A Desert Called Peace cl-1

by Tom Kratman

  A Desert Called Peace

  ( Carrera's legions - 1 )

  Tom Kratman

  Tom Kratman

  A Desert Called Peace

  Prologue

  Solitudinum faciunt; pacem appellant (They made a desert and called it peace) -Tacitus

  They called him "the Blue Jinn." He took a small and perverse pride in the title. Blue jinni were evil jinni. That his enemies thought him evil was… pleasant. Even more pleasant was the sight of his enemies, beaten and bleeding, captive and bound.

  The Jinn looked over those enemies in the late afternoon sun. Sinking in the west, the sun's light was carved by the mountains to cast long, sharp shadows across the ground. Much of that ground was covered with the head-bowed, broken prisoners.

  One of those captives, Abdul Aziz ibn Kalb, held his bleeding head upright. Abdul Aziz glared hate at his captors. These were a mix of Pashtun mercenaries-tall and light eyed; light skinned they would have been, too, had the sun not burned them red-brown-and shorter, darker men. All were heavily armed. All sneered back the hate Abdul Aziz felt, mixing with that hate a full measure of disgust and contempt.

  Aziz's hate mixed with and fed on fear. Along with several hundred other male prisoners, and nearly a thousand women and children, Aziz waited to hear his fate. The male prisoners' hands and legs were taped together. Not far away, the women and children waited unbound. The two groups were close enough together that Abdul Aziz could see the noncombatants as well as a small group of his enemies ascending a low hill to his front.

  Leading that group, Abdul Aziz saw, was a uniformed man, medium in height, and with his face and head wrapped with a keffiyah. Another looked oriental. Three more were dressed much as any mullahs would be. A sixth wore the white dress of the emirate of Doha. The last was another man in uniform, bearing the rank badges of a subadar. Trimly bearded, tall and slender, with bright gray eyes, the subadar looked Pashtun to Abdul Aziz.

  That man in the lead partially unwrapped the keffiyah from around his head. Aziz had never seen him before, but had heard enough descriptions to recognize the "Blue Jinn." The Jinn paused and lit a cigarette. He puffed it contemplatively for a few moments. Then he sat back easily in a chair, almost a throne, that had been prepared for him by his followers out of hastily felled and trimmed trees. Even at this distance Abdul Aziz saw the eyes that gave the Jinn his name. Though it was just a trick of the sun, the eyes seemed to glow from the inside like malevolent coals.

  A dark-clad, bearded mullah walked to the microphone of a portable public address set standing in front of the chair and began to speak.

  "I have consulted," he announced, "with the man you probably know as the Blue Jinn, and whom you see to my right, concerning your fate. He, in accordance with the Sharia, has turned the general resolution of your cases over to myself and my fellow mullahs. We have pronounced sentence of death upon you, in accordance with the will of Allah, for complicity in murder."

  It was widely speculated that the mullah only consulted the quarter gold Boerrand the Jinn allegedly paid him for each desired "legal" death sentence he passed on. The Jinn never admitted this. Neither did he deny it.

  "Your young children shall be taken back to your enemy's country," the mullah continued. "Your women, and the girls over twelve, are awarded to his Pashtun Scouts as prizes. Mr. Yamaguchi," and the mullah's head nodded to indicate the oriental man who had accompanied the party, "and Mr. al Ajami," another head nod, "represent certain interests in Yamato and Doha that might wish to buy some of these women and girls from the Scouts. Having consulted with the Jinn I have informed him that there is no religious prohibition to this, that you are all apostates and your women may properly be enslaved. For his part, he says he could care less what happens to them so long as it is within the law."

  A wild and heartrending moan emerged from the cluster of women as the grinning, leering Pashtun began to prod them away to the processing area. Aziz felt a sudden relief that his wife had been spared the ignominy of rape followed by sale into prostitution.

  "As for the rest of you, as I said, you shall die. But the Jinn tells me to inform you that he is solicitous of your souls."

  The mullah stopped speaking and backed away from the microphone. The Blue Jinn stood and took the mullah's place. He spoke in decent Arabic, Aziz was surprised to discover, though his accent was somewhat heavy.

  "Some years ago the actions of your leader and your movement robbed me of my wife and children," the Jinn announced. He turned to the chief mullah. "What does Sura Eighty-one say, O man of God?" he asked.

  The mullah recited aloud, loud enough for the microphone to pick up so that the prisoners could hear, "When the infant girl, buried alive, is asked for what crime she was slain…"

  "What does it mean?"

  "It means, sayidi, when Allah asks who murdered her, for no infant girl can be guilty of a crime."

  "Does Allah approve of burying infant girls alive, then?"

  "He does not. Sura Eighty-one, the Cessations, is concerned with the end of time, Judgment Day, and the punishment of the wicked. God will punish the murderers of infant girls."

  The Jinn's face twitched in the smallest of smiles. "Ah, I see. What does the Holy Koran say about those who bring disorder to the world?

  "It says, O Jinn, in Surah Five, the Table, that those who fight against God or his Apostle, bringing disorder to the world, should be killed, or have the hands and feet cut off on opposite sides, or be exiled, or be crucified."

  "I see," said the uniformed man. "Do those who kill infant girls fight against God? Have these men brought disorder to the world?"

  "They have. They do," answered the mullah, "for this is expressly forbidden under Islam."

  The Jinn turned back to his captives. "I loved my family, even asone supposes-you love your own. I swore, when they were murdered, to avenge myself on all who had contributed, even passively, to my loss. Thus you shall die. I am, though, as Mullah Hassim told you, very solicitous of your fate in the hereafter. So before you die, you will be thoroughly Christianized."

  Then the Jinn smiled, nastily, and turned to his subadar.

  "Crucify them."

  PART I

  Chapter One

  To reap the harvest of perpetual peace…

  – William Shakespeare, King Richard III

  UEPF Spirit of Peace, Earth Date 25 November, 2510

  Klaxons sounded piercingly throughout the ship as black- uniformed crewmen and women hurried through the cramped metal corridors to this or that necessary duty. Despite the soft, gripping soles of the crew's footwear, needed in the reduced gravity aboard ship, their feet made a rumbling sound that passed through the air and hull. Not a few of the crew's pale faces looked mildly nauseated. Transition through the rift, jumping thousands of light- years in an instant, affected some people like that. Others it seemed not to bother. Nor was there any predicting in advance; the only way to find out was to endure the transition.

  A voice followed the klaxons, emanating from someone on the ship's bridge. "All hands, all hands, secure from transition. Rotating ship in five minutes. Sail crew, stand by to deploy the sail for braking. Captain to the admiral's quarters."

  High Admiral Martin Robinson, United Earth Peace Fleet, was one of those affected badly by the passage. He'd hoped it would not prove so and had his hopes dashed moments after the bridge had announced, "Transition in…"

  Robinson's looks belied his age. Despite being two centuries old, his face remained unlined, his back unstooped, his blue-gray eyes clear and bright. His heart and lungs and all the other organs worked as if they inhabited a twenty-one-year-old body and were no older than that themselves. Even his hair was blond, without a tra
ce of silver or gray, and his hairline unreceded.

  Anti-Decay Accelerating Factor, or ADAF, drugs had been available, at least to Earth's elite, for centuries. As a Class One, the highest of Earth's six castes, the high admiral was very elite indeed.

  Yet neither the apparent age nor the real age had helped one whit to spare Robinson the misery of transition. One moment he had been fine, if a bit nervous. The next had seen his mind temporarily erased as his body disassembled and reassembled in an imperceptible instant. With the next he was on all fours on the deck of his cabin, projectile vomiting, moaning, and cursing.

  It was in this position, vile smelling puke forming a puddle beneath him, washing over his hands in a flood and spreading to stain the knees of the black uniform trousers, that the captain of the Spirit of Peace found her admiral and the incoming system and fleet commander.

  The captain of the ship, Marguerite Wallenstein, accompanied by two of the voiceless proles that handled janitorial services for the largely middle to upper-caste crew, hurried to kneel at the admiral's side and help him regain his chair. The proles set immediately on hands and knees to cleaning up the vomit while Wallenstein went to a nearby cabinet and took from it an amber bottle and two glasses. She poured herself and the admiral a drink.

  Color was just returning to Robinson's drained face as he gratefully accepted the glass from Wallenstein.

  "I was warned what to expect but nothing-," the admiral began.

  "Nothing prepares you for it," Wallenstein finished. "I know. It gets better-a bit, anyway-after you've done it a few times."

  "How many times have you…?"

  "This is my fifth transition," Wallenstein said, "and hopefully my next to last."

  Younger than the admiral by some fifty years, Wallenstein looked to be the same age. A leggy, slender and svelte Scandinavian, she was a Class Two, ranking just below the admiral in the hereditary order of United Earth. Like him, she received full benefit of all the ADAF therapy and might, with luck, live to see five hundred. Not precisely beautiful-nose a bit too large and eyes a bit too small, she still exuded much of the earthy sexuality the application of which had seen her through difficult times in her rise within the hierarchy of the UEPF. What low shipboard gravity did for her breasts didn't hurt, either.

  A competent officer, Wallenstein had ambitions. Chief among these was to be raised to class one, followed by promotion to admiral, even high admiral, and then to take what she considered her rightful place among the ruling caste. It would be a rare honor and achievement. She also knew that without a powerful sponsor it would never come to pass.

  The proles finished their odiferous task and, bowing deeply and respectfully to the captain and the admiral, made a quiet exit from the suite. Neither of the upper-caste officers bothered to return the bows, even symbolically. They forgot about the proles as soon as they, and the smell of vomit, had left. Who knew or cared what proles thought, after all?

  "You should have waited in freeze, Martin," Wallenstein said reproachfully, once they were alone.

  The admiral shrugged, already half recovered. "It seems to pass quickly. And I did want to experience the transition, once anyway. Speaking of freeze, though, what of our passengers?"

  "No malfunctions, if that's what you mean," Wallenstein answered. "They'll stay in freeze until a few days before we assume orbit. We haven't the stores to feed and water them without recourse to Atlantis Base, anyway."

  Robinson nodded his understanding and agreement. Moreover, it would be months before the ship would be able to take orbit around the target world. He had great respect for the position-or at least for the power- of the clergy of Earth, but really didn't want them for company for all that time. The representative of the caliph of Rome, in particular, grew tiresome very quickly, despite the body she would share gleefully and for the asking.

  And on that not entirely happy thought, Robinson considered inviting the captain, once again, to his bed.

  It would be a long braking maneuver before the ship assumed orbit and, while he could, by right and tradition, bed any female of the crew he wished, he had found the captain's technique most agreeable, especially in low gravity. Wallenstein would make Peace 's long descent to the planet something other than a trial.

  Peace was one of thirty-three ships now in system. Four of these were of the same, Spirit, class. Another twenty-three were of one of the older but similar classes. The Spirits were slightly larger than the rest, but only slightly. They were ovoid, at just under two hundred meters across and three hundred long. Their silvery skin shone when the sun was just right. Only on closer inspection could one see that the apparently smooth surfaces were pocked with the marks of hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of strikes by astral debris.

  Still, at a distance the ships-all twenty-seven that could be seen from below by the locals if the locals used powerful telescopes, as some did-seemed pristine, powerful and invulnerable.

  Only one of the petty states that infested the surface of the planet below had made any effort to match the power of the majestic and apparently invulnerable fleet. Just how successful that attempt had been was a matter of considerable conjecture, both above and below.

  All of the ships, newer and older, were said to be armed to the teeth. Those arms, specifically Peace 's arms, had been used exactly twice since the once invulnerable fleet had been established. It was too risky to do so now, though. Having seen two of its cities destroyed by nuclear fire from the fleet, the state so victimized had moved Heaven and Earth to eliminate the fleet's invulnerability.

  That state, the locals called it the "Federated States of Columbia," had made the effort in a spirit of revenge as much as survival. "Once burned; twice shy" was the common saying. Having seen two of its cities burned off the map toward the close of the great war that had convulsed the planet decades before, their equivalent saying had become, "Twice burned; a third time and we nuke you until you glow." The Fed bastards had actually had the effrontery to demonstrate that the threat was not idle, tracking, intercepting and destroying a robotic courier ship to prove their point. An armed and decidedly hostile standoff had ensued with more than a thousand (the exact number was deep-classified) of FSC nuclear-tipped and hypervelocity missiles pointed into space, and a like number of Peace Fleet warheads aimed expressly at the FSC. Moreover, it was widely believed that the FSC maintained, in addition to its nuclear missiles, some hundreds of mobile railguns and charged particle beam weapons capable of reaching into space either to defend against incoming UEPF warheads or, if those weapons were as good as they might be, even reaching out to touch the ships of the fleet.

  The Peace Fleet might have destroyed the FSC, damn the retaliation, then, except that at the same time the FSC had demonstrated the ability to deluge Atlantis Island, the Peace Fleet base on planet, with too much nuclear fire to intercept. Since the families of the crews were on that base…

  Besides the twenty-seven ships locked in geosynchronous orbit, six more were held farther back, one behind each of the planet's three moons-in order of size: Hecate, Eris and Bellona-and three more guarding the rift point. These six were of varying types but, while having some defense capability, were designed generally for the support of the "tooth" elements of the fleet. This was longstanding practice, not a reaction to the FSC's threat. Indeed, insofar as Earth itself was concerned, there had been no reaction to the threats. Earth no longer understood threats, it had been so long.

  In Orbit Above Terra Nova, 19 April, 2511

  The blue-green planet turned slowly and majestically below, its day-side pastels interrupted only by concentrations of white clouds. The right quarter of the planet was plunged in night. Cities came into view as bright sparks and thick lines, especially along the planet's southern hemisphere.

  Watching the scene on the wall-mounted view screen that hung in his sleeping cabin, High Admiral Robinson shook his head in something between dismay and disgust. So many people, twelve times or more what we have on Old
Earth. And so uncivilized. Before I left home I was briefed that they were a potential threat, but only when you see the size of their cities, so much brighter than our own now, do you realize just how many of the barbarians there are, just how much potential for violence they have.

  The picture on the sleeping cabin view screen was better than the one in his main cabin. For all that, it was still flawed. Multicolored lines flickered across it from right to left. Sometimes they were wide, sometimes quite narrow. They were always an annoyance and they never went completely away.

  It had been a long braking before Spirit of Peace assumed orbit over the new world. Give Wallenstein her due, she's as competent a skipper as she is a bedmate. She's brought her command in flawlessly. Now if she would only stop hinting that she wants me to back her for a rise in caste.

  The Spirits- Spirit of Peace, Spirit of Unity, Spirit of Harmony and Spirit of Brotherhood- were the newest ships in the fleet, the most recent having been launched just over one hundred and twenty Earth years ago. The others were much older. One of the others, the UEPF Kofi Annan, was nearly four centuries old. Earth could not build another. Even the ancient Annan was beyond her ability to recreate.

  And that was the problem. The new world, Terra Nova, could not build them or their like either, yet. Yet was the operative word. The day was soon coming when the natives could build starships. The day was coming when the natives could come up looking. Worse, the day was probably coming when they would.

  And Earth couldn't resist them now, thought the still youthful high admiral of the fleet, watching the screen and lying in his extra wide bunk next to the peacefully snoring Wallenstein, not if they manage to get off-planet and out of the system. Barbarians.

  Robinson looked over at the captain and considered giving it another go. Why not? Despite his centuries of age, the ADAF therapy had given him the vigor of a young man, along with the skill and grace of a much older one. Anti-agathics were one of the truly remarkable breakthroughs of Earth's medical science. It was no mean achievement and had contributed much to the peace, order and stability of Old Earth that its critically important leadership actually had the time now to truly run things. Indeed, no one given the full treatments had yet died of any natural cause. Perhaps, if Robinson lived to see his third or fourth century, further breakthroughs might extend his life indefinitely. On the other hand, it had been a century since the last DAF gene advance. At least, he could not think of another since. He wasn't actually sure that anyone was even trying. Very few of even the very few progeny of the elites seemed much interested in science anymore. They were fewer even that chose to serve in the United Earth Peace Fleet and those were few enough.