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Chapter Twenty-three

 
De l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace.

—Napoleon, quoting Georges Jacques Danton

Cricket 4-15, 12/8/469 AC

The scout plane carrying Carrera and his small party flew alone. Above it, the thundering transports, gunships, and attack aircraft moved in formation. Below, flights of helicopters, some the huge IM- 62s, ferried men, supplies and equipment forward.

Carrera's mind wandered a bit, as it sometimes did these days. He thought of his original group and where they were now. Most were still with the legions in one capacity or another. Kennison had left when his term was up and, sorry though he'd been to see him go, Carrera had understood. Soult and Mitchell were warrants now, teaching on the Isla Real. Well, they'd gotten a little too old and senior to carry my radios but . . . I do miss not having those boys here with me. Daugher and Bowman had been killed, in different actions. They'd died as they'd liked to live, fighting to the end. Tom Christian had taken a second retirement and then immediately gone to work for the legions as a civilian. Greedy bastard, Carrera thought, smiling slightly. All the others were still on the job, most of them in uniform back on the Isla Real. Parilla was president of the rump of the Republic.

In the Cricket, Carrera used half his attention to keep a mental tally of where everyone should be, modified by the rarely broadcast code word for a delay or advance in the schedule.

Just shy of the Kashmiri border the Cricket dropped down behind some mountains and began to circle. A dozen helicopters passed, turned a few miles to the north, and began to set down their loads on a barren and fairly flat hilltop.

1st Maniple (Heavy Mortar), Artillery Cohort, in firing position. Check.

 

UEPF Spirit of Peace, 12/8/469 AC

Wallenstein sat her command chair on the ship's bridge fuming. It wasn't enough that she'd sold her soul to Robinson in exchange for a jump in caste. No, that price might have been worth it. But to be cheated out of her price? There was a reason that people used to say "Hell hath no fury . . ."

"Captain, we've got a lot of Novan air traffic near where the admiral set down," announced one of the lower caste sensor operators, turning away from his console to face his captain.

"Identification?" she asked.

The intelligence officer piped in half a second later. "Almost total radio silence, Captain. Based on flight paths I'm pretty sure they're coming from the mercenary base near Jalala, Pashtia. Their target looks to be the Salafi base in southern Kashmir."

Oh, my. Wallenstein was never so lovely as when her face lit with a smile. She looked particularly beautiful now. Revenge will be sweet.

"Ignore them," she commanded.

"But . . ."

"Ignore them!" she insisted.

"But shouldn't the high admiral be warned?"

"He knows," she lied, forcing her brain to think quickly. "This is just what he's been waiting for. Send to all ships of the Peace Fleet to cut off all communication except with this ship. Now."

The Base, Kashmir Tribal Trust Territories, 12/8/469 AC

If the sight of a large column of vehicles carrying armed men and blaring their horns was a shock to the leader of the guards at the pass, he failed to show it. He did raise an arm to halt the lead vehicle.

Masood had the right look and the right accent. Shorn of his uniform, he stood up in the lead vehicle, one hand resting lightly on a machine gun mounted to the roll bar. "Allahu Akbar!" He called to the sentry leader at the western entrance to the fortress valley. "We have come to join you in the fight against the infidel crusaders. Rejoice, brothers!"

The leader had had no word of any large group of reinforcements coming. On the other hand, they hadn't been told not to expect any. And, in the closed world of the Salafis and the Yithrabi culture from which they sprang, information was power. It was always hoarded, rarely fully revealed. There really wasn't anything inherently suspicious about a column of armed men who looked the part showing up and requesting to join the struggle. This one was a little large, to be sure, but hadn't Mustafa promised them all a growing force in their struggle against the infidel? Apparently he hadn't been lying.

The sentries waved the column through while the men riding the vehicles stood and cheered. To the flanks, cavalrymen fired standard Samsonovs into the air with the gleeful abandon of schoolboys. Soon enough, the entire camp was cheering while men and women emerged from caves and tents to add their voices and the rattle of their rifles to the air.

 

Jimenez, face nearly covered, looked out the side of the cross- country sedan as it made a turn into an open area at the base of the central massif. He noticed a large cave with a camouflage net over it. His eyes lit upon five rough crosses erected in the open area. Children played at the foot of the crosses. Men, or what was left of them, hung stiff and dead above the children, one of whom poked at a body with a stick. Still in their legionary battle dress trousers, but stripped of all other equipment and adornment, Jimenez recognized the remnants of the lost Cazador team.

You are going to pay for that . . . with usury.

And then he saw a head move.

 

Sergeant Sevilla heard the blaring of the column as though through a series of baffles. His grip of reality was quite poor by this point. He head was filled with rushing noises and his eyes went into and out of focus regularly. With a bit of the little strength remaining to him he forced his chin off of his chest and his head up enough to see.

More of the bastards come to gloat and jeer? May they burn in Hell.

 

Jimenez, riding in the back next to Masood, stood up and whispered, "One of our men, over there on those crosses . . . he's still alive."

Masood looked himself and saw that this was true.

Hand still resting on his machine gun, Masood asked, "What do you want to do, sir?"

Jimenez asked himself, If we warn only the vehicle leaders and just we and they open fire on that mass will the rest of the scouts catch on quickly enough? It wasn't in the plan but . . . God . . . what a target! Worth the chance. And then . . . those are our men.

Sitting back down Jimenez keyed the mike that led to the small, short-range radios carried by each of the leaders. "On my command, I want you to blast that crowd. Try to hit only armed men . . . but don't be a fanatic about it."

Masood, who like the others heard from an earpiece stuck in one ear, looked down at Jimenez and raised one eyebrow. You sure about this?

Jimenez's eyes narrowed as he gave an affirmative nod. Oh, yes, I'm sure.

So be it. Smiling still, Masood waved his right hand, genially, acknowledging the cheers of the mujahadin and their families. The welcoming rifle fire dropped gradually as magazines were emptied. When, like a bag of almost completely microwaved popcorn, the firing had dropped to no more than an occasional pop Masood threw his head back and laughed heroically.

"In . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . FIRE!" Jimenez ordered.

The subadar lifted his machine gun off the roll bar, grasped it with both hands, swung it to the right to face the crowd, slammed the butt into his shoulder and pulled the trigger.

The gun was a typical Volgan model, not the newer M-26 used by the legion. This was no problem; the slower rate of fire was more than enough for such a tightly packed crowd. Cheers turned to screams of pain and dismay as Masood and a couple of dozen others swept their weapons across the crowd on both sides. The fire laid them out in windrows, cutting them down like wheat being harvested.

There were probably children in there and certainly there were women. Whatever they were, they were simply targets as the guns bowled them over.

The scouts were no slouches. Already somewhat hyped up on adrenaline, it took a mere fraction of a second for them to join their fire to the subadar's. Their fire lashed out into the crowd cutting down the Salafis by the hundreds. The rest ran screaming to either side, bullets in the back dropping many of them dead or screaming in pain. Mothers ran frantically to and fro trying to find children to carry to safety. The Pashtun didn't deliberately target these. Avoiding them, however, was not always possible or practical.

The Salafis returned fire, some of them. But with the confusion, the shock, and the jostling by the panic-stricken, their fire was to little effect.

Jimenez was shocked as well, half at the destruction and half at the surprise. Leaning forward he tapped the driver, hard, on the back of the head. "Ram that central cross," he shouted. Even as he did, the cavalry—That kid Cano is quick on the uptake, isn't he?—began racing for the entrances to the fortress valley, Cano's men going straight ahead while Rachman's peeled off and wheeled to the rear.

 

Life for the crucified rarely contains any humor. Nonetheless, when he saw the fire lance out from the vehicles, Sevilla began to laugh and curse hysterically. "Die you bastards, you motherfuckers . . . hahaha . . . scream and fucking bleed, you pigfuckers."

Like some of the others, Bashir had dropped to the ground as soon as the firing from the newly arrived vehicles began. He had only a pickax in his hands anyway. This, the absence of a firearm, might have been what spared him.

Lying under the fire, Bashir twisted his head. He was surprised to see one lone sedan speed off to ram one of the crosses, eliciting a scream from the crucified man that rose even over the roar of gunfire.

They couldn't be here just to save those men . . . that man. But they intend to, even so.

Whispering, "Allah give me strength," Bashir raised the pickax, head first, to show he was unarmed. Then, when no bullets struck it, he stood erect and reversed his grip.

Still unstruck, though bullets flew all around him scything down the fleeing crowd, he began slowly to walk toward the crosses. His speed picked up as he neared them. Bashir arrived and the cross tumbled over onto its back at almost exactly the same moment. He immediately shouted the only name he knew among the men of the legion—"Fernandez! Fernandez! Fernandez!"—then began trying to pry the spikes that went through the Sevilla's heels.

The heel spikes came out fairly easily. Both ankles were free of the cross by the time Masood joined Bashir.

"How the fuck do you know Fernandez?"

"He sent me here! Now help me get the arms free!"

The arms were tougher; the spikes had been driven farther into the wood. Still, with two men straining on the pickax handle, they came free quickly enough.

 

While Masood and this new convert tried to save his man from the cross, Jimenez turned the other way and walked the line of vehicles

"Up the hill! Up the hill," he screamed over the sound of the rifles. No one paid him any mind until he began walking the passageway in the bus, forcing the men to cease fire and begin to dismount. Some kept up the fire while others crawled out the left side windows or risked exposure in leaving by the door.

The trucks had less problem. From those the scouts merely grabbed a pack, their own or someone else's, jumped over the side and began to run to surmount the looming massif above. For the four-wheel-drive vehicles there was even less problem. Some of these turned left and drove at least as far as the stream at the base of the massif before dismounting. Within a couple of minutes of opening fire there was a flood of Pashtun Scouts splashing through the waist- deep stream or surging upward.

Jimenez walked the line under cover of the vehicles, making sure the men forgot the easy targets and remembered the mission. He went first to the tail of the column, shouting and pointing, then turned around and reversed his steps.

He met Masood where he had left him, by the crucifixion site. A medic from the Scouts was already working on the saved man, who announced, repeatedly and heartbreakingly, "Sevilla, Juan B., Sergeant, Legion del Cid, Cazador Tercio, Serial Number Two-Seven- Zero . . . Sevilla, Juan B. . . ." The blood encrusted, oozing holes from the spikes showed on both of the sergeant's wrists and heels.

"Who is this?" Jimenez asked, pointing at Bashir.

"Fernandez's spy. And he's got a story."

"Story?"

"There's a cave over there," Masood answered. "He says we need to look in it." To Bashir he said, "Get this man to safety."

"Let's hurry then." The party of three, including the driver, trotted over to the cave. Bashir picked Sevilla up, slung him across his shoulders and headed up the mountain in the wake of the Scouts. He thought he would be less likely to be shot that way.

A bullet rang out from inside the cave as soon as the camouflage curtain moved slightly. It sounded strange, nothing like the twenty- two- to thirty-caliber favored on most of Terra Nova. Jimenez and Masood immediately fell to the ground and fired several long bursts into the cavern until they were rewarded with a scream.

When they did go past the curtain it was to see one man, uniformed, bleeding on the rocky floor and . . . 

"Holy shit!" Jimenez was stunned. "The fucking UE is here? I knew we had enemies in high places but this . . ."

The hatch to the UE shuttle was open, its integral flight of steps lowered. They looked inside and saw nothing. Then they pulled open the cargo bay doors and . . . 

Jimenez ran outside, pulling a small but extremely powerful radio from his belt as he did so. "Patricio? Goddammit, Patricio, fuck radio silence. Get on the horn, goddammit!"

"Carrera," crackled back.

"Come quick, compadre. Come really quick. Don't spare the horses. Accept any level of casualties. There are eleven, I say again, fucking eleven, nuclear weapons here. Oh, and a United Earth transport but we machine gunned the shit out of it."

"What the—"

"Just trust me. Come a runnin'."

Cricket 4-15, 12/8/469 AC

Eleven nukes? Good God. I didn't need my little play after all.

While he was thinking this, Jimenez came back on the radio. He sounded slightly out of breath as he said, "We found our lost Cazador squad . . . huff . . . huff . . . huff. They were crucified. We saved one . . . huff . . . huff . . . huff. To do that we had to shoot up a substantial crowd . . . huff . . . huff . . . huff."

Jimenez continued explaining. "We really had no choice . . . But there's two effects of that . . . huff . . . huff . . . huff. One is that we're trying to unfuck things on top of the central hill. We got pretty disorganized in the scramble . . . huff . . . huff. The other is that the north side of the base has got to be weaker now. The scouts killed hundreds of men of fighting age on that side when they opened up."

"You're assuming they assembled from where they were camped, and camped on the side they were to defend, right? Makes perfect sense. Let me think on it. Yeah, despite the confusion, it may make sense to switch the side for the main effort."

"Don't think too long, Patricio. There are maybe five-hundred- and-fifty or so of us on this hill, plus a couple of hundred cavalry blocking the entrances, and we're surrounded by thousands of the bastards."

Loud and clear over the radio came the rattling sound of incoming mortar fire, somewhere close to wherever Jimenez was.

"Roger. Artillery priority, minus the rocket launchers, is yours. Twenty-four 155mm are in range and ready. Twenty-four 160mm will be ready to fire . . . in . . ." Carrera looked up at a chart and then to a clock . . . "about seventeen minutes. Air support priority is yours. Expect nine sorties of Turbo-Finches to arrive in a few minutes followed by two more every ten minutes for the immediate future. Also three ANA-23 gunships on station continuously as per the plan. I'll be overhead in a few. Over."

"Roger," Jimenez answered. "Air and arty . . . huff . . . priority to me."

"Yes . . . and the Cazadors should be jumping right about . . . now. Carrera, out."

I intended to bring in one nuke as a cover and an excuse. Instead we find another eleven. Do I send that one back? No . . . I might have to blow that entire mountain to shit and I can't be sure of being able to set off the captured ones. It stays in the plan . . . for now.

The Base, Kashmir Tribal Trust Territories, 12/8/469 AC

While Subadar Masood and the other leaders tried to bring order out of chaos, Jimenez scanned the skies. Thin antiaircraft fire was rising from the surrounding hills, thin mostly because the bulk of the 14.5 and 23mm weapons had already been overrun with the central massif. Even now, small arms fire was breaking out all over the massif as Salafi air defense gunners struggled to fight their way to their guns.

The air over the other side of one of the surrounding ridges suddenly lit up in a ball of orange flame. That was a Finch-dropped thermobaric bomb, intended to make as sure as possible that the jumping Cazadors weren't shot to bits on the way down. Nothing was likely to survive such a blast, even should the targets be bunkered in. More such blasts followed the first.

A twin series of pops, one from the east, one from the west, grabbed Jimenez's attention. He'd heard the sound before. It was the small charge that caused the heavy rockets, fired from almost fifty miles back, to dispense their cargo; in this case, mixed anti-personnel and anti-vehicular mines to help Cano's cavalry seal off both of the entrances to the valley.

And then the small pops of the mines being laid were lost amidst the tremendous roar of thermobaric bombs dropped from the ANA- 23 gunships. These smashed up every known and suspected air defense position on the hills ringing the valley fortress.

The angle of the view over the ridges to the south was such that Jimenez had only the briefest glimpse of dark dots descending from the low-flying Nabakovs before they were lost to sight. He knew the men were jumping without reserve 'chutes and from a height of a mere four hundred and fifty to five hundred feet over the ground. They'd have jumped lower still except that the irregular terrain meant that while some would jump at four-fifty, others would touch down hard from as little as two hundred and fifty feet.

 

Deep below, in a conference room not far from where Mustafa had interviewed Bashir, the men and serving women felt and heard nothing of the turmoil above until a breathless Abdul Aziz burst in to make the announcement.

"Sirs . . . we're . . . we are attacked! The infidels already hold the ground above us. Their paratroopers are descending all around to seal off the base."

"What?" Mustafa asked. "How . . . ?"

"I don't know . . . panicked rumors only. Some say that a column came in pretending to be reinforcements and just opened up on our people."

Robinson turned instantly white. "The special weapons . . ."

"Damn your 'special weapons,' you infidel bastard," Mustafa snarled. "That's probably what the pigs came for."

"I've got to get to my shuttle," the high admiral insisted. "If they find those nukes we're all screwed."

Peshtwa, Kashmir, 12/8/469 AC

The office was . . . Tasteful, Siegel thought, looking about with approval. It was Anglian tasteful. There was no gilt, no tacky decorations, just simple and elegant wood with a mix of Kashmiri and Tauran art on the walls and a beautiful series of rugs covering the floor.

Siegel stood beside the ambassador from Pashtia to Kashmir. The ambassador, underpaid and, being out of the country, without any serious opportunity for graft, had jumped at the one hundred thousand drachma offered to set up this meeting. Siegel was reasonably certain that he'd have gone for less but it wasn't like he was spending his own money.

"Mr. President," Siegel apologized, "there really was no choice. You know you don't control the Tribal Trust Territories and you know that the Salafis have a major base there. We know, and we would have thought your Central Intelligence Directorate would have told you, that a nuclear weapon is coming in, possibly more than one. My principal has begun an attack by ground and air to seize that weapon or those weapons with—I hasten to add—the full backing and support of the Federated States. You can try to resist, and get in a war with the FSC or you can do the smart thing and announce that this operation is entirely with your approval. One way makes you look weak and foolish, especially when your air force goes down in flames. The other makes you look strong and decisive."

The president, Baraka, short and dark, listened attentively. His face showed only a trace of hostility. After all, what this emissary- without-portfolio said was true enough. He didn't have control of CID. He didn't have control of the Tribal Trust areas. And it was entirely conceivable, even probable, that the Salafi base could be about to play host to one or a number of nuclear weapons. It was even possible that the weapon was coming from his own country's stockpiles.

He still didn't have to like it.

Siegel understood perfectly well. To the ambassador who had accompanied him to the meeting he said, "Would you leave us for a moment, sir?"

"I am further authorized, Mr. President," he said, once the door had closed behind the ambassador, "to offer you and your family sanctuary for life, in the Republic of Balboa and to . . ." he dug into an inside pocket of his coat and withdrew a small red booklet . . . "to offer you a substantial guaranteed honorarium if you cooperate in this."

He handed the booklet over to Baraka who opened it and read without comment. Finished reading, the president placed the booklet in a desk drawer and sat, silently, for a few minutes.

"What's Balboa like, Mr. Siegel?" he asked.

"Wonderful place, Mr. President," Sig answered. "Warm though a bit wet, rather like here. Clean. Beautiful women. Low cost of living. Best of all, sir, it's very secure."

Baraka slowly nodded before reaching out one finger to an intercom. "Achmed, call the General Staff duty officer. I want every plane in the Air Force grounded. Further, I want the Army's regiments in the posts bordering the tribal lands to the south confined to barracks. Lastly, set me up a press conference for noon, to be held here."

Already he felt the vultures circling. The important thing, the president knew, isn't whether or not our borders have been violated. The important thing is that I act like I am confidently in charge.

The Base, Kashmir Tribal Trust Territories, 12/8/469 AC

Mustafa felt his confidence wilting like a desert flower—quickly and completely. His closest followers sat stunned. This was not supposed to happen, not here, not in the sanctuary that God, in the form of the Kashmiri government's inability to control their southern border, had ordained.

Stunned transformed to horrified when another messenger burst in saying, "The stinking President of Kashmir has come on the television. He says that the attack is with his permission. He says his air force is staying out of it only due to incompatibility between the FSC's Air Force and Kashmir's. We'll get no aid from that quarter."

Was it the nukes that brought them here? Mustafa wondered dully. But then, how could they know? I told no one but Abdul Aziz and Nur al Deen. They wouldn't tell any one. They are the most faithful of the faithful. Robinson couldn't have told. If he had, he'd have been out of here last night. Sometimes it makes me wonder whose side God is on.

"What are we to do, Mustafa?" al Deen asked.

"Fight," Mustafa answered, fatalistically. "What else can we do? But," his eyes fixed on Nur al Deen, "begin collecting the cadres, the most important ones, and the families. We may lose here, but that will only be Allah's test of our faith. If we can get the key people out," his finger pointed, "along with that one weapon, we can continue the struggle."

"I'll send an advanced party out now," Nur al Deen said, "to gather some of our followers further north, their vehicles and animals, to provide us a cover when we emerge."

"Excellent, my friend, except . . ." Mustafa looked at the bomb. "Not to the north. We'll take the southern route. And we will prevail yet."

Camp San Lorenzo, Jalala Province, Pashtia, 12/8/469 AC

"What is it, Alena?" Fernandez asked. "Worried for your brother and your husband?"

"I am," the girl admitted. "But that's not it. I am missing something and I don't have a clue of what."

"Maybe it's only nerves."

"No," Alena insisted. "I know nerves and I know when there's a truth staring at me from nose length away. This is the latter. Why can't I see it?"

To that Fernandez had no answer. He operated off of hard evidence, not the half mystical insights of this Pashtian witch-girl, however damnably effective those insights might sometimes be.

 

His father had told him to pack his rucksack—and little Hamilcar was very proud that he'd been issued the very same model the legionaries carried—and to report to Fernandez. He'd packed himself, though his father's driver had taken him to Fernandez's office in the main headquarters building. Gaining entrance was no problem; the troops were used to Ham having the run of the place.

Besides, he knew better than to ever mention a word of what went on there, not even in the thrice weekly electronic letters his father insisted he send to his mother.

 

Alena heard a small sound, something like an oversized mouse scurrying, and looked towards it. A small boy, bowed under the weight of a rucksack bigger than he was, staggered and stumbled towards Fernandez. She started to smile and then looked again at the boy's face. She'd seen that face before . . . somewhere . . .

"Iskander, our Lord," she whispered, before dropping to her knees and placing her face and palms to the floor.

 

The Base, Kashmir Tribal Trust Territories, 12/8/496 AC

Jimenez lay beside a Pashtun Scout bearing a laser designator. He pointed at a stream of tracers rising to the sky. The tracers chased behind a Turbo-Finch, just pulling up and away from a strafing run. Almost they closed the gap before the Finch pulled away.

"Bring fire down on that," Jimenez ordered the scout. "Right at the base. Pulverize it."

"Yes, sir," the scout answered, aiming his designator at the target while another man on a radio called the artillery for supporting fires.

Jimenez crouched above the military crest. He was in plain view of hundreds of Salafis on the surrounding hills, but out of their range. For the enemy that were in range, he had the mass of the crest for cover. Even so, bullets from below struck the trees and branches above him steadily, sprinkling him with bits of wood and bark they had chewed off.

Crouching lower still Jimenez moved closer to the crest where the Scouts had set out a perimeter and were battling fiercely to keep the huge numbers of charging and firing Salafis at bay. As he got closer still he went to his belly to crawl forward. A commander has to see the action; not just rely on reports of others to guide him.

He crawled, he lay, he saw, he thought, Holy shit.

The hill sides and valley floor below were crawling with the enemy.

"Good fighting," Masood announced, approvingly, as he flopped down next to Jimenez.

"Maybe too much of a good thing," Jimenez answered with a smile.

 

Despite a pretty severe case of nerves, and the incessant shaking of the helicopter, Cruz forced a smile to his face. There was a lot of acting involved in combat leadership and he'd been to some of the best training for actors available. What, after all, was Cazador School except some hundreds of men in utter misery pretending that they liked it?

The helicopter would have been a little bit overstuffed if it had borne, as it was designed to, Taurans or Volgans. For the smaller and slighter Balboans who made up the bulk of the legion it was possible to cram several more, sometimes many more, troopers than the design had called for.

In this case, with forty-seven men of his own platoon, a two-man and one-scout dog team, another two forward observers, the one platoon medic, a piper and Majeed, twelve men sat each side of the two helicopters carrying Cruz's platoon, and three more on each of the cargo bays' floors. The dog, tongue lolling, sat in the middle of Cruz's.

Cruz's smile almost disappeared as the helicopter crested the high ridge to the south of the target and began a rapid descent to the valley floor outside the fortress.

I fucking hate elevators.

He had a bad, heart-pounding moment when a stream of tracers passed by, visible from the passenger compartment through the pilots' windscreen. The tracers stopped abruptly mere moments before the IM-71 would have been forced to pass through them. Flying in tight formation going around the fire might have been worse than flying right through it.

Better to lose a couple of men to antiaircraft fire than all of two birds to a crash.

Again, like an elevator, the chopper stopped descending and pulled up suddenly to gain a little more altitude. Cruz's stomach sank sickeningly. It did so again as the pilot made some turns to bring the bird around to the north side of the target. Then, once again, the chopper rose rapidly.

"Two miinnuuttee," the crew chief announced, holding up two fingers and showing them to the men lining both sides of the compartment. The infantrymen in the back immediately began making last minute adjustments to their load-bearing equipment and loricae.

That "two minutes" was all the warning the crew chief would be able to give, Cruz knew, as the aviator turned his complete attention to the machine gun mounted on one side. This he began to fire in long bursts to the left front as the bird climbed up the side of a ridge. A bag caught the crew chief's hot, expended shell casings as they flew out the side of the gun in a steady stream.

Bad sign, Cruz thought. Very damned bad.

 

Noorzad had, he thought, no good choices. He'd lost over a third of his men just to the sudden surprise fire when the column of light trucks and buses had opened up. He'd lost some more from the aerial attack and the artillery and mortar bombardment. He thought he might have as many as fifty men left, possibly a few less.

Forget the surrounding ridges and join the attack to free Mustafa's hill? He wondered. No . . . a few more guns there won't help much. Better to stay here and hold the ridges as long as possible, take as many with us as possible.

There was an air defense gun, a twin 23mm job, not far from Noorzad. The crew were dead around it but, in one of those peculiar effects of large explosions, and especially thermobaric ones, the gun itself was still standing and looked fine.

"Come . . . come!" Noorzad shouted to four of his followers. Not looking to see if they followed, he raced on foot to the gun. A quick visual examination showed the gun was loaded. There was a crude metal chair to sit on and what seemed to be a sight. At least there was an assemblage that, lined up with a seated gunner's head, would define a line roughly parallel to the twin barrels.

Noorzad sat down in the chair and confirmed that the projection ahead of him was a gun sight. An experimental press of each of the foot pedals swung the gun left and right. He tugged on the handles and the gun's muzzles raised up. When he pushed them forward the elevation dropped.

This took mere moments. By the time his men joined him Noorzad was lining the sight up on the leading of two approaching helicopters. He thought he knew enough to lead, but he overestimated how much was required. When the firing studs were pressed, the twin cannon spit out their sixty shells in a few seconds. The electronically fired gun clicked on empty as Noorzad ran out of ammunition. That was just before the helicopter would have crossed the path of the shells.

"Get more!" he shouted to his men. "More shells."

The unfamiliar flexible belts of cannon cartridges, sixty per belt, caused some problem as the men tried to control them and feed them into the ammunition slots. By the time he was ready to fire again, Noorzad saw that the helicopter was on the ground with dozens of armed and armored men spilling out of it and the others that had accompanied it. The dozens became hundreds as more helicopters touched down. Crap.

Well . . . if I can't kill enough of the infidel infantry I can kill their helicopter.

 

Cruz was, per doctrine, the first man out. He stood at the edge of the rear door cursing and hustling his men off the helicopter, directing their leaders where he wanted them placed. A piper automatically took a position by the centurion's side and began playing the First Tercio's own theme, "Boinas Azules Cruzan la Frontera."

"Sergeant Avila," Cruz shouted over the helicopters and the pipes, pointing, "I want your squad there, from ten o'clock to two o'clock." Then he turned his attention back towards the inside of the just-lifting helicopter and saw the left-side wall began to disintegrate in his field of view. The crew chief, still gamely firing his machine gun, was hit by something that exploded, tearing his upper torso from his lower body at the waist and flinging the chief's remains to the right side of the compartment. Cruz had the briefest glimpse of one of the pilots being thrown across the cockpit onto the other.

Smelling aviation fuel and seeing sparks and smoke, Cruz turned to throw himself away from the bird. From behind came a loud whoosh as the fuel caught fire, exploded, and knocked Cruz and the piper, faces first, to the dirt.

 

Seeing that someone was at least trying to do something, more men, not all of them Noorzad's, rushed to reinforce the gun position. The column of smoke served as their orientation mark.

Noorzad and his men cheered when the helicopter began first to smoke and then to burst into flame. They saw what Cruz could not. One of the two pilots, trapped by flame behind him, tried to force his way through the strong plexiglas of the windscreen as fire rose all around.

Noorzad would cherish the open-mouthed agony writ on that pilot's face for the rest of his life.

 

Cruz and his men were shocked, yes, by the destruction of the helicopter and crew that had bravely brought them in. More than shocked though, they were deeply angered. A red mist descended across the centurion's vision.

"Fix bayonets, you bastards," Cruz called out, as he affixed his own. "Play, you son of a bitch," he cursed at the shocked piper.

"Fix bayonets" usually meant a wild screaming charge with blood in your eye. It was not precisely a favored tactic in the legion but this was a special case, a situation where time was more valuable than lives because it meant lives. The men of the platoon knew that. Even so they looked at their young centurion as if he were insane.

"Fix BAYONETS!" Cruz repeated, as loudly as possible. This time the men knew he was serious. They reached to their belts and, still prone on the ground, pulled out the shiny blades (for the legion knew that a bayonet was a weapon of terror and that, thus, shinier was better) and attached them to the muzzles of their rifles, jiggling the bayonets to make sure of a secure fix.

"Now . . . you sonsabitches . . . FOLLOW MEEE. . . ."

 

Looking out the right side window of his Cricket, Carrera saw one of his valuable IM-71s suddenly caught by heavy fire as it tried to lift off after landing its troops. He cursed as the chopper abruptly settled back to earth and began to pour out first smoke, then fire.

His first instinct, born of hate and rage, was to bring a cohort's worth of artillery down on the gun that had just slaughtered his men. He was just starting to pick up a microphone to do that when he saw a rare thing, a remarkable thing. What looked like about fifty men were streaming towards the enemy air defense gun in a single mad rush. Sunlight glinting upward told that those men had their bayonets fixed.

 

Racing forward in the lead, Cruz saw the enemy heavy gun fire a brief burst. The passage of the shells created a palpable shock wave around him. No matter, possessed by battle madness he continued his charge, screaming like a demon and firing from the hip.

Nearby, charging forward with fangs bared, the platoon's attached scout dog began to howl: ahwoooo. My pack is the greatest.

A bullet struck one of the glassy metal chest plates of Cruz's lorica and bounced off, singing. With the angle of the strike and of his body, it shocked and slowed him but it didn't stop him.

Wild-eyed Salafis arose from the ground. Some were cut down by the legionaries' fire but others closed. Cruz put two three-round bursts of 6.5mm into the body of one, half emulsifying his target's innards. Wheeling to face another, this one thrusting forward a fixed bayonet, Cruz tapped the enemy rifle aside and lunged to plunge his own bayonet into the enemy's throat. Dropping his rifle to clutch at his wound, eyes rolling up in his head as blood rushed out to spatter on the ground, this Salafi sank to his knees.

Cruz put one booted foot on the Salafi's head and pushed him off of his now red-running bayonet. Again he whirled to face two more charging maniacs. He swung his butt at one and missed, but then stepped forward and reversed the motion to slam the butt into the Salafi's unarmored kidney. That one went down puking with pain. The next one up Cruz shot before spinning to plunge the bayonet into the back of his previous opponent.

"Die, motherfucker," he snarled as the Salafi screamed in agony.

By this time Cruz's men had reached him and joined the fray. The entire hilltop became a mass of lunging, shooting, screaming and dying men. The dog ripped out a Salafi throat, howled again, and bounded off in search of another. Ahwooo; my pack is the greatest. Not far behind the piper's playing added to the furious din.

Here the legionaries' superior training and armor—to say nothing of the pooch's—came to the fore. Even at close range, the Salafis couldn't usually get a bullet to penetrate directly from in front, though a number of the Balboans went down with wounds to face, head, limbs and torso sides. Within a few moments, all the Salafis were down and Cruz's men were finishing off the wounded with butt stroke, burst and bloodied bayonet.

There was no time, in a close fight, for the niceties. And men who had failed to surrender by the time the legion closed to three hundred meters had forfeited their right to do so.

Breathing deeply, anger still raging within him, the centurion walked deliberately to where a crusty-looking, one-eyed Salafi struggled to load the light cannon that had smashed and burned the helicopter. Seeing the look in Cruz's eye the Cyclops stopped his efforts and began to raise his hands.

"Fuck you, asshole," Cruz said, as he took aim and triggered a burst into Noorzad's head.

 

Interlude

4 July, 2206, Cygnus House, Chelsea, London, European Governing Region, Earth

"The marquis is dead; long live the marchioness," Lucretia whispered to herself as the last of the lower class investigating officers departed the mansion. The sun was down and an ambulance had long since carted off her late father's cooling corpse.

As she closed the door behind the police, Class Fours and thus very deferential to the new Marchioness, Lucretia sighed, "Oh, Daddy, and you were such a good lay, too." She sighed, and then burst out laughing, dancing on light feet across the black and white tiled floor of the vestibule.

The police had carted off the bulk of the domestic kitchen staff, of course. They would be incarcerated in Amnesty's own dungeons and rigorously questioned by its own interrogators. But . . . who cares? Lowers can be bought for a song. Which is a damned good thing because now, with Daddy out of the way, I intend to go through a lot of them.

"Then, too," she said aloud, "perhaps I should buy a commission in the Peace Forces. I've always fancied how I'd look in uniform."

Lucretia walked to her father's desk and pressed a button on the intercom. A face appeared, that of one of the maids, Emily.

"Yes, mum?"

"I feel like celebrating. Whiskey. Ice."

"Yes, mum."

When the maid arrived, not more than five minutes later, Lucretia waited for her to pour and then struck her across the face with her riding crop. "You were too slow."

Weeping, the maid sank to her knees, crying and covering her bruised face with her hands.

"That's better, Emily. I much prefer you in that position. But . . . I think you would look even better with your face to the floor." Arbeit used her dainty foot to press the maid's head downward.

Lucretia left the girl there, trembling and cowering, and with blood welling from the slash across her face. The new Marchioness liked that, the image, the reality, the trembling fear. She picked up the glass of whiskey and drank deeply.

Lucretia then laughed and started to sing, softly:

"Arise you prisoners of starvation . . ."

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