Caliphate

by Tom Kratman

  The girl produced a small pencil. The boy unlaced a shoe. Meara thought he understood the purpose of the pencil, to weaken the tape that bound him so the children could tear it. But why did the boy tie the shoelace loosely around his neck? Why did the girl put the pencil through the loop and begin to twist it?

  * * *

  Retief looked down at the buggy-eyed, blue-faced corpse with its tongue swollen and blackened. The corpse, still bound to its chair, was of the one he thought of as the "fat prisoner." There were two children nearby, coloreds, looking down at the grotesque, obscene thing with an odd mix of innocence, hate and pure satisfaction.

  No time to worry about that now. Later, maybe. If there's a later and if it matters. Besides, there are enough children hurt here not to worry too much about one renegade.

  He reached for an intercom button. "Retief here. It's not as bad as it felt. We've got some kids hurt. Some of them might be dead. And one of the prisoners is definitely dead."

  "Can you toss them to lighten the load?" the pilot asked. "Every inch might count."

  "I won't toss the kids. I can toss the dead prisoner," Retief answered. "He's so fucking huge he might give us the lift we need all on his own."

  "Do it."

  Retief, though no weakling, found it impossible to pick up and carry Meara's obese corpse. After a couple of attempts, he gave up the notion. Instead, he stepped over the corpse and began to roll it, chair and all, towards the back of the airship's lounge, to where the viewing ports had been completely shattered. He had to kick some of the clear material, a kind of double layered glass with a plastic binder between the layers, out of the way. Once that was done, he again went to Meara's corpse and, with a great grunting heave, pushed it over the stern.

  It wasn't enough to give the airship much more lift but for some reason Retief's spirit felt a bit uplifted. There had to have been a reason those children had strangled the wretch, after all.

  an-Nessang, Province of Baya, 24 Muharram,

  1538 AH (4 November, 2113)

  With a gasp of pain, Hamilton half collapsed against the black- painted auto. It was too dark to see if Petra was inside, and she was strong enough not to cry out.

  "Petra, please tell me you're in there," Hamilton said, after wrenching the door open.

  Still shivering, she tossed the bolt cutters aside and flew out from under the cover of the concealing blanket, scrambled over the backs of the front seats, and wrapped him in a desperate hug.

  "I thought you forgot about me," she said. "I thought you and Hans were dead and everything had failed. I was expecting to be found and crucified. I had to kill a man."

  "You had to . . . never mind. Honey, I've got some bad news and you ought to sit down for it. And besides, we need to hurry to the lake."

  Hamilton had expected a scene. Petra didn't deliver. Instead, she simply asked, "My brother died a free man?"

  "Yes."

  "Then it is well. It's all he wanted; that, and to fight against our enemy. Ling knows?"

  "Yes. She didn't take it well."

  Petra nodded as she backed into the front passenger seat. "No . . . no, she wouldn't."

  "Was she in love with him?" Hamilton asked.

  "I think . . . maybe . . . she wanted to be. I think she could have been, in time. And maybe, too, she thinks she was."

  Hamilton nodded understanding. He then reached under the seat, his fingers questing for the key. "Where are you, you little . . . ah, here you are." He put the key in the ignition, said a probably hopeless prayer, and turned it. Half to his surprise the car started immediately. He reached up, took the goggles off of his head and set them on the seat between himself and Petra. Only then did he turn on the headlights and put the car's automatic transmission into drive.

  Over the sound of the engine, and coming from somewhere above, Hamilton heard the sonic boom of a fast moving aircraft.

  Flight Seven Nine Three, 24 Muharram,

  1538 AH (4 November, 2113)

  "Come this way, children!" Retief shouted over the crying and the roar of air rushing through shattered viewports. "Come to the center. It will be safer there. If someone's hurt, help them. Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!"

  He was surprised by how well they followed his orders. Maybe, he thought, just maybe, when you're born a slave you simply learn very young to accept the bad part of life and deal with it. Whatever the benefits now, it's still shitty.

  Retief arranged the kids as best he could on the deck of the lounge. They covered an area of perhaps twenty by thirty feet. He thought about moving the tables around them but, No way; they're bolted down. The chairs he could move, though, and he began to.

  Without a word, Matheson, seeing what the Boer was doing, dragged himself over and lay on his side along one edge of the layer of children. His body, he thought, would be better than nothing for protection from fragment.

  Retief nodded in approval. Now there's a good man, he thought.

  He was dragging a brace of the chairs from the side to the center when he saw a sudden fireball in the night, the light reflecting off the waters of the lake, now below, to the clouds, above.

  Wide-eyed, Retief asked, "What the . . . ?"

  "Seven Nine Three? Swiss Airspace Control. We have been ordered to defend you. If you have any self-defense capability, go to weapons tight immediately."

  "Switzerland this is Seven Nine Three. We've got nothing. What's your ETA?"

  "Look behind you, Seven Nine Three. Hell, look around you."

  The pilot saw nothing initially, then a sudden burst of light from somewhere behind lit up the world. In that light he caught a glimpse of a brace of fighters. He thought he saw a large red cross painted on each fighter's tail. Down below he was certain he saw several armed patrol boats leaving for the deeper water. Those definitely came from the Swiss side of the lake.

  Lee, still in Ling's voice, said, "Switzerland . . . Seven Nine Three. Honey, for that I would consider changing my sexual polarity."

  On the other end, a female Swiss Armed Forces radio operator looked at a microphone in considerable confusion, before answering, "If you're a girl, Seven Nine Three, and are as sexy as you sound, you'll do just fine."

  "We'll talk," Lee/Ling said. "Later."

  Highway 12, Province of Baya, 24 Muharram,

  1538 AH (4 November, 2113)

  Late, late, late . . . shit. Hamilton drove like a madman. This was not, in itself, a problem; everyone in the Caliphate who drove, drove like a madman. But, what with castles blowing up, firefights, janissaries being alerted, dogfights overhead . . .

  Seeing a road sign, mostly rusted through and in any case barely legible, Hamilton made a sudden decision. He slowed and jerked the wheel to the right, swinging onto another highway heading north.

  Petra asked, "What are you doing?"

  "Sudden rush of brains to the head," he answered. "All attention is on what's going on around and above the lake . . . that, and the castle. So what we're going to do—and, yes, it's a risk—is swing around af- Fridhav and come in from the other side. I think we're more likely to get away with this coming in from the east."

  Petra chewed at her lower lip for a few moments before saying, "If you think that's best, I'll trust you."

  And doesn't that make my chest swell? Hamilton thought.

  Flight Seven Nine Three, 24 Muharram,

  1538 AH (4 November, 2113)

  The shoreline swelled before him, all rocks and trees. The airship was in ground effect now, and still half a mile from shore. The pilot really didn't know if they'd make it. His control panel had become a Christmas tree of red lights from punctured gas cells and damaged or failing engines. Even if they did make it across, though, the airship wasn't going to land; it was going to crash.

  But there are degrees of crashing, Lee reassured himself. Some are worse than others.

  Calmly, or as calmly as one could expect anyway, the pilot brought the airship in closer and closer to shore. About a thousand feet out, he
flicked a switch to dump the fuel. A sudden slight ballooning upward told him that had worked. He'd not been sure that it would, with all the damage the ship had taken.

  He killed the main forward rotors, causing the ship to slow considerably. What little fuel remained in the system would go to the vertical thrusters.

  Slowly . . . slowly . . . slowly the shore edged closer. The nose touched and began to crumple. There was still a lot of mass in the airship, and a lot of inertia. It was enough to half crush it. That mass drove the ship inexorably forward to ruin. At the last second, the pilot threw Ling's arms over her face.

  And that was the last thing he remembered for quite some time.

  af-Fridhav, Province of Baya, 24 Muharram,

  1538 AH (4 November, 2113)

  Over the little tourist boats Hamilton stood with a set of bolt cutters in one hand. The boats were lit by the flames on the other side of the lake. The flames suggested to Hamilton that his worst fears were realized: The ship had crashed and burned, the people— including the freed children—were lost, and the virus somewhere at the bottom of the lake.

  "Does that mean . . . ?" Petra asked.

  "I'm afraid it might."

  Her shoulders slumped and she seemed on the verge of tears. "To have come so far . . . "

  Hamilton put his unencumbered arm around her and said, "But we're still alive. And we have to get away." If we can get away. I was counting on our slipping through in the confusion . . . but if the airship's already down maybe there won't be enough confusion.

  "Damned right you do, asshole!" sounded in Hamilton's ear, startling him.

  "Bernie?" he asked. "You're alive?"

  "No, I'm speaking to you from the great beyond, baas. Of course I'm alive."

  "But the fire?"

  "The pilot dumped fuel to gain some altitude and reduce the chance of fire. I don't know what touched the fuel off, a tracer, maybe. Then again, there's been enough shit flying that it could have been anything. Now get your ass over here. There are Swiss medics and rescue personnel taking care of us, and a helluva fight in the air and on the lake. In the confusion . . . "

  While Hamilton was talking, Petra looked at him as if he'd gone slightly mad.

  "Oh, and Caruthers is here. He says move your ass."

  Hamilton looked down at Petra and laughed. "They're alive! And we're going to stay that way, too. Hop in, Honey. Untie the boat while I cut the chain."

  The boat's electric motor was virtually silent. At first, and for just under an hour, Hamilton followed the northern shore. The lights of the fight on the water and in the air receded. When he judged it was safe enough to do so, he cut the wheel hard port and set off into the lake.

  His eyes scanned nervously about, as did Petra's. He kept his weapon leaning against the steering column. Hers she kept in her hands. She knew, intellectually, that it would be little defense against a patrol boat. That didn't matter. The comfort of the weapon was not in its ability to defend her. It was in its ability to make her a target to be shot rather than a victim to be taken, tried, and crucified.

  Or worse than crucified, she thought. Someone to be re-enslaved.

  "Get ready," Hamilton whispered. "There's something up ahead, a patrol boat, I think."

  What he saw in his goggles she didn't know. That he moved the submachine gun resting on the steering column to a position across his legs frightened her. She grasped her own weapon all the more tightly.

  "Ah shit," he said. "They've seen us."

  Petra pulled the submachine gun to her shoulder. She couldn't see anything yet, not having goggles. No matter; when the enemy appeared, she would be ready.

  "That won't be much use, you know," Hamilton said.

  "Depends on the purpose," Petra answered. He understood completely.

  The boat had four life jackets draped over the back. Hamilton pointed to them and told her, "Dump the burka and put one on. The water's cold but we might still make it if we swim for it."

  "Or they might take us alive from the water," she answered. "No thanks."

  He nodded that he understood that, too.

  "If this were faster I'd try to ram them," he said. "As is, I doubt they'd feel the nudge."

  Petra heard the first inklings of a heavy engine, somewhere up ahead. The boat that Hamilton had seen seemed to loom in the darkness. She aimed her submachine gun at it and was just about to pull the trigger when Hamilton began to laugh. That was odd enough that she lowered her weapon . . . and then screamed as the boat bearing down on them opened fire.

  Hamilton saw immediately, as Petra didn't, that the patrol boat ahead was firing high. He immediately ducked low into the little stolen rental, dragging her down with him. For her part, her finger was still on the trigger of her submachine gun. The twin shocks of having fire pass overhead, and being dragged downward, caused her finger to tighten. The weapon fired into the bottom of the boat, three rounds before the thing further shocked her into releasing the trigger.

  That was too late, of course. Water immediately began spurting up through the newly created holes.

  "Ah, shit," Hamilton said, as a stream of icy water took him in the neck. The boat wouldn't sink; he was sure of that much. Between the walls of the hull it was sealed foam. Even so, as it sank its resistance to the water would increase to the point it would be faster—and with the boat rapidly filling, no colder—to swim.

  The patrol boat in front of them suddenly leapt forward, missing the little pleasure boat by feet and rocking it dangerously. It might have capsized but that its center of gravity was already somewhat lower.

  Hamilton struggled to put his rear on the seat and his hands and feet at the controls. "Bail!" he shouted to Petra, as the boat began moving ahead.

  "Bail?"

  "Use your hands . . . anything you can find, actually, to get the water out of the bottom of the boat."

  Petra, being careful this time to put the safety on the submachine gun, bent over and began to scoop. That wouldn't do more than buy a little time, but it was better than nothing. With a naval battle developing furiously behind them, Hamilton pushed the little boat toward shore for all it was worth.

  "Which isn't too bloody fucking much," he muttered. The water rising above his ankles sent a chill up his spine. Petra bailed even more furiously, crying with frustration that the water was still rising.

  "Matheson!" he shouted aloud. No answer. They might have put him under. Crap. "Ling?" Nothing. Probably hurt in the landing. Shit. I think I can haul Petra to shore . . . but we'll both be better than half frozen.

  "Get out of your burka and put on a life vest, honey," he said.

  "Why?" she asked, still bailing.

  "We're not going to get picked up by the Caliphate; that Swiss patrol boat will see to that. But we're going to have to swim for it."

  "I CAN'T!"

  "No matter, honey, I CAN."

  * * *

  Hamilton didn't put on a life jacket. It would have interfered with his swimming and hauling Petra to safety. Besides, he was a very strong swimmer and simply didn't think he needed one.

  The top of the boat was almost flush with the water now, the little engine deader than chivalry. The firefight between the patrol boats behind them had ended, but without knowing who had won, Hamilton didn't think they should risk staying with the foundered recreation boat. Odds are only fifty-fifty of being found by a friend if we stay here, he thought. Our odds of making the swim are a little better than that. He could see the far shore in his night vision goggles but, with those giving no depth perception, he couldn't be sure of how far away it was. No worse than fifty-fifty, anyway, he amended.

  "This is going to be really cold, Petra," he said, very gently. "Over the side now."

  Nodding, she bent at the waist, put both hands on the gunnels, and stepped over into the water. Her mouth opened into a wide, round "O" with her silent scream.

  Bracing himself, Hamilton eased himself over. Oh, God, this is cold. He moved his body to be
almost parallel to the surface and said, still gently, "Grab hold."

  Petra didn't move, but just clung to the side of the boat. Instead of telling her again, Hamilton took her hands, one by one, and placed them around his neck, interlacing the fingers. Twisting within the circle of her arms, he kicked away from the boat and began a slow, energy-conserving, breaststroke. Though she made no answer, Hamilton talked to Petra constantly to keep her awake and alive.

  "You're going to like freedom, Petra . . . I can't wait to take you on a boat where no one's trying to kill us, honey . . . Babe, wait until you see the shopping in New York City . . . Love, scuba is just more fun than you can imagine . . . "