Carnifex

by Tom Kratman

  You know, Cano thought, in a while, when it really starts to hurt, I'm going to regret this. But for now, before the serious pain begins, I've got to admit, that was fun.

  Alena's father walked onto the field, approached his daughter, and lifted her to her feet by her hand.

  "Does anyone object that this proven man take this woman to wife?" the father shouted.

  "NNNOOO!" roared the crowd.

  The father led Alena to where Rachman and Cano stood. He took Cano's hand, eliciting a small yelp as the hand had been broken. Into it he placed Alena's smaller one. There was more ceremony, a feast, and a short trip to the hieros to come, but from that moment they were married.

  It was a pity Cano couldn't see well enough to note the light in Alena's eyes.

  She had the sight.

  18/8/468 AC, Al Qamra, Nicobar Straits

  It might as well have been night for the little bit the crew of the boat could see. Somewhere overhead the sun shone; they could see it there, a dim circle of something that was a little bit lighter than the smoke and ash that filled the air. Below, sonar listened attentively but fruitlessly. When the smoke was this thick, all traffic in the Straits simply stopped and dropped anchor. Then all passive sonar could hear was the sound of waves slapping the shore and the hulls of the becalmed shipping. And those sounds came from everywhere.

  To Jaquie, the waves slapping the hull were not relaxing, as they might have been in a different place on a different kind of world. They were just a reminder that she and her shipmates were blind, blinder, in fact, than any bat.

  So, while Marta dozed below, Jaquie walked the deck with a 9mm Pound submachine gun. Nothing was going to hurt her lover, not if she could help it. Nothing was . . .

  What was that?

  * * *

  Liang Dao had had about enough. Did he care for the spread of Salafism? Not a chance; quite the opposite. Did he want to subordinate his people to some would-be sultan? No way. Did he want to get in, or take part in, a war with some people who had proven altogether too willing to take massive reprisals against anyone interfering with shipping?

  Brother, my mother didn't give birth to any fools. I'm out of here.

  So Liang Dao had done the only sensible thing when the other pirates had gotten together to attack the fleet patrolling the Nicobar Straits; he'd told his people to pack up and be ready to move at a moment's notice. They'd done it, too. They wanted no more to do with Salafism, or being on the blunt end of a reprisal, than Liang Dao did.

  Not that Liang Dao or his people had any problem with piracy. They'd been pirates for millennia, and on two different planets.

  But you've got to get away with it or it just doesn't pay. And those fucking round-eye bastard mercenaries won't let you get away with it. I shudder to think of what that fleet the Salafis failed to sink is going to do when it gets back.

  Looking around his boat, a good-sized junk bearing nearly one hundred and fifty of Liang Dao's closest friend and relatives, he did shudder. He remembered seeing the classis—though he didn't know that was its name—pass by his coastal village months ago. The assembly had radiated menace. Had the Salafis succeeded in crushing it Liang Dao would have shed no tears. As was?

  We've got to get the hell out of here. Unfortunately, we don't really have the funds to settle anyplace decent. Now if we could only pick off a small freighter or maybe some fat yacht . . .

  Hey, what's that?

  * * *

  Jaquie crouched down and jacked the bolt on her Pound SMG. Something had nudged the side of Qamra. Driftwood? Maybe. Wreckage from the classis? Possibly.

  Then again, maybe not, either.

  Still keeping low, and keeping her back to the wheelhouse, Jackie moved toward the bow. At the edge of the wheelhouse, she peered into the smoke and thought she saw a man, possibly two of them, neither much more distinct than shadows, climbing aboard Qamra. She thought she saw a weapon in the hands of one of the boarders. As she raised her Pound to engage she heard another sound, coming from behind. She recognized the footsteps. If she hadn't, she'd probably not have turned and seen Marta, coming along the deck.

  "Hon, dammit, what the hell—?"

  A shout in a language, followed by the clear sound of a bolt being thrown home, propelled Jaquie instinctively to protect the one thing she cared about more than anything else in this world or the next. Pound forgotten, Jaquie launched herself at Marta to force her to the deck.

  From up at the bow, someone fired a long burst.

  * * *

  Liang Dao was always nervous on a ship hijacking. You just never knew what might be waiting. And since those mercenaries had showed up, the risks had gone through the roof. Indeed, but for dire need he'd probably had left the yacht alone. And he could see the name of the thing, painted on the bow, in English and Arabic. You could bet some oil sheik would have armed guards.

  Still, the wives and kids and cousins and aunts and uncles need to eat.

  With a heart heavily thumping in his chest, Liang Dao jacked the bolt of his Samsonov and eased himself over the side and onto the boat. He landed, cat-footed, on the other vessel's deck and peered into the haze.

  He saw something big, certainly a lot bigger than he was. The creature said something in a woman's voice but in a language he didn't under stand. He refrained from firing, because it was a woman, despite the huge size.

  And then something jumped out from what he thought was the wheelhouse. By instinct, Liang Dao pointed and fired.

  * * *

  Marta's lorica had seemed heavier than normal when she put it on to go on deck to find Jaquie.

  "That stupid bitch," she said aloud and angrily when she discovered Jaquie had doubled the plates in the front and back by using her own. She stormed out of the cabin and onto the deck to find and slap some sense into her lover.

  After checking the stern, fruitlessly, she began to walk briskly toward the bow. She spotted Jaquie crouched by the front of the wheelhouse and asked, "Hon, dammit, what the hell . . . "

  She didn't get another word out before Jaquie lunged at her. Toward the bow someone fired a long burst. Marta felt one bullet impact on her doubled chest protection, and heard two more whine overhead. Three others made a different sound. Jaqui's lunge struck her but the smaller girl impacted loosely, like a bag of skin and bones. It was still enough to knock her from her feet.

  Marta felt Jaquie's body laying atop her, then smelt the iron-coppery blood her love spilt onto the deck in a torrent. Screaming, she grabbed the first weapon her hand came upon, Jaquie's already cocked Pound. Still laying on her back, head toward the stern, Marta pointed the thing toward her feet and the ship's bow, and pulled the trigger. She held that trigger pull until the bolt clicked back. She held it even after two splashes indicated she'd hit all the targets there were to hit.

  The ship immediately broke into pandemonium, with klaxons ringing and the sound of booted feet running on deck. Up ahead, a single mount 40mm began to arise from the deck with a whine.

  With the Pound empty, and the assailants gone, Marta bent over Jaquie's limp body, unwilling to believe what had just happened. Her fingers dabbed at the blood. "Please don't be dead . . . . please?" Marta begged of the corpse. "You were the only good and decent and clean thing in my life. Please be okay?" .

  And then she raised her head to the sky and screamed an inarticulate shriek like a lost soul descending into Hades. A couple of crewmen or Cazadors, she neither knew nor cared which, bent to help her.

  "Don't touch me!"

  Leaving the body behind, Marta arose to her feet and walked up to the 40mm. By that time, two other crewmen were manning it. She tore them off and tossed them to the deck, taking the gunner's seat herself. She knew how to use the gun; she'd seen it done often enough.

  A sudden gust of wind parted the smoke, revealing to Marta scores of people crowding a ramshackle junk. She didn't see them as people, however, neither the men nor the women . . . nor the children. Marta pressed a foot p
edal to swing the gun around to aim at the other ship's bow. Her handles allowed her to bring the sights and barrel down.

  In the wheelhouse, Chu asked, "Should we stop her?"

  Rodriguez, who was one of those that had tried to lift Marta from the corpse, just shook his head, slowly.

  From the junk, from the people upon it, there arose a great moan of despair as the 40mm began to fire, starting at the bow and sweeping down the length of the thing. Nor did Marta stop until the magazine ran dry.

  She left no survivors.

  34/8/468 AC, Nicobar Straits

  The classis proceeded in what amounted to an arrow shape: three corvettes in a V followed by one minesweeper, then the heavy cruiser, Tadeo Kurita, then by the Dos Lindas. Behind Dos Lindas came the rest, escorted by the single remaining patrol boat and Qamra.

  Fosa wasn't overly worried about attacks on the support ships, not the way the classis was proceeding. He watched with a smile as a flight of Yakamovs took off, carrying a full load of Cazadors. Up ahead, Kurita's turrets, all that could be brought to bear, swiveled in their mounts to point generally to the west.

  * * *

  Yuan Lin had found a place for herself and her children. Rather, she had found a place for herself as one of Parameswara's concubines. The children were fed, clothed, and housed because the pirate chief liked his concubines happy.

  Of course, happy doesn't mean I don't have to work, Lin thought, beating some dirty clothes against a rock in a stream a half mile from Parameswara's fortress. She was not alone. Thirty or more other women and girls, likewise engaged, were there with her in the clearing by the stream. But it's not so bad a life, Lin thought. Para doesn't hurt me anymore than I like to be hurt. And the kids are doing well enough. And—

  She felt a sudden pressure in the air. It was like the prelude to of rain, really, except much more sudden. She looked up and saw the fortress suddenly bathed in smoke and fire. Then she heard the freight-train racket of flying shells, followed by the body- and soul-buffeting explosions from the fort.

  The pounding went on for many minutes, the column of smoke rising to the sky. When it stopped, mere seconds after it stopped, she noticed small dots in the sky that she took for helicopters. They were descending.

  Lin never heard the Turbo-Finch that dived down upon the group in the clearing. Before she could have, she and they with her were perforated by dozens of small finned nails called flechettes the plane had fired by rocket before the noise of its engines could reach ground.

  UEPF Spirit of Peace

  The ship was quiet, or as quiet as it ever was. There were still sounds from the vents refreshing the air. If one listened carefully, one could hear the crew going about the business of keeping the ship in space. High Admiral Martin Robinson was oblivious to all that, concentrating instead on the scene being played out below.

  The big Kurosawa in Robinson's quarters showed it in all its gory detail. Starting in the southeast, and at this point about halfway through the Nicobar Straits, the "bloody, bastard, never-sufficiently-to-be-damned, mercenary swine" were doing their best to scour the Straits free of pirate life. Word was spreading faster than the fleet moved, however, so many of the little villages and towns were emptying themselves before the first shell came in or bomb dropped, before the first sound of a helicopter ferrying in troops reached them.

  Even so, some of those troops were landing in the brush to either side of the straits. Robinson noted that the aerial attacks away from the coastlines, and the naval gunfire from the newly recommissioned heavy cruiser upon those refugees, tended to match where small teams of troops had been landed.

  "It's not a total loss, Martin," Wallenstein comforted. "The people will be back, and back to their old occupation, in time. We can set things up again to support that useful pig, Mustafa."

  Robinson said nothing, at first. Instead, he turned to manipulate his computer to have the Kurosawa zero in on the smoking ruins of Parameswara's fortress. A few hours ago there had been armed legionaries swarming the place. Now there was nothing but shot and hanged men, and women and children left with nothing but their eyes to weep with.

  "I don't think so, Marguerite," Robinson said. "Not for one hundred local years. That's how badly those people are going to be terrorized."

  "Well . . . the Tauran Union and the World League, down below, have issued very strongly worded condemnations," Wallenstein said. At that, even she had to laugh. "Condemnations. Like the mercenaries care about condemnations."

  "They care as much as Mustafa does," Robinson said. "And why shouldn't they? They're Mustafa's children." And, I suppose, mine.

  "I'm sorry, Martin," was all Wallenstein could say. "What now?"

  "Now, I am afraid, I am going to have to do what perhaps I should have done years ago." Robinson hesitated before continuing; what he had in mind was a serious step. "I've contacted our people in Hangkuk. I'm going to purchase and, if necessary, deliver to Mustafa what he's been asking for all these years."

  Wallenstein shook her head. "Oh, Martin, I can't tell you what a really bad idea that is."

  "Would you rather see our world destroyed, Captain Wallenstein?"

  The mention of her rank, and the implication of the caste that kept her there, shut Wallenstein up completely.

  EXCURSUS

  From: Janus Small Arms Review, Terra Nova Edition of 472 AC

  The F-26 Rifle is a gas operated, electronically fired and controlled, magazine fed shoulder weapon of 6.5mm caliber. A joint development between Zion Military Industries (812 Ben Gurion Blvd, Nazareth, Zion, Terra Nova) and Balboa Armaments Corporation (57 Avenida Omar Torrijos-Herrera, Arraijan, Balboa, Terra Nova), a subdivision of the Legion del Cid, SA, the F-26 compares favorably with such weapons as the Volgan Abakanov, the Federated States of Columbia's M-42 Wakefield, the Sachsen STG-13, Gaul's Daudeteau-31, and the Zhong Type-57, with all of which it competes in the international arms market.

  Specifications:

  Caliber: 6.5mm x 31 SCC (Semi-Combustible Casing)

  Weight: 4.1 Kg (Zion), 4.3 Kg (Balboa) w/o magazine or bayonet

  Barrel Length: 533mm

  Length Overall: 795mm (Zion's bullpup version), 1022mm (Balboa's conventionally shaped version)

  Action: gas operated w/ piston, rotating bolt

  Materials: The rifle makes extensive use of carbon fibers, plastics and glassy metal stampings. Unique among modern military firearms, the barrel is constructed of a relatively thin steel lining around which is wound carbon fiber (the barrels being produced under license from Thorsten Arms, a subdivision of Thorsten Prosthetics). This saves about 80% of the normal barrel weight. Moreover, given the high rate of fire, cooling becomes critical. The graphite barrel is superior to steel as a heat shedding medium, though there have been complaints from the field of it being too fragile for the uses to which it is sometimes put.

  Max Effective Range: 850m

  Rate of Fire: 3 round Burst: 1975 RPM. Full Automatic: 2 settings: 700 RPM and 1200 RPM. The weapon also has the capability of firing single rounds. The ROF is set by a side switch above and to the right of the trigger and controlled by an integral computer chip.

  Sighting: All weather, day-night, medium range thermal imaging sight with integral laser range finder. The effective range of the sighting unit for target acquisition and range determination is 900 meters, day, and 250 meters, night, though this may be reduced by extreme dust, smoke or precipitation.

  Command and Control: The rifle is the key component in "Soldier V" the joint Balboa-Zion project to create a fully digitalized ground combat soldier. As such, it contains its own global positioning system receiver with compass. The soldier's frequency hopping communication system is also partially contained within the rifle stock. Leaders can, by use of a heads-up display integral to the Mark V helmet, not only determine the relative locations of each of their soldiers or subordinate teams, but can also see graphic displays of their arcs of fire. This feature has substantially reduced both blu
e on blue fire and training accidents (except when the "moral training" magazine, q.v., is used).

  Cycle of Operation:

  The weapon being set on one of its four firing settings and a round being chambered, the firer depresses the trigger (which, being nothing more than an electronic switch, has no "break point" and is thus very smooth). An electronic charge passes through the bolt face, initiating the primer, which sets off the propellant while expanding propellant and stub to obdurate (seal) the breach. The bullet moves down the barrel until reaching the gas port, near the muzzle. A stream of gas passes down the gas port, forcing the operating piston to the rear. The piston, in turn, causes the bolt carrier to begin to retract, unlocking the bolt. At that point the rearward movement of the bolt and bolt carrier causes four things to occur almost simultaneously: the VHTP (Very High Temperature Plastic) stub is ejected out the bottom ejection port, a rammer beneath the bolt—driven by a reversing cam—three-quarter feeds the next round from the magazine, a flywheel is set to spinning (recharging the integral battery until the trigger is released, at which point a brake is automatically applied to the flywheel), and a ratcheting rod is driven downward into the magazine which compresses the magazine spring from the center/rear. The bolt and bolt carrier then return forward, finishing the loading of the next round begun by the rammer. The bolt then rotates again to lock in position. At that point, and assuming the trigger is still depressed, the rifle will either fire and begin the cycle again (3 rd burst), or will have a very brief, computer-controlled delay before firing (high or low automatic), or will cease fire (rounds). It is the short distance to be traveled by the bolt to load and eject that enables the weapon to attain such high rates of fire.

  Note: In the event of battery failure or weakness the magazine may be removed, the trigger depressed and the bolt jacked six to ten times to build up a firing charge.