The Slide

Chapter 8.2 | Convergence

“He’s telling them to drop the weapons,” Tee said, standing next to Farha as Sophia approached.

Farha rolled her eyes. “And so, should you — holster your pistol.” She turned to the guards that had dropped from their camels and shouldered their rifles aimed towards the marauders, “Hold fire, lower your rifles.” And, as if in a trance, they acquiesced.

Absently, Tee followed the suggestion and put his pistol into the sleeve of the holster.

The lead bandit dropped all his weapons and addressed Farha.

“What’s he saying now?” Farha sarcastically questioned Tee.

“I know not. Maybe ‘Crazed something’. I only know basic commands.”

“You are right, he’s calling me a ‘Crazed One’,” Farha said quietly. She turned and started back towards the vehicle. The bandits prostrated themselves, bowing.

“What did he really say?” Sophia asked.

“He called me ‘A One’.” Farha lied. She wondered why he called her The Anointed One. It confused and troubled her.

The rest of the journey along the in-bound road through The Ridges was without incident to Base One/Central.

At Central Farha delivered her oral report to the CC Communications Specialist and went to the barracks lounge to write her written report.

A friend delivered a letter. “It came from the courier from Ground Zero about six hours ago.” She thanked him and hugged him and immediately sat on the floor and tore open the envelope.

It was from Alexis:

My leave off-base was denied. I do have twelve hours beginning tomorrow, free beginning at 1200 to 900 hours the next morning. If you can make it, I have arranged for a private 1-room-dome for the night. Please give Pierre Tueterria — the courier — a note saying yea or nay. Love with All My Heart, Alexis.

She stood scribbling on her pad and running back to the central command of the base.

“Master-Steward Ansel, has Pierre Tueterria — the courier passed through here on his way back to Ridges or Ground Zero yet?”

“Is that your report?” he asked. She nodded ‘yes’.

“Why, yes, he left maybe 40 minutes ago for Ridges on the outbound.”

“Permission to pursue on horseback, sir.”

“Your report. Let me see, first.” She threw the pad on his desk.

“I can’t make sense of your scrawl. Permission denied.”

“But Master-Steward, I haven’t seen Alexis, my beloved, in twelve weeks and I was hoping to get a message to him.”

After some wrangling, Master-Steward Ansel agreed to “pull-strings” to get her a ride to Ground Zero at 300 hours in the dark of the following morning. It was a seven-hour trip under ideal conditions.

“Fine,” Farha was crushed, and her countenance deflated. She went to the barracks lounge to write her report.

She collapsed into his arms. He led her to the one-room dome where she immediately fell asleep because of staying up late to catch the transport.

They made-love at dawn.

“Will you wed with me?” as he sunk to one knee.

“Yes, my darling. But what will that mean for us?”

“I am near to another promotion to First Lieutenant in about a month. Then we can plan a small ceremony. It’s possible that we could live together at Ridges or Central, assuming we don’t have children right away. If you totally agree to wed and we join, then we must each obey all orders without question, otherwise the joining may be pushed off. Unless…”

“Unless you mean we both quit the CC and the military?” Farha asked.

“We could as an absolute last resort. Of course, that would mean there would be no more associations with the Slide,” Alexis concluded.

“I could not bear that.”

They were both crushed that Alexis was not promoted to First Lieutenant and that seven weeks had passed from last they met. If it were not for Farha spending time with Nikos, Maria, and Sophia; and getting new glimpses inside the Slide from Nikos’s piracy of the satellite feeds, she felt that she would have exploded from frustration.

“Something is coming,” Nikos said, and added: “Watch out.”

Alexis had a five day leave and through communications — they decided together that they would go to Paris. The plan was to meet at the Ridges and travel together. She was so excited she got time to wait for him a day early at Ridges.

He was late. After two hours of badgering the captain, she convinced him to message ahead. Intrusive imagery, in her mind’s eye, of electrical discharges from the slide had decimated the main bunker and collapsed several trenches at Ground Zero.

Then it came to pass. Orders came to retreat to the caves. Everyone was panicked around her. She was calm, and a resolve took hold. She stole a horse from the stable. Two guards fired rifles at her. Large bolts of side-lightning took them down.

She drove the horse down the hard-packed road faster and faster to the encampments/observation bivouacs and into hard-packed sand beyond. The horse crashed into old glass formed by the strikes and Farha was thrown head over heels across bumpy streamers of glass in between boulders. She lay dazed.

Lieutenant Petroff and his sergeant were pinned down in a forward observation shelter that had been partially destroyed by the lightning strikes. The strikes were fierce, up to twelve successive strikes that saturated the landscape. It was brighter than day. They counted after the twelve in seconds, trying to determine if there was a pattern of rest between the strike-clusters. The ground sizzled, shelters smoked from where they had been hit, and small fires burned across the landscape.

“It seems to be random,” Sergeant shouted as the strikes began again. Alexis nodded in fierce agreement.

Farha ran blindly down a small hill. Lightning sliced over her head and plasma charges flared over her body and she slipped and fell.

“Six strikes,” Alexis said in the night’s silence. Farha heard that, and she smelt fear. Light from strikes inside the Slide lit up the area. She picked herself up, gathered her bow and quill with three arrows left, and followed his scent.

Alexis, outraged, he commanded Farha to her knees, then to come into the shelter. Lightning struck and plucked Alexis up in a ball of plasma. Farha saw the strike’s invisible charge pull Alexis into the Slide. She screamed, pulled an arrow from the quill and shot towards the Slide. It fell short.

She ran towards the Slide, firing the remaining arrows as she ran.

Lightning hit her, and she was thrown skyward.

The last chapter of Part 1 (this part) is next: