(Light ye shall have on that lesson, but little time to learn.)—Kipling, "The Islanders"
Carrera stood in the fierce, bitterly cold winds of the Pashtian highlands. Despite the heavy wools, silks, polypropylene, and windproof outer shell, he shivered as the wind whistled through the pass and around the rocks. The wind seemed to be saying, "Avenge us."
"I'm trying; God knows I'm trying," he whispered back.
Down below, on the plains around Mazari Omar, his men were still busily rooting out the insurgency. It was probably a fruitless task. No matter what damage to the guerillas he did, the Taurans were taking back over even as he cleared areas out. They were good soldiers, many of them; he'd particularly been impressed with the Tuscan Ligurini under Generale Marciano. (Under cover of the legion's combat operations, and in the absence of a treacherous press to report what he was doing, Marciano had pushed his own forces out to actively engage the guerillas. What would happen after the Legion del Cid left, Marciano didn't know.)
Ordinarily, using the kind of rules of engagement the Taurans had, it might take as much as fifteen years to destroy an insurgency, if, indeed, it could be destroyed at all. The Federated States' methods, having some of the stick to go along with the carrot, could do the job more quickly, if, again, it could be done at all. Carrera's methods used much less of the carrot, much more of the stick. It remained to be seen whether that would work any better. The Pashtian insurgency— ha! insurgency was practically a way of life for them!—had always been almost singularly tenacious.
It doesn't matter, Carrera thought. I am not here, ultimately, to quell an insurgency, though I and my boys will give it our workmanlike best. Ultimately, I am here for the money that brings me closer to revenge and the revenge itself.
"It's a cold dish," whispered the wind.
That's all right. I've never minded cold food. But . . .
"But what?" asked the frozen breeze.
"But I miss Lourdes, and I miss the children. And I think maybe I need a break."
That was particularly telling. Only this morning he'd chewed out his chief logistician over something that, in retrospect, was just not that important. The week prior the goddamned nightmares had come back with a vengeance. His drinking was up again; it had to be or he'd never get any sleep. Yet alcohol-induced sleep was not very restful. And then he'd seen off a couple of dozen of his killed and wounded at the airport at Mazari Omar and found himself starting to cry.
Bad sign, very bad sign. But what the hell can I do?
If ever a man looked downcast, and in need of rest, it was Noorzad. Oh, he'd made it out, along with a critical dozen of his key followers. The rest? Bombed, burnt, butchered. Even after escaping from the mines dropped by air, he'd found a new group of fast horse cavalry on his tail, relentlessly tracking him over the mountains. He'd had to sacrifice the last of his newer people to those cavalry to buy time for the rest to escape.
His one weary eye, the white patches on his skin that told of frostbite, and the general air of sheer exhaustion he exuded; all said he needed a break.
There was one good thing, one tiny bright spot, amidst the disaster. Coordination between the lesser, mercenary infidels and the greater infidels in the north of Pashtia had been poor. Noorzad had half expected to be met by yet another ambush as he and the pitiful remnants of his band emerged from the snows of the central mountain range. Instead, there'd been nothing except some sympathetic tribesmen who'd provided camouflage for the guerillas on their way to the nearest city.
Once there, things had improved considerably. Noorzad had acquired a new satellite phone and reported in to Mustafa, seeking guidance and orders. Those had been simple, both to receive and to follow.
"Come home."
Now he was "home." However exhausted Noorzad might have been, he still could hardly wait to rebuild his force and return.
"That will be a while," Mustafa advised as he poured tea for the both of them with his own hand. "Our . . . infrastructure was not well rooted in the south of Pashtia. Our defenses were weak. And this enemy is not as weak as the Taurans. Worse, though he doesn't have the firepower of the greater enemy, he makes up for that with a ruthlessness to match our own."
"The men I left behind?" Noorzad queried.
"It was not your fault," Mustafa cut him off, insisting, "You had no other choice. To stand and fight would have meant being slaughtered. But . . ."
The lesser chief raised one eyebrow. "But?"
"As near as we can tell, they've cleaned out your band completely. And no, we cannot take hostages to trade because these infidels not only won't trade—that much we learned when they were in Sumer— they've already shot or hanged all their prisoners . . . unless they've spared a few for questioning."
A look of mental agony flashed briefly across Noorzad's face. If he had known, he would have stood and fought rather than run. Not that he'd cared about most of his men, especially the spoiled Yithrabis. But he'd left friends behind.
Mustafa read the look well. "No," he said. "That is, I think, part of their method. They shoot their prisoners precisely to make us want to stand and fight. They may someday sell our women and children as slaves to the same purpose."
"What now?" Noorzad asked, willing away his feelings of personal failure.
"Now the winter is upon us. The passes are mostly closed. South of the mountains the infidel is continuing to clear out our people and the filthy, decadent Taurans are setting up shop again. In the spring, the mercenaries will surge over the mountains to reinforce the Federated States and Anglia. We cannot stop them, though we can bleed them."
"Cut their supply?"
"No . . . I think not," Mustafa answered. "The Federated States troops require more in supply per man, even for light infantry, than the Volgans did for their armored troops. They must have their comforts, at least when in base. The lesser infidels seem to require much less. They live . . . rough." There was a tone almost of admiration in Mustafa's voice. "I don't think we can appreciably interdict their supply lines."
Noorzad sighed sadly. "Then . . . my men go unavenged?"
"No," Mustafa smiled. "No; we have a plan and a means to hurt these infidels in return."
Xamar Coast, Motor Yacht The Big ?, 4/1/468 AC
The Legion del Cid tended to take a somewhat legalistic approach to counterinsurgency and piracy suppression. They could have simply started at one end of the Xamar coast and worked their way to the other, killing everything that lived and making the entire coast uninhabitable. But, much as they never sent someone for serious torture until a duly constituted court had pronounced sentence of death, so they would not destroy a village unless it could be directly linked to the support of piracy.
They had such a village now. Early this morning The Big ?, "?" for question, thus camoflaging the boat under the usual idiotic practice for naming yachts, while keeping the Q-ship inside joke, had passed close to some fishing boats to allow the crews to get a look at the awesome mammary display on the forward deck. Then the yacht had sailed directly southward, paralleling the coast and heading generally towards a village suspected of being a pirate haven. Overhead, silently, a small remotely piloted vehicle with a high resolution camera had caught good quality facial shots of the villagers as they'd cheered their own boat out to intercept the infidel yacht. Was this entrapment? Who cared? It wasn't as if the village wasn't predisposed to piracy. It wasn't as if they hadn't had a boat ready.
The Suzy Q had been little more than a field modification. The Big ? was almost purpose built from the keel up by a Sachsen shipbuilder with some long tradition of building clandestine surface raiders. She mounted hidden side-firing machine guns, as had her predecessor, three per side. However, the firing ports on The Big ? were centrally controlled, as were the guns themselves, from an armored fire control station just under the cockpit.
That fire control station also had command over the two main guns. Forward, there was, as with Suzy Q, a rising gun, hydraulically driven. There was also a stern gun mounted to fire through a port that opened under central control. Both were 40mm high-velocity pieces, firing from fifty-five round magazines. All the positions, along with the hull itself, were now fairly heavily armored.
More thought had been given to tactics now, too, given the sad end of Suzy Q. The side guns and the forward gun were not to be the primary engagement stations any longer. Instead, when under threat the boat would turn away from any attacker, allowing its rear 40mm to begin the engagement. That station, the entire stern, in fact, was extremely well armored. Indeed, under the smooth-appearing white hull was not only a three-centimeter belt of steel, outside of that steel a complicated matrix of boron carbide resin, ceramic, polyurethane, and tungsten proofed the hull against the largest weapons the pirates had shown so far, the shoulder-fired rocket grenade launcher.
Because of the weight of the stern armor belt, the engines had had to be placed somewhat forward of center. This gave the boat some peculiar handling characteristics, notably a comparatively tight turn radius and a comparatively quick recovery from a tight turn. The engines themselves, twin diesels with an aggregate horsepower of over eight thousand, were capable of pushing the boat at almost the speed of the Santissima Trinidad.
Moreover, except for an excess of fold-down bunks in the crew spaces, it looked like a yacht even to a suspicious boarding customs agent. Even the guns were not obvious from inside the yacht, being hidden behind what looked like storage spaces and under fixed bunks.
Though they were crew, as corporals Marta and Jaquelina had a stateroom of their own. Since Marta was a screamer this was less of an advantage than it might have been. In fact, the two slept together but approximately chaste. "Approximately" because while Marta was a screamer, Jaquie was not and Marta was a very giving girl.
"Kinda silly, isn't it?" Chu asked Rodriguez.
"Huh?"
"C'mon, Rod, you only have to look at them to see they're in love. Everybody knows it and looks the other way."
"Oh . . ." Centurion Rodriguez sighed. "I told them to cool it before they ever signed on as regulars. I'm a little surprised they took my advice, really."
"Yeah."
Chu's eyes scanned the instruments. "Classis was right. We've got company coming."
Rodriguez nodded. "I'll go have the girls put on their act and get my boys standing by."
As the Cazador left the cockpit, Chu picked up the microphone for the encrypted radio. "Dos Lindas, this is The Big ? We have company coming and we are preparing to engage."
Combat Information Center, BdL Dos Lindas, 5/1/468 AC
Fosa saw that there was a new kill recorded for The Big ? on the operations board down in CIC. Below the Ops board, a chart showed the intercept course between the Dos Lindas and a helicopter chartered by Hartog Shipping, based in Haarlem.
Haarlem still did quite a bit of shipping around the globe. As such, her merchant fleet had suffered more than most from the pirates' depredations both along the Xamar Coast and through the Nicobar Straits. It wasn't really surprising then, that a mid-sized Haarlem company, Hartog, had contacted Nagy and asked about hiring protection from the Legion del Cid. Nagy had entered negotiations, in consultation with both Fosa and the Yamatan representative, Kurita, and hammered out a workable, and sufficiently profitable, deal.
As part of that deal, the Haarlemers had insisted on face-to-face contact with the commander of the flotilla. There had seemed no principled reason to refuse.
The Haarlem registry helicopter had come in with the morning sun. Undaunted by the machine guns ostentatiously trained on it, it had flown twice around the Dos Lindas before settling down to a marked spot on the rear deck. There it was met by a small party of escorts and brought down to CIC to meet the skipper.
Fosa shook hands; Kurita bowed slightly. The Haarlemers introduced themselves as Ms. Klasina Frank and her administrative assistant, Christian Verdonk. Frank seemed extremely pale and rather plump, quite in contrast to the very deeply tanned and athletic-looking Verdonk.
Both Haarlemers' faces were guardedly friendly as Fosa led them through a tour of the ship. He took them through the five decks of the ship's tower, then down to the deck encircling the hangar and finally down to the hangar deck itself where he'd assembled one company of Cazadors and a roughly equal number of ship and air crew. Frank and Verdonk walked the line, following Fosa. He didn't lead them down each rank.
Later, over a cordial but not overly friendly lunch in Fosa's quarters, which meal the visitors barely touched, the skipper explained, "We cannot guarantee you protection. You understand this? The most we can do is try, within reason, to conform our deployments to the passage of your company's ships, to come as quickly as possible, if we are in practical range, if one of your ships is attacked, and to station small parties of Cazadors on some of your ships as they make the passage. In theory, we are capable of conducting rescue operations, but as a practical matter, we've never really been able to rescue any crew once they were taken to shore. I doubt we ever shall be able to."
"Hartog Shipping understands this," Ms. Frank said, looking up from her uneaten rehydrated pork chops. Shrugging, she added, "We are not paying so much that we could ask for more. As long as you will be willing to go to the aid of ships as you are able, or let one shelter under your wings at need, this is enough."
Ownership of Hartog Shipping was an interesting subject. Indeed, it was so interesting that a not inconsiderable portion of the both Federated States intelligence and investigative assets, with a healthy assist from Yamatan Imperial Intelligence, had gone into trying to determine just who owned the company, and others like it. Between ships owned but leased elsewhere, and some of those passing through four or five or, in one case, even nine nominal leasers before being leased back, plus shadow corporations, secret stock ownership, and front organizations, it had never proven possible to determine ownership of the company to any degree of certainty. This was actually normal.
Mustafa didn't have that problem. He knew who owned Hartog. For all practical purposes, he did. At least he had a controlling interest.
For the most part, he exercised no control. Rather, he left it to the company management to keep the affair solvent. He had, however, intervened to the extent of having two of the company's lesser assets filled with thoroughly reliable, even fanatical, Salafi skippers and crew. He had also intervened to obtain the company's sailing schedule, then passed that on to Abdulahi in Xamar so that the latter could attack a few Hartog vessels. This was a necessary cover for what was to follow.
The chosen ship, the Hendrik Hoogaboom, was an older, dry-bulk cargo carrier of roughly sixty-eight hundred tons capacity. Measuring one hundred and two meters in length at the waterline, and just under eighteen in beam, she was of a perfect size for her chosen task. Indeed, she was not really very well suited anymore for her designed task, being more or less uneconomical to run. Neither Mustafa nor Hartog Shipping would much miss the Hoogaboom once she'd completed her mission.
On the bridge, standing besides the ship's captain and future martyr to the cause, Abdul Aziz sighed with satisfaction. The Hoogaboom's rebuilt engines barely strained as the much modified ship left the tugs that had guided it out into the dredged channel that led to the sea.
"Three more stops," The captain said. "And then one more on the way to Paradise."
"I'll be leaving with the next stop, Captain," said Abdul Aziz. "I must report back to Mustafa."
Three men, Mustafa, Nur al Deen, and Abdul Aziz, walked the trails within the fortress. There came from the north the steady crackle of small arms fire as the mujahadin practiced marksmanship. For the most part the practice was a wasted effort. Yet it had one great virtue. In any group there are always exceptions. The marksmanship training program, useless as it was to train any appreciable number of decent shots, was still absolutely critical to identifying the rare naturally superb shot for further, more useful, training. Federated States Army, Taurans, and even the legion had had occasional cause to curse those rare genuine marksmen the Salafis now fielded.
Along with the rifle and machine gun fire, the din was frequently punctuated with much larger blasts as others among the holy warriors were trained in the intricacies of combat demolitions, booby traps, and other improvised explosive devices.
Mortars, too, could be heard as their crews practiced this simplest of the artillery arts. These, though, fired from outside the perimeter of the fortress and directed their fires even farther away. It might have been more effective to fire from inside at targets outside. In the past, as a matter of fact, they had. Quality control at the factory, however, was never all that great and there had been a number of unfortunate accidents. Mortar firing was all done outside the perimeter, now.
After the cacophony of the ship fitting in Hajipur, Abdul Aziz barely noticed the blasts of mortars and demolitions. Mustafa and Nur al Deen were fairly used to them. None of the men so much as twitched, even at the largest of the explosions.
Abdul Aziz explained, "The greatest weakness to the plan, Sheik, is hitting the target's motive power before it notices the threat from the Hoogaboom. The enemy carrier is more than twice the speed of our ship, and based on the tour given to our two undercover reverts, extraordinarily maneuverable."
"I do not see," Nur al Deen huffed, "why we need to make this extraordinary expenditure to destroy a single ship. A single cigarette boat with a ton of explosives should be enough."
Mustafa laid a hand on Nur's shoulder. "It would not be, my friend. We have reason to believe that such a boat would be most unlikely to get anywhere near the carrier unless covered by something like the Hoogaboom. Even if it did, the great infidel in space, High Admiral of Pigs Robinson, assures me that the carrier is sufficiently well built and compartmentalized that it would take as many as three such hits to put it down. There is no chance, none, that we could get three cigarette boats close enough."
"And," added Abdul Aziz, "With two thousand tons of a mix of ammonium nitrate, hydrazine, and aluminum powder, the Hoogaboom need not get all that close to destroy the ship, two hundred meters or so."
"I still think it's a waste," insisted Nur al Deen.
Mustafa stopped walking and turned. "My friend, one thing I have learned since we began this. Defense does not win. We must attack, and attack, and attack again."
"Abdulahi is not enthused about the prospect of martyrdom for more of his men," Nur al Deen said.
"This is true," Mustafa agreed. "But then he, too, must learn that he must attack and hold nothing back. He should study Parameswara."
"Parameswara isn't being asked for one hundred and fifty suicide bombers," Nur al Deen answered.
BdL Dos Lindas, 19/1/468 AC
"Security and economy of force are principles of war, Captain- san," Kurita intoned. "Defense is not."
Fosa paced the rounds of his bridge nervously. Indeed, he grew more nervous the closer the Dos Lindas approached to shore and the possibility of land-based cruise missiles, torpedoes, or suicide boats. The FSN had been clear that an attack on the fleet was being prepared. Sadly, they could not provide the first clue as to its nature.
"I know that, Commodore. And I know we have to do this. Hell, it was my idea. But I still hate the idea of getting closer to a threat I don't know the nature of."
Resuming his pacing, Fosa took all of three steps before he stopped and turned. Facing the Yamatan over one shoulder he observed, "You're taking this all very calmly."
"I was captain, Battlecruiser
Oishi," was Kurita's only, and completely sufficient, response.
Fosa grunted while Kurita turned his attention back to the contemplation of the eternal beauty of the sea at moments before action.
It was several hours before sunrise. Only one of Terra Nova's three moons shone. In the relative darkness, the sea twinkled with thousands of stars. Kurita amused himself with the notion that the stars were his old shipmates, come to watch him in action before he joined them at the Yasukuni shrine that had been dismantled and sent spaceward from Old Earth so many centuries ago.
Above the winking sea, the Dos Lindas cruised under half power toward the shore. The carrier was blacked out, with not even deck lights showing. Crewmen, who would normally be allowed to smoke on portions of the flight deck, were instead confined to air- and light- tight compartments before they could indulge their vile habit.
On deck every functioning Yakamov helicopter sat with engines idling. Forward of them were a baker's dozen of Cricket Bs, the upengined and expanded variant of the legion's standard recon aircraft. Between the Crickets and the choppers sat four Turbo-Finches with light ordnance loads of about one ton each. None of the aerial troop carriers had more than their crews aboard.
The Cazadors were going in under strength. One half of one of the eight line platoons was detached to The Big ?, though they'd be nearby at sea and could land by rubber boat if needed. Another two platoons were split up among various Yamatan and Haarlemer freighters. Still, with the headquarters and support troops that were going to land, there were just over two hundred Cazadors in the landing force. These waited below, in the hangar deck, playing cards, sleeping, or sneaking off for a quick cigarette as the mood took them.
UEPF Spirit of Peace, 19/1/468 AC
"Computer?"
"Yes, High Admiral?"
"Put me through to Abdulahi in Xamar."
The call went through almost instantaneously; Abdulahi had learned since he'd lost three ships to the infidels' ambushes not to let the high admiral's warnings pass.
"Yes, Admiral Robinson?"
"Your enemies are moving inshore, between the villages of Sanaag and Gedo. I can't tell which of them is the target. Possibly both are."
"The villages? What reason could they have for going after villagers?"
Unseen below, Robinson rolled his eyes. Were these people incapable of understanding the nature of the war they were in or the nature of their enemies, the nature they themselves brought forth?
Forcing disdain from his voice, Robinson answered, simply, "Terror."
That Abdulahi understood. "I'll have a column on the road within the hour, High Admiral. Thank you."
"I don't know that it will do you any good."
"Perhaps not, High Admiral, but I have to try."
Again, Robinson rolled his eyes. "You can reasonably expect them to cover the roads by air, Abdulahi."
"We have some antiaircraft weapons mounted on some of our vehicles."
"I doubt that light ones will be enough."
BdL Dos Lindas, 19/1/468 AC
The Cricket Bs, being the slowest, were the first aircraft to take off. With the carrier's nose into the wind, even fully laden with five Cazadors and a pilot, it was a strain to keep the things from taking off on their own. With Fosa's command, "Land the landing force," the deck crew removed chock blocks, the pilots gunned engines, and— fwoosh—the things were gone into the night in a couple of eyeblinks.
The Finches were next to depart. These had superb short take off capabilities, but nothing like the miraculous abilities of the Crickets. They needed every inch of the flight deck they had to get airborne.
Rafael Montoya was lead bird for the Finches, this mission. As usual, he nearly wet himself as his plane reached the end of the flight deck and began to fall to the sea. As usual—now, at least—he maintained control of his bladder as he fought his plane back into the air.
"I have got to find another line of work," he muttered, once he was sure he was not going into the drink to be ground to pulp underneath his own ship.
Once clear of the ship, Montoya veered left and began a long spiraling climb to five thousand feet. There he loitered until the last of the Finches was airborne. Then, together, the group turned east. If everything worked out, they'd be past the coast and able to turn to make their initial attacks with the sun behind them.
The Yakamovs, with eighteen Cazadors loaded—actually, slightly overloaded—each, took off almost vertically even as the elevators began bringing up the last of the Crickets and Finches for the other part of the mission. Once airborne, the Yakamovs dropped down to skim-the-waves level. One never really knew what the wogs might have bought, in terms of warning radar and air defenses, from somebody or other.
"They're bringing more aircraft up on deck," Wallenstein said, as she and the High Admiral watched the carrier's ops in high resolution real time. "That's . . . odd. We know they can launch everything more or less at once if they really want to. We've seen them do it."
Robinson worried a tooth with his tongue. There was absolutely no chance of a cavity in any of his teeth, of course; it was a nervous affectation.
"Maybe tougher to get everything on deck and launch it at night?" he mused. "I don't know. It is, as you say, 'odd,' Marguerite."
The couple went silent then and stayed silent, watching the launch of the last of the mercenaries' aircraft on the high admiral's big Kurosawa. Bored after a bit, Robinson directed Wallenstein to come over. He snapped his fingers lightly and pointed at the deck, indicating she should kneel down between his legs. She did, of course; sexual service from their inferiors was a given right of the higher castes. Wallenstein hardly objected; she still desperately wanted Robinson's support for a jump in caste. Refusing him, or even performing at less than her very best, would jeopardize that. She sucked expertly but only automatically. Her mind was still working on other things.
Suddenly, Wallenstein pulled her head off. Her face took on a horrified look. "High Admiral," she said, "I just had the most appalling thought. We've been assuming all along that the mercenaries are unaware, and the Federated States only dimly aware, that we might be helping the other side. What if they know? What if they're counting on it? What if they were counting on us warning Abdulahi?"
Combat Information Center, BdL Dos Lindas,
19/1/468 AC
Fosa and Kurita watched the large plasma screen—this one, too, was a Kurosawa—intently. The screen showed numerous markers. Central was the carrier itself, shown as a green triangle. Nearby were two smaller markers, green squares, for the Santissima Trinidad and the San Agustin. Ordinarily, there would have been corvettes in place. Indeed, not long before they'd been there on station around the carrier. Now, however, they were needed elsewhere. The plasma screen showed them—another two green squares—racing at thirty-seven knots to a point that would place them within range of a long arc of the main coastal road. They were due to arrive within fourteen minutes; so said the display. Wide circles around the corvettes' markers indicated maximum range for their guns.
A last important green square, The Big ?, likewise chugged toward the coast. It moved much more slowly, however, at some twenty-four knots. That didn't matter; it wasn't expected to be needed until later in the day.
Above the town of Gedo a blue circle was superimposed, Montoya's Finches circling like vultures. Another blue marker, this one in a V, showed the remainder of the carrier's Finches heading in. Further lines from both markers went generally north, intersecting the coastal road. Numbers above the lines indicated the time required for each group to reach a point on the coastal road from their present position. The lines shifted as they were moved by the crew of CIC. The times shifted as well.
Another blue V indicated the flight of Crickets and Yakamovs. This group, too, had a line that ran to the coastal highway. Like the Finches, the line and the times shifted and changed.
From the town and running up the highway was a series of eyes, outlined in black. These were the RPVs, watching the highway. Beneath the eyes, shown in red, was a long dotted column. This was the enemy, the enemy they'd expected to come from the capital of Xamar once the pirates were apprised of the fleet's movements. It was to the center of mass of this that the lines pointed. It was time of flight to this that the numbers indicated. It was this that the corvettes' markers sought to capture within the wide circles that showed maximum range for their guns.
Although the other chart showed times of flight, ease of management required that a different screen show in one convenient place the times for interception from each force to the enemy column. For the aircraft, those times were based on what was possible within their minimum and maximum speed, along with the speed required to intercept simultaneously, with the speed of the truck convoy from the capital factored in. When all subunits on the chart showed a time between nine and eleven minutes, Fosa took the radio microphone and announced, "Black this is Black Six. Roland. I repeat, Roland." Fosa then turned the mike over to his operations officer who quickly and efficiently relayed the speeds and course the various elements were to assume. The entire thing could conceivably have been digitalized, but this just wasn't that kind of force. Besides, voice worked well enough.
Every marker on the plasma almost immediately changed course to intercept the column at precisely the point it was expected to be in ten minutes.
Montoya keyed his mike and announced, "In ten . . . heading: 262 . . . speed: 137 . . . on one from five . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one." He then adjusted his throttle and eased his stick over to head toward the convoy. A glance to either side with his night vision goggles told him the others were following in a V behind.
A toss of the head backwards and the goggles flipped up, clearing his vision so that he could see his instruments. Everything appeared nominal, so he threw his head forward to bring the goggles back over his eyes. Then, followed by his wingmen, he dove for the dirt. He intended to come in low out of the rising sun.
"Fucking wogs are never going to know what hit 'em."
Abdulahi might have been willing to send lesser sons to sea, even to sacrifice a few here and there for the greater good of his line. For the core of his power base, the mobile column of over a thousand well armed and—by local standards—well trained cousins and nephews and family retainers, nothing and no one would do to lead except his number one son, and presumptive heir, also called Abdulahi.
Abdulahi the junior stood in the back of the second truck in the column, scanning ahead. Darker than three feet up a well digger's ass at midnight, Junior cursed. Even the one moon that had been showing had gone down. The sun was not yet up. The stars gave little light, even where they reflected off the sea beside the road. Only the headlights of the trucks provided illumination, and that only ahead and only when they actually worked. Many drove on one light, or even none.
Worse, perhaps, than the darkness was the noise. The trucks would have made a cacophony even had they been well maintained. They were not, however, well maintained. Added to the roar and backfiring of out-of-tune engines were the squeals of badly maintained brakes, the squeaks of abused shock absorbers, the whistles of leaking air tanks. In all, beyond the noise of the column Junior couldn't hear a blessed thing.
That didn't matter, as it turned out, as Montoya's flight was already lining up and the shells were already leaving the corvettes' guns by the time Robinson had alerted Abdulahi the senior to the threat.
The 76.2mm shell was no great shakes. Even coming it at a relatively high angle, its burst radius—more of an oval, actually—was no more than about fifteen by twenty-five meters. Moreover, because it was high velocity, the shells had to be of fairly high quality steel to withstand the stresses of firing. High quality steel produced many times fewer fragments than did simple, cheap iron.
On the other hand, the guns firing from the corvettes were capable of tossing out eighty shells each in forty seconds and, moreover, doing so with considerable accuracy. By the time the computer-controlled guns had emptied their magazines, a sixteen-hundred meter section of Xamar's coastal highway had been deluged with fire and flying chunks of glowing hot steel casing.
Combat Information Center, BdL Dos Lindas,
19/1/468 AC
"YeeHAW!" Kurita exulted, when the image from the nearest RPV showed the road begin to erupt. Immediately, everyone stopped what they were doing and simply stared at the normally ultradignified and reserved Yamatan.
"I've always liked Columbian films," the commodore said, stiffly, by way of explanation. It didn't really explain much.
Fosa suppressed a smile, then picked up the microphone. "Good shooting, corvettes," he said. "Reload and stand by to support the Cazadors."
"Already reloading, Legate," the first corvette answered. "Half full now," responded the second.
"Roger . . . break. Bluejay One: Finches, you may make your run."
Montoya's voice came from the speaker. "Wilco, Skipper." The other flight leader answered, "On station in three, Skipper."
Unbidden, the leader of the Cazadors—still aboard the Crickets and Yakamovs—broke in. "Leave some for us, ya greedy bastards."
Montoya had slowed slightly, to allow the other three birds in his flight to line up on him. Now, with the first rays of sun creeping over the horizon, the four Finches divided up their prey, then separated laterally themselves.
For himself Montoya picked a half dozen trucks, one of them already burning. As his thumb flicked off the red safety on his yoke, he sang out, "Hojotoho! Hojotoho! Heiaha! Heiaha! Hey, where the hell's a PSYOP chopper to play "Ride of the Valkyries" when you really need one?"
Veering left, Montoya's thumb pushed the firing button. Fifty- seven-millimeter rockets lanced out at a rate of six per second, preset. The rockets were almost evenly divided into high explosive, incendiary—the classic shake and bake—and flechette. Still veering, Montoya switched to his second pod by twisting a dial with his free hand. Once again he thumbed the firing button. Downrange, Hell was materializing.
Junior couldn't believe his eyes. One minute he'd been riding forward in pre-triumph mode to punish the wicked infidel and earn the gratitude of his father and glory among his people. The next, his column was half turned into twisted wreckage, and the roar of engines was replaced with the screams of the dying. With the next, the darkness was illuminated by the combination of just-rising sun and just- spouting flame.
There was an explosion off to Junior's left. Seconds later virtually the entire complement of the rear of the truck in front of him fell down with a god-awful collective moan. The moan was soon replaced by the sound of a dozen men, weeping like brokenhearted girls, as their organs failed from flechette wounds and their life's blood gushed out to fill the bed of the truck and run out the back in a small wave.
Junior watched the blood well from the truck in stunned horror, oblivious even to the other explosions and bursts of some smoking stuff that billowed around him. Some of the smoking shit must have touched upon the contents of a ruptured fuel tank. The truck ahead suddenly burst into flame. The weeping changed to screaming.
It wasn't until one of the attacking aircraft passed by overhead and to the front that Junior awoke from his shock. It was the pilot passing by that did it, so close that Junior could see the whites of his eyes and the gleaming smile as he looked down to survey the damage.
In that moment Junior hated that pilot in a way he had never hated anyone before; fully, completely, with all his heart and soul. From that hate came the spur to action.
Bluejay Two came in from south of the column, three Finches in trail formation. The last two were separated by about three hundred meters each from the one ahead. The lead Finch's pilot selected the last third of the column to receive his attentions. Seeing what appeared to be two otherwise undamaged trucks unloading a couple score infantry, the pilot donated to them one of his rocket pods. He was rewarded with the blossoming of white phosphorus flowers and fertilizing of the ground with a mass of men tossed down and about by flechettes and high explosive. Another truck burst into flame.
The pilot pulled back on his stick, easing his dive and pulling up parallel to the ground and about fifty meters above it. Ordinarily, he'd have used his machine gun pods now. The execution paragraph of the order called for "maximum frightful and terror, initially," however. Since terror and napalm were virtually synonymous . . .
Junior's attempts to bring some order out of the chaos ended when he saw two tumbling cylinders coasting through the air. The sudden burst of bright orange flame at the tail of his column was enough. Hate was not forgotten, exactly. It was just that everything was forgotten as Junior began to run away from the ruined column as fast as his legs would carry him. It was a good thing he did, too, as more orange- colored hell burst first around the middle of the column and next along the front.
Even while running he turned and saw the long flaming tongue lick along the column, engulfing men, turning them into writhing, shrieking human torches. The tongue seemed to cover the entire horizon. This was an optical illusion, induced by stark terror. In length, the tongue of fire was actually no more than two hundred meters.
Like their chief, the violence and sheer frightfulness of the naval artillery and aerial assault proved simply too much for the mass of the men. In their hundreds—hundreds still because, for all its frightfulness, aerial attack is rarely completely effective—they streamed to either side of the column, abandoning weapons, leaving comrades and relatives behind.
Once safely away from the epicenter of the infidel attack, Junior was able to throw himself to the ground and take stock of the situation. Around him streamed hundreds of his followers, leaderless and half bereft of weapons. To the west he could hear the slapping of waves against the rocks of the shore. To the east bursts of machine gun fire told him that the enemy were herding the rest of his people toward the water.
"Do they mean to murder us all?" he wondered aloud. Then he heard the whop-whop-whop of incoming helicopters and the high pitched whine of turbines.
"Move it. Move it, you bastards," screamed the senior centurion, First Centurion Saldañas, of the fleet's Cazador detachment. Saldañas had a brother who was a squid, but that brother, Tribune I Saldañas, was currently back in Balboa.
As a practical matter, nobody could hear the centurion over the noise of the Yakamovs and Crickets. He was convinced, however, that the sheer vibrations of his voice were enough to add half a mile an hour to any group of infantry that ever lived. Most of the troops would have agreed with that assessment.
Two platoons of Cazadors, plus the maniple headquarters, had come in on a dozen Cricket Bs. The remainder, three platoons, the company headquarters, medics, mortars, and the demi-cohort headquarters landed via helicopter. The Crickets had all landed on a short stretch of road to the north of the column. The Yakamovs had touched down in a line parallel to the column and opposite it from the sea. Once the troops had debarked, the Yakamovs again lifted off and began to sweep to the east, away from the column.
It was often held, as a matter of the customary laws of war, that there was an absolute right to surrender and to have that surrender respected. This was sheer ignorance, however. In practice, there was no such right, for in practice there were always circumstances in which prisoners could not be taken. Let a heavy bomber circle an artillery battery with nothing but white flags showing. The bomber's choices were limited to bombing anyway, or not bombing and leaving the battery to resume operation of its guns as soon as the bomber departed. This was not a choice at all. Bombs away!
Let a descending parachutist drop his rifle and take out a white flag which he then waved vigorously. If he was descending to an area where he could be taken captive, all well and good. But what if the wind, a factor out of his control, carried him toward his own lines where he could not be made prisoner and where he would be rearmed? Kill 'em quick, before they get away!
Similarly, when terrified men attempted to surrender to circling aircraft . . .
Door gunners to either side searched out and shot down whatever Xamaris they found in the grass. Some of those Xamaris tried to surrender, of course, but aircraft don't typically take prisoners. These didn't either; given the enemy's treatment so far through the war of any aircrew that came into their hands there was no surprise in this . . . except perhaps to those Xamaris who thought it worth trying.
The infantry, on the other hand, typically could take prisoners. Spreading out in a long, uneven line, they swept toward the sea. Any Xamaris about whom there was any question of intent were shot down on the spot, or double tapped as the need arose. The rest were herded toward the ocean. For those who begged for their lives, and who appeared to have no weapons, the Cazadors extended fingers and bayonets seaward, instructing them that there their surrender would be accepted.
All the Xamaris clustered by the ocean shore, to include Junior, were certain they were going to be shot. They felt immense relief when they saw the Cazadors culling out groups of twelve or fifteen and taping their hands behind them but not shooting them.
In the end, three hundred and forty-nine prisoners were taken. Disarmed and searched, in some cases, strip searched, these were held under guard of a single platoon at the beach while the two corvettes and The Big ? came close inshore to receive prisoners. The rest of the Cazadors reboarded helicopters about noontime. They then went to teach the village of Gedo a very sharp lesson on the subject of supporting or encouraging piracy.
The village had not been close enough for the people to hear the gunfire and the explosions coming from the ambush of the column. Thus, it came as a complete surprise to them when suddenly a half dozen aircraft swooped in to rocket their small fishing fleet into so many disassociated splinters. Even as the Finches were destroying the place's livelihood, helicopters landed on the three landward sides and began disgorging heavily armed and armored men. Most of the men were dark, if not so dark as the villagers of Gedo. Mixed in among them were some light enough to have been Taurans, and others, very black and usually as tall and slender at the villagers themselves.
The villagers didn't even consider resistance. Most of the young men and most of the town's arms had disappeared at sea recently— no one knew why—and so there were few even to offer resistance. Loudspeakers directed them to move to the seashore and this they did.
Saldañas directed his men to separate out the women and children from the men. While this was going on, three Cricket Bs landed nearby on a short strip marked out on the sand. One of these disgorged some audio-visual equipment and what appeared to be a laptop computer, along with a couple of operators. From the other two emerged six men in naval dress uniform, six folding metal chairs, six small field tables and one gavel.
At the Cazadors' gestured directions, the men of Gedo, such as remained, stood up and faced a camera held by one of the men from the first Cricket. This was connected to the laptop held by another. The camera swept along the row of faces. All the prisoners were then faced left for another sweep of the camera, and right for a final set of shots. The Cazadors then ordered them, still with hand gestures, to sit while keeping the same positions. Sitting down on the sand, with hands bound, was no mean achievement. Several fell over and had to be righted by the Cazadors.
The laptop operator pressed a button. The laptop whirred as it analyzed the faces just fed into it with the images recorded previously, as the village had cheered its young men to sea. Circles began to appear around faces as the computer matched distances between eyes and noses, lengths of noses, distance from nose to the corners of mouths, and each of about fifty different features that combine to make each face unique. When it had finished, and the words, "análisis completo," appeared on screen, the laptop operators went down the line of men, separating out those who had not appeared previously, cheering on the pirates.
The rest were marched, one by one, before the four-member court. The defense, for one of the six naval officers landed by the second and third Crickets was indeed the counsel for the defense, had a very tough time of it. No one spoke the local language and Arabic, a form of which was widely understood here, was quite a bit different in Xamar than in Sumer. Instead, a local was found who spoke English, as did most of the naval officers. Thus, charges were read off in Spanish, the defense counsel (not a lawyer, just a naval officer detailed for the purpose) translated those to English, and the Xamari translated that for the accused.
Typically, the trials went something like this:
Judge Puente-Pequeño: "You are accused of being an accessory before the fact to the act of piracy at sea. How do you plead?"
Defense Counsel, after translation: "Not guilty."
Judge: "Let the record show that the accused has entered a plea of Not Guilty. Prosecutor?"
Prosecutor, pointing to the laptop which showed the accused cheering the pirates: "That's him there."
Defense: Eloquent shrug.
Judge: "Has the accused anything to say in his own defense?"
Defense, after translation: "He has four wives and seventeen children to support, Your Honor. Besides, this is on land. Piracy law runs only at sea. Moreover, the defendant claims ignorance of the purpose of the column we engaged while it was moving here and of the boats that left and never returned."
Prosecutor, very wearily: "The former nation of Xamar has dissolved, Your Honor. It lacks sovereignty. It has become a ward of the World League, which also lacks sovereignty. Piracy law runs at sea because no one can hold sovereignty there. It also runs here, because no one does hold sovereignty here. As far back as the time of Julius Caesar, on Old Earth, it has been proper to try for crimes committed at sea people caught on land but otherwise under the sovereign protection of no one and acknowledging the sovereignty of nothing. As for the ignorance claim, Your Honor, frankly, in a area which has fallen under control of piracy, where national sovereignty is extinguished, where the Big Bad Motherfucker in Charge is the chief pirate, where the relief column is led by his son, and where everyone knows what the family business is, I think that the 'I didn't know' defense is fairly weak."
Judge, even more wearily than the counsel for the defense: "This is the thirty-seventh trial in which the defense has made the same lack of jurisdiction argument and the thirty-seventh—word for word— rebuttal by the prosecution. It is also the thirty-seventh attempt at claiming innocence through ignorance, likewise thirty-seven times rebutted. Gentlemen, cease. The court has already found it has jurisdiction, that the members of the column understood the business upon which they were engaged, and that this village understood the purpose of sending armed men to sea."
Judge, picking up gavel: "The accused is found guilty." Tap. "He will be shot following termination of these proceedings." Tap. "Next case."
Defense: "But Judge, what about the women and children? We're leaving them with nothing."
Judge: "We're leaving them—" the judge pausing briefly as a Cazador sergeant leading a squad shouted, "A punta . . . Fuego!" and a fusillade rang out "—with their eyes to weep with, and their tongues to spread the word. For our purposes, that's all they need. Next case." Tap.
The news had come in from Terra Nova and that news was grim: substantial parts of the new world torn apart in rebellion and the former secretary general's great-great-grandson, Kotek Annan, butchered by barbarians. Hardly an eye was dry, at UN Headquarters, with the thought of that brilliant boy done to death—without the slightest provocation; it could not be doubted—by regressives. The secretary general, Eduoard Simoua, was beside himself with grief.
Unfortunately, though Simoua wanted to make the gesture of sending yet another Annan to govern the new world, none were suitable. This was the judgment of the clan's patriarch, and to that judgment Simoua had to bow.
Briefly, Simoua thought about sending one of the retired officers from the various national armed forces that worked for the Department of Peacekeeping out to take charge. But no, none of those with the requisite experience and ability is really to be trusted. Most certainly, are they not to be trusted unsupervised.
Well, in a sense it's a disarmament problem. Why don't we send off one of those people? They've all got the right attitude. And they can be relied upon. But who, specifically?
"Bernard Chanet is here to see you Mr. Secretary."
"Send him right in, Irene," said Simoua, rising from his seat warmly to greet his proposed new governor for the world of Terra Nova.
Warm and fulsome greeting or not, Chanet seemed, at best, disinterested. Rather, his interest was made manifest when he asked, "What's in it for me and mine?"
Oh, so that's how it's going to be, thought Simoua, with a mental shrug. No problem.
"What do you want?"
Oh, so they want a patsy that desperately, do they? thought Chanet. Things there are worse than I thought. My price just went up.
"Amnesty?"
"Amnesty for what? What have you done?" Simoua asked.
"No, no," Chanet said, explaining, "I want you to have my son put in charge of Amnesty, Interplanetary."
"But they're . . ."
Chanet's uplifted eyebrow stopped Simoua before he could say "independent." Not that the organization was a wholly owned or wholly funded subsidiary of the United Nations, but since the UN was much better funded now, what with direct levies of tax coming from the citizen of the United States . . .
"We have . . . influence," Simoua conceded. "This could be arranged . . ."
"For life," Chanet amended. "With right to select his successor."
"That's impossible! Why, in the last thirty years since I took over as secretary general, we've only made appointments like that twice. And both of those were special cases."
"More special than a war being waged against our control of those portions of Terra Nova that aren't under the governance of major powers here?" Chanet asked.
"Perhaps not," Simoua conceded. "Note, though, that the major powers here do not govern Terra Nova; they dump there."
Chanet nodded his head at the correction, then went silent, leaving the secretary general to think.
If there were some clamor to take this job, Simoua thought, I'd tell this arrogant upstart to stick it. Sadly, the line for the posting isn't even one deep, outside of the fascist ex-officers in the Peacekeeping Department. It will be expensive though. Why, I'll have to bribe all nine members of the Interplanetary Executive Committee, including the Treasurer. Doable? Yes.
"Fine," Simoua told Chanet. "You leave in four weeks as a special representative of the secretary general with plenipotentiary powers. Your specific instructions will follow, along with the forces we will allocate to you. And your son has the chair of Amnesty. Later, we can meld the chair and the secretary generalship. As for making those permanent, let's let him keep them for so long that no one remembers when it was even possible for someone else to have them. Legalities can follow the custom, once established."