The Far Side (88 page)

Chapter 33 :: The Adventure of a Lifetime

So, off Charles, Adam, and Sally went, along with more than thirty others.  They didn’t move very fast as ATV’s aren’t the most stable transportation platform ever.  Add a trailer for supplies and they were ungainly and awkward.  They moved north at less than fifteen miles an hour, and Charles spent his entire time, checking his assigned sectors of the sky, and while he was at it, in every other direction as well.

When the terrain turned rough they only averaged about ten miles an hour.  There was something like a road, but it wasn’t really suited to high speed travel, even from an ATV’s point of view.

Charles wasn’t sure if Ezra Lawson’s decision that Charles should ride in the ATV Lawson was driving was a mark of favor or disdain, but Charles simply did his job without a fuss.

After four hours they stopped an hour for lunch -- MREs, which at least Charles was familiar with.  Half of the people ate at one time, while the other half were on guard, then after a half hour they swapped off.

Charles made a mental note about that.  In Iraq, when they bunkered up for a meal, a couple of people had guard duty and the rest ate.  If you had the guard, you ate later.  Considering how tired he’d been on some of those patrols, he blessed Ezra Lawson’s method as far superior to that the army had used in Iraq.  Everyone got to eat.

By late in the afternoon, they arrived at the end of the surveyed line, and for the next two hours the surveyors traveled over the local area checking that the route than had been initially selected still looked good.

Ezra spoke to the three cadets after the evening meal was finished.  “It’s generally safe here at night, but we’ll be running a perimeter guard anyway.  For tonight, you three are excused.  Starting tomorrow, one of you will have the duty each night.  The other shooters here know their business, and you should be sure to ask questions of them whenever you’re not a hundred percent positive.

“As I’ve said, the Arvalans and the Tengri aren’t into the ‘God’ business.  Thus, they have no problem with running around at night, at least philosophically.  If you get up in the middle of the night tonight, you’re going to find it really, really dark as this is what they call a ‘double dark’ night.  The Big Moon doesn’t touch either horizon tonight.  Yesterday it touched; tomorrow night it’ll touch, but not tonight.

“At least one person who saw the Big Moon in daylight had an instant claustrophobic attack.  That’s not happened at night, because, at least at night, all you’ll see is a big chunk out of the sky until about five local time tomorrow, when there will be a hint of sunrise on the Big Moon.

“It takes not quite eleven days for the Big Moon to return to where it was before.  A day in the daylight, free from the horizon, a day like tonight, free from the horizon in the middle of the night.  Two days after, as it approaches the terminator, and three-eighths of a day with it straddling the terminator.

“Generally speaking, neither the Tengri nor the Arvalans move around on a night like tonight, because you need a light, and then everyone knows you’re coming.  It invites an ambush.  They don’t move around much at night, period.

“The dralka don’t fly at night.  We have yet to see one up within a half hour after sunrise or before sunset.  Still, we watch until it’s too dark to watch any more.  It only takes being eaten alive once to ruin the rest of your day.”

He went and busied himself talking to the half dozen surveyors.

Charles looked around the camps, for there were really four camps, about a hundred yards apart.  The ATVs were set up in a diamond pattern, one vehicle at the north and south apexes, and one more at the northwest, northeast, southwest and southeast apexes, and then the smaller pattern repeated with groups of vehicles at the apexes of the larger diamond, except four groups instead of six.

Charles spent a few minutes building a firing position, knowing Ezra was watching him.  Off and on during the day, Charles had seen glimpses of the ocean, a couple of miles off to the west.  Ezra Lawson’s ATV was in the northernmost group, on the north apex -- further north than any of the others.

When it was dark, everyone in the various groups gathered at a single fire in the ring of vehicles of the northern group.  Ezra listed the assignments for the next day, and Charles learned that he and Ezra were going to go a bit further north, a mile ahead of where the survey was going to start and, via radio, stay a mile in advance of the surveyors, due north of their position.  Other ATVs would ring the surveyors in all directions.

It was clear that during the actual surveying the ATVs were going to provide a protective shell for the three surveyors and their three designated assistants -- men who were all armed with automatic weapons, just like the guards.

Ezra sat down next to Charles while they were eating.  “I have a favor to ask of you, Cadet.”

“Sure, Mr. Lawson.”

“When we start to egress, we’ll let everyone know, but I dearly would like to squeeze a round or two off from your Barrett.”

Charles smiled.  “Mr. Lawson, the Barrett has a bad reputation for shooting the shooter in the head if you’re not careful.  Ricochets are unpleasant, even if they miss.”

“I will exercise due care.”  Ezra looked around.  “In the ‘Stan and Iraq, I was an artillery observer.  I never actually fired a weapon at anyone.  Targets, yeah, I fired at targets on all sorts of ranges.  And sure, I put laser designators on all sorts of things, including people.  But it was never me who pulled the trigger and killed a living human being.  Not until I got here.”

He looked at Charles.  “I was Kris’ and Andie’s bodyguard.  I never once protected them from any of their human enemies -- they did that themselves.  I killed a couple of dralka; that was all and shot at guys in a couple of battles.  I helped, but they did their share and more.”

It was something Charles was familiar with.  A lot of people were good shots, but made lousy snipers -- their heart wasn’t in it.  Until you actually squeezed off a money round, you never knew in your heart if you could do it.  Some guys he’d known had hearts of stone and never thought about it.  He’d thought about it.  It wasn’t easy and he’d never shot someone just minding his business.  His targets had all had weapons in their hands and as far as Charles was concerned, that earned them target status.

Of course, he would never have dreamed about hunting an animal with his sniper rifle -- that wouldn’t have been sporting, what?

He slept, expecting to sleep badly.  He woke up only once during the night when someone coughed.  There was no other sound, and after a bit, he went back to sleep.

The morning was interesting.  He was roused a half hour before dawn, and indeed, there was a thin slice of light in the eastern sky.  People busied themselves with breakfast, and as they were seated around the fire, Ezra spoke.

“Hamburg, I heard you cough, last night.  I also smelled cigarette smoke.  I promise whoever is smoking, I don’t give a shit about the light -- I care about anything that gives my position away.  If I smell smoke again, I’ll line up every last one of you and sniff your breath.  If I smell cigarette smoke on your breath, your next conscious thought will be in the infirmary back on Earth.  Do I make myself very clear?”

The man involved shrugged but nodded.

Shortly after daylight, he and Ezra were in position, and Charles built himself another firing position of stones.  This time it was Charles who was curious.  “Mister Lawson, these rocks are rounded, like they’ve been in the water.”

“They were in the water.  Before a bout of climate change this was all jungle and swamp.  Arvala has no axial tilt -- the days and nights are the same length.  There are no seasons, and the sun always rises and sets at the same time.  Still, the weather seems to have long-term cycles.  Right now it seems to be swinging back to a wet cycle, as there were two hurricanes last summer.”  He laughed, “Our summer, anyway.”

Ezra waved to the north.  “See there?”

Charles looked north and didn’t see anything there.  He glanced at Ezra who was looking through binoculars and talking into his radio.  Alerting the others, Charles was sure.

He looked back up, and finally spotted a single dralka, about two miles away, flying low, over towards the ocean.  He bellied down in his firing position and got ready.

“He’s flying just inland of the ocean, Cadet.  It means that he’s not terribly hungry.  Dralka are smarter than you might think -- if he was hungry he’d be over the water, making circles, looking for a school of fish.  Here he is, over land.  Thus, he’s not very hungry, because there is nothing to eat on the land, except us.”

“May I fire when it’s in range?”

“Sure.  Open up any ol’ time.  The laser says two point one miles.  You’ll pardon me if I get my ear plugs on.”

Charles watched the dralka carefully.  It wasn’t flying very fast -- it would take a half dozen strokes from its wings and gain a couple of hundred feet of altitude, and then settle down to some cruising.  It was obvious that it wasn’t going to get anywhere near them.

He looked over his shoulder.  “I don’t suppose you would get up and wave at it, would you, Mr. Lawson?”

Charles was quite prepared for the other to tell him to jump up and wave himself, but instead, Ezra was up and waving after a few seconds.  There were some startled queries from the rest of the camp, but the veteran ignored them.  Sure enough, the dralka swerved a bit and started gaining altitude as it came towards them.

Ezra Lawson dropped down next to Charles.  “Any of these critters are a danger.  Killing one is a good idea.  Still, there are two dozen people here who are going to be pissed as hell if it gets close.

“They have two attack modes that they favor.  They fly low and hide that way, or they fly high and drop like rocks.  Just then it was in the typical cruising altitude.  They know the Arvalans have bows and so they fly higher than the bows can reach.  We’d just as soon you not miss, so that there will be no survivors to let them know that they have to keep even higher these days.”

Charles’ eyes had never left the dralka.  “No problem, Mr. Lawson.”

The flying predator slowly approached, having settled at an altitude of about five thousand feet above ground level.  If it had been truly smart and had been quartering towards them, instead of heading straight in, it might have made it a difficult shot.

Charles let the motions of the dralka sink in, going totally still, more or less a fire control computer.  As almost always happened, the shot, when it came, surprised him.

The dralka flipped backwards in the air and then fell like a rock.

Ezra Lawson audibly swallowed.  “Shit!  That was a good two thousand yards!”

“It’s a big target, Mr. Lawson.”

“Not much wider than a person,” Ezra said absently.  He laughed then.  “Well, Cadet, you are going to be extremely popular with the Arvalans if you can keep shooting like that!”

He stood up and yelled for everyone to saddle up.  While everyone was getting their gear cleared away, Ezra stood on a small hummock of ground with a pair of binoculars, glassing the horizon, mostly to the north and west.

Then he hastily put his gear together and the ATVs formed a new perimeter around where the surveyors were working.  It was, Charles saw, a layered defense.  There were the perimeter guards out about a mile, four of them, with only Charles doubled up.

There was a middle ring, again, in a diamond around where the surveyors were, about half a mile out.  Both Sally and Adam were there with their escorts.  There were three surveyors and three helpers, plus seven inner perimeter guards.

After two hours of uneventful waiting, he glanced at Ezra.  “This seems like overkill for the occasional bird.”

He laughed.  “You’d think so.  But once, up north, there were a couple of hundred at once.  Since then, we’ve seen flocks in excess of twenty three times.  One of these is no big, you’re right.  Twenty?  Now that’s right sporty!  A couple of hundred?  You might as well relax to the fact that you’re going to lose people.”

Charles patted the Barrett.  “Do you know how many rounds this has up the spout?”

“I heard it had a magazine, but I never heard how many.”

“Ten, Mr. Lawson.”

“And you have how many spare mags, Cadet?”

“I have six with me and twenty-five more in my gear.”

Ezra laughed.  “You better hope our ATV doesn’t break down -- because if it does, we have to hump our gear back to the cave.  If we leave ammo behind, I’d have to write a lot of reports.  You don’t even want to think about what happens if you leave a firearm behind.”

“We don’t want the Arvalans to have firearms?”

“No, not that.  Andie Schulz is busy showing them how to make them.  Like I said, these are interesting times.  There are a number of factions among the Arvalans.  The old leadership of the Dralka fighting order, among them.  They weren’t happy with the changes we represented and tried to kill us.  We haven’t seen any sign of them for a few months, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t out there.

“Then there is a tantalizing hint of another enemy.  Once, a long time ago, there was a pirate and bandit named Rangar.  The rookery used to be his headquarters.  He raped, looted, and kidnapped up and down this peninsula.  One day he carried off a really big raid, and when they tracked him down after that, they found a beach where some ships had come to take them off.  That was a hundred years ago.