City in the Mountains

By John Bustrak

Every nation and ethnic group has its own unique culture, the ideology and philosophy which define its character. While Kel has entered many foreign nations, Kyris is unlike any other he has visited before, and when he's asked to fight on their behalf, he asks them to show him just what they want him to fight for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Bustrak
• Release date: Sep 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301076987

John Bustrak

I'm an author, by nature, and by intended trade. Intended trade, because I've yet to make enough off of it to earn a living, so need to worry about things like day jobs. Before I am an author though, I am a Christian. And that means there are things I'm willing to die for; if there's nothing that matters so much to you to be willing to die for it, what then are you *living* for?

Book preview

City in the Mountains

By John Bustrak.

Published by John Bustrak at Smashwords.

Copyright 2013, John Bustrak

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Author's Note: This story will likely be little but confusing if you do not read 'City on the Plains' first.

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Three helicopters, large, bulky, and with powerful rotors allowing them to operate at higher altitudes amongst the Kyrian Mountains, were flying noisily South and West out of Cheros. One of the three bore men and women recently injured in the Drejl raid on the city, the other two bore new recruits and volunteers slated for training. Aboard the first helicopter, a young man by the name of Kel (no family name) rode, strapped into a stretcher that was itself anchored to the helicopter's deck.

I had never seen such a flying machine before today, Kel said, speaking into the small microphone of the headset he wore, I would have thought flying machines would have been modeled upon birds, rather than windmills.

The first were, Lieutenant Amy Melder, Kyrian Armed Forces Support Branch, said, It was more than thirty years after the first controlled, powered flight before helicopters were invented. I suppose you could argue that hot air balloons came first by a hundred or more years, but those floated more than flew.

How common are flying machines? Kel asked.

Well, Amy replied, The KAF flies several hundred, commercial transport lines on the rest of the continent fly some thousands, and each other major military has at least a few hundred. The Hirsayen Empire probably has a couple thousand combat aircraft. When you count in privately owned aircraft, I'd guess there's somewhere between twenty and fifty thousand aircraft in the world.

Kel was silent for a long time after that, staring through the window, catching little but sky and bits of mountaintops at the angle he had had from the floor. Amy watched him carefully as he did so; he was roughly half the reason she was being transferred up into the mountains, and she had no intention of missing such a significant opportunity to read his character. Unfortunately, his body language and facial expression were largely closed; she could conclude that he was a cautious personality from that, but she had already known that he was careful about what he revealed to others, moreso as the translation program they used had been refined for clearer communication.

It seems as though every day I spend in the South, Kel eventually said, The more different I realize it is.

The same would probably be true if I went to the North, Ami replied, Don't worry, you'll get to the bottom of it eventually.

Nothing else of significance was said on their flight into the mountains.

The first