Chapter 3
Aria and Emily stood on the Observation Deck overlooking Ursidrean territory. Snow-capped mountains towered over them, and below the deck, rocky hills fell away to dark forests and beyond. The sun sparkled on the snow.
“Are you sure you want to go out there?” Aria asked. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you want.”
“I have to find my sisters,” Emily told her. “Waiting here is the last thing in the world I want to do. If Faruk finds them, I want to be there to see them for myself and know they’re safe.”
Aria sighed. “It doesn’t look good down there.”
On the gravel field below them, Donen and Faruk stood face to face in heated conversation. They punctuated their exchange with wild gesticulations. “Faruk doesn’t look happy about this.”
“You can’t blame him,” Aria replied. “He’s only ever traveled with trained border patrol. You’re an unknown quantity to him.”
Donen ended the conversation with a chop of his hand and strode back to the Observation Deck. “He refuses to take you, just like I told you he would.”
“What are we going to do about that?” Emily asked.
“We,” he replied, “aren’t going to do anything. If you want him to take you, you better go down there and convince him. There’s nothing more I can do.” He walked away.
“Can’t you order him to take me?” Emily asked. “You’re commander of the army.”
Donen called back over his shoulder. “I did order him, and he still refused. Go talk to him yourself. Maybe you’ll have better success.”
Emily gazed down the field. Faruk squinted into the sun toward the Observation Deck. His team of armed border guards waited for him at the edge of the trees. Aria sighed. “If you’re going to talk to him, you better do it now. He’s about to leave, and who knows when he’ll be back.”
Emily gritted her teeth and strode down the steps onto the field. Faruk saw her coming and waited. He studied her movements on the way down the field. She picked her way through the stones and stopped in front of him.
“What’s this foolishness about you coming with us to the border?” Faruk asked.
“It’s not foolishness,” Emily told him. “I have two sisters and a cousin with the Lycaon, and I want to find out if they’re safe. This is the only way I can do it.”
“You can wait here, and I’ll find out for you,” he told her.
She shook her head. “I don’t want to wait.”
“It’s too dangerous,” he told her. “Anything could happen on the border. Aria told you about that Felsite woman who was killed. That could be you.”
“I don’t have anything else in my life now,” she told him. “These are the last relatives I’ll ever have. I want to see them for myself and satisfy myself that they're safe and happy. You would feel the same way if you were in my place.”
He waved toward his team. “These are all hardened warriors with years of combat experience. They’ve been patrolling the mountains for years. Do you really think you can keep up with them?”
“I’m not too weak to hold my own with them,” she replied. “The rotational compensator repaired my muscles, and I’ve spent the months since I came out of my coma working to get myself back to full function.”
He shrugged. “I know, but…..”
“I worked on mountain search and rescue in Prince Rupert for six years,” she told him. “I’ve spent years in the mountains, too. I know I can keep up with your men if you just give me a chance.”
He frowned. “Well, where’s your gear? You can’t go like this.”
She hurried to the Observation Deck and came back with a loaded backpack. She dropped it at his feet. His eyes widened, but he didn’t say anything. He dropped to one knee and tore it open. He inspected every article in it, including her underwear. He checked her food supplies, her sleeping bag, and her first aid kit. Then he repacked it all and stood up.
“All right,” he told her. “You can come. But I’m warning you now, if you become a danger to yourself or anyone else, or you endanger the border in any way, I’m sending you back with no questions asked. Is that clear?”
Emily couldn’t hold back her smile. “Perfectly clear. You don’t have to worry. I won’t let you down.”
He pursed his lips, but didn’t answer. He climbed up to the Observation Deck and took something out of a cabinet in the safety barrier. He strode back down the field and held out a metal cylinder to her. “You better take this.”
She eyed it, but she didn’t touch it. “What is it?”
“It’s a phase reciprocator.” He shoved it toward her, but she kept her hands at her sides.
“Phase reciprocator?” she repeated. “That doesn’t tell me anything.”
The first hint of annoyance crept into his voice. He pushed the thing toward her again. “It’s a weapon. Did you use weapons on the mountain search and rescue in Prince Rupert?”
“Of course,” she replied. “I know how to shoot.”
“Good, because I won’t have you going out there unarmed.” He held it out. “Take it.”
She stared at the thing. “I don’t know how to use it.”
He pushed a button on the side of the cylinder. “This is the power-up button, and this is the firing mechanism. You squeeze this, and it fires.”
He pointed the thing toward the treetops and squeezed. A streak of electric blue shot out the end of it and hit a branch. With a puff of smoke and a loud crack, the branch broke off the tree and hit the gravel. Faruk pointed to another button. “This is the phase regulator. It lets you modulate the reciprocator depending on what you want to shoot.”
Emily took the device and studied it up close. “I don’t understand half of what you’re saying, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.”
Faruk turned. “Good. Now come on. We’re late leaving already.”
He marched toward his team, and they shouldered their packs at his approach. Emily threw her pack over her shoulder and hurried after him. Faruk hefted his own pack onto his back, and the team set off down the mountain with Emily bringing up the rear.
They hiked all day over every kind of terrain. Emily might have kept up with them with no problem after six years on mountain search and rescue, but six months on her back in a hospital bed left her weak and breathless. Not even the rotational compensator could overcome the wasting effect of her injuries and coma. But she wouldn’t let Faruk make a liar out of her. She pushed herself harder than ever, and she never let the team out of her sight.
Faruk led the group far ahead of her, and he never once looked back to see how she was doing. The others did, though. The man at the end of the line stopped and waited for her on long climbs over treacherous passes and gave her drinks of water from his canteen, but he never spoke to her.
They stopped at midday on a ridge overlooking rolling mountains and trackless valleys. Emily dug out her food supplies and filled her belly. No one on the team spoke, and Emily dared not break the silence. Gazing out at the view with her sweat evaporating on her face brought back the peace and kinship of the mountains. She hadn’t known it for years, but on this alien planet, she found it again as if she'd never left Earth.
They marched on and on and on until after dark. Faruk set down his pack in a grassy knoll by a murmuring stream, and his team set to work to build a camp. One man built a fire, and one prepared a meal. Three others set off into the trees with axes and constructed on the site a small but solid collection of huts made of bundles of reeds.
Emily sat on a rock and watched them. She would have helped if she knew what they wanted her to do, but each man knew his job without being told. She rested her legs instead.
Faruk went down to the stream, and when he came back, he sat down on the ground next to her. “You did very well today. I’m impressed.”
She shook her head. “Don’t be impressed. I can’t believe how weak and out of shape I am. I’m embarrassed. I don’t blame you for not wanting to bring me.”
“Considering what you’ve been through,” he replied, “you did very well. If I’d known you would be like this, I never would have objected to you coming.”
“I’ll do better tomorrow,” she told him.
“There won’t be a tomorrow,” he replied. “This is the border. We’re setting up camp here, and we’ll use this as a base to patrol the area for the next six months.”
Emily looked around. “It doesn’t look like much of a border.”
“No one uses the border areas between the factions,” he replied. “No one wants to get shot by accident.”
“How can you tell where the actual border is?” she asked.
“This stream feeds into another tributary farther down the hill,” he told her. “That stream is the actual physical border. When you know the terrains as well as we do, you know where you are in relation to it. But this is the closest we ever get to the actual border. It’s better to keep back and stay safe.”
She studied him. “Aria said you loved the mountains.”
He gazed at the sky. “I don’t know how anybody could live underground all the time. I would go crazy.”
“But you’re a medical man,” she pointed out. “You could be doing so much good working in the infirmary.”
He cocked his head. “If I did, I wouldn’t have been there to rescue you.”
She blushed. “That’s true. Thank you for that.”
“The infirmary doesn’t need me,” he went on. “They have the best doctors in the faction. A good border patrol officer is much more valuable to our faction than another doctor in the infirmary.”
“How can you stand all the fighting between the factions?” she asked.
“I don’t fight the other factions,” he replied. “When Donen takes the army out to fight the other factions, we stay here. Somebody’s got to guard our borders.”
“Have you ever been in combat with the other factions?” she asked.
“I fought the Avitras when they attacked our city,” he replied. “That was a long, hard battle, and we needed every hand. We fought for our very lives. Even the women and cubs fought. The battle lasted three weeks, but we drove them back in the end.”
“Did you kill very many of them?” she whispered.
“Quite a lot of them,” he replied. “I wish I’d killed more. If they attack our city and threaten our families and cubs, then killing is too good for them. I even killed Aquilla’s brother. Aquilla was the younger brother, and his brother Erius was Alpha until I killed him in that battle. Then Aquilla became Alpha. I’m sure he still holds a vendetta against me for it.”
Emily shook her head. “All that killing.”
“And I fought the Lycaon,” he went on. “That was a long time ago now—maybe fifteen years ago. They invaded our territory, and my team got caught by surprise. They pinned us down, and we fought flat out to hold them back while one of our men went back to the city to raise the army. We lost half our patrol, but we held out until the army came and secured the border.”
Emily stared into the trees. “And there’s just one small stream between you and them? What’s to stop them invading again?”
“That was when old Rufus was Alpha,” he replied. “He’s dead now, and his son Caleb is Alpha. Caleb doesn’t value fighting. He saw enough of that under his father. Now that he’s Alpha, he wants his people to live in peace.”
“He sounds like my kind of guy,” Emily murmured.
Faruk nodded. “Mine, too. The more Alphas we get like him, the better.”
“Donen seems reasonable, too,” she remarked. “He didn’t want to fight the Felsite, but he had to. Now he’s going to make peace with Renier to avoid any further hostilities.”
“I only hope it works,” Faruk agreed.
“Why wouldn’t it?” she asked. “Wouldn’t all the Alphas want peace?”
He shrugged. “Don’t ask me how the Alphas think. I don’t want to be an Alpha.”
“But you’re commander of your team,” she pointed out. “That makes you an Alpha—sort of.”
“I’m not an Alpha,” he replied. “This team works together. If one of us thinks we ought to do something, we all listen and make a decision together.”
“You didn’t let them decide to bring me along,” she pointed out.
He chuckled. “I didn’t think you’d last the first day. I thought you’d give up after the first few hours and go back to the city.”