Carnifex

by Tom Kratman

  Khan, the husband, pulled up more data from his screen. "Officially, piracy costs the economy down below about twelve to sixteen billion FSD annually. It is believed, however, that the actual incidence of piracy is understated by a factor of about twenty . . . though it is doubtful that the costs are quite that understated."

  Robinson scratched his head. "Interesting. Thank you, Khan. Tell me, did your wife enjoy our session?"

  "She says she did, Admiral, but wishes you had pinched her nipples more and come in her mouth rather than her throat. She likes that sort of thing."

  "I'll remember that for next time. In the interim, I want both you and she to look into the long term potential for both squeezing funds from and ruining a large scale economy through unchecked piracy. Robinson, out."

  5/10/466 AC, Xamar Coast, Western Uhuru

  "This is becoming tedious, sayidi," said the Helvetian banker representing a Tauran shipping firm, the Red Star Line. The banker looked rather like a gnome, short and stout and bearded. It was his job to negotiate the release of a dozen merchant sailors taken from a Red Star Line refrigerator ship two weeks prior. The sailors, bound and filthy, lined one corner of the sparsely furnished office near the center of the city.

  Within the office tea and dates were served by tall, slender women with amazingly large, dark eyes. The women, some of them slave girls, likewise set out a tray of thin bread made from the flour of the chorley, a non-Old Earth species that resembled a sunflower that grew just above ground level, accompanied by local shoug, a mix of ground peppers ranging from "Holy Shit" to "Joan of Arc," with a very small admixture of "Satan Triumphant."

  Of the women, the eyes were all that could be seen, that, and the seductive swaying even their robes could not conceal. They didn't matter though; the gnome had little use for women.

  "Indeed," agreed the formidable, even fierce, looking Hawiye tribe chief seated on a cushion opposite the banker. Like the women, the chief was tall and quite slender, despite his years. "As I have told you many times, retrieving your people from these thugs costs me. It costs in money; it costs in arms; it costs in favors and in influence. I would prefer to put our relationship on a more formal and regular basis. But you people . . . "

  It was all a polite fiction. The Hawiye chief, Abdulahi was his name, didn't actually ransom anyone himself, nor did he have the slightest objection to groups of his underlings seizing infidel shipping. In fact, he sent them out to do so and then maintained, for form's sake, that he was only acting as an intermediary for the return of the crews. This face-saving arrangement was workable, but far from ideal.

  "I know, sayidi. And I have spoken to my superiors at length on the subject. They've finally agreed to a more . . . regularized, arrangement."

  At last, thought Abdulahi. Protection money. Or "Danegeld," as my instructors in Anglia would have called it.

  "Here is what I propose," said Abdulahi. "Your firm will inform me in advance of when it will have a ship passing within this area. You will pay me an amount based on cargo—"

  "The displacement," interjected the Helvetian. "My principles are not going to accept allowing your people aboard to inspect cargos. Besides, we could not really be sure they even were your people without you meeting every ship."

  "Fair enough," Abdulahi agreed. "Displacement. That can be checked objectively. Moreover, it has a direct, if uneven, relationship to crew size, and therefore ransom potential, as well as docking fees, which likewise bears on money carried in the ship's safe. This is fair and simple enough."

  "In any case," the Hawiye pirate lord continued, "You will pay a reasonable fee—yes, we will have to agree on what constitutes 'reasonable'—in advance. I will use the money to pay off the pirates who infest our coast."

  "They will, of course, be free to attack the ships of other firms," added the Helvetian. Which is absolutely necessary to us or those firms will be able to ship cheaper than we can.

  "Naturally."

  "The question remains, however, can you control the pirates."

  Abdulahi simply laughed.

  6/10/466 AC, Zioni Embassy, Ciudad Balboa

  The Jewish Brigadier, Yonatan Bar El, laughed aloud. "Yes, Duque," he answered. "I do rather understand the problems inherent in the Legion using Zioni equipment in Arab lands. Even your friends—and we in Zion are amazed at some of the friends you've made—wouldn't, just as you say, know whether to support you or shoot at you. Still, you must admit, our Chariot is a tank infinitely superior to the Volgan dreck you've been using."

  "The Volgan stuff is better than you admit, Yoni," Carrera replied. "After all, don't you use every piece of Volgan equipment you can get your hands on, after a quality rebuild."

  "We do," the Jew admitted.

  "Well, we have a substantial, if not quite controlling interest, in the Kirov tank factory. They do a quality initial build. We're pretty happy with our equipment, with a few exceptions."

  "Which exceptions," the Zioni inquired. Maybe there was a sale to be made after all.

  "Lighter but longer ranged artillery would be nice. Small arms are acceptable but . . . " Carrera shrugged eloquently.

  "But the Volgan Bakanovas don't really have the range you would like."

  "They lack range," Carrera admitted. "They lack penetration—"

  Lourdes, wearing a long, silk sheath dress interrupted. "Patricio, Mrs. Bar El asked me to her family quarters. Do you mind if I slip out for a few minutes?"

  The other half of the sales team, Carrera thought, answering, "Not at all, miel. I'll still be here when you return."

  Lourdes pecked chastely at Carrera's cheek before turning to sway away. Yoni Bar El's eyes followed for just as long as politeness permitted, while thinking, Yum.

  "We have a new small arms system in Zion . . . " he said, once he could tear his eyes away from Lourdes' seductively swaying posterior.

  "I know. We've looked at the SAR-47. Not interested."

  "Yeah . . . our troops don't like it either." It was Bar El's turn to shrug. "Though I expected them to like the grenade system that goes with it."

  "Now that looked to have promise," Carrera agreed. "But what we really want is something that takes advantage of all the recent developments in small arms: super fast burst rates to make burst fire practical—the Bakanova has that, but only for two rounds, a cartridge firing a bullet with really superior ballistics, combustible casings, electronic ignition, integral limited visibility sights."

  "It's funny, isn't it?" the Zioni observed. "There really are a number of major . . . oh . . . possibilities out there, and nobody seems interested in pursuing them. You would think that the FSC—"

  "That much I don't really understand myself," Carrera said. "I served in the FS Army for quite a long time. The rifle my troops were last issued wasn't any better, really, than the rifle I'd been first issued. And it was a twenty-year-old design then. But they don't seem able to come up with a new one. This would be fine if the old one were great. But it wasn't."

  "In any case," Bar El said, "we've blown our small arms design budget on the SAR-47 and we're stuck with it. And it's not a bad weapon, really. But now, we've got our designers reduced to making oversized pistols for Columbians with penis envy."

  It was Carrera's turn to snicker. Then he turned serious. "You know, Yoni, I still do have money for small arms development. Maybe we could arrange something."

  15/10/466 AC , The Base, Tribal Trust Territories, Kashmir,

  "A superb arrangement, Abdulahi," said Mustafa ibn Mohamed ibn Salah, min Sa'ana. The news was enough to launch Mustafa up from his usual misery to something like hope, maybe even happiness.

  The years had been unkind to Mustafa. Naturally tall and vigorous, disaster heaped upon disaster has shrunk him, even as a lingering illness weakened him. With good news so hard to come by, the news brought by Abdulahi was welcome indeed.

  Communications for the movement were never secure. The only way to be certain of a secret was to carry it in person.
Even the infidel press could not balance out that inferiority, though they tried. And using couriers, too, had its problems, as any number of mujahadin grabbed without cause or warrant from airplanes and airports around the globe could have testified. It was infuriating, and—Mustafa had to admit—unexpected, for the infidels to fail to follow their own rules. It was worse when the Kosmos weren't able to shriek, scream and nag their own governments into compliance in their own suicide.

  "It is superb, Sheik. And it can only get better. This one heathen shipping company will be off limits, for a good price. But that doesn't reduce our righteous plundering. It only means we can concentrate on those who have not yet agreed to pay this maritime Yizya. This will increase the pressure on them to come to an arrangement with us. And each one that does submit increases the pressure on those who have not. One by one they will bow."

  Abdulahi laid down a thick briefcase and opened it. Inside, Mustafa could see, were stacks of large denomination bills; Tauran lira, Federated States drachma, masu of Yamato, Volgan gold rubles, Helvetian escudi . . .

  Mustafa felt tears begin to form. Abdulahi turned away, feigning not to notice.

  "When here, in our darkest hour, you come to our rescue . . . " Mustafa began.

  "Sheik, when my homeland was torn and my tribe starving, who came to our aid? You did. When the infidels occupied our land, who gave us the means and the encouragement to resist them? You did. Who built for us schools and hospitals? You did. This is a small repayment . . . with the promise of much more to come."

  * * *

  Later—after Abdulahi had been presented with a recently captured Tauran slave girl to take back with him to Xamar; a small token of Mustafa's appreciation and esteem—Mustafa had sat in his quarters for a long time stroking his beard and looking at the case of money while thinking upon the uses to which it could be put.

  It's not that much really, a few million, five at most. I could almost weep for the days when the Ikhwan commanded hundreds of millions of FSD and thousands upon thousands of fighters.

  This money is a start. It is also a suggestion. Along with the Xamari, I must think upon how to direct the seaborne mujahadin of Nicobar. Then again, they do not owe me as did Abdulahi and his people. Is it worth my time and effort to try to direct the Nicobars? Perhaps not. Can I make it worth their time and effort to support me? Perhaps so. It must be thought upon.

  For now, I have the fight in Pashtia to worry about. And, even though I am a son of the Prophet, peace be upon him, I find I must worry, that I must not leave everything to Allah.

  What a strange thought that is. The filthy Nazrani say that "God helps those who help themselves." How odd that this seemingly impious notion should infect me, and yet it may be so. I must set the mullahs to searching the Holy Koran and the Sacred Hadiths to see if this idea may be religiously supportable.

  In any case, if it is not supportable, I do not know what is. Allah has turned his face from us everywhere we relied upon him too heavily. In Pashtia we were slaughtered in weeks. In Sumer, the holy warriors could not face the infidels. Millions have gone over to them, keeping only the shell and shadow of the Faith and none of its meat and drink. Perhaps Allah . . .

  Mustafa sipped at qahwa, unsweetened coffee brewed from beans still green, and filtered through a piece of hemp rope stuck in the spout. There was a thought there, an important thought that had gone skittering away. Perhaps Allah . . . . what?

  Perhaps this is another test of our faith in him? Perhaps. But . . . Aha! There is the thought. What if it is as much a test of His faith in us?

  A serving boy, a slave but not a Tauran, bent to refill Mustafa's cup. The Emir of the Ikhwan stopped the boy by covering the cup with his hand.

  "Go," he said. "Find and bring me Nur-Al-Din, the Misrani, and Abdul Aziz who helps manage the accounts. Bring me, too, Mullah al Kareem, that we might use his insight into the holy words. When that is done, brew more qahwa. It will be a long night.

  16/10/466 AC, Training Area Thirty-Five, Isla Real

  Leave was never quite "leave" when Carrera returned from the war. Rather, it was his opportunity to observe, direct and correct the training and administration taking place behind him.

  There was only one moon up this evening, Eris, but she was full, casting sharp shadows on the ground. At that, Eris only provided perhaps twenty percent of the maximum illumination possible from Terra Nova's three moons.

  Under that moonlight, battle-dressed and wearing night vision goggles, Carrera watched an infantry platoon from Fourth Tercio going through their paces in setting up a night ambush. It looked professional; it looked well-oiled. Yet something bothered him about it and he wasn't sure quite what.

  "What's wrong with this, Jamey?" he asked Soult.

  Soult shrugged. "No clue, boss. It looks fine by me."

  "Yeah . . . yeah, that's it. It looks fine. How does something look that fine? When does real war ever look that fine? Let's go trip into the objective rally point, shall we?"

  The two were challenged by the team left behind at the objective rally point, or ORP, with the platoon's rucksacks. That was fine, too, but not in a way that bothered Carrera.

  "Don't tell anyone I'm here," he told the sergeant in charge. "I just want to watch for a bit."

  The sergeant was obviously not happy about that. If his tribune, Cano, came back and found Duque Carrera waiting for him without his having been warned, there'd be hell to pay later on.

  Carrera understood that. "Jamey," he said, "stick with the sergeant so that when his tribune comes to rip his balls off he can plead superior orders and no opportunity." Soult went and stood next to the sergeant while Carrera walked to the side of the ORP nearest the ambush and waited. With his goggles on, he could just make out the ambush position, though not the men in it who had all gone prone. He continued forward until he could make out the waiting legionaries, then stopped and went to one knee to watch.

  Mannequins joined to each other and suspended from a cable strung tightly between two trees began to enter the kill zone, in single file, pulled by someone off to the right, somewhere. Carrera saw them move across at a walking pace, a pace a group of Salafis might well take up when they thought they were safe but had to get somewhere.

  The target mannequins—there were twelve of so of them, Carrera thought—were fully in the target area when the entire scene was brightly, if momentarily, lit by the flashes of two directional mines. Carrera ducked his chin onto his chest against the backblast and the fragments.

  There followed rifle and machine gun fire; dozens of weapons sending out streams of tracers into the jungle downrange. Mannequins began to drop to the ground as bullets found the inflated balloons within sandbags that held them to the cable overhead. The bullets pierced the balloons, collapsing them and letting them and their sandbags flow through the harnesses, detaching them from the overhead cable.

  This continued for a minute before there was a whoosh as a star cluster launched into the sky. The ground was suddenly lit in a bright magnesium light. Carrera heard a whistle and then voice commands. Men began to move rapidly across the kill zone, shooting every mannequin once more in the head as it lay on the ground. Special teams searched the "bodies," collecting documents of intelligence value, communications devices, and weapons. The documents, cell phones and one radio were turned over to the platoon leader. A pile was made of the captured weapons, which pile a two-man team prepared for demolition.

  At some point—Carrera presumed it was when the intel collection team reported to the platoon leader that the bodies were clear—another star cluster was launched. Men began to scurry back to the ambush line, even as the demo team shouted "Fire in the hole" and pulled the igniters that led to the charges they'd placed on the arms.

  Once the demo team had cleared away, there was another whistle blast and, once again, the rifles and machine guns poured lines of death into the jungle opposite the ambush line. Voice commands followed and, by ones and twos the ambushing plat
oon began to form up to fall back to the ORP.

  "It's too smooth," Carrera whispered.

  * * *

  Cano was pissed. Being taken by surprise, ambushed himself by the Duque, was just too fucking much. Bad enough that . . .

  "Relax, Tribune," Carrera said, not ungently. He was actually impressed with the kid. "I just have some questions. It was a good ambush. Really. What bothers me was that maybe it was too good. Why do you think it was so good?"

  Cano didn't relax. Sure, he wasn't a signifer anymore; he was entitled to tie his boots in the morning without tying the left one to the right one. Even so, this was the bloody Duque. He was a bastard; everyone knew it. Cano could just see his career flying off to parts unknown and unknowable. He could . . .

  "I asked a question, Tribune," Carrera reminded.

  "Oh . . . sorry, sir. I was . . . I just wasn't expecting you to—"

  "I asked a question, Tribune."

  "Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Well . . . sir . . . we've done this ambush here maybe a dozen times just since I've been leading the platoon. The boys know what to do and, then again, we drill the shit out of it . . . "

  Aha.

  "Jamey! Call the Chief of Staff, the I and the Ia. I don't give a shit if they're asleep. Get 'em up."

  17/10/466 AC, Main Officers Club, Isla Real

  Normally, in every day life, Carrera was a surprisingly gentle sort. He wasn't particularly aggressive, or vicious. He'd probably never done a deliberately cruel thing, outside of line of duty, in his life.

  In line of duty, however, or especially in action, he changed. The change wasn't like that of a man turning to a wolf; that kind of transition, even in myth, took time. Instead, for Carrera, there simply came a moment when stress impended and he changed.

  It was something like a click.

  "I'm so glad you could all make it," Carrera hissed to the assembled senior officers and centurions of the Legion.