Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (7 page)

Chapter 6

In the village of Ouididi, Atlas Mountains, Refuge

They arrived at Ouididi just as the sun set.  The first thing Emily noticed was the twenty foot electric fence that surrounded the village, but then her attention was drawn to the houses, which were a riot of red and green and blue and white.  Children ran through the narrow streets, announcing their arrival with shouts and laughter.  Curious adults emerged on the street or stood on balconies and waved their greetings.  Everyone seemed to know Rafael.  Some of the women looked at Rafael and then Emily and called their bantering congratulations.  Emily’s universal translator caught it all.

“So, Rafael, you finally bring home a bride, eh?”  Or, “God is great!  Even Rafael has finally fallen!  And such a beauty!”  And, “You must be bringing a new bride for your brother, Rafael, she’s obviously too good for the likes of you!”

Rafael shouted back friendly insults and retorts, meanwhile taking care not to trample any of the children running alongside his horse.  One small dark haired girl with luminous brown eyes ran up.  “You’re back!  You’re back!”  Rafael reached down, got hold of her jacket collar and swung her up to sit in front of him on the saddle.  “What have we here, eh?  Is this a baby grogon that snuck into the village?”

She looked over her shoulder, baring her teeth in a mock snarl.  “I am much more ferocious than any grogon you’ll meet, Rafael Eitan, but not half as fierce as the Mothers.  They are going to tear you apart!  You don’t come home for months, and then when you do you tell them you are staying for only one night!”  She wagged a finger at him.  “By the time they finish with you, brother, you will be in the stew pot for our supper!”

Rafael laughed, but Emily thought it might be a little forced.  Then the little girl leaned out so that she could see Emily.  “I am Rafael’s sister, Nouar.   I welcome you to our village.”

Emily leaned over and shook her hand.  “I am Emily Tuttle.  I met your brother during training at Camp Gettysburg.”

Nouar’s eyes widened.  “Oh, you are
that
Emily!  My family will be honored to meet you.  Rafael told us all about you in his letters home.”  Emily raised an eyebrow.  That was…interesting.

“Captain Tuttle is the captain of a Victorian warship,” Rafael told his sister seriously.  “She fought the Dominion after they invaded Victoria and made it possible for Queen Anne to safely reach Refuge.”

Nouar looked at her with new interest, but before she could say anything further, Rafael brought his horse to a stop.  “We’re here,” he said.  “Let’s put the horses away and get something to drink.”

Rafael’s six parents were mostly in their fifties, with the youngest, Hakima, in her mid-forties. His birth mother, Leila, was a petite, small-boned woman with a light complexion and tawny colored hair running to grey that fell past her shoulders.  She looked nothing like her tall, broad-shouldered, swarthy son and Emily amused herself for a few moments trying to guess which of the three men at the table was Rafael’s birth father, before conceding it could have been any of them.

There were ten children at the house, the youngest being Nouar and the oldest Fatum, who was married and had two children of her own.  She was a year or so older than Rafael – and Emily, too, for that matter – and she studied Emily with frank curiosity, her eyes shifting from Emily to Rafael and back again.  Dinner was served at two long tables that stood in the center of a large dining room.  The tables were made from wide planks of the local wood; there were benches for the children and chairs for the adults.  There was hot food and tea, thick loaves of a dark bead that tasted of molasses and a dark red local wine that at first Emily found too bitter and sour, but by the end of the second glass thought wonderful.  And Gods help me if I have a third glass, she thought, I’ll just fall asleep here at the table.

The three fathers – Amin, Danny and Yael – were mostly quiet, but the mothers fussed over Emily as if she were a long lost daughter.  At the other table, the younger children mostly talked among themselves, occasionally glancing at Rafael and laughing over something.  Conversation ranged from the early signs of winter, hunting, recent grogin sightings – a large pack was in the area and the villagers went beyond the electric fence only if armed – to the war with the Dominion.

“What bothers me is the rumor you heard that the Tilleke were involved with the Dominion,” Yael told Emily, his spectacles flashing in the light.  “Bad enough to be caught unawares by the Dominion, but the Tilleke are truly a nasty lot, too clever by half and Emperor Chalabi has to be the most ruthless man in Human Space.”

“And Godless,” murmured Leila and the others nodded in agreement.

“How do you manage to stay so well informed here in Ouididi?” Emily asked with genuine curiosity. 

“Oh, we have radio and television just like the cities,” Yael assured her.  “You couldn’t have seen it when you arrived, but we have a large antenna half a mile along the ridgeline, so we have good broadband reception and follow things pretty closely on the Nets.”

“Khali Yael is being modest,” Rafael said, across the table from her.  “He spends six months of the year in Haifa; he’s a professor of political science at the University, so we are a better informed family than most in Ouididi.”

One of the other fathers, Danny, chimed in.  “Yael is also our token liberal, though how we ever let a liberal into the family still escapes me.”

“I thought it was my overwhelming sex appeal,” Yael deadpanned, and then tried to look hurt when all of the other adults hooted with laughter.  He glanced at Emily and winked.

“We needed to balance off having a blood thirsty Fleet Marine and a backwoodsman in the house,” Hakima suggested dryly.

Danny laughed.  “He does do that, he does.”  He turned to Emily.  “All honor to you for escaping the Dominion the way you did.  ‘Tis rare to escape a trap like that.”  He laughed and slapped the table.  “Oh, and I’d loved to have seen the looks on their faces when they realized you’d taken the space station Atlas with you.”  He laughed again and the gesture was so familiar that Emily knew without a doubt that he was Rafael’s natural father.  “It was a fine thing you did, a fine thing indeed.”

“And in the midst of this, you are here to visit the Temple Ait Driss?” asked Hakima.  She was a tall, shrewd looking woman with the strong nose and high cheekbones of many of the mountain folk.  And as Hakima glanced at her, Emily realized the question had many layers.   She grasped then that while Hakima may not be Rafael’s birth mother, she most certainly
was
his mother and every bit as protective of him as any mother could be.  Aicha and Leila, busy chatting with Rafael, did not hear the question, but Yael did and he looked askance at his wife. 

“Emily is our guest, Hakima,” he said softly but firmly, “let’s not press her unduly even before we’ve had dessert.”  Rafael suddenly realized that the conversation had taken a turn and listened more closely.  Hakima gazed steadily at Emily.

“It took us a week to reach Refuge,” Emily said after a long pause.  “We were fighting every day, sometimes all day.  My battle group, the Coldstream Guards, was assigned the job of finding the Dominion supply train and destroying it.  We found it, but were ambushed and took many losses.”

“Emily,” Rafael interrupted, “you don’t have to explain any of this.  We-“

Emily held up a hand to stop him.  “It’s alright, Raf.  It is odd that they sent me here, but I think I know why.”  She turned back and addressed Hakima directly, conscious that in the background the children’s table had fallen silent and they were all listening as well.

“My captain and the other officers were killed, so I ended up in command of the ship.  We destroyed the Dominion supply ships and fought our way back to the Atlas, but then had to hold off a strong attack by the Dominions as we approached the Refuge wormhole.  By the end there were only three ships left of the original twenty. We were the rearguard; if the Dominions got past us they’d have a clear shot at the Atlas.  There was a Dominion battleship-“  She faltered, then continued, her voice bleak.  “To stop it I had to send my best friend on a suicide mission.  I knew what I was doing.  I gave the order.  It worked and the Atlas escaped, but she was captured and I don’t think I will ever see her again.”  She shook her head.  “Every morning I wake up and think that because of my orders she is sitting in a cell somewhere…”

“You honor her with your grief,” Leila said, giving Hakima a warning glance.

Hakima nodded.  “You do her honor, as is right, but that does not explain why you are here instead of with your Fleet preparing for battle.”

“Hakima, enough!” Leila snapped.

“I am here because the Fleet Surgeon thinks I need a vacation or I will have a breakdown,” Emily said matter-of-factly.  “And she’s right.  We lost a lot of captains in the escape, a lot of ships and many thousands of sailors.  Twice I was one of only a few survivors.

“At the end, I had resigned myself to death. It just seemed…inevitable.  I sent away all of the crew I didn’t need to fight the ship, then I was going to ram the Dominion battleship because I was out of missiles.  That’s when I sent my friend on the mission, knowing she could not survive.”

At the children’s table, the teens stared at her open-mouthed.  Around her the adults stood in a tableau of disparate reactions: Hakima gazed at her steadily, Leila wiped tears from her eyes, Yael clenched his jaw, Amin, the woodsman, seemed to study her with new interest and Danny, the old soldier, nodded in sympathetic understanding.

  “I know the Fleet needs me,” Emily continued, struggling to keep her voice calm despite the emotion threatening to overcome her. “But it’s hard.  I try to put it behind me. I think the Fleet Surgeon is hoping that a change of scenery will help me to shake off the dust and stop brooding, and Gods know the scenery here is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.” 
There, I’ve said it,
Emily thought, a little stunned that she actually had said it to a group of complete strangers.

Leila looked stricken, but Hakima nodded, then sighed.  “Refuge will pay its debt,” she said, “but this is going to be a terrible war.”  She looked then at Rafael.  “And you, my son, must promise that you will be careful.  I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you.”  Her gaze swept over Leila and Aicha.  “None of us could.”

“I think you should fall in love with Rafael,” Nouar announced loudly from the children’s table.  “That would help you stop brooding!”

“Such wisdom!” Aicha said sternly.  “We are blessed to have such wisdom from one so young!”  She stood up, drawing to her full five feet height.  “You children, clear up the dinner plates and wash them.  And you, our little match maker, it is your turn to wipe the tables and sweep the floor.  Off you go!”

The children went grumbling to their chores, but Nouar tried for the last word:  “It is time Rafael got married,” she announced stoutly.  “Emily is perfect.  She’s a war hero, not some stupid city girl like those others he’s dated.”

“I actually wanted to be a historian,” Emily told her, “not a soldier.” 

Nouar’s face lit up.  “See?  What did I tell you?  She’s even got brains, unlike those silly doxies Rafael usually favors.”

Emily blinked, then turned to Hakima and asked in a low whisper, “I keep thinking she’s a child. 
How
old is she?”

Hakima snorted ruefully.  “Twelve going on thirty, and may the One God be merciful to the men who marry her!”

Emily gave Nouar a considering look and turned back to Hakima.  “She is your birth daughter?”

Hakima rolled her eyes in affectionate exasperation.  “Oh, yes, she’s mine.  The One does have a sense of humor, you know.”

Emily laughed.  “I am a guest here and mean no offense, but I would guess that you were a handful as a teenager.”

“You would guess correctly,” Hakima admitted, a little sheepishly.  “My mothers always told me that someday I would have a daughter just like me and finally learn how much trouble I was.”  She gestured helplessly at Nouar.  “And so it has come to pass.”  She sobered then, turning back to Emily.  “I apologize for my questions.  Rafael is much loved, but he has brought home some truly inappropriate women, Nouar is right about that.  I wanted to make sure-“

Emily held up her hands.  “No, please, I understand.  But honestly, I am here just as a tourist.  Until this morning, I had no idea that Rafael would be my guide.  I think they asked him because we knew each other at Camp Gettysburg.”

Leila joined them then and touched Emily’s arm.  “Come, have some more tea and dessert, then I will show you your room.  You’ve had a long day and tomorrow will be even longer.”  She slipped her arm through Emily’s and led her back to the table.  “We are very proud of our Rafael and honored that they chose him to escort you to the Temple.  You know the history of Ait Driss?”

“Only a little,” Emily admitted.  “I know it was the site of a massacre, but I don’t know the details.”

Leila nodded.  “Rafael will tell you more on the way, but it is a sacred place to us.  Not sacred because of anything religious that happened there, no, but because what happened there was such a tragedy, a great loss of life.  It was a turning point for the people who lived in the mountains, they had to change the way they lived together in order to survive.”

Emily thought about this for a moment, then it struck her.  “Was this when the larger marital units began?” she asked.