by Tom Kratman
The tank rocked as del Rio fired a round point blank into the oncoming Sumeris. The shell exploded a bit farther than would have been ideal but the Sumeris went down anyway, killed or wounded or merely stunned by the explosion behind them.
Perez shouted into the microphone, "Jorge, back up! Back up, dammit!" Mendoza threw the tank into reverse and stepped on the gas. These actions were automatic; he didn't need to see. Instead, he looked up and saw parties of the enemy racing along the roofs on both side of the street. Several of them carried rocket grenade launchers.
Distracted by the threat above, Mendoza lost track of the direction his tank was going. Instead of moving directly back, it lurched at a slight angle to the lay of the street. Thus, just after passing an intersection, the left rear struck the wall of a building, smashing it and lurching up on the mound of adobe fragments it created. The tank bellied up and stuck on the mound.
Perez was firing the heavy, pintle-mounted machine gun in front of the commander's hatch, the steady hammering feeling like blows to the driver. Maybe Perez saw the attackers above; maybe he didn't. The firing stopped, in any case, when the tank crashed into the wall and came to a sudden halt. Mendoza, stunned but not out, keyed the microphone on his CVC and tried to warn Perez. "Sergeant Per-"
Whatever warning he was about to give was cut off when an RGL round, fired from above, struck the top of the tank, over the engine compartment. Jorge didn't see the hit, but he felt the sudden overpressure all around him as if it were a set of massive clubs, applied equally and simultaneously to every square inch of his body.
He didn't feel the second round impact on the roof of the turret. Nor did he feel it when a round of the ammunition, caught halfway between the armored carousel below the turret and the breechblock of the gun, went off.
Having seen off the spoiling attack, Sada, Qabaash and a few of their men retraced their steps back toward the command post. It was daylight now and, even though he knew in principle that he was at least as likely to be seen crossing the trench across the park at night as in the day, it still took all the courage Sada could muster to take that first crouched-over step out into the sunlit trench.
The shelling had stopped, which seemed to Sada a good thing as the shards from the airbursts might well have found them out even below ground level in the uncovered ditch. On the other hand, the helicopters above seemed as threatening.
"But they're not looking down here at all," Sada said to himself. "Hmmm. If I had an RGL would it be worth the shot? No matter, since I don't."
Halfway across the park Sada and his party turned left and followed a narrower, zigzagging section of the trench that led to the apartment building's basements. Nobody saw them, all the enemies' eyes still fixed on the buildings looming above.
X.
Private Muqtada Fawash saw one RGL round strike the tank's rear grill, setting it alight. The blast knocked forward the man in the tank's commander's hatch who had been stoutly serving his machine gun until the moment the blast hit. Muqtada didn't know if that blast had killed him. He was certain that the second round impacting had been fatal though; it was so close to the enemy tanker's body that it should have cut his torso nearly in two.
As impressive as that was, it was as nothing to the blast that came a fraction of a second later when, so the private assumed, the second RGL set off some-almost certainly not all-of the tank's internally stowed ammunition.
Right before Fawash's eyes two bodies were blown completely out of the tank. The first-the tank commander's-flew almost straight up and in two pieces, a geyser of flame following it. The second was expelled from the driver's compartment. The force must have been something awful, for it had caused the driver's legs to be nicked off when they struck the inside ring of the hatch.
Fawash winced in sympathy.
Muqtada was a bit of an oddity in the Sumeri Army, though not all that uncommon in Sada's brigade. He whispered a prayer as his hand reached up to caress a small golden cross hung about his neck. Then, he hurried to where the second body had fallen to see what he could do to help a fellow Christian.
There wasn't much, Muqtada saw, once he got a good look at Jorge Mendoza's body. Still, what I can; I must. He cleared Jorge's airway and made sure he could breathe. Then he took the cord from the CVC helmet and tied it around one leg to stop the gush of blood. The victim's belt did for the other. Best I can do. He made a quick sign of the cross over Jorge just as his sergeant barked, "Fawash, get your Nazrani ass in gear."
"Yes, Sergeant."
Fawash hurried, like a good soldier, following his sergeant. In accordance with the prearranged order, this small group of a dozen men was to fan out left and find some position that could be defended and which would block or delay the enemy advance into the area just reconquered.
Daugher and Bowman trembled with an almost sexual excitement. This was going to be so much fun. Carrera, Soult and Mitchell were calmer. Let what is coming, come.
The Sumeris came on fast, a dozen of them, right up the street. It wasn't bad tactics, Carrera thought, just a desperate mission that required throwing the book away. They were plainly looking more to accomplishing their mission than to safety.
Amateurs initiate an ambush by doing something silly like shouting, "Fire!" Professionals begin one by simply opening fire with their most powerful weapon. In this case, that was a light machine gun carried by that human fireplug, Mitchell, who still kept the fleeing trooper from earlier beside him. Carrera waited until the Sumeris were well into the kill zone before slapping Mitchell's back. From behind the flattened automobile tire where the two had taken cover Mitchell depressed the trigger and stitched an entire rotary drum magazine, seventy-five rounds, into the Sumeris, spraying bullets out as if from a water hose. Men twisted and fell, spilling blood across the street. Before the drum was empty the barrel was smoking.
On the other side of the street from Carrera, Daugher and Bowman joined in gleefully but taking more care to target individuals. Bowman counted off, "One… two… three…" He was counting bodies, not bursts.
By the time the last Sumeri was down, a uniformed tribune dropped beside Carrera and Mitchell. "Legate, it's Tribune Valdez, 6th motherfucking Cazador Cohort. What are my chingada orders?"
Carrera answered, simply, "Contain and destroy that outbreak ahead."
The tribune arose, made a half a salute and then turned to urge his men forward.
"C'mon, you scrofulous pieces of runny shit!" Valdez cried. "There's enemy up ahead and you can kill their buggered asses. Now move, fuckheads!"
As he was moving forward, still cursing a storm, Valdez happened to look down at the Sumeri bodies in the street and was struck by the glint of a small golden cross, strung around the neck of one of them.
Interlude
12 April, 2092, Rift Transition Point
The technology had improved considerably. Ships were larger, lighter and stronger. They could carry more. Moreover, deep sleep techniques had improved to the point that the colonization ships could be stuffed almost to the rafters with people who, thus suspended, needed neither food nor air. Only the crews remained awake during the voyages, and even they slept for as much as two thirds of the time. The crews had shrunk considerably as the ships had grown more reliable and automation had further improved.
The colonists' livestock, too, could be sent in greater numbers and variety. There was even room for seeding the new world with the animals, especially the endangered animals, of the old. (Though some of Old Earth's endangered animals were themselves dangers to Terra Nova's.) Moreover, cows could make cows, rice plants could be set in moist earth to make more rice seed, horses made more horses. Little machinery was shipped, and that mostly of the simplest types. Books came digitalized. Medicines and some medical equipment were sometimes sent.
There were ninety-seven ships, either built, laid, or planned. They were, in comparison to earlier vessels, huge, capable of hauling as many as fifty thousand passengers in deep sleep. Their li
ght sails… well, "enormous" hardly did them justice. The ships took months to load and unload.
To fill those ships voluntarily, however, required an end point at which the passengers would feel comfortable. The Agreement of 2087 divided up the new world into sections roughly comparable to the areas held by the nations and supranationals of Earth, which sections were then often further subdivided. In the division, some got a bit more than they'd had; some got a bit less. Switzerland's colony, Helvetia, had a bit less mountain and a bit more pasture. Japan's Yamato was an island chain of three large islands and numerous small ones, and was somewhat larger in land area-though just as mountainous and almost as resource poor-as the home islands. Canada got a largely frozen wasteland. It also was next to the colony for the United States. As Canadians saw it, this made sense. They knew their Americans and knew that no American-founded colony would stint their war department. Thus, how else could their settlers ultimately get the best defense in the world and have to pay nearly nothing for it.
Mexico, too, wanted a land border with the gringo colony. From the point of view of the upper classes that had ruled Mexico to their own benefit for so very long, how else could they hope to export the masses of the jobless and hungry their preferred system was sure to create unless there were to be a labor hungry and prosperous land nearby? They were reasonably certain the Americans, wherever they went, would create such a land.
Not everyone was a volunteer, of course. The nations of Earth sometimes used their allotted ships to send off their criminals en masse. Unsurprisingly, their criminals often did very well in the new land. Others used it as a population control measure. China's people often took the space route to fecundity, since the one-child policy, except for party leaders and the rich, was being strictly enforced again. India's poor were given the choice of departure or continuing to sleep on the pavement and starve. They went in droves and died in droves.
Weapons were permitted to the new settlers by most Earth governments, if the settlers could afford them. Wisely, most elected to bring a level of technology, roughly that of late seventeenth- to early eighteenth-century Earth, which could be sustained. Some Earth companies, for example, made not-so-small fortunes building flintlock rifles for the emigrant trade. Flint could be found; percussion caps required industrial manufacture.
This load, leaving the solar system and transiting the rift on the 12th of April, 2092, consisted of colonists from the Republics of Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras, all in the vessel Amerigo Vespucci, Captain Ngobe Mzilikazi, UNSN, Commanding. The Vespucci departed without incident, accelerated to the requisite speed for transition, reached the rift, and disappeared from Earth's view.
Chapter Twenty-Four The courage of your enemy honors you. -Arab saying
Ninewa, 9/3/461 AC
It took two days to contain and clear out the remnants of the spoiling attack Sada had launched. When it was finally done, the legion was pleased to discover that about half the century that had been under assault had managed to hold out in a stout adobe building and beat off all attacks. Even the wounded who had not made it to the building were found, as often as not, neatly laid out and, to the extent practical, cared for, in nearby structures. The sergeant in charge, though wounded, was still ready to fight when the first relieving troops reached him.
He didn't have a bad word to say about the Sumeris, but he had more than a few for Manuel Rocaberti. After hearing the sergeant out, Carrera had returned to the command post and had a long conversation with Parilla.
Parilla and Carrera were still talking as Manuel Rocaberti entered the legion's command post. A private, looking very frightened, stood to one side under a guard supervised by McNamara. The Dux and legate immediately stopped whatever the conversation had been and turned to face the tribune. The private was the same one who been stopped and arrested for desertion under fire.
"Manuel," Parilla began, "The legate and I were just discussing what to do with this man. Carrera wants him shot before the legion. I think maybe we should be kinder, under the circumstances. You're still officially his commander. What do you think?"
Rocaberti had been surprised that he had not been arrested when he'd shown up to report the destruction of his century. He assumed, then, that they must have all been killed but for this private. It was either that, or the position of his uncle, that was acting to save him. Perhaps it was both. Still, that also made the private the only possible witness against him.
"Shoot him," Rocaberti answered. "Court-martial him and shoot him. Discipline ought to be maintained."
Though it jarred his half-healed wound, raising a wince, Parilla's fist lashed out of its own accord, catching Rocaberti on the jaw and knocking him to the floor. He was surprisingly fast for someone nearly in his sixties.
" That was your last chance, Manuel," Parilla said. "Sergeant Major McNamara, arrest this man. He is charged with desertion under fire. And release the private back to his unit."
University Quarter, Ninewa, 10/3/461 AC
The sun was up enough to cast long shadows across the streets and parks of the town.
Carrera sighed, a bit wistfully, looking from his high perch down onto the grounds of the university below. Be a shame to destroy it; it's the only bit of decent architecture I've seen since coming here.
The University of Sumer at Ninewa was smoothly white and surrounded on three sides by a three-meter high wall that, but for the bullet marks, would have been equally smooth and equally white. The river bank made up the fourth side. A green strip of park, fed from the waters of the river, framed the university. Two-lane, one-way boulevards ran to either side of the park.
Because it was older than most of the smashed city behind him, Carrera knew that the University predated the current dictator of the country and so hadn't suffered his megalomaniac urge towards heroic monumentalism or outsized construction. It was low-lying, for the most part, and tasteful in the way that traditional Arabic architecture almost always was, all high windows and graceful arches, with geometric decoration on the walls where those walls were not smooth.
There were three gates into the compound, one in the center facing to the southwest and two more flanking that one to the northwest and southeast at a distance of about four hundred meters. Another broad boulevard led from the town directly to the main gate.
"Patricio, I think you're insane," commented Parilla, standing next to Carrera and looking out over the same scene. "Let someone else go. Send me."
Behind the two, Soult added in, "Goddamn straight."
"Besides," Parilla continued, "you don't know you can trust this man."
Not turning his head to address his friends, Carrera insisted, "He's fought like a soldier so far. No tricks… well, no dirty tricks. He's been a tricksy enough bastard in every permissible way though; that I'll give you."
Clasping his hands behind his back, Carrera began to pace. "Raul, we can't send you," he said. "Your English is, at best, so so. Fahad doesn't speak Spanish. I'm the only one with the right combination of languages and rank. And I don't think it's right to insult this man by sending anyone lesser."
"We could just blast them out, you know," Parilla objected.
"Yes," Carrera agreed slowly. "But then how would we get any future use of them? And I think we're going to need them in the future. I think we've got the best group of Arabs on Terra Nova, right here."
The party went silent then as two assault teams composed of mixed armor and infantry moved into firing position and spent five minutes or so each blasting two large gaps in the university walls. A " practicable breach," Carrera had called it.
"Order the troops to cease fire except in self-defense," he commanded. "Get the air ala circling overhead."
" Amid, there's a white flag showing near the main gate," Qabaash informed Sada. "Just three men, one holding the flag, another with a small loudspeaker, and the last standing there with his arms folded. You suppose they want to surrender? The loudspeake
r asked for you, personally."
Sada looked around at some of the remnants of his filthy, ragged command and answered, "Somehow I doubt they intend to surrender to us."
"Are you going to meet them, Amid? If so, I need to have the barriers at the gate cleared away."
"Can't hurt to talk, I suppose," Sada answered. Every minute we gain… gains us… nothing. "Have someone shout to them that I'll be along in thirty minutes. And, yes, open the gate."
It had begun hot enough, standing there in the open and waiting for the Sumeris to respond. As the sun arose, it grew hotter still, despite the wide swath of pockmarked greenery on which they stood. Sweat poured off the faces of Carrera, Soult and Fahad. Their uniforms, and Fahad's civilian clothing, grew soaked with it even though the dry, dusty air sucked it away almost as fast as it formed.
"There he is," Fahad said. "Magnificent, isn't he?"
Carrera agreed, though he said nothing. The man approaching under flag of truce was caked with sweat and dust, but tall, well built, and walked like a man of fierce courage still.
Carrera's party stood in place while the Sumeri approached. Sada stopped only once, gaping at Fahad from just recognition distance. Fahad made a small bow, Yes, my general, it is me.
"How may I be of service?" Sada asked in polite, Anglian accented English. He looked at Carrera's eyes and thought, Creepy, like the Blue Jinn. Glancing at Fahad again, he added, to Carrera, "I gather you know who I am."
Taking the hint, Carrera offered his hand, which Sada took, and introduced himself, adding, "Your men have fought well, as have you."
"Thank you, Liwa Patricio." In the Arab way, Sada used rank and first name. "And, might I add, they're ready to keep on doing so."
Carrera bit his lower lip, doubtfully. "For a while," he conceded. "But the rest of your army, elsewhere, has folded. These are the only men who've made a good stand. It would be a shame to rob your country of them now, don't you think?"