The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  “Removing them from the south will be expensive. Your friends have described that they have moved some of their cannon ashore to defend their fort, and that they have built walls for their men to hide behind. Their weapons are better than ours. It will be expensive to attack and destroy them,” Collum reminded her.

  “Then don’t attack them at first. They have to eat, Collum. You’ve been down there and so have I. They will be seeking to grow crops. You have to destroy those crops, if you can.”

  Collum sniffed. “Crops no longer grow in the East Finger.”

  “It’s been raining, Collum. If they are smart, and I’m willing to bet that they are, there are things they can do to hold water back and keep some for their crops. You are going to want to attack their crops and anything they build to hold water. If they can’t eat, they can’t stay. As large as their ships are, they will have trouble hauling enough food and water to keep colonists alive, particularly if you dispute their presence.”

  Collum was silent for a while and then he stood quickly. “I will think on this, Andie. There is much in what you say.”

  “Think on one last thing,” Kris told him. “You want to break the chains of your ancestors, and you want to kill those who hold those chains. Dralka was wrong to give up on their oaths -- but you will be equally wrong if you hold those oaths more important in simple fulfillment than a final victory.

  “You can’t break chains if you’re dead. Your army won’t break any chains if it is destroyed. You will need to be careful that you don’t let that happen, even if means leaving the field to your enemies. There is always the next time. To paraphrase one of our great war leaders, your job is to not to die for your king, but to make the other scum die for theirs. Alive you can come back another day, perhaps with a better plan and better weapons and prevail where before you failed. If you die with that failure, I can promise you that you will not prevail in any battle in the future.”

  The soon-to-be-King bowed his head. “As I said, I have much to think about.”

  * * *

  Kris and Andie took turns hugging Ezra when he returned from the south three days later. After the hugs he handed each of them a radio. “Jake had a spare and he found two where Kyle was killed. These are much better than the ones we had before.

  “It’ll be dawn shortly in LA and your parents, Kris and Linda for you Andie, will head to the hospital where your father is hanging on. He got better for a while, but he’s starting to slip again. Call it in an hour and a half they’ll be ready to talk.”

  “I’m ready,” Kris said.

  “Me too, but I gotta say, I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to say to my old man.”

  “Yeah. On top of that, the conversation is going to be overheard by the government. Jake broke the rules, so it’ll be best if we don’t mention him. He was supposed to grab any of us he found and hotfoot it back to the Far Side door and take whoever through. Then they were going to close it forever.”

  “The hell they are!” Andie said with venom. “I’ll kill those bastards just as dead as those other fuckers!”

  Ezra spoke softly. “Andie, it’s a serious felony to utter a threat like that against the President, and almost as serious to utter threats like that against congressmen. They have the wind up, Andie, and they are doing all they can to get people to change their minds and ban off-world travel.

  “We’re going to have to spend a month in quarantine, and then we’ll be subject to medical testing the rest of our natural lives. This isn’t Jake’s field; your mother can probably tell you more about it, Kris, but he said that those tests were going to be thorough.”

  “That is so stupid!” Andie vented. “Jesus H. Christ on a crutch! We’ve been here more than two fucking months! We haven’t had a sniffle, a cough, a wheeze -- we haven’t run a temperature and all of our systems are A-OK. Further, none of the Arvalans are dying of the flu, colds, mumps, measles, chickenpox or the plague.

  “I won’t say it won’t happen, but we can deal with it, just like we’ve dealt with everything else.”

  “Yes,” Kris said. “I read an article a few months ago about how they’re sure that Columbus brought back VD from his trip to the New World.”

  “That was a scourge for a long time,” Ezra told her.

  “Is was -- but that was then and this is now. We’ve got a good handle on most diseases, and are doing a lot of research on what’s left. And, I think, scourge or not, few people think we’d be better off now if Columbus had stayed home,” Kris offered.

  “They are going to want to know our plans to return,” Ezra cautioned them.

  “So, in two days, Collum’s army is going south. It’s not going to be the fastest march in the history of the military, but they should be close in three weeks.” Kris went on to say, “I hope they’ll realize that going south on our own wouldn’t be good.”

  “I hope so. So far the only thing they know about you helping them with is the crossbow. So far, no one has made an issue of it,” Ezra told Andie. “I told Jake and he’s going to speak to Linda and your father, Kris, because he’s sure, and so am I, that the government is going to go crazy with the idea that you are feeding these people technology.”

  “Tough shit!” Andie told him. “If I had it to do over again tomorrow, I’d do it just like I did before.

  “I don’t care what the government wants, Ezra. These people have a dream, one that Martin Luther King would have found exemplary. We can, and we will, use that against the government,” Kris warned. “A holy crusade to rescue an entire race from slavery.”

  “Whites, slaves to blacks,” Ezra noted. “I’m not sure how far that will fly. Some will think it’s justified payback.”

  “That is so sick,” Andie said, shaking her head. “It doesn’t even justify a reply.”

  “I’m just telling you.”

  He looked around. They were on the city wall, watching soldiers drilling with crossbows. “And don’t forget one last thing: there’s the little matter of making sure that Collum, Melek and their people don’t lose. I keep thinking of Cortez and I shiver.”

  “We’ve talked to them,” Kris explained. “Even to quoting Patton to them. Andie thinks they should go after their crops.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Ezra said, facing Andie. “They are going to be short of supplies. Screw that up and they are screwed indeed.”

  Kris nodded. “I’m thinking that they’ve bitten off too much to chew,” she told Ezra. “If they’d put in a base on those islands off the coast, the Arvalans wouldn’t have noticed and might not have responded as quickly and in such numbers. It would take a couple of months before they can get transports here to haul troops east. Worse, the other side has ships with cannons and the Arvalans don’t. The Tengri have control of the sea, and that’s a big plus for them.

  “There’s no way to get them to do it, but ideally the Arvalans should leave a trusted general here to deal with the Tengri and return west as fast as they can, and get people working on ships and guns. To be honest, I’m afraid that if the Arvalans push the Tengri off the mainland they’ll just go to those islands and set up there. You say they have radio?”

  “Yes, not even the NSA can read it, although they haven’t had a lot of time yet -- and no Tengri linguists.”

  “Chaba isn’t of much use,” Kris told him. “She speaks the language, but can’t read or write and knows practically nothing beyond her household duties.”

  “Don’t forget screwing,” Andie said darkly. “Melek says that Rari is one very happy man. She’s got a good grasp of that, I’d say.”

  “I’ve tried to get her to start attending the classes for children,” Kris told Ezra. “Except the kids teased her at first until the adults lost their tempers -- now those kids just sullenly hate her. They aren’t old enough to understand just what it means to have been a slave for generations. Worse, this is something we’re going to have to deal with. Chaba is probably typical, and maybe even braver than most. Th
ey’ve had hundreds of years of slavery and any sign of resistance gets crushed. In short, Chaba hates school as much as the kids hate her.

  “The slaves aren’t taught anything beyond their basic duties and anyone showing any signs of an attitude is culled. Killed,” Kris said with distaste. “Educating the ones that are rescued may take a generation or two.”

  Ezra looked at the two girls. “You both sound like you mean to stay.”

  “Stay? No!” Andie told him. “Come back a lot -- yeah, that I’m going to do.”

  “My father travels a couple of times a month, usually,” Kris told him. “Even my mother travels now and then. We’re just going to go further.”

  “Getting back to the Tengri,” Ezra said, “you might think it a good idea to leave them here, but that fort is too close to the Far Side Door. It has to go. But, from Jake’s description, Collum and his soldiers are going to get their clocks cleaned.”

  “Why?” Kris asked. “The crossbows are almost as good as a musket. Better, in fact.”

  “Aye, that’s true enough. But the Tengri aren’t idiots, according to my cousin. They’ve brought eight guns ashore. The have two covering the northern approaches, two covering the southern approaches and four on the eastern side. Odds are, those ships will seriously mess with anyone coming from the north or south -- in truth it wouldn’t take a genius to realize that coming from the east would screen them from the ship’s guns.

  “I’d be willing to bet that two of those four guns pointing north or south can be hustled to the eastern wall and emplaced quickly. Six guns, firing grapeshot, will make short work of an attack over open ground.”

  “You said you were an artilleryman,” Kris responded. “As an artilleryman, how would you attack that camp?”

  “A barrage of RPGs aimed at the cannons, some mortars, 81MM types, dropping rounds inside the walls and trying to hit the ships. Maybe a couple of recoilless rifles or small cannon.

  “Except, we can’t get those, Kris, forget it! The government is going to pull the plug on us. Even trying to get more weapons through and they’ll pull the plug on all of us.”

  “More weapons?” Andie said, her eyes focusing on Ezra.

  “Well, Kurt bought a million rounds for the P90s. He’s sent a quarter of that through, plus weapons for everyone. We have a dozen people now, I think, counting Jake and Linda, inside the cave.”

  Andie’s eyes lit up with unholy glee.

  Ezra shook his head. “Forget it, Andie. The P90s are only effective at a few hundred yards. Those cannon can hit out to a mile or more. And while their muskets aren’t accurate at that range, there would be a lot of them firing from cover at a dozen of us running around in the open. You’d just get a lot of guys killed Andie, and it’s not likely you’d do any good.”

  “Even if three thousand Arvalans are shooting off their crossbows?”

  “More targets for the cannons, Andie,” Ezra told her. “More targets for the muskets. You’d probably win, but it would cost a lot of lives.”

  “In short, if we had weapons from home, we could do it easily, and kill Tengri and not our allies, but we can’t use them because those fucking assholes have the wind up?” Andie said, back to being angry.

  “That’s about it, Andie. And really, you’d have a lot of trouble convincing them that it would be a good idea. You’d have a lot of trouble convincing anyone that it’s a good idea. I’m not sure, but it might also be that Collum and Melek would object.”

  “Why would they object?” Andie said, still furious.

  “I can’t speak for you, Andie, but when I was twelve my mother decided that I needed to learn how to cook. She would stand over me and make comments about everything I did. I shouldn’t do this, I should do that. It was dispiriting and I quickly grew to hate cooking. When I came home after I got out of the army, my mother came in and found me boiling water for tea in the microwave. She got on my case, saying that the tea tasted funny, brewed like that. I ask you -- hot water is hot water!”

  Kris laughed. “I’m not sure but what I agree with her. But I think I see your point. If we do all the hard things for them, they are going to think that we’ll do it for them all the time and that all they have to do is sit back and relax.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Except if they try it on their own, they’ll get hammered,” Kris went on.

  “Yes.”

  “So, Mr. Fucking Know-it-All -- tell me, do you have a way to do something, or just an endless stream of excuses about how you can’t?” Andie said, and spit at his feet.

  “Now that, Andie, is another question altogether. In a bit we’ll be talking to the people back home. I don’t think we should go into the military situation just now. The King of Arvala and his most trusted lieutenant are going to escort us south with a large force of men to keep us safe. Because there are so many, it’s going to take a couple of weeks.

  “Once we’ve finished talking to them, we can talk to Kurt and Jake, without worrying about eavesdropping. They can go back and forth, although they have to stay in the containment area. If there’s a way to talk to others without the government listening in, they’ll know a way.”

  “And how do we make Collum and Melek think they are risking as much in an attack? Even while we’re doing our best to keep them safe?” Kris asked.

  “You have to understand, if some of their men don’t bleed and die, it won’t make any difference. They’ll know that they were just a fucking chess piece, like the Marines were in the first Gulf War. I’m pretty sure we can take out the cannons or their crews with RPGs -- and let Arvalans deal with the soldiers on the walls.

  “That won’t be cheap, but without those cannon, the Tengri aren’t going to like what happens.”

  They talked more until it was time to talk to their parents.

  Andie didn’t want to go first, but Kris and Ezra insisted. It was like watching two strange cats meeting each other in a dark alley -- much hissing and spitting, but there was too much at stake to do that for very long. Andie told him she was coming as fast as he could. Otto Schulz had laughed. “You wouldn’t know how to hurry if it slapped you in the face! Take your own sweet time!”

  It left Andie in tears, but she was back from the radio when Kris talked to her father and mother.

  “I’m fine,” Kris told her parents. “It’s been exciting a few times, but I’m fine. So are Andie and Ezra.”

  “You’re getting enough to eat?” Helen Boyle asked.

  “Yes, we’re about out of MREs, as we’ve been eating some no matter what. The local food seems filling but there is no way to know if the local vitamins and minerals are the same as ours. So we’ve kept up a steady diet of stuff from home -- if just not in as large of quantities as we’d like.”

  “And the people are human?”

  “Well, pretty much. I haven’t, you know, examined all the anatomical details,” Kris told her mother.

  “Any allergies?”

  “Not so as I’ve noticed. Neither Andie nor I were prone to getting sick before and we haven’t gotten sick here. I don’t think pathogens are a problem, at least not as big as everyone seems to be making out back home.”

  “Water? Have you been drinking boiled water?”

  Kris swallowed. “Ah, no. Sorry, I forgot about it.”

  “And you’ve had no GI troubles?” her mother pressed.

  “None,” Kris told her. “Is that important?”

  “Let’s just say that the flora and fauna of the human gut is quite varied and unless you have a modern water distribution system, said intestinal flora and fauna have a tendency to appear in drinking water.”

  Kris decided to edit things a bit. “They have public outhouses, divided by sex.”

  Andie raised an eyebrow and Ezra snickered. They had public outhouses, not divided by sex.

  “Well, do be careful dear. The larger animals bite, so it is certain that the microscopic ones are at least trying to.”

  “I have been ve
ry careful, Mom,” Kris replied. “We had to walk about four hundred miles to get here. We didn’t get a single blister. We have been real careful.”

  “Well, you keep it up. Here’s your father.”

  Oliver Boyle said hello and Kris did the same. “Is your hand okay?” Kris asked.

  “Yes, thanks. It was just a cracked bone. I’m sorry about the young Chinese fellow who was killed. Otto and I have done something for his family. Not to mention we’re suing the pants off the City of Los Angeles, the LAPD and the LA County Sheriff’s Department and a great many individuals who were our guards.”

  “It is my understanding that the government is listening in,” Kris told him.

  “Well, they’re being unobtrusive about it. Here in Otto’s hospital room with us is Jon Bullman, a technical representative from the government who is supervising the operation of the fusor.”

  “Well, I’ll address him then, but they are free to monitor this and take what I have to say under advisement. Mr. Bullman, hello, I’m Kris Boyle.”

  “Miss Boyle, you have my deepest regard.”

  “I do? Can we count on you, then, ignoring a government order to turn off the fusor, an order that would strand us?”

  “Yes, if I knew there was a possibility of your rescue without excessive casualties. I don’t think my bosses realize quite how much people like me admire people like you -- and not those who are sitting on their big fat behinds and who never go out and doing something worthwhile.”

  “Well, we have about four hundred miles of territory to cover before we can reach the Far Side Door. There are predatory dinosaurs out there, do you understand?”

  “I understand. I’m sorry about the young man who was killed the other day. My wife and I sent his parents flowers and a donation in his name.”