The Far Side
Page 52
“No, my lady,” he replied, commoner to noble.
Andie turned to the man who, so far, was the only Tengri who’d spoken. “You are as much of a runt as I am, Tengri. This is the last time -- command someone from that ship to come here. If you cannot, then you aren’t the person I wish to talk to.”
He simply stared at her, a haughty smile. Andie turned to the ship. “I’m going to count to ten. Either you get someone headed here, or I’ll kill every one of you I see that isn’t part of your truce party.”
She started counting at one, taking about a second for each number. When she got to ten, she shouted, “Be it on your heads. We would have given you the survivors of this camp, had you been willing to talk.”
She hefted the P90 and began firing three shot bursts. The laser sight was so cool! She finished her first magazine, and there were still men in the shrouds, so she dumped the mag and put in the next one. She shot one of them off the ropes, and the man facing her said, “Stop!”
“Why the fuck do I want to stop?” There really wasn’t a good Arvalan word for “fuck” so Andie used the English one. “Didn’t I tell you what would happen?”
There were at least a dozen men on the ship, dead or wounded. Twice, men had popped up and fired a musket at them, once hitting close enough to tell they’d been fired at. Twice, Andie had calmly killed the shooter.
“You there on the boat! Do you really want me to kill all of you?”
That was the cue, and a mortar round landed about a hundred yards further to sea, sending a fountain of water into the air.
Andie turned to the man next to the one she’d been talking to. “Can you understand me?”
He shook his head, and Andie let fly at this feet, sending him dancing away. “Then I don’t need you. Leave or die.”
She turned to the second man. “Can you understand me?”
This one paled and stood frozen, making not the slightest sound.
Andie laughed low and turned the P90 on the first speaker. “I take that to be a yes. So, tell me again why I need you?”
“Kill me, and you’ll die where you stand.”
“Kill me and we’ll sink the ship and the moron who commands it. Then we will wait until you get hungry enough to come out of your fort, and then we will kill you all. On the other hand, I have more important things to do than waiting for all of you to decide when it would be a good day to die.
“So, get someone from that ship here, right now, or I’ll call up to the fort, over your bleeding corpse, and ask if there’s anyone there who would like to talk survival.”
“I can do that,” the man said, clearly sweating.
He called to the ship, and a moment later a small boat appeared from the offside of the ship, and eventually two men from the surviving ship were deposited near Andie.
“Okay, it’s simple,” Andie told them. “Go home. If you do not go home, we’ll kill you. Because we have no desire to have mongrels such as you around, we will let you all go. All you have to do aboard your ship is push your cannons into the water! Splish - splash! You in the fort can send the slaves out first, empty handed. Once we have them secure, you can come out, carrying food only, no slaves. You can keep your personal weapons. You will leave the fort intact as well -- not so much as a scratch on the cannon or a flogged slave.
“Then you can sail away, and we won’t bother you -- unless you return, and then we’ll kill you.”
“And why should we believe you?” the speaker told Andie. “Without our cannon, we would be defenseless.”
Andie waved around, which brought another mortar shell crashing down, seawards of the ship. “You are already defenseless. We simply don’t want you to be tempted to violate your promise anytime soon.”
Andie waved at the sun, edging closer to the Big Moon. “The King tells me you have until the eclipse starts. As soon as the light starts to dim, he’ll sink the ship. Then we’ll start lobbing shells into the camp until you finally get tired, hungry, or desperate enough to come out. Then we’ll kill you. You have to know, the King would just as soon kill all of you fuckers, right?”
“You don’t command these men, stop pretending.”
“I don’t?” Andie asked, sounding gleeful. “Let’s have a little command test. You tell all of the men in your fort to stand up and raise their weapons.” He did nothing, and Andie’s tone sharpened. “You can command them, right? Do we need another lesson?”
Still nothing happened, and Andie held the P90 above her head. In a second, three thousand men were standing along the two miles of ravine, waving crossbows over their heads. Then they vanished.
“Okay, fuckwad, wanna try for two out of three?”
“I will have to talk with the Viceroy,” the man said weakly.
“Fine, like I said, when the eclipse starts -- the ship sinks. And if the ship starts to move, the ship sinks. You guys will be ever so welcome coming out to fight us on our land.”
“You will regret this!” the speaker said, before turning away.
“Dumb fuck! Who asked you here anyway?”
“Before the day is over, you’ll wish you’d never been born!”
Andie laughed one last time. “You are a clueless mother fucker, you know? Do you think that another ship is still coming? Did you know how close they came to shore at the headland? Close enough for our guns to reach out and hit it! You haven’t heard from them since they called in at dawn to tell you they’d be here by noon, right?”
The man turned pale and walked away.
When the Tengri were all clear, the Sea Fighter sergeant spoke to her. “Lady Andie, may I ask a favor? In payment for my being here with you today?”
“Of course, whatever you want.”
“I wish you would forget me, my name, and my order. I would just as soon take my chances in a dralka rookery if you should ever again need someone next to you in a parley.”
Rari laughed and said the Arvalan equivalent of “Been there and done that!”
* * *
They spent the last hour hugging the ground once Kurt spotted the ship coming. Kris spent most of the time on her back, staring up at the sky, trying to figure out if Earth or this place had the bluer sky.
“Five minutes, Kris,” Kurt told her.
“I’m awake,” she joked.
“Just letting you know.”
“My mother freaked when she heard I’d killed someone,” Kris told him.
“Well, see, you’re a more honest kid than I ever was. I made sure the subject never came up with mine. Yeah, she wouldn’t have understood. I wish she could have, but she wouldn’t.”
He popped his head up for a second and then brought it back down more slowly. “This is going to be too easy. I’d hoped for this, but... really... actually having it happen...”
“Having what happen?”
“I mean in a few minutes they are going to tack. Then they will be coming right towards us, aiming for the point of the headland. I’ll wait until they get ready for another tack and are committed. That tack will almost certainly take them directly away from us.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“Yes, but you have to understand that all I have to do is guess the distance, and I have your laser range finder to do that. A straight shot, no deflection. Piece of cake. I’ll score a hit with the first shot. Two, maybe three hits, if what Ezra said is true, will be all that it takes. They won’t have time to maneuver out of the way.”
Kris pulled up a picture of the Tengri man who’d tried to shoot her with a musket. It was unpleasant.
“Shoot,” she told him.
He lifted his head and watched, so Kris did too. The ship had been headed straight for them, and now the sails started to shiver as it began to turn.
“Fire!” Kurt told the man on the mortar.
Kris had never seen a mortar shell explode and, as it turned out, she still had a while to wait to see one. There was a flash between the rear mast and the higher deck at the r
ear of the ship. For a second, nothing seemed to change, and then there was a different kind of flash. Brighter, yellower, with red edges and black smoke around the center. For a second Kris thought the ship was sliding backwards into a hole.
The ship had barely started to turn, and now, the rear third of the ship simply dissolved. For a moment, the forward two thirds continued straight ahead, more or less parallel to the headland, then it veered towards them.
There was a small beach there, and it seemed like someone was guiding the remains of the ship towards it, because it headed right for the beach. There was a grinding crash, and the forward two thirds of the ship shattered on the sand and rocks.
“Jesus!” Kurt said, crossing himself. “Never mess around with a black powder magazine! They must have had the hatch open, and the mortar round must have gone inside the magazine. Jesus!”
For Kris, all she could do was stare with horrified fascination at the wreckage. Nothing moved. How many hundreds of people had just vanished at her command? She swallowed and tried not to be sick.
“We should see if there are any survivors,” she said dully.
“Tengri ship, Tengri survivors,” Kurt said bluntly. “We are two dozen, and there were hundreds of them. We can’t even begin to afford to look. Collum and Melek can send troops later.”
“Kurt, you can do whatever you want, okay? I wouldn’t leave a pit bull to die alone if I hit it with my truck, okay?”
“You’ll get yourself killed. While I personally would probably lose a bonus from your old man for getting you home safe, you personally, Kris, would be dead. Think on it.”
Kris started down, making her way carefully over the rocks. No one else came after her, but she had stopped caring what other people did. Nothing moved, the scene was desolation.
Boards and bits of this and that were scattered everywhere, and the first body she found didn’t resemble anything that had even been human. It was burned and crushed almost beyond recognition.
She staggered, staring around her in horror. This was what her mother had thought, Kris knew. How could she ever explain this to her mother? How could she ever look at herself in the mirror again?
These were the bad guys, her mind told her. These were bad guys. They made people like Chaba slaves. They would try to make someone like Kris or Andie slaves. She owed them no tears, no sympathy.
And yet, a voice whispered in her ear, “It’s who you know. It’s what you know. If you don’t know diddly, you don’t know squat.”
She stopped at the point where the ship had impacted the rocks. The scars left by the impact on the rocks were awesome as well as sickening. The ship must have been going quite fast. She remembered then -- it had been sailing with the wind. Did their sails make their own wind, like Andie’s did? Hitting these rocks at five miles an hour would have been painful. At ten or fifteen miles an hour? Who could survive?
Not far away there was a groan of pain and even as Kris turned to look, she saw a hand grip the gunnels of a small boat and try to lift the person up. It was a flashing second’s glance, and all Kris could see was that she was a girl, she was young, and she was covered with blood.
Heedless, she rushed forward and helped. The girl was, Kris noted, in the forward portion of a small boat, the rear of which was broken and torn, although not as bad as the larger ship had been.
There was a crackle of static from her radio. “Kris, Ezra. How is it going?”
“The other ship is gone,” she said dully, as she lowered the girl, probably, she thought, about twelve, to the ground and started trying to stop the worst of the bleeding.
“Well, Andie talked them into knots here, and since they haven’t heard from the ship, they think they’re screwed. They are screwed, right?”
“Yes,” she told him as she straightened up. Behind her she heard a clatter of rocks and saw Kurt.
“She’s hurt,” Kris told him. “I need bandages.”
He silently passed her a kit with army bandages and other stuff in it. Kris wasn’t sure what it all was, and absently wished her mother was there.
Ezra said something on the radio, and she asked him to repeat what he’d said. “You really should have seen Andie, Kris! She was superb! She could have talked them out of their pants!”
“Okay,” Kris told him. “I’m a bit busy just now. I’ll get back to you.” She turned off the radio and worked to put bandages on the worst of the young girl’s injuries.
“Do you know what you’re doing, Kris?” Kurt asked.
“Practicing first aid.”
“I’m going to send Toby Keith down to you -- he makes the Arvalans nervous as it is. Let him get you and the girl back to the cave, okay?”
“Sure, sure,” she told him, focused only on her work.
She really had no idea how long it took to get back to the cave. The others had gone on ahead, and Toby was patient and helped her carry the girl. Others emerged from the dark, and they could put the wounded girl on a stretcher, and that made things much easier.
They whisked her right through the Far Side door, without comment or hesitation. Her mother was there and took over the care of the injuries. Kris stood rooted in place, watching her mother do her thing with swift, practiced motions.
“Is she okay?” Kris asked.
Her mother turned to her. “Bumps and bruises, some of them pretty bad. A couple of bad cuts, but you did a good job on those, Kris. Mostly, I’d say, she’s simply terrified.”
“Of what?”
Her mother’s expression would haunt her until the end of days.
“You. Me.”
“Why?” Kris’ brows furrowed.
“We’re white, she’s black. At a guess, she thinks she has a life of slavery to look forward to.”
Kris looked at the girl, tall, willowy slender, and above all, black. She saw Toby Keith, much shorter, much lighter skin, but still black.
There was no warning then, nothing. Black winds rose up all around her, and there was a rushing sound as if all the air and life was being sucked out of the universe. She was choking, unable to breathe. There was nothing but blackness and wind, and she never bothered to try to fight it.
Chapter 24 :: Rest and Recovery
Glaive Trennys lifted his head and stared at the flaming pyre that had once been his flagship. Then his eyes drifted to the ship’s boat drawn up on the beach, surrounded by a dozen of his men, all dead.
The Emperor’s orders had given him no leeway, and they had directly led to this.
Imperial Viceroy of the West! A grand title! Admiral of the Western Fleets! Almost as grand! Six months ago he’d commanded six fine ships and now -- this!
The last storm had been a catastrophe. They had been sailing eastward in line abreast, two dozen miles between ships, just barely in sight of each other, communicating by radio to pass reports. His ship, the Glaive, had been the furthest north. His was a fine ship, the best in the Imperial Navy and named in honor of his grandfather.
The Horel, the southernmost ship, had reported the storm coming and he’d ordered bare poles and thought it would be no worse than a dozen storms he’d endured already on the voyage. He laughed at his naiveté! He had never heard of a storm like the one they found themselves in!
The day had turned as dark as if there was an eclipse. Lightning shattered the heavens and wind roared and water fell from the sky faster than the pumps could deal with it.
Captain Unna of the Feston had messaged an hour after the storm had gotten very bad that he’d seen a bright flash to his south, which he assumed was the death of the Horel. Whether or not it was truly the death of the ship or simply a brighter lightning flash than the million others, there was no way to tell. Horel had never been seen or heard from again.
Then Unna had messaged a short while later that the rainwater was endangering the radio and he was going to seal it into waterproof canvas. By that time the Glaive was fighting for its life and Glaive had no more time to give it any thought.
Just before dark of the second day, the clouds parted for a bit and they could see land to their south, not two miles distant. They turned further north and were safe. Alas, the ship that was the next one south of them in line was never heard from again after that. Only Abna, the smallest warship, was still transmitting, and then it too fell silent.
When the storm clouds finally parted, he could see a solid mass of land ahead of them. It had been a close thing, because if the storm had just lasted a few more hours, they’d have crashed into the beaches there.
For the first time since the terrible storm had started they heard from the Emperor and it was Glaive’s sad duty to tell him that so far as he knew, that the Glaive and the four hundred and ten men and women aboard were the only survivors.
The Emperor ordered the ship to turn south to see if he could spot wreckage along this strange coast and if so, perhaps find survivors. Imagine Glaive’s pleasant surprise when two days later they heard from Unna’s ship, the Feston. Unna was dead and the ship a wreck that the surviving crew members had beached to keep it from sinking. Unna had kept the radio safe and the survivors had set it up and got it running again.
Glaive told them to conserve the equipment as best as possible, since radios were notorious for breaking down and there were few spare parts that had survived. The Glaive added more sail and as they were rounding the peninsula the lookouts had spotted a familiar ship. That turned out to be the Abna, which had its transmitter fail, but its receiver still worked. They had heard the conversations between Glaive and home and the Glaive and the survivors of the Feston and had sailed to meet them.
When Glaive came ashore he was met by his cousin, Yourel, who he had expected never to see again. Yourel and most of the others aboard the Feston were civilians -- scholars mostly -- and a few additional soldiers of the expedition. Feston had been their supply ship, and the second in command, Homer Graal, had saved most of the food supplies.