by John F. Carr
Barbarossa glared, his thoughts running back to all the times the woman’s efforts, either deliberately or accidentally, had interfered with his plans. He had long assumed that A’isha was the key to the disappearance of the daughter he had intended to marry, and that African lad, Abdullah. In his darker hours, he imagined the two of them, married somewhere themselves, surrounded with the children that should be his.
A’isha’s efforts to support women and the poor often operated at cross-purposes with his various enterprises. He was not going to let her bring him down, not in his moment of triumph.
“Money is no object,” he growled. “And it must look like the CoDominium is behind it. Kill some Marines, and stage their bodies to make it look like they were the culprits.”
“It is good that you are willing to loosen your purse. Killing Marines and stealing their bodies is no easy matter.”
The big man’s face colored with anger, a shade almost as red as his hair. “Just get it done,” he snapped.
“As you wish,” said the nondescript man, as he rose, bowed, and left the room.
After a moment, Barbarossa left the room and headed for his personal quarters. It had been a crazy day. He badly needed a drink.
* * *
Company A moved as quickly as they could. They began to adapt their march more and more to the rhythm of Haven’s day/night cycle, marching almost continuously through periods of bright and dim, only taking long rests during the dark of truenight. This was a brutal pace, which had a cruel effect on the troopers, but they needed to open the distance between themselves and the military force they had discovered. With each day that passed, they began to be more confident that they might survive.
They had scouts out ahead on point and others posted behind the company, to watch for enemies, but none appeared.
They had three seriously wounded troopers riding with them. The grueling pace was hard on the soldiers and, after a few days, the first one died in his saddle. A day later, another followed him. The third trooper, however, began to improve.
Everyone was exhausted, but began to look forward to seeing the small village of Tombstone. Because it was off the main trail, Captain Flint thought it would be a good place to rest and regroup. The men of the company even began to speculate what kind of welcome they might get from the women they had rescued from the slavers.
They were mounted and making good time in the middle of a long dimday, Cat’s Eye full and high in the sky above them, when Andre heard shots up ahead. The Captain sent him forward to see what was happening. When he reached their scouts, he found them dismounted, scattered behind what cover they could find, and exchanging fire with a half dozen men who had taken cover in a cluster of rocks. From the way they had reacted to the sight of the soldiers, the corporal in charge speculated to Andre that they had stumbled on a small group of bandits.
Suddenly, the rate of fire increased, and they realized that the bandits were taking fire from the hillside above them. The bandits, desperate to escape from this new threat, burst into the open and the troopers made short work of them.
Andre heard soprano whoops from the hill above them, and shouts of greeting. Someone rose from the hillside, holding a rifle high in the air, and waving a white handkerchief. Andre rode to greet her and realized that it was one of the former slaves they had rescued. She introduced herself as Raneem and Andre remembered that name as belonging to the woman who knew English. He told her to call in the others and three more women came down the hillside, leading four horses.
They were wearing coarse homespun tunics and trousers, crude leather moccasins and cartridge belts. Each of them carried a rifle. Andre sent his troopers to collect the bandits’ horses, and they also stripped weapons from the dead men. He sent another trooper back to brief Captain Flint, and soon the rest of the Company joined them.
Raneem told them they were just a few hours away from Tombstone and the unit headed out in that direction. She rode between Andre and the Captain. They asked her to fill them in on what had been happening in the weeks since they had left.
Unfortunately, they found that a conversation with her was not the shortest distance between two points. As she rambled along, they learned what the Tombstoners were eating these days, that Palozi was getting by with only a cane, that Palozi had also been training them in shooting and other military ‘things’ and that they had ambushed and captured another slave caravan.
With that news, the Captain started asking pointed questions. It took a while, but he was able to get the whole story. One of the Tombstoners had been out hunting, when he found a slave caravan settled down for the night. He’d made his way back to town and a large group of villagers and freed slaves armed themselves and headed out to set an ambush, attempting to replicate the tactics that the cavalry company had used.
It had not gone as well and, while they had defeated and killed the slaver drivers, they had lost five people and seven of the slaves. Still, this left the village with seventy new inhabitants, six wagons, twenty-four oxen and six camels. The villagers decided that they did not want to be in the camel business, so most of the men had loaded trade goods into one of the wagons, taken the camels in tow and headed for Fort Abomey to try to trade them for more seed for crops, cloth and other staples.
Andre was taken aback. The folks of the Tombstone had been busy since they left. He heard the men behind him buzzing with conversation. The point that the troopers had taken from all of this was that there were more than twice as many women waiting at the end of the ride.
He heard Trooper Swenson swear in disgust, and tell her fellow troopers to “get a life.” He looked back, and the column had grown ragged, men shifting their position to talk to friends, some of them flirting with the three other women who had been riding with Raneem. Discipline was starting to evaporate.
The Captain raised his hand for a halt, and ordered everyone to gather around. He suggested that Raneem move out of earshot, but she refused, curious to hear what he had to say; he shrugged and started to talk. He wasn’t worried about Jacobs and Swenson, the unit’s female troopers— they had heard it all since joining the unit.
“We’re heading for what will probably be a pretty good party,” he said, and waited until the cheering died down. “But I want you to keep in mind that we’re guests here. The Militia issued us all condoms, and if it’s appropriate, I expect them to be used. We don’t want to leave any bastards behind. Furthermore, after surviving through everything we’ve lived through, I don’t want you dying of some social disease.
“If any of you sticks anything anywhere it’s not wanted, I will personally cut it off and feed it to the dactyls. And don’t think that if folk’s stories don’t match, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. No means no. And if these folks turn up with any alcohol to offer you, don’t get carried away. I intend for us to ride these plains for a long time and if we play our cards right, this place is one that will welcome us for years to come. So treat these folks right.”
He paused and then continued, “Now, let’s mount up, and please try to maintain at least a little military bearing until we break formation.”
The Captain turned, and there stood Raneem. Her eyes were wide, her mouth hung open; she was red as a beet.
The Captain sputtered, “I tried to warn you,” as he mounted up.
Things stayed more than a little loose until the Company saw smoke from the village’s cook fires ahead. Then the tattered guidon came out of its case, men straightened their gear and tried to brush the dust off and the column regained its military order. As they rode past the first few buildings, shouts rang out, and folks started to pour out of the buildings and run out of the fields. There were shouts of joy and greeting.
Trooper Palozi came around the corner of a building, and shouted out to his friends. They came to a crisp halt, and the Captain shouted, “Fall out!”
* * *
A’isha had been working late, trying to mediate a dispute between Burea
u of Relocation officials and representatives of the Humanity League who provided support for the newly arrived transportees. The two sides had reached an uneasy compromise which A’isha hoped would lead to better cooperation in the future. Cat’s Eye had nearly set, and the street was dimly lit with russet tones, and striped by long shadows. One bodyguard walked well ahead of her, Laith and another walked at her side, and a fourth one behind her.
A’isha felt a sudden blow, as if someone had punched her in the stomach. And then another on her back, and her hip, and then a savage pain in one arm. She realized that guns were firing and men were emerging from the shadows, men dressed like the Faithful in long, dark robes, but with the close-cropped hair of Western military men. Their hands were filled with weapons, and the muzzle flashes lit the street in flickering bursts of light. The noise was deafening.
A’isha went down on her hands and knees. She coughed and looked curiously at the spray of blood on the dirt under her face. She rolled onto her side, and saw some of her attackers fall. But her bodyguards were falling as well. Laith, her Lion, towered above her, his clean-shaven face contorted with rage. He held a blazing pistol in each hand, roaring like a human lion. He paused to look at her, and even in the midst of the rage, she saw sadness and concern. She knew from the way he looked at her that she would die.
She saw him flinch, once, twice, then twice more, while firing in all directions. Blood blossomed on his shirt, and began to spurt from a wound in his leg. She was proud to think that such a man would defend her. Then she thought about Tawfiq. Who will take care of him now? Her greatest regret was that she would never see her grandchildren.
Suddenly, A’isha realized the world was growing silent….
* * *
The days spent in Tombstone were a pretty good time. The first night, the Captain gave Smith back his harmonica and they had themselves a regular dance with a couple of overturned pots providing a percussion section. Tim turned out to be a pretty good contra dance caller and instructor and soon they had long lines of folks dancing and having a good time.
There was laughter from the troopers for the first time in weeks and the high-pitched laughs of the women were like music to their ears. The young Muslim women were strangers to dance, but Andre soon learned that they had decided—pretty much collectively—to leave the restrictions of their faith behind them. Not a surprise, considering how their coreligionists had treated them.
The villagers had found plenty of alcohol in the wagons of the two slaver caravans, and decided that this was a good time to consume it. Their hunting parties had been successful in recent muskylope hunts, so food was plentiful, although the troopers found muskylope flesh almost inedible. Many of the troopers did pair up with the young women of the village, and if you took a girl and a blanket up to the hills above town, there was a better than even chance that you would trip over another couple in your travels.
Andre found that little Raneem, for all her talking, was pretty easy to get along with, although too shy to do more than share a few kisses after the dances.
There was one blot on their time in the village. The morning after they arrived, someone found Lieutenant McKenna wrapped in a blanket near the bonfire that had burned in the center of town, but sweating profusely. They brought him indoors and stripped him for examination. They found a deep and festering wound on his right ankle, and angry red streaks were running up his leg.
His fever was over 104 degrees Fahrenheit. They gave him antibiotics, but before the next day, he was dead. They would never know if he knew about the wound’s severity and ignored it, or just didn’t realize how badly hurt he was. In any event, he had stayed on duty until his troopers reached safety—and that was what he’d be remembered for.
Flint gave Andre command of First Platoon. He wasn’t a Militia officer, but at this point, there was no sense in letting details like that stand in the way. Sergeant Wakefield was given Second Platoon. They buried McKenna with full honors, or the best they could do in field conditions. After two days of rest, though, the Captain began to get edgy, and let everyone know that they needed to keep moving. While Sparks had survived, their radio gear had not, and they needed to make a report.
They headed out from Tombstone with many fond farewells and a few tears from the women in the village. Palozi volunteered to stay at the village, help them build some defenses, teach them more marksmanship and continue to oversee their military training. Seeing the value in having a forward base, the Captain agreed. They left three other men in the village also, those too sick or badly wounded to continue the pace of the march.
As they rode out, Andre looked back at the village, and the ranks of women, with their homespun uniforms and rifles, who had lined up to bid farewell to the Company. He wondered what kind of society would form if the village were to survive the war that everyone thought was upon them?
Not wanting to take any more food from the villagers, they sent riders ahead out along the route to forage and hunt. Soon they adopted the same brutal pace as before their break, making a beeline for Fort Abomey.
Seven days after they left Tombstone, as they approached Fort Abomey a vehicle roared up the trail. It stopped in front of them, and the CD Marine Major in command, O’Donnell, jumped out.
“My God,” he said, his mouth hanging open in shock. “What happened to you guys?”
The Captain described what they had found in the mountains and what they had gone through since their escape. The Major whistled softly, pulled water and rations out of the vehicle and passed them out as widely as he could. The Captain stressed the importance of reporting in, and asked to be taken back to their radio room.
“Can’t do that,” the Major replied. “All the satellites are off line. Our main antenna got hit by a Thunderbolt.”
Everyone looked at him in shock. The Thunderbolt was a kinetic energy weapon, basically a crowbar dropped from orbit, precision guided, which hit its target with devastating force. There wasn’t supposed to be any military space capability in this system other than the CoDominium Navy, but someone was taking out space-based capabilities, and using precision space-based weapons.
“Then, Major,” Flint said, “I’d like to impose on you for all the supplies you can spare, stay with you for a couple of days, and then move out to Fort Camerone.”
“Absolutely,” said the Major, “And we can get the Lieutenant here to carry our Marine dispatches back to the Seventy-seventh, and get some new orders ourselves.
They stayed at the Fort for the rest of a dimday and on through another day of truenight. The Captain authorized beer rations from the local town, but didn’t allow anyone to leave the fort. Andre noticed that Wakefield refused his beer ration. And after too short a rest, the weary troopers of Company A headed out again.
* * *
The funeral parade was the largest gathering of people on Haven that Barbarossa had ever seen. A’isha’s casket was laid in a black lacquered wagon drawn by four snow white Arabian horses, the finest that could be found. The procession wound its way through the narrow streets of Medina, past tenements and markets, past the cylindrical metal buildings of Capsule Town where so many babies had been born, through the tent city of the newly arriving transportees. Past the winding road and the house she had shared with the Mahdi for so many years. And ahead of them, on a windswept hilltop, her final resting place, already the proposed site of a grand monument.
Crowds packed the sides of every street, weeping and crying, leaving barely enough room for the procession to pass. And after it did, the crowds streamed along behind them, joining the procession.
Barbarossa’s nondescript associate had not just staged the bodies of CoDominium Marines at the site of A’isha’s murder. He had actually hired six of them to kill her. He’d also planned to betray them when the deed was done and make sure they were all killed rather than captured, but because of Laith and the other bodyguards, that wasn’t even necessary. A very well run operation, he concluded, and an atroc
ity that gave the Faithful one more reason to go to war with the infidels.
It turned out to be a reason that dwarfed the other crisis Barbarossa had manipulated, the discovery of their hidden base in the mountains. He’d had no idea this mere woman was so popular with the masses.
Barbarossa looked to his side, at the Mahdi who he had followed for so many years. The man had aged during these last few days. In his long black robes and black turban, with a long uncut grey beard hanging nearly to his belt, he looked every inch the wise old prophet, just returned from the desert to reveal the will of Allah to his followers.
Tawfiq was the wisest man that Barbarossa had ever known. He had forged the Muslim transportees that poured across the steppes of Haven into a nation. Under his leadership, they had built towns, farms, trade routes, industries. He had won a degree of autonomy from the CoDominium Governor of Haven; the right to rule themselves, to practice Shariah law among the faithful. He had helped form armies, won support from afar, helped prepare the Faithful for their destiny. The Mahdi hadn’t wanted to take this step, but he was the man best equipped to lead the nation at war.
Barbarossa shivered. If Tawfiq thought it was too early to move, perhaps they should have waited. But he shook off the self-doubt. Their cause was just, their power at its peak, their people ready. Sometimes people who were smart and thought too much needed a push to take action.
The woman had made the Mahdi soft, took his focus off victory, and drew his attention toward babies and children and hunger and Allah only knew what other things that should not be the concerns of men. Barbarossa was convinced that she had sent away her daughter, and robbed him of the bride he had craved for so many years. She was a stumbling block for him, for the Mahdi, for the Faithful—and now she was gone.
The Mahdi turned to Barbarossa and said, “After we bury her, summon the council. It is time to strike.” His eyes were hard, dead, full of hatred.
Barbarossa shivered. He prayed the truth of what he had done would never be known. This was not a man to have as an enemy.
