was anyone’s guess.
“Do the Mexican authorities have anything to say about it?” I asked.
I could imagine that if conflict spilled over the border into Mexican territory, the government would have plenty to say about it. And Mexico was a prominent Nations of Earth member, so there would be statements from Rotterdam about incursions into sovereign air space and stuff like that.
But clearly, Sheydu’s channels didn’t receive that sort of news. Clay and Marisol couldn’t raise any useful information either. Sheydu said she’d keep trying.
It was all a big, confusing mess.
Either communication was extremely poor here—always a possibility—or communication had changed so much recently that it went through channels not accessible to me and my team. I didn’t know which option disturbed me most.
I looked out the window, and for now, the landscape below seemed quite normal. Brown, parched fields, stony hillocks, larger mountains. The o
ccasional road, the occasional settlement, all often shrouded in dust. It was getting dark.
The number of settlements passing underneath was slowly increasing, and many of the settlements displayed street lights. Warm light radiated from the windows of houses. I spotted the occasional vehicle. We had to be getting close to the city.
Sheydu slipped into the seat next to me while I was looking down. I turned around. The way she fixed me with her gold-flecked eyes, I knew she had nothing good to say.
“We still can’t get onto the Exchange,” she said. “I’ve been able to raise a few local responses, but most of them are also wondering what’s going on.”
“What do you mean by local? How local?”
She showed me a map. Three of the four locations marked on the map were also in Los Angeles. One was further south in Mexico.
“The capital is also not responding.”
“Mexico City? Has there been an interruption to communication infrastructure? Are we being jammed?”
I felt cold. My team’s communication should bypass any blocks. She would use Exchange satellites. Those should be unaffected by anything that was going on locally.
Sheydu breathed in deeply. “Everything is possible. We know that there were several events of aggression in the city at the same time. Material I’ve seen suggests that they were attacks from the air. It’s likely that communication equipment was taken out, potentially also power stations. We don’t have any major relays in this part of the world so we’re reliant on Exchange satellite communication and that is sporadic, since the satellites we use are not set up for this function, nor can they cope with the volume of messages currently directed at them. I suspect the latter is an issue. Simply too many people trying to use the satellites at the same time.”
Sheydu hated not knowing. The stiffness in her language betrayed that she was deeply uncomfortable.
She didn’t know what was going on.
She didn’t speak the language and didn’t trust translators—and with very good reason.
Her usual channels of communication didn’t work.
She had the responsibility not just over me, but also over the entire team, which included the child of an influential rival.
And I insisted on doing things that pulled her deeper into the uncomfortable zone.
“What about our hosts? The owners of this craft? Have they said anything?” I had spotted Sheydu speaking to Marisol earlier.
“They live locally and have lived here for a long time. They suggest that communication outages are not uncommon. They say that usually, if they’re unable to reach the Exchange, it’s because the local network is out. But they’re also saying that they haven’t seen aggressive attacks this intense before. They say there is often unrest across the border, but it usually manifests at the street level with people gathering in large groups, looting shops or stopping the normal flow of life in the population centres. They say it never amounts to more than a few hundred people making demands, although it can also get violent and people can get killed and buildings get destroyed.”
“Is there another way that we can reach the Exchange? What about Nations of Earth?”
She shrugged. “We don’t have good contacts there as we used to. They continue to not answer our communication, but they were doing that already.”
“Keep trying,” I said.
“We will. We may need to wait until we’re at our destination.”
Yes. But being on the ground would cut us off from whatever tenuous connections we had with the Exchange while up here in this craft.
She returned to the others.
I resumed staring out the window into the murk of semidarkness outside.
Whatever had happened, at least I’d soon meet Thayu and Emi again. And then I should…
Wait.
I had an idea.
If all else failed, I could simply try to use the local communication channels to speak with my father. Not being in this area, he might have a less politically charged idea of what was going on. That was if news from this part of the world reached New Zealand. I had no idea if it did. I would think so, I hoped.
“Wow,” Reida said from elsewhere in the craft.
His tone was genuinely impressed.
He was looking out the front window of the craft, over the pilot Clay’s shoulders, pushing himself up in his seat so he could see more.
I got up from my seat.
The sky ahead faced west and should have been orange after sunset. Instead, it had gone dark with thick black smoke, which rose from numerous columns across the city. It hung in a murky blanket over the plain.
Clay lowered the flight altitude to avoid flying through the worst of it.
I moved to the seat behind him so I could look over his shoulder.
“What has happened here?”
“It looks like they came back while we were gone,” Clay said. His voice was soft and horrified.
Much of the city was shrouded in black smoke, with the occasional spots of burning buildings.
We passed over several places where deep craters had been formed in the ground.
“Was it not like this when you left to pick us up?” I asked.
“Not as bad this. It looks like they’ve wiped out whole suburbs.”
“Any idea at all who has done this?”
“Well, we assumed they were the army of the America Free State.“
Could it really be that we had visited in the middle of the outbreak of another North American war? Hmmm, yes, “aliens” could just as easily mean people from other countries or continents.
“Has this happened before?” I couldn’t imagine living like this. Also, I didn’t think Amarru would have been happy to let me come here if this was a common occurrence. And Amarru was someone who always knew where I was going and why. She might be the only person on Earth who knew.
Clay said, “There are always tensions. Attacks used to happen quite a lot, but there haven’t been any for a while. We thought that with the four countries now talking to each other, it might be over. I have to admit that I don’t really keep up with the local politics.”
But I bet he still knew a lot more than I did, and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone like Ezhya was paying him for that knowledge.
“But everyone seems to say that last night’s attack was different.”
“It was. There seemed to be sophisticated equipment involved, operating from a very high altitude. That’s as much as we heard before the news gag came into effect.”
“I don’t know why everyone seems to think that we were at peace,“ Marisol said. “In the last year or so, certain elements in America Free State have been spoiling for a fight, and Paterson is egging them on. First, there were the attacks on Braddock, because she ‘gives in to the enemy’, whatever that is supposed to mean. She did no more than have a preliminary meeting with Dekker, and nothing much came out of it anyway, and then Paterson encouraged the emigrant America Free State populations to riot. The man is an idiot.”
So, Dekker would have meetings with Braddock, but he ignored gamra.
Not that the sentiment surprised me, but the blatant expression of his disinterest in us was getting ridiculous.
Clay explained that it was impossible to land the craft anywhere near his house, so we’d have to go to a farm across the mountain range where a bus would wait for us.
We were going down.
It became hard to see through the shimmering outside the window where Clay had turned on the screening that reduced the visibility of the craft.
The craft was now flying over a mountain ridge. Pockets of suburbs occupied scattered areas of the bottom part of the slopes, but most of the top was a barren desert. We then descended the other side of the ridge, out of view of the city.
Not much later, we landed in a dusty field, next to a rickety farm shed.
; A Coldi man waited outside the shed to guide the vehicle in.
Clay and Marisol spoke to him briefly in the local dialect that was hard to understand.
“He says there isn’t much news,” Clay said as we walked from the shed to the house along a driveway through a dusty field. “Sorry that it’s not as you wanted. People are waiting for Paterson or Schuster to make an announcement.”
That was Governor Schuster of Dixie Republic.
“Do you think either of them is responsible?”
“I expect so.”
“What about blaming aliens?”
He snorted. “That’s the first thing they all say. Aliens did it. If not, Nations of Earth. Then they’ll have an investigation and find out that the problems are closer to home.”
Well, in that case, we’d be happy to escape from this area. Los Angeles should get help from the Mexican military, and Nations of Earth was likely to offer assistance. This wouldn’t affect us once the passenger services started flying again. But it was probably a good idea to fly to Mexico City and return from there, rather than try to fly over these belligerent countries with short-fused leaders.
Chapter Seventeen
At the end of the road, we came to the farmhouse.
Judging from the outside, the house was habitable and in use at least some of the time. The windows were intact, a section of the roof looked new, and an open carport to the side contained a vehicle.
We didn’t go inside.
A bus sat on the packed dirt outside the front door.
We boarded the bus, a set of dusty and tired looking people, with dusty packs and not much to say.
Clay went into the house and returned a bit later wearing a local hat and jacket.
Marisol also clambered into the bus and sat on the seat behind her brother, turning around to watch us.
Neither she nor her brother looked particularly Coldi. Had they ever been to Asto? I guessed not.
We drove over a rough dirt road that zig-zagged up the mountainside. The landscape was rough, washed out, dusty, with straggly scrubs and occasional cactuses poking up from between the rocks. It was almost dark now.
