Chapter 12

"Welcome to the frontier, Major," Wyndham grinned, "or should I say 'welcome back'?"

"It's definitely not my first visit, Colonel," Sophie returned his grin, surprised at how comfortable she felt with him, "though I've never been to this particular stretch of it."

"So, General Carson briefed you?"

"He gave me an overview, Colonel," Sophie answered, "but you're the commander on the ground, and I'd like to get your take on what's going on. Who's leading the SO Team?"

"Lieutenant Colonel Lee," Wyndham answered. "he was in the L9 class behind yours, but came in with more rank."

"Jack Lee?" Sophie asked. "Sure, I know him. Didn't know he'd gone through L9, though. I think he was a year behind my brother in school when we were kids. General Lee's son, right?"

"That's the one," Wyndham answered. "He's waiting for us at HQ."

Sophie threw her gear into the back of the HMMV and, since Wyndham took the passenger seat, she unslung her weapon and climbed in behind the wheel. She noted that the Colonel kept his weapon ready, and remembering how porous the so-called borders out here could be, she propped her four barrel assault rifle against the dashboard for easy access.

"Which way?" she asked, listening to the bio-diesel powered engine roar to life.

"We actually built the base around this airfield, but HQ is down that dirt track, there," he pointed. "We took advantage of some of the old hangar buildings, but most of the structures around here were so dilapidated that we bulldozed 'em and set up tents and temporary structures."

Sophie saw what he meant. The track, in the beams of the headlights, seemed walled on each side with vegetation, but soon opened out into a large, recently cleared, floodlit area. Sophie steered toward the tent pointed out by her new CO and parked beside another HMMV. Both vehicles, she noted, were newly manufactured and heavily armored.

"Sophie Chen-Thompson!" The speaker was a tall, lanky man whose close-cropped hair was probably brown, but there was so little of it, it was hard to tell. "How is the President's little sister?"

"Not bad, Jack," Sophie grinned, "How's the Vice-President's little brother?"

Jackson Lee, Jr. had hung out with Gav a lot during his teen years, and had never missed an opportunity to gently tease Sophie. It seemed as though nothing had changed.

"It's about time you got here," Jack said, "we've been holding up the whole damned show, waiting for you."

"Yeah, me and about six loads of supplies," Sophie shot back, "not to mention about half your airplanes."

Jack waved his hand dismissively.

"Trivia!" he snorted. "Next to the great Doña Sophie, what are a few supplies and airplanes? Why I hear tell that with one hand..."

"Don't start, Jack," Sophie warned, her voice taking on a serious tone. "We're supposed to be on the same side, so don't cross any lines you'll regret."

He stared at her briefly, but realized she was right. It may have been good natured ribbing, but there were some places you just didn't go - unless you wanted to fight about it. He was her superior in rank, but he had addressed her personally, and those precedents had been established while Phoenicians were still at the Citadel - when you speak on a personal level, you're not in the military and are subject to civilian justice. In most cases that meant that the person you were talking to could challenge you to fight if he or she took offense at what you said. The only time that didn't hold true was when you were facing the enemy directly. Besides, Jack had seen Sophie fight and wasn't at all sure he could take her.

"Why don't we get the briefing started?" Wyndham said, by way of breaking the tension.

"What's the situation?" Sophie answered, looking at the map already spread out on the table. It was Pre-Sickness, but its faded surface had been marked up with new place names and the boundaries of the territories were penciled in, as nearly as they could be determined.

Such boundaries tended to form as much by tacit agreement as by negotiated treaty. As long as group A didn't cross that creek or the line between those two peaks, and group B stayed on their side, nobody complained, but let somebody from the 'foreign' group stray beyond those markers, and someone was likely to get killed - assuming they were recognized as not belonging in the foreign territory.

In practice, small groups and individuals traveled freely across the boundaries, since the consolidation that had taken place among the barbs in recent years made it almost impossible to differentiate friend from foe, and except where topographical boundaries such as mountains and waterways existed, there was no practical way to effectively guard the borders or identify people who didn't belong on one side or another, unless trespassers obliged by wearing some sort of uniform or insignia to identify them as such.

Some groups of barbs had adopted styles of dress that identified them as residents of the same territory, but it was not difficult for intruders to adopt the same dress to blend in. In short, the borders were primarily an excuse for frequent disagreement between groups of barbs, rather than an impediment to the intermingling of neighboring peoples.

"Okay," Wyndham said, pointing at the map, "we're here, at the moment, and it's a pretty good bet that all three of the peoples we're concerned about have eyes on us, pretty much twenty-four hours a day. Jack's recon teams have spotted concentrations of scavs here, to the east in old Cincinnati, and here, to the southeast. This group at Cincinnati, that call themselves 'New New York', or 'Noo-Noo's, has some crude firearms, but are mostly armed with crossbows. These folks started further east but have pretty much taken over the territory to the north and east of Cincinnati. This group, camped out in old Louisville, the Confeds, have no firearms that we can see, but they have a bunch of mechanical throwing machines. I think they're called..."

"Trebuchets and ballistas," Sophie finished for him.

"You know about these weapons?" Wyndham asked.

"If the leader of this group is who I think it is, we've crossed paths before. He and his men ambushed a convoy in old Memphis and my S&R team hunted 'em down. They were just getting ready to go after our base in Arkansas with a bunch of those things when we hit 'em. The guy was a first-time offender, as far as we knew, and just got deported, to Florida, I think. He's an ex-professor or something, and somebody who'll bear watching."

"Sounds like the guy," Jack nodded. "Still wears an old pair of spectacles from before the sickness."

"Okay, so it's open season on him if his guys fire a single bolt in our direction," Wyndham said. "We're reasonably secure from massed attack here. There's some pretty rough terrain around this little valley, and we've got patrols on all the approaches that an army could use. That won't prevent small groups from filtering in to spy or sabotage, so we still need to keep our eyes open."

"Has anyone tried talking to the leaders of these groups?" Sophie asked. "I mean, they may have started out as scavs, and compared to our level of technology, they may be barbarians, but they are, essentially, foreign nations. Maybe before we start shooting, we ought to find out what they're after."

The two men exchanged glances, and Wyndham said, "That was a good thing you did in the islands, Major, but these aren't the same people. I think it's pretty clear that they're both trying to grab territory for themselves. We don't need to talk to them to understand that."

Sophie shrugged and answered, "You're in charge, Colonel, but I don't think you requested me for my habit of keeping my opinions to myself. Way I see it, you've got nothing to lose by talking to them, and potentially, a lot of lives and military assets saved if you can come to an agreement with one or both of them. Even if there's no chance for a deal, you might learn something that will help if we have to fight them. Why not hear them out?"

This time, when Wyndham exchanged glances with Jack Lee, they wore more thoughtful expressions.

"What do you think, Jack?"

"Worth a shot," the SpecOps leader shrugged. "How do you want to play it?"

"Can your guys get close enough to deliver a message, without getting killed or captured?"

"Sure," Jack answered. "Both encampments are on the river. Our guys can use that to their advantage, slip into the camps at night, and pass any message you want."

"I'm low woman on the totem pole, here," Sophie said, "but I'd suggest you save the water insertion for another time. If we don't reach an agreement with them, it would be nice to have that little avenue still open to us. Your guys are Level Nine-trained Phoenicians. They should be able to get into an enemy HQ without being seen."

Jack smiled, "Forgot you'd had L9 too. Yeah, it'll take a little longer, but we can do that, and you're right about saving the water insertion for when we really need it."

Two nights later, a four-man team of operatives slipped silently through the rubble and detritus of the streets of old Cincinnati. A guard turned his back to take a piss, and two shadows slipped through the momentarily unguarded entrance of the building against which he was emptying his bladder. Five minutes later, they returned, accompanied by the leader of the Noo-Noos.

"Make sure these guys have safe passage out of town," the leader told the surprised guard, "and next time take your piss with your eyes open!"

The guards at Louisville were all stationed around the perimeter of the barb HQ, but there were gaps, and the Phoenician messengers were able to slip in unnoticed. Getting out, after delivering their message, was a different story. The bespectacled leader of the scavs told one of his henchmen to escort them safely out of town, but one of the Phoenicians noticed the hand signal that was passed between them.

He exchanged his own hand signals with his teammates, and five minutes later, they fought their way through the ambush, killing a number of scavs in the process. Two of them took crossbow bolts, but their body armor kept the bolts from hitting anything vital.

"Okay," Wyndham said next day as he and Sophie and Jack Lee listened to the reports of the two teams, "the Noo-Noos sound like they want to talk, but if the Confeds show up, they'll probably try to ambush us."

"So how do you want to play it, Colonel?" Jack Lee asked, after sending his men off to tend to their wounded and to get food and rest.

"We'll meet with the Noo-Noos," Wyndham said thoughtfully, "and see what they've got to say. I don't think I want to risk any lives on a meeting with the Confeds, though. Either of you got an objection to that?"

"I'm okay with it," Lee shrugged. "If the sumbitch can't even let my messengers pass, I doubt if he's going to just show up to a meeting."

"Again, it's your call, Colonel," Sophie replied, careful not to repeat the gaffe she had made with Wyndham in Hawaii, "but I still think it's worth a try. Yeah, they tried to ambush your guys, but I'm not sure I wouldn't have done the same. These people live off of whatever they can find or steal, and the armor and weapons your patrol had with them would have made the scavs wealthy by their standards, so it's not suprising that they'd risk trying to take it."

She held up her hand to forestall the protests forming on the faces of the two men. "No, I'm not naive enough to believe that that's the only possible explanation for their behavior. I'd say take precautions. Have your men hidden near the designated meeting site a couple of days ahead of time, so they can see what the scavs do when they don't think we're around. If nothing else, we might learn something useful. In fact, given how smart this guy is and what he knows about us, if it was me, I'd get my guys posted as soon as possible."

Once more, the two men exchanged glances and shrugs.

"I suppose that makes sense," Wyndham said, his voice fraught with skepticism.

"Look, Mark," Sophie hoped the personal address would help make her point, "It's your decision. I'm just expressing my opinion. I don't think you would have included me in this discussion if you just wanted me to nod and smile."

A smile broke over the Colonel's face. "No, of course not. I suppose we're just so programmed toward flexing our muscles against the scavs, that this approach takes us a little out of our comfort zones. Intellectually, I can find no fault with the approach you suggest. It's just not one we're accustomed to taking."

"The world is changing, Colonel," Sophie said. "If we don't find a way to change with it, we're going to be perpetually at war. We may be at war for many years yet, as it is, but we need to start learning ways of living peacefully with those around us so we don't find ourselves surrounded by enemies."

"But doesn't that go against your father's philosophy?" Jack asked. "Wasn't he the one who wanted us to be strong enough that nobody would want to fuck with us?"

Sophie shook her head. "No. My father's ultimate goal was to shorten the time it would take to bring civilization back to this world. He knew that to do that we'd have to be strong enough that we wouldn't expend all of our energy fighting for what we need to live, but ultimately, he envisioned using that strength as a beacon to others: a way to bring them to the light, so to speak. He never intended for us to be conquerors or imperialists. What I'm trying to accomplish is sort of the second phase of that. The scav groups are getting large enough now that they are taking on many of the characteristics of nations, partly to be able to gain enough strength to stand against us. As they grow and coalesce I think we'd be better off having them with us than against us, don't you?"

"What if they don't want to join us?" The Spec-ops leader asked.

"That's their right and their choice," Sophie shrugged. "But even if they decide to remain sovereign, by talking to them we have the opportunity to make alliances and trade agreements. Also, we remove 'aggressor' from the descriptions they have of us. Even if all that fails, by talking, we get the opportunity to establish a truce with our enemies, and it's a lot easier to learn to live together if we're not killing each other."

Both men now stared at Sophie as if seeing her for the first time. Finally, Jack broke the silence.