Carnifex

by Tom Kratman

  The IM-71 which had brought that bomb waited outside the cave, rotor still turning, while Carrera inspected. A warrant officer from Fernandez's section had dismounted and accompanied Carrera on his inspection.

  "I want those taken back, except that one," Carrera said, pointing out one of the Hangkuk bombs. "Have your people start loading them now and get out of here as soon as you're ready."

  He considered further. I'd love to take this shuttle back and strip it down for reverse engineering. Then, too, I don't have a lot of interest in a UEPF-FSC war . . . for now. And, if the Feds are given this, they just might go to war, given the nukes. Hmmm . . . an IM-62 could lift it, I think. There's no way the shuttle weighs more than twenty tons. We could disassemble it here and ship it home inside a plane . . . if an IM-62 can lift it so can an NA-21. Yes.

  "Drag out the shuttle, too. In pieces. We'll send it home," he finished.

  * * *

  Oh, Mama, I want to go home, Cruz thought as he and his lead squad eased their way further into the depths of the massif.

  He broke and shook an infrared chemlight, tossing it around a corner. A grenade would have been as dangerous to him and his legionaries as to any Salafis who might be sheltering behind the corner.

  The light was invisible to the naked eye. It lit up like day for the IR-sensitive monocular Cruz wore on his helmet. He flipped this down and, gulping, heart thumping in his chest, crouched low and pointed his F-26 around the corner's edge.

  There were people there. Rather, there were a number of desiccated corpses laying on the tunnel floor and sitting with backs against walls. Cruz felt an involuntary shudder. Bad as they are, this was a shitty way to die.

  Radio was useless down here, they'd discovered. Instead, the clearing teams laid out wire behind them, connecting their operations with the surface by field telephone. Cruz whispered his report into the phone before handing it over to his RTO.

  Partly for grip and partly for silence the party imitated the generally barefoot Salafis. It felt decidedly odd to the legionaries but it did, they admitted, make a certain sense. At least one soldier asked his squad leader, "Sarge . . . if I'm killed, will you make sure they put my boots on me before they send me home."

  The sergeant slapped the legionary's helmet and told him to, "Shut the fuck up, you morbid bastard."

  Cruz scanned the tunnel floor ahead with his monocular. Nothing there to stick into feet, he decided. "Come on," he whispered, leading his men forward along one wall.

  Midway to the next twist of the tunnel Cruz stopped to pick up the IR chemlight. There were a limited number, and there was no sense in wasting one. Instead of tossing it again, he had a better idea. He stuck it in the muzzle of the rifle of one of his men and had the soldier stick the rifle out. Then, as he had before, Cruz got low and peeked around the corner.

  This time the bodies at the far end were living and apparently ready to fight. Taking a deep breath, Cruz turned and walked slowly and carefully back several men. By the sniff he could tell when he had reached the right one, despite the darkness.

  "Go back fifty meters," he whispered to each of the soldiers he passed until he smelt the gas. "Undo your hose here and go to the point," he told that soldier.

  "Sure, Centurion," the legionary answered.

  The tunnel floor sloped downward. At the juncture the soldier eased his hose out and tipped a heavy, twenty liter, can of gasoline he carried. The gas left the can, trickled through the hose and began to flow down the sloping floor of the tunnel. The evaporating fuel was choking. Sounds of panic roared up the tunnel as Cruz bent to apply his cigarette lighter to the fluid.

  "Back to air!" he shouted as the flames took hold, sucking the oxygen out of the local atmosphere.

  * * *

  "They'll go where? Carrera shouted into the microphone.

  "One of the local underground aqueducts, the karez," Fernandez's voice answered. "And the system is thick up there. No telling which one they'll have used. Assuming the girl is right, of course."

  Deep down Carrera knew she was right. Fuck, fuck, fuck. They can't get away.

  * * *

  Although it was only a few miles to the karez, it took more than ten miserable hours to negotiate it. In the cramped confines of the tunnel every stumble created a blockage. The air became foul and fetid. While the warmth of the bodies did cause a bit of air to rise, sucking fresh air in from the karez ahead, and displacing some of the heavy carbon dioxide down, it was barely enough to sustain life. The children too grown to be carried suffered especially. Some stopped suffering in time and were left behind. Their little bodies on the floor added to the difficulty of the journey for the others. To Robinson's discomfort, the crying didn't decrease with the dead children. Instead it increased exponentially with the wails of bereaved mothers and as the suffering of the other kids grew.

  * * *

  The trickle of dead and wounded out the various cave and tunnel mouths never seemed to end. Only a few of these were Salafi. In the close confines of the tunnels the legionaries rarely were willing to take a chance.

  Above, in the ad hoc command post, a computer graphics man constructed a diagram of the interior from the reports of the grunts fighting below. Looking over the man's shoulder as he rotated the diagram on the screen, Carrera was amazed.

  "Jesus, they must have been building this thing for thirty years, wouldn't you say, Subadar Masood?"

  Masood, who had been walking up behind Carrera very quietly, snapped his fingers. It was impossible, so far as he could tell, to sneak up on his Duque.

  "At least thirty years," he answered, "to my own certain knowledge."

  At that moment an IM-71 carrying wounded lifted off from the valley floor and rotored out, heading south.

  "I wish to hell I had some kind of gas that would seep down and clear the bastards out without losing any more of my men," Carrera said. "Carbon dioxide would do, if we had a way to manufacture it. Chlorine would do even better but that's against the rules."

  Masood shook his head in the negative. "Wouldn't work, Legate. There are all kinds of baffles and twists down there. And then how would you get rid of the gas, even if it worked, to search?"

  "Probably couldn't," Carrera admitted. Looking at the 3D diagram on the monitor screen, he said, "May not matter anyway. It appears to be mostly cleared."

  He looked toward the crew manning the telephones. "You are keeping the men below informed, right?"

  "Affirmative, Duque."

  * * *

  "Wait," Cruz whispered, holding up one hand to halt the second of the thirty-nine remaining men of his platoon. There was a shuffling and jangling from behind him as the men ran into each other.

  "What is it, Centurion?" his optio asked.

  "I heard something ahead."

  "This fucking place is spooky."

  "No shit."

  The sound from ahead died out at the same time Cruz's men managed to quiet down. There was no need for him to tell them to fix bayonets. They'd learned early on that firing a rifle in these close confines was nearly as painful as being shot. Most of the clearing had been done with flame, rifle butt and bayonet.

  "Cruz, that you?" rang out in Spanish from up ahead.

  The thudding hearts slowed immediately as men exhaled with relief. If there had been anything more terrifying than closing to bayonet range in these infernal caverns the men couldn't imagine what it was.

  "Yeah . . . yeah. Dominguez?"

  "Oh, Cazador compadre!" came the laughing answer.

  Cruz felt the fear drain away. "Christ, 'Minguez, you scared the shit out of me."

  "Tell you what, Cruz; you clean my drawers and I'll clean yours and we'll see who has the hardest job," Dominguez answered as he strode forward. "Hey, what the fuck is this?"

  In the IR, using only his monocular, Cruz didn't understand at first. He pulled out one non-IR chemlight and, ordering his men to shut one eye, broke and shook it.

  "Holy shit!" he exclaimed, lookin
g into what appeared to be a very shallow tunnel with many large boulders blocking it a few feet in. "You don't suppose . . . "

  "Buck it up to higher." In this case Dominguez meant both higher in the chain of command and higher in elevation.

  * * *

  "They fucking what?" Carrera raged.

  "It looks like they got away," Jimenez explained. "Whichever direction that tunnel goes in, and I'd be willing to bet it doglegs somewhere, they'll have gotten into the karez system and that's extensive enough they could be heading anywhere.

  Carrera felt his heart sink and his energy drain away. All this, for nothing? All my men lost or crippled, for nothing? War for almost nine fucking years, for nothing? Why, God?

  He sat down, right on the dirt and grass. Click.

  Jimenez sat next to him. "Hey, we hurt the bastards," he tried to cheer.

  "Not enough," Carrera answered distantly. "Never enough."

  "Wonder who that is?"

  Carrera looked up to see an FSA helicopter, sporting a red placard with three stars on it, winging in. "Rivers," he answered, "come to claim the nuke."

  "The nuke?" Jimenez asked. "There were eleven of them."

  Carrera answered, tiredly, "I know that. You know that. He doesn't. We're going to keep ten . . . just in case. They've already gone back to base."

  "Dangerous game, Patricio. I know we have the seven but those were really unaccounted for."

  "It'll be fine."

  * * *

  Rivers was escorted up the top of the massif by the same naik who had seen to Carrera earlier. Neither said a word.

  Rivers didn't offer to shake hands; he was still furious at being maneuvered as he had been.

  "So there really was a nuke."

  Carrera nodded. "Yes. I was always certain there would be," he answered. "But their chiefs got away. All we managed to get here were a lot of indians."

  "Well, intelligence will be interested in getting their hands even on just indians."

  "No . . . that's not going to happen. We'll develop our own intelligence and share it with you," Carrera corrected. "Besides, there weren't very many indians taken, either."

  Changing the subject, in large part because he knew that, if Carrera said he was not going to turn over any prisoners, then no prisoners would be turned over, period, Rivers asked, "How did the chiefs get away?"

  "Tunnel. We had no clue before we hit this place but it apparently leads to the underground irrigation system here, the karez."

  Rivers thought about that one. "You are planning on giving me the nuke, right?" Seeing Carrera's listless nod, he continued, "Well . . . just because you share all your intelligence with us"—Rivers didn't really believe that—"doesn't mean we share all our intelligence with you."

  Carrera cocked his head to one side, raising an eyebrow.

  "We might be able to tell where they are underground. Don't bother asking how, but we sometimes can."

  Hmmm. He means what? Seismic? Maybe, but probably not. Ground penetrating radar? Too deep. Carbon dioxide emissions? No . . . that wouldn't work as CO2 sinks. Maybe . . .

  "Thermal? From so far underground? Some of these karez are a thousand feet down."

  "It might work," Rivers shrugged. "I'm promising only to try."

  Gunoz Karez, 800 feet down, 13/8/462

  Water there was in plenty; all one had to do to drink was stoop. Since it was well above ankle-deep, one didn't even have to stoop that far. Food was another issue entirely. And, since there was none to issue . . .

  "There will be food ahead," Nur al-Deen promised. The word filtered up and back the long line of refugees. "Food ahead . . . food ahead."

  Progress would have been slower but that the karez was dark enough that the women and older girls could lift their burkhas up out of the water and away from tangling their legs in wet folds of cloth. In the light they'd have been too fearful to do so. In Salafi lands girls had been forced to roast to death rather than leave a burning building improperly clothed.

  On the other hand, it was a long walk. The men and women simply had to go to the bathroom. Since there was no way to fully undress, no privacy at all but the darkness, they simply pissed and shat themselves. The stench made Robinson gag. Arbeit's vomit added to the stench.

  I've never really understood these people, he thought, not until now. I was a fool even to think of trying to make a world government here. All I ever really needed to do was help the Salafis to take over. They'd have knocked this world back so far into the stone age that they'd never have gotten off planet and become a threat to us. When . . . if I get back, I am going to throw all the backing I can to the Salafis. It's Earth's best hope.

  Trying to get his mind away from the stench, Robinson contemplated his flagship and his fleet. Wallenstein must be in a panic. She would have seen the attack from space. No doubt she is frantically trying to rescue me, poor little girl.

  UEPF Spirit of Peace

  Wallenstein had the radio traffic from below piped directly into her day cabin. She exulted with grim satisfaction at the news she received. Cheat me, will you, you piece of rat filth?

  She pressed a button on the intercom atop her desk. "Intel, can you identify the frequency the enemy commander is using?"

  "They're using frequency hoppers, Captain, but we can copy it," the Intel officer answered. "If I can ask, why?"

  "Never mind that. Send the key to communications. Communications?"

  "Here, Captain."

  "When you get the code, patch me through to the ene . . . coalition commander down below. Direct from him to my cabin here with no other listeners, understand?"

  "Roger, Captain. Only take a few."

  The Base

  The RTO's brown eyes went as wide as saucers. "Duque? There's someone on our push who says she's in command of the United Earth Peace Fleet."

  Except for color Carrera's eyes became a mirror of the RTO's. He put out his hand for the microphone.

  "Carrera."

  "This is Captain Marguerite Wallenstein of the UEPF ship, Spirit of Peace. In the absence of our High Admiral, I am the ranking officer in space, Duque. I just called to offer my congratulations."

  "For?"

  There was a moment's hesitation on the other end before Wallenstein came back with, "You did find the . . . packages, did you not, Duque? The twelve packages? You do have my High Admiral in captivity, do you not."

  "I found your packages, Captain," Carrera admitted. TWELVE Packages? Shit. "As for your High Admiral, I am still looking."

  "Look well, Duque," Wallenstein suggested. "The packages were his idea, not mine. Besides, if you find him there'll be a gap in my social schedule I'd be happy to let you fill." Though he didn't know anything about the captain, Carrera could almost see the sultry smile on the other end.

  "That's all right, Captain. I think I'll be looking very carefully even without such a tempting offer. On the other hand, assuming you would prefer for your High Admiral never to return, as this conversation suggests, perhaps you can help me find out where he's gone."

  "Always willing to help in the 'spirit of peace,'" Wallenstein quipped. She sounded positively thrilled to help.

  Some interesting politics going on above, Carrera thought. Pity Rivers hasn't been able to deliver the location of the enemy, yet. He asked, "Can you scan for unusual heat signature coming out of the ground in an area of about twenty kilometers around me?"

  "Piece of cake, Duque."

  "Get me that, then, and I can guarantee your High Admiral won't be coming to take command ever again. Until then, Carrera, out."

  To the RTOs he said, "Not a word, ever, to anyone."

  Interlude

  21 June, 2390, UEPF Spirit of Peace

  The huge lightsail was deployed to brake the ship as it assumed orbit around Terra Nova. Down below the year was 334, AC.

  Times there were actually pretty happy. The Federated States of Columbia, a generation past the bloodletting of the Formation War, enjoyed un
precedented prosperity. In the Volgan Empire the Tsar was experimenting with the freeing of the serfs. The continent of Taurus had not seen war on its soil for two generations, which was something of a record. Moreover, the Moslem and Salafi portions of the globe were, by and large, under the rule of the Taurans, a result of the crushing of the last Salafi jihad. The discovery of oil on the Yithrab peninsula was still a dozen years away.

  The rate of technological progress, down below, was worrisome, though. This was why, after much hemming and hawing, the Consensus had finally agreed to build the last four starships—Spirit of Peace, Spirit of Unity, Spirit of Harmony and Spirit of Brotherhood—required to bring the fleet up to the strength that had been decided on centuries before.

  It isn't so much that the Consensus acts slowly, mused the new commander of the fleet, High Admiral Jonathan Saxe-Coburg, as that it thinks so slowly. Something about the anti-agathics seems not to help with the mind after the third century, or at least it doesn't help with a number of us. His Excellency, the SecGen, seemed particularly badly effected when last we spoke. And the Caliph of Rome? Hopeless.

  Or maybe it isn't the failure of the anti-agathics. Maybe it's the sheer stultifying boredom of Old Earth that slows the minds of the people who brought us to where we are today. I confess, I don't know.

  And I don't know what I'm going to do about the problem of Terra Nova, either. We haven't changed, technologically, in centuries. You can watch the change as it happens down there. Sure, they're at the level of breech loading small arms, railroads and steam, right now. Where will they be in another century?

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Bloomin' loot!

  That's the thing to make the boys git up an' shoot!

  It's the same with dogs an' men,

  If you'd make 'em come again

  Clap 'em forward with a Loo! loo! Lulu! Loot!

  Kipling, Loot

  15/8/469 AC, Gunoz Karez, 200 feet down

  Robinson had no compass. It seemed such a primitive thing, really, that the thought had never occurred to him to bring one, even had one been available aboard his flagship. Then, too, with the twists and turns of both escape tunnel and karez, he was really quite lost. The only objective measure he had to go by was that the karez was, however gently, ascending. That meant . . .