War World X: Takeover

by John F. Carr

  So Abdullah set out to research the issue. He found that the rate of successful pregnancies in the highlands above the Shangri-La Valley were less than four out of ten. And at least two or three out of each ten pregnancies led to the death of the mother. There were midwives in Medina who did their best with what was little more than folk remedies. The CoDominium Marine medics were useless, saying female problems were “not their department.”

  The mining company doctors in Eureka were more sympathetic, but offered little more than theories—something in the water, or the thin air, or diets or the odd cycle of days and nights. One of them, an older man, gave Abdullah access to his desktop computer, and Abdullah quickly realized how much he missed a world where so much information had been at his fingertips.

  He spent hours in front of the computer, learning more than he ever thought he would about the subject. He interviewed women in the towns and would have gotten a reputation for being a bit odd had not A’isha put out the word that he was doing work for the Mahdi, work that would improve the chances of life for the children of the Faithful.

  He did learn that some of the wealthier men in town sent their wives south through the Karakal Pass and Fort Stony Point into the Shangri-La Valley below. Success rates for pregnancies in the valley were apparently much better than they were here in the north.

  In the end, though, he discovered his answer one night while taking a break, with his mandolin in his lap, and a pint of beer at his side. They were at the pub, and had just finished a set of reels, the “Banshee,” and “Far From Home.” Far from home, indeed, thought Abdullah as he took a drink.

  “What ails you?” asked his friend Patrick, in town after one of his many scouting trips, his tin whistle on the table in front of him.

  Abdullah explained the task that Tawfiq had set before him and how his research was hitting dead end after dead end.

  “I know whatcha need,” said Patrick. “A birthing chamber.”

  “A what?” asked Abdullah.

  “A chamber, like in a hospital, where pregnant women go if they are having trouble.”

  “What do these chambers do? What do they look like?”

  “I don’t know what they do,” answered Patrick. “But the doors look like the doors on those tin cans you folks came in. Except ya go through two of ’em, one after another. I saw ’em when I went to visit Moira, when she was pregnant with her third kid, and havin’ problems. Made my ears hurt to go in and out, even though I swallowed hard, like they told me to. There aren’t many of them, but people travel hundreds of miles to use ’em. Don’t they have any ’round here?”

  Abdullah’s thoughts whirled. Two doors indicated an airlock, and what Patrick was describing was a pressurized chamber. He remembered reading about complications of pregnancies at high altitudes. He thought about their camp, with hundreds of capsules, each one a potential pressure chamber. He wondered if any of them had air handling systems that had not been scavenged for metal and parts. All along the answer had been right around them.

  He whooped, and clapped his friend on the shoulders. He threw a coin on the table.

  “Drinks are on me,” he shouted, as he ran out the door.

  The next morning, the hard work began. He’d had the one percent of inspiration, now came the ninety-nine percent of perspiration. He got Tawfiq to assign him assistants, an Afghan machinist, a Pakistani electronics technician and a couple of other men who were handy with tools. They surveyed the capsules and found a pair, fairly close together, that still had their equipment intact. These were occupied by senior lieutenants of the Mahdi, who were too well-off to need to scavenge and sell off components. These lieutenants soon found themselves moved to other quarters.

  The capsules had been designed without airlocks, since they docked with their carrier, and were not designed to open until they reached the surface of a habitable planet. So there was welding and reworking required to fit each with a working airlock, and then he had the few men with engineering background design compressors that would keep the pressure inside the capsule and adjust the pressure in the airlock when it was used.

  Abdullah found himself reporting directly to A’isha on this project and was surprised, but pleased, to realize she was not thinking just of herself, but also of other women of the Faithful. In fact, she said, if this would work, they could build more chambers, and make money from the townspeople.

  He sometimes found opportunities to talk to Faryal after these meetings, stealing moments together in supply tents, having rambling conversations about everything except what was most important to them, whether or not they would ever have a chance to be together. He didn’t dare tell her that he sometimes thought about running away, finding that place in the Shangri-La Valley that Patrick called ‘real friendly.’ She would never agree to leave her family, or her duties.

  It took months, but finally, the chambers were ready. Midwives who had been trained as nurses went inside the chambers with women who were nearing their final trimester. In a few months, they would know if they were successful. A’isha herself was one of the first women to go into the chambers. It was hard to tell in her burqa, but sometimes, when the breezes swirled, you could see the bulge at her middle.

  Tawfiq was bemused by all of this construction and activity. He didn’t understand how the air pressure could make a difference, in fact, he seemed to worry that this experiment could do his wife more harm than good. But he trusted Abdullah, and he certainly listened when A’isha spoke to him.

  “The prophet was a man,” he once told Abdullah. “But he was born of a woman, and married a woman, and raised girls in addition to boys. And no man is wise who ignores the counsel of women.”

  One night, Abdullah was called to a meeting with Tawfiq and Barbarossa. There was a stranger there, a blond-haired man with a thin beard Abdullah was called upon to translate.

  “I represent people who want to help you in your cause, Mahdi,” said the man. He went on to describe how they could help with a stand alone protein factory, light and heavy weapons, ammunition, radios, radar. Barbarossa’s eyes widened at this description, almost licking his lips at the thought.

  “I am not at war,” said Tawfiq. “Why do you offer me these things?”

  “Because you do not wage war now,” the man said, “that does not mean you do not desire to overthrow the current order of things. I suspect that is what you would do if you could find the resources to support the effort. When the CoDominium controls most of the food, and leaves you unarmed, you have no choice but to accept their boot heels on your necks.”

  “But why would you do this for us?” asked Tawfiq. “What is in it for you?”

  “I represent those who want to see the CoDominium fail. We do not have the manpower to oppose them directly. But we do have the ability to help others who share our desires.”

  The man went on to invite Tawfiq to send a delegation to a meeting in the hills to the east. There they could meet their representatives, see some of the resources that were being offered and meet with others who opposed the CoDominium on Haven.

  “Barbarossa,” said Tawfiq. “You can barely contain your excitement over this development. You will go as my representative. Take our young African with you to translate and take the infidel scout, Patrick to guide you.”

  “And Abdullah,” he continued. “You will help Barbarossa pick the young men for this mission. I want them picked based on their potential to play this game of baseball. Your idea of beating the Marines at their own game intrigues me. And even if we lose a hard-fought game, we will still gain advantage in their eyes. Train them on your journey.”

  Barbarossa objected that this would be a meaningless distraction, but Tawfiq was insistent, and so, before they left, Abdullah and Patrick taught the women how to make the necessary leather gloves and bought bats and balls. From his few possessions, Patrick took out his Red Sox cap for the first time since he had started his journey; the women used it as a pattern for other caps, an
d made uniforms. Abdullah and Patrick also presided over tryouts, timing sprints, measuring the distance of throws, watching people catch, watching them swing, searching for potential five-tool players among the Faithful.

  That was how Abdullah found himself astride a horse for the first time in his life and wearing a pistol, an ancient revolver. The mining companies and Marines had banned sales of weapons to the Faithful, but enough of them had been obtained to arm the thirty odd men who rode into the hills. The horses had cost the Faithful dearly, both in treasure, and in talent. In addition to buying their own horses, the Arabs had shown themselves expert at breeding and had insisted they be paid for their services with mounts of their own.

  This trip was going to be a long one, hundreds of miles to the northwest into a deep ravine in the Girdle of God mountains. Even though it was summer, the air was cold during dimdays, and downright frigid in the wee hours of the dark truenights. They rode through high plains, dry lands with scrubby vegetation and nasty creatures lurking among the rocks.

  Provisions were not as much of a problem as Abdullah had expected despite the barrenness of the land. Thanks to Patrick’s knowledge of the steppes, they were able to find and kill a wild muskylope on almost a daily basis, butchering them as a staple of their diet and saving their beans and rice for days when game escaped them. They were careful to share what passed for livers in these animals to get necessary vitamins, although the taste left much to be desired. Water was rare in the area, but Patrick had a knack for reading the land for signs of it and they kept their many water bottles and skins full.

  Abdullah learned about saddle sores and that a horseman spent as much time walking, leading his mount, as he did riding. He learned to watch for the hazards of the land: Razorgrass that would open a horse’s leg in an instant. Dens of land gators, vicious reptiles that could bring down a horse and kill its rider before anyone could ride to his aid. Vicious little lizard-like tamerlanes that hunted in packs like jackals. Rocks and holes that could trip a mount or a man.

  Fortunately, the most common sight was simply the inedible reddish screwgrass that grew in patches on the low ground, made even more red by the light of the gas giant, Cat’s Eye, that hung in the sky almost constantly.

  Each day, during rest stops, they played baseball, awkward games at first. So Abdullah and Patrick had them run drills for fielding, catching and throwing. They tried everyone out as pitchers and catchers, searching for that elusive talent required for those two positions.

  Barbarossa grumbled at first, but soon took an interest in the game himself and began to act as an umpire, calling balls and strikes. He always insisted, though, that they have sentries out whenever their games distracted them from their surroundings. And the blond man watched these proceedings with an air of amusement, keeping to himself as they traveled.

  After weeks of journeying, they finally found the outpost they were looking for. It was set far into a mountain ravine and camouflaged with netting and tarps above the simple buildings. At the bottom of the ravine sat two vertical launch landers, also heavily camouflaged.

  The blond man showed Abdullah and Barbarossa into one of the buildings and they sat at a large table with a group of men of varying nationalities.

  “Before we proceed,” said Barbarossa. “I need to know more about your organization. Who you are, what you want?”

  A heavyset man at the head of the table nodded. “Fair enough,” he replied. “We call ourselves The Brotherhood. The CoDominium is a marriage of convenience between two powers that do not trust each other, because they trust the other powers of the world even less. And this alliance brings out the worst in both nations. Now that man has moved out into the stars, power is shifting away from Earth, fragmenting among new worlds. Our organization does not want these new worlds to be united and dominated by the CoDominium. We want them to be free.

  “So we support groups like yours of people who want freedom and are willing to fight for it. And in fighting for your own freedom, you draw the power of the CoDominium to many worlds, spreading their forces thin, thereby making them easier to defeat. We can also put you in contact with other friends who might want to aid your cause.

  “So you see,” he continued. “We help you not just to be generous. We help you because it serves our interests and furthers our cause.”

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” replied Barbarossa.

  “Precisely,” the man answered.

  The discussions moved quickly. Soon, there were charts of the northern regions of Haven spread out over the table. They needed to find a base where their protein plant and military supplies could be delivered. They discussed how many men could move into the area to begin building the backbone of their military forces, how they could be trained, and deployed to fight guerilla actions until they had the strength for open combat.

  These discussions went on for days, days Abdullah found tedious and unsettling. And even more unsettling was a statement from Barbarossa as they left one of the long meetings.

  “This is my chance,” he said. “To show the Mahdi that I am truly worthy of his trust. And to show him that I am the man to marry his daughter.”

  Abdullah’s heart went into his throat. There was no man he wanted to hear those words from, least of all this cruel and powerful man.

  Their trip back was quiet at first. The blond man stayed with his fellows, although two microwave line-of-sight transceivers traveled back with them on a packhorse. They covered many miles and Abdullah learned that riding a horse was something that got easier with time, as you learned to move with the animal instead of against it.

  They were practicing baseball during a gloomy dimday when there were shots, and cries from the sentries. The ball players rushed for their weapons. A hail of arrows flew into the camp and there were howls of pain. A band of screaming men came charging in behind the arrows, wielding clubs and axes. Abdullah held his pistol before him in the two handed grip Patrick had taught him. He squeezed the trigger carefully and on his third shot, a man went down.

  Beside him, Patrick stood like a statue, shooting as if this were target practice, his right hand smoothly working the bolt on each shot, an attacker falling with every round fired. Around them, both sides fought bravely, and it was soon hand-to-hand in places

  One of the men tackled Abdullah and he fell back, the man’s foul breath hot on his face, his hand around the haft of the axe that was moving toward his face. There was a crack, and the man fell against Abdullah, blood spraying from his nose. Patrick stood above them, the butt of his rifle bloody.

  Abdullah nodded in thanks, but Patrick was already turning to look for the next threat. As he got up, Abdullah saw Barbarossa howling like an animal, picking up attackers and throwing them at their comrades. And before long, modern weapons overcame numbers and a pitiful few of the attackers fled over the rocky ground.

  The attackers looked smaller as they lay on the ground dead and wounded, dressed in wretched rags.

  “Who were they?” Barbarossa asked Patrick. “Do you recognize them?”

  “Brigands,” said Patrick.

  “Who are brigands?”

  “That’s what we call men who go savage, head out on their own, form raidin’ parties and live out on the fringes. They’re prob’ly loyal to no one but their own band,” Patrick replied.

  “I hope you are right,” Barbarossa said. He pitched his voice higher, calling out. “I want every one of them dead. Do not waste bullets, use their own axes on them.”

  As they went about this bloody business, Patrick whispered to Abdullah, “I hate to say it, but you folks’re sometimes a bit too bloodthirsty for my taste.” Abdullah was still catching his breath. He gulped, and nodded in agreement.

  The Mahdi paced outside the door of the capsule like a caged lion, back and forth, forth and back. He growled like a lion, too. His lieutenants, some, like Abdullah, who had just returned from their long journey to meet with the Brotherhood, were gathered around him no
t wanting to face his wrath but wanting to be here with him. They did not know what to say, so they said nothing, gathering silently around a small fire in the dull glow of a dimday, drinking sweet hot tea. Tawfiq tried to ask Abdullah some questions about the upcoming baseball game against the Marines, but his heart wasn’t in it and he paid little attention to the answers.

  Abdullah could hear raised voices inside the capsule, muffled and indistinct. A couple of times, there were screams, and each time, Tawfiq flinched. Then they heard muffled cries and the wheel at the center of the hatch began to spin. The door opened and the midwife stuck her head out.

  “The mother is tired, but fine. All went well. The child is healthy.”

  Tawfiq asked, “Is it a boy, or a girl?”

  The midwife looked grouchy, as if this was a fact that made no difference.

  “You are the father of a fine, strong son,” she said.

  “A son!” cried Tawfiq, and he turned and grabbed Abdullah, who stood next to him. “He will be called Nabil. A son, at our age! Abdullah, you have saved her life, and his life. You have saved my life! My name will not die with me. Truly Allah has blessed me.”

  Barbarossa raised a gun and fired into the air and soon Capsule Town and Medina rang with gunfire. As word spread, they heard cheers in the distance. The midwife shook her head in disgust at this display, disappearing back into the capsule.

  “Tonight, there will be music and drink! Tonight, we celebrate,” cried Tawfiq. “I have a son!”

  The party lasted far into the night. Abdullah was one of the first to succumb to the drink; it was something new to him, grain alcohol from a still on a local farm, tasteless but strong. He awoke to find himself lying on the ground, covered by a blanket, with a cottony mouth and a head that felt like it was filled with rocks. He heard gunfire nearby and couldn’t believe people were still firing off rounds in celebration. A hand grabbed his shoulder and shook him hard.