A Desert Called Peace

by Tom Kratman

  To the west of Urania and the east of Taurus, and lying approximately equidistant between the two, lie the Columbias, or—for Spanish speaking areas—the Colombias. These are two continents, joined by a narrow isthmus (of Balboa, q.v.), that run north to south- southeast. The larger of these, called Southern Columbia, was awarded to the old North American Free Trade Area which further subdivided the bulk of the continent almost exactly according to the wishes of the former United States of America. The two Canadas, Mexico and the Central American petty states fell into line fairly readily. Cuba was denied any colony on the new world, which denial it took with very good grace as it was believed that the entire country would depopulate itself if its people were given the chance to escape. (The government of His Revolutionary Highness, Alejandro I, son of Raul Castro, is believed to have been one of only two governments on Earth, the other being that of North Korea, that had to bribe UNISBC not to make any grant of land on the new world. This is unconfirmed and investigations into the matter were squelched by the then UN Secretary General, Kojo Annan.)

  The other eastern continent, called Northern Colombia, was awarded to the former Mercosur, the Latin American version of NAFTA. Mercosur attempted to form a unitary colony. This, however, broke apart in a series of wars, the results of which plague Northern Colombia to this day.

  Uhuru, which lies to the north of Taurania, was given to the Organization of African States. This organization attempted a colonization project much the same as Mercosur, but with even more hideous results. (See Republic of Northern Uhuru, History of, for example. See the Mutara-Kegeli Genocide, for example.)

  The Arab League parcel was not made the award of any given state. Rather, the area settled by the Arabs was unitary and later broke up or developed, depending, into something like nation states. A peculiarity of the Arab League Mandate is that a portion of it was given by the Arab League to Israel. Much was made of it, on Earth and at the time, as showing a spirit of conciliation and peacemaking. This was not the case, however. All the Arab League wanted was for some place of settlement to attract out as many Jews from Israel as possible. Arab colonists were not consulted in the matter.

  For various reasons having to do with Old Earth politics, Australia was given no award on the new world though New Zealand was. The population of Australia, such as wished to settle elsewhere, tended to gravitate either to Anglia, New Wellington, the Federated States, the Republic of Northern Uhuru, or—as a distant last choice—Secordia in South Columbia.

  A final subcontinental sized island, dubbed Atlantis, lies in the Mar Furioso, midway between the Columbias and Taurania. This is the enclave of United Earth . . .

  Chronology, History of, Part VII:

  Time on Terra Nova, on the other hand, is measured since Anno Condita, "the year of the founding." This would not be 2037, the year in which the robotic exploratory vessel, Cristobal Colon, actually found the rift and the planet. Rather, AC is the year in which the first, sadly failed, colonization attempt was made from Earth, in the Old Earth year, 2060.

  Establishment of a local calendar spelt a considerable problem for those early settlers who followed after the Cheng Ho disaster (qv). The Terra Novan year corresponded very closely to the Terran year, there being 31,556,926 seconds to an Old Earth year and 31,209,799 seconds in each orbit of the new world about its sun.

  For the Salafi settlers this presented even more of a problem, one made worse by the fact that, rather than the one moon of Earth by which the Islamic calendar ran, Terra Nova had three, none of which quite ran to any schedule that suited the traditional Islamic calendar. The Islamics settled this more or less mathematically, by adding a fourteenth month, to commemorate the "Second Hejira," or Pilgrimage, adding days to some months, and creating a complex set of calculations to keep this calendar in synchronization.

  One advantage to the new Islamic calendar was that now, at least, it matched the actual year for the world on which it was practiced.

  From all parties—Secular, Islamic, Christian, Buddhist, etc—there was strong pressure to maintain the twenty-four hour day, of which Terra Nova had three hundred and fifty-five, and the sixty minute hour. This was done by increasing the length of the Terra Novan second to 1.017533901 Earth seconds. Ten months (basically the original months of the Roman Republic) of five weeks each were established, with an intercalary period of five or, rarely, six days between 35 December and 1 Martius.

  It has worked about as well as any calendar system ever has, and perhaps a bit better than most.

  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 Anglia
ns 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.

  Ric
ardo 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,