A Desert Called Peace

V

The phone rang at Hennessey's Federal District hotel, an upscale but small establishment just off of Embassy Row. He answered.

"Hennessey, this is Ron Campos. This is the deal; take it or pound sand. I'm going to cover your operational and training expenses on a cost plus basis, cost plus ten percent, for the next six months. That amount will be deducted from your final bill IF we decide your group can do the job. I am sending down an officer who doesn't know you and whom you don't know-that's right, boyo, not one of your fans; Virgil Rivers warned me about that-to judge whether your legion is worth hiring. If he decides you are, you have a contract at the figures and with the provisos we discussed. If he nixes you, tough shit."

Carrera's respect for Campos went up a notch. "Done, Mr. Secretary."

Interlude

5 May, 2068, CNN Studios,

Atlanta, Georgia, USA

A year's worth of decent feeding had returned Marjorie BillingsRajamana to her normal state, exotic beauty. She was a natural.

The studio, however, was something of a sham, a living roomlooking arrangement on one side, which the cameras faced, and a maze of snaking cables and dividers on the other. The interviewer was at least as much of a sham, his only real talent being the ability to project an air of interest and intelligence onto a face that, while pretty, sat in front of a fundamentally dead mind.

"It actually started on Earth," Marjorie began in explanation, her upper class British accent lending considerable dignity to her words. "We didn't know it at the time, but it started here, during the training program."

"What started here?" the interviewer asked. Well, that wasn't a mind-straining question, after all.

"A love affair," Marjorie sighed. "A teenaged love affair."

"Love destroyed the Cheng Ho?"

God, where did they get this idiot? Coming here was a mistake. Oh, well… stiff upper lip and all.

"Love started the chain of events that led to the troubles on the ship, yes. Then it continued to work its way to destroy it." Marjorie answered. "One of our colonists, Dr. Akbar al Damer, had a very lovely daughter, you see. Another, Dr. Immanuel Schweiz, had a handsome son. Without anyone here on Earth knowing it, those two fell in love. Touching, is it not?"

"Surely, yes," the talking head agreed, "but I hardly think-"

"On Earth, al Damer had to endure it," Marjorie plowed on. "In space, once his daughter, Besma, came up pregnant, he could not. He killed the boy and his daughter, too. Oh, there was no proof he did it. Otherwise, the captain would have spaced him. But al Damer did it, even so. Even if he had not it wouldn't have mattered. Everyone believed he had.

"But that was only the first incident. We'd made a great effort to integrate the passengers. That began to unravel when the first Buddhist girl married the first Buddhist guy. She moved in with his parents. Then they had a baby and there was no room. Actually, there was hardly room even to make a baby in our quarters but love will find a way." Marjorie smiled and thought, Especially in low gravity.

"So a Hindu family, very sweetly, offered to vacate their nearby quarters if others could be found for them. The captain had a storage chamber cleaned out, not too far from another Hindu family. And everyone lived happily ever after.

"Not. Suddenly, without anyone ever thinking about it, we had two ethnic or religious centers of gravity. Marriages continued, and people kept shifting around. Within a year and a half there were Moslem sections, Mormon sections, Buddhist and Hindu sections, Catholic sections, Protestant sections… often separated by open spaces, sections of quarters left empty during the shifting. One real problem was that Moslem girls, given the chance, often preferred non-Moslem boys and would leave their sections to find husbands and, often enough, lovers among the non-Moslems.

"There was surprisingly little conflict at first, considering what came later," she said. "And then Dr. al Damer was found stuffed into the recycling bin. The dead boy's father probably did it. Within hours the Moslem section was off limits to anyone but themselves, and parties of Moslem 'youths'"-one could hear the quotations as she said it-"were rampaging and the girls were being dragged back.

"And then we had the Great Cartoon, Pig and Cow War…"

Chapter Fifteen The soldiers like training provided it is carried out sensibly. -Alexander Suvarov

Casa Linda, 7/7/460 AC

Carrera coolly regarded the Federated States Army officer standing in front of his desk, wearing the battle dress of the FSA. The officer was so incredibly average looking as to nearly defy description: average height, average build, average hair loss for a man of about forty. He wore his glasses averagely and his uniform bore an average number of the merit badges the FSA had always seemed addicted to.

"Virgil Rivers sends his best, Legate," the officer, John Ridenhour, said.

That brought a smile to Carrera's face. "How is old Virg?"

"He's fine," Ridenhour answered. "He's been selected for his first star, you know. He said to remind you, 'Who needs nukes?' If you don't mind my asking, and it seemed a damned odd thing to say, what the hell does that mean?"

"You had to be there," Carrera answered.

"He also said to tell you that I am the 'Imperial Spy,' and that you should take very good care of me." It was Ridenhour's turn to smile.

"You look the part," Carrera answered. "John, I'd set you up in a penthouse or mansion, with hot and cold running bimbos, a fast convertible and a big fishing boat with a perpetually full beer cooler if that would get me the recommendation I need from you to get my legion to the war," Carrera admitted. "On the other hand, that would be a pretty serious insult so I am not offering those things. Even so, do you have a place to stay?"

"The Julio Caesare," Ridenhour answered.

Carrera considered. "That's a good choice. If you're not married check out the Disco Stelaris down by the casino. If you are married then take my advice and don't check out the disco. How about a-"

From the next room Lourdes piped in, "Sergeant major has already assigned Mitchell to drive for Coronel Ridenhour, Patricio."

God, she's such a treasure.

"Okay," Carrera said. "That settles that. Mitchell has pretty decent Spanish, too, now. And he'll be armed so you needn't worry overmuch about personal security."

"I'm sure he'll be fine," Ridenhour agreed. "Besides, my Spanish is actually fairly good."

"All right then. Basically you can go anywhere, look at anything, and talk to anybody. No restrictions. Mitchell will have copies of the master training schedule and map overlay with him at all times. You need a helicopter lift somewhere, let him know in advance. I don't really recommend using our helicopters, though, because the pilots are damned near brand new and really won't be ready until just before we deploy, if we do."

"Ground trans should be fine," Ridenhour answered. "If I really need a chopper my budget can cover hiring a civilian one. I'll pass it through your man Mitchell to clear it with you if I have to do that."

"That's fair," Carrera agreed. "All I can tell you is have fun and that I think you'll be pleasantly surprised."

Guarasi "Desert" Training Area,

Republic of Balboa, 7/10/460 AC

Money was less of a problem now; Campos' offer-while less than generous-had helped a lot. Moreover, the interest payments on the loan Carrera had personally made to the legion were being rolled into the operating cost, multiplied by the cost-plus factor, and charged to the Federated States. Thus, Carrera still retained control of the thing, notionally and nominally under Parilla, and would for the foreseeable future. While he had that control, he trained the men.

One major problem was that they were heading to the northern Sumerian desert: dusty, almost treeless, waterless away from the River Buranun, and open outside the cities. Balboa, on the other hand, was about two thirds jungle, much of that being mountainous, and most of the rest either city or valuable farm and ranch land. He could hardly use good farmland for maneuvers or, at least, not for serious ones.

Fort Cameron was about used up. It had never been large enough to train anything as large as the LdC for any purpose higher than initial training for individuals. The Imperial Range Complex, too, was overstrained as were the local training areas attached to the old Federated States military installations, most of which the legion had no access to anyway.

There was a useful open training area at the Lago Sombrero, about fifty miles down the coastal highway east of Ciudad Balboa. This was an old Federated States military base built to defend Balboa from attack during the Great Global War. In time, it had been returned to the Republic. Architecturally it wasn't much, a dozen barracks suitable for housing perhaps one thousand officers, centurions and men, and a large ammunition storage facility. More important was the airstrip that sat astride the main highway that paralleled the northern coast and connected Balboa with Atzlan and the Federated States to the south and east. Most important were the fifteen square kilometers of training land. Even this wasn't really enough though. Neither did it match well enough the damned desert the legion was going to fight in, Inshallah.

There was also a patch of ground, the Guarasi "Desert," just a bit inland from the northern coast and rather past Lago Sombrero. It was… sort of… kind of… almost… a desert. At least it looked something like a desert, having roughly 19,000 dusty acres of various kinds of cactus (and the odd breadfruit tree and tranzitree) amidst a barren landscape of erosion, loss of topsoil, overgrazing and general environmental devastation. It still received forty inches of rain a year so the desert analogy could sometimes seem very strained.

Carrera was-discreetly-looking into buying it permanently for the legion for a desert training area. For the nonce he was able to lease it for a low price from the government of the Republic, which owned it and had turned it into the kind of national park virtually no one ever wanted to visit except for the occasional environmentally conscious gringo or Tauran who went there to reconfirm his view that human beings just sucked and the planet would be better off without them.

On the Guarasi's eighty-one square kilometers Carrera had set Abogado's Foreign Military Training Group to running desert combat training courses for century and cohort sized units. The land had been modified to the extent of constructing several fortified areas for the troops to train on the attack. The type of fortifications differed. There were "pita" types, round raised-berm forts with trenches dug into the berms and firing positions and ramps for armored vehicles inside. There were also the more classic trench systems that the Sumerians were known to use, heavily bunkered and fronted by broad belts of barbed wire and simulated minefields. In addition, Carrera had bought about half the used tires in Colombia Central (and apparently every used tire in Balboa) and had them stacked, wired together, and filled with dirt to create buildings suitable for live fire training in city fighting. Only some of the fortifications, and all the tire houses, were sighted in places where live ammunition could be used to train. They were all, however, sighted to present a fairly coherent picture of a broad fortified zone suitable as an objective for a brigade-or legion-level attack provided, at least, that no tank or Ocelot main gun ammunition was used.

Ah, well, thought Carrera, watching a century-level (roughly eighty men including the forward observer team and the medic) attack on a "pita." The attack was at night, without artillery or mortar illumination and only about twenty-five percent of the maximum illumination possible from one of Terra Nova's three moons.

It was not quite as dark as three feet up a welldigger's ass.

From his vantage point, and looking through a large thermal imager mounted on a tripod, Carrera observed as three machine-gun teams one hundred meters apart slithered into position in a muddy canal that crossed in front of the "pita." To the right side of the machine guns, in the same muddy ditch, a two-man rocket grenade launcher-RGL-team set up, bowed down under a double or perhaps triple load of ammunition.

Unseen, Carrera smiled. I know it must have been a bitch lowcrawling the better part of a kilometer with that on their backs. Good boys. Tough boys. He felt a sudden warm glow of affection for his legion.

He saw one man, hunched under a backpack radio, walk bent over extremely low from one team to another, stopping briefly at each. Three other men followed that one. He knew that was the sniper team by profile of the long-barreled Draco rifles they carried. Those four disappeared into the ditch. Behind the ditch, stretched out in wedges about fifty meters deep and as many across, Carrera could make out, just barely, three groups of perhaps seventeen to nineteen men, waiting silently.

Jamey Soult handed Carrera a set of headphones linked to a radio tuned to the frequency of the attacking century. He whispered, "Be only a few minutes, sir. The centurion with that century just reported to the commander that the support is in position. Now, I think, they're just waiting for an 'up' from the mortar section."

Which should long since have been up, Carrera fumed as he slipped the headphones over his ears. Calm… calm, he ordered himself. People make mistakes. That's why they're out here; to learn.

To help them learn, five of the FMTG's evaluator-trainers-not "safeties," Carrera despised the idea of special safety NCOs or officers in training for combat-stood more or less among or behind the groups along with another man that Carrera thought might be the FSA officer, Ridenhour. It was hard to tell in the fuzzy green image provided by the thermal sight.

It wasn't too much longer before he heard one long pop coming from two kilometers or so behind him. This repeated several times; the two mortars of the century's light mortar section beginning a preparation to drive the notional enemy into their bunkers.

With only a few seconds' delay from when he first heard the crump of the mortars, the machine guns and RGLs opened up across a front of about two hundred meters. The overall effect of the machine guns' tracers was strangely beautiful and quite surreal.

What sounded like three of the four-shot, tube-fed, pump action 43mm grenade launchers carried by an infantry century joined in with a foofoofoompwhawhawham. Smallish explosions began blossoming along the front and top of the berm. A few overshot to explode inside.

Instead of one round in five, the machine guns were firing pure tracer, the glowing rounds making actinic lines through the air. This would help keep the assault teams, just now beginning to rise to their feet, from walking inadvertently into machine gun fire.

The first mortar shells fell inside the pita, their high explosive outlining the top edge of the berm in sudden harsh light as they detonated.

Behind the ditch the assault teams finished forming. Carrera thought he heard, dimly and distantly over the pounding of mortar shells and the nearer staccato bursts of machine gun fire, a young voice shouting, " Legionarios, a pie… al asalto… adelante! "

To add to the night's misery, Cruz and the rest of the century wore super-heavy, Federated States surplus, armored vests. These were not the obsolete ballistic nylon that might stop shrapnel but would not stop a bullet. Neither were they the roughly twenty-five pound aramid fiber vests with ceramic inserts. No, no; that would have been too easy. These vests were surplus from the time of the old Cochin war and had been intended for helicopter door gunners who were never expected to walk any farther than from the helicopter pad to the NCO club for a beer. They were ceramic, over an inch thick, weighed fifty-four pounds and would stop anything less than a heavy machine gun's bullet.

One would have thought the protection afforded by the vests would have been a comfort to Cruz. After all, there were only a couple of hundred of them, apparently, and it should have been reassuring to be given them to wear.

Not a chance. True, there were only a couple of hundred of them in the entire legion. Thus, they were only used for live fire problems, such as this one, where the chance of death or serious wounds for somebody was very high. Despite the fatigue of lugging himself, his weapons and equipment, two sections of live bangalore torpedo plus a blank, and the bloody-damned fifty-four pound vest, belly to the dirt, across nearly a kilometer of open space fast enough to make muscles scream in protest, Cruz trembled.

This is so going to suck mastodon cock. Cara, I want to come home !

Cruz, like the others, had learned very quickly that words in the military did not always mean what one thought they ought to mean. "Good training," for example, clearly meant, "Gonna suck." "Really good training," indicated, "Oh, shit, is this gonna suck." "Superb training," suggested something like, "This is gonna suck so hard every whore in Balboa will be unemployed for a week."

Cruz was an acting team leader for the exercise and had the responsibility for breaching the wire ahead. The section leader, Sergeant del Valle (who had gradually become a surprisingly friendly and even gentle sort once basic training was done with), had hinted that there was a good chance, unless of course Cruz screwed everything up badly, that the position might be made permanent. Since this would be a roughly twenty percent pay raise, and since he'd decided he really did want to marry Cara and the extra money would be useful, it was just possible that the legionary was as concerned about his performance as he was about being shot.

Well, I'd like to tell myself that anyway. Fact is, though, I am scared to death. Fucking demo. And I thought hand grenades were bad. Jesus! And a fat lot of good this vest will do me if a the bangalore goes off early. No shrapnel or bullets in me, maybe, but also no arms, legs or head. Probably no dick, either, for that matter.

The two sections of live bangalore-basically connectable pipes filled with a cyclonite-trinitrotoluene mix and weighing nineteen pounds each-lay clutched in Cruz's arms along with the one blank section. The blank was there so that if one did set off a mine or booby trap in the course of pushing the torpedo through the obstacle the explosion would not be carried back through the rest to prematurely detonate the torpedo and, infinitely worse, one's mortal and all too easily disintegrated body.

Two men had been hurt, one slightly and one badly, and another killed on this range about a week earlier. Cruz considered that and again shivered. Rumor was that the gringos running the training area, the FMTG, had started to add more artificial controls to keep such a thing from happening again when THE Gringo had shown up and nixed the idea.

What Carrera had, in fact, said was, "There's nothing wrong with the exercise as set up. It was a reasonable problem for the stage of training of the troops concerned, the control was generally adequate. It was a realistic simulation of what the legion will soon face. Some men were hurt because they fucked up, not because the exercise was. Men get hurt in training; it's the cost of doing business. And besides, Abogado, what the fuck do you expect them to learn if someone's doing their jobs for them? You know better. I know you know better."

What had happened was this: the previous week a three man breach team from Third Century, 4th Cohort had assembled their bangalore and pushed it through the wire. They had then sprinted back towards the relative cover of a small depression in the ground in which the rest of the section waited. Unfortunately, because the range had been used several times before, there were sections of barbed wire embedded in the ground and sticking up above it. One of the men of the breach team had caught his foot on the wire and fallen face down. Then, with the fuse to the bangalore burning fast, the other two had gone back to free their comrade from the wire. They were still trying when the fuse reached the blasting cap and the assembly detonated, sending dozens of pieces of serrated barbed wire through their bodies.

One of the would-be rescuers was killed outright with twenty-two pieces of barbed wire in him. The other would be in hospital for quite some time. The one who had had his foot caught got away with little more damage than a few light scratches and one piece of wire embedded in his ham.

Carrera had driven to the 4th Cohort that afternoon, linked up with Jimenez, and presented the almost unhurt soldier with a wound badge in front of his peers.

"There is no moral difference between a wound received in training and a wound received in action," he had told the assembled troops.

He had then gone to the hospital in Ciudad Balboa and waited for the badly wounded legionary to come out of surgery and recover consciousness. To this man he also presented a wound badge, plus the lowest step of the six awards for valor-a Cruz de Coraje, in Steel-for the attempt at saving his comrade. More quietly, Carrera had whispered in the soldier's ear, "You should have simply got him and yourselves low, with your helmets facing the explosion. Don't fuck it up again. Now get well and come back to us."

He had not gone immediately to see the family of the dead man, leaving that for a Survivors' Assistance NCO from Christian's II shop. Instead, he had gone to the funeral and presented the same awards he had to the wounded man to the dead legionary's family.

The civilian life insurance company that covered the men of the LdC had shortly thereafter done a few calculations, this being the thirty-seventh man killed in training so far for whom they had had to pay 100,000 FSD, and cancelled the group life insurance policy.

Which was how the Legio del Cid became a self-insurer.

Cara… Mom… I hope you don't end up collecting my insurance, thought Cruz, as mortar and machine gun fire began to strike the pita ahead. He heard the century commander, a signifer, shout, " Legionarios, a pie… al asalto… adelante! " Legionaires, on your feet… into the assault… forward!

Rifles slung across their backs, Cruz and his breach team stood up. As he stood, finally able to do something, he felt fear melt away. He slung the three sections of bangalore across his right shoulder. Then, machine-gun tracers marking the path to either side and the steady flash of exploding mortar rounds outlining the objective, he confidently called, "Follow me."

Cruz and his men began to trot forward, followed by the century commander, his radio-telephone operator, and the forward observer team. When Cruz spotted the wire obstacle he was to breach-nasty looking thing!-he shouted to his team, "Down. Cover." Then he raced forward and flung himself onto the ground on his side of the wire. He felt some scraps of that wire, previously torn apart, dig into his legs as he did so.

Cruz took the blank bangalore section in both hands and began to feed it forward through the tangle. The blank piece had a rounded cap to it, which helped it slither between the strands. When he reached the last foot of that blank section he stopped and grabbed one of the two live sections, feeling first to make sure that he was not about to feed in the section that had been primed. Having made sure of that, he attached the unprimed live section to the blank and forced it through. Then he shouted, "Number two, on me."

Another soldier, Private Sanchez, wielding two more of the explosive pipes, trotted up and flopped beside Cruz. They attached one section, then the other, continuing to feed them forward as they did so. About half-way down the third live section of pipe Cruz told Sanchez, "Scram," before calling out, "Number three, on me." Sanchez disappeared into the night, his place being taken by another troop.

With the fourth and then the fifth live sections attached, the bangalore was too heavy, at about one hundred pounds, for one man to push forward easily. Cruz and the other legionary strained the assembly forward until they reached the end, whereupon Cruz attached his own final live section, the one that had been primed with cap, fuse and pull-igniter.

Again, Cruz ordered, "Scram." The other legionary took off, low and running.

First whispering a very short and eloquent prayer, more or less "Oh, God," Cruz screamed out, "Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!" He then pulled on the igniter. He spent a second making sure the fuse, which had been cut to twelve seconds, had caught properly before turning himself to sprint to relative safety. As he sprinted he counted aloud, "Nine… eight… seven… six…"

Then, in the dim light of the moon, Bellona, his eye caught sight of the second man in the breach team, the one after Sanchez, on one knee apparently struggling to free himself from another grasping piece of the goddamned wire.

"Five… four… three…"

There was no time to free the entangled legionary. Without much thinking about it Cruz simply changed direction slightly and dove at him.

"Two… one…" Khawhoomf!

The explosion seemed to pick the two off of the ground where they sprawled, shake them like rats caught in a terrier's mouth, then slam them down again. Hard. Very dammed hard. The shattered wire whined dangerously overhead or, in the case of pieces thrown high by the blast, lost velocity and pattered harmlessly down.

The century commander blew a whistle. At least Cruz thought it must be the whistle. It was hard to tell at first; his ears were ringing. Ah, yep, he thought dully, must have been the whistle for the assault because everyone is running past me.

Everyone is running past me?

"Bravo team, Second Squad! Assemble on me!"

Ridenhour had thought those two kids were goners when he saw the one caught fast and the other dive for him. He saw them only briefly as he took what little cover was available and tried to make himself very small. But no, once the danger from bits of jagged, flying metal had passed he saw the two sitting up, looking rather dazed and confused. He jogged over as three others likewise moved to join the pair, one of whom-the kid who'd been chosen to lead the team to execute the breach, Ridenhour assumed-began shouting in Spanish. By the time Ridenhour reached the little group they were already following the trail elements of the assault party through the wire, across the open area, and up the steep slope of the pita's berm.

This is just so fucking unsafe. Don't they even care if they kill somebody?

Apparently, they did not. At the point of the assault on the berm's outer edge Ridenhour found a young signifer, the century commander, directing his sections left and right to begin clearing the trenches that zig-zagged along the top. He noticed the mortars were still firing, but at the far side of the pita, while the machine guns had switched from the open center to the left and right edges.

Ridenhour heard someone shout, in Spanish, "Backblast area clear!" It took him half a second to translate and remember what that implied. This gave him about one quarter of a second to throw himself to one side as an RGL gunner let fly down into what must have been a hard target in the center of the pita. Another shout, another buffeting by the backblast, and the RGL team arose to a low hunch and moved on.

There was firing, a lot of firing, from the attacking sections' assault rifles and LMGs as they cleared the trench from the center to the left and right. The firing was supplemented by blasts; simulators, small demo charges, or live grenades, Ridenhour didn't know which. He crawled up the side of the berm to lay beside the century commander and peer, like the latter, over the lip of the berm in order to see the action.

Wow.

The interior of the place was lit up like Christmas by flames. One section moved in either direction around the perimeter, shooting and blasting as they cleared each bay of what looked to be an octagonal trace trench. They raced on at a speed Ridenhour thought downright foolhardy. What the hell do they do if they run into each other? Well, at least they've lifted the mortar fire off the objective.

The signifer commanding apparently had thought of that problem. He got on his radio and ordered one section to halt in position and guard. Then he told the other section to clear almost to the halted one.

"All right," said the signifer to the action section. "Now back up fifty meters… fast." He gave them half a minute to finish that move before ordering the second section to clear forward fifty meters. One way or another, the entire thing was gone over at least once.

The centurion for the century arrived and reported. "Signifer, I have all three machine-gun teams, the other RGL team, the breach team, and the scout-snipers. Where do you want them." The century commander began bellowing orders.

Ridenhour shook his head and slithered down the berm. He had seen enough for one night.

Cruz's ears were still ringing. Moreover, he was pretty sure he had taken at least one piece of serrated barbed wire across the butt. But… you know… and then he started to laugh, lightly at first. Sanchez and the other man looked at Cruz, questioningly. Then they, too, started to laugh, sheepishly at first but with a growing mirth.

Sanchez was the first to put feelings into words. "Goddamn, Cruz, that was fun. Jesus, I love this shit."

Ridenhour and Mitchell joined Carrera and Soult shortly after sunrise. Soult was taking down the tripod with the thermal imager and stowing them in a trailer towed behind his vehicle.

Mitchell spoke first. "Sir, that was just too fucking cool."

"It wasn't bad," Carrera agreed. "Didn't lose anybody, at least."

"Not there, sir, no," Soult said. "But while you were sleeping I got the word-sorry, I should have told you before but it slipped my mind-that we lost another one, plus four wounded, on the Cohort Deliberate Attack Course at Ranges Eight and Ten at the Imperial Range complex."

"Hmmm, that would make… ummm… thirty-eight, so far. What happened?" Carrera asked. He didn't seem overly concerned.

"Half a dozen mortar rounds fell short," Soult answered simply. Carrera shrugged. "Appears to have been an ammunition problem rather than a fire direction error. Harrington already directed that that lot be pulled out of training stocks and examined."

Carrera shrugged. You had to expect ammunition quality control problems when you bought cheap.

"You're taking this awfully calmly," Ridenhour observed. "Don't you think you're maybe pushing these units a little hard?"

"No," Carrera answered, then elaborated, "Look, John, when somebody says, "There's never an excuse for getting someone killed in training," what they really mean is, "I don't care if someone gets killed in combat later because they're not well trained enough, because that won't affect my career, now." It's just a damned immoral way of looking at things. And I won't permit it in the legion."

"But how the hell do you explain to a young kid's parents that he got killed for something that wasn't even battle?"

"How do I explain to a bunch of young kids' parents that they got killed in a battle we lost because their units weren't well trained enough?" Carrera countered.

"Are you going to have a unit left when you're done training them?"

Carrera hesitated briefly, pulling up some mental data. "I planned on one percent deaths-call it forty-nine or fifty men-in basic training and advanced individual training. We actually lost about half that. I assumed we'd lose another dozen in the Cazador, you would say 'Ranger,' School I had FMTG run early on for the selection process for Officer Candidate School and Centurion Candidate School. We lost seven. The unit training I anticipated would cost us another fifty and we are at eight dead so far. We probably will lose another thirty but we recruited enough to make up for those losses plus another couple of hundred more for the badly wounded."

"But what about the men's morale?" Ridenhour continued to object.

Carrera yawned. "They don't know any better. We act like it's normal and routine and so they tend not to question it. It's just not an issue. You can ask if you want, but do me a favor and don't act like the bleeding heart press when you do, less still like some hypocrite congresscritter with never a day in uniform. And please don't try to convince the troops that there is something wrong with training that sometimes kills.

"Remember, too, that you're trying to compare apples and oranges. The Federated States has a military tradition and a tradition of victory. There are any number of the right attitudes your young men take in more or less with mother's milk. These boys don't get the same conditioning. They need extreme training measures to make up for what they never got as children."

"Maybe," Ridenhour admitted reluctantly.

"Also, John, for your purpose in being here ask yourself, after what you saw last night, if you think my cohorts and centuries will be able to fight. That's really all you have to decide upon."

Soult interrupted. "Sir, it's the 11th. I think you had an appointment in Cochea."

Carrera sighed, sadly. "I didn't forget, Jamey. Thanks, though."

Cochea, 11/7/460 AC

Soult didn't even think about driving anywhere near the grave marker. He could pay his respects on foot. Instead he pulled up next to Carrera's in-law's house and, while his boss went inside to see the family, unloaded Carrera's gear and two liters of scotch and carried the lot by hand to the grave marker. There he erected a small shelter, a poncho hooch, and draped a mosquito net three quarters around it with enough slack to make a complete bar. Then he laid out a sleeping roll inside the shelter, erected a folding chair outside of it, and placed both liters of scotch and a metal drinking vessel next to it. He took half a dozen antimosquito torches and stuck them into the ground in a circle around the little encampment. Then he retired to the house where, since he and Carrera had been expected, Linda's family had set aside a room for him.

"Tomorrow morning, Boss?" he'd asked.

"Yes, Jamie, though probably mid-morning."

Then Carrera walked to Linda's grave, sat in the folding chair, and began to explain how things were going to the shades of his family. He drank as he talked, drank deeply and quickly.

The screaming and sobbing didn't begin until nearly midnight.

UEPF Spirit of Peace, 15 August, 2514

"Admiral," said Khan, the wife, over the intercom, "you asked me to keep track of that new force growing in the Republic of Balboa. My husband sent down a high altitude skimmer to look things over yesterday at the third watch. We've just finished looking over the recording and we think you ought to look at it. Actually, we have two we think you need to look at."

"What's the specific subject matter?" Robinson asked.

"The one we think you should look at first is of the Federated States Army conducting combat training. Once you have seen that, you should look at this new force and see how they do the same. My husband and I find it very worrisome."

Robinson sighed. "Very well, send them."

"Sending now, High Admiral."

Robinson turned to face the large Kurosawa. A small light below it, an original part of the Peace, blinked urgently.

"You have a message, High Admiral," the computer announced.

"Show me."

Immediately, the large screen began to show a top down view of what looked to be about one hundred soldiers from down below in the process of conducting some kind of attack. There was no sound- high altitude skimmers weren't even equipped for sound-but the visual was quite clear and distinct.

Robinson watched with boredom as men got up, moved, flopped to the ground, and used their weapons. All in all, it was rather unexciting, even dull. He yawned.

The images froze and the computer announced, "Ready to show second recording, High Admiral."

"Go ahead." Robinson yawned again.

Instantly, the previous, placid scene was replaced by one of smoke and fire. Other soldiers, differently uniformed, got up, ran, and used their own weapons, just as in the first recording. That much they shared.

In other particulars, however, they couldn't have been more different. Instead of being placid, this recording fairly exuded aggression and violence. Shells exploded, dangerously close to troops. Robinson could see that.

The thing that really caught his attention, though, was when a small group was apparently scythed down by a too-close shell. Dead or wounded, Robinson couldn't tell. But he could see, in full detail, that those unhit didn't even stop training.

My Annan, these people care nothing for their own lives.

"Computer, connect me to Khan."

"Have you seen, High Admiral?" she said, as soon as she came on.

"Are they always like that?"

"Pretty much, sir. You may also recall that I mentioned the possibility that this group would be even less constrained by the rules we have thrown around armed forces down below than the FS is?"

"I recall, Khan."

"Well, we've acquired another bit of intelligence. The second in command of that force, possibly the effective first in command, had his family in the Terra Novan Trade Organization headquarters on the day of the attack. They were killed."

Robinson closed his eyes and said, "Uh, oh."

Interlude

From Baen's Encyclopedia of New and Old Earth,

Edition of 442 AC

The following entries are not to appear in the Old Earth edition of the Encyclopedia

Terra Nova, Geography and Settlement of:

The major land mass of Terra Nova, Taurania, lies on its east-west axis approximately midway between the magnetic southern pole of the planet and the equator. The split between the Taurus end of Taurania, in the east, and Urania, in the west occurs arbitrarily along the Volkosk mountains and culturally and ethnically somewhat to the west of that.

Taurus, so called because it resembles an upside down male bovine with an erection, was the award of the old European Union on Old Earth. There being no equivalent supranational organization for Asia at that time, Urania was parceled out amongst various sub-supranational entities, roughly in accordance with their population, wealth, terrestrial patrimony, clout, and willingness and ability to bribe members of the old United Nations Interplanetary Settlement and Boundary Committee, or UNISBC.

To the west of Urania and the east of Taurus, and lying approximately equidistant between the two, lie the Columbias, or-for Spanish speaking areas-the Colombias. These are two continents, joined by a narrow isthmus (of Balboa, q.v.), that run north to southsoutheast. The larger of these, called Southern Columbia, was awarded to the old North American Free Trade Area which further subdivided the bulk of the continent almost exactly according to the wishes of the former United States of America. The two Canadas, Mexico and the Central American petty states fell into line fairly readily. Cuba was denied any colony on the new world, which denial it took with very good grace as it was believed that the entire country would depopulate itself if its people were given the chance to escape. (The government of His Revolutionary Highness, Alejandro I, son of Raul Castro, is believed to have been one of only two governments on Earth, the other being that of North Korea, that had to bribe UNISBC not to make any grant of land on the new world. This is unconfirmed and investigations into the matter were squelched by the then UN Secretary General, Kojo Annan.)

The other eastern continent, called Northern Colombia, was awarded to the former Mercosur, the Latin American version of NAFTA. Mercosur attempted to form a unitary colony. This, however, broke apart in a series of wars, the results of which plague Northern Colombia to this day.

Uhuru, which lies to the north of Taurania, was given to the Organization of African States. This organization attempted a colonization project much the same as Mercosur, but with even more hideous results. (See Republic of Northern Uhuru, History of, for example. See the Mutara-Kegeli Genocide, for example.)

The Arab League parcel was not made the award of any given state. Rather, the area settled by the Arabs was unitary and later broke up or developed, depending, into something like nation states. A peculiarity of the Arab League Mandate is that a portion of it was given by the Arab League to Israel. Much was made of it, on Earth and at the time, as showing a spirit of conciliation and peacemaking. This was not the case, however. All the Arab League wanted was for some place of settlement to attract out as many Jews from Israel as possible. Arab colonists were not consulted in the matter.

For various reasons having to do with Old Earth politics, Australia was given no award on the new world though New Zealand was. The population of Australia, such as wished to settle elsewhere, tended to gravitate either to Anglia, New Wellington, the Federated States, the Republic of Northern Uhuru, or-as a distant last choice-Secordia in South Columbia.

A final subcontinental sized island, dubbed Atlantis, lies in the Mar Furioso, midway between the Columbias and Taurania. This is the enclave of United Earth…

Chronology, History of, Part VII:

Time on Terra Nova, on the other hand, is measured since Anno Condita, "the year of the founding." This would not be 2037, the year in which the robotic exploratory vessel, Cristobal Colon, actually found the rift and the planet. Rather, AC is the year in which the first, sadly failed, colonization attempt was made from Earth, in the Old Earth year, 2060.

Establishment of a local calendar spelt a considerable problem for those early settlers who followed after the Cheng Ho disaster (qv). The Terra Novan year corresponded very closely to the Terran year, there being 31,556,926 seconds to an Old Earth year and 31,209,799 seconds in each orbit of the new world about its sun.

For the Salafi settlers this presented even more of a problem, one made worse by the fact that, rather than the one moon of Earth by which the Islamic calendar ran, Terra Nova had three, none of which quite ran to any schedule that suited the traditional Islamic calendar. The Islamics settled this more or less mathematically, by adding a fourteenth month, to commemorate the "Second Hejira," or Pilgrimage, adding days to some months, and creating a complex set of calculations to keep this calendar in synchronization.

One advantage to the new Islamic calendar was that now, at least, it matched the actual year for the world on which it was practiced.

From all parties-Secular, Islamic, Christian, Buddhist, etc-there was strong pressure to maintain the twenty-four hour day, of which Terra Nova had three hundred and fifty-five, and the sixty minute hour. This was done by increasing the length of the Terra Novan second to 1.017533901 Earth seconds. Ten months (basically the original months of the Roman Republic) of five weeks each were established, with an intercalary period of five or, rarely, six days between 35 December and 1 Martius.

It has worked about as well as any calendar system ever has, and perhaps a bit better than most.

Chapter Sixteen War is too important to be left to generals. -Georges Clemenceau

War is too important to be left to the politicians. -Colonel Jack Ripper (in Dr. Strangelove)

Hamilton, FD, 6/1/461 AC

It would be wrong to say that Campos was personally planning the invasion of Sumer. After all, that was not the secretary of war's job. Instead, SecWar was responsible for administration, for expenditures, for procurement and the like.

On the other hand, when the secretary of war is convinced that he is quite the cleverest man ever to live, that most of his subordinates- indeed most of the human race-are idiots, in short when the secretary of war is something of an arrogant blockhead, one can expect him to take a hand, and perhaps an unduly heavy hand at that, in overseeing the detailed planning.

It was all water off a duck's back to Virgil Rivers. He'd been in the Army for better than two decades, been raised in the army, for that matter. Arrogant overbearing assholes were all in a day's work, provided they were at least reasonably competent.

That much one had to give Campos. He was at least reasonably competent.

Competence, however, was not infallibility. This was a problem for Campos. He aspired to not much more than competence but, since he equated himself with competence and competence with infallibility, he had rather a difficult time of it when things went wrong.

"What the hell do you mean, Virgil?" Campos fumed. "The Kemalis won't let the Fifth Division unload at their ports and won't permit them to cross the country? We need that division, plus the 731st Airborne Brigade, to hit Sumer from the south. Howellson from State assured me that the Kemalis would knuckle under."

Rivers, who had not been privy to any such conversation and knew the secretary of state, Howellson, extremely well, rather doubted that. But Campos tended to hear what he wanted to hear. Rivers also had good cause to know the Kemalis, immigrants from Turkey on Old Earth, were altogether too proud to knuckle under to anyone. Moreover, they had domestic political problems with being used as a base to attack another Islamic state, even though their own was only nominally Islamic and largely secular. Indeed, the settlers to Kemali had come largely to escape the increasing fundamentalism of their native Turkey.

"Mr. Secretary, no how, no way, are the Kemalis going to let us bring the Fifth Division through."

"Can General Thomas shift a force down to the southern part of the country?" The secretary asked.

"He says no, that everything he has he needs for the major attack from the north." Since the northern attack was already being done on a shoestring, largely as a result of Campos' unceasing nagging to reduce costs, Rivers thought that Thomas had a good argument for not being stripped of forces. Whether Campos would accept that or not…

"Can we fly in something to the area of Sumer we control from the Oil War?"

"Yezidistan? There are airfields there that can take heavy lift, yes. Unfortunately, Mr. Secretary, most of the heavy lift we have we need for the major operation in the north. Even more unfortunately, with Fifth Division's armor loaded on ships and essentially untouchable for anything from weeks to about a month and a half, we would have to fly a unit, along with all its supplies, in from the Federated States. That would take a lot more lift than we can spare, tens of thousands of tons."

"Allies?" Campos asked, hopefully.

"Besides the Yezidis, none," Rivers answered. "The Anglians and the other small packets from our allies are either needed for the major attack or are too small to be of any effect. And the Yezidis just aren't up to it even though they've been supplemented by our own Special Warfare people."

The Yezidis were a caste-based Kurdish group that had left the area of Mosul, Iraq, en masse early in the 22nd century. They practiced what appeared to be a pre-Islamic-pre-Zoroastrian, as a matter of fact-religion with elements of Islam grafted onto it. They had never been accepted by the majority Moslem population who thought them "devil worshippers" and among whom they had lived-usually not amicably-for centuries. The Moslems, mainstream as well as Salafi had often fought with the Yezidi, much to the disadvantage of the latter.

With the opening up of mass emigration to the new world the Yezidi had jumped at the chance to be on their own. They had a reputation as fine warriors. Reputation notwithstanding, they had been continuously stomped into the dirt by their neighbors and had seen their original colony parceled up among the Kemalis, Sumeris, Alawis and Farsis in the area. Even the Volgans had, at one time, had a piece of them. Rivers, who had worked with them in the past, thought they were posturing swine but, since the secretary had great expectations from the Yezidi, he kept his own counsel. He couldn't keep a look of contempt off of his face, however, and Campos saw it.

"What? You don't think the Yezidi will come through for us?"

Rivers sighed. Time for some honesty, after all, it seemed.

"Mr. Secretary, everything you need to know about the Yezidi is explained by their conduct during and after the Oil War. We told them if they arose in rebellion, in other words if they helped us by drawing off some of the Sumeri troops, we would help them. They rebelled all right, but they waited until after we had stomped the crap out of the Sumeri army on our own. They only rebelled when it seemed perfectly safe to rise up in the vacuum we created, and after we didn't need their help any more. Then they whined when even the shot-and-bombed-to-shit rump of the Sumeri Haris al Watini was able to crush their chicken-shit asses. They will do nothing for themselves or for us. Trust me on this. Politically they're unreliable and militarily they're worthless."

Campos started to object but… he's been there. He should know.

Eager to divert the subject before he said something truly career damaging, Rivers asked, "What about the Balboans? Could we use them down in Yezidistan?"

"One medium-light brigade to do the job of a heavy division, Rivers? I don't think so. Besides, that colonel we sent down, Ridenhour, has very mixed reports on them."

Rivers, who had read the same reports, looked nonplussed. "I don't understand, sir. Ridenhour was very clear that he thought they'd put up a good fight."

"But what about their losses to friendly fire in training, Virgil? According to Ridenhour they've killed nearly one and a half percent of their own people just in training and just in the last year?"

"Well… yeah," Rivers replied. "Losses are not something that would deter Pat Hennessey from going ahead. He might eat his own guts over it later, but he would never let that stop him. And… frankly, so what? It isn't like those are our people being killed."

"But that's precisely the point, Virgil. If we let a maniac like that loose near our people there's no telling how many… oh."

"Right, Mr. Secretary. In the mountains of southern Sumer-Yezidistan, if you prefer-there are not going to be any of our people, not until the 731st Airborne makes its drop. And if I know Hennessey, and I do, he'll just wave at the 731st as they drop and continue the march to wherever he can find a fight."

"Balboans, huh? Well… can Thomas get by without them?"

"Honestly, he doesn't want them. He knows Hennessey from way back and, as he so delicately put it, "If I never see the son of a bitch again, it'll still be too soon." They, ummm, really don't like each other."

"Does anybody like Hennessey? Oh, never mind. All right, Virgil. Work out the details and brief me. And by the way, how are we coming in modifying the plan to take advantage of the awesome shocking power inherent in our technological superiority?"

Rivers, who knew that the only difference had been to take the basic plan and a word processing program and add in the phrase "awesome shocking power" in one hundred and twenty-seven places, answered, "Just fine, Mr. Secretary. It's a much better plan now." Yessir, yessir, three bags full.

Casa Linda, 10/1/461 AC

"Son of a bitch!" Carrera cursed as he read through the dispatch sent this morning from the FS embassy in Ciudad Balboa. He looked rather pleased when he first began to read since the missive contained agreement that his legion would be hired at the agreed price by the FS for the coming campaign. As he had read further though…

"What is it, Patricio? What's wrong?" Lourdes asked.

"That motherfu… it's Campos. He'll hire us on but not for the mission we originally agreed to. Instead of going to the north with our equipment going by sea and then basing out of al Jahara, we have to go south-by air, mind you, which is much more expensive-and establish ourselves in Yezidistan. Then we have to fight through to where an FS airborne brigade is going to jump in, and continue operations with them until we link up with coalition forces somewhere north of Babel."

He kept reading before admitting, "Oh. Well, it isn't that bad. We get the airborne brigade's artillery and service support battalions flown in and attached to us in advance in Yezidistan. And he's offering to allow us to cost-plus the extra money we'll have to spend to get the Volgans to fly us in over what it would have cost for us to go by sea."

"So you will actually make more money than you planned?"

"Ummm… maybe. No telling what we'll face or what we'll lose. And I've been in those mountains before. They practically defend themselves, at least as long as they're not being defended by Yezidis. Yezidis are a net minus to combat power.

"It's going to be tough fighting, though. They're also moving up the date by a week and I am not sure we can have the cold weather gear we'll need on hand by then. Iffy. Lourdes, would you assemble the staff please? Key members only."

She was about to go, then remembered the phrase "tough fighting." That worried her. So, instead of going to use the telephone to spread the word, she locked the door to Carrera's office and went back to stand beside his chair. Then, somewhat to his surprise, she rotated the chair to face her. She dropped to her knees and began to undo his belt.

"This won't take long," she said, "I'm getting better at it. And I want to take every chance there is to remind you to come home to me when the fighting is done… and not to let yourself get killed."

Near Caridad's home,

Las Mesas, Balboa, 12/1/461 AC

Ricardo Cruz leaned against a tree in a secluded spot by the creek that fed Cara's family's farm. He and the girl were asymmetrically undressed, her with her top off and him lacking trousers. She knelt on the trousers so as to leave no tell-tale dirt scuffs as her head bobbed rhythmically back and forth, lips locked in a tight, and, since it was her first occasion, rather odd feeling "O."

Cruz had returned home on leave, prior to deploying over to Sumer with the legion. Before returning home, he stopped off at a small jewelry shop on Avenida Central in Ciudad Balboa and purchased a ring. It hadn't been anything amazing, as far as engagement rings went. Still, when he had shown it to Cara and asked her to be his wife she had seemed to think it a marvel equal to the Anglian crown jewels. Naturally, as a well bred and brought up young man, he had asked Cara's parents' permission to marry her, after she had indicated no reluctance on her part. They, weighing his prospects, seeing that he had already been accelerated in rank past most of his peers, and liking him in general, had agreed and discreetly suggested the new couple take a walk somewhere they could plan the future. Well, Cara's parents had been young once, too.

Planning for the future, when you're that young and that in love, means little more than finding a secluded spot and racing to undress.

Ricardo had originally wanted to make love. Cara had not exactly refused, but had made what she thought was a reasonable counteroffer, a little something the girls in her high school sometimes gossiped over and sometimes bragged upon. He'd agreed, she'd tried and found that, while it was an acquired… errr… taste, it was a taste fairly easily acquired. The other taste was not so easily acquired but she'd managed. Twice. This was number three and… well… why not?

Besides, she thought, if those groans and moans are truthful I own him now. Can this little thing really feel as good as all that. Hmmm,

She looked up, smiled shyly and whispered, "Ricardo, I love you. So… if you want to make love…"

He'd started to lift her up, if only so he could lay her down again on the mossy bank. And then he froze in internal confusion.

I am going to war and I may not be coming back. Too, he remembered something his section leader had told the men once: "Some day we all must die. Whether our lives will have meant anything depends on how we have lived them. Have we done well by those who cared for us, those for whom we were responsible? Have we done our duty? Who, among the innocent have we harmed? Who have we helped? How is the world better for our having lived? I think God will want to know. I think He'll ask."

And then what if she gets pregnant and I get killed? That would be a hard thing to inflict on her and the child both, insurance and survivor's benefits notwithstanding.

Cruz whispered back. "I love you, too, queridisima. But I am going to war soon. We don't know yet what will happen. I hope I'll come back. But I don't know that I will. We'll wait then. Maybe when I return we can continue that conversation. For now…"

Understanding, Cara smiled again, bent her head, and continued her bobbing.

Herrera International Airport,

Ciudad Balboa, 15/1/461 AC

The blue and white painted Air Balboa BG-47 bobbed up and down along the taxiway as it approached the terminal. On one side of its designated gate awaited a similar aircraft, on the other a chartered Volgan LI-68 was already boarding.

Some distance away, at the cargo terminal, teams of men, some civilians and others in the uniform of the Legio del Cid, loaded wide- bodied cargo aircraft-a mix of FS military, FS civilian, Balboan civilian and more Volgan military under charter-with the wheeled vehicles of the legion. Since some of those aircraft bays stood seventy feet above the tarmac, requiring that the wheels be hoisted that distance into the air on self-mobile elevators, the loading was sometimes rather precarious.

The Balboan airport was capable of receiving mid-size airships, of course. But the debarkation airport in Yezidistan was not. This ruled out using LTA craft to move any of the brigade, despite the potential cost savings.

Parilla and Carrera stood off to one side, in a pair together and separate from the confusion around them. Carrera was used to the apparent confusion of a major deployment. Parilla was not and looked plainly concerned over it.

"Relax, Raul. This is so normal that it is the very essence of routine for something like this."

Parilla, despite this, did not seem to relax.

Carrera watched as a centurion stopped one three-ton truck before it nearly went over the side of an elevating loader. The centurion walked briskly to the driver's door of the truck, opened it, hauled the driver out with both fists and then held him in the air seven stories above the ground while shaking him and cursing. The centurion didn't drop the driver, however, but put his feet back on the ramp, pushed him back into the cab, forced him to slide over. Then the centurion climbed in himself to show how the damned thing was supposed to be done.

Parilla winced at seeing this. To Carrera it was… well, in small details, at least, he thought the centurions ought to have a certain latitude.

"Are we going to make it, Patricio?" Parilla asked. Carrera had never shut him out-even consulted with him frequently-but neither man had any doubt as to who was really in charge. Nonetheless, Carrera always treated Parilla as his unquestioned superior in public and a good friend in private. Politeness cost nothing, after all.

"I think so, Raul. We were lucky to have the freighters stopped before the Volgans actually began putting our armor aboard. They're going to fly the stuff into Yezidistan directly from the airport near the factory, all sixteen tanks and forty-four Ocelots, plus eight extras for floats, two tanks and six Ocelots. The other twenty-two still come here by ship, for training, of course. I'm still worried as hell about the cold weather gear, though. Those mountain passes are fucking freezing this time of year."

Parilla gave an involuntary shiver. "How badly off are we?"

Without inflection, Carrera answered, "So far we've been able to find mid-weight sleeping bags for every man, Anglian surplus, and about ten thousand heavy wool blankets for when we find out that a mid-weight sleeping bag just won't do sometimes. The Misrani tents we have will be good for summer or winter since they've got a good heavy liner to them, though with that desert pink color they'll stand out like sore thumbs whether it snows or not. The south of the country isn't desert, after all. Stoves are allegedly en route. We'll see."

"God I hate the cold." Parilla shivered in anticipation, despite Balboa's oppressive heat.

"So do I," Carrera agreed. "In any case, balaclavas have been ordered, good wool ones from Helvetia, but the order won't be filled for about ten days-ten cold fucking days, I expect-after the tail end of the legion arrives. Same deal and same source on the polypropylene-lined leather gloves. We have found some really neat polypro mittens that allow the troops to peel back the part covering the fingers for fine detailed work, but in a cold wind they'll be pretty worthless, too. Harrington's looking for leather shells to cover the mittens. Nobody had winter boots available for immediate delivery in the quantity we need and the boots we were offered were almost no better than the jungle boots the men already have. That scares me. I foresee a lot of trench foot in our future unless Harrington can come through on the boots. I told him I didn't care if the styles match, just so long as they are good, serviceable, winter boots. Maybe that will help. Then again, part of our problem is that most of the troops have shorter, wider feet than those found in all the places that make winter boots.

"On the plus side, we have gotten twenty-thousand sets of polypro underwear. It's already in Yezidistan and being issued, first thing, as the troops debark from the aircraft. Most of it will be too big but better too big than too small. I've had a local company take five thousand white bed sheets and convert them to camouflaged pullover smocks. Better than nothing."

"We're going be cold for a while then," Parilla commented.

"Very."

"Wish we'd had time to acclimatize the men to cold weather," Parilla said.

Was there a touch of rebuke in his voice? Carrera thought so but whether it was directed at him or not was an open question.

Parilla's aide de camp came up to the pair. "Sir," he said to the nominal senior, "the aircraft chief stewardess tells me they are ready to board you now."

"You're sure we should fly separately?" Parilla asked of Carrera.

"Absolutely," Carrera answered. "In the first place, God never intended for man to fly. Worse, He has an odd sense of humor. If one of those things comes down with both of us on it, the legion will be fucked. Go on, Duce. I'll be on the flight right behind you."

A bombero band stood at attention on the tarmac playing a martial tune, one heavy on the brass and drums. The legion's main band, the pipes and drums, were already long departed and guarding the headquarters in Yezidistan.

From the movable stairway nestled against the Air Balboa jet, Parilla made a good show of turning, smiling for the cameras, and waving at the crowd of families and well-wishers bidding farewell to yet more of their soldiers. Behind him the line of mostly hung-over men waiting to board bunched briefly at the halt.

Unseen in the crowd, Lourdes waved back with her right hand. She hadn't seen Patricio since he had left the terminal lobby a few minutes after Parilla.

While Lourdes waved with her right, her left was busy catching tears in a handkerchief. Raul Parilla's elderly wife put an arm around Lourdes' narrow waist.

"I have never done this either," the older woman confided. "I am frightened for them."

Lourdes began to cry more loudly. "I am frightened for me. "

"I know, dear. I know."

Standing not far away, a younger woman, affianced to legion Private First Class Ricardo Cruz started to bawl as soon as she saw Lourdes' tears. Seeing Cara, Parilla's wife made a motion for her to join them. Then, standing there in the lobby, the three women hugged each other and had a good, long cry.

Hewler International Airport,

Yezidistan, 16/1/461 AC

Under the glare of the portable lights, the last of a dozen rented semi-tractors carrying Misrani Army tents pulled away from the unloading area on their way to the legion's bivouac site near Mangesh, Yezidistan. This was about thirty miles to the north and perhaps five miles from the dividing line between Sumeri controlled Yezidistan and the Yezidi safe area that had been guaranteed by the Federated States eleven years before, following the Oil War.

Despite the bitter cold the unloading crews sweated with the strain. Their breath made little horizontal evergreens of frost in the air. Nearby, Kuralski and his Yezidi counterpart, Captain Mesud, stood to one side while waiting for the Volgan LI-68s that would be flying in, among other things, a load of rather poorly made but at least warm cold-weather boots that had been stolen from Volgan army stores years before and offered to Harrington once the need was made known. Along with the boots were coming some tons of ammunition, a portion of a huge store that had been offered by the newly reunited Sachsen Reich from what had once been held by then nominally independent North Sachsen. This, too, would go to join the growing stockpile of supplies and equipment building in the middle of Yezidistan. Packaged field rations from Anglia, Gaul, the Federated States, and other places arrived at intervals as well. No rations would be coming from Zion as Kuralski had been warned about Army of Zion rations, canned goat with the hair still on it, and kosher to ensure near tastelessness. Besides, the one tasty, for certain values of "tasty," item of food in Zioni rations, Shoug, was a mix of ground peppers ranging from "Holy Shit Peppers" to "Joan of Arc Peppers," with a very small admixture of "Satan Triumphant Peppers." That way layeth logisticide.

Thirty miles away, at Mangesh, Sergeant Major McNamara had his hands full setting up the five hundred and forty odd tents the brigade would be moving into. Morse and Bowman were a great help, here, but-thank God!-his real salvation was that enough of these nonYezidi, Christian Chaldeans spoke English to get his will across. Ah, well, at least he didn't have Harrington's worries. That poor bastard was torn in a hundred directions; trying to set up an Ammunition Supply Point, arrange feeding, receive the equipment that arrived in a steady stream from Hewler International, and, in general, prepare for the arrival of the remaining troops.

Still, between himself, Kennison, Kuralski, Johnson, and Captain Mesud- fine officer, thought McNamara, rare among these wogs- he had to admit that things were getting done. They had a tent city laid out and about half the tents raised. The ASP was also laid out and, at least to the extent ammunition had arrived, dug in. Johnson was going insane trying desperately to set up local training facilities.

In a way, that was McNamara's biggest distraction, not that he minded. Carrera-McNamara still had to force himself not to think of his boss as Hennessey-was very goddamned particular, and a little unpredictable unless you thought at his level, about how his training was set up. Johnson did better than most and Mac enjoyed filling in the small details.

Mangesh was not strange to Carrera; he'd been there before. That was part of the reason he had chosen it for his staging area. Still, the place looked rather worn down, even more so than when he had left.

After a seemingly interminable flight, followed by a long drive from Hewler International, Carrera and Parilla finally arrived at the legion's staging base in the Yezidistan Mountains. Kennison, McNamara, and the rest of the advanced party were on hand to greet them.

A smiling Kennison was the first to speak. " Duce, Pat, welcome to outer Hell… or maybe, since it's so frigging cold, Niflheim."

Carrera smiled back and spread his arms wide. "It's almost good to be here, Carl. Why don't you and the sergeant major show the Duce and myself around?"

Kennison signaled for a driver to bring up his vehicle. "Right. We planned a little show and tell after the sightseeing tour."

Siegel, standing nearby, piped in, in Italian, " Un' espetaculo de cani e cavellini. " A dog and pony show. At Kennison's dirty look Siegel made himself scarce.

"Good, but make it brief, will you? I'm about ready to hit the sack now."

The four-Parilla, Carrera, Kennison, and McNamara, climbed back into the vehicle. Kennison gave the driver directions to take them around the camp. As the vehicle drove around the perimeter, Kennison pointed out the main features.

It soon became obvious to Carrera that the camp consisted of six sub-camps, a large central one and five more at a distance of about two and a half kilometers from the center.

Kennison explained, pointing at the layout, "We've put the Mechanized, Artillery, Combat Support, Service Support and Headquarters in the center. The four line cohorts and most of the Cazadors are out on the perimeter. Air is back at the airport, along with a century of Cazadors. Security of the perimeter is the responsibility of the Cazadors and the infantry. Each has about one fifth of the total area; grunts a bit more; Cazadors a bit less."

"Have you had any infiltrators?" asked Carrera.

Kennison shrugged indifferently. "Not exactly. Truth? It doesn't matter. The Yezidi did most of the work. I'd be really surprised if at least one of them, anyway, isn't reporting to Saleh, in Babel."

Carrera shrugged, as well. Nothing much to be done about that. Besides, except for local artillery, the only weapons the Sumeris had that could range to the camps were some crudely modified Volgan missiles. Even the unmodified versions were so inaccurate they had been known to miss entire countries before. The dictator, Saleh, would be more likely to hit the base around Mangesh if he hired a bunch of witch doctors from Uhuru and had them try to entice meteors down from space.

And even then, Carrera thought it more than likely that the UE Peace Fleet would interfere.

While the two men spoke, the vehicle continued on its way until it reached the center of the main camp. Kennison pointed out to Carrera the doublewide mobile home, air-conditioned, heated and with running water that he had set up for Carrera and Parilla's living quarters.

"Harrington sent it, along with another one to serve as the Operations, Intel and Logistics Center."

"Oh, he did, did he?" Carrera objected, glaring at the second doublewide. "There'll be no goddamned Headquarters Regency Hotel. Move it and turn it over to the medical century.

"As for the other one, the Duce can have that to himself. Get me a tent set up nearby, will you, Mac?"

The sergeant major didn't object. He just turned to Kennison and made a rubbing motion with his thumb across his fingers. Kennison, equally wordlessly, took out his wallet and paid McNamara a fifty drachma note. McNamara had been sure that Carrera wouldn't take quarters much more comfortable than what the troops had.

Folding the note and stuffing it in his pocket with a grin, McNamara asked, "Do you mind bunking wit' me, sir? We're kind of cramped for tent space."

Pretending not to notice the wager, Carrera simply answered that a shared tent would be fine.

While Parilla and Carrera were being shown the base, out in one of the outlying camps, Mendoza, his friend Stefano del Rio, and the tank commander, Sergeant Perez, worked over their newly issued White Eagle, though they called it a Jaguar II, tank, breaking down and checking the auxiliary weapons, checking fluid levels, and inventorying tools.

"Sergeant Perez?"

Perez looked over to where a kneeling Mendoza was unpacking a heavy machine gun from its crate. "Yeah, what is it, Jorge?"

Mendoza stood erect. In his right hand was a piece of paper. In his left was a labeled bottle full of clear liquid. He held them out for his sergeant's inspection.

A curious del Rio hopped down from the turret to join them.

Perez took the paper and read aloud:

Boys:

We want you to know that this tank is good tank, the best. No effort was spared. We didn't tolerate no shoddy work. She should see you well through coming fight.

Bottle? Well, all of us here have idea of what you going to go through soon. We thought it help. Is all.

Vaya con Dios,

Josef Raikin

Stefan Malayev

And the crew of Overseer Team 21

"That was pretty thoughtful of them, wasn't it, Sergeant?"

Perez just nodded. Damn, that was thoughtful, he thought. He said, "Mendoza, pad it with something and lock it up with the tools. We may need it come a rainy day."

Royal Jahari Land Forces Building, al Jahara, 19/1/461 AC

The Coalition commander didn't need to worry about rain. He would barely have needed to be concerned about the near detonation of a nuclear weapon.

Underground and very safe, deep in the bowels of the Royal Jahari Land Forces Building, Carrera and Parilla waited patiently for their meeting with the commanding general of the FSC-led Coalition. Concealing his distaste at a headquarters buried so far underground, Carrera muttered something about "Fredendall" and "Kasarine Pass."

Parilla looked at him questioningly. "Never mind, Raul," he answered. "Old Earth history… which just goes to show that some things are eternal."

A well meaning FS Army brigadier general sat down beside the two. "Are you all ready for your meeting with the Bulldozer?" he asked.

Parilla, having limited English, looked to Carrera. Carrera shrugged and didn't bother to translate except to mutter in Spanish about people who created their own nicknames or had their public relations departments do it for them.

"Is that the name his PR folks came up with for him now?" he asked the brigadier.

The brigadier gave Carrera a quizzical look. "It's what he's always been called."

Carrera snorted, shook his head, and put on a shallow smile. "No, that's not true. When he was a mere division commander he was known to most of his division as 'Fat Normy.'"

The brigadier's face looked as if Carrera had suddenly shown signs of a career destroying disease. He hastily left. Carrera smiled wickedly, then translated for Parilla.

"Did you know General Thomas back when you were in the FS Army?" Parilla asked.

"Know him? Not well. We had one of those cases of instantaneous dislike, really, and a few unpleasant run-ins after that." Carrera suddenly laughed. "You want to hear my best story about Fat Norman?"

"Tell me."

Carrera, still smiling wickedly, said, "It was silly, really. There was this captain in the battalion I was the operations officer for that had a little run in with Norman. The division was having its annual organization day. 'Conquest Day,' they called it. Some military intelligence wimp who was running one of the competitions fucked up his station. The puke put the man from our battalion in fourth place for that particular competition when the troop had actually placed second. This friend of mine tried to get the puke to fix it but he was nowhere to be found. So my friend tried to fix it himself. Unfortunately, he'd been pretty badly hurt in a training accident the week before and was moving a little slow. Maybe, too, he was thinking a little slow from the pain medications.

"First he put the troops in the right order, the one they themselves agreed was correct. Then my friend went over to the reviewing stand on the division parade field and tried to get Normy's attention so he could fix the awards list Normy had been given. My friend got Normy's attention, all right, but the general wouldn't listen and proceeded to chew him out in front of the division. By then the awards ceremony had started."

Carrera leaned back and shook his head slightly. "Then about a dozen colonels and lieutenant colonels surrounded this poor captain, asking what the problem was. My pal was explaining it to them when Normy came to the mistake the guy had been trying to fix. When Normy turned around it was like the parting of the Red Sea for Moses. Those colonels backed away like the man had the plague. The captain came to attention and Norman began to chew again.

"Even the captain thought it was hilarious. Consider. First the guy was chewed out for trying to fix a mistake someone else had made. Then he was chewed out for not fixing it fast enough."

Parilla laughed. "And did you really call him 'Fat Normy'? he asked.

"I don't know if the whole division did. But the officers of the brigade I was in? Oh, yeah. Don't get the wrong idea. Other than that he's an asshole, he's a perfectly acceptable commander. Not brilliant, perhaps, but far from stupid. Of course, if this war takes a hero, we could be in trouble."

The conversation ended when the secretary looked up and announced, "The general will see you now." Carrera picked up a bag containing a laptop as he and Parilla rose to enter the Coalition Sanctum Sanctorum .

While both men saluted, only Carrera reported verbally. " Dux Parilla and Legate Carrera report to the CinC, sir."

The general rose from behind his desk and returned the salute. Then, hiding the sneer he felt for Carrera, he walked around the desk to firmly grip Parilla's hand. Carrera translated the English words of welcome.

Only after that did Thomas return to his seat, turn his attention to Carrera and say, "I didn't want you here and I am ever so pleased that you'll be on the other side of Sumer."

"You couldn't be half as pleased as I am," Carrera answered, smiling. "That said, you are still stuck with me in this theater, you still need the legion Dux Parilla and I have brought, and so, in the interests of our common mission, why don't you just fuck off and stop being an asshole, Norman?"

Thomas' eyes flew wide with fury. "Nobody talks to me that way! Nobody!"

"It's about time somebody did," Carrera answered calmly. "Now, do you want to listen or do you want Parilla and me to pack up, go back to our base in Yezidistan, and call Campos and tell him that you've gratuitously insulted us, that we just can't work with you and that we're going home?"

"You wouldn't…" Thomas began before remembering that there was nothing the man he had known as Patrick Hennessey wouldn't dare to do. Since that approach wasn't going to work, the general consoled himself with finishing, "What the fuck do I need another brigade of military police for, anyway?"

That Carrera did translate for Parilla. They both began to laugh.

"What's so goddamned funny?" Thomas demanded.

"Is that what Campos told you?" Carrera asked through his laughter. "That we're MPs? That's the funniest thing I've heard in years."

"Not the secretary of war, no," Thomas answered, slowly. "One of my staff officers looked up Balboa, saw that it had only twelve companies of military police, and deduced, since you are from Balboa, that that's what you brought."

Muttering, "MPs… fucking MPs," Carrera took the laptop computer from its bag, fiddled with it a bit, and placed it on Thomas's desk, turning the screen so that all three could see it. Then he took a remote control and pressed a button.

A picture of a White Eagle, AKA Jaguar II, tank appeared on the screen.

"That, Norman, is what we call a 'Heavy Armored Community Relations Vehicle.' It lacks a siren, mind you, but there's nothing like a high velocity 125mm long rod penetrator to get the attention of a speeding driver."

Click. Another picture appeared, this time of an Ocelot.

"This is, of course, a Light Armored Community Relations Vehicle mounting a 100mm crowd control cannon." Click to show a Volgan 122mm artillery piece. "That is a 122mm Auxiliary Riot Control Agent Dispersal Projector." Click. "The 160mm High Angle Leaflet Distribution System." Click. An aircraft appeared, propeller driven but mounting a fearsome array of machine guns and rockets. "That is our Turbo-Finch Low Altitude Riot Control Aircraft…"

Click, click, click, click, click.

"You aren't MPs?"

"No, we're not MPs," Carrera answered. "What we are is a large combined arms brigade with a core of leadership some of which was converted to military police but were infantry before that and which we converted back to infantry or to some other combat arm. That cadre has been expanded with young men of such a high quality that your own Rangers would weep with envy. In the last year that brigade has spent more time training, and under more realistic situations, than any unit in your army except, maybe, for the Rangers. We have used more live ammunition in that year than your entire 39th Parachute Infantry Division uses in three years."

"You can really force a pass through the Yezidi mountains?" Thomas asked.

Carrera translated that for Parilla, who snapped his fingers and answered, in heavily accented English, "Piece o' cake."

Thomas nodded, looked contemplative for a few moments, then hit his intercom and said, "Cancel the plans to fly a brigade of the 11th Division up to Yezidistan."

Turning to Parilla, Thomas asked, "Will you need a Liaison Officer?"

Parilla shook his head, no, while Carrera answered, "We have one we're happy with who's been with us for some time. He'll do."

On their way out Parilla looked mildly thoughtful. "Patricio, I'm curious. Everyone in the headquarters that I saw had a pair of those tan colored boots just like Thomas did. But I haven't seen a line trooper with a pair yet. What's going on there?"

Carrera smiled. "Raul, you have just observed the 'trickle down theory' of supporting combat troops. I will just about guarantee you that every rear echelon motherfucker will have a pair of those boots before a single pair finds its way to a private in an infantry squad."

Parilla looked confused. "But how can that be? The rear support types don't need them. The infantry do."

Carrera laughed bitterly. "How can it be? How can it not be? It starts with Normy himself. He gets these high-speed boots and "tests" them personally. Or, more likely, just wears them because he's the big cheese and he can. Who knows?

"Then the next senior guy below Normy will get a pair. After all, he's got to show that he's a pretty big cheese, too. So far it isn't a big problem. But then the boots get to the other REMF generals, colonels, and majors. You might think that Normy, or his deputy, could put a stop to that with an order. They could, too, if it wasn't that they lost the moral authority to do so by wearing the boots themselves first. It would be embarrassing to tell the REMFs they can't have them… and generals spend most of their time surrounded by REMFs.

"So by now, we've got all the more junior officers and senior noncoms in the rear wearing the goddamned boots. Well… how can they tell their REMF troops that the troops can't have the boots? They can't. They gave up their moral authority to do so by grabbing a pair for themselves first. So, because Normy grabbed a pair for himself and let his subordinates grab a pair too, every REMF will have to have a pair of those boots before a single set trickles down to the line. Disgusting, isn't it?"

A light seemed to flash in Parilla's brain. "Patricio… is that why you didn't want to use the doublewide?"

"It's a part of it, Raul. You can use yours and nothing's lost as long as I establish that there will be no palace building below you."

"I see. Maybe I should give up the palace, too."

"You could have refused it initially. Now?" Carrera shook his head emphatically. "No. It would look too much like you're following me… which is not the impression we want to give the troops."

"But I want to do the right thing. I must do the right thing," Parilla insisted.

"I should have explained how this shit really works initially, when I first saw that rolling whorehouse Harrington scrounged. My fault I didn't, not yours. Let me see." He thought intently for a short while, then said, "Raul, in about two days, at the command and staff meeting, the medical unit is going to ask about having another air- conditioned and heated facility for some of the inevitable casualties. You will ask Harrington about it. He will say that none are available and none will be for the immediate future. You will then order the sergeant major to cart off your mobile home and get you a tent. I will then tell the medicos that the very first time I see or hear of that building being used for ANY purpose but care of the wounded and ill, I will have the guilty parties staked out naked in the cold overnight."

Laughing lightly, Carrera said, "You know, I'm not sure it won't work out better this way than if you'd turned down the trailer in the first place."

Mangesh Base, Yezidistan, 20/1/461 AC

Colonel John Ridenhour approached the bunker guarding the gate with some care. When he had walked to within fifty meters of it, but no closer, a voice rang out, loud enough to be heard, but no louder, "Halt! Who goes there? Friend or foe?"

"Friend," Ridenhour answered in Spanish.

"Advance, friend, to be recognized." Ridenhour again walked forward before being halted again. He met the sentry's whispered challenge with an equally soft-spoken password.

A young Balboan sentry emerged from the bunker and brought his rifle to present arms. Ridenhour returned the salute.

When the sentry had moved his rifle back to a more ready position, he asked, "Sir, what the hell were you doing out there?"

"Just looking over the perimeter from the enemy's point of view."

Satisfied, the young sentry asked, in halting and accented but understandable English, "How does it look?"

"Good, son, very good. By the way, what's your name?"

"Cruz, sir. Private First Class Ricardo Cruz."

"Where are you from in Balboa?"

" Las Mesas Province," Cruz answered proudly.

"You're a long way from home."

Cruz smiled, white teeth shining slightly amidst the dark night. He thought longingly of Caridad. "Sir, a mile would be too far to be away from home. But if I have to be away, here's not much worse than anywhere else. Except for the damned cold, of course."

Research Building, University of Ninewa

Sada shivered as he watched the trucks loaded. There was a bitterly cold south wind blowing across the city. The scientists, soldiers and workers, like Sada, suffered in the biting breeze. Unlike him, most were allowed by their positions to find shelter wherever there was a lee.

Shaking his head sadly, Sada noted that there were only enough trucks to move half the load, all of that being money and bearer bonds. Was Saleh, the dictator of the country, incapable of coming up with enough vehicles at one time to make away with the contents of the building's basement?

If we cannot even come up with trucks, what chance have we? Sada fumed.

"We'll be back," the colonel commanding the column assured Sada.

"You'll be back if you aren't blasted to shit on the way," Sada corrected.

Excursus

From: Reconquista, Copyright © Xavier Jimenez IV, 601 AC, Carrera-Balboa Press, Ciudad Balboa

By 155 AC Makkah al Jedidah had only one stream, and that shallow and sluggish. The other had gone to hide below ground. The city still had trees, about as many as it had at the founding. Most of those trees, however, were no longer growing but had been cut for roof beams.

Farther out was sand with a few water holes and oases. Caravans trekked the sand; woe betide anything that grew near the caravan trails. The camels and especially the goats would eat anything found green right down to the roots.

There was little wood by this time, little to burn for fuel. Instead, the people gathered up the droppings of their animals and dried and burned those. Thus, even that little bit of fertilizer never nourished the soil.

As one went farther away from the original center of settlement one would find more greenery. Yet the pattern was clear. The settlement of Salafi Man was spreading fast; the existence of natural flora and fauna disappearing at the same rate or faster. The Salafis fled the desert. But they brought the desert with them, created it, wherever they went.

The nomads' flocks' hooves pounded the soil, compacting it and pulverizing it. This rendered the soil fine enough to be carried off by water and wind. And the trees that might have protected the soil, holding it in place, gathering it from the wind, shading it so that surface water did not evaporate so quickly… these were gone or going. Evaporation, too, brought salt to the surface, killing what plants remained and rendering the soil useless for growing.

Other colonies on the periphery of the Salafis felt the nomads' desperation. Often starving, themselves, the Salafis raided for food. They raided to spread their way of life, their purer faith. They also raided for slaves, especially women slaves. Thus, added to the now forced emigration from Old Earth, the slave women brought new Salafis into the world in continuingly large numbers.

Most of the southern shore of Uhuru, along the Tauranian Lakes, had fallen to them, as had northwestern Taurus and substantial parts of Urania and, once the Salafis took to sea, some islands of the Mar Furioso. This meant more slaves, more women, and more Salafis. And, except where even they could not overcome nature, it also meant more desert.

The other peoples of the new world began, not to strike back, but to defend what was theirs. After what they had endured from the Salafi, mercy was not a concept in common currency.

In Ardeal, five thousand Salafi raiders were impaled at a pass following the defeat of their raiding party. At Turonensis, in Gaul, an amphibious Salafi invasion was defeated by disciplined musketry and its survivors hanged to a man, several thousand Christian slaves being liberated in the process. When a Salafi army pushed north, past the desertified coast of Southern Uhuru, seeking new lands to turn barren, it was met by the Bulala Amalungu- and Bayede Nkhosi -crying, Shosholoza- and Nomathemba -chanting, Amazing Grace – and Onward Christian Soldiers -singing, massed, Christian-Animist impis of the great King Senzangakona III of the Nguni.

Salafi hit and run tactics, on horseback, had proven no match for the Nguni numbers and their urge to close and kill at breakneck pace afoot. The Salafis and their mounts were butchered, despite their extensive use of firearms. It was said among the Nguni that the glittering sheen of their spearheads had been lit by a miraculous glow from the large gilded cross they carried as their king's standard. It was said among the few Salafi survivors, thereafter, that it was almost impossible for a man on horseback to outpace a racing Nguni impi in the long run… and that with the Nguni it was always a long run. Only the desert, creation and ultimate defense of the Salafi, had kept the impis from continuing on to exterminate the threat to their south.

Nor was the resistance limited to non-Moslems. The Salafi were a threat to everyone. Near Babel, in Sumer, disciplined, musket-wielding Sunni and Shia farmers on foot held the mounted Salafis at bay while their own, limited, cavalry swept in behind to trap them. Something not dissimilar happened when the Salafis faced the civilized, Moslem and Christian, Misrani along the banks of the Interu in Southwest Uhuru.

In time, the Salafi immigration from Old Earth ceased. The semistarvation that had driven their expansion on Terra Nova began to reduce their population as, morally ingenious literalists that they were, they avoided the proscription against burying infant girls alive by first either smashing their heads with rocks or leaving them exposed for the desert animals.

And so the Salafi movement began to recede, for a time. It would come again, in the guise of an ideology. As it left, it left behind little but wasteland and corpses, and small detachments of outcast adherents. When it returned, it would be over a carpet of waste and bodies, stepping along the footholds it had left behind like a man crossing a stream on stones.

As the Salafis fell back to their desert fastness, they left little but waste and destruction-physical, moral and intellectual-behind them. Their adherents left behind in the lost lands were outcast and despised. Indeed, they were often killed out of hand, especially in Moslem lands. Heeding the Koran's stricture on how to deal with those who brought disorder to the world, only shortage of wood saved many Salafis from crucifixion. And those lost hands and feet on opposite sides.

Thus Salafism languished for more than two centuries while the new world progressed around them. In fact, while Uhuru, Urania and other continents were carved up by Taurans, Zhong, Yamatans and Columbians, the Salafis of the Yithrab were left in peace. This was neither altruism nor respect but a simple reflection of the fact they had nothing anyone wanted.

The resurgence of radical Salafism can be dated to the discovery of substantial energy deposits, in the form of fossil fuels, in the Yithrab Peninsula and its environs, beginning in the year 348 AC. Having access to Earth's history prior to the end of emigration, the peoples of Terra Nova were never in ignorance of the value of the stuff. Civil war within the Salafi reach erupted within a few years of the discovery, the al Rashid clan eventually emerging triumphant.

Oil revenues were initially more or less trivial to the buyers, though significant to the then-poor Salafis. Especially during the Great Global War, when all civilized constraints of behavior were thrown off, the Salafis were altogether too frightened of conquest to exert the power implicit in control of so vast a reserve of energy.

With time, however, growing awareness of the value of their resource, coupled with the post-GGW nuclear standoff between the Federated States, the Volgan Empire and the UEPF, placed the al Rashid in a position to take control of their own oil and their own destinies. Others, not merely on the periphery but around the globe, followed suit. Fossil fuel prices rose precipitously. In point of fact, they did not stop their continuous rise until the fall of the Volgan Empire freed the Federated States to credibly threaten the use of military force should prices get out of hand.

Oil brought unprecedented wealth. Money received from it went into the creation of welfare states, impressively armed if indifferently effective military and naval forces, and provided obscenely lavish lifestyles for the ruling clans. No small amount, too, went to the spread of Salafism.

Among the Misrani at the edge of Southern Uhuru, to Kashmir, to Sukarno, madrassas sprang up like mushrooms. Providing free room and board, as well as a free-if highly constrained-education, the madrassas were highly popular among the disenfranchised lower classes of the Moslem portions of Terra Nova.

And that was the problem. Most of the population of Moslem states on Terra Nova were disenfranchised and frighteningly poor. Moreover, while the first two hundred and fifty years of settlement had seen them prosper approximately as well as colonization efforts by non-Moslems, after approximately the middle of the third Terra Novan century this was no longer true. Increasingly, they had fallen behind. Increasingly they were seen to be militarily inept. Increasingly, the pride of a very proud set of people was pricked. Increasingly, they heard the message of the Salafis to return to the older, purer ways… to fight back with fire and sword.