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Chapter Eighteen

 
There is no love untouched by hate
No unity without discord
There is no courage without fear
There is no peace without a war

—Cruxshadows, Eye of the Storm

Runnistan, Pashtia, 8/7/468 AC

Rachman was terrified; Tribune David Cano could see it in his eyes. Yet the fierce Pashtun would rather die in horrible agony than ever admit to feeling the slightest fear.

And why the hell shouldn't he be terrified? Cano thought. Poor bastard's never been up in a helicopter before. He's never even flown before. If I were him, I'd be shitting myself. What a great people these are. What a formidable people.

It had been this way since he'd first been assigned to the Pashtun Scouts. Everything about them impressed Cano. Everything about them he liked. Were they rough men? Yes and so was he. Were they crude and uncultured, ignorant and savage?

Well, what was I but an ignorant ridge runner before the legion picked me up and sent me to school? My only skill was riding a horse. But these people aren't stupid, no more than I was. They're just uneducated . . . and that can be fixed.

Cano had the oddest feeling, in accompanying Rachman and a hundred and nineteen of his fellow tribesman going to their home villages on leave, that he was going home as well. He'd fit in so well with these men, enjoyed their company and their comradeship so much, that he just knew he was going to belong, and perhaps better than he'd ever belonged anywhere before.

He felt Rachman's fist pounding his shoulder and looked over. The look of fear in Rachman's eyes had disappeared as the Pashtun gestured enthusiastically at what appeared to be a nothing-much village a few thousand feet below.

"Home," Rachman announced over the thrum of the Volgan-built IM-71. And again, with a mix of satisfaction and exuberance, "David, we are almost home."

BdL Dos Lindas, Hajipur, Sind, 8/7/468 AC

The moons Hecate and Eris were high, the former full and the latter in three quarters. The bay of Hajipur was bright under the light of the moons.

In the bay, surrounded by her escorts seaward and her infantry force on the dock, with sailors and Cazadors manning the guns, Dos Lindas sang with the ring of the hammers and the rushing crackle of the welding machines. She sang, too, with the sing-song speech of the local shipfitters who still swarmed her like industrious bees.

"She be good as new, soon, Skipper," said the master of the shipfitters. "Better den new."

Fosa knew it was true. Not only had the local boys, and a few girls, patched her up, they'd identified weaknesses and worn spots in the hull, seen a few places that wouldn't be the worse for a little extra bracing, and fixed all that as well. The laser topside, blown off by the near miss of a cruise missile, was replaced, as was every wrecked forty- and twenty-millimeter cannon, and .41 caliber machine gun. Even the lost crew, aviators and Cazadors were up to strength, though there had been an awful price to pay back home to make it so.

All that was needed now was the rear elevator. And that was coming soon, this very night, in fact.

We shall see home again, you and I, Fosa thought as he stroked a railing atop the tower rising high above the flight deck. We could fight even as we are. Yes, we could not launch aircraft half so well, but we could still fight, we could still avenge our fallen comrades.

But we'll have our elevator, my dear ship. Tonight it comes to us. And a new sister to fight at our side. And then we go back for revenge.

Fosa looked up at a bright flash at the entrance to the bay. A split second later came the report of a large caliber gun. This was followed, thirty seconds later, by another flash and another boom. Again: flash . . . boom. It went on through twenty-one blank shots, a custom that had followed man to the stars.

The speakers on the bridge barked, "Barco del Legion Dos Lindas, this is BdL Tadeo Kurita. We're escorting your elevator. And we've got ten six-inch guns. Let's get you up to one hundred percent. And then, let's go hunting."

Wilcox's Folly, FSC, 10/7/468 AC

Micah Fen was fat. That was the one thing everyone noticed about him. Indeed, it was the one thing impossible not to notice about him. At least, it was the one thing impossible not to notice until one came close. Within ten feet, perhaps even twenty-five if downwind, one was subjected to the foul odor of obesity necrosis that hung about him like a cloud of gnats about a dead dog's anus.

Khalid had spent a lot of time on the GlobalNet researching his targets. And I never suspected how much the filthy swine would just plain stink. I wonder if his mind is half so rotten as his skin.

For the first several months in the Federated States Khalid had done nothing but research and planning. He already had hit plans for most of his potential targets at obvious places, their homes, their offices, their lovers' homes. He still worked on those, but spent more time now looking for the excuse to execute the hit and leave the blame on the Salafis.

I'd really never expected this one to come up within my hit parameters. Fen's been so consistent in his support of the Salafi Ikhwan, so thoroughly in their camp, I just never imagined he'd do something that would—Il hamdu l'illah—allow me to actually kill him.

It would have been better, of course, if Fen had brought his busload of gays to a mosque rather than a Nazrani church, Khalid thought. But that, I suppose, would have been asking for too much. After all, if nothing else, Fen can hardly have risked exposing the gays to the "righteous, Godly wrath" of the Salafis he wants them to support. So . . . a Nazrani church it had to be and a Nazrani church will have to do.

Besides, Khalid thought, even if imperfect it's still worthwhile even to just suggest to the gays here who support Fen that they're supporting a man who would turn them over to people who would crucify them.

Khalid liked all the targets he'd been assigned, qua targets. Even so, it was especially pleasing, much more so than his usual hit, to be assigned to take out Fen. Who, after all, encouraged the people who blew up my family, who murdered my mother, my brother, and my angel, my poor innocent little Hurriyah. Who better deserves to die?

"You never really thought about it, did you?" Khalid asked. "You never realized that, if terrorism works, it can work on you and yours?"

Fen said nothing. He couldn't; his mouth was duct taped closed even as his wrists and ankles were duct taped to the heavy chair on which he sat. Nonetheless, his piggish eyes were full of pleading terror.

Only fitting.

"You really never had a second thought for your safety, did you?" Khalid asked. "However much you lambasted your country in film and print, however much you lied, however many people you caused to be killed by encouraging their murderers, you never thought that any of it could ever come back on you?

"Sure, I understand," Khalid said, genially, removing a small roll of duct tape from a satchel and placing in on a table near Fen. "You're Micah Fen, star. Retribution is for little people. You only kept a bodyguard to keep away your adoring fans."

"It was easy, you know," Khalid continued, as he checked his digital camera once again. "Get on the GlobalNet, find your touring schedule, check for chartered flights, watch for the press throng, spot you, and then follow you to your hotel. You've got security at home, and you do travel with a bodyguard." Khalid's head inclined towards the cooling corpse of Fen's bodyguard, spreading crimson on the suite's thick carpet. "But outside of your cocoon, you were really very vulnerable."

"I put on a service staff uniform I took from a hotel storage closet and checked with room service to see which room had ordered the most grotesque quantity and quality of food. That had to be you. I came to this floor and bludgeoned a maid—she'll be fine; don't worry—then hid her in a closet and took her passkey.

"With the passkey, I just entered your suite and shot the bodyguard, twice in the chest and once in the head, with a silenced .45. By the time you woke up, you pustule, your mouth was gagged and your arm twisted behind your back. I doubt you would even have woken up if I hadn't dragged you to that chair you're taped to by your arm and shaggy hair. You would like to know why, wouldn't you?"

Glaring at Fen's piggish face, Khalid removed from his pocket a wallet containing a family photo. He opened this and showed it to his victim. "This little girl was my sister, Hurriyah. You praised and encouraged the men who murdered her. That was enough. I'd have sucked Fernandez's dick for the chance to kill you, but he—fine man—gave me the chance for free."

Fen shook his head emphatically. Khalid paid no attention. Instead, he put away the photo and wallet and drew from his pockets a clear plastic bag, a nail and a press release concerning Fen's pro-gay activity. Khalid had scrawled a message in Arabic on the press release. He'd use his pistol to nail the press release to Fen's forehead after the fat fuck was dead.

With the camera, Khalid took a photo of his victim, bound and gagged. He then put the camera aside and pulled a couple of inches of the duct tape roll free.

"This is really going to suck," he said to Fen, happily. "It's going to suck for you, I mean. I, on the other hand, am going to really enjoy it. Take a deep breath, why don't you? No sense in making this too quick."

After placing the clear bag over Fen's head, which elicited a garbled set of pleas for pity and mercy, Khalid took the free two inches of tape and began to wind the sticky stuff around Fen's neck, sealing the bag. The rolls of fat about Fen's neck made it a tougher job than Khalid had anticipated, causing him to have to make three extra winds to ensure a good seal. Fortunately, he'd brought more than enough tape.

Khalid stepped back and picked up the camera. Already Fen had the bag billowing, as he tried to suck in oxygen to feed his almost incredible bulk. In a short time the actor-producer's head was whiplashing back and forth and side to side as he exhausted all the oxygen trapped in the bag and went into a full panic.

While snapping a picture of Fen's purpling face, Khalid was struck by a smell even worse than Fen's normal, unsavory aroma.

"Oh, you shit yourself, didn't you?" Khalid sneered. "What a pig! Aren't you embarrassed?"

In answer, Fen's head only whipped the more frantically as it fruitlessly sought escape from the bag that had cut off its air.

Runnistan, Pashtia, 10/7/468 AC

Nobody in the village fired his rifle into the air. Instead, the men, Samsonov rifles and clones held easily in their hands, clustered around Cano and Rachman, forming a circle. The women of the place stood behind their men, but that appeared more a defensive arrangement than a mark of low status. Oddly, the women were not veiled.

Among the villagers, Rachman and his men were well known. All eyes were on the stranger, Cano. From the encircling crowd one old man emerged and walked toward the group.

"Father," Rachman said to the old man, "we have returned in glory, all but for Filot who fell in battle and was buried on the field. I have brought with us our hectontar, that our people might rejoice to see the leader of their sons and to see that that leader is worthy. Father, David is one of us."

Cano followed the conversation, more or less. The word hectontar was new to him, but he assumed it was local dialect and thought no more of it. He was, in any event, much more interested in the fact that the villagers were not using their rifles as noisemakers; in that, and in the unveiled women he saw behind the men. He saw a pair of bright green eyes atop a swaying, willowy shape, but lost them in the crowd.

"Since my son says you are worthy," said Rachman's father, offering his hand in greeting, "I welcome you to our village. Come; the day is warm. Let us sit and talk in the cool of my courtyard."

While the rest of the group split up to follow their own families home, Rachman and Cano followed Rachman's father, Cano's eyes still searching for that willowy shape.

 

The courtyard was walled. Even so, the house was built on the side of a steep hill. From the courtyard's fountain, Cano could see out over wall to where a group of the village's young men were busily fighting over the corpse of a sheep, from horseback.

The game looked interesting, and even fun, though Cano had no idea of the rules. Based on the number of boys he saw being carried off the field, dripping blood, he wasn't entirely sure there were any rules.

Rachman's father saw Cano's interest and said, "It's for you, you know."

"Well, it is entertaining," Cano replied.

"No, not that," Rachman said. "The young men are trying to impress you with their skill and courage." Seeing Cano really didn't understand, Rachman huffed and added, "So you'll hire them on to join the scouts. We haven't had a good war that we had a chance of winning in . . . well, in a very long time."

"Ohhh." Cano shrugged. "I'm not sure how to even go about that. I don't know if the Legion is interested in expanding the Scouts, though they might be. No, they should be. I'll ask—"

He stopped suddenly as a willowy young woman, technically more of a girl, really, stooped gracefully to set a tray of assorted finger food—fruit, olives, Terra Novan olives with their wrinkled and gray skin, flat yellow chorley bread, honey, some other green and red sauces in bowls—between the three of them. She was unveiled and when she turned her head to smile and Cano saw her green eyes . . . 

God in Heaven; she's beautiful, Cano thought. Those eyes . . . that face . . . that shape . . . 

Rachman smiled, though his father laughed aloud.

"This is my sister, Alena," Rachman explained. "She's fifteen."

Cano immediately looked crestfallen, which raised a laugh from both of the others. "Fifteen," Rachman said, "is not a problem."

Did Cano understand from that what he thought he did? He knew they'd never offer the girl—no, the woman; he'd seen that in her eyes and her smile—for anything dishonorable. It would be as a wife or nothing. But fifteen? He looked again.

The next time I see a fifteen-year-old that looks like that—even back home where the girls grow up fast—will be the first.

Cano shot an inquiring look at Rachman, then at the father. Yes, they do mean it.

He thought that, and then immediately looked even more crestfallen than he had before. "But I'm not a Moslem," Cano said. "And I can't give up the faith of my fathers."

All three of the Pashtun, father, son and sister, broke out in gales of laughter. Rachman eventually ended up on one side on the ground, shaking with mirth. The sister, Alena, sank to her knees and held her sides. Cano looked on, cluelessly. (But doesn't Alena have a wonderful laugh?)

Rachman's father recovered first. He picked up a wedge of chorley bread, dipped it into a bowl holding some sauce made from holy shit peppers, and said, just before popping the wedge into his mouth, "Son, take your war chief to see the hieros, why don't you?"

BdL Qamra, Hajipur, Sind, 10/7/468 AC

Though the sun had not yet set, Hecate shone indistinctly on the eastern horizon.

To the west, the fronts of the Hindu and Buddhist temples lining the waterfront were in shadow.

"They've got a god or goddess for everything, I think," Marta said to Jaquelina, the two sitting side by side on the forward deck, arms around each other's waists. Marta was relaxed enough but Jaquie seemed to her lover to be very stiff.

"Are you feeling all right, love," Marta asked.

Jaquie said nothing, but shook her head and leaned into Marta, tucking one shoulder under the larger woman's arm.

"Tell me," Marta commanded.

"It's nothing."

"Tell me."

Jaquie nestled closer in and admitted, "Honestly, I'm scared."

"Oh."

There wasn't a lot more to say. The carrier was still under repair. The other escorts were needed to secure it in a place that was something less than secure. Even so, the contract with the Zaibatsu required, at a minimum, that the classis maintain a presence in the Nicobar Straits. All that was available, or would be available before BdL Tadeo Kurita unloaded Dos Lindas' elevator, was Qamra.

Fosa had given the word the previous day. "Take Qamra out to the Straits and see if you can't take out one or two of the smaller pirate boats. We'll be along as soon as we've fitted the elevator. We'll all be along."

"We're going to be alone out there," Jaquelina continued, with a small shiver. "For a week or two. Maybe more. No backup. No help. Nobody scouting for us. No retreat if we get in trouble. Even the men are worried."

Marta leaned over to kiss the top of her lover's head, then reached out a hand to stroke hair and cheek. "You have too much imagination," she said. "We'll be fine. I won't let anything happen to you."

Jaquie backed off and looked intently into Marta's face. "I'm not worried about me, you idiot. I'm worried about you."

Runnistan, Pashtia, 10/7/468 AC

The hieros was carved into the mountain, about a half mile from Rachman's family's home. The trail seemed well-worn, to Cano, as if the people of the village followed it regularly to the rectangularly carved opening in the mountainside. He mentioned this to Rachman.

"We come here often, yes," the Pashtun said. "To commune with God . . . to dedicate the young men to His service . . . sometimes just to be away from people to think."

By the time they reached the carved opening, the sun was down. Rachman took a match from one of the two guards standing by the entrance. With it, he lit a small, oil-burning lamp. It cast a flickering light over what looked to Cano to be brick-sized, carved stones, framing a tunnel perhaps thirty inches wide. With the flame from the lamp Rachman lit a torch lying nearby.

"We took these when we left Old Earth," Rachman explained, gesturing at the stones with the torch. "We had no money to pay for much extra baggage, not unless we were willing to sell off some of our patrimony, which we weren't. So say the legends, anyway. Each man and woman took one stone or one piece of something to rebuild this, here. Come, I'll show you."

The footing was even, if not quite smooth, and Cano, guided by Rachman's torch, felt his way along easily. Seventy-five yards or so into the mountainside the narrow tunnel opened up to . . . 

At first, Rachman's torchlight reflected dimly from what Cano judged to be over one hundred dull mirrors. As the Pashtun circled around the room, lighting more lamps as he went, the things Cano took to be mirrors began to appear as round shields, plates, medallions, necklaces and . . . 

"Holy shit."

"Very holy," Rachman agreed, "but not shit." He pointed with the torch toward a golden plate, perhaps fifteen inches across. "This is the image of our God."

"Where have I seen that face before?" Cano wondered aloud. "It was in an old book, at the legion's library . . . an old book from Old Earth . . . Al . . . Alex . . ."

"Iskander," Rachman supplied. "The avatar of our God. God made flesh. It is to Him that we pray. He will come to us again, so say the prophecies." There was no waver of doubt in Rachman's voice. His god would return.

"Ohhh." He thought for a moment about the implications. Then it hit him. "You are not Moslems?"

"We pretend, sometimes," Rachman said. "And give little gifts to Mullah Hassim to make sure he doesn't raise an army against us. But, no, not Moslems. Which is why—" He raised one eyebrow, waiting to see if Cano could make the connection.

He could. "I would not have to convert to be a suitable match for your sister?"

Rachman was smiling broadly. "Correct, Hectontar Cano."

"She's only fifteen, and she doesn't even know me," Cano objected.

"She is already a woman, ready to bear you fine, strong sons and daughters. And you have two weeks to get to know each other," Rachman answered.

"I am a soldier and I might be killed at any time."

"She is the sister, daughter, granddaughter, great-great-great-great to infinity granddaughter of soldiers. She would understand."

"I don't even know if she likes me."

"I told her and my father about you months ago. They both like you. You don't already have a wife, do you?"

"No," Cano shook his head. "No wife. No girlfriend. I never had time to even look for either since I joined the legion."

"Well," Rachman said, "let's stop wasting time and get back to my father's home so you can get to know your future one."

In the flaring light of the torch and the lamps, all reflected by the gold and polished stone of the hieros, which Cano now understood to mean "shrine," or perhaps "temple," Cano said, "You are the strangest matchmaker I have ever heard of."

"No, no," Rachman disagreed. "You should see my aunt. She has a better moustache than I do . . . though I think my beard is more manly . . . a little."

Outside, the guards began to laugh so loudly that Cano was sure it was true about the moustache and beard on Rachman's aunt.

"Alena can read, you know," Rachman said, as they made their way back to the entrance. "Father insisted upon it. Me, personally, I think it was a mistake. She's too smart as it is—"

"Way too smart," agreed one of the guards, just as the two emerged from the tunnel.

"Not bad girl," said the other, "just make you feel stupid." He shrugged. "Doesn't mean to."

"Good shot, too," said the first.

"Oh, yes, very good. Also good on horse. This important; means she can keep up with husband on campaign."

"Very important quality in wife," the first guard agreed. That guard put a hand on Cano's shoulder. "But better you than me, Hectontar. You see, she has the sight."

"The dowry for my sister will be immense," Rachman warned, changing the subject, and shooting a dirty look at the guards. "Immense! Not that anyone else is bidding, mind you," he admitted.

What the hell, Cano thought, I make more in a month than these people do in a year. Hell, in three or four years. And I never spend it. It might be nice to have a wife to spend it on. To see those beautiful eyes light up . . . 

Cano gulped, nervously. "Rachman, you have to talk me through this. How do I propose?"

Nicobar Straits, BdL Qamra, 14/8/468 AC

It was a daunting enough proposition. Alone, untended, unsupported, Chu had to take his vessel into enemy waters and simply look for trouble or, failing that, wait for trouble to find him.

"Somehow, I don't think it'll be long," Chu said.

"What's that, Chu?" Centurion Rodriguez asked.

"Nothing . . . oh, just that I don't think it will be too long before trouble finds us, even with the girls below and undercover."

"You can count on it," Rodriguez agreed, staring into the smoke that still covered the waters of the Straits. "Sucks to be us."

"Tonight, you figure?" Chu asked.

"Or tomorrow, or the next night. Wish we had the rest of the classis with us."

"Yeah," Chu sighed. "Wish in one hand . . ."

BdL Dos Lindas, Hajipur, Sind, 15/8/468 AC

"Shit me a goddamned working elevator!" Fosa screamed at his chief engineer.

"It's not that simple, Captain," the engineer answered sheepishly. "Yes, we thought it would be that simple but we were wrong."

Fosa turned around and stared out of the bridge's wide, and new, windows, looking at the menacing shadow of the Tadeo Kurita. It wasn't particularly easy to calm himself down, but he did. He turned around again and asked, "All right; what's the problem?"

"It's the way this class, any class, really, of warships was built, way back when, Skipper. They can use the same diagrams. They can subcontract to the same subcontractors. But they're always a little different. In this particular case, we've got to modify the goddamned hangar deck and the elevator portal because it's three fucking millimeters too small. Or the elevator is three millimeters too big; take your pick."

"How long?"

The engineer looked at the master of the shipfitters.

"'nother week, Skipper. Maybe five day if go well."

"Fuck."

 

Runnistan, Pashtia, 16/8/468 AC

"Why were the young men using a sheep before?" Cano asked, as Rachman fitted him with padding and a helmet in preparation for his upcoming game of buzkashi. Rachman and the other players, standing nearby holding their horses, were already suited up.

"Oh, that was just practice. For serious games we use calf . . . soaked in cold water to toughen it up . . . and filled with sand."

"And the purpose of this is?" Cano asked.

"Show toughness and courage in front of soon-to-be wife," said one of the other players in Cano's team. Cano thought he was one of the two guards he'd met at the hieros, the one who'd said, "Better you than me."

"You must pay close attention, David," Rachman added, "to the young men on both sides who show real fighting heart. They're playing to impress you, after all. Well . . . that and to get rid of my sister."

Cano looked across the dusty playing field past the opposing team to where Alena sat, framed by a simple goal. She wore a long blue dress and, for the ceremony, she was veiled. Between them, in a small pit, was the corpse of the calf.

"We only play by these rules when it's part of a wedding," Rachman explained. "Otherwise, we fight to take the calf around a pole and bring it back within a circle we draw around the pit. For wedding, though, you must present calf, whatever's left of it . . . and of you . . . to new wife as trophy."

"How long do I have?" Cano asked.

Rachman shrugged, "Maybe couple days."

A couple of days? DAYS? "What if I lose?"

"Alena says you won't."

"And she has the sight, remember," added that same guard, pressing into Cano's hand a whip.

"What's this for?

"To hit people," Rachman explained patiently. "Well, you're not the type to let someone hit you without hitting back, are you, brother-in-law to be?"

 

The morning sun was rising, the horse was limping, and had he been afoot Cano would have been staggering, when the two reached the rectangular goal beyond which sat his bride.

The rest of his team, and even the other team, and especially the crowd, all cheered themselves hoarse as Cano undraped from across his saddle the remains of the calf. The sand was long gone, an entire leg was missing, and the thing was more than half in shreds. He tossed the calf, what there was of it, through the goal and dismounted.

Rachman was there to catch him and keep him from falling over. He was also there to help him walk through the goals to claim his woman. This was as well since the various whips and fists and flailing hooves of rearing horses had fairly well shut Cano's eyes. He'd never have made it to the goal without Rachman to lead his horse.

You know, Cano thought, in a while, when it really starts to hurt, I'm going to regret this. But for now, before the serious pain begins, I've got to admit, that was fun.

Alena's father walked onto the field, approached his daughter, and lifted her to her feet by her hand.

"Does anyone object that this proven man take this woman to wife?" the father shouted.

"NNNOOO!" roared the crowd.

The father led Alena to where Rachman and Cano stood. He took Cano's hand, eliciting a small yelp as the hand had been broken. Into it he placed Alena's smaller one. There was more ceremony, a feast, and a short trip to the hieros to come, but from that moment they were married.

It was a pity Cano couldn't see well enough to note the light in Alena's eyes.

She had the sight.

 

BdL Qamra, Nicobar Straits, 18/8/468 AC

It might as well have been night for the little bit the crew of the boat could see. Somewhere overhead the sun shone; they could see it there, a dim circle of something that was a little bit lighter than the smoke and ash that filled the air. Below, sonar listened attentively but fruitlessly. When the smoke was this thick, all traffic in the Straits simply stopped and dropped anchor. Then all passive sonar could hear was the sound of waves slapping the shore and the hulls of the becalmed shipping. And those sounds came from everywhere.

To Jaquie, the waves slapping the hull were not relaxing, as they might have been in a different place on a different kind of world. They were just a reminder that she and her shipmates were blind, blinder, in fact, than any bat.

So, while Marta dozed below, Jaquie walked the deck with a 9mm Pound submachine gun. Nothing was going to hurt her lover, not if she could help it. Nothing was—

What was that?

 

Liang Dao had had about enough. Did he care for the spread of Salafism? Not a chance; quite the opposite. Did he want to subordinate his people to some would-be sultan? No way. Did he want to get in, or take part in, a war with some people who had proven altogether too willing to take massive reprisals against anyone interfering with shipping?

Brother, my mother didn't give birth to any fools. I'm out of here.

So Liang Dao had done the only sensible thing when the other pirates had gotten together to attack the fleet patrolling the Nicobar Straits; he'd told his people to pack up and be ready to move at a moment's notice. They'd done it, too. They wanted no more to do with Salafism, or being on the blunt end of a reprisal, than Liang Dao did.

Not that Liang Dao or his people had any problem with piracy. They'd been pirates for millennia, and on two different planets.

But you've got to get away with it or it just doesn't pay. And those fucking round-eye bastard mercenaries won't let you get away with it. I shudder to think of what that fleet the Salafis failed to sink is going to do when it gets back.

Looking around his boat, a good-sized junk bearing nearly one hundred and fifty of Liang Dao's closest friend and relatives, he did shudder. He remembered seeing the classis—though he didn't know that was its name—pass by his coastal village months ago. The assembly had radiated menace. Had the Salafis succeeded in crushing it Liang Dao would have shed no tears. As was?

We've got to get the hell out of here. Unfortunately, we don't really have the funds to settle anyplace decent. Now if we could only pick off a small freighter or maybe some fat yacht . . . 

Hey, what's that?

 

Jaquie crouched down and jacked the bolt on her Pound SMG. Something had nudged the side of Qamra. Driftwood? Maybe. Wreckage from the classis? Possibly.

Then again, maybe not, either.

Still keeping low, and keeping her back to the wheelhouse, Jackie moved toward the bow. At the edge of the wheelhouse, she peered into the smoke and thought she saw a man, possibly two of them, neither much more distinct than shadows, climbing aboard Qamra. She thought she saw a weapon in the hands of one of the boarders. As she raised her Pound to engage she heard another sound, coming from behind. She recognized the footsteps. If she hadn't, she'd probably not have turned and seen Marta, coming along the deck.

"Hon, dammit, what the hell—?"

A shout in a language, followed by the clear sound of a bolt being thrown home, propelled Jaquie instinctively to protect the one thing she cared about more than anything else in this world or the next. Pound forgotten, Jaquie launched herself at Marta to force her to the deck.

From up at the bow, someone fired a long burst.

 

Liang Dao was always nervous on a ship hijacking. You just never knew what might be waiting. And since those mercenaries had showed up, the risks had gone through the roof. Indeed, but for dire need he'd probably have left the yacht alone. And he could see the name of the thing, painted on the bow, in English and Arabic. You could bet some oil sheik would have armed guards.

Still, the wives and kids and cousins and aunts and uncles need to eat.

With a heart heavily thumping in his chest, Liang Dao jacked the bolt of his Samsonov and eased himself over the side and onto the boat. He landed, cat-footed, on the other vessel's deck and peered into the haze.

He saw something big, certainly a lot bigger than he was. The creature said something in a woman's voice but in a language he didn't under stand. He refrained from firing, because it was a woman, despite the huge size.

And then something jumped out from what he thought was the wheelhouse. By instinct, Liang Dao pointed and fired.

 

Marta's lorica had seemed heavier than normal when she put it on to go on deck to find Jaquie.

"That stupid bitch," she said aloud and angrily when she discovered Jaquie had doubled the plates in the front and back by using her own. She stormed out of the cabin and onto the deck to find and slap some sense into her lover.

After checking the stern, fruitlessly, she began to walk briskly toward the bow. She spotted Jaquie crouched by the front of the wheelhouse and asked, "Hon, dammit, what the hell—"

She didn't get another word out before Jaquie lunged at her. Toward the bow someone fired a long burst. Marta felt one bullet impact on her doubled chest protection, and heard two more whine overhead. Three others made a different sound. Jaqui's lunge struck her but the smaller girl impacted loosely, like a bag of skin and bones. It was still enough to knock her from her feet.

Marta felt Jaquie's body lying atop her, then smelt the iron-coppery blood her love spilt onto the deck in a torrent. Screaming, she grabbed the first weapon her hand came upon, Jaquie's already cocked Pound. Still lying on her back, head toward the stern, Marta pointed the thing toward her feet and the ship's bow, and pulled the trigger. She held that trigger pull until the bolt clicked back. She held it even after two splashes indicated she'd hit all the targets there were to hit.

The ship immediately broke into pandemonium, with klaxons ringing and the sound of booted feet running on deck. Up ahead, a single mount 40mm began to arise from the deck with a whine.

With the Pound empty, and the assailants gone, Marta bent over Jaquie's limp body, unwilling to believe what had just happened. Her fingers dabbed at the blood. "Please don't be dead . . . please?" Marta begged of the corpse. "You were the only good and decent and clean thing in my life. Please be okay?" .

And then she raised her head to the sky and screamed an inarticulate shriek like a lost soul descending into Hades. A couple of crewmen or Cazadors, she neither knew nor cared which, bent to help her.

"Don't touch me!"

Leaving the body behind, Marta arose to her feet and walked up to the 40mm. By that time, two other crewmen were manning it. She tore them off and tossed them to the deck, taking the gunner's seat herself. She knew how to use the gun; she'd seen it done often enough.

A sudden gust of wind parted the smoke, revealing to Marta scores of people crowding a ramshackle junk. She didn't see them as people, however, neither the men nor the women . . . nor the children. Marta pressed a foot pedal to swing the gun around to aim at the other ship's bow. Her handles allowed her to bring the sights and barrel down.

In the wheelhouse, Chu asked, "Should we stop her?"

Rodriguez, who was one of those who had tried to lift Marta from the corpse, just shook his head, slowly.

From the junk, from the people upon it, there arose a great moan of despair as the 40mm began to fire, starting at the bow and sweeping down the length of the thing. Nor did Marta stop until the magazine ran dry.

She left no survivors.

Nicobar Straits, 34/8/468 AC

The classis proceeded in what amounted to an arrow shape: three corvettes in a V followed by one minesweeper, then the heavy cruiser, Tadeo Kurita, then by the Dos Lindas. Behind Dos Lindas came the rest, escorted by the single remaining patrol boat and Qamra.

Fosa wasn't overly worried about attacks on the support ships, not the way the classis was proceeding. He watched with a smile as a flight of Yakamovs took off, carrying a full load of Cazadors. Up ahead, Kurita's turrets, all that could be brought to bear, swiveled in their mounts to point generally to the west.

 

Yuan Lin had found a place for herself and her children. Rather, she had found a place for herself as one of Parameswara's concubines. The children were fed, clothed, and housed because the pirate chief liked his concubines happy.

Of course, happy doesn't mean I don't have to work, Lin thought, beating some dirty clothes against a rock in a stream a half mile from Parameswara's fortress. She was not alone. Thirty or more other women and girls, likewise engaged, were there with her in the clearing by the stream. But it's not so bad a life, Lin thought. Para doesn't hurt me anymore than I like to be hurt. And the kids are doing well enough. And—

She felt a sudden pressure in the air. It was like the prelude to of rain, really, except much more sudden. She looked up and saw the fortress suddenly bathed in smoke and fire. Then she heard the freight-train racket of flying shells, followed by the body- and soul- buffeting explosions from the fort.

The pounding went on for many minutes, the column of smoke rising to the sky. When it stopped, mere seconds after it stopped, she noticed small dots in the sky that she took for helicopters. They were descending.

Lin never heard the Turbo-Finch that dived down upon the group in the clearing. Before she could have, she and those with her were perforated by dozens of small finned nails called flechettes the plane had fired by rocket before the noise of its engines could reach ground.

UEPF Spirit of Peace, 34/8/468 AC

The ship was quiet, or as quiet as it ever was. There were still sounds from the vents refreshing the air. If one listened carefully, one could hear the crew going about the business of keeping the ship in space. High Admiral Martin Robinson was oblivious to all that, concentrating instead on the scene being played out below.

The big Kurosawa in Robinson's quarters showed it in all its gory detail. Starting in the southeast, and at this point about halfway through the Nicobar Straits, the "bloody, bastard, never-sufficiently- to-be-damned, mercenary swine" were doing their best to scour the Straits free of pirate life. Word was spreading faster than the fleet moved, however, so many of the little villages and towns were emptying themselves before the first shell came in or bomb dropped, before the first sound of a helicopter ferrying in troops reached them.

Even so, some of those troops were landing in the brush to either side of the straits. Robinson noted that the aerial attacks away from the coastlines, and the naval gunfire from the newly recommissioned heavy cruiser upon those refugees, tended to match where small teams of troops had been landed.

"It's not a total loss, Martin," Wallenstein comforted. "The people will be back, and back to their old occupation, in time. We can set things up again to support that useful pig, Mustafa."

Robinson said nothing, at first. Instead, he turned to manipulate his computer to have the Kurosawa zero in on the smoking ruins of Parameswara's fortress. A few hours ago there had been armed legionaries swarming the place. Now there was nothing but shot and hanged men, and women and children left with nothing but their eyes to weep with.

"I don't think so, Marguerite," Robinson said. "Not for one hundred local years. That's how badly those people are going to be terrorized."

"Well . . . the Tauran Union and the World League, down below, have issued very strongly worded condemnations," Wallenstein said. At that, even she had to laugh. "Condemnations. Like the mercenaries care about condemnations."

"They care as much as Mustafa does," Robinson said. "And why shouldn't they? They're Mustafa's children." And, I suppose, mine.

"I'm sorry, Martin," was all Wallenstein could say. "What now?"

"Now, I am afraid, I am going to have to do what perhaps I should have done years ago." Robinson hesitated before continuing; what he had in mind was a serious step. "I've contacted our people in Hangkuk. I'm going to purchase and, if necessary, deliver to Mustafa what he's been asking for all these years."

Wallenstein shook her head. "Oh, Martin, I can't tell you what a really bad idea that is."

"Would you rather see our world destroyed, Captain Wallenstein?"

The mention of her rank, and the implication of the caste that kept her there, shut Wallenstein up completely.

Excursus

From: Janus Small Arms Review, Terra Nova Edition of 472 AC

The F-26 Rifle is a gas operated, electronically fired and controlled, magazine fed shoulder weapon of 6.5mm caliber. A joint development between Zion Military Industries (812 Ben Gurion Blvd, Nazareth, Zion, Terra Nova) and Balboa Armaments Corporation (57 Avenida Omar Torrijos-Herrera, Arraijan, Balboa, Terra Nova), a subdivision of the Legion del Cid, SA, the F-26 compares favorably with such weapons as the Volgan Abakanov, the Federated States of Columbia's M-42 Wakefield, the Sachsen STG-13, Gaul's Daudeteau-31, and the Zhong Type-57, with all of which it competes in the international arms market.

Specifications:

Caliber: 6.5mm x 31 SCC (Semi-Combustible Casing)

Weight: 4.1 Kg (Zion), 4.3 Kg (Balboa) w/o magazine or bayonet

Barrel Length: 533mm

Length Overall: 795mm (Zion's bullpup version), 1022mm (Balboa's conventionally shaped version)

Action: gas operated w/ piston, rotating bolt

Materials: The rifle makes extensive use of carbon fibers, plastics and glassy metal stampings. Unique among modern military firearms, the barrel is constructed of a relatively thin steel lining around which is wound carbon fiber (the barrels being produced under license from Thorsten Arms, a subdivision of Thorsten Prosthetics). This saves about 80% of the normal barrel weight. Moreover, given the high rate of fire, cooling becomes critical. The graphite barrel is superior to steel as a heat shedding medium, though there have been complaints from the field of it being too fragile for the uses to which it is sometimes put.

Max Effective Range: 850m

Rate of Fire: 3 round Burst: 1975 RPM. Full Automatic: 2 settings: 700 RPM and 1200 RPM. The weapon also has the capability of firing single rounds. The ROF is set by a side switch above and to the right of the trigger and controlled by an integral computer chip.

Sighting: All weather, day-night, medium range thermal imaging sight with integral laser range finder. The effective range of the sighting unit for target acquisition and range determination is 900 meters, day, and 250 meters, night, though this may be reduced by extreme dust, smoke or precipitation.

Command and Control: The rifle is the key component in "Soldier V," the joint Balboa-Zion project to create a fully digitalized ground combat soldier. As such, it contains its own global positioning system receiver with compass. The soldier's frequency hopping communication system is also partially contained within the rifle stock. Leaders can, by use of a heads-up display integral to the Mark V helmet, not only determine the relative locations of each of their soldiers or subordinate teams, but can also see graphic displays of their arcs of fire. This feature has substantially reduced both blue on blue fire and training accidents (except when the "moral training" magazine, q.v., is used).

 

International Sales:

Although acknowledged to be a superior battle implement, the F- 26 and its cousins do only marginally well in international sales. This is for two reasons. The first is that the rifle is extremely expensive, at least twice the price of its next nearest competitor. The other is that both the Legion del Cid and Zion absolutely refuse to sell the rifle to Salafi and certain other states at any price, though the legion does issue it to its Islamic mercenary battalions, the Pashtun Scouts.

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