by Tom Kratman
Of course, such an assembly was heavier than a grenade, a lot heavier. On the other hand, what with having many times the explosive and shrapnel it was just the thing for taking out a bunker or trench.
Or a hide.
* * *
The leader of the mujahadin patrol hadn't been certain, at first, that it even was enemy. After so long without a contact he'd begun to believe that the crusaders and their mercenaries had given up on the Base. Who could be out here, then? Probably it was only another patrol like his own. Or maybe some herders got lost. Or . . .
"No . . . it's the infidels," he whispered to his men once he caught sight of the distinctive silhouette of a Helvetian-style helmet. "Come. We'll follow."
They almost lost sight of the crusaders several times. The mujahadin were confused by the fact that the hide was nowhere one would reasonably expect an observation post to be, thus the route the infidels followed was nothing like the route they would have expected. They were persistent, however, and their persistence was rewarded when, unexpectedly, one of the enemy stood a little too high before crouching down to slither into the hillside.
The leader of the patrol had no idea how many men might have gone below. He only had five of his own with him. Best to be safe then.
Spreading his men out in a line above the hide, he took from a small bag slung around his neck one of the homemade grenades. He motioned two of his men to do likewise. Each unwound the roughly meter-long cord tied around their devices.
"All together now," the leader whispered. "Pull together, spin together, throw together. Ready . . . . pull."
There was the small sound of three spring-driven firing pins being released and the only slightly louder pops of the pins hitting the primers. All three fuses caught immediately. The men whirled their charges by the cords and released them at about the same time. They sailed through the air silently to land either in or around the spot where the crusaders had been seen to enter the earth.
All three grenadiers hurled themselves to the ground and waited for the explosions. There was only one brief cry from the enemy before the bombs went off. The five men of the mujahadin patrol began to fire as soon as the last of the home-made grenades had exploded, then charged forward still spraying the ground to their front. There was no return fire.
6/8/469 AC, UEPF Spirit of Peace
It was critical, Wallenstein knew, that she not only continue in obsequious pleasantness to the High Admiral and the IG, but that she also continue to eagerly seek out opportunities to make her body available to them. This was no problem; she could feign passion while reading a book. She did so now, while plotting both revenge and her own advancement.
"Unh!" I am senior in the fleet, after Robinson. Arbeit has civil rank but not line rank. "Oh!" If anything were to . . . "Mmm." happen to them . . . "Ahhh." command would devolve on me. Screw this . . . "Ung" I can think better with his cock in my mouth than with him laying on me.
Impatiently, she pushed him off her and bent over to take him in her mouth. Her head motions were thoughtless, automatic, the result of many decades of practice.
He's got to be operating on sealed orders. The Security Council must have given them to him before we left Earth. They're probably locked in his computer in a way even I can't get to. But I have records enough of his orders to date to make a good case for thinking there were sealed orders and carrying through with them, even if there were not. Plus, Arbeit's going along with him makes my case even better.
Automatically, she pulled her mouth away to run her tongue under the shaft a few times before she returned to her sucking-on-autopilot.
Besides, the Governing Council, even if they knew nothing of the state of Terra Nova today, would certainly approve of initiative shown in eliminating a threat. There's probably no better way, no better way left to me, to reach Class One then to eliminate such a threat.
Robinson began to moan and writhe under her ministrations. Now she did concentrate, moving her head and mouth briskly up and down to get the business over with. She still had much thinking to do, and could do without further distractions.
7/8/469 AC, The Base, Kashmir Tribal Trust Lands
Bashir looked up from his digging, distracted by the apparition of five bound and bloodied men being led into camp by ropes tied around their necks. He recognized the uniforms, despite the blood, and had a sinking feeling that his sole contact with the foreign infidels had just been lost. With it, quite possibly, his family was also lost.
He managed to keep the despair from his face, to feign mere curiosity. When Noorzad invited all the men excavating to come and witness the punishment, he even managed to look cheerful as he walked over, still carrying a heavy sledge hammer in his hands.
A substantial crowd had gathered by the time Nur al-Deen, Mustafa's lieutenant, emerged from a cave to stand on a rock overlooking the scene. He looked down upon the captives and spat, eloquently. Then he began to speak in Misrani-accented Arabic. The Arabs among the crowd understood perfectly well. The Pashtun and Kashmiris were totally lost, most of them.
"He says their punishment in written in Sura Five of the Koran," one of the men standing near Bashir announced. 'Thus be it to all,' he says, 'who bring disorder to the world, who fight against the Prophet,' peace be upon him."
Bashir was no Islamic or Salafi scholar. He wondered, What punishment is given in Sura Five? Then he remembered the crosses.
* * *
Sevilla had picked up a little Arabic in Sumer, but this accent left him completely baffled. It didn't help any that he was nauseous, suffering from a severe concussion, and that he had multiple bits of metal lodged in his flesh.
Through waves of concussion-induced nausea he looked around at the crowd. They looked dangerously cheerful, though not so cheerful as they became once the ugly old man in the turban standing atop the rock stopped speaking.
Rough hands grabbed Sevilla and the other four remaining and half-dragged and half-carried them to a flat spot by the base of the central massif. Others disappeared into caves, emerging in moments carrying large wooden beams and posts. Injured as he was, it took Sevilla long moments to identify the purpose of the wooden members. As soon as he did, he began to fight, to resist. It did no good, a few tugs on the rope about his neck caused it to choke off blood to his brain for a moment, taking consciousness with the fresh blood.
When he awakened it was to find himself tied hand and foot to a rough wooden cross. Looking left and right he saw that his comrades were likewise tied. He struggled weakly with the bindings and to no better result than to chafe his wrists and ankles.
Looking down across his chest, Sevilla saw someone take a sledge hammer from another. This one walked forward, accompanied by a man holding four silvery-gray, six-inch long spikes and a like number of wooden squares in his hands. The sergeant's struggles with his bindings grew frantic.
Both of the approaching men spat down on Sevilla's face before kneeling next to him. He felt a wooden square against the heel of his left hand. The square grew heavier as a fist holding a spike came to rest upon it. Frantically, he looked away as the hammer rose and fell and . . .
Oh . . . God . . . Blood ran from the sergeant's mouth where he bit halfway through his tongue. A few more agonizing blows finished driving the spike through wood and hand, affixing that arm firmly to the cross member of the crucifix.
Sevilla wished he could faint, but there was no such mercy. He was still conscious as his right arm was likewise pinioned. Mustn't scream . . . mustn't cry out . . . don't give them the satisfaction. Oh, God, help me . . .
He didn't scream, either, until the third spike was driven through his right heel. That's when the crowd began to laugh.
* * *
Bashir was sickened. Thank Allah they didn't make me drive the spikes. This? This, was what I was serving?
Guiltily, Bashir spared a glance at the five men hanging on the crosses. Their arms were raised above forty-five degrees when they hung limp. Obviously
this impaired their breathing, for they forced themselves to put weight on their tortured heels every few minutes and gasped in air desperately when they did so.
They'd been up there for hours now, with no sign of an approaching, merciful death. Children clustered around the bases of the crosses, poking the men with sticks and throwing rocks, dirt and shit at them. Women stood a little further off. They threw nothing, just stared and pointed and sometimes laughed when the crucified men wept, as they sometimes did.
"How long?" Bashir asked one of his comrades, pointing to the crosses with his chin.
"Two days," was the answer. "Minimum two days. I've seen them—one of them, anyway—last as long as five."
"We do this often?"
"No . . . not often," answered the other, digging in his ear, casually, for grit. "It's been months, actually. The last one was an infiltrator from the government in Peshtwa. He was young and strong like those. That was the one that lasted five days."
9/8/469 AC, UEPF Spirit of Peace
In four days Wallenstein had come no nearer a solution to her problems than she had been when she'd found the High Admiral's computer left on. She'd played the scenarios out in her mind many times. One more time couldn't hurt, she thought.
Option one: I inform those people down below that Robinson is delivering nukes to the Salafis. Result: whether they get the bombs or not the Federated States of Columbia probably launches an attack on this fleet which we could not survive.
She sighed, deeply, attracting the attention of her bridge crew. A casual glare put their attention back on their duties.
Option two: Arrest Robinson before he can deliver them and hold him on charges of delivering weapons technology to the Terra Novans. This is a clear violation of regulations and the Governing Council would uphold me.
Right. Sure they would, with Arbeit screaming "treason." Two chances of that, after humiliating two Class Ones: slim and none. Besides, the crew knows the game as well as I do. I couldn't count on their support. Worse, he really might be acting on sealed ordered. I'd be arrested. Sent home, and find myself as guest of honor at one of the Duke of International Solidarity's gladiatorial combats, like as not.
No one paid any attention when she sighed once again.
Option three: Sabotage his shuttle. Forget it. I don't have a clue about making a bomb with what's aboard ship. The most I can do is not see if it hasn't been properly maintained. And, if he notices—and he's been very touchy about the entire subject since that fire that nearly killed him—the bastard will space me so fast . . .
And . . . that seems to be it. Stop him here; stop him en route; or stop him below. And none of those choices work. Fuck.
11/8/469 AC, The Base, Kashmir Tribal Trust Territories
He was alone now, the pain almost entirely gone. With the pain had gone his strength, of course. Sergeant Sevilla was barely able to stand to change the angle of his arms to allow himself to breath.
The signifer had passed first, two days prior. Sevilla didn't know why. Perhaps it was the injuries he'd taken when captured. He forgave the boy his idiocies. What good could holding on to anger and hate do now?
The other three had all gone silent yesterday; their bodies hanging dark, cold and unmoving. Even the children seemed to have lost interest in them. There was little diversion, after all, in tormenting a corpse.
And I'm near enough to a corpse, Sevilla thought hazily. Not much fun left in me for them, either. Almost, he laughed at the thought.
He wondered sometimes if he wasn't already dead and had just gone to Hell. He saw things, things he knew weren't there. His mother came to him in those visions, weeping for her boy. He whispered to the vision, "Don't cry, Mama, it will all be over soon and I can join you." The visions didn't last. The feel of the rough wood on his back, the evening cold biting his exposed skin, the soreness where the nails had penetrated his flesh, spilling his blood and splitting his bone . . . all these told him he was still alive.
Unfortunately.
Tomorrow, I'll die, Sevilla thought, with utter certainty. Under the circumstances, he looked forward to it.
UEPF Spirit of Peace
Wallenstein and a collection of her officers stood at the broad, thick plexiglas window of the shuttle deck as Robinson and Arbeit boarded the Admiral's gig. The lower classes of the deck crew were on their faces in full proskynesis before the Marchioness of Amnesty. Robinson turned once, to wave jovially, then entered the hatch which closed behind them. The lowers arose and evacuated the deck.
The ship began to hum as air was pumped out of the bay. Wallenstein watched the pressure drop on the gauge intently, even as the balloon expanded. She hoped that the shuttle's seals would fail and the crew suffocate along with the High Admiral. No such luck . . . unfortunately.
At her nod, the officer in charge pushed a button. This caused a hydraulic whine to begin as the bay doors began to open. They stopped with a kachunking sound.
"Son of a bitch," the OIC cursed. "You two," he pointed at two prole crewmen, "Get on the manual crank."
With straining and grunting effort, the proles forced the bay doors open by main force. The shuttle pilot applied the smallest amount of power to vertical lift, just enough to raise the Admiral's gig a half meter off of the deck. Soundlessly, as far as the watchers could tell, it rotated until it was facing directly outboard. Gracefully, and still soundlessly, the shuttle moved forward until it was far enough past the ship for it to start main engines safely to descend to Atlantis Base.
Wallenstein's last thought as the shuttle departed was, Crash, you bastards. It was a hopeless prayer.
Atlantis Base
The small Class One terminal by the landing field was, Unni Wiglan thought, the epitome of good taste, well maintained. More a salon than a transportation facility, the walls were decorated with art from Old Earth, the floor—except where gold-flecked, polished marble showed through—covered with expensive local rugs from Yithrab, Kashmir, Farsia and Pashtia. Rather than even the superior, upholstered seating she was used to in the VIP sections of Tauran Airports invariably reserved for the very rich and officials of the Tauran Union and World League, plus some other select progressive organizations, the seating here was positively homelike, leather sofas and chairs with ottomans, fronted and flanked by coffee and end tables of rare silverwood.
Slightly smiling, blank-faced proles from Old Earth puttered about, sweeping and mopping, dusting and polishing. Unni gave them no thought; they were like the lower classes of the Tauran Union, there to serve and be cared for and not to be overly noticed. The proles were as much furniture as anything else in the terminal.
The years had been kind to Wiglan. She'd kept her slim shape and, if she hadn't quite won the war against gravity, she seemed to have arranged an armistice. She kept her hair shorter now, off her shoulders as befit her age. The few gray streaks detracted not at all from her appearance.
Unni's heart fluttered with excitement. A portion of that was anticipation of the thorough fucking she expected to receive soon at the High Admiral's command. After centuries of practice, he certainly had some technique. Then, too, she was going to be introduced to the Marchioness of Amnesty, said to be a fine looking woman. Unni wriggled with anticipation.
More excitement, though, came from the sheer danger of the enterprise upon which she had, at Robinson's behest, embarked.
It had not been easy for Unni to overcome her personal revulsion with the Tauran Union's military. Moreover, she'd had little personal to trade beyond whatever prestige there might be in association with, and the occasional bedding of, a TU minister. Still, she'd been diligent in her High Admiral's cause and he had funded her lavishly.
The results of that association, those beddings, and that funding waited outside in a Yamato-manufactured truck surrounded by tough looking, armed, UE Marines: from Hangkuk, four nuclear weapons, from Volga, another four, and from certain persons in Kashmir's nuclear program, four more.
A wall speake
r chimed thrice and announced in a sexless voice, "Marchioness of Amnesty and High Admiral of United Earth Peace Fleet's launch arriving in five minutes."
Unni looked skyward, expectantly. She was surprised, therefore, when the Marine band outside began to play Earth's Hymn to Peace and she looked down to see the familiar pumpkin seed shaped launch with its blue- and white-enameled symbol of United Earth roll up almost silently to the terminal and stop.
The symbol split to reveal Robinson, in full regalia. He stepped down onto a small staircase that had thrust out simultaneously with the opening of the hatch. Three steps and the High Admiral's feet were firmly planted on the purple carpet that was reserved for Earth's highest and noblest officials. The Marchioness followed.
While Robinson strode the purple carpet the truck pulled around to the far side and a crew of Marines in plain fatigues began to transfer its contents to the shuttle's hold. The other Marines, the armed ones in full dress uniform, marched smoothly at port arms to surround the small ship and line both sides of the purple carpet. They then faced outward on command.
Wiglan shivered to see the Marines march, their bodies stiff and their faces cold, hard and emotionless. How much more pleasant to be surrounded by the blankly smiling proles!
* * *
The High Admiral entered, Arbeit on one arm, lighting the salon with his smile. "Unni, my very dearest," he said, enthusiastically, after introductions, "how can I, how can Earth and Civilization, ever repay you? You're a marvel!"