Meeting halfway

A Rocket-Propelled Grenade lost its killing power once the shaped charge at the front was removed, but the rocket motor at the rear could still function normally.

Nick fitted a figure-eight buckle to the rocket's tail boom, attached a safety rope, and finally loaded it into a PSRL-1 Rocket Launcher, an RPG-7 copy manufactured by AirTronic USA. His homemade line thrower was complete.

To be on the safe side, he modified three rockets, adding different amounts of ballast to the warheads where he had removed the shaped charges. He intended to give it several tries.

RPG-7 Rockets did not actually work the way ordinary people often saw them portrayed in movies, shooting into the air like skyrocket firecrackers in a trail of sparks and flashes, as though a Long March carrier rocket were launching.

With an effective range of less than 1,000 meters and a total warhead charge weighing only a little over a kilogram, these rockets could not afford to waste too much dead weight on propellant.

Their solid-fuel rocket motors lasted less than a second. By the time they had accelerated the projectile to its maximum flight speed of nearly 300 meters per second, the fuel was essentially exhausted.

After that, the rocket flew entirely on inertia, its deployed stabilizing fins keeping it spinning.

So once more than 300 meters of safety rope was attached to its tail, Nick had absolutely no confidence that the rocket could still fly steadily and reach the other side of the gorge. All he could do was fire a few and see.

He did not have any of those extremely fine pilot lines made of Kevlar or Dyneema fiber, which would have made things much simpler. The polyester static safety ropes in the armory were excellent quality, but precisely because they were so overbuilt, their diameters ranged from around 10 to 16 millimeters.

At that thickness, more than 300 meters of rope weighed quite a bit. He seriously suspected that the rocket would only get halfway before the rope dragging behind it pulled it down into the gorge.

Of course, even if all three launches failed, there were still other options, such as taking a rope apart and improvising a lighter pilot line, or making an oversized skyrocket-style firecracker by hand. If there was one thing the armory had no shortage of, it was explosives.

A day later, his preparations were complete, and it was now the evening of February 14.

Just as Nick excitedly prepared to tell Dahlia about his plan to cross the gorge, he discovered that she was not waiting on the terrace early as usual, ready to happily tell him what little game she had thought up that day for them to play at a distance to pass the time.

Over the past several days, they had played more than a dozen board games alone. Dahlia had taught Nick chess and checkers, while Nick had taught her Go and Chinese chess. Eventually, out of sheer boredom, he had even brought out Gomoku.

There were not even any lights on in the room opposite. Nick could only make out a faint, flickering candle flame and a blurry figure huddled in a corner, seemingly sobbing.

Uh...

Nick was a little bewildered. It was February 14. Although neither of them had openly acknowledged their feelings, it would hardly be an exaggeration to say the attraction was mutual.

What could make a Russian girl like Dahlia hide away and cry alone on Valentine's night?

The sight certainly tugged at his heartstrings, but a thought began creeping into Nick's mind. Could she actually already be taken? Had she only been spending time with me because she was bored, or had this all been wishful thinking on my part?

He quickly shook his head to clear out that nonsense. Humans really were social animals. Spending too long alone made it especially easy to overthink things.

Although Nick had never considered himself a master of romance, he was certainly no innocent little virgin either. Under these unusual circumstances and the various objective factors at play, he had let his heart get involved for once, but he still retained his basic reason.

He remembered a lyric from a song in his previous life: "More than friends, not quite lovers." That more or less described their current relationship. The bottomless gorge physically ruled out the possibility of taking things further.

Although they had not discussed their personal circumstances in much depth during all those conversations across the gorge with their writing boards, Nick was still fairly sure he was not some interloper swooping in to steal another man's girl.

So he waited patiently on the terrace, occasionally checking the other side through the observation scope, until Dahlia wiped away her tears and came out of her own accord.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm very sad today. Thank you for being here with me."

Sure enough, he had been overthinking it. Nick was about to tell her his plan through the writing board when his pen suddenly stopped halfway through. He erased what he had written and wrote something else.

"I once read a line: 'Only those willing to travel far can discover how far they can go.' I thought it made a lot of sense."

Dahlia blinked. Whether she understood Nick's hint or not, her long lashes, still beaded with tears, trembled a few times, and she gave him a faint smile from across the gorge.

"Looks like someone wants to break a few rules?"

Nick looked up at the sky. A moment later, he raised his board again. "It's not like anyone will know, right?"

The next morning, Nick got up bright and early, tidied himself up, and carefully shaved.

He could not be bothered with his daily inspection. It was not as though the equipment would suddenly break down if he skipped a day. He found a suitable spot on a patch of concrete beside the watchtower and began hammering in expansion bolts.

Before he finished, however, a gunshot rang out from the other side.

Nick jumped, thinking more Hollow Men had climbed the cliff and Dahlia was warning him.

But when he picked up his binoculars and looked across, he saw the girl shouldering something resembling an RPG, aimed straight toward his side.

*?*

Before he could work out what was happening, a wisp of white smoke rose, followed by a tiny black dot flying toward him, trailing a long, thin pilot line.

Seeing the cone-shaped projectile land successfully in the woods by the cliff and disappear, Nick wasted no time sprinting over and managed to grab the pilot line, which was only two to three millimeters thick.

After he hauled the thicker static rope attached behind it across the gorge and secured it in a crossed arrangement around two large trees, Dahlia appeared at the cliff edge again, wearing a parachute pack.

Nick could not help gaping at the sight.

His hint earlier had meant that he was preparing to go over to her. He had not expected this girl to be even more impatient than he was. More importantly, the Russian armory on the other side was clearly better stocked than his. What did they keep a long-range line thrower like this for?

By then, Dahlia had already hooked her pulley onto the rope across the gorge and leaped off, sliding swiftly toward him.

Although static rope had almost no stretch, there was no avoiding sag in the middle over such a long distance. She therefore slid less than a third of the way before having to rely on a powered rope ascender to slowly cover the remaining stretch.

"Good morning, Nick."

As the girl nimbly climbed over the rusty iron railing at the cliff edge, stood prettily before Nick, and greeted him without the slightest awkwardness, Nick found his heart speeding up uncontrollably, his palms sweating and his throat going dry.

"Ahem. Good morning, Dasha."