Carnifex

by Tom Kratman

  "I know," Carrera agreed. "Assume we'll actually call up some of the reserves for the first time. Assume that we'll leave D echelon to fill up to replace the corps later on. Beyond that, you're chief of staff. So go staff it, chief. I want to see a preliminary OPLAN within . . . oh, two weeks."

  26/5/467 AC, Barco del Legion Dos Lindas, Xamar

  "I once wanted to see this sight so badly," said Kurita, looking out at the steaming Uhuru coast from the bridge of the Dos Lindas. "Back during the war we tried so hard to get this far. And then the FS Navy caught us in the open, far from land based air support. And they butchered us. My ship escaped, barely, along with half a dozen destroyers and two light cruisers. The rest went down."

  Fosa contemplated how that must have felt, saw in his mind's eyes his own fleet going down in smoke and flame, sailors trapped below decks slowly drowning, some struggling in the oil covered water as the flames lick along the surface to drive them below to death. He shivered, though if Kurita saw it, he affected not to notice.

  Instead, Kurita asked, "What's next, Captain-san?"

  Interlude

  Finca Carrera, Guayabal, Panama, 5 January, 2091

  Belisario Carrera shook with rage. "This land has been in my family for nearly five hundred years. What the fuck do you mean that the UN is taking half of it?"

  The uniformed policemen, local boys all, escorting the executive assistant to the Deputy Special Representative for the Secretary General to the Republic of Panama, looked down at the ground, ashamed and disgusted. They understood that attachment to the land. But what choice had they? They had their own wives and children to think about.

  "There is no call for profanity, Mr. Carrera," said the sweating, suit-clad bureaucrat, stiffly. His accent was strange to Belisario, his Spanish clipped and harsh. "No call at all. Your democratically elected government has agreed to allow the United Nations to assist it in better apportioning your nation's wealth for the betterment of mankind. That your ancestors stole this land for themselves does not mean, sir, that you own it. It is part of the common heritage of the Family of Man."

  Belisario's thirteen-year-old daughter, Mitzilla, chose that moment to come out of the house to stand beside her father. "Get off our land, you bastard," she said.

  The bureaucrat looked down at Mitzi's face and then continued on. When his eyes reached her chest they opened wide with surprise and desire. He tore them away, most reluctantly, and returned his attention to her father. He said, "Perhaps, for a suitable consideration, something can be worked out, Mr. Carrera."

  Belisario said nothing. But he looked at the UN representative in a way that said, without words, You are a dead man.

  * * *

  It was a UN court that sat in judgment over Belisario. A national court simply could not be trusted to give a proper judgment. In neither case, though, would the sentence have been death.

  "Belisario Carrera," said the judge, "you have been found guilty of the premeditated murder of Robert Nyere. We have no death penalty, as we have grown above such barbarisms. If we did, I would certainly have no choice but to sentence you to hang by the neck until you are dead. I would enjoy passing such sentence, Mr. Carrera, as the man you murdered, a flawless and faultless gem of mankind, was my nephew. As is, I sentence you to transportation for life to the colony of Balboa, on the Planet Terra Nova. May the planet kill you in a way I am forbidden from doing."

  "Bailiff, take him away."

  Long Island, New York, 15 April, 2099

  It wasn't bad enough that Detective Juan Alvarez, as a city employee, had to pay tax to the city of New York, along with the State of New York, and the United States. No, no; that wasn't nearly bad enough. Now he had to pay as well, after filling out a half inch thick stack of virtually incomprehensible forms, to Earth's United Nations.

  Actually, it was worse than that. The UN didn't collect a single tax. This would have been too simple and employed far too few bureaucrats. Instead, Alvarez had to pay to the General Assembly Fund, the Peacekeeping Fund, the Food and Agricultural Organization Fund, the Arts and Humanities Fund, the Reparations to the OAU for the Loss of Human Capital Fund . . .

  "For Christ's sake," Alvarez blurted out, putting his head down and running thick fingers through thinning hair, "my family were goddamned serfs to the Spanish. Most of my wife's were serfs to the English. Why the hell are we paying the descendants of people who made money selling slaves for having sold those slaves?"

  There was no answer, of course, or none that would satisfy. The real, and unsatisfactory, answer was that money was collected to go to the Organization of African Unity, in order to employ bureaucrats who knew nothing and did nothing, and pad the accounts of the chiefs of state of the countries that made up the OAU and those of their families.

  With a sigh, Alvarez wrote out a check and attached it to the Human Capital Fund return, then added those to the pile. The next form was the tax return for the Repatriation Fund for non-Islamic citizens of the Zionist Entity. This, however, was an optional tax, mostly paid by Islamics across the world. Alvarez crinkled up the form and tossed it into the wastebasket.

  UN direct taxation was not something federally mandated, nor even approved. Instead, over the last fifteen years, a growing number of states of the United States had adopted UN taxation within their state tax codes. They received a percentage back, much as private corporations and companies did with the sales tax, for what they collected on behalf of the UN. There was talk of an amendment to the Constitution. Certainly the Supreme Court had been no help since it had unilaterally decided it was subject to the laws and rulings of various international tribunals.

  "I could move down south," Alvarez said aloud. "They don't collect for the UN, yet. But . . . " He shook his head, no. The language of the American Deep South was now mostly Spanish, and Alvarez didn't speak Spanish. Not much work for a police detective in North Carolina who couldn't speak Spanish, less still in Texas.

  "Besides, they're a mess down there; Mexico in confederate gray. I couldn't afford the bribes to get on a police force even if I did speak Spanish. No wonder great-great-grandpappy wet his ankles in the Rio Grande. No wonder . . . "

  Alvarez felt one of those rare epiphanous moments that happen, sometimes, when two or three different little reminders hit all at once. The Jews are leaving Israel en masse for Terra Nova, and the more that leave, the more want to. When the going got tough in Mexico, not that it was ever likely to have been too easy, Great-Grandpappy lit out for greener pastures. And there's not too much fucking bureaucracy on the New World.

  "Honey?" he called out to his wife. "I just had an idea . . . "

  Chapter Seven

  Set a thief to catch a thief.

  —Gallic Proverb

  Set a lawless non-governmental organization to destroy a lawless non-governmental organization.

  —Patricio Carrera

  UEPF Spirit of Peace, 27/5/467

  "Computer, center on target and enhance scale."

  At Robinson's command the image on his Kurosawa screen shifted, then changed, going from the western half of the continent of Uhuru and the eastern half of the Sea of Sind to a narrow view of Xamar Coast and, finally, to the little flotilla comprising the Dos Lindas task force. It was in real time; he could actually see the aircraft taking off and landing.

  "From here we could toss a rock down and destroy their flagship, but . . . "

  "But," Wallenstein interjected, "the FSC has made clear that any direct military action on the part of the UEPF on any target down below will be an instant casus belli. No matter the party in power, none have ever wavered from it. They'd be hounded from office if they did."

  Robinson sneered, not at Wallenstein but at the memory of his predecessor, the High Admiral who had scorched two of the Federated States' cities.

  "I wonder if he knew the trouble he would cause us."

  Wallenstein shook her blonde head. "I doubt it. It's easy to forget how quickly an uncivilized and uncontrolle
d people can advance if they have good reason to."

  "Which reason my predecessor certainly gave them. And all for nothing since they won that war anyway. The only difference was that there were twenty or thirty million fewer Yamatans to see the end. Oh, well, spilled milk and all. Besides, he paid with his life, after a fashion."

  Robinson turned his attention back to the Kurosawa. "I can't attack them directly. I can; however, make sure they not able to attack anyone else."

  Wallenstein made a quizzical sound.

  "It's simple, Marguerite. That contemptible little fleet can only affect the sea it occupies and about three or four hundred kilometers around it. Even that three or four hundred, though, is constrained by the speed of their aircraft and the chance of being in the right place at the right time. We get to choose whether those times and places will be right."

  Robinson's voice changed to the neutral, uninflected tone used for talking to machines. "Computer, connect me with Abdulahi."

  To the High Admiral's mild surprise, the answer came almost immediately. A melodious voice said, "Yes, High Admiral; Abdulahi here."

  There's a shock; one of those down below actually listening to instructions.

  Whatever his thoughts, Robinson confined his words to business. "Friend, that new threat I told you of has taken up station off your coastline."

  "I see that, High Admiral," the Xamari answered. Robinson had transferred to him, as he had to Mustafa, the means of tapping directly into UEPF surveillance and sensing systems. "We can easily avoid them."

  "Excellent, Abdulahi."

  4/6/467 AC, BdL Dos Lindas, Xamar Coast

  "This is superb, Commodore," Fosa complimented Kurita on the sushi the Yamatan had prepared from fish he'd caught himself the night before.

  Kurita smiled, slightly, and nodded, acknowledging the compliment.

  Fosa looked around at the Yamatan's quarters. In warship terms they were the height of luxury, measuring all of about three hundred and twenty square feet. Even Fosa's own were not quite so large. They were furnished well, as warships measured such things. Kurita had hung on one wall a portrait of the emperor he had served ably and bravely in the Great Global War. That emperor had long since joined his divine ancestors. His memory retained Kurita's loyalty, even so.

  It wasn't the size or the luxury, nor even the portrait of the emperor and what it said of Kurita, the samurai, that impressed Fosa. It was the unbelievable cleanliness of the quarters.

  He'd asked of his senior naval centurion how the place had gotten so completely sanitized. The centurion had shrugged, "Got no clue, Cap'n. He never asked us for anything but a mop and bucket, sponges and some rags. Oh, and liquid cleaner."

  Fosa was left with the only possible solution; that Kurita, at nearly a century old, had gotten down on his ancient hands and knees and made quarters fit for his emperor's portrait. That was rather humbling.

  "I saved it from my battlecruiser," Kurita had said in explanation. "When we had to . . . surrender"—and the word came out only with painful difficulty—"I took it last, as I was leaving. Every day I apologize to it that I and my comrades failed in our duty. Perhaps someday the emperor shall forgive us."

  Which helped convince Fosa, not that he needed much convincing, that the Yamatans were not just odd, but admirably odd.

  "How goes the hunt?" Kurita asked.

  "Not well," the captain said. "Admittedly we've only been on station

  two weeks but . . . "

  "But given the frequency of reported piratical attacks near this section of the coast a week should have seen at least two," the commodore supplied.

  Fosa nodded. "Yes, but there's been nothing. Attacks north of us, yes. Attacks south of us, yes. Nothing here."

  The Yamatan quoted, "All warfare is based on deception. Therefore, when capable, feign incapacity; when active, inactivity. When near, make it appear that you are far away; when far away, that you are near. Offer the enemy a bait to lure him, feign disorder and strike him. When he concentrates, prepare against him."

  "Musashi?" the Balboan asked. "The Book of Five Rings?"

  Kurita shook his grey head. "Sun Tzu."

  "Do you think someone is reporting on our positions and dispositions, Commodore?"

  "Unquestionably," Kurita answered. "The only real question is who."

  "Not the Federated States Navy," Fosa said. "Even if the Legion is in bad grace with their government their armed forces are still strong friends."

  "I agree," the Yamatan said. "That leaves the Tauran Union, the Volgans, the Zhong, and the UEPF. In any case, it hardly matters who, for our purposes. What matters is the fact that that someone, to all appearances, is reporting on us."

  "I wonder if the FSN can shed any light," the Yamatan wondered. "After all, they're rather . . . oh . . . . capable."

  FSS Ironsides, Xamar Coast, 6/6/467

  The twin-engined Cricket B came down at an angle that made the deck crew blanch. It didn't roll but hit, bounced once and then again, then came to an almost unbelievable stop.

  "It ain't natural," pronounced one of the deck crew. His purple overalls marked him as a "grape," or fuel handler.

  An officer from the bridge crew was on hand, detailed to escort Fosa and his small party down to the captain's port cabin. The party didn't include Kurita.

  "I do not hate them, Captain-san," the Yamatan had explained, "but it would be . . . awkward, even so. My family was in Motonari, you see." Motonari was one of the two cities in Yamato atomic bombed by the FSC.

  Being led through the carrier's innards was a less intimidating exercise for

  Fosa than had been the approach that showed how completely it dwarfed his own command. One hundred thousand tons and more. God, what a ship.

  The passageways seemed more to a human scale to Fosa, and then he came to the hangar deck.

  I could almost fit Dos Lindas down in it, he thought in awe and wonder. He did some measurement by eye. No, I could fit Dos Lindas into it, if we ripped off both flight decks. Then he consoled himself with the thought, It's not the size of the ship in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the ship. That, and the rules of engagement.

  The rest of the journey afoot was uneventful, but informative. Twice Fosa stopped to ask his escort officer questions about the ship's operation. Both times he made a mental note to at least consider changing SOP on the Dos Lindas.

  The captain met him warmly by his port cabin's hatch. Leading him into the quarters, somewhat larger than Fosa's and Kurita's combined, the Ironside's captain made the introductions, the important one of which was to the admiral.

  Fosa was surprised to see a bottle of rum sitting on the captain's table. "I thought all FSS ships were dry," he said.

  The admiral shrugged. "Yes and no. The chaplain is allowed sacramental alcohol, and the ship's medical staff keeps medicinal brandy. In our case, the chaplain believes in having sacramental bourbon and scotch, rum and cognac, along with the wine. That particular bottle was being held as medicinal rum until it could be properly blessed."

  "I see. How . . . " Fosa wanted to say "morally ingenious" but didn't know how far his welcome stayed. He let it go.

  "We can be morally ingenious," the admiral said.

  Lunch and small talk followed. It was a decent meal, but no better than what was served aboard Dos Lindas, and perhaps not as good. Fosa made a point of inviting both the captain and the admiral, as well as the other two officers present, signals and operations, to come aboard his own ship at their earliest convenience.

  "Regretfully, Legate Fosa, we cannot," the admiral answered for all. "If we did, it would be lending official FSC sanction to what we suspect—to be honest, what we hope—is your mission and your rules of engagement. That, our government and the . . . people . . . in charge would never tolerate."

  "I understand," Fosa agreed. "Perhaps in some future time, some happier time for your service."

  Ironside's skipper said, "The admiral meant what he said, Legate. W
e sincerely hope you will be able to do what we are expressly forbidden from doing, which is to say, we hope you can do even the slightest good." The captain pushed a folder over to Fosa. "Take a look at that."

  Fosa opened the file and saw that it contained a couple of dozen eight-by-ten glossies and a couple of printed sheets of paper. When he looked carefully at the first photo he said, "My God . . . "

  The admiral answered, "Our God had nothing to do with it."

  The photos were of the massacre, the butchery, of the crew of the Estrella de Castilla.

  Fosa shuffled through the photos as quickly as he could. When he came to the first printed sheet he began to read. Halfway through the rules of engagement he exclaimed, "How in the hell can they expect you to do anything under this nonsense?"

  "They don't expect us to do anything, Legate," The admiral explained. "They expect us to make the appearance of doing something. Don't you have progressives at home? Appearances matter a lot more to them than actually doing anything."

  Fosa took from his white uniform blouse a folded piece of paper of his own. "My commander gave me full latitude to write my own ROE. This is ours."

  The admiral scanned quickly, then passed the paper on to his subordinate.

  "Admirably direct," was the admiral's sole comment.

  "Admirably traditional," said the signals chief when the paper reached him.

  "Legate," the captain asked, "what does your fleet consist of?"

  Fosa laid out the composition of the fleet, omitting only the precise nature of the recreation ship, dubbed "Fosa's Floating Fornication Frigate" by all the crews of his task force. As he spoke, the ops officer began jotting onto a notepad.

  "So you have no long-range strategic recon," observed the ops officer for the carrier battle group. "We can make up that lack."