Trial by Fire - eARC

by Charles E Gannon

  Because, like the other elusive foreigners I’ve heard rumors about, they want to stay invisible. “Yeah, I’ve heard there are some unusual tourists hiding in Java’s jungles, these days.”

  The clone just nodded, then glanced over the gunwale to the northwest. “But Dentist or no, bule, you still have to go over the side.”

  Caine’s stomach seemed to sag down into his intestines. “I’ve get to get out of Indonesia.” He stopped before adding because the invaders were following me, somehow. Hearing that, the clones might shoot him and toss him overboard without pause. But on the other hand—

  Caine turned and looked back at the Indonesians huddled in the shade; a few tentative smiles answered his glance. The black marketeers who’d smuggled him aboard in Pakis had told him he was shipping out on a fishing boat, not a blockade dodger. The kind of ship that weaved in and out of the pulaus that straddled the fifty-kilometer maritime limit. They hauled those few people and objects that got smuggled into or out of Java, and now, some of those smuggled people were in danger because of him. The clone was right: he did have to go over the side.

  “Listen, Dentist,” the clone emphasized, “you—and we—might not live long if we don’t get you into the water. Now.”

  Caine nodded, headed toward the gunwale, looking for life jackets.

  “Not that way,” the clone muttered. He turned and shouted toward the pilot house. “’Ranto, get him some gear. Syarwan, come about to due west, best speed.” Back to Caine. “You can’t get over the limit, not if they’re looking for you. And obviously they are. So you’re going to have to sneak back, hide out if you can.”

  Caine found the courage to nod at his own death warrant. “Better than having all of us blown out of the water here.”

  The clone smiled. “Okay. Now, do you know where you are, where you need to go?”

  Caine looked at the sun, glanced toward the small islands scattered in a one-hundred-twenty-degree arc from southwest to northwest. “We’re about fifteen klicks east of the northern extents of the Pulau Seribu—the Thousand Islands.”

  “Good. You studied a map. That’s probably going to save your life.” The ship had come about, vomiting black gouts of exhaust. The clone pointed over the starboard bow. “Look between twenty-five and thirty degrees: you see that little island?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pulau Ringit. Closest to us, relatively easy approach. There’s an islet before you get there. No dangerous shoals, smooth sea bed. Rest there.”

  “Got it.”

  “It’s only a few hundred meters between the islet and Pulau Ringit, but don’t cross until dark.” ’Ranto emerged from the pilot house, slid down the rails, handed a heavy canvas duffle to the captain. “And try to stay underwater.”

  “Well, I can hold my breath as well as the next person, but—”

  The clone started producing equipment out of the canvas duffle: a pony tank, regulator, mask, fins. “You know how to use these?”

  “Everything except the regulator, I’ve snorkeled, but never—”

  “Then learn. Fast.”

  As Caine started fitting the mask, the captain checked his watch and the horizon. “Once you’re on Ringit, just blend in.”

  “Blend in?”

  “Sure. Lots of bules there, stranded when the Arat Kur hit. With their credit cards cut off, they’re running out of money and have to scrabble like the rest of us. Pretty amusing. You’ll fit right in. Although you’ll want to get some clothes. You can pass yourself off as a dive enthusiast—unless you’re talking to a real diver.”

  “Are the islands occupied?”

  “By the Roaches or Sloths? No. They don’t like to isolate themselves in small numbers. They’ve sent a few government troops out to keep watch, but half of them will look the other way for a few rupiahs and the other half would desert if they could. If the invaders really have to settle problems in the islands, they do it with orbital surveillance and interdiction, drones, aerial patrols and counterinsurgency drops.”

  “Okay, but our forces, the commandoes who are arriving in-country. They must be swimming in across the line all the time. How do they do it without getting caught, wiped out?”

  The clone grinned. “There’s a lot going on out here. More than I know, and a whole lot more than the invaders know. But right now, that doesn’t matter. This does. After you reach Pulau Ringit, you won’t need to do any more diving. Just book a ship to Java. But not directly to Jakarta. The Hkh’Rkh are aggressive about their search-and-detainment checks of the ships that put in there. Get a little packet into a Barat coastal kempang, like Sedari. Then go overland to Jakarta. Lots of bules there, so you won’t stand out. Use trains or buses, you’ll attract less attention. And use behasa whenever you can. You want to sound like you’ve been here a few months.”

  Caine nodded. “Thanks for the advice. And the help.” He shouldered the pony-tank, tested the regulator: fine.

  The clone returned his nod. “Last bit of advice. We’re less than eight klicks from Ringit, so you’ve got a swim ahead of you. But don’t keep the regulator in your mouth. You’ll forget you’re using up air breathing. Swim as long as you can without becoming tired, exhale, put in the regulator, take a long, slow breath, start again. You’ll go farther and last longer with the air you’ve got. And don’t go deep or you could get the bends.”

  No depth gauge, so I’d better err to the side of caution. Caine heard a thin rumble to the north, looked up. Three black specks were on the horizon. They grew noticeably larger as he watched.

  The clone had noticed them, too. “Talk time is over. They must have seen us rendezvous with another smuggler, earlier this afternoon.”

  “But you didn’t violate the limit.”

  “No, but once we’re outside of the coastal buoy line, no hull is allowed to approach another closer than three kilometers. If one tries, we are supposed to report it and open fire if we can’t warn them away.”

  “The invaders’ orbital surveillance must be extraordinary.”

  “A lot of what they’ve got is pretty extraordinary. Like whatever they’ve got that allows them to follow you. Which may be the real reason they’re coming back. So get going.”

  The enemy aircraft had resolved into discernible shapes; it was the same three that had buzzed them earlier. They were approaching in an inverted delta formation. Caine watched as Pak Sumadi smiled his shattered smile and reached under a tarp for a stock-rotted AK-47. Beyond it, Caine saw the distinctive cubist-coke-bottle shape of an RPG-7 warhead.

  The clone followed his eyes, shook his head. “No, you’re not even going to think about staying here. If they didn’t see us rendezvous with the other boat, then we’ll be fine as long as you’re not on board. But if you are, and they’re looking for you, then you’re dead and so are we. And if they did see us link up with the other boat, then they’re coming to attack us. So either way, you need to be on your way.”

  Caine couldn’t be sure how much was the bravado of the valorous damned, and how much was just good common sense. He snugged his mask, sat on the gunwale, took a bearing on Pulau Ringit. Leisurely pace or not, seven kilometers was still one hell of a long swim. He turned back: Pak Sumadi had his right hand raised in farewell. “Hati-hati,” he said.

  “Hati-hati,” Caine answered. He turned to the clone. “Sampai jumpa.”< footnote: “(I’ll) See you.”>

  “Probably not. Go. Now.”

  Caine didn’t stop to think. He pushed off, holding his mask. As soon as he hit the water—harder than he expected because of the speed of the boat—he swam away. After ten seconds, he jackknifed forward at the waist, straightened his legs toward the sky behind him and kicked hard.

  He went down quickly, saw the light dim around him. He straightened out. Other than the small, shimmering disk of the sun and the wake of the ship, he could imagine himself trapped in a green glass paperweight: his surroundings were silent, still, identical in all directions. He looked up at the dappled path of t
he wake, calculated the course of the ship, turned twenty-five degrees to the right of it. Yes, that matched his estimate of the heading for Ringit. He took a breath from the regulator, stowed it, began swimming, felt a spasm of pain in his left forearm. Not the Mars wound again, not now.

  Behind and to the left, the water frothed white and he could make out the hull once again; the ship was backing engines. Preparing to be boarded? Already? No way of knowing. He kicked, exhaled slowly—spread out the bubbles—and took another breath from the regulator. He pushed his legs into long, sinuous, deep-digging kicks, looked up to attempt to gauge his depth.

  Back in the direction of the ship, through the faint jade green of the water, he saw a bright, orange flash where its weed-trailing keel had been. Then the shock and muffled boom—as much felt as heard—hit and deafened him. Clones, Pak Sumadi, rotting fish—all gone as though they had never existed. And now, going down farther than he should, Caine was heading into the depths where Ulysses had met his deceased comrades. But, as he had in college, Caine rejected Virgil’s version in favor of Homer’s. Like his code-namesake Odysseus, Caine had no desire to visit the dead, much less join them—not if he could help it.

  Correcting for the mild current, Caine set himself back on course for Ringit, resolving to come up in five minutes to check his deviation from that heading. He held his breath. No bubbles for at least a minute. As he resumed his slow kicking, Caine resolved that this day, the sea-god Poseidon—ever the enemy of Odysseus—would not be the final arbiter of his fate.

  Northern approaches to the Pulau Seribu, Java Sea, Earth

  From the moment the oversized and ancient commercial fishing boat drew alongside Captain Ong’s small Taiwanese bulk container ship, he knew that the encounter was going to be a peculiar one. The fishing boat was too small to be authorized for passage over the fifty-klick blockade line just ahead, and hadn’t managed to get a new radio yet. That, or she was choosing not to advertise she had a set that hadn’t been fried by the invader EMP strikes of three weeks ago. Instead, she signaled her intents by semaphore and hand gestures. Although piracy had decreased since the invasion, Ong still took the precaution of putting an armed team aboard the boat before he agreed to go over for the requested meeting.

  As he stepped off the accommodation stairs onto the swaying and somewhat grimy deck, Ong discovered a second, and far more profound, peculiarity: a woman with fair skin, jet black hair, and glass green eyes emerged from the pilot house. She was taller than any of the men around her, shapely, and projected an air of certainty that she would not be trifled with simply because she was not to be trifled with.

  The master of the fishing boat remarked that the lady had asked to speak to the captain in private, and they could have the use of the master’s quarters, if they wished. His deference suggested the woman had shown him impeccable proof of generous payment, the evidence of powerful familial connections, or the certainty of dire penalties if compliance was not forthcoming. Given the man’s tendency to bow whenever it might be vaguely appropriate, Ong guessed her bona fides might have included all three.

  But instead, the woman invited Ong to accompany her to the taffrail, where the stink of the engine’s fumes and the racket of its operation seemed sure to discourage eavesdropping.

  She did not bother with preamble, or even niceties. “I am told, Captain Ong, that you are a man who may be relied upon.”

  “I am pleased to be spoken of so highly, Ms.—”

  “Smith. Elena Smith.”

  “—Ms. Smith. However, without knowing who has been so complimentary regarding my character, I am at a loss to—”

  “Captain, there are individuals in Singapore with whom you share information about what you observe during your food runs to Indonesia. I understand from them that you served in the Taiwanese military, and even, briefly, in the National Security Bureau.”

  Ong blinked. “Ms. Smith, I cannot—”

  “Please. Neither you nor I have the time to engage in denials that cannot be sustained. I can recite the many things I’ve heard about you. But you already know that I wouldn’t be on a broken-down fishing boat just outside the Indonesian blockade line to wheedle information. That’s not why I trailed you here all the way from Singapore.”

  “So why did you trail me from Singapore, Ms. Smith?”

  “To solicit your help in reaching Indonesia. Of course.”

  Ong was a polite man by both upbringing and inclination and so nodded slowly. “You are, I take it, familiar with the impediments?”

  “Many of them, but news is not easy to come by, and I have been traveling for some time.”

  “Traveling from where, if I may ask?”

  She surveyed him levelly. “The eastern coast of the United States down to the Panama Canal. Once there, I—changed ships to a high-speed liner, bound for Singapore.”

  Hmmm. With every passing second, Ms. Smith sounded more and more like an operative. Except, where was her support staff and/or equipment, why was she traveling alone, and why had she scrambled after his ship, sight unseen, to attempt to make infiltration arrangements on the high seas? Something was not right. But it might be professionally dangerous to attempt to find out what that something was, so Ong followed her lead. “Very well. I take it you did not stay long in Singapore?”

  “Just long enough to get in contact with a family friend. Who told me about you and your ship.”

  And who also told you that I am debriefed by military intelligence there, after every food run. And who is just the sort of friend every American family has in Singapore. “So I take it you did not have time to apprise yourself of the new conditions of the blockade?”

  “I did not, but I know that there are hundreds of ships porting in Java with food every week, so the border must be porous.”

  “Not as porous as you might think, madam.”

  “But they’ve opened up the approach channel and porting restrictions, haven’t they?”

  How long has this woman been traveling? “Yes, madam. We still must cross the fifty-kilometer boundary using one of five designated navigation lanes: Jakarta, Semarang, Surabaya, Cilacap, and Banywangi. But after that, smaller ships such as mine may disperse to another seven smaller ports. However, government boats follow and monitor us all the way to our destination, stand guard while we unload, and then escort us out. I believe we are occasionally followed by alien submersibles, as well.”

  “So the invaders determined that it was too difficult to coordinate all the shipping of foodstuffs into the five big ports?”

  “No, they determined that their situation might become untenable if people started starving. Which some of them did, after the first week. So, fearing a more general revolt, the invaders opened up the seven other distribution points along the coastline.”

  “And have things been easier since then?”

  “On the contrary, they have been much worse. After the initial restrictions were lifted, the Sloths became more difficult than ever, stopping ships for the smallest infractions, shooting anyone who disagreed or refused to obey immediately.”

  “It sounds as though the Hkh’R didn’t like the open-coastline rule, then.”

  “No. Clearly, that humanitarian decision must have come from the Roaches. They seem to have some kind of conscience, even though they’re bugs.”

  “Actually,” murmured the woman, “they’re not.”

  “No? Well, they look like insects. But I’m quite sure that the open coastline was their idea. I suspect that the Hkh’Rkh would have been quite happy to let every human on Java die.”

  “So, getting to Java. How close do you approach the outlying islands, the pulaus?”

  “We have a no-approach zone of eight kilometers, Ms. Smith. The exosapients are very strict in the enforcement of that limit and of maintaining speed. If we slow to less than eight knots, they scramble VTOLs and board the ship. If a ship slows to less than five knots, they often sink her. Rail gun rounds from orbit, usually.”


  “But if you drop something in the water, and leave it behind, what then?”

  “If we are seen dropping anything, even trash, over the side once we come within the fifty-kilometer limit, we will be boarded or sunk.”

  “They monitor your trash? Really?”

  “I know of two captains who ignored that restriction. They are both dead, their ships at the bottom.”

  “I see. But what if something was in the water already, and was being towed behind you?”

  “I’m quite sure they’d see it, unless it was very small, smaller than a life raft. Some people tried that the first week of the blockade. They’re now keeping company with the two captains I mentioned.”

  “What if the towed object was small enough to remain concealed in your wake?”

  Ong stared at the woman and decided that she was not only quite clever, but quite insane. “Ms. Smith, the wake of even this ship is extremely—”

  “I am aware of its punishing force, Captain. My question is, could you rig a rope system that would allow me to remain in the wake, reliably?”

  “Well, if we maintain the lowest allowed speed—”

  “Which seems advisable for my health.”

  “—then yes, I suppose so. But even if we pass within eight kilometers of one of the pulau, how do you plan to get to it? That is a very long swim, and I remain unconvinced of the effectiveness of the shark repellent we have been given.”

  “Oh, once I’m in the water, and you’re going slowly enough, my friend can get me safely to land.”

  “Your—friend?” Ong asked, looking about.

  Ms. Smith only smiled and crooked a finger as she began walking forward. Ong followed.

  She stopped at the midship hold, which was loosely covered. Probably no catch in there. Indeed, this part of the ship smelled unusually clean. Ong looked around. “Is your friend joining us here?”

  “No. We just joined her.” She pulled back the cover.

  Ong looked down. Set snug within the stained gray bulkheads of the ship was a large tank, at least four meters long by three wide by two deep. And in it was a sleek dolphin of medium size. Ong stared, speechless.