Starvation Ridge: Bright in the Skies -- Chapter Nine

 "What are they doing now?" asked the young Roundhouse woman standing next to Mrs. Perkins.

    "I have no idea," she replied, "and I'm not sure binoculars would help. The trees down there were not in the Fire, and they're in the way. But it can't be good. It looks like the bandits have been reinforced, and I think they're working on the vehicles. There's also a lot of smoke from what looks to me like cooking fires. Where do they get so much to eat?"

    "You know the answer as well as I."

    Mrs. Perkins chewed a fingernail distractedly. "I wish Mr. Molinero would come back up here. He'd be better able to make out whether to send a runner to report."

    "No, he would not," replied Emilio, stepping into the shelter. "You say they are still in camp, and so that means no change. You would surely send a report if they showed signs of moving toward Bridge or here, and it may be that is no more than I would do."

    "Thank you, Mr. M.; I was just feeling a little twitchy."

    "First command always does that to a soldier."

    "Well, now that you are here, what brought you out of the woods?" 

    "Our runner with the initial report has returned and tells us a relief party is right behind him. So I am here to greet them."

    Even as Emilio spoke, a whistle blew from the direction of the path from the valley, signaling the arrival of the new crew.

    They stepped from the stone shelter into welcome sunshine, but halted in surprise at the sight before them.

    A number of fighters entered the clearing, carrying heavy packs or bedrolls, among them Billee with Krall, the dog from Roundhouse, and Ro-eena, who was unrolling wire from a spool as she came on. But what drew their eyes was Wilson, apparently completely unarmed and carrying a coiled length of rope, walking next to the Creek's last remaining horse. On the horse, easy in his seat and armed with a Creek selfbow and a handsome Bowie knife, sat a large man Mrs. Perkins had not seen before. He had been good-looking once, perhaps; but his face, from mouth to ear, was a swollen mass of sticthes, gleaming with salve. He looked as if part of his jawbone might be missing.

    "Hey, gang," said Wilson. "Ready to get down from here for some of Mrs. M.'s cookin'?"
    Emilio frowned. "What is this, if I may ask?" 

    "We're conductin' a little experiment in diplomacy."

    "I do not think I like what this can mean, sir."

    "Well, let's not air it out in public, if we can help it. Mr. Lacey, will you excuse us for a conference, please?"

    The big man nodded gravely. Wilson and Emilio walked round the corner of the lookout.

    Billee, with Krall in tow, stepped over to Mrs. Perkins. The girl's face was a study in tragedy, but she addressed herself to business in hand. "Let's go inside, you 'n me."

    "Certainly, honey."

    Inside the now much cleaner and homier little fort, Billee ran her eyes over everything, found it sufficient, threw down her load, and moved to the window. She watched the distant smoke for a moment, bit her lip, nodded to herself, and turned to Mrs. Perkins.

    "How's everyone?"

    "Tired, cold, wet, and hungry. But it has been quiet up here."

    "We'll give ya a feed before ya go down. What's the disposition of crews?"
    "Four, with four each. One crew here, three on approaches."

    "'K, I can replicate that with crews of three. After ya eat, y'should pack up and go home."

    "Bee, what in Jeeah's name is Captain Wilson up to?"

    "Prisoner exchange."

    "What?"

    "It's a ruse. Get Mr. Eastsider back to his folks so he can tell 'em to go home. Will's going as surety. If Mr. Big comes into the lines with a new horse and a prisoner, he doesn't lose face, y'see."

    "But then we've lost – you've lost – oh, no, this just can't be."

    "Well, I said 'ruse', didn't I?" Big man's s'posed to let him go when it's all settled." 

    "Sounds awfully iffy if you ask me."

    Billee's face crumpled. "Well, nobody asked me." She began sipping air in short, hard breaths.

    "Are you hyperventilating? You have every right, honey, but why don't you just sit down here, hold onto Krall, and take three deep breaths. Captain would not take such a risk if he didn't have good reason to believe in what he's doing."

    "Um." Billee's eyes were glistening.

    "Sit. And here's a bit of a rag to snuffle in. Come out here as soon as you think you look bossy enough and boss us around some, all right?"

    Mrs. Perkins stepped out the door. She found Ro-eena, spool in hands, waiting there round-eyed. "Not yet."

    "Oh, no, ma-am, I have a little bit of sense."

    "You have a lot, and we both know it. She'll be out in a moment." Mrs. Perkins turned and almost collided with Wilson. "She's in here," she smiled.

    "Thanks." Wilson did not smile in return. He stooped to enter.

    Mrs. Perkins walked over to the stranger, who sat alone on the horse. It was clear he was discreetly under guard, as several of Billee's soldiers had not gone far, yet he seemed completely relaxed. She was sure, though, that his broken face could not be comfortable for him.

    "Hello," she said.

    He met her eyes directly but made no reply. Something in his searching look struck her; had he never seen a Black woman?

    "This is a good animal you have here." She patted its neck. The big head swung round, and a huge nose snuffled at her ear.

    The man's eyes softened. "Pardon me for not dismounting. I am injured in both legs. I have not seen this breed before. He would be of greater value to my people if he were not a gelding, but he will be of interest."

    "He's part Percheron. They make good plow horses; farming and heavy cartage."

    "And tall. I was always a little hard on our Appaloosas."

    "Are there still Appys? I'm glad. My dad loved them. But, you know, he might not be a good war horse."

    "I saw that; but I have those. This will make a good ceremonial animal, I think. Something to make the Bend tribe grind their teeth." 

    Oh, my goodness, is he trying to smile? Hope he doesn't split his cheek. "Well. Then it should work, shouldn't it?"

    "My men are among the best of my people. They will receive your captain well, and honor themselves before Spirit in returning to him his freedom."

    "I sincerely hope so, for your sake."

    "I understand; the girl with the dog." Again the almost-smile.

    Emilio stepped forward. "Yes. That is his wife; she will track you and hand you your head if he does not come back."

:::

Avery knurled the focusing knob. "It seems a very chummy gathering over there."

    "May I see?" Karen perched herself on one leatherette arm of his chair.

    He handed her the binoculars. "Mind the throwing knife."

    "I'm clear of it," she said, but looked down anyway to be sure.

    "Should you even be up here?"

    "You sent for me. I'm fine, and Allyn's as good as he can be in his fishbowl." She put the glasses to her eyes, fiddling the knob one-handed. "Bouncy. What are these, ten-ex?" She turned them over dourly. "Uh huh, there's a hole for a tripod mount. Got one?"

    "A tripod? Not at the moment. With that one all-doing hand of yours, you might try resting the binocs on the window casement."

    "Here, I'll try this." She draped the strap around her elbow and tensioned it against her hand. She stood up, stepped forward, and leaned her elbow against the command console. 
"Some better."

    "Who taught you that?"

    "My father, of course."

    "Of course. What do you see?"

    "Busy bodies. Who's that on the horse?"

    "That's the wounded guy we had in the brig."

    "I think he's an Eastsider!" Karen spat the word.

    "Good call from this distance. And without his braids, too. You had a run-in with them once, I gather."

    Karen looked at Avery, her eyes hardened to flints. "What are you up to?"

    "Nothing you wouldn't try yourself if you're a leader of a people. Feeling ready for the responsibility?" She's about ready to explode. Am I pushing on this too soon?
   
    "They're eaters; they hunt people."

    "I think that description may fit most nowadays, at least in this part of the world. He's being returned to his tribesmen to persuade them to leave off aiding Magee. Wilson and I have spent a lot of time on him and we think this risk, which is a heavy one, is worth taking under our circumstances."

    "And we just turn him loose? With our last horse?" 

    "We're out of hay for this winter anyway. We'd have to eat the poor thing, assuming we're here to do so. You know we've broken into the last of the grains. This gives him something to show his men; bragging rights are important over there."

    "Yes. They are." She returned to her viewing. "I had to kill two of them to keep from being bragging rights myself."

    "And he's not unaccompanied. Wilson will go with him as a surety of our good intentions."

    She whirled round again. "Why? They go, or they stay. We lose our best man to no advantage."

    Avery winced inwardly. Best man. Well, it was probably no more or less than the truth. "They might become our allies instead of Magee's. Now. Or down the line."

    Karen stood staring at him open-mouthed.

    Doctor Mary rolled in from the hall, followed by Mrs. Lazar, Selk, and Elsa Chaney. The latter three found chairs and pulled them up to the table. Selk carried, of all things, a leather-bound attaché case.

    "Oh, ho," said Mary. "From Karen's looks, you've been catching her up on our gambit."

    Karen whirled on her. "They're eaters."

    "Shall I tell her?" Mary addressed herself to Avery.

    "Be my guest; frankly I'm terrified of her."

    "Tell me what? That we're cannibals too and I'm the last to know?"

    "No, dear girl," replied Mary, her head tipped to one side. "We've made an effort here – last outpost of civvy, and all that. So far so good. Unsustainable practice. Humans are highly tainted with cesium nowadays, and there's a kind of a mad-cow risk, too."

    "What, then?"

    Mary looked at Karen for a long moment. "Yer just about to curdle your milk – think of little Allyn. Tell you what, wontcha sit at th' table." 

    Elsa had brought over an extra chair and placed it beside herself. She patted the seat and smiled tentatively. Karen sensed that Elsa was, if anything, nearly as stressed as she. She would, for Elsa's sake, hear them out. She sat.

    Mary rolled round the table to the space they had left for her, and put her hands on the table, fingers interlaced.

    "Karen, my dear, you were brought up on canned food?"

    "Yes; almost entirely, I think."

    "From, say, age four to fourteen. Ten years."

    "Yes."

    "Vegetables, fruit, meat."

     "Yes, ma'am. One can of something for breakfast, two, of two different kinds, for lunch. We had no suppers."

    "Hence your slim figure, which you're getting back, I'm glad to see. So that was, for the two of you, six average-sized cans a day – say, about a kilo."

    "Yes."

    "Often meat."

     "It was a beef-heavy diet, yes." Karen knitted up her eyebrows. "Where is this going?"

    "Did you always see the cans?"

    "What?"

    "Karen, where in a thoroughly looted city did your dad find twenty-one thousand nine hundred cans? Of, mostly, beef?"

    Karen blinked, then sat still, her lips parted. Elsa reached to put her arm around Karen's shoulder, but the young woman shrugged her off. Karen stood up, gulping at the room's suddenly stuffy air. Her chair fell over backward.

   Tears started, from Karen's wide eyes. "Unh. Unh-h-h-h." She grabbed at her tunic, loose where the large belly had been, and ran from the room.

    Mary unlaced her fingers and placed her palms down on the table. 

    Avery exhaled. "Well, that went well." He reached out and poked at Selk's attaché case morosely. 

    Elsa reached over and patted his hand. "No, actually, I think it did. She'll think this through and be the stronger for it."

    "Yeah, well." said Mary. "We see eye ta eye on this one. Even those who are all about honesty sometimes know when to pull their punches. I think all the more highly of Mr. Rutledge, I really do."

Avery gave Mary a sharp look. "Was that a correct figure?"

    Computationally? Yes. But garbage in, garbage out. She ate less than that when she was four, more when she was fourteen. Throw in th' odd possum for them both. But a reasonable figure. I don't see any way 'round it."

    "Mary, you are so scary sometimes," put in Elsa.

    "What, 'scary' is about feelings. Look, there's more. I really admire th' man. You think telling her to lock her door all those years was just about bandits?"

    Elsa gasped. But she didn't offer a reply.

    Avery and Selk exchanged uncomfortable glances. This was getting into territory of which they knew little.

    Avery cleared his throat. "Hnh-hmm. So, should we hear from Selk?"

    "Sure," said Dr. Mary, companionably.

    Elsa and Mrs. Lazar nodded. Everyone turned to the young technician.

    Selk swallowed, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing. "Well ... so ... so, anyway, here is Mr. Angle's valise, which we believe the bandit did not see. The shoebox had been gone through, and they may have had a conversation ... but this was inside the attic floor. I don't think Mr. Angle was supposed to have these." He opened the case and hefted out a pile of papers and silvery plastic squares.

    Mary picked up one of the squares, flipped it over, and sardonically admired herself in its refractive surface. Jabba the Hutt Enters the Black Hole. "These are entirely opaque to us these days. Last outpost, indeed."

    "I suspected as much," said Avery. "But the printouts may be useful, yes?"

    "I think so," replied Selk. "Though my ... my reading comprehension is not up to a lot of it."

    "You're better than you think." Mary said. She turned to Avery. "Did we find out how poor Wilbur died? I forget."

    "Oh, we talked about that in one of the last General Meetings. Something like an ice-pick to the brain stem."

    "Right. The bandit could have just been covering his tracks, but I have the feeling the monster's literate. So, first of all, for the edification of those here, Selk, what do we know was in the shoebox that wasn't in the leather thingy?"

    Selk brightened. "The shoebox is all about Wilbur Angle's line, which was the nuclear battery. A ... a Navy nuke techie. This stuff here, which was found during the investigation, is about the satellite, which, it turns out, is why Ridge is here."

    "Then this persistent siege may be only about the power source, not the weapon?"

    "Likely."

    "But they could figure out what they've got once they get it?"

    "Not likely, without these papers and some education. But not impossible." He reached for an ancient calendar page, which he'd laid on top of the pile of papers, unfolded it, and spread it on the table, blank side up, then waved his hand over a pencil nearby. "May I?"

    Avery waved off the politeness. "My pencil, your pencil."

    "Thank you." Selk drew a circle in the center of the paper. "There is no suitable illustration among the printouts, so I will draw. This is us."

    Avery smiled. "Earth."

    "And these three dots would be the DARPA laser array."

    "In space."

    "Yes, over thirty thousand kilometers out."

    "Why three?"

    "Best coverage." Selk drew three triangles, intersecting at points equidistant on the circle. "The entire world could be reached in this way very economically. They could have controlled all three from a laptop anywhere, back when there were other satellites and such, for communication. And only three transmission stations would have been required for backup."

    "And are there three of them?"

    "Don't know; that was planned. There's not much about the other ones here; need-to-know applied."

    Elsa raised her hand. "Whatever was it for?"

    Mary answered. "World domination. Things had gotten so outta hand, and China'd begun refusing to share its access to Africa and South America. Nuclear was the only other lever left for tryin' to pry them off the pot, but once you go nuclear, all bets are off."

    "Which happened anyway." Avery ran his hand over the stubble on his chin. He missed his beard. Damned lice!

    "But very fitfully. Accurate news was hard to come by, in the end, fellas, but I have the impression this thing was used. We may very well owe it our lives."

    Elsa picked up one of the squares and examined her reflection in its surface. Oh, dear Jeeah, am I that old? 

   Mary was still orating. "The world almost died of famine, of flood and fire, of disease, of heat, of hate, of war, of grief. The hands of power itched to reach for th' last button, the nuclear option. Some did. But then things began happenin' to the weapons, and the communications. Inexplicable things. Precise weapon strikes of a kind unknown to the world at large. But this came too late to save the powerful – the world's computers were dying of interference: from the sun, from electromagnetic warfare, and from th' general increase in background radiation. The military had computers and communications the longest, but th' chaos caught up with 'em."

    "Good," said Elsa emphatically.

    "Hence," Mary went on, "the Undoing, which, as we all know was mostly the cooking-off of a number of abandoned nuclear power plants and cooling ponds."

    "And so, what do these papers tell us? That we have the remains of the 'precise weapon'?" Avery asked, glancing back at Selk, who was riffling through them reverently.

    "Sir, what's left of it, yes. We think. All but the computers and the gee-pee-ess."

    Mary rocked herself back and forth by shoving and pulling on her chair wheels. "Young Mr. Selk has convinced me we should have a go at running this thing."

    "So you both really do think there's a satellite still out there? After all this time? How?" Avery remembered his dad, Carey Murchison, telling him about the fall of the satellites; their orbits had decayed, one by one, and they had become bright meteors – the brightest of all being the second and last International Space Station, which had struck the atmosphere somewhere near the Marquesas, wherever that was, seared the skies above Mexico and Missouri, and peppered Iceland and Spitzbergen with firebombs.

    Selk smiled, almost patronizingly. He tapped the papers. "It's huge, well shielded and robust, with multiply-redundant gyros and attitude thrusters, plenty of fuel, and of course has a nuclear battery, just as we do."

    "I'm sure you know what all that means ... and how do you know it hasn't fallen?"

    "We've been watching it through the spotting scope. Bee and Guchi have the best eyes." Selk tapped his diagram with the pencil. "As we noted, its orbit is what was called geosynchronous – goes around us every twenty-four hours, above the equator – so, from our point of view it's always in the same place, more or less – south of here, parked at ninety degrees west, it says here. And here's the good part."

    Selk stood up and walked to a locker-style cabinet door on the wall, not far from the room's entrance. He threw open the door. Masses of wires, like multicolored spaghetti, appeared, which Avery had seen before, but on a shelf above now stood a squat green steel box, with a round glass window on its face. Selk flipped a toggle switch beneath the screen, and played with knobs to either side of the switch as the screen slowly came to life. All that appeared there was a sinuous green line that snaked across a gray background against a grid of fainter green lines, then back down again. "This is basically an ancient type of oscilloscope. You may have seen it sitting in one of the storerooms down on the fourth level."

    "I have. But I've never seen it lit up like this. So, it's not a television or anything like that?"

    "No; it's a just diagnostic tool really; Dr. Mary knows things about it that I don't. But the DARPA people had adapted it, according to those papers on the table, to help the control panel talk to the satellite. In case anything went wrong with the computers. We're linked to the dish through the 'scope, and if the dish isn't pointed right, the signal shown here drops in intensity – toward the wye axis, here. This way we can add or remove a few pebbles under the edge of the dish, and get the strongest link."

    "You're beyond me. But I take it you believe you've gained control of the satellite?"

    "Well, yes and no. We can't move it around or change its position; that's fixed. But we think we can tell it to aim and fire, though it's now completely blind."

    "Have you tried it?"

    "Well-l-l ... today's the day, sir, if you like."

    "By all means. We need everything we can get. What's the anticipated effect?"

    Selk looked at Dr. Mary. Mary shifted her weight in her wheelchair and sighed. "We don't really know. Clearly they thought this was worth doin', but it boggles th' mind. Radiant energy falls away by the inverse square of the distance, and th' distance in this case is immense. The most effect would be at the equator, directly beneath the thing. But from that orbit's viewpoint, that's not really much closer."

    "So, what's a guess? Set fire to buildings, shatter glass?" Avery, guiltily, suddenly remembered something ignoble from his childhood concerning insects and a magnifying glass. "Or just burn ants?"

    Elsa tipped her head sideways and looked hard at Avery, but Mary simply sighed. "We're just going to have to try it and see."

    "I would expect an incendiary effect, yes, maybe a cutting or ablative effect, very very narrow beam," said Selk brightly. "Not visible spectrum. Just a guess."

    Avery looked at the two of them. Never, even from Mary, had he heard so much jargon. How much had she poured into this myopic creature's head?

    Suddenly Mrs. Lazar spoke. "And now men see not the light which is bright in the skies; but the wind passeth, and cleanseth them."

    Avery turned to her. "More Leviticus?"

    "Job."

    "Geniuses and living libraries all around me. So what do we do to try out this thing?"

    Everyone turned to Selk. His great moment having arrived at last, it proved too much for him, and he began picking at his nose.

    Elsa kicked him beneath the table.

    "Oh," he said, as his thick glasses slid down on a sudden sheen of perspiration. He pushed them back. "Nothing to it, really. Throw on the toggle switch under that cap left of the dials – 'A', 'B', and 'C' as that old sign below there says – and turn the upper dial up to 'one,' the first white notch – put that right by the white mark on the counter next to the dial, I mean. It goes clockwise."

    "What-wise?" Avery had wheeled over to the counter and followed the odd-sounding, to him, directions. "Oh, I see. The wheel. It can't go to the left, so it goes right."

    Selk was consulting his papers. "Now, the old computer system used gee-pee-ess, which is long gone, but the backup uses lat-long, so – "

    Avery finally lost patience. "Mr. Selk, could you just tell me what to do? We've got a war to fight out there."

    "Sorry, sir. Reach for the second dial, lower left – "

    "This one? It's got three of the wheel things."

    "Yes, sir, degrees, minutes, and seconds. I've already set the outer two dials for you, so just work the little one. The big one is set on forty-four, the middle ring is fifty-four."

    "What about the wheels on the right?"

    "Those are east-west. This one is north-south."

    "Now you're saying things I think I understand. Latitude and longitude it is, then?"
    "Yes, sir. Now crank the inner dial – slowly – till it says seventy-five."

    Avery turned the smallest dial, about ten centimeters in diameter, gently to the left. "Done. How do we know it's doing anything?"
Z
    Mary cut in. "There wouldn't be much to see yet, my lad; we're at some unit, say one thousand watts, of power on site, from forty thousand kilometers away, aimed at a high point in the Coast range. If Mr. Selk's reading these papers properly." She grinned.

    Avery glanced at her; these two had obviously gone through this exercise before, and were grandstanding. Well, they had a right; and it was an encouraging sign. He'd play along.
    Selk checked the oscilloscope, and seemed to be satisfied with what he saw there. "Next we have to do east-west. Let's move the outer dial to one-twenty-three and the middle one to twenty-one."

    "Done."

    "Now the inner one to fifty-one."

    "Got it. I have a feeling that's around here somewhere; what have you two set me up to see?"

    "Wait, sir. Let's go back to the upper dial and power up to fifty."

    "This is fifty?"

    "Yes, the first red notch."

    Avery twitched the black dial.

    "Now, if you'll come to the window, sir." Selk walked over and retrieved the big binoculars.

    Avery rolled along the counter and took the glasses. "Where do I look?"

    "Out past the Highway of Death, a little north of due west."

    Avery knurled the focus knob, sharpening a glimpse of a familiar sight – the van of a large truck from the bygone era, with the letters "K', "I", "N" and "S" in stylized black still showing on the faded and peeling paint, over a gleam of everlasting aluminum. Clouds hung low over the surrounding hills, but the view of the valley was unobstructed and the 'seeing' was decent. He swept on past the Highway out to the North-Running River.

    Nothing. Nothing at all. Disappointment rose in his throat like gorge.

    Wait! White smoke? No, steam! A gout of steam rose and floated leisurely away to the south through the autumnal trees. It was as if – no, it was fact, presented to him by his half-disbelieving eyes. Starvation Ridge was boiling a tiny patch of the river, almost twenty-five kilometers away. And could presumably do the same – anywhere?

    He handed the binoculars to Selk and turned to Mary.

    "What's the angle of attack here?"

   "Excuse me?"

    "How steep is the beam?"

    "Oh! In this part of the world, it's always gonna be twenty nine point five eight degrees."

    "So there are things it can hit, and things it can't?"

    "It depends on the material on-site," said Mary. "Leave it trained on a mountain long enough, it can bore through to the valley beyond, betcha."

    "What is this thing's reach? Japan to Europe?"

    "No, there are, or were, three of them. To the satellite the disk of the Earth occupies only seventeen degree of arc. This one is pretty much North and South America, and Hawaii ... Malvinas, South Georgia ... maybe the Azores."

    "Some of that means nothing to me. But, say we wanted to hit – I don't know, Argent –"

    "Argentina?"

    "Right, thanks – from here, now, we could do it?"

    Mary leaned back in her chair and regarded Avery coolly. "Mm-hmm."

    Elsa opened her mouth, then closed it, her face ashen.

    Avery wheeled round to face Mary's protégé. "Mr. Selk, give everyone a turn with the binoculars and then shut this thing off – seems wasteful, burning a river." Avery rolled to the table and surveyed the pile of papers. An odor of old, musty leather permeated the air. He drummed his fingers on the table, then teased a printout out of the middle of the pile. Rows of numbers, entirely meaningless to him, marched across the page. He looked up. He'd felt Savage Mary's eyes were boring into him, and he wasn't mistaken. "Dr. Mary, how long has this young man been able to read – interpret and apply – this kind of thing?"

    "I've been working on him for years," she chuckled.

    "What's the top increment on that upper wheel?"

    "It's expressed in exponents. We think the top red notch is one hundred thousand."

    "And we're boiling off running water at fifty?"

    Mary cracked her knuckles. "Yep."

    Avery exhaled, placing his hands palm down on the table. "Let's have Mr. Selk pack away as much of this into the valise as he doesn't need for present operations, and take it to the Ridge incinerator. With a witness. I want explosives up here, and also down by the reactor, wired to go, with trigger switches centrally located. If that pack of yahoos out there gets inside this facility and shows any likelihood of winning, I want every person who attended this meeting, myself included, dead, and any chance of Magee using that space thing permanently interdicted. I think no one can object to this; we all understand what we're sitting on here."

   A slow smile of almost wicked pleasure creased Mary's face. "My thoughts are much like your own, Captain Murchison. If we fail to save the Creek, the least we can do is save the world."

(To be continued)