by John F. Carr
“Yes, my Mahdi,” he answered. He had forged his weapon, pointed it at their foes, and pulled the trigger. Now it would be as Allah willed.
* * *
The survivors of Company A finally started to see familiar landmarks along the road. But the farms they passed were quiet, abandoned, with people peering out fearfully from behind shuttered windows. As they neared the twin towns of Medina and Eureka, separated only by the Isis River, they could see pillars of smoke in the distance, rising over the towns. The Captain, worn and weary, decided to circle to the south to cross the Isis River at a ford up near the town of New Damascus, rather than ride through the vicinity of Medina and Capsule Town. At this point they had reports to make, and he wanted to avoid any fights before they made them.
The unit was ragged, the horses and men thin and disheveled. If it was not for their weapons, and the careful way they scanned their surroundings, they might have been a group of refugees.
As they neared the ford, a gunshot rang out. “Halt and identify yourself. If you do not cooperate, we will open fire.”
The Captain and Andre dismounted and walked forward, their hands held out to show that they were empty. Their horses walked along beside them. “I’m Captain Kenneth Flint and accompanying me is Lieutenant Andre Bourque, CoDominium Marines. This is Company A from the Haven Volunteers, First Cavalry Regiment. We’re returning from a long patrol, and need to cross the river so we can go to Fort Camerone and make our reports. I need to report to Colonel Trelawney, and he needs to report to Colonel Shawley.”
The guard rose from behind the barricade. He looked at them curiously. “Christ, sir, we thought all of you were dead. And nobody’s going to be reporting in to Colonel Shawley. He’s dead, his staff, too.”
“What?” asked Andre, stunned. “How?”
“They died in Eureka, at a regimental dining out. Colonel Shawley, almost every officer in the Seventy-seventh, the mayor and a lot of important civilians. A bunch of waiters were wearing suicide vests. They never knew what hit them. I don’t think all the officers died, but you’re the first Marine officer I’ve seen since all hell broke loose. It’s open rebellion, sir.
“The Muslims say we killed their Mahdi’s wife. And back east in the mountains, we hear that they have a whole army, with air support, artillery, armor, and who knows what else. An army that’s heading our way. Or into the Shangri-La Valley. The satellites are all down. No nav signals, comms all gone to hell. No one knows for sure what’s going on.”
Andre felt dizzy. His legs felt shaky, and he leaned on his horse for support. He was having trouble taking a breath, but he forced himself to draw a deep one. He mounted his horse as did the Captain.
The Captain raised his hand above his head, and brought it down in the direction of the ford. “Move out!” he ordered.
EPILOGUE
Like most gas giant planets, Cat’s Eye had many moons. On one of the smallest was a tiny CoDominium Naval Intelligence post. It listened constantly to any electronic emissions in the system, whether from ships passing through, from satellites, or from the planet Haven itself. Advanced filtering technology, unavailable outside Naval Intelligence, allowed them to intercept many messages otherwise unavailable due to disturbances in Cat’s Eye’s magnetosphere.
The watch officer collected the information that had come in over the past few days. Loss of signals from communication and navigation satellites around Haven. Radio reports of bandit attacks. Rumors of armored and mechanized infantry units. A week of radio jamming signals from various points in the Girdle of God mountains. News of the terror bombing that killed most of the officers of the Seventy-seventh Marines. And an urgent request for assistance from the Governor.
The watch officer turned this into a single electronic data package, and sent it to a dark automated sphere, lurking near one of Byers’ Star’s Alderson points. That sphere would travel down the Alderson tramline to the next star, transmit its signal to the next sphere, which would travel to the next star, and so on. In this way, since almost all of the travel time from Earth to Haven was in the transits between Alderson points, a message could reach the CoDominium Navy’s headquarters on Luna in months, not the year that a normal journey took.
And once it reached HQ, because bad news always moves more quickly, the data package from Haven flew up the chain of command, all the way to Admiral Lermontov himself.
Help would soon be on the way.
Crofton’s Encyclopedia of Contemporary History and Social Issues (Second Edition)
THE BROTHERHOOD
There is little factual data on the Brotherhood, a secret network of CoDominium colonial worlds united against CD rule. Officially, according to the CoDominium Intelligence Bureau (CIB), no such organization exists, nor ever has. Despite the lack of official confirmation, there is sufficient evidence that such a cabal does exist, and continues to exert influence upon CoDominium policies and regulations concerning the colony worlds.
Five of the wealthiest colonial worlds appear to be in command of the Brotherhood; those worlds have been identified as Friedland, Levant, Sauron, Stalin, and Xanadu. At least a dozen other worlds have shown evidence of possible ties to the Brotherhood. Among these are worlds as diverse as Covenant, Frystaat, Istvan and Harley’s world.
The growth of the Brotherhood has been accelerated by the recent acceleration of naval budget cuts, which have forced the CoDominium Navy to reduce patrols to the outer colony worlds. Many of these frontier colony worlds do not possess sufficient military force to protect themselves from external aggression due to insufficient population, adverse environmental conditions and lack of industrial development. Therefore it is only natural to find them turning to larger and more prosperous colonies for the aid and protection which can no longer be guaranteed by the CoDominium.
There has been evidence of actual sedition against CoDominium rule on several colonies, including Ferris, Greenworld, Istvan, and Wolfe. On Istvan revolutionary forces, supported and supplied by Stalin, were able to overthrow local government and proclaim a new planetary entity. Only direct intervention by the CoDominium Navy and the destruction of two Stalin heavy cruisers stopped Istvan from becoming a vassal world.
Due to recent budgetary reductions it is debatable if today such a large operation could be conducted more than eight months travel distance from CD Naval Headquarters at Luna Base. The CoDominium Grand Senate has debated this issue, but has tabled any motion to increase the Navy’s budget or other alternatives to deal with this threat to the CoDominium’s continued existence.
It has long been suspected that several of these colonies who guide the Brotherhood have purchased immunity from further Grand Senate investigation by hidden contributions of grants and honorariums to a score of Senators.
The glue that binds the Brotherhood’s alliance appears to be solely that of opposition to the CoDominium Government. This is the only explanation for the continuing alliance of such antithetical governments as those of Stalin and Levant. One suspects that were the CoDominium to further reduce its presence in the colonies, or leave them entirely, this ‘working alliance’ would quickly come to an end as each of the major powers struggled to build its own sphere of influence against other power centers and each other.
One thing is certain: The Brotherhood is growing increasingly bold. The Istvan Operation of 2072 provides direct evidence of this. Advanced arms and munitions were provided by Stalin to the local Revolutionary People’s Government which led to the quick overthrow of the legitimate government and the destruction of local CoDominium troops (a brigade of the Eighteenth CD Marines). Only Colonel John Christian Falkenberg’s brilliant campaign prevented Stalin from gaining a foothold on a vital CD colony.
There is some evidence that after the disastrous and sudden turnaround at Istvan that the Brotherhood has decided to keep its operations aimed at worlds outside the heart of CD influence and pick its targets where CD influence is waning or gone altogether. Planets at high threat includ
e Churchill, Haven, New Washington, and Wolfe.
PEACE AT ANY PRICE
John F. Carr
ONE
2076 A.D., Ceres
VICE-ADMIRAL SERGEI LERMONTOV stared into the viewscreen while he collected his thoughts. The heavy cruiser Relentless was framed by the black vacuum of space and might have been mistaken for a Tri-V display except for the winking lights of tugs as they maneuvered the cruiser into her berth.
Relentless was one of six capital ships permanently assigned to the Ceres watch. Ceres Base was the port-of-entry for all ships entering or leaving the Sol System. Any ship discovered leaving the system without a CD customs seal was subject to confiscation. Any ship still under power after the third warning was subject to vaporization.
This was the CoDominium’s attempt to protect the colonies from any spillover from Earth politics and/or national disputes. Now, the latest wrinkle was keeping the Colonials out of Earth’s wars; just last week they’d intercepted a Friedlander transport crammed with arms to be smuggled into the German Free Territories where a resurrected Freikorps was up to their usual proto-Nazi mischief.
There were times when Lermontov wondered just who he was protecting from whom. Unfortunately, mankind had not only taken his tools, art and culture to the hundred known colonized planets, but his ages-old hatreds and wars as well. There was a growing swell of fratricidal madness that threatened not just old Earth, but the embryonic civilization in the stars.
Only the CoDominium had the power and armed force to keep peace on strife-ridden Earth and in the thin spattering of humankind across this corner of the galaxy. The CoDominium, alas, comprised those same elements of humanity, and was just as riddled with nationalism, corruption, and self-interest. It was only the dedication of a few officials and officers, like John Christian Falkenberg, the man he was about to meet with, who kept alive the guttering candle of civilization.
There was a knock at the door. He pressed a button and the door slid open to reveal his adjutant, Vadim Kuznetsov. “The colonel is here, Admiral.”
“Please show him in, Smitty.” This was a private joke based on the adjutant’s surname. Carried to its logical conclusion, the adjutant would have descended from the founder of a Washington institution. For Kuznetsov, whose serf great-grandfather had actually been a blacksmith, the kuznets joke was wearing rather thin. He about-faced and opened the door.
Colonel John Falkenberg entered and saluted. Lermontov noticed a few streaks of gray in the younger man’s sandy-colored hair and made a quick calculation: thirty-two years old and already Falkenberg had the look of a man a decade older. Command did that; look at Grand Senator Martin Grant, he looked twenty years beyond his present age. And I’m not doing much better.
“I got your note at Luna City. Would’ve been here sooner but I had to provide transport for the Forty-second.”
Lermontov saw no trace of the resentment most men would have shown upon being called back to active duty after a four year tour of the outer planets and with a month left of leave still coming to him. Yet, Falkenberg had always been something of a loner, even more so after his quick-ending marriage to Grace Conrady. Most men would have turned bitter over such a failed union; Falkenberg had only become more dedicated to his regiment and to the CoDominium.
“I’m sorry to cut your leave short, Colonel, but we have a true emergency.”
Falkenberg’s wry smile asked, “So what else is new?”
“Also an opportunity. I thought that might get your attention, Colonel. It’s a revolt on Haven; serious enough to have halted all gallium shipments.”
Falkenberg emitted a sharp whistle. “Haven supplies forty percent of all the CoDominium’s gallium; that’s going to cause big problems.”
“Allenby at the Bureau of Resources says they have sixteen month supply stockpiled, but that’s not a lot of margin. At full throttle, it’s a six-month run to Haven so you don’t have lot of time. But I want results— and I don’t care how you do it.”
“Yes, sir,” Falkenberg said stiffly.
“I’m not authorizing extermination, Colonel. Just telling you to use your best judgment, and don’t worry about Board of Inquiry later. Everyone wants this problem settled quickly.”
“That’s a first.”
“I know. Times are tough dirtside, and no one wants to see the current recession blossom into a depression. Not on either side. Even Japan’s feeling the pinch. On this project, for the first and maybe only time in my life, I get everybody’s cooperation.”
“What’s the opportunity you mentioned?”
“Dover Mineral Development has promised us their total support for our ’78 Naval Appropriations in the Grand Senate if we take care of their little problem. I don’t have to tell you what a help that will be.” No one knew better than the Lermontov just how much money it took to keep the Navy healthy and just how hard it was to squeeze a drop of blood from the flint-hearted Grand Senate. Even their allies had been nervous over the ’78 Appropriations Bill.
“Haven,” Falkenberg mused. “End-of-the-Line, a barely-habitable moon. Grand Senator Adrian Bronson’s behind DMD and they’re richer than God. You know how I feel about the Bronsons….”
“We both know they were behind getting you transferred from the Navy to the Marines. And they’ve fought the last two Appropriation bills tooth and nail. We do this job for them and we have their total support— for now.”
Falkenberg swallowed. “So what’ll it take to make them happy?”
“First, you must bring the revolt to an end. Then eliminate the problem—use your own discretion on this; bring the instigator back in chains if you want—just get him off Haven.”
“Who’s the black hat in this drama?”
“The Mahdi. Secular name is Tawfiq al Talib. He was aboard a rust bucket making the hajj run up Red Sea when food ran out and they started rationing water in Second Class. This was with a sea temperature of eighty-five and an air temperature of a hundred-seventeen.
“Tawfiq discovered that First Class passengers were still eating ice cream and showering in fresh water while Second Class babies died of dehydration. It ended up with several hundred Crew and First Class passengers walking the plank and our present Mahdi, along with all Second Class passengers, walking the gangway into a Bureau of Relocation transport.
“The powers that be decided that he and his followers were too dangerous to leave on Earth. The Colonial Office offered to ship them all out to End-of-the-Line, since Haven already had a large population of Middle Easterners and Asiatics. Governor Bronson was not happy about the Bureau of Relocation’s decision to dump almost a million of them on Haven, after the Moroccan Food Riots in 2060. So Bronson refused the landing craft permission to land in the Shangri-La Valley. Instead they were shunted off to the even more god-forsaken northern steppes.
“There’s a big lake there, called the Dire Lake; it’s more a swamp than a lake despite the fact it’s the size of Lake Michigan. Very shallow, except where the Dire River drains into the lake. Now, it just so happens that a huge gallium mine was conveniently located there, and I’ll leave it to you to guess who owns the mine.”
Falkenberg smiled. “Dover Mineral Development. I thought it was Kennicott that owned the mineral rights on Haven? What’s Bronson’s outfit doing there?”
Lermontov removed his spectacles to clean the lenses. When he was finished, he looked up owlishly and said, “Kennicott never really owned the mineral rights; they just took them. In actuality they belonged to the Church of New Universal Harmony. In fact, one of the first things Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson did, after he arrived on Haven as the new Consul-General, was to force Kennicott Metals to pay past and present royalties to the Harmonies—”
“Oh,” Falkenberg interrupted. “I would have loved to have seen Senator DeSilva’s face when he was informed of that fact!”
“Yes, it was told to me that he was mightily disturbed. This, however, made Erhenfeld very popular with the Harmonies and h
e had no problem getting his hands on the mining rights to the Highlands. But, getting back to our present situation, the Mahdi was transported to Haven about twenty years ago. Time enough to make a name for himself on Haven and bring all the tribes and sons of Allah together in jihad against the Company.”
“Makes sense,” Falkenberg observed. “The crew and First Class passengers back on Earth were probably all Muslim, too, so he gets even by taking it out against some totally agnostic corporation.”
“It appears so. You could probably use a little background. How much do you know about Haven, John?”
“Just the usual encyclopedia stuff since I’ve never been there. It’s run by some holy Joes, the New Harmonies, and became a CoDominium Protectorate because its mines are valuable enough that the big companies didn’t want the Haveners to get all the profits. I know there are some serious disputes between Dover, Reynolds Off-World and Kennicott Metals over which company controls the hafnium deposits and the shimmer stone formations. Haven’s marginally habitable, like Tanith or Fulson’s World; no one would live there if it weren’t for the hafnium and gallium mines—and, of course, the shimmer stones.
“It’s over a year away on commercial transport from Earth so the Bureau of Relocation has used it as a dumping ground for Earth’s troubles—mostly Asiatics ‘because they are more acclimatized to desert life’. I wonder what genius in the Population Control Bureau arrived at the conclusion that Haven was a desert, when the equatorial zones can freeze an unsuited man in less than twelve hours and storms in the northern latitudes can be as bad as an Antarctic ice storm. On top of that, the air is as thin as an Andes mountaintop!”
“You exaggerate, but not by much,” Lermontov said. “The Colonial Office authorized some gene-shaping, before it was outlawed in ’39, and they’ve got some plant life pumping out a little oxygen in the equatorial area of the Shangri-La Valley. The northern latitudes look like scenes taken from some of the old American propaganda films about Gulag life in Siberia during the worst of Stalin’s pogroms in the 1930s. Only these Zeks can never leave.