by John F. Carr
She looked out at the towns below her. Medina with its dusty mud walls. The cylinders of Capsule Town, containing the vessels that landed them on this world, and providing pressurized cocoons where women bore their children. And beyond the Dire River and the bridge that crossed it, the gallite miner’s city of Eureka. On a hill overlooking Eureka in the distance was the CoDominium’s Fort Camerone.
The twin towns still bore the scars of the CoDominium’s foolish experiment of nine years ago. Even after all these years, the effects of the asteroid strike were all too easy to find. Their intent had been to replenish Dire Lake with the ball of ice. But they had miscalculated, and nearly destroyed their outpost on its shores. She still remembered the tsunami that roared through the low parts of town and the blast of steam that brought whole buildings down.
She was lucky. The house that his followers had built for their leader had been constructed to withstand attacks of all types and had sheltered her during the crisis. But she would never forget the carnage of the days that followed. There were some who called it Allah’s Fist and congratulated themselves on the righteousness that had saved them. For those who knew, and accepted the truth, it hardened their hatred for the CoDominium. Both were arguments for extremism among a people who followed that path more than they should.
A’isha looked at the clock. She could wait for her husband no longer. She had to go down to Capsule Town for a meeting with the accountants and bankers. The Mahdi had given her authority over that operation, which brought much wealth to their movement, although not as much since the CoDominium government had started taxing it. It grated to think that they were paying the bills for their own oppression, but if Allah willed it, that arrangement would someday change.
* * *
The morning after the bar fight, Lieutenant Bourque stood beside Captain Flint as he made his report to Colonel Jack Trelawney, the Commandant of the Haven Volunteers. Trelawney sat behind a large wooden desk in a sparsely furnished office, a big man, balding, with a bluff, friendly demeanor. His Chief of Staff, Major Pritchard, a shorter, wiry man, sat in a chair beside the desk.
“So let me get this straight, Captain,” the Colonel said. “No deaths or serious injuries on either side.”
“No sir,” Flint answered.
“And the bar owner will be seeking restitution from the thugs who insulted your men.”
“Correct.”
“Then, since you are about to get First Sergeant out on patrol and sobered up,” the Colonel said with a grin appearing, “the only problem we have left is the fact that our new compatriot here, despite already visiting our drinking establishments, has not been offered a drink himself.”
The Colonel smiled at Andre, “An omission I trust we will address this evening.”
“Will do, sir,” Flint said with a grin.
His attention now on Andre, the Colonel asked, “And what does Colonel Shawley think of all this?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Andre replied. “I haven’t seen him yet.”
“Oh, dear boy, you are wet around the ears, aren’t you? As a CoDominium officer, you never arrive anywhere without first reporting in to the senior officer on station.” Trelawney turned to Prichard. “Major, see if you can’t get this straightened out without too much harm to our young friend.”
So Prichard took Flint and Andre in tow and headed out toward Fort Camerone. After passing through the checks of the sentries, they made their way to the Regimental offices. The three of them waited in an outer office for nearly a half hour before an orderly ushered them in.
Colonel Shawley’s office was similar to Colonel Trelawney’s only in function. The room was richly decorated with military memorabilia and fine furniture, and was absolutely spotless. The Colonel was behind the desk, his eyes on a computer screen on the desk in front of him. Resplendent in Marine dress blues, his hair cropped tight and his back straight, the Colonel was an intimidating sight.
“What is it, Prichard?” he snapped without looking up.
“Morning, Colonel,” the Militia Major replied. “I brought your young Lieutenant from Headquarters in Castell City to report in.” He looked pointedly at Andre, who snapped off a rigid salute.
“Lieutenant Andre Bourque, CoDominium Military Headquarters Staff, reporting for duty, sir.” Andre stepped forward and laid a letter on Shawley’s desk. The Colonel looked at it with distaste.
“And where were you billeted last night, Lieutenant?” the Colonel asked.
“With the militia, sir, I figured that I should get started on my mission immediately.”
“You thought wrong,” the Colonel snapped, glaring at Andre. “You may have been born on this pesthole of a planet, but you are a commissioned CoDominium officer, and you need to remember where your loyalties lie. The last thing I need is for you to forget yourself and go native among these colonials with their ridiculous equine experiment. You’ve started your time here by insulting me, and now you need to get back on track.
“You will report in to my staff, be briefed on what we expect of you, and when you return from this fool’s errand of a patrol, you will report back to my staff for debriefing, and we will prepare the message I want you to bring back to Headquarters. Am I understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Andre said.
“Now,” the Colonel ordered, “get out of here, so I can get back to work.”
The three of them saluted, and left the office. When they were down the hall and out of earshot, Flint whispered to Prichard, “That went well.”
When Andre looked surprised, Prichard smirked and said, “You should see him on a bad day. Now, his G3 is down the hall, I suggest you check in with them for the briefing he mentioned, and return to us only when you’ve completed your business with your own organization.”
“Thanks, sir,” said Andre, and headed off down the hall.
* * *
A nondescript man in dusty robes and a dark turban went into one of the small coffee and tobacco shops on the main street above Capsule Town. Or at least, in addition to the hideously expensive greenhouse-grown real items, they sold other products that substituted for coffee and tobacco here on the highlands. This was one of the less reputable shops on the street. They would also put a little alcohol in your drink for an extra price, take you into a back room with dancing girls for another extra price, and take you to rooms behind that where you could get cozy with the girls for a large extra price. The sign above the door was the image of an angry looking bear.
In one of the booths, the man saw another angry bear. Or at least, a man who looked like one, assuming that you could find a bear with red hair. The man’s hair was under his turban, but his huge red beard spilled down his chest, and his dark eyes peered out from beneath bristling red eyebrows. If a bear he was, it was a giant one, as he looked to be two meters tall when he stood up. He was not a fat man, but he was massive and imposing, and his voice filled the air. It was Barbarossa, one of the Mahdi’s senior military leaders. And to those of unsavory reputations, he was also widely suspected as kingpin of all things illegal in Medina.
The man slid into the booth, and Barbarossa raised an eyebrow at him, lowering his voice. “You have it?” he asked.
The man nodded, and slid a radio across the table.
“The microphone and transmitter has been hidden as you requested. It is connected to a solar panel, so you don’t have to worry about changing batteries. And this unit can store an electronic record of what it receives for up to twenty-four hours. Anything the woman says will be available to us.”
“Good,” Barbarossa replied. There was no need to say who ‘the woman’ was. A’isha and her social programs had been a thorn in his side for a long time. He pushed the receiver back toward the man. “But I need you to keep this device yourself. I have been called to our fortress, and leave in the morning. You can be the one to monitor what goes on. I need to know what is going on in that room. My business is suffering, and I think I know why.”
Barbarossa grinned at the man. “You can get your money in the back. Or, another form of payment, if that suits your fancy.”
The nondescript man smiled back with a smile that would have chilled a lesser man than Barbarossa. “I’m sure you have something that will suit my fancy.”
* * *
Lieutenant Bourque, his errands with the Marines complete, found his way back to the militia stables and a fenced in small field, or paddock. He found Captain Flint and went to his side.
“Gentlemen,” the Captain said, “This is Lieutenant Bourque, the Marine who will be attached to our unit. He is a native Havener, born in the Shangri-La Valley. Lieutenant, this is Lieutenant McKenna of First Platoon, and Lieutenant Patterson of Second Platoon. McKenna hails from Scotland, while Patterson comes from Canada.”
Andre shook their hands and greeted them. McKenna looked unhappy about something while Patterson gave him a sunny smile.
There was a man on horseback in the center of the paddock, giving a demonstration on riding without using the reins. He had a pistol in one hand and sword in the other. He had dark skin and an interesting turban.
“Oh,” Andre said, “I see that you do have Muslims in your unit. I’d been told otherwise.”
“Dinnae let him hear ye say that,” McKenna replied. “It’s a Sikh he is, and tetchy about it. The only Muslims in the unit are our scouts and translators, the two gay lads sitting on the fence over there.”
Andre looked and saw two slender young men, bareheaded, smiling and laughing. “They do look happy.”
“Nae,” McKenna said. “Gay I said and gay I meant. Fakeh and Dafiq left Medina to avoid being killed for their preferences. We give ’em shelter, so we can count on their loyalty. Other units have to struggle with ‘infidels’ as translators, but these lads are far better.”
Flint interjected, “We don’t want the divide between our troops and the Muslims, and have tried to incorporate them into the militia, but every time we bring them into our units, trouble ensues. So we end up with the militia and the Faithful glaring at each other from two opposite sides of the fence.”
Andre stood with the other officers, watching the training. He saw that, even though he had ridden a horse frequently as a young man growing up in the Shangri-La Valley, he had a lot to learn.
“I fire pretty well standing on the ground, but I don’t know how I would do firing mounted,” he said.
“Don’t get the idea from our training that we normally fight from horseback,” Flint said. “Our forces would more properly be called dragoons, since we travel on horse, but fight dismounted. There are enough automatic weapons on the steppes that a mounted charge could quickly turn into a disaster.
“And the First Regiment is a Regiment in name only. Our Company, which in cavalry organization might also be called a squadron, is the only company formed so far. And instead of four platoons, we just have the two, and a small command element. So our force consists of those two platoons of fifty men, and a ten-man headquarters element that includes me, the first sergeant, bugler, guidon, surgeon, farrier, radio operator and three quartermaster personnel. So one hundred and ten of us in all.”
Andre squinted and stared at some troopers standing on the other side of the paddock.
“Are those women?” he asked.
“Yes,” Flint answered. “Troopers Jacobs and Swenson. The militia doesn’t share the CoDominium Marines’ reactionary views on women in combat. If they want to fight, pass the physical fitness tests and can make it through training, they’re welcome to join us. And they come in handy when we need to do searches. The Muslims go buggy when a man gets near their women.”
Flint yelled over to a trooper, who soon brought a mount over for Andre.
“We need to get you in the saddle quickly,” he said. “We’re leaving on patrol in just over a week, and you need to get some calluses on your butt.”
Andre thought he was kidding, but by the end of the day, he knew what Flint had meant. Riding rubbed you in places that never normally got rubbed, as well as working muscles that usually didn’t get worked. Fortunately, they had given him a great mount, a sturdy but gentle mare named Lizzy.
On top of that he got a stack of manuals thrown at him. Most were reprints of nineteenth century manuals on cavalry unit organization and tactics. Andre found that, regardless of whose idea the cavalry unit was, Major Prichard was its intellectual father. He was the one who took the old, dry tactics and explained them to others, or developed modifications that made more sense. He was passionate in defending the idea of mounted troops, convinced that—until Haven developed an industrial base—the horse was the best means of developing a mobile military force, at least in the quantities required to patrol open areas like the northern steppes.
“Give me twenty trucks, or a hundred horses, then come back in ten years,” he would say. “And you’ll find two or three operating trucks if you’re lucky. But you might find two hundred horses.”
Andre had to admit this made sense. You could see the evidence of Prichard’s logic everywhere you went on Haven. While Castell City and other towns on the rivers of the Shangri-La Valley were starting to see paved roads and automobiles in small numbers, you didn’t have to go far to see horses and other beasts of burden dominating the economy. And if the people of the steppes were using horses for transport, it only made sense for the military to do the same. Officers like Shawley didn’t have the imagination to let go of tactics and weapons developed on industrialized worlds, even when it was the most practical course of action. Maybe it had something to do with being born on Earth.
* * *
Tawfiq did not return to Medina on the day he had been expected, or even the day after, or days beyond that. A’isha did not worry, though, as his duties often kept him away from home. The CoDominium considered the Muslim population of the steppes of Haven as a problem, but it was a problem of their own making. There was unrest, squalor and rampant crime, but there would have been so much more if it were not for the efforts of their own leadership.
A’isha had spent the last few days in Capsule Town, reviewing the operation of the birthing chambers, whose pressurized air helped mitigate the problems that plagued so many pregnancies and births on Haven. The operation had become a large source of revenue for the Faithful, with the privileged families of mining company employees willing to pay dearly for the services they provided which were more effective than even a trip to the lowlands of the Shangri-La Valley. In fact, there was so much demand from paying customers that one of the hardest decisions they faced was how much of the capsule availability would be set aside for those among the Faithful who could not pay for the services they required.
Now A’isha walked the dusty streets of the tent city that sat on the outskirts of Medina, with one bodyguard scouting the street ahead, two more obvious bodyguards walking beside her and another bodyguard or two behind her. At her left side was Laith, known even to infidels as the Lion, who had been her head bodyguard since the day after that attack in Capsule Town, just after Nabil was born. He had defended her many times since then—the Mahdi had many enemies, who targeted not only him but his family and his friends.
Laith was a large man, intimidating, with close cropped hair and no beard. He always wore a pair of pistols, one on each hip. His eyes constantly scanned the crowd, and she wondered if he ever tired of his duties. He certainly never let any weariness distract him.
The tents were mobbed as usual with a squalling mass of humanity. They came in on the shuttles, which were then loaded with the gallite that dominated the economy of this region for the return voyage. The transportees came from locations throughout the Muslim world, but primarily from the regions known as the “Stans,” the lands of Central Asia that were being depopulated by the Russian arm of the Bureau of Relocation. They came with the clothes on their backs and sometimes with a small bundle of possessions, but not with much more. The informal refugee council, which she headed, provided the newcomers with
sturdy shoes from local cobblers, warm but simple garb, a coat, a blanket as well as a few essentials and toiletries.
The transportees were then sorted by family and tribe, by trade and profession and provided training on Haven, its odd day and night cycle, its seasons, its flora and its fauna. Then they were sent off to a place that could best accommodate and support them. Some of the better educated were lucky and were hired for decent jobs in town. But far too many were just marched off into the steppes to serve as day laborers on farms, condemned to a life of brute labor on a hard land where they would be lucky to be allowed to share in revenues from the crops they raised to feed themselves. Not to mention being provided the means to keep themselves from freezing in Haven’s harsh winters.
The stronger ones were sent to the mines where many were maimed or died in accidents.
A’isha took note of what was being done right in the camp and what was being done wrong. The camp looked chaotic because of all the activity, but was well ordered with each street marked and each tent numbered. She stopped from time to time to offer advice or corrections, or sometimes simply words of encouragement. A few she asked to meet her later in her offices. The transportees often did not know who she was, but could tell she was important and often begged and pleaded for her help. But never threatened, not with the Lion and her other bodyguards standing at her side.
Finally, her duties in the camp finished, she headed for the offices that managed the transportee reception operation. She met with one woman in particular; whose statements in the camp had concerned her.
“You say that young women have been disappearing in the camp?” she asked.
“Yes,” replied the woman. “And it is the pretty ones who disappear. Even those who cover themselves, as is proper.”
A’isha thought about this, and asked, “Are there any women who appear to be singling these women out? Perhaps observing them when men are not around, and leading them away?”