Carnifex

by Tom Kratman

  "Come . . . come!" Noorzad shouted to four of his followers. Not looking to see if they followed, he raced on foot to the gun. A quick visual examination showed the gun was loaded. There was a crude metal chair to sit on and what seemed to be a sight. At least there was an assemblage that, lined up with a seated gunner's head, would define a line roughly parallel to the twin barrels.

  Noorzad sat down in the chair and confirmed that the projection ahead of him was a gun sight. An experimental press of each of the foot pedals swung the gun left and right. He tugged on the handles and the gun's muzzles raised up. When he pushed them forward the elevation dropped.

  This took mere moments. By the time his men joined him Noorzad was lining the sight up on the leading of two approaching helicopters. He thought he knew enough to lead, but he overestimated how much was required. When the firing studs were pressed, the twin cannon spit out their sixty shells in a few seconds. The electronically-fired gun clicked on empty as Noorzad ran out of ammunition. That was just before the helicopter would have crossed the path of the shells.

  "Get more!" he shouted to his men. "More shells."

  The unfamiliar flexible belts of cannon cartridges, sixty per belt, caused some problem as the men tried to control them and feed them into the ammunition slots. By the time he was ready to fire again, Noorzad saw that the helicopter was on the ground with dozens of armed and armored men spilling out of it and the others that had accompanied it. The dozens became hundreds as more helicopters touched down. Crap.

  Well . . . if I can't kill enough of the infidel infantry I can kill their helicopter.

  * * *

  Cruz was, per doctrine, the first man out. He stood at the edge of the rear door cursing and hustling his men off the helicopter, directing their leaders where he wanted them placed. A piper automatically took a position by the centurion's side and began playing the First Tercio's own theme, Boinas Azules Cruzan la Frontera.

  "Sergeant Avila," Cruz shouted over the helicopters and the pipes, pointing, "I want your squad there, from ten o'clock to two o'clock." Then he turned his attention back towards the inside of the just-lifting helicopter and saw the left-side wall began to disintegrate in his field of view. The crew chief, still gamely firing his machine gun, was hit by something that exploded, tearing his upper torso from his lower body at the waist and flinging the chief's remains to the right side of the compartment. Cruz had the briefest glimpse of one of the pilots being thrown across the cockpit onto the other.

  Smelling aviation fuel and seeing sparks and smoke, Cruz turned to throw himself away from the bird. From behind came a loud whoosh as the fuel caught fire, exploded, and knocked Cruz and the piper, faces first, to the dirt.

  * * *

  Seeing that someone was at least trying to do something, more men, not all of them Noorzad's, rushed to reinforce the gun position. The column of smoke served as their orientation mark.

  Noorzad and his men cheered when the helicopter began first to smoke and then to burst into flame. They saw what Cruz could not. One of the two pilots, trapped by flame behind him, tried to force his way through the strong plexiglas of the windscreen as fire rose all around.

  Noorzad would cherish the open-mouthed agony writ on that pilot's face for the rest of his life.

  * * *

  Cruz and his men were shocked, yes, by the destruction of the helicopter and crew that had bravely brought them in. More than shocked though, they were deeply angered. A red mist descended across the centurion's vision.

  "Fix bayonets, you bastards," Cruz called out, as he affixed his own. "Play you son of a bitch," he cursed at the shocked piper.

  "Fix bayonets" usually meant a wild screaming charge with blood in your eye. It was not precisely a favored tactic in the Legion but this was a special case, a situation where time was more valuable than lives because it meant lives. The men of the platoon knew that. Even so they looked at their young centurion as if he were insane.

  "Fix BAYONETS!" Cruz repeated, as loudly as possible. This time the men knew he was serious. They reached to their belts and, still prone on the ground, pulled out the shiny blades (for the Legion knew that a bayonet was a weapon of terror and that, thus, shinier was better) and attached them to the muzzles of their rifles, jiggling the bayonets to make sure of a secure fix.

  "Now . . . you sonsabitches . . . FOLLOW MEEE . . . "

  * * *

  Looking out the right side window of his Cricket, Carrera saw one of his valuable IM-71s suddenly caught by heavy fire as it tried to lift off after landing its troops. He cursed as the chopper abruptly settled back to earth and began to pour out first smoke, then fire.

  His first instinct, born of hate and rage, was to bring a cohort's worth of artillery down on the gun which had just slaughtered his men. He was just starting to pick up a microphone to do that when he saw a rare thing, a remarkable thing. What looked like about fifty men were streaming towards the enemy air defense gun in a single mad rush. Sunlight glinting upward told that those men had their bayonets fixed.

  * * *

  Racing forward in the lead, Cruz saw the enemy heavy gun fire a brief burst. The passage of the shells created a palpable shock wave around him. No matter, possessed by battle madness he continued his charge, screaming like a demon and firing from the hip.

  Nearby, charging forward with fangs bared, the platoon's attached scout dog began to howl: ahwoooo. My pack is the greatest.

  A bullet struck one of the glassy metal chest plates of Cruz's lorica and bounced off, singing. With the angle of the strike and of his body, it shocked and slowed him but it didn't stop him.

  Wild-eyed Salafis arose from the ground. Some were cut down by the legionaries' fire but others closed. Cruz put two three-round bursts of 6.5mm into the body of one, half emulsifying his target's innards. Wheeling to face another, this one thrusting forward a fixed bayonet, Cruz tapped the enemy rifle aside and lunged to plunge his own bayonet into the enemy's throat. Dropping his rifle to clutch at his wound, eyes rolling up in his head as blood rushed out to spatter on the ground, this Salafi sank to his knees.

  Cruz put one booted foot on the Salafi's head and pushed him off of his now red-running bayonet. Again he whirled to face two more charging maniacs. He swung his butt at one and missed, but then stepped forward and reversed the motion to slam the butt into the Salafi's unarmored kidney. That one went down puking with pain. The next one up Cruz shot before spinning to plunge the bayonet into the back of his previous opponent.

  "Die, motherfucker," he snarled as the Salafi screamed in agony.

  By this time Cruz's men had reached him and joined the fray. The entire hilltop became a mass of lunging, shooting, screaming and dying men. The dog ripped out a Salafi throat, howled again, and bounded off in search of another. Ahwooo; my pack is the greatest. Not far behind the piper's playing added to the furious din.

  Here the legionaries' superior training and armor—to say nothing of the pooch's –came to the fore. Even at close range, the Salafis couldn't usually get a bullet to penetrate directly from in front, though a number of the Balboans went down with wounds to face, head, limbs and torso sides. Within a few moments, all the Salafis were down and Cruz's men were finishing off the wounded with butt stroke, burst and bloodied bayonet.

  There was no time, in a close fight, for the niceties. And men who had failed to surrender by the time the Legion closed to three hundred meters had forfeited their right to do so.

  Breathing deeply, anger still raging within him, the centurion walked deliberately to where a crusty-looking, one-eyed Salafi struggled to load the light cannon that had smashed and burned the helicopter. Seeing the look in Cruz's eye the Cyclops stopped his efforts and began to raise his hands.

  "Fuck you, asshole," Cruz said, as he took aim and triggered a burst into the Noorzad's head.

  Interlude

  4 July, 2206, Cygnus House, Chelsea, London, European Governing Region, Earth

  "The Marquis is dead; long li
ve the Marchioness," Lucretia whispered to herself as the last of the lower class investigating officers departed the mansion. The sun was down and an ambulance had long since carted off her late father's cooling corpse.

  As she closed the door behind the police, Class Fours and thus very deferential to the new Marchioness, Lucretia sighed, "Oh, Daddy, and you were such a good lay, too." She sighed, and then burst out laughing, dancing on light feet across the black and white tiled floor of the vestibule.

  The police had carted off the bulk of the domestic kitchen staff, of course. They would be incarcerated in Amnesty's own dungeons and rigorously questioned by its own interrogators. But . . . who cares? Lowers can be bought for a song. Which is a damned good thing because now, with daddy out of the way, I intend to go through a lot of them.

  "Then, too," she said aloud, "perhaps I should buy a commission in the Peace Forces. I've always fancied how I'd look in uniform."

  Lucretia walked to her father's desk and pressed a button on the intercom. A face appeared, that of one of the maids, Emily.

  "Yes, mum?"

  "I feel like celebrating. Whiskey. Ice."

  "Yes, mum."

  When the maid arrived, not more than five minutes later, Lucretia waited for her to pour and then struck her across the face with her riding crop. "You were too slow."

  Weeping, the maid sank to her knees, crying and covering her bruised face with her hands.

  "That's better, Emily. I much prefer you in that position. But . . . I think you would look even better with your face to the floor." Arbeit used her dainty foot to press the maid's head downward.

  Lucretia left the girl there, trembling and cowering, and with blood welling from the slash across her face. The new Marchioness liked that, the image, the reality, the trembling fear. She picked up the glass of whiskey and drank deeply.

  Lucretia then laughed and started to sing, softly:

  "Arise you prisoners of starvation . . . "

  Chapter Twenty-four

  So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,

  Farewell remorse; all good to me is lost.

  Evil, be thou my good.

  Milton, Paradise Lost

  12/8/469 AC, The Base

  The two infantry cohorts peeled the edges of the fortress, one clearing east, one west. As they did, they made the valley floor below uninhabitable to the Salafis trying desperately to relieve the central massif. As they did, too, it was possible for Jimenez and Masood to shift their own troops away from the cleared portions and concentrate on the sections of the massif still under attack.

  It was not possible yet for the Scouts atop the massif to delve into the lower area, the caves and tunnels. It was also, Carrera considered, unwise to pull in the wide-ringing Cazadors and cavalry scouts to assist until the outer valley floors could be cleared in detail.

  Still, one part seemed clear enough. He directed his Cricket to land by that part of the massif's base.

  * * *

  "Get us the fuck out of here, Martin," Arbeit begged. "I don't want to die here . . . or anywhere."

  Robinson ignored her. He needed desperately to call his ship or Atlantis Base. Unfortunately for that, his belt communicator could not penetrate the rock above and getting up to the surface was quite problematic. His allies here held the entrances to the caves, but any attempt to emerge was driven back by a fusillade of fire. Even being near the edges was dangerous as the enemy aircraft could swoop in at any moment to deliver rockets and napalm. Burned and bleeding men were even now being carried deeper below.

  "You look worried, infidel," commented Nur al-Deen.

  "And you're not?" Robinson retorted, then realized the retort was hollow. Nur al-Deen did not look worried in the least.

  The Salafi smiled. "Not at all. Not only is my faith in Allah limitless, but we have an escape tunnel."

  "What?"

  "An escape tunnel. It leads from under this hill to a main line of the local karez."

  "Karez?"

  "Yes, karez. They're underground . . . oh, aqueducts I suppose you would call them. About a meter wide, maybe one and a half to two high, deep below the ability of the infidel sensors to reach, and they lead everywhere. There are tens of thousands of kilometers of them in this area. It's a tight fit and, for the tallest among us it will be very uncomfortable to walk so far bent over like old women. Still, we can get out. And we will, while the martyrs above buy us time to escape."

  It suddenly hit Robinson, "Those things I thought were lines of bomb craters . . . those are part of the system?"

  "Yes," Nur al-Deen replied. "There are none for the tunnel that leads from here to the main line. That was deliberate on our part, partly for defense and partly for deception. We are building a fire by the tunnel entrance to draw in fresh air so we can use it. Before, any enemy who tried to would have had to carry their air with them."

  Relieved, Robinson ran his hand across his face, then reached into his pocket and pulled out the detonation device. He wasn't necessarily going to be captured or killed after all. "You must take me with you. I still control the nukes," he said. "Only I have the key codes."

  "Of course," Nur al-Deen agreed, amiably. "Otherwise we'd stake you out for the other infidels now."

  Camp San Lorenzo

  "Karez," Alena said, suddenly, looking up from where she lay in full proskynesis of the floor before a befuddled Hamilcar. "My Lord gave me the insight. Truly he is a god."

  "What was that? Karez? And please stand up, girl."

  Seeing Hamilcar did not object, Alena stood and said, "What was bothering me; I know now . . . the karez. You know, the underground aqueducts?"

  "What about them?" Fernandez asked.

  "I think that if one passes close enough to the enemy base, they will have tunneled to it."

  The Base

  Carrera's Cricket jostled to a rough landing not far from where four crosses still stood. The pilot had a time of it avoiding the mass of vehicles still standing there, some of them burning and smoking, and which had brought in the Scouts. The ground leading from the vehicles was littered with corpses.

  Carrera sighed, looking at the crosses. They really did it. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. He got on the radio and made a call back to Camp San Lorenzo with a demand for his engineers to make something for him, a lot of somethings, as a matter of fact. Then he exited the aircraft and walked to stand at the base of one of the crosses. This one held the cold, blackened body of a young signifer he had personally commissioned not long before. I promise you, son, they'll pay with interest.

  A half squad of Pashtun Scouts ran up, their naik looking at Carrera so much as if to ask, Are you insane, Duque? This area is not secure.

  As if to punctuate, an almost spent bullet whined in, kicking up dust near Carrera's feet. He ignored it.

  "Naik, can you lead me up to Jimenez?"

  "Yes, sir," the Pashtun answered. "He and the subadar sent us. This way please."

  "And leave a couple of men to guard my Cricket."

  "Yes, sir."

  Escorted by his two radiomen, these having pulled the radios out from the Cricket and slung them on their backs, and three of the naik's scouts, Carrera began to mount the steep-sided hill to his front.

  * * *

  The way was steep in places. Robinson nearly fell at several points. Torches were an impossibility, the air was barely enough to sustain life. Fortunately, the Salafis had a fair number of chemical light sticks to illuminate the way. Still, the point light sources were few enough that many tripped on loose rocks and slipped on the damp tunnel floor.

  The people in the tunnel amounted to perhaps just over five hundred mujahadin, Mustafa's most faithful, a party of them taking turns carrying the litter on which rested the one nuclear weapon they had salvaged. There were also many times that in women and children. These last were not only those who belonged to the core of the faithful, but as many others from those staying behind as could be gathered before the tunnel behi
nd them was deliberately collapsed.

  Children cried continuously, the tunnel walls echoing with the annoying sound. This was particularly hard on High Admiral Robinson. His class rarely saw children but for grubby prole brats begging by the side of Old Earth's streets and roads. Their own progeny, few as they were, were invariably given over to lower caste governesses to care for.

  "Can't you quiet your brats?" Robinson demanded. Arbeit seconded that.

  "We could more easily quiet you," Nur al-Deen answered over his shoulder. "That; or have you wailing a lot more than the children." The High Admiral immediately shut up; possession of the nuke keys might, after all, not be enough to save his life. The Salafis were frequently irrational.

  * * *

  The southern, eastern and western "walls" of the enemy fortress were cleared. Still, the Legion and its auxiliaries were shut out from entering the caves and tunnels. The fire from the defenders inside keeping them out was not less than the fire of the attackers outside pinning the Salafis in.

  The call had gone out for flammables over and above the flamethrowers carried by the Legion's sappers. These had seen their fuel exhausted before the defenders had been much discomforted, so deep were the excavations. Fuel, however, would not be forthcoming for hours.

  Some deep excavations could be reached as they were isolated from the central tunnel and cave system. One of these, the largest, contained a UE shuttle, somewhat shot up, and eleven nukes.

  Well, there's my excuse, Carrera thought, looking at the shuttle. But do I want to give them all up? I don't think so. The Volgan weapons almost certainly didn't come in officially but from criminal channels. Those I can keep. The Hangkuk warheads are unlikely to come to light. I can keep those, too. But I have to produce at least one and if I produce one Kashmiri bomb the subsequent investigation is going to show at least three more missing. Best to turn over one Hangkuk bomb and keep the other two. Then, if I use a Kashmiri bomb someday the evidence will point at them. That might be useful. And best to send the one I brought myself back to base.