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Chapter Sixteen

War is too important to be left to generals.

—Georges Clemenceau

 

War is too important to be left to the politicians.

—Colonel Jack Ripper (in Dr. Strangelove)

Hamilton, FD, 6/1/461 AC

It would be wrong to say that Campos was personally planning the invasion of Sumer. After all, that was not the secretary of war's job. Instead, SecWar was responsible for administration, for expenditures, for procurement and the like.

 

On the other hand, when the secretary of war is convinced that he is quite the cleverest man ever to live, that most of his subordinates— indeed most of the human race—are idiots, in short when the secretary of war is something of an arrogant blockhead, one can expect him to take a hand, and perhaps an unduly heavy hand at that, in overseeing the detailed planning.

It was all water off a duck's back to Virgil Rivers. He'd been in the Army for better than two decades, been raised in the army, for that matter. Arrogant overbearing assholes were all in a day's work, provided they were at least reasonably competent.

That much one had to give Campos. He was at least reasonably competent.

Competence, however, was not infallibility. This was a problem for Campos. He aspired to not much more than competence but, since he equated himself with competence and competence with infallibility, he had rather a difficult time of it when things went wrong.

"What the hell do you mean, Virgil?" Campos fumed. "The Kemalis won't let the Fifth Division unload at their ports and won't permit them to cross the country? We need that division, plus the 731st Airborne Brigade, to hit Sumer from the south. Howellson from State assured me that the Kemalis would knuckle under."

Rivers, who had not been privy to any such conversation and knew the secretary of state, Howellson, extremely well, rather doubted that. But Campos tended to hear what he wanted to hear. Rivers also had good cause to know the Kemalis, immigrants from Turkey on Old Earth, were altogether too proud to knuckle under to anyone. Moreover, they had domestic political problems with being used as a base to attack another Islamic state, even though their own was only nominally Islamic and largely secular. Indeed, the settlers to Kemali had come largely to escape the increasing fundamentalism of their native Turkey.

"Mr. Secretary, no how, no way, are the Kemalis going to let us bring the Fifth Division through."

"Can General Thomas shift a force down to the southern part of the country?" The secretary asked.

"He says no, that everything he has he needs for the major attack from the north." Since the northern attack was already being done on a shoestring, largely as a result of Campos' unceasing nagging to reduce costs, Rivers thought that Thomas had a good argument for not being stripped of forces. Whether Campos would accept that or not . . . 

"Can we fly in something to the area of Sumer we control from the Oil War?"

"Yezidistan? There are airfields there that can take heavy lift, yes. Unfortunately, Mr. Secretary, most of the heavy lift we have we need for the major operation in the north. Even more unfortunately, with Fifth Division's armor loaded on ships and essentially untouchable for anything from weeks to about a month and a half, we would have to fly a unit, along with all its supplies, in from the Federated States. That would take a lot more lift than we can spare, tens of thousands of tons."

"Allies?" Campos asked, hopefully.

"Besides the Yezidis, none," Rivers answered. "The Anglians and the other small packets from our allies are either needed for the major attack or are too small to be of any effect. And the Yezidis just aren't up to it even though they've been supplemented by our own Special Warfare people."

The Yezidis were a caste-based Kurdish group that had left the area of Mosul, Iraq, en masse early in the 22nd century. They practiced what appeared to be a pre-Islamic—pre-Zoroastrian, as a matter of fact—religion with elements of Islam grafted onto it. They had never been accepted by the majority Moslem population who thought them "devil worshippers" and among whom they had lived—usually not amicably—for centuries. The Moslems, mainstream as well as Salafi had often fought with the Yezidi, much to the disadvantage of the latter.

With the opening up of mass emigration to the new world the Yezidi had jumped at the chance to be on their own. They had a reputation as fine warriors. Reputation notwithstanding, they had been continuously stomped into the dirt by their neighbors and had seen their original colony parceled up among the Kemalis, Sumeris, Alawis and Farsis in the area. Even the Volgans had, at one time, had a piece of them. Rivers, who had worked with them in the past, thought they were posturing swine but, since the secretary had great expectations from the Yezidi, he kept his own counsel. He couldn't keep a look of contempt off of his face, however, and Campos saw it.

"What? You don't think the Yezidi will come through for us?"

Rivers sighed. Time for some honesty, after all, it seemed.

"Mr. Secretary, everything you need to know about the Yezidi is explained by their conduct during and after the Oil War. We told them if they arose in rebellion, in other words if they helped us by drawing off some of the Sumeri troops, we would help them. They rebelled all right, but they waited until after we had stomped the crap out of the Sumeri army on our own. They only rebelled when it seemed perfectly safe to rise up in the vacuum we created, and after we didn't need their help any more. Then they whined when even the shot-and-bombed-to-shit rump of the Sumeri Haris al Watini was able to crush their chicken-shit asses. They will do nothing for themselves or for us. Trust me on this. Politically they're unreliable and militarily they're worthless."

Campos started to object but . . . he's been there. He should know.

Eager to divert the subject before he said something truly career damaging, Rivers asked, "What about the Balboans? Could we use them down in Yezidistan?"

"One medium-light brigade to do the job of a heavy division, Rivers? I don't think so. Besides, that colonel we sent down, Ridenhour, has very mixed reports on them."

Rivers, who had read the same reports, looked nonplussed. "I don't understand, sir. Ridenhour was very clear that he thought they'd put up a good fight."

"But what about their losses to friendly fire in training, Virgil? According to Ridenhour they've killed nearly one and a half percent of their own people just in training and just in the last year?"

"Well . . . yeah," Rivers replied. "Losses are not something that would deter Pat Hennessey from going ahead. He might eat his own guts over it later, but he would never let that stop him. And . . . frankly, so what? It isn't like those are our people being killed."

"But that's precisely the point, Virgil. If we let a maniac like that loose near our people there's no telling how many . . . oh."

"Right, Mr. Secretary. In the mountains of southern Sumer—Yezidistan, if you prefer—there are not going to be any of our people, not until the 731st Airborne makes its drop. And if I know Hennessey, and I do, he'll just wave at the 731st as they drop and continue the march to wherever he can find a fight."

"Balboans, huh? Well . . . can Thomas get by without them?"

"Honestly, he doesn't want them. He knows Hennessey from way back and, as he so delicately put it, "If I never see the son of a bitch again, it'll still be too soon." They, ummm, really don't like each other."

"Does anybody like Hennessey? Oh, never mind. All right, Virgil. Work out the details and brief me. And by the way, how are we coming in modifying the plan to take advantage of the awesome shocking power inherent in our technological superiority?"

Rivers, who knew that the only difference had been to take the basic plan and a word processing program and add in the phrase "awesome shocking power" in one hundred and twenty-seven places, answered, "Just fine, Mr. Secretary. It's a much better plan now." Yessir, yessir, three bags full.

 

Casa Linda, 10/1/461 AC

"Son of a bitch!" Carrera cursed as he read through the dispatch sent this morning from the FS embassy in Ciudad Balboa. He looked rather pleased when he first began to read since the missive contained agreement that his legion would be hired at the agreed price by the FS for the coming campaign. As he had read further though . . .

"What is it, Patricio? What's wrong?" Lourdes asked.

"That motherfu . . . it's Campos. He'll hire us on but not for the mission we originally agreed to. Instead of going to the north with our equipment going by sea and then basing out of al Jahara, we have to go south—by air, mind you, which is much more expensive—and establish ourselves in Yezidistan. Then we have to fight through to where an FS airborne brigade is going to jump in, and continue operations with them until we link up with coalition forces somewhere north of Babel."

He kept reading before admitting, "Oh. Well, it isn't that bad. We get the airborne brigade's artillery and service support battalions flown in and attached to us in advance in Yezidistan. And he's offering to allow us to cost-plus the extra money we'll have to spend to get the Volgans to fly us in over what it would have cost for us to go by sea."

"So you will actually make more money than you planned?"

"Ummm . . . maybe. No telling what we'll face or what we'll lose. And I've been in those mountains before. They practically defend themselves, at least as long as they're not being defended by Yezidis. Yezidis are a net minus to combat power.

"It's going to be tough fighting, though. They're also moving up the date by a week and I am not sure we can have the cold weather gear we'll need on hand by then. Iffy. Lourdes, would you assemble the staff please? Key members only."

She was about to go, then remembered the phrase "tough fighting." That worried her. So, instead of going to use the telephone to spread the word, she locked the door to Carrera's office and went back to stand beside his chair. Then, somewhat to his surprise, she rotated the chair to face her. She dropped to her knees and began to undo his belt.

"This won't take long," she said, "I'm getting better at it. And I want to take every chance there is to remind you to come home to me when the fighting is done . . . and not to let yourself get killed."

 

Near Caridad's home,
Las Mesas, Balboa,
12/1/461 AC

Ricardo Cruz leaned against a tree in a secluded spot by the creek that fed Cara's family's farm. He and the girl were asymmetrically undressed, her with her top off and him lacking trousers. She knelt on the trousers so as to leave no tell-tale dirt scuffs as her head bobbed rhythmically back and forth, lips locked in a tight, and, since it was her first occasion, rather odd feeling "O."

 

Cruz had returned home on leave, prior to deploying over to Sumer with the legion. Before returning home, he stopped off at a small jewelry shop on Avenida Central in Ciudad Balboa and purchased a ring. It hadn't been anything amazing, as far as engagement rings went. Still, when he had shown it to Cara and asked her to be his wife she had seemed to think it a marvel equal to the Anglian crown jewels. Naturally, as a well bred and brought up young man, he had asked Cara's parents' permission to marry her, after she had indicated no reluctance on her part. They, weighing his prospects, seeing that he had already been accelerated in rank past most of his peers, and liking him in general, had agreed and discreetly suggested the new couple take a walk somewhere they could plan the future. Well, Cara's parents had been young once, too.

Planning for the future, when you're that young and that in love, means little more than finding a secluded spot and racing to undress.

Ricardo had originally wanted to make love. Cara had not exactly refused, but had made what she thought was a reasonable counteroffer, a little something the girls in her high school sometimes gossiped over and sometimes bragged upon. He'd agreed, she'd tried and found that, while it was an acquired . . . errr . . . taste, it was a taste fairly easily acquired. The other taste was not so easily acquired but she'd managed. Twice. This was number three and . . . well . . . why not?

Besides, she thought, if those groans and moans are truthful I own him now. Can this little thing really feel as good as all that. Hmmm,

She looked up, smiled shyly and whispered, "Ricardo, I love you. So . . . if you want to make love . . ."

He'd started to lift her up, if only so he could lay her down again on the mossy bank. And then he froze in internal confusion.

I am going to war and I may not be coming back. Too, he remembered something his section leader had told the men once: "Some day we all must die. Whether our lives will have meant anything depends on how we have lived them. Have we done well by those who cared for us, those for whom we were responsible? Have we done our duty? Who, among the innocent have we harmed? Who have we helped? How is the world better for our having lived? I think God will want to know. I think He'll ask."

And then what if she gets pregnant and I get killed? That would be a hard thing to inflict on her and the child both, insurance and survivor's benefits notwithstanding.

Cruz whispered back. "I love you, too, queridisima. But I am going to war soon. We don't know yet what will happen. I hope I'll come back. But I don't know that I will. We'll wait then. Maybe when I return we can continue that conversation. For now . . ."

Understanding, Cara smiled again, bent her head, and continued her bobbing.

 

Herrera International Airport,
Ciudad Balboa,
15/1/461 AC

The blue and white painted Air Balboa BG-47 bobbed up and down along the taxiway as it approached the terminal. On one side of its designated gate awaited a similar aircraft, on the other a chartered Volgan LI-68 was already boarding.

Some distance away, at the cargo terminal, teams of men, some civilians and others in the uniform of the Legio del Cid, loaded wide- bodied cargo aircraft—a mix of FS military, FS civilian, Balboan civilian and more Volgan military under charter—with the wheeled vehicles of the legion. Since some of those aircraft bays stood seventy feet above the tarmac, requiring that the wheels be hoisted that distance into the air on self-mobile elevators, the loading was sometimes rather precarious.

The Balboan airport was capable of receiving mid-size airships, of course. But the debarkation airport in Yezidistan was not. This ruled out using LTA craft to move any of the brigade, despite the potential cost savings.

Parilla and Carrera stood off to one side, in a pair together and separate from the confusion around them. Carrera was used to the apparent confusion of a major deployment. Parilla was not and looked plainly concerned over it.

"Relax, Raul. This is so normal that it is the very essence of routine for something like this."

Parilla, despite this, did not seem to relax.

Carrera watched as a centurion stopped one three-ton truck before it nearly went over the side of an elevating loader. The centurion walked briskly to the driver's door of the truck, opened it, hauled the driver out with both fists and then held him in the air seven stories above the ground while shaking him and cursing. The centurion didn't drop the driver, however, but put his feet back on the ramp, pushed him back into the cab, forced him to slide over. Then the centurion climbed in himself to show how the damned thing was supposed to be done.

Parilla winced at seeing this. To Carrera it was . . . well, in small details, at least, he thought the centurions ought to have a certain latitude.

"Are we going to make it, Patricio?" Parilla asked. Carrera had never shut him out—even consulted with him frequently—but neither man had any doubt as to who was really in charge. Nonetheless, Carrera always treated Parilla as his unquestioned superior in public and a good friend in private. Politeness cost nothing, after all.

"I think so, Raul. We were lucky to have the freighters stopped before the Volgans actually began putting our armor aboard. They're going to fly the stuff into Yezidistan directly from the airport near the factory, all sixteen tanks and forty-four Ocelots, plus eight extras for floats, two tanks and six Ocelots. The other twenty-two still come here by ship, for training, of course. I'm still worried as hell about the cold weather gear, though. Those mountain passes are fucking freezing this time of year."

Parilla gave an involuntary shiver. "How badly off are we?"

Without inflection, Carrera answered, "So far we've been able to find mid-weight sleeping bags for every man, Anglian surplus, and about ten thousand heavy wool blankets for when we find out that a mid-weight sleeping bag just won't do sometimes. The Misrani tents we have will be good for summer or winter since they've got a good heavy liner to them, though with that desert pink color they'll stand out like sore thumbs whether it snows or not. The south of the country isn't desert, after all. Stoves are allegedly en route. We'll see."

"God I hate the cold." Parilla shivered in anticipation, despite Balboa's oppressive heat.

"So do I," Carrera agreed. "In any case, balaclavas have been ordered, good wool ones from Helvetia, but the order won't be filled for about ten days—ten cold fucking days, I expect—after the tail end of the legion arrives. Same deal and same source on the polypropylene-lined leather gloves. We have found some really neat polypro mittens that allow the troops to peel back the part covering the fingers for fine detailed work, but in a cold wind they'll be pretty worthless, too. Harrington's looking for leather shells to cover the mittens. Nobody had winter boots available for immediate delivery in the quantity we need and the boots we were offered were almost no better than the jungle boots the men already have. That scares me. I foresee a lot of trench foot in our future unless Harrington can come through on the boots. I told him I didn't care if the styles match, just so long as they are good, serviceable, winter boots. Maybe that will help. Then again, part of our problem is that most of the troops have shorter, wider feet than those found in all the places that make winter boots.

"On the plus side, we have gotten twenty-thousand sets of polypro underwear. It's already in Yezidistan and being issued, first thing, as the troops debark from the aircraft. Most of it will be too big but better too big than too small. I've had a local company take five thousand white bed sheets and convert them to camouflaged pullover smocks. Better than nothing."

"We're going be cold for a while then," Parilla commented.

"Very."

"Wish we'd had time to acclimatize the men to cold weather," Parilla said.

Was there a touch of rebuke in his voice? Carrera thought so but whether it was directed at him or not was an open question.

Parilla's aide de camp came up to the pair. "Sir," he said to the nominal senior, "the aircraft chief stewardess tells me they are ready to board you now."

"You're sure we should fly separately?" Parilla asked of Carrera.

"Absolutely," Carrera answered. "In the first place, God never intended for man to fly. Worse, He has an odd sense of humor. If one of those things comes down with both of us on it, the legion will be fucked. Go on, Duce. I'll be on the flight right behind you."

 

A bombero band stood at attention on the tarmac playing a martial tune, one heavy on the brass and drums. The legion's main band, the pipes and drums, were already long departed and guarding the headquarters in Yezidistan.

From the movable stairway nestled against the Air Balboa jet, Parilla made a good show of turning, smiling for the cameras, and waving at the crowd of families and well-wishers bidding farewell to yet more of their soldiers. Behind him the line of mostly hung-over men waiting to board bunched briefly at the halt.

Unseen in the crowd, Lourdes waved back with her right hand. She hadn't seen Patricio since he had left the terminal lobby a few minutes after Parilla.

While Lourdes waved with her right, her left was busy catching tears in a handkerchief. Raul Parilla's elderly wife put an arm around Lourdes' narrow waist.

"I have never done this either," the older woman confided. "I am frightened for them."

Lourdes began to cry more loudly. "I am frightened for me."

"I know, dear. I know."

Standing not far away, a younger woman, affianced to legion Private First Class Ricardo Cruz started to bawl as soon as she saw Lourdes' tears. Seeing Cara, Parilla's wife made a motion for her to join them. Then, standing there in the lobby, the three women hugged each other and had a good, long cry.

 

Hewlêr International Airport,
Yezidistan,
16/1/461 AC

Under the glare of the portable lights, the last of a dozen rented semi-tractors carrying Misrani Army tents pulled away from the unloading area on their way to the legion's bivouac site near Mangesh, Yezidistan. This was about thirty miles to the north and perhaps five miles from the dividing line between Sumeri controlled Yezidistan and the Yezidi safe area that had been guaranteed by the Federated States eleven years before, following the Oil War.

Despite the bitter cold the unloading crews sweated with the strain. Their breath made little horizontal evergreens of frost in the air. Nearby, Kuralski and his Yezidi counterpart, Captain Mesud, stood to one side while waiting for the Volgan LI-68s that would be flying in, among other things, a load of rather poorly made but at least warm cold-weather boots that had been stolen from Volgan army stores years before and offered to Harrington once the need was made known. Along with the boots were coming some tons of ammunition, a portion of a huge store that had been offered by the newly reunited Sachsen Reich from what had once been held by then nominally independent North Sachsen. This, too, would go to join the growing stockpile of supplies and equipment building in the middle of Yezidistan. Packaged field rations from Anglia, Gaul, the Federated States, and other places arrived at intervals as well. No rations would be coming from Zion as Kuralski had been warned about Army of Zion rations, canned goat with the hair still on it, and kosher to ensure near tastelessness. Besides, the one tasty, for certain values of "tasty," item of food in Zioni rations, Shoug, was a mix of ground peppers ranging from "Holy Shit Peppers" to "Joan of Arc Peppers," with a very small admixture of "Satan Triumphant Peppers." That way layeth logisticide.

 

Thirty miles away, at Mangesh, Sergeant Major McNamara had his hands full setting up the five hundred and forty odd tents the brigade would be moving into. Morse and Bowman were a great help, here, but—thank God!—his real salvation was that enough of these non- Yezidi, Christian Chaldeans spoke English to get his will across. Ah, well, at least he didn't have Harrington's worries. That poor bastard was torn in a hundred directions; trying to set up an Ammunition Supply Point, arrange feeding, receive the equipment that arrived in a steady stream from Hewlêr International, and, in general, prepare for the arrival of the remaining troops.

Still, between himself, Kennison, Kuralski, Johnson, and Captain Mesud—fine officer, thought McNamara, rare among these wogs—he had to admit that things were getting done. They had a tent city laid out and about half the tents raised. The ASP was also laid out and, at least to the extent ammunition had arrived, dug in. Johnson was going insane trying desperately to set up local training facilities.

In a way, that was McNamara's biggest distraction, not that he minded. Carrera—McNamara still had to force himself not to think of his boss as Hennessey—was very goddamned particular, and a little unpredictable unless you thought at his level, about how his training was set up. Johnson did better than most and Mac enjoyed filling in the small details.

 

Mangesh was not strange to Carrera; he'd been there before. That was part of the reason he had chosen it for his staging area. Still, the place looked rather worn down, even more so than when he had left.

After a seemingly interminable flight, followed by a long drive from Hewlêr International, Carrera and Parilla finally arrived at the legion's staging base in the Yezidistan Mountains. Kennison, McNamara, and the rest of the advanced party were on hand to greet them.

A smiling Kennison was the first to speak. "Duce, Pat, welcome to outer Hell . . . or maybe, since it's so frigging cold, Niflheim."

Carrera smiled back and spread his arms wide. "It's almost good to be here, Carl. Why don't you and the sergeant major show the Duce and myself around?"

Kennison signaled for a driver to bring up his vehicle. "Right. We planned a little show and tell after the sightseeing tour."

Siegel, standing nearby, piped in, in Italian, "Un' espetaculo de cani e cavellini." A dog and pony show. At Kennison's dirty look Siegel made himself scarce.

"Good, but make it brief, will you? I'm about ready to hit the sack now."

The four—Parilla, Carrera, Kennison, and McNamara, climbed back into the vehicle. Kennison gave the driver directions to take them around the camp. As the vehicle drove around the perimeter, Kennison pointed out the main features.

It soon became obvious to Carrera that the camp consisted of six sub-camps, a large central one and five more at a distance of about two and a half kilometers from the center.

Kennison explained, pointing at the layout, "We've put the Mechanized, Artillery, Combat Support, Service Support and Headquarters in the center. The four line cohorts and most of the Cazadors are out on the perimeter. Air is back at the airport, along with a century of Cazadors. Security of the perimeter is the responsibility of the Cazadors and the infantry. Each has about one fifth of the total area; grunts a bit more; Cazadors a bit less."

"Have you had any infiltrators?" asked Carrera.

Kennison shrugged indifferently. "Not exactly. Truth? It doesn't matter. The Yezidi did most of the work. I'd be really surprised if at least one of them, anyway, isn't reporting to Saleh, in Babel."

Carrera shrugged, as well. Nothing much to be done about that. Besides, except for local artillery, the only weapons the Sumeris had that could range to the camps were some crudely modified Volgan missiles. Even the unmodified versions were so inaccurate they had been known to miss entire countries before. The dictator, Saleh, would be more likely to hit the base around Mangesh if he hired a bunch of witch doctors from Uhuru and had them try to entice meteors down from space.

And even then, Carrera thought it more than likely that the UE Peace Fleet would interfere.

While the two men spoke, the vehicle continued on its way until it reached the center of the main camp. Kennison pointed out to Carrera the doublewide mobile home, air-conditioned, heated and with running water that he had set up for Carrera and Parilla's living quarters.

"Harrington sent it, along with another one to serve as the Operations, Intel and Logistics Center."

"Oh, he did, did he?" Carrera objected, glaring at the second doublewide. "There'll be no goddamned Headquarters Regency Hotel. Move it and turn it over to the medical century.

"As for the other one, the Duce can have that to himself. Get me a tent set up nearby, will you, Mac?"

The sergeant major didn't object. He just turned to Kennison and made a rubbing motion with his thumb across his fingers. Kennison, equally wordlessly, took out his wallet and paid McNamara a fifty drachma note. McNamara had been sure that Carrera wouldn't take quarters much more comfortable than what the troops had.

Folding the note and stuffing it in his pocket with a grin, McNamara asked, "Do you mind bunking wit' me, sir? We're kind of cramped for tent space."

Pretending not to notice the wager, Carrera simply answered that a shared tent would be fine.

 

While Parilla and Carrera were being shown the base, out in one of the outlying camps, Mendoza, his friend Stefano del Rio, and the tank commander, Sergeant Perez, worked over their newly issued White Eagle, though they called it a Jaguar II, tank, breaking down and checking the auxiliary weapons, checking fluid levels, and inventorying tools.

"Sergeant Perez?"

Perez looked over to where a kneeling Mendoza was unpacking a heavy machine gun from its crate. "Yeah, what is it, Jorge?"

Mendoza stood erect. In his right hand was a piece of paper. In his left was a labeled bottle full of clear liquid. He held them out for his sergeant's inspection.

A curious del Rio hopped down from the turret to join them.

Perez took the paper and read aloud:

 

Boys:

 

We want you to know that this tank is good tank, the best. No effort was spared. We didn't tolerate no shoddy work. She should see you well through coming fight.

Bottle? Well, all of us here have idea of what you going to go through soon. We thought it help. Is all.

 

Vaya con Dios,

 

Josef Raikin

Stefan Malayev

And the crew of Overseer Team 21

 

"That was pretty thoughtful of them, wasn't it, Sergeant?"

Perez just nodded. Damn, that was thoughtful, he thought. He said, "Mendoza, pad it with something and lock it up with the tools. We may need it come a rainy day."

 

Royal Jahari Land Forces Building,
al Jahara,
19/1/461 AC

The Coalition commander didn't need to worry about rain. He would barely have needed to be concerned about the near detonation of a nuclear weapon.

 

Underground and very safe, deep in the bowels of the Royal Jahari Land Forces Building, Carrera and Parilla waited patiently for their meeting with the commanding general of the FSC-led Coalition. Concealing his distaste at a headquarters buried so far underground, Carrera muttered something about "Fredendall" and "Kasarine Pass."

Parilla looked at him questioningly. "Never mind, Raul," he answered. "Old Earth history . . . which just goes to show that some things are eternal."

A well meaning FS Army brigadier general sat down beside the two. "Are you all ready for your meeting with the Bulldozer?" he asked.

Parilla, having limited English, looked to Carrera. Carrera shrugged and didn't bother to translate except to mutter in Spanish about people who created their own nicknames or had their public relations departments do it for them.

"Is that the name his PR folks came up with for him now?" he asked the brigadier.

The brigadier gave Carrera a quizzical look. "It's what he's always been called."

Carrera snorted, shook his head, and put on a shallow smile. "No, that's not true. When he was a mere division commander he was known to most of his division as 'Fat Normy.'"

The brigadier's face looked as if Carrera had suddenly shown signs of a career destroying disease. He hastily left. Carrera smiled wickedly, then translated for Parilla.

"Did you know General Thomas back when you were in the FS Army?" Parilla asked.

"Know him? Not well. We had one of those cases of instantaneous dislike, really, and a few unpleasant run-ins after that." Carrera suddenly laughed. "You want to hear my best story about Fat Norman?"

"Tell me."

Carrera, still smiling wickedly, said, "It was silly, really. There was this captain in the battalion I was the operations officer for that had a little run in with Norman. The division was having its annual organization day. 'Conquest Day,' they called it. Some military intelligence wimp who was running one of the competitions fucked up his station. The puke put the man from our battalion in fourth place for that particular competition when the troop had actually placed second. This friend of mine tried to get the puke to fix it but he was nowhere to be found. So my friend tried to fix it himself. Unfortunately, he'd been pretty badly hurt in a training accident the week before and was moving a little slow. Maybe, too, he was thinking a little slow from the pain medications.

"First he put the troops in the right order, the one they themselves agreed was correct. Then my friend went over to the reviewing stand on the division parade field and tried to get Normy's attention so he could fix the awards list Normy had been given. My friend got Normy's attention, all right, but the general wouldn't listen and proceeded to chew him out in front of the division. By then the awards ceremony had started."

Carrera leaned back and shook his head slightly. "Then about a dozen colonels and lieutenant colonels surrounded this poor captain, asking what the problem was. My pal was explaining it to them when Normy came to the mistake the guy had been trying to fix. When Normy turned around it was like the parting of the Red Sea for Moses. Those colonels backed away like the man had the plague. The captain came to attention and Norman began to chew again.

"Even the captain thought it was hilarious. Consider. First the guy was chewed out for trying to fix a mistake someone else had made. Then he was chewed out for not fixing it fast enough."

Parilla laughed. "And did you really call him 'Fat Normy'? he asked.

"I don't know if the whole division did. But the officers of the brigade I was in? Oh, yeah. Don't get the wrong idea. Other than that he's an asshole, he's a perfectly acceptable commander. Not brilliant, perhaps, but far from stupid. Of course, if this war takes a hero, we could be in trouble."

The conversation ended when the secretary looked up and announced, "The general will see you now." Carrera picked up a bag containing a laptop as he and Parilla rose to enter the Coalition Sanctum Sanctorum.

While both men saluted, only Carrera reported verbally. "Dux Parilla and Legate Carrera report to the CinC, sir."

The general rose from behind his desk and returned the salute. Then, hiding the sneer he felt for Carrera, he walked around the desk to firmly grip Parilla's hand. Carrera translated the English words of welcome.

Only after that did Thomas return to his seat, turn his attention to Carrera and say, "I didn't want you here and I am ever so pleased that you'll be on the other side of Sumer."

"You couldn't be half as pleased as I am," Carrera answered, smiling. "That said, you are still stuck with me in this theater, you still need the legion Dux Parilla and I have brought, and so, in the interests of our common mission, why don't you just fuck off and stop being an asshole, Norman?"

Thomas' eyes flew wide with fury. "Nobody talks to me that way! Nobody!"

"It's about time somebody did," Carrera answered calmly. "Now, do you want to listen or do you want Parilla and me to pack up, go back to our base in Yezidistan, and call Campos and tell him that you've gratuitously insulted us, that we just can't work with you and that we're going home?"

"You wouldn't . . ." Thomas began before remembering that there was nothing the man he had known as Patrick Hennessey wouldn't dare to do. Since that approach wasn't going to work, the general consoled himself with finishing, "What the fuck do I need another brigade of military police for, anyway?"

That Carrera did translate for Parilla. They both began to laugh.

"What's so goddamned funny?" Thomas demanded.

"Is that what Campos told you?" Carrera asked through his laughter. "That we're MPs? That's the funniest thing I've heard in years."

"Not the secretary of war, no," Thomas answered, slowly. "One of my staff officers looked up Balboa, saw that it had only twelve companies of military police, and deduced, since you are from Balboa, that that's what you brought."

Muttering, "MPs . . . fucking MPs," Carrera took the laptop computer from its bag, fiddled with it a bit, and placed it on Thomas's desk, turning the screen so that all three could see it. Then he took a remote control and pressed a button.

A picture of a White Eagle, AKA Jaguar II, tank appeared on the screen.

"That, Norman, is what we call a 'Heavy Armored Community Relations Vehicle.' It lacks a siren, mind you, but there's nothing like a high velocity 125mm long rod penetrator to get the attention of a speeding driver."

Click. Another picture appeared, this time of an Ocelot.

"This is, of course, a Light Armored Community Relations Vehicle mounting a 100mm crowd control cannon." Click to show a Volgan 122mm artillery piece. "That is a 122mm Auxiliary Riot Control Agent Dispersal Projector." Click. "The 160mm High Angle Leaflet Distribution System." Click. An aircraft appeared, propeller driven but mounting a fearsome array of machine guns and rockets. "That is our Turbo-Finch Low Altitude Riot Control Aircraft . . ."

Click, click, click, click, click.

"You aren't MPs?"

"No, we're not MPs," Carrera answered. "What we are is a large combined arms brigade with a core of leadership some of which was converted to military police but were infantry before that and which we converted back to infantry or to some other combat arm. That cadre has been expanded with young men of such a high quality that your own Rangers would weep with envy. In the last year that brigade has spent more time training, and under more realistic situations, than any unit in your army except, maybe, for the Rangers. We have used more live ammunition in that year than your entire 39th Parachute Infantry Division uses in three years."

"You can really force a pass through the Yezidi mountains?" Thomas asked.

Carrera translated that for Parilla, who snapped his fingers and answered, in heavily accented English, "Piece o' cake."

Thomas nodded, looked contemplative for a few moments, then hit his intercom and said, "Cancel the plans to fly a brigade of the 11th Division up to Yezidistan."

Turning to Parilla, Thomas asked, "Will you need a Liaison Officer?"

Parilla shook his head, no, while Carrera answered, "We have one we're happy with who's been with us for some time. He'll do."

 

On their way out Parilla looked mildly thoughtful. "Patricio, I'm curious. Everyone in the headquarters that I saw had a pair of those tan colored boots just like Thomas did. But I haven't seen a line trooper with a pair yet. What's going on there?"

Carrera smiled. "Raul, you have just observed the 'trickle down theory' of supporting combat troops. I will just about guarantee you that every rear echelon motherfucker will have a pair of those boots before a single pair finds its way to a private in an infantry squad."

Parilla looked confused. "But how can that be? The rear support types don't need them. The infantry do."

Carrera laughed bitterly. "How can it be? How can it not be? It starts with Normy himself. He gets these high-speed boots and "tests" them personally. Or, more likely, just wears them because he's the big cheese and he can. Who knows?

"Then the next senior guy below Normy will get a pair. After all, he's got to show that he's a pretty big cheese, too. So far it isn't a big problem. But then the boots get to the other REMF generals, colonels, and majors. You might think that Normy, or his deputy, could put a stop to that with an order. They could, too, if it wasn't that they lost the moral authority to do so by wearing the boots themselves first. It would be embarrassing to tell the REMFs they can't have them . . . and generals spend most of their time surrounded by REMFs.

"So by now, we've got all the more junior officers and senior non- coms in the rear wearing the goddamned boots. Well . . . how can they tell their REMF troops that the troops can't have the boots? They can't. They gave up their moral authority to do so by grabbing a pair for themselves first. So, because Normy grabbed a pair for himself and let his subordinates grab a pair too, every REMF will have to have a pair of those boots before a single set trickles down to the line. Disgusting, isn't it?"

A light seemed to flash in Parilla's brain. "Patricio . . . is that why you didn't want to use the doublewide?"

"It's a part of it, Raul. You can use yours and nothing's lost as long as I establish that there will be no palace building below you."

"I see. Maybe I should give up the palace, too."

"You could have refused it initially. Now?" Carrera shook his head emphatically. "No. It would look too much like you're following me . . . which is not the impression we want to give the troops."

"But I want to do the right thing. I must do the right thing," Parilla insisted.

"I should have explained how this shit really works initially, when I first saw that rolling whorehouse Harrington scrounged. My fault I didn't, not yours. Let me see." He thought intently for a short while, then said, "Raul, in about two days, at the command and staff meeting, the medical unit is going to ask about having another air- conditioned and heated facility for some of the inevitable casualties. You will ask Harrington about it. He will say that none are available and none will be for the immediate future. You will then order the sergeant major to cart off your mobile home and get you a tent. I will then tell the medicos that the very first time I see or hear of that building being used for ANY purpose but care of the wounded and ill, I will have the guilty parties staked out naked in the cold overnight."

Laughing lightly, Carrera said, "You know, I'm not sure it won't work out better this way than if you'd turned down the trailer in the first place."

 

Mangesh Base, Yezidistan, 20/1/461 AC

Colonel John Ridenhour approached the bunker guarding the gate with some care. When he had walked to within fifty meters of it, but no closer, a voice rang out, loud enough to be heard, but no louder, "Halt! Who goes there? Friend or foe?"

 

"Friend," Ridenhour answered in Spanish.

"Advance, friend, to be recognized." Ridenhour again walked forward before being halted again. He met the sentry's whispered challenge with an equally soft-spoken password.

A young Balboan sentry emerged from the bunker and brought his rifle to present arms. Ridenhour returned the salute.

When the sentry had moved his rifle back to a more ready position, he asked, "Sir, what the hell were you doing out there?"

"Just looking over the perimeter from the enemy's point of view."

Satisfied, the young sentry asked, in halting and accented but understandable English, "How does it look?"

"Good, son, very good. By the way, what's your name?"

"Cruz, sir. Private First Class Ricardo Cruz."

"Where are you from in Balboa?"

"Las Mesas Province," Cruz answered proudly.

"You're a long way from home."

Cruz smiled, white teeth shining slightly amidst the dark night. He thought longingly of Caridad. "Sir, a mile would be too far to be away from home. But if I have to be away, here's not much worse than anywhere else. Except for the damned cold, of course."

 

Research Building, University of Ninewa

Sada shivered as he watched the trucks loaded. There was a bitterly cold south wind blowing across the city. The scientists, soldiers and workers, like Sada, suffered in the biting breeze. Unlike him, most were allowed by their positions to find shelter wherever there was a lee.

 

Shaking his head sadly, Sada noted that there were only enough trucks to move half the load, all of that being money and bearer bonds. Was Saleh, the dictator of the country, incapable of coming up with enough vehicles at one time to make away with the contents of the building's basement?

If we cannot even come up with trucks, what chance have we? Sada fumed.

"We'll be back," the colonel commanding the column assured Sada.

"You'll be back if you aren't blasted to shit on the way," Sada corrected.

Excursus

From: Reconquista, Copyright © Xavier Jimenez IV, 601 AC, Carrera-Balboa Press, Ciudad Balboa

 

By 155 AC Makkah al Jedidah had only one stream, and that shallow and sluggish. The other had gone to hide below ground. The city still had trees, about as many as it had at the founding. Most of those trees, however, were no longer growing but had been cut for roof beams.

 

Farther out was sand with a few water holes and oases. Caravans trekked the sand; woe betide anything that grew near the caravan trails. The camels and especially the goats would eat anything found green right down to the roots.

There was little wood by this time, little to burn for fuel. Instead, the people gathered up the droppings of their animals and dried and burned those. Thus, even that little bit of fertilizer never nourished the soil.

As one went farther away from the original center of settlement one would find more greenery. Yet the pattern was clear. The settlement of Salafi Man was spreading fast; the existence of natural flora and fauna disappearing at the same rate or faster. The Salafis fled the desert. But they brought the desert with them, created it, wherever they went.

The nomads' flocks' hooves pounded the soil, compacting it and pulverizing it. This rendered the soil fine enough to be carried off by water and wind. And the trees that might have protected the soil, holding it in place, gathering it from the wind, shading it so that surface water did not evaporate so quickly . . . these were gone or going. Evaporation, too, brought salt to the surface, killing what plants remained and rendering the soil useless for growing.

Other colonies on the periphery of the Salafis felt the nomads' desperation. Often starving, themselves, the Salafis raided for food. They raided to spread their way of life, their purer faith. They also raided for slaves, especially women slaves. Thus, added to the now forced emigration from Old Earth, the slave women brought new Salafis into the world in continuingly large numbers.

Most of the southern shore of Uhuru, along the Tauranian Lakes, had fallen to them, as had northwestern Taurus and substantial parts of Urania and, once the Salafis took to sea, some islands of the Mar Furioso. This meant more slaves, more women, and more Salafis. And, except where even they could not overcome nature, it also meant more desert.

The other peoples of the new world began, not to strike back, but to defend what was theirs. After what they had endured from the Salafi, mercy was not a concept in common currency.

In Ardeal, five thousand Salafi raiders were impaled at a pass following the defeat of their raiding party. At Turonensis, in Gaul, an amphibious Salafi invasion was defeated by disciplined musketry and its survivors hanged to a man, several thousand Christian slaves being liberated in the process. When a Salafi army pushed north, past the desertified coast of Southern Uhuru, seeking new lands to turn barren, it was met by the Bulala Amalungu- and Bayede Nkhosi-crying, Shosholoza- and Nomathemba-chanting, Amazing Grace- and Onward Christian Soldiers-singing, massed, Christian-Animist impis of the great King Senzangakona III of the Nguni.

Salafi hit and run tactics, on horseback, had proven no match for the Nguni numbers and their urge to close and kill at breakneck pace afoot. The Salafis and their mounts were butchered, despite their extensive use of firearms. It was said among the Nguni that the glittering sheen of their spearheads had been lit by a miraculous glow from the large gilded cross they carried as their king's standard. It was said among the few Salafi survivors, thereafter, that it was almost impossible for a man on horseback to outpace a racing Nguni impi in the long run . . . and that with the Nguni it was always a long run. Only the desert, creation and ultimate defense of the Salafi, had kept the impis from continuing on to exterminate the threat to their south.

Nor was the resistance limited to non-Moslems. The Salafi were a threat to everyone. Near Babel, in Sumer, disciplined, musket-wielding Sunni and Shia farmers on foot held the mounted Salafis at bay while their own, limited, cavalry swept in behind to trap them. Something not dissimilar happened when the Salafis faced the civilized, Moslem and Christian, Misrani along the banks of the Interu in Southwest Uhuru.

In time, the Salafi immigration from Old Earth ceased. The semi- starvation that had driven their expansion on Terra Nova began to reduce their population as, morally ingenious literalists that they were, they avoided the proscription against burying infant girls alive by first either smashing their heads with rocks or leaving them exposed for the desert animals.

And so the Salafi movement began to recede, for a time. It would come again, in the guise of an ideology. As it left, it left behind little but wasteland and corpses, and small detachments of outcast adherents. When it returned, it would be over a carpet of waste and bodies, stepping along the footholds it had left behind like a man crossing a stream on stones.

 

As the Salafis fell back to their desert fastness, they left little but waste and destruction—physical, moral and intellectual—behind them. Their adherents left behind in the lost lands were outcast and despised. Indeed, they were often killed out of hand, especially in Moslem lands. Heeding the Koran's stricture on how to deal with those who brought disorder to the world, only shortage of wood saved many Salafis from crucifixion. And those lost hands and feet on opposite sides.

Thus Salafism languished for more than two centuries while the new world progressed around them. In fact, while Uhuru, Urania and other continents were carved up by Taurans, Zhong, Yamatans and Columbians, the Salafis of the Yithrab were left in peace. This was neither altruism nor respect but a simple reflection of the fact they had nothing anyone wanted.

 

The resurgence of radical Salafism can be dated to the discovery of substantial energy deposits, in the form of fossil fuels, in the Yithrab Peninsula and its environs, beginning in the year 348 AC. Having access to Earth's history prior to the end of emigration, the peoples of Terra Nova were never in ignorance of the value of the stuff. Civil war within the Salafi reach erupted within a few years of the discovery, the al Rashid clan eventually emerging triumphant.

Oil revenues were initially more or less trivial to the buyers, though significant to the then-poor Salafis. Especially during the Great Global War, when all civilized constraints of behavior were thrown off, the Salafis were altogether too frightened of conquest to exert the power implicit in control of so vast a reserve of energy.

With time, however, growing awareness of the value of their resource, coupled with the post-GGW nuclear standoff between the Federated States, the Volgan Empire and the UEPF, placed the al Rashid in a position to take control of their own oil and their own destinies. Others, not merely on the periphery but around the globe, followed suit. Fossil fuel prices rose precipitously. In point of fact, they did not stop their continuous rise until the fall of the Volgan Empire freed the Federated States to credibly threaten the use of military force should prices get out of hand.

 

Oil brought unprecedented wealth. Money received from it went into the creation of welfare states, impressively armed if indifferently effective military and naval forces, and provided obscenely lavish lifestyles for the ruling clans. No small amount, too, went to the spread of Salafism.

Among the Misrani at the edge of Southern Uhuru, to Kashmir, to Sukarno, madrassas sprang up like mushrooms. Providing free room and board, as well as a free—if highly constrained—education, the madrassas were highly popular among the disenfranchised lower classes of the Moslem portions of Terra Nova.

And that was the problem. Most of the population of Moslem states on Terra Nova were disenfranchised and frighteningly poor. Moreover, while the first two hundred and fifty years of settlement had seen them prosper approximately as well as colonization efforts by non-Moslems, after approximately the middle of the third Terra Novan century this was no longer true. Increasingly, they had fallen behind. Increasingly they were seen to be militarily inept. Increasingly, the pride of a very proud set of people was pricked. Increasingly, they heard the message of the Salafis to return to the older, purer ways . . . to fight back with fire and sword.

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