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Part III

Chapter Nineteen

 
La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid.

—Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderlos de La Clos

Camp San Lorenzo, Jalala Province, Pashtia, 12/6/469 AC

Fernandez shook his head ruefully and placed the report from Mahamda, his chief of interrogators, down on his disk. The intelligence coming from the Mises had dropped alarmingly. Mahamda's report was clear on why, too. He picked the report up again and reread the key paragraph.

"The Pashtun are simply too tough," Mahamda had written. "They're not like the soft city boys from Sumer and Yithrab we were used to dealing with. Oh, yes, we can break them; but it takes three times longer. That's no different, in practice, from cutting my interrogation staff by a factor of three. And when they do break, the intelligence we gain is almost always old, too old to be useful tactically, though it usually retains its strategic value. Only when we have family members to threaten do they turn quickly. Nor will simply giving me more men do much better. This is delicate work, work that requires great talent and much training. Simply inflicting duress is rarely enough."

"And I don't have a solution to that," Fernandez muttered. "Patricio is still too delicate about threatening innocents; though he has made great strides. I wonder if we spoiled ourselves a little by going for the easy route and not developing enough tactical intelligence capability. Something to think on, anyway."

North of Jalala, Pashtia, 12/7/469

Alena sat up abruptly. She'd had another of her visions, this time in a dream. It hadn't been a particularly good one, nothing like when she had seen her husband presenting the calf's carcass to her on the playing field, nothing like the vision of their first night together (though the reality of that had far surpassed the dream). In fact, it had been downright horrible, all smoke and fire and screams and struggling, dying men.

She glanced at the horses, hobbled and guarded, a hundred meters away. No . . . it wasn't them.

Alena's eyes looked overhead. No, no aircraft.

Alena herself wasn't sure whether her visions came from somewhere else or if they were just the result of having a mind that could take and match a great many disparate bits of information and come up with probabilities from that, probabilities that that same mind imagined into visions. It didn't really matter which it was, she supposed, since the visions turned out to be right, more often than not. Best of all, unlike most men, her husband—she looked down warmly at the sleeping form beside her—listened. How could she not love a man who listened?

This vision was different from most. She sensed that the action she had seen was not to be immediate, nor close by.

What could have caused it? she wondered.

Her conscious mind was at least as good as her subconscious. She began to tally what she knew.

Point: the war is going fairly well, with new information coming in every day and deserters from the Ikhwan giving themselves up regularly. This will make the other side desperate. Point: I have seen my husband's higher commander. He is a tired man, breaking down and unwilling to admit it to anyone. He is desperate, too. Point: the action has mostly moved to the border, but is stuck there because we can't cross to where the enemy shelters. Point: support for this war among those who fund it is waning. They, too, are desperate for it to end.

She, too, shook her head. No, those are not the keys. It was something else, but what?

"David," she said, nudging the sleeping form beside her. "Husband, awaken. I have a prediction. Let me see the map."

With a grunt David sat up next to her. He'd learned, over the past two years of action, one hundred and fifty or more firefights, several awards and decorations and a promotion, and the past year with his wife, that when Alena wanted to see the map he'd be well advised to deliver. He reached into the saddle bags beside his sleeping roll and took the map and a blue-filtered flashlight out, unfolding the map in front of her and focusing the light for her to see by.

Alena's finger began tracing the map, stopping at points and gliding right over others.

Point: a platoon from the Cazador cohort was ambushed yesterday here. Point: there was a report of donkeys being purchased by someone here. Point: there was a report of a delivery of explosives here, last month. Point . . . Point . . . Point . . . Point . . . 

Alena closed her eyes and began to rock back and forth. It was eerie, but Cano wasn't about to object. When she opened them she pointed to a spot on the map, a junction of backwoods trails, and said, "Bring your men here, before first light. Thirty to forty of the enemy, heavily armed, and leading a caravan. If you hurry . . ."

 

Some miles from where Alena studied her husband's map, Senior Centurion Ricardo Cruz shivered in the cold night air.

Despite almost ten years of the news networks' predictions about the "brutal Pashtian winter," it had so far failed to materialize anywhere below the high mountain passes. They were still waiting, expectantly, and devoted several hours a week to the subject.

On the other hand, while not exactly "brutal," the winter could be cold enough. Cruz thought it was "goddamned cold," for example. He thought so despite the roughly one thousand drachma worth of cold weather gear the legion was now able to provide each man deployed. On the other hand, it could be worse. I remember that first winter, in the hills of Yezidistan . . . brrrr. Ah well, at least the wind blows from the other direction so we can get a little shelter from these rocks. Fortunately, too, it also keeps our scent out of the kill zone.

This was Cruz's third year at war and ninth with the legion. In many ways it was the worst. He'd spent his second combat tour as an optio. Federated States Army troops would have called the position, "platoon sergeant." Now, even with his break from the regular forces, he was a full-fledged senior centurion leading a platoon of fifty-one men, including the attached forward observer team, Pashtun scout, and the platoon medic. If all went well, after this tour he'd go to the First Centurion's School, alleged to be a gentlemen's course—And won't that be a fucking break?—and take over as first shirt for an infantry maniple. The pay he'd receive in that position, nearly two thousand drachma monthly, would place him and his family easily in the top quarter of income in Balboa. Add in the very nice four-bedroom house the legion provided on either the Isla Real or one of the new casernes, the schools, beaches and other recreational facilities and it added up to . . . 

It adds up to: I still miss Cara and the kids . . . and I need to get laid. Badly.

Just over two hundred of the Sumeri whores—war widows, mostly—that the legion had . . . acquired . . . had chosen to follow the eagles to Pashtia. These had been supplemented by several score more from the local community, generally slave girls purchased from the local dealers and given the choice of prostitution and care or freedom to go. Most stayed. Some of the girls had even managed to find husbands from among the men. This, however, was decidedly difficult in the close confines of the legion. Cruz didn't know of a single legionary who had taken a hooker to wife who had remained with the colors. It was just too awkward when every one of your comrades had had her at one time or another. Whatever the justice of the matter— and Cruz thought it was damned poor—people usually just didn't think of hookers as really human outside of fiction. Nor could a typical man stand to be in the same room, sometimes the same universe, as someone who'd had the woman he loved.

Sometimes, he had to admit, Cruz had been tempted. The girls were segregated by the rank of the soldiers they serviced. The group dedicated to the centurions was, for lack of a better term, hot. They were also very clean, as the legion's own medical staff checked them, and the men, regularly. Moreover, careful, if confidential, record was kept of who'd screwed whom. While venereal disease made its way in, occasionally, it was damned rare.

Even so, when tempted Cruz had merely pulled out his wallet, opened it to a picture of Cara and the kids, and said, "Nope. Not worth it."

He pulled the wallet out now, looking at the picture once again in the moonlight.

Cruz lay with a squad from his platoon in a rock-strewn ambush position under the bright light of two nearly full moons. His own optio remained back at the objective rally point with the platoon's four donkeys, the medic, the forward observers, and a few other men. The rest of the platoon was out in three- and four-man ambush positions around the central one. Intel had confirmed that an enemy platoon of allegedly about twenty-five men had departed a refugee camp in Kashmir three days ago and was expected to use this pass. Intel was right about such things perhaps one time in five or six. That was often enough to justify the effort. (Alena Cano's record was much better than this, but who knew outside of her husband's group of cavalry?) Moreover, the ratio had been improving over the months as the legion discovered that the best way to ensure that the enemy did not come when and where expected was to land a helicopter anywhere within miles of the spot. Instead, the ambushers almost always trekked in on foot or, in the case of some of the Pashtun Scouts, on horseback, moving at night, with a few donkeys to help with the load.

A small bud in Cruz ear beeped low. "Cruz," he whispered.

"Centurion, this is Optio Garcia. The RPV reports thirty-two men entering the pass with fifteen donkeys. Heavily laden. Heavily armed. Light gunship"—a Cricket with a dual machine gun mounted to one side—"standing by. Two Turbo-Finches waiting at the strip. Reaction platoon waiting to reinforce, loaded on helicopters."

"Roger."

Cruz had had fourteen directional mines laid along a rough line of almost four hundred meters. He did some quick calculations. Thirty- two men and fifteen donkeys . . . subtract four or five for point and rear guards . . . moving at night they'll close it up a bit . . . say, four or five meters per man, two staggered lines. They should fit inside the kill zone before we initiate. Of course, the point and rear guards will probably not be in the kill zone when we open up.

Cold forgotten amidst the excitement of impending action, Cruz reached up and pulled the passive vision monocular down over his right eye. Then he tapped awake Majeed, his attached Pashtun scout. "Pretty soon. Make ready," he whispered.

Majeed sat up with a smile. With luck, there would be a bonus for this one. Majeed had his eye on a third wife. Legion scouts made a lot of money in comparison with the Pashtian norm. The multiple wives this allowed the scouts to support added much to their status and kept the recruiting lines for the few open positions somewhere between long and longer.

 

Carefully, the two Pashtun sniffed at the air. Nothing. They moved bare feet along the cold rock as they advanced into the pass, eyes scanning for any sign that the infidel awaited.

Brothers, Bashir and Salam had once thought to join the Scouts. Having been shamed by rejection, they'd vowed revenge for the insult and made their way north to the refugee camps that lay just far enough across the ill-defined border that there could be no doubt they were in the territory of Kashmir rather than that of Pashtia. There, the brothers had sought work and been hired to lead formed units and caravans of donkeys into Pashtia. The pay was not as good, not nearly as good, but at least they could strike back at those who had insulted them.

This was their third trip. They'd begun to consider the possibility of retiring after this one. While the pay was not so good as that given to the infidel legion's scouts, it was enough at least to pay for a wife each and a small plot of decent land. With that, they could grow enough of the poppy to eke out a decent living.

It was beginning to look like eking out a living would be better than continuing to lead convoys forward and dying in the process. Neither brother knew anyone who had managed to lead four convoys safely through.

Besides, they had already begun to loathe the Yithrabis, who looked down on them, criticizing everything from their illiteracy to their manner of dress.

 

Covering himself almost completely behind his rock, Cruz watched the two point men walk through. Even at a distance of one hundred and twenty-five meters, and in the fuzzy and grainy picture given by his monocular, they seemed fairly professional. He had to hope that one of the other point ambushes in the area ambush would get them. No sense in letting pros survive.

He shifted as quietly as he could to look to his left, the direction from which the sounds of donkeys came. Yes . . . there they are. Cruz saw thirteen or fourteen men, in a staggered double column, enter the kill zone. Behind those were the donkeys, tied together in strings of five or six with a man leading each string. Another group of thirteen or fourteen took up the tail of the caravan.

Shame about the donkeys.

He waited, his heart racing so fast he could not have marked the time by it even if he'd thought of it. Unconsciously, his hands reached for the two directional mine detonators he'd placed carefully against the rock to his front.

It took almost six minutes from the time the point of the main body entered the kill zone to when its tail did. All that time, Cruz's heart beat so heavily that he thought the enemy must hear it. Of course, they did not hear it. In fact, the only thing they did hear was . . . 

Kakakakakaboomoomoomoomoom.

 . . . as the directional mines went off. These Volgan-made munitions were flat cylinders with one point seven kilograms of explosive on one side and four hundred cylindrical bits of steel buried in a plastic matrix on the other. Most of the bits went high or low, of course, though even then some of the low ones would ricochet at man height across the kill zone. In all, tests had confirmed that at least a third, in this case about two thousand, bits of flying steel would cross at an acceptable graze to the ground. The mines were more directionally focused than the FSC-made versions and so had been laid at angles to sweep along rather than across the kill zone.

More than half the infiltrators were blown off their feet, screaming and spurting blood and bone. Immediately the men along the ambush line opened fire, while a machine gun to the right raked directly long the line of march. A few tried to return fire. They were shooting in the dark at barely seen muzzle flashes. Cruz's men, on the other hand, had F- and M-26s with integral thermal sights. They did not shoot blindly at muzzle flashes but instead were able to take careful aim at standing or kneeling men.

The fire went on for what seemed a very long time but was really no more than forty-five seconds. By the end of that time all of the obvious targets were down. Cruz thought he saw a few running pellmell across the rocks to his front.

Good. Right into Corporal Lopez's position.

A single white star parachute flare, hand held and fired, flew up with a bang and a whoosh to burst overhead. The squad leader of the squad Cruz had accompanied blew his whistle three times. Firing ceased. Another whistle blast sent the men into the kill zone. Most of them, as they crossed, carefully shot each of the bodies laying there once again, in the head, to make sure. A central team, two men, looked around quickly and identified someone still breathing who might be a leader. One of the team rapped the supposed leader on the head with his rifle stock and dragged him off. Another two-man team went rifling packs and pockets for items of intelligence. Some was kept, maps and notebooks, typically, along with cell phones and the one radio they found. The rest, along with weapons, were dropped beside the intel team.

What was just business sense for the enemy infiltrators was a mercy to their donkeys. These were shot quickly and even with regret. After all, the legion could always use more strong and healthy beasts of burden and, as anyone who dealt with them knew, the Pashtian animals were the best.

Cruz had watched the squad go through its motions. No sense in taking over from a perfectly competent sergeant, after all. Nonetheless, while half the squad provided far security to the kill zone and half assisted the intel team in the search, he went out to look over the intel gathered.

A map caught Cruz's eye. Picking it up and looking at it under the moonlight, Cruz spontaneously whistled.

 

Bashir and Salam cowered behind a rock as the infidel ambush went out into the kill zone. Bashir began to raise his rifle to engage them, when Salam slapped it down.

"Foolish Brother, do you think you can do any good?"

"What do we do then, O wise Brother?" Bashir asked quietly but sarcastically. "Do you think they don't have this place surrounded? We are not going to escape. Better to take one with us."

"God curse the day we ever left to join the Ikhwan," Salam said. "But, if we kill one of the infidels, they will certainly kill us. Then, if the tales are to be believed, they will take bits of our bodies and blood to identify our clan in the evil ways the infidels have. Then our clan will suffer. Do you want that?"

"No . . . no, not that," Bashir admitted, relaxing his grip on his rifle. "But what are we to do?"

"We escape," Salam counseled. "To Hell with the Ikhwan. Drop everything. We'll crawl out under cover of the night."

 

The Cricket's machine gunner saw the brothers through the thermal imager mounted over his gun. "I've got two in sight," he told the pilot, "but I don't think they're interested in fighting."

"Whereabouts?"

"Five-fifty to six-hundred meters southeast of the kill zone. They're crawling away. There's also a group of cavalry coming as fast as they can drive their horses. I recognize them. They're friendly."

"I see the cav," the pilot said. "I'm going to fly over low and direct them to the crawlers."

 

"Surrender now," Rachman called out in Pashtun once the airplane informed him by signal that the Scouts were close enough. "You are surrounded and there is an armed aircraft overhead that has you in its sights. Come out unarmed and with your hands up."

Unheard by any but themselves, Bashir and Salam breathed a deep sigh of relief that the infidels were interested in prisoners. They had reason to believe this was not always the case.

 

Cruz saluted Cano and reported, then added, "You missed all the fun."

Cano shrugged and pointed with his chin at Bashir and Salam, preceding the cavalry column with heads down and hands bound. "Not all," he disagreed.

Cano then turned and gave the woman riding beside him a mock dirty look. "Wicked wife! Incompetent. Call yourself a seeress. Hah! Thirty to forty heads you promised us, and on that promise I awakened my men for this? I should divorce you."

The woman just laughed, as did the Pashtun close enough to Cano to hear.

Even Cruz laughed at that. It was patently obvious, just from a glance, that this tribune would not leave the woman for anything.

"We've got a helicopter coming in for the prisoners, your two unwounded ones plus two we have that might or might not make it."

"Then Centurion Cruz," Cano said, "I present to you and your men two hale prisoners of war, compliments of this wicked woman whom I shall certainly beat mercilessly at some more convenient time."

The woman, Cruz noted, pulled a vicious looking dagger from her belt and began nonchalantly flashing the blade in the sun. Still, the whole time she smiled at her husband.

Camp San Lorenzo, Jalala Province, Pashtia, 14/7/469

There was a bit more rock and concrete in this camp than there had been in Camp Balboa back in Sumer. Moreover, while the "brutal Pashtian winter" wasn't all that bad it was somewhat uncomfortably cool in these hills at night and in the winter, even this far north. Thus, the spread of legionary barracks and offices, mess halls and warehouses were, in the main, wood-lined and heated. The wood had once been growing on the spot where the camp sat.

Standing in one such, with a small fire going in a sort of Franklin stove in one corner, a number of men—and one small boy—sat in comfortable chairs. All but the boy sipped something alcoholic, often enough scotch. A recently captured map was tacked to one wall. The map showed a valley dominated by a single, tall elevation in the center, with two streams that cut around the mountain, and long ridges to either side. Both mountain and ridges were heavily trenched and bunkered.

The legion hadn't needed the map to know this was a main enemy base; it was simply too obvious. What the map provided was considerable detail on the fortifications of that base as well as the suggestion that it was a regular meeting point for the elite of the enemy movement. Also, that is was the enemy base.

"The problem, Patricio," Fernandez said, pointing at the map that had been delivered by Cruz's maniple commander the day prior, "is that their base is in Kashmir and Kashmir has both a credible air force and nukes."

Carrera didn't bother saying, So do we . . . have nukes. Fernandez was one of a very few who knew that the legion did have nukes. Moreover, the original three had been supplemented by another four that had needed reworking and recertification. And hadn't that been a bitch to arrange through some off-line Volgan contacts?

The problem was that Kashmir didn't know the legion had nukes and, so, might be inclined to discount the possibility and use their own. Nor would it have been altogether wise to have let them know.

"And even if they don't use the nukes, they have a real air force, a good one. You can't count on the Federated States to provide air cover for an attack into the territory of even a very nominal ally any more than you can count on them putting us under their own nuclear umbrella if we attack across the border."

"We can stymie their air force if we can helo in the air defense maniple," Jimenez suggested.

This was more likely than it had once seemed. A number of Volgan warships, laid up and rusting, had been stripped for their heavy, range-finding lasers. The lasers—power hogs, all—had then been mounted on three-hundred-and-sixty degree rotating carriages, with less powerful and power-consuming lasers mounted coaxially. The lesser lasers could send out low energy streams of light more or less continuously. When they got a bounce back from an aerial target they automatically fired the main laser, blinding or at least stunning the pilot. Since blind pilots cannot fly . . . 

There was a treaty against this, against the use of lasers to blind. Carrera ignored that and, when questioned by the press during one of the very few press conferences he deigned to endure, had answered, "If we wanted to blind them so they would be blind, that would be illegal. In fact, we want to blind them so they crash their planes and die. This does not leave them blinded for later on in life and, so, is perfectly legal."

Even the Federated States hated that position, their pilots more so.

It was Greg Harrington's turn again to serve as the forward Ib, or logistics officer, of the deployed legion. He had more objections. "If that map and what's drawn on it is right—"

Lawrence Triste, also back from Balboa and serving as Ic, or Intelligence, interjected, "We snuck an RPV there last night. The map is correct. There are several thousand of them, well armed, with decent air defense, dug in like rats and surrounded by mines and wire."

"—well then," Harrington continued, "that's even worse. It will take hundreds of tons of artillery and heavy mortar ammunition to breach that place, maybe thousands—"

"Thousands," confirmed the artillery cohort commander. "Even though the base will be in range of our rockets without them crossing over or getting very far from a good road," he added.

"See? I can't move that much. I just can't. And you'll need infantry to clear the place, and to make sure there are no escapes. We don't have the lift, Pat."

Carrera turned furiously on his logistician. "You stupid fuck! I pay you to fucking solve problems, not to whine about what you can't do—" He stopped abruptly, shamefaced, and said, "I'm sorry . . . you didn't deserve that. I don't know what—" His voice trailed off.

Everyone went silent. Even Harrington wasn't angry, or more than a little hurt. Carrera, unlike the rest of them, had been at war for over eight years without more than an occasional break. The strain was telling . . . but none of them had the heart to tell him it was time for him to take a long rest.

The small boy in the company of men was Hamilcar, Carrera's first child with Lourdes. He was a good looking kid, and tall for his age. The stature, like the huge eyes, probably came from his mother. On Carrera's last visit home the boy had begged to come along and, since his mother had stayed in a combat zone with him as a baby, she had been in a very difficult position to refuse. Then, too, she was terribly worried about her Patricio and his health, both physical and mental. That last visit home had been . . . difficult.

Hamilcar was loathe to speak, surrounded, as he was, by half a dozen men that he had grown up admiring. But it seemed so obvious to him. He would have thought it would be obvious to his father, too.

Well, no one else was going to say anything. He'd have to. Clearing his throat he piped up in a little-boy voice, "Father, if you landed a cohort inside the enemy base, on that large hill in the center, it would draw them away from the outside. Wouldn't that help you?"

The room went quiet as every man turned to look at little Hamilcar in something between surprise and wonder.

"Acorn never falls far from the tree, does it?" Jimenez commented.

"Helps anyway," Harrington admitted grudgingly. "If we can crush their air defense so we even can land men on the hill. Plus . . . it's a damned steep hill . . . hard to actually land a chopper on. But it doesn't solve the other problems."

"Even those might not be insurmountable," Carrera said, calm again if infinitely weary. "The major problem is that if we hit it and don't get most of the leadership, then it's all a bloody damned waste."

Fernandez brightened. "I might have a solution to that, Patricio. Give me a couple of days."

 

Bashir had not seen his brother, Salam, since they'd surrendered. He'd been interrogated, of course, and warned that very severe consequences would follow if he didn't tell the absolute truth. It was also explained to him that Salam was being asked the same questions and that, if the stories didn't match perfectly, the severe consequences would be administered to both.

"Absolute truth from each of you is your only salvation," the interrogator had explained.

Bashir had only told one lie, that concerning the whereabouts and names of his family. Unfortunately, he and Salam had never been given the chance to work out anything between them. Bashir would remember the beating that followed for years. Even after he'd told the truth the beatings had continued until, apparently, Salam had likewise come clean. Or perhaps they'd continued just on general principle or to see if they'd come up with different answers. Bashir didn't know.

Their parents, plus their brothers and sisters were brought to the camp two days later, though they were apparently well treated. Neither attempted the slightest lie after that.

 

Fernandez spoke, through an interpreter, to Bashir first. The man looked pretty bad off, face bruised and eyes half-swollen shut. He walked like a much older, indeed a very old, man. That would pass, Fernandez knew. The guards were expert and had been under firm instructions to do no permanent damage.

He had the guard remove Bashir's manacles and offered the young man water and some food, legionary rations, in fact, which Bashir choked down, greedily. He especially liked the one-hundred-gram bar of honey-sweetened halawa, seven hundred calories of crushed sesame seed goodness in just over four ounces.

While he ate Fernandez made a show of looking over his file. "Ah . . . I see you tried to join us once."

"How did you—?"

"Your picture was taken when you were interviewed. We matched that to your picture taken when you were first brought here. The computers do that almost instantly. Hmmm . . . rejected, I see . . . well . . . no, not rejected. We placed you and your brother on the wait list. We'd likely have taken you in a couple of months."

"The recruiter didn't tell us that," Bashir answered. "He said if we could come up with a bribe he might get us a position in a couple of months."

Fernandez smiled evilly. Corruption was always a problem, though it was a problem the legion dealt with very severely. In reality there was only one punishment, death.

"Did he indeed? We'll see to that. I understand you tried to lie to us," Fernandez said.

"What fool would give you the names of their people?"

"Good point," Fernandez agreed. "We'll forgive you the lie though, of course, you and your brother are under sentence of death for aiding our enemies. Their guilt became yours when you agreed to help them."

"We've never been tried!" Bashir objected hotly.

"You will be . . . if necessary. Do you doubt the results of that trial?" Again Fernandez smiled, though not so evilly.

"No," Bashir said, with resignation.

"Still . . ." Fernandez hesitated, "you did cooperate fully once you realized you had to. And . . . then, too . . . what good is a boy who won't take a beating to protect his family?"

It was a slender reed, barely to be perceived. The Pashtun grabbed it anyway. "I could cooperate more."

"There would be great risks," Fernandez cautioned, "and not merely for yourself . . . great rewards, too, of course."

 

Later, after Bashir had been brought back to his cell to think a bit, Fernandez interviewed Cano and Alena, privately.

"Tribune," he said, "there is something very weird going on here. You were not supposed to be at that ambush. It was miles away from your patrolling area. Yet there you were. I checked back over the last couple of years. Your group of scouts is always nearby whenever trouble crops up and you are even remotely in range. You've got the highest kill rate of any group in the legion. Why?"

Cano just looked at Alena and said, "My wife's a witch."

Fernandez looked intently at the Pashtun girl.

"I'm not a witch, exactly," she said, looking up at the wood paneling of Fernandez's office. "At least I don't think I am. But I do pay attention . . ."

Interlude

1 Easton Street, London, England, European Union,
11 January, 2126

In his plush office, all woods and wools and crystal, Louis Arbeit stretched like a satisfied cat after a kill.

The nature of the kill? Fifty-thousand small arms smuggled into various spots on Terra Nova in aid of the various insurgencies there. More on point; the payment received for them.

It was perfect, Arbeit self-congratulated. Amnesty can go anywhere there; even the guerillas accepted us because we brought them arms. Oh, not directly, of course. That would have been too dangerous. Instead, we bought space from the Food and Agricultural Organization from what was set aside for them for cargo on the resupply, reinforcement and resettlement ships. And my father made sure that space was considered "hands off" by the crews. After all, it was only "food."

The real food and the arms went to the colonies in Southern Columbia and Northern Uhuru. They paid us and then delivered the arms to the guerillas and the food to whoever needed it.

Arbeit sighed with contentment. And at two-hundred grams of gold for an obsolescent rifle and one thousand rounds, we robbed those bastard guerillas, too.

Looking up and out the window of his office, Arbeit thought, sadly, A shame about the old man, though. I wonder if the guerillas would have assassinated him if they'd known how important he was to their supply of arms and munitions. Fortunately Mother is taking it well.

He stood and began to pace about the spacious office. The thing is, though; where should I best invest the money? Even after paying off my helpers, generously, I've still got four tons of gold just sitting in Switzerland.

Maybe it's time to talk to SecGen Simoua about making my posting for life. A single ton of my gold should be enough to remind him of his promise to my father. Then again, the Swiss are said to have some new anti-agathics. New and pricey. Since the old SecGen died, finally, I am reminded that I am mortal and need them. Perhaps Simoua would settle for half a ton.

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