Carnifex

18/1/468 AC, The Base, Kashmir

Three men, Mustafa, Nur al-Deen, and Abdul Aziz, walked the trails within the fortress. There came from the north the steady crackle of small arms fire as the mujahadin practiced marksmanship. For the most part the practice was a wasted effort. Yet it had one great virtue. In any group there are always exceptions. The marksmanship training program, useless as it was to train any appreciable number of decent shots, was still absolutely critical to identifying the rare naturally superb shot for further, more useful, training. Federated States Army, Taurans, and even the Legion had had occasional cause to curse those rare genuine marksmen the Salafis now fielded.

Along with the rifle and machine gun fire, the din was frequently punctuated with much larger blasts as others among the holy warriors were trained in the intricacies of combat demolitions, booby traps, and other improvised explosive devices.

Mortars, too, could be heard as their crews practiced this simplest of the artillery arts. These, though, fired from outside the perimeter of the fortress and directed their fires even further away. It might have been more effective to fire from inside at targets outside. In the past, as a matter of fact, they had. Quality control at the factory, however, was never all that great and there had been a number of unfortunate accidents. Mortar firing was all done outside the perimeter, now.

After the cacophony of the ship fitting in Hajipur, Abdul Aziz barely noticed the blasts of mortars and demolitions. Mustafa and Nur al-Deen were fairly used to them. None of the men so much as twitched, even at the largest of the explosions.

Abdul Aziz explained, "The greatest weakness to the plan, Sheik, is hitting the target's motive power before it notices the threat from the Hoogaboom. The enemy carrier is more than twice the speed of our ship, and based on the tour given to our two undercover reverts, extraordinarily maneuverable."

"I do not see," Nur al-Deen huffed, "why we need to make this extraordinary expenditure to destroy a single ship. A single cigarette boat with a ton of explosives should be enough."

Mustafa laid a hand on Nur's shoulder. "It would not be, my friend. We have reason to believe that such a boat would be most unlikely to get anywhere near the carrier unless covered by something like the Hoogaboom. Even if it did, the great infidel in space, High Admiral of Pigs Robinson, assures me that the carrier is sufficiently well built and compartmentalized that it would take as many as three such hits to put it down. There is no chance, none, that we could get three cigarette boats close enough."

"And," added Abdul Aziz, "With two thousand tons of a mix of ammonium nitrate, hydrazine, and aluminum powder, the Hoogaboom need not get all that close to destroy the ship, two hundred meters or so."

"I still think it's a waste," insisted Nur al-Deen.

Mustafa stopped walking and turned. "My friend, one thing I have learned since we began this. Defense does not win. We must attack, and attack, and attack again."

"Abdulahi is not enthused about the prospect of martyrdom for more of his men," Nur al-Deen said.

"This is true," Mustafa agreed. "But then he, too, must learn that he must attack and hold nothing back. He should study Parameswara."

"Parameswara isn't being asked for one hundred and fifty suicide bombers," Nur al-Deen answered.