by John F. Carr
Major Savage studied the ramrod-straight veteran and decided God was still alive. “At ease,” he said, and endured another ear-shattering “SAH!”
He glanced at Hawes and saw instant agreement.
“Sergeant Major, how quickly can you recruit a full regiment?”
The answer came without hesitation. “Ten days, SAH!”
“Carry on, Sergeant,” Captain Hawes said. Turning to Savage he added, “I believe the sun is sufficiently over the yardarm.” They left Lobsang Dorji in charge and repaired to the nearest grog shop.
“Do you think he can really do it?” Hawes asked over their second chota peg.
Jeremy Savage didn’t know. But he had learned that sergeants when left to their own devices could usually get things done. It was kibitzing from incompetent officers that created chaos.
“They’re boys all right,” Hawes observed a week later, “but they’re damned sure not recruits.”
Sergeant Major Lobsang Dorji had gotten his own message out over the local radio and in six and one half days the muster was complete. The regiment was not much for marching in step but the recruiting party was well under budget with uniforms since most brought their own.
When questioned about the promptness with which he had raised a regiment, the Sergeant Major explained, “SAH! We were under contract in Africa. Only one month since we come home.” Lobsang Dorji’s conduct and paper work were impeccable but, like many sergeants major, he was incapable of conversing in less than a shout.
Captain Hawes pronounced himself satisfied and while they engaged transport back to the Cape for planetary liftoff the men consolidated their families and possessions and all hands engaged in one of the noisy and bizarre rites of their amalgam of Hindu, Buddhist and more ancient Tantric rites. Jeremy Savage had once inquired into the meaning of this ceremony and had come away with the same vague sense of confusion that had followed his first experience with transubstantiation. Three months later the CoDominium First Gurkhas passed through the airlocks into Ceres Base.
And waited.
After a week Captain Hawes cadged transport for one battalion on a freighter heading for Haven and, knowing the urgency of Colonel Falkenberg’s situation, took the HQ battalion, leaving Major Savage to drill the remainder of the regiment in Ceres’ near-zero G.
THREE
GRAND SENATOR MARTIN GRANT stood at the bar in his Senate chambers and poured two tumblers full of Danube brandy, handing one to the Vice Admiral and taking the other himself. Grant returned to his desk chair and took a deep drink. “Ah. I needed that.”
Vice Admiral Sergei Lermontov, a tall, slim man with rimless spectacles perched on his thin nose, sat opposite in a leather chair made of some exotic leather from Comstock. Lermontov, Vice-Admiral of the CoDominium Navy, was second in command only to Grand Admiral Doni. He was also the keen mind behind the Navy’s recent string of military successes, victories that were coming back to haunt him in the form of Naval budget cuts and capital ship reductions.
The smaller minded among the senators, which these days appeared to be the majority, were using these victories as an argument for fewer battlecruisers. The argument was that the new heavy cruisers, large enough to hold six gunboats and a Marine regiment, could theoretically act as a small flotilla. In some cases they were right, in the hands of captains like John Grant, Jr., Rolf Hartmann, or Bartholomew Ramsey, who was up for Admiral any day now. In the hands of the incompetent, they were invariably too little and too late.
The heavy cruisers were kept on continual patrol between the colony worlds of their sector and were almost always out of touch, easy when oftentimes ships were themselves the fastest means of communication between worlds. Sometimes the Navy needed capital ships to keep the peace, as in the case of the Second Danube Rebellion where it had taken three battlecruisers and their support ships to defeat the Danubian fleet, and eight Marine regiments to install an uneasy peace.
Now the Senate was using its investigatory powers to meddle in the actual running of the fleet itself; the reason behind Lermontov’s trip from Ceres Base to Luna to testify before a Senate Armed Services Investigating Committee. As head of Naval Appropriations, Grant had done everything possible to stock the Committee with allies but it had been blocked in a number of cases by the team of Nash and Bronson.
Grant took another sip of brandy, noting that Lermontov had hardly touched his, and said, “I don’t know about you, Sergei, but I need something to soothe these frayed nerves of mine.”
Lermontov took a sip, probably out of politeness, and nodded his agreement.
“You acquitted yourself well on the Floor today. Fine job. Old Hartford T. Nash and Adrian Bronson looked at you as if they’d prefer to see you skinned, flayed, and spitted. What did you ever do to old Hartford?”
Lermontov sighed. “His son, Bradley, was my executive officer on the CDSS Ajax. Young Nash was a good lieutenant and had a bright future in the Navy; in fact, his father had great plans for the lad: nothing less than Grand Admiral. When he was killed in action old Nash looked for a scapegoat. When I was exonerated in a General Court Martial he almost had a stroke. Ever since then he’s been looking for ways to get back at me.”
“You’d better hope Falkenberg acquits himself with glory on Haven before you’re accused of favoritism or worse. According to regulations, a general—senior colonel at least—should have been put in charge of the Haven expedition.”
“I have complete faith in John Christian. If the job can be done with only one regiment of Marines, he’s the one man who can do it. If he can’t, the worst they can accuse me of is penny pinching. And their hands are farther up the hose than mine.”
Senator Grant nodded his accord. Most of this year’s Naval budget had already been spent. As it was they’d had to send Falkenberg out in one of the Ceres’ patrol ships. Besides, the Forty-second Marines had been the only Line regiment in System; they’d have had to wait weeks before the Twelfth and the Sixth arrived back from Comstock—or send cadets straight out of the Academy here on Luna.
“Obviously the Committee didn’t agree, or they wouldn’t have sent General Shafter Parker. Man’s only seen action once in his entire career, and that was back in ‘58 when he put down a glorified prison break on Fulson’s World.”
“Parker is an embarrassment to the Service,” Lermontov agreed. “I’d rather have someone more competent in charge of the fact-finding committee.”
“Nobody competent would take the job. At best they’d have to relieve Falkenberg and take charge of a disheartened and under-strength command. At worst they’d have to abandon Haven. Only a suet-head like Parker could see any possibilities for advancement in a job like this.”
“Parker has to redeem himself,” Lermontov said. “after those charges the Governor of Saratoga made…” The Grand Senate had squelched the investigation after they found out Parker had been using his Marines as tax collectors and smugglers. Only an ignorant peasant mentality would believe it could get away with hiring them out as mercenaries to various land barons.
“The Grand Senate,” he continued, “decided it wouldn’t do the CoDominium’s already-tarnished image any good if word got out that one of its senior officers was even more venal than critics claim.”
“Hypocrites,” Grant replied. “Now Old Nash has gotten two birds with one stone: he’s rid of a political embarrassment and possibly smudged your reputation if Falkenberg can’t command his usual miracle. They may get exactly what they deserve if Parker relieves Colonel Falkenberg on some trumped-up nonsense and the Arabs send them all packing.”
“It must not happen, Martin. Haven is one piece of the CoDominium economy that might prove impossible to replace. Falkenberg must prevail.”
“You’re laying a lot of weight on that young man. The Mahdi and his hotheads may not be all that Falkenberg faces on Haven. CD Intelligence reports violations of the Haven Blockade by Levantine privateers and gun runners. This has all the markings of another Brothe
rhood venture.”
Lermontov frowned. “Naval Intelligence has suspected that for some time. I wanted to station a battlecruiser there for months, but none are available in that Sector. You can thank the Grand Senate for that.”
“Why not?” Martin Grant said. “Sometimes they act as if the Navy and the Senate are competitors. Just the other day Senator Bronson was complaining to me that the illegal sales of Cordoban smackhaft was cutting into his profits on borloi from his Tanith plantations. He wanted me to send a fleet and an army to halt the Cordoban drug trade which we all know is sponsored by the Brotherhood. Wouldn’t that just be the jewel in our crown of empire!”
“As a humanitarian gesture for those poor devils who’ve been shanghaied there, it might be worth doing,” Lermontov said, “But I don’t command a fleet just to maximize Bronson’s drug profits. I do agree with him though, that it’s time to do something about the Brotherhood. They’ve grown brazen enough to recruit right here on Luna Base at the Marine Academy.”
“So I’ve heard,” Senator Grant said. “CDI has managed to infiltrate the lower levels of the Brotherhood, but we’ve yet to place anyone in the top ranks. Give us time.”
“The Academy Commandant just ran out of time. We’re going to arrest him and several instructors tomorrow. I suggest we make a few other such surgical strikes throughout the CoDominium.”
Grant paused a moment to mull over how many different ways this could backfire. “Go ahead and cleanup the Academy,” he finally said. “But for now, I say we leave the Brotherhood alone.”
When Lermontov raised his eyebrows Grant added, “Can you imagine a more unnatural marriage than Levant and Sauron? How long would that alliance last if the CoDominium were suddenly gone? Hours at most. The Brotherhood is a lot like the old Mafia; everyone suspects that it exists but no one will admit they belong. And like the Mafia, which began as a resistance to the French invasion of Sicily, the Brotherhood’s more interested these days in gun-running and dope-smuggling than revolution. Look at the mess they’ve made of Cordoba. And if the Brotherhood goes, what takes its place? The last thing we need right now is a serious CoDominium revolutionary alliance.”
“You’re probably right, Martin. The colonies are nowhere near ready to throw off the shackles of CoDominium rule. Their biggest problem, of which they remain blissfully unaware, is that if they make too much noise the CoDominium will just cut them loose—abandon them to starve proudly to independent death.”
“Which is what we’re here to stop,” Martin finished. They clinked glasses, finished off their drinks and Grant said, “Mafia!”
“Shto?” Lermontov blinked.
“Ironic, isn’t it? In eastern dialect it means the same as Dar es Salaam.”
“Mafia,” Lermontov grunted. “Haven of refuge—safe harbor— shore of peace. Ah well. Times change.”
FOUR
2077 A.D., Haven
BY HAVEN standards, Eureka was a cosmopolitan city, with a preponderance of Cornishmen and a few affluent Maronite Christians of Lebanese origin. They were mostly merchants or professionals. At the other end of the narrow bridge across the Isis was Medina, which is simply Arabic for ‘town’, the most famous ‘town’ in Arabia Deserta having been Yathreb before the Prophet brought it profit.
Medina was the usual middle-eastern combination of no public services and too many people, which was why the more affluent Maronite Christians of Lebanese origin tended to settle more in Eureka.
These Maronite Christians are aware of the danger in flaunting wealth needlessly so Medina was a walled town—walls around every house or compound. Inside, if ever a stranger got inside these domestic circumvallations, was every possible gradation from opulence to squalor. Those with nothing to lose wandered the streets with perfect liberty. Anyone dressed in better than rags would not dream of venturing forth without an armed escort.
Most Medinites were dependent on Eureka in one way or another. Mornings and evenings the bridge was clogged with servants and day laborers, all of whom hated their co-lingual Lebanese worse than they did the Cousin Jacks. Occasionally some Cornish hellraker could be seen heading in the opposite direction for the establishments that catered to a giaour trade. The majority of the Medinites, however, observed the Prophet’s command to ‘Let not the first drop pass thy lips.’ in the most literal fashion. In this they were reinforced or coerced by the Mahdi.
The Mahdi, whose secular name was Tawfiq el-Talib, had acquired his surname from the eagerness with which he stretched his limited ability to read by hunting obscure and cabalistic meanings in the most innocuous suras of the Koran. Talib, ‘student’ or ‘seeker’, was well on his way to being an iman when the elders pointed out that it might be more fitting to make hajj first.
Air travel on 21st century Earth was prohibitively expensive for Third Worlders so Tawfiq hitched his way down from the Afghan border to Karachi on a truck convoy. The truckers were so used to hauling munitions and guerrillas that nobody really believed his story about making pilgrimage to Mecca. At Karachi, however, the docks were clogged with pilgrims eager to acquire the title of hajj. Slow as an hour hand, they were trooping aboard the Sidi Ferrous, which had been new before the oil ran out.
The ancient liner had a few first class cabins on the upper deck, and a plenitude of second class below. The remaining pilgrims bought deck passage, cooking their own food over braziers or spirit stoves as the overloaded ship trudged its eight-knot way across the Arabian Sea into the Gulf of Aden, passing in sight of the Hadhramaut Coast through the Bab el-Mandeb, then making a beeline up the middle of the Red Sea for the final eleven hundred kilometers to Jiddah, which is the port for Mecca.
It had been hot in Karachi. The Gulf of Aden was worse. With a breeze astern moving at the same eight knots as the Sidi Ferroush, thus creating an illusion of motionless air and leaving the ship to suffocate in the smoke from its own funnels, the Red Sea was a branch office of hell.
Pleading riots ashore, the captain had not taken on water at Aden. Next day it was rationed. On the second day out of Aden women and children were dying. At which time Tawfiq el-Talib glanced up toward First Class just in time to catch a half-eaten popsicle in his eye. The child who tossed it did not seem to be suffering.
Resentment was an unfocused surge of anger and unbelief at first. Until Tawfiq el-Talib made a few well-chosen remarks about the Islamic duty to charity and the hypocrisy of pilgrims who would shower in fresh water while their coreligionists’ children were dying of thirst.
They might have gotten away with the revolt if a Saudi boat had been first out, but the SOS was responded to by a US Marine hovercraft which arrived just as the last of the first class passengers had been tossed to the sharks and the deck class passengers were preparing to deep-six the remainder of the crew. Thus Tawfiq el-Talib, along with his followers, was led in shackles aboard a Bureau of Relocation transport to spend over a year in conditions more barbarous than aboard the Sidi Ferroush, eating unclean food which stank of pig grease—and with not a hope in hell of ever seeing Earth again. By the time they reached Haven, Tawfiq had been transformed in people’s imaginations. He was now the Mahdi.
Christopher Columbus discovered in short order that Indians do not make good slaves. Deprived of liberty, they curl up and die. Dover Mineral Development discovered early-on that the same was true of the Mahdi’s people.
Put to work underground, they curled into fetal balls waiting to be carried off by djinni. Whipped to their feet, they swung hammers with singular irresponsibility, as dangerous to those around them as to themselves. Fingers and hands were constantly coming between hammer and single-jack steel. Rock splinters tore out unprotected eyes and those who actually accomplished some work drove too far without stopping to timber and the cave-ins cut into profit. Observing all this was a Humanity Leaguer who filed reams of tear-jerking testimony. Finally the Company gave up.
“You, Mahdi, whatever your bleedin’ name is. Take your lot and bugger off. There’s fa
rm work out at some of the oases. If you don’t cotton to that, see if you can get on with one of the camel jockey caravans. Move on now; you’ve had your last free meal from DMD.”
Being from the bustee slums around Karachi and the West Bank, most of the Mahdi’s people were as ignorant of camels as they were of mining. In the first decade of hegira half of those not already dead from mining succumbed to hunger and cold. The surviving remnant of a remnant were not exactly fanatics, but they had coalesced into a small efficient unit who shrank from nothing in their constant need to survive.
Unnerved by a sinking water table from the Company’s pumping, the oasis farmers were a pushover for the Mahdi’s raiders and, after the series of disasters starting with the ice ball’s impact and its effect on planetary weather while the dust was settling, then a prolonged drought and an inexplicable drying-up of wells, it was not difficult to accept the Mahdi’s pronouncement that he was indeed the messiah whom Allah had appointed to fight the final battle and preside over the Last Days. They became instant converts.
The Bedouin, whose flocks were also decimated by the drought, did not hesitate to share their meager remainder with the Mahdi, providing they could be accepted into his Chosen band. Within months the raids and desertions had rendered final the disruption of the food supplies on which Eureka depended. The Cousin Jacks and their families were reduced to eating petrocarb from a decrepit pilot plant which the Company had hastily dismantled and transported from a mining town, which was being abandoned, in the Shangri-La Valley. Also virtually abandoned was the Medina across the river whose inhabitants had long since defected to the Mahdi. The only thing that kept his salvation-sotted horde from overrunning Eureka was Fort Camerone.
Colonel Jack Trelawney, Commandant of Haven Volunteers, whacked the rump of his camel and, along with the usual gurgles, grunts, and complaints, got an extra half-knot up the hill where the fort guarded the approach to the Isis Valley and Eureka. The colonel was a realist, which ruled out optimism.