Chapter 14

Roger and Sean Beth rode into Twin Olives at the head of the Durrutti column. What greeted them were scenes of devastation, misery, fear, grief and pain. A house was burning - the result of a Bakhunin rocket - but, there was no-one with any energy left to put it out. Around them, shocked and stunned people milled around or lay in the sun, dirty, disheveled and completely worn out. Roger turned behind him.

"Stavros, take half the guys and follow the Bakhunins North. Make sure they keep moving over the border. If anyone so much as stops to take a piss ... Ah, just keep them moving. If you meet a superior force, fall back, and Stavros? Don't bring back any prisoners. We'll be hard enough put to feed ourselves."

"Aye," the man replied, with a brief expression of understanding.

"Nor?" Roger called. "Take everyone else. Go around and relieve anyone still standing duty. Help these people as much as you can, and put that fucking fire out."

"Sure, Roger," replied the son of his old friend, Mikele.

"Roger?" Sean Beth said. "I'm going to her."

"Yeah, go ahead. I'll be there as soon as I can." Rowl staggered into view, his knee heavily bandaged and walking with the aid of a bamboo stick. He tried to speak, but broke down in a fit of coughing. Tears streaked his black stained face. "Rowl?" Roger said. "I'm sorry. Your friends have let you down."

"No," he croaked. "The Bakhunins have done this, not our friends."

Sheltering under a tree, Roger saw his daughter Sian, her arm bandaged, Gina, and two Euro women. Their heads rested on each others shoulders and their arms were tightly wound around one another. Gina was sobbing uncontrollably and the older of the Euro women was quietly talking to her. All of them had the same look of utter fatigue.

Roger had many questions he wanted answered. Where was Rasida and Schecter and why hadn't they responded to the calls for help? They promised to only be a day away, yet, they were still not here. Schecter had stripped Twin Olives of their missiles, APM launchers, the Kegresse, and the rocket pod equipped drone. Any one of these modern weapons would've made a difference. Was this deception, or wrong thinking? Why had John gone along with this? Why had he trusted Schecter and de la Perriere, knowing full well the allegations made against them? Was this conspiracy or did the Bakhunins merely seize an opportunity? These questions had to wait, however. He took one more grave look around, before dismounting and walking quickly towards the Garcian's meeting-hall-come-aid-station.

Outside, the lightly wounded lay in the sun under improvised shelters of bed linen, table cloths and tent fly sheets. Garcian children were fetching water from the lake in buckets and struggling with their heavy loads to bring succour to the injured. Old people were handing out fresh baking and fruit to those with the energy to eat.

Roger strode purposely through the open door to be confronted by the more seriously injured. A Garcian healer looked up, and indicated another door, closed, at the end of the hall. He continued through, taking care not to tread on any limbs from the groaning bodies that littered the floor.

The sight that confronted him sent a chill down his spine. On the bed lay Rada, a heavy bandage over her chest. Two drips were strung above her, one for saline, the other for blood plasma. Another tube drained her chest cavity and a monitor registered her vitals on a shelf behind her head. She looked deathly pale, her lips cracked, and the Garcian woman, Miriam, their most experienced healer, was explaining she was in 'an induced coma.'

Beside her, and holding her hand lest the loosening of it would cause Rada to slip into death, was John. His face was blank, his eyes red, and he seemed oblivious to anything else around him except his beloved Rada. This pair was a team, Roger thought, forever bonded together as tightly as a ship to the wharf and he feared for John's life should Rada succumb. No force on Earth could separate those two, even in death. To lose Rada was to lose John. Roger was certain of it.

On the other side of the bed, Sean Beth stood, checking Rada's pupils and absently feeling for a pulse. She talked quietly to Miriam. who was telling her she'd been given 7 units of whole blood. "We have little left," she told Sean Beth. "When we run out, if we don't get any more supplies..."

"I know," Sean Beth placed her hand lightly on the woman's shoulder.

"As you can see from the scan, the bullet's lodged against her anterior aorta. It's caused a microscopic tear, which is why she's losing so much blood. I, I can't operate lest I cause it to rupture completely. All I can do to keep her alive is to keep pumping blood into her."

"She's 'O' positive," Sean Beth said, pulling up her sleeve. "Same as me. I birthed her, and Gina, and patched her up for the last 35 years. Bleed me!"

"Sean Beth, are you sure?" Miriam asked.

"There's a vein," she said, tapping her arm. "Do it, now!"

Roger left them to it and went back into the hall. Boris, the Bakhunin and Fladomir's aide, was lying on a stretcher with a leg bandage right up his calf. He gave Roger the stiff arm salute, and grinned. Roger studiously ignore it, lest he reacted in a way he'd regret later. He then went outside to see the horses were looked after, watered, fed and sponged down.

Armin de la Perriere piloted his little two seat 'floog' towards the distant speck of green that marked the oasis of Twin Olives. He saw the smoke drifting lazily up into the sky and tried to interpret its significance. His radio had been stripped out by the Bakhunin pillagers and he'd no way of communicating.

He still sensed the elation he first felt when he'd discovered the floog, intact and discarded, amid piles of debris. The Bakhunins had pulled it free of the wreck of the Normandie with grappling ropes, in hope it could, at least, yield something useful. Without the access codes and his iris scan, the floog was useless to them. They'd contented themselves with stripping anything they had a use for, leaving the bulk of the instruments intact.

The plan had worked a treat. Armin had slipped out of the Kegresse at night, unobserved, and made his way to the wreck of his airship. The Normandie lay like a beached whale with its back broken. The gigantic hull had come down and crushed the ventral platform, as he'd predicted. Underneath the hull, the ventral motors had been destroyed, and the laterals and dorsals hung lifeless from their pods.

The floog would enhance their air component, could be armed, and would be the first aircraft in the air force he'd a mind to create. Armin thought it was a stunning coup, to spirit the craft right out from under their noses.

Rasida and Schecter had taken their little force on a tour, while attacking any targets of opportunity. The real objective, of course, was the recovery of the floog. Unfortunately, he'd no means of communicating and the raiding party was late for the rendezvous. Not knowing where to search, Armin decided his best course of action was to head back in triumph to Twin Olives.

As he approached the oasis, it was obvious a battle had taken place there. Dead horses could still be seen around the perimeter and, from the air, Armin could track the path of the Bakhunin rockets through the trees and bushes. He could even see the wounded lying outside the meeting house. What he wasn't sure was who won and whether the Bakhunins were now in control?

The Arks were not ones for waving flags. The Black Guard had a standard and sometimes the Ark flag of red and black would be flown for special occasions. Uniforms, such as they were, was the black allsuit, but everyone, Bakhunin, Garcian and Black Guard, wore the same thing. I guess, Armin thought, that no-one had envisaged a situation where Ark would fight Ark.

There were many horses refreshing themselves at the lake as he flew over - more horses than he knew the Garcians possessed. Many more armed Arks moved around down below, but he still wasn't sure whether they were hostile. They paid him little attention and he took that as a good sign. Taking the risk, he settled the floog down in a small clearing by the lake and awaited the throngs cheering their congratulations. Instead, though, a tall figure with silver flecked long hair strode towards him.

"What's this?" the Ark demanded, as Armin climbed down from the cockpit.

"We captured it," Armin started to explain. He then told him of the deception, how the floog was always their real objective, and how this little aircraft would improve their 'offensive capability.'

"So it was useless to the Bakhunins without access codes?" Roger asked him, fixing him with a white, hot glare. Armin nodded slowly. This wasn't the reception he expected. "So you recapture something for no more reason than to deny the enemy something that's useless to them anyhow?"