Carnifex cl-2

by Tom Kratman

  Gunning the engines to top a white-foamed crest, Pedraz thought, Show me a sailor who's not afraid of the sea and I'll show you an informal burial at sea waiting to happen.

  The Trinidad's bow cleared the crest and hung suspended over the water. With resistance lessened and the engine at full throttle, the boat lurched forward until reaching the tipping point and . . .

  "Yeehawww!" Pedraz exulted, now that he was free of the fear of being crushed by the Harpy. The bow plunged down like a rollercoaster car on steroids, the rollercoaster having plainly been designed by a lunatic on LSD.

  The waves were steep and the troughs were deep, but the wavelength was long and the angle at least survivable. The boat continued its plunge for the bottom, the crew hanging on for dear life.

  A seeming wall of water arose before Pedraz's eyes. He knew it was

  probably half illusion—a result of the Trinidad's angle as it rode down the wave. Even so, his heart skipped a beat. He cut back on the throttle lest the boat's bow go straight into the water below.

  Then he gunned it again as the boat reached the base of the trough and began the long climb up and over the next wave. No problem; Pedraz had the storm's measure and timing now, and his crew had faith in their little boat's skipper. With a lighter heart, he forced his way closer to the dimly sensed presence—given the thick, blinding spray one could hardly see it as more than a dim presence—of the Ironsides.

  14/6/467 AC, FSS Ironsides

  Pedraz had to admit it, the FSN squids had made himself and the other seventeen men of the crew pretty damned comfortable over the last several days. He'd missed his rum ration, of course, and the food wasn't really as close to home cooking as was served aboard legionary ships and boats. Still, the quarters were comparatively spacious and the mattress, oh, much better.

  The break was over. A remotely piloted vehicle from one of the frigates escorting the Ironsides had spotted what appeared to a medium sized group of Xamari pirates collecting and boarding three smallish boats for an excursion.

  Pedraz had watched in real time in CIC as the pirates gathered.

  "Do they always act like that?" he'd asked of a Spanish speaking sailor manning a visual screen

  "Generally, yeah, Chief. They dance around, shooting their rifles into the air to psyche themselves up. Then they get all the old men, women and kids cheering. Then they board and launch. By the time we are allowed to do anything it's always too late. See, we can't do a damned thing until they've actually committed piracy on the high seas. By then . . . by the time we can act; they'll have grabbed the crew as hostages and we're stymied."

  After watching the pirates' boats for a while, Pedraz commented, "Slower than shit, aren't they?"

  "Yeah," the other sailor agreed. "And that's how you're going to get them, this once anyway."

  Pedraz went back to watching the slow progress of the pirates' vessels. He estimated them as doing no better than ten knots. A few quick mental calculations told him they needed to get at least eight miles offshore for him to have a decent chance of both intercepting them before they reached the boat and not warning them in time for them to turn around.

  After what seemed to Pedraz to be a very long time watching, Ironsides' operations officer spoke up, in English. "Tell Mr. Pedraz to man his boat and to have the Agustin's crew man as well. We'll lower them to the water and then signal when it's time to leave."

  14/6/467 AC, Xamar, Abdulahi's Headquarters

  The pirate chief's smile grew into a chuckle as he watched three of his boats closing on the lone freighter. He watched on a laptop's screen, the laptop hooked into the receiver provided to him by those space-faring infidels overhead.

  Such a useful toy it was, that receiver. It was not only capable of giving him the locations of any naval vessels that might interfere with his operations, it gave him the precise locations of potential targets and identified—though this was trickier—ships belongs to companies that were already paying the Jizya. It would never do to seize those who paid to avoid attack unless, of course, those payments were late.

  Abdulahi panned back, to embrace a broader ocean area. At this scale he could make out the two infidel carrier groups, which he thought of as "the greater and the lesser infidels," both the distinctive flat tops and their smaller escorts. He could close the view in, also, to watch the take offs and landings of their aircraft. That, however, usually cut off the view of the escorts unless they happened to be very close to the carriers.

  Recentering the cursor on the waters between the target freighter and where his own boats had to be, Abdulahi clicked to lower the scale to where he could just make out his vessels. The two carrier groups disappeared off to the sides of the screen.

  One might have thought that the pirate lord would have paid more attention to the threat to his operations, rather than the targets. But there was emotional satisfaction in watching the targets taken. The threat? Well, he knew the rules of engagement as well as the captains and crews of the warships. The FSN wasn't allowed to be a threat until it was too late and the others, the infidel mercenaries, were not nearly as capable and were, moreover, being watched by the space-faring infidels who would warn him if the mercenaries got into a position to interfere.

  UEPF Spirit of Peace

  While Abdulahi concentrated on the target, Wallenstein—from Robinson's desk—focused on the threat. She, unlike the Xamari, was not restricted to a laptop screen. Instead, she had the latest in Terra Novan video technology, and something every bit as good as anything produced at home, the High Admiral's two-and-a-half meter Kurosawa. With that, and the processing power inherent in the ship's computer, she was able to track both war fleets as well as the pirates and their targets. Symbols stood in for full views of the ships.

  That is to say, she was able to track everything but didn't see the need. Once she'd identified that the mercenary fleet was in no position to interfere with the pirates with their own ships, she focused in on the carrier to ensure it wasn't launching aircraft at the pirates. That kept her rapt attention. The only thing that had bothered her was the disappearance of the two patrol boats from the ocean surface. This had not troubled her long, however, for she had found them sitting under tarps atop the ship the screen identified as the Harpy Eagle.

  BdL Harpy Eagle

  The boatswain spared a glance overhead, silently praying that his camouflage job would do.

  The hardest part had been assembling the frames in the midst of the storm, with the wind roaring and the waves sometimes washing over the deck. It had actually been fairly easy to construct the frames out of cheap lumber down in the cargo hold. Taking them apart and stowing them in an open space within the deck level of the superstructure hadn't been hard. But getting the frames out and built when no man could hear a word, or sometimes even see another for all the spray in the air? The boatswain rather hoped they'd not have to try this trick again and certainly not in a storm like the last one.

  Safe enough bet, though, he thought. Like most tricks, it's unlikely to work more than once.

  Still silently, the boatswain said a small prayer for the success of the Trinidad and the Agustin.

  BdL Santisima Trinidad

  The sea state, so long after the storm, was low and the bow rode high, skipping over the waves, propelled by twin screws driven by sixty-two hundred horsepower. Pedraz stood at the helm, giving light taps to the wheel to cut expertly across the waves. His body bounced in time with the beating of the hull.

  Up front, on the 40mm, stood Seamen Clavell and Guptillo. The pair wore Legion standard (plus) body armor and helmets, though Clavell's helmet covered a set of headphones that were hooked into the boat's intercom. The "plus" came in the form of a silk and liquid metal apron that extended over the crotch, and liquid metal greaves covering chins and knees. There wasn't a hell of a lot of cover on a patrol boat.

  A few paces behind the gun crouched two more of the crew, likewise accoutered. One of these carried a clip of five 40mm shells
and was close to the forty. The other had the same but was closer to the magazine well from which more shells would be passed upward.

  Pedraz looked to port where Seaman Leonardo Panfillo clutched the spade grips of a .41-caliber heavy machine gun. The shiny brass belt draped down before disappearing into a gray painted ammunition can. Pedraz looked for signs of worry in Panfillo's face. There weren't any—and perhaps this made perfect sense after having braved the hair-raising transfer during the storm—but only a look of grim determination.

  Satisfied with Panfillo, the skipper glanced to starboard where Estèban Santiona manned the .41 on that side. He was heavyset, was Santiona, but the weight helped him control the vicious vibration of the HMG. Something, at least, made the sailor such a bloody good gunner; in informal competition with the gunners of the other boats in the tercio Santiona had, frankly, kicked the rest of the patrol boat maniple's posteriors.

  "Estèban," Pedraz shouted over the roar of the engines and the pounding of the water. "Leave a couple of the bastards for the rest to practice on, got it?"

  "Si, mi skipper," the rotund gunner answered without looking up.

  The Ironsides and Pedraz had worked out a simple method by which the supercarrier could vector in the patrol boat to the targets without being too obvious about it. The method was that the Trinidad and its sister ship were assigned a flight number, Blue Jay Four Three. The Ironsides' radio room broadcast vectors under that flight number. Pedraz heard and adjusted his course while Agustin's skipper merely followed Pedraz. The carrier couched the directions in terms of naval aviation but had schooled Pedraz to ignore the parts irrelevant to him. They'd also told him not to acknowledge the directions. For further deception, Ironsides had put up an aircraft which would follow those directions.

  One never could tell who might be listening.

  UEPF Spirit of Peace

  The computer on Robinson's desk spoke. "Captain Wallenstein, I have discovered an anomaly."

  "Go," ordered the captain, simply.

  "There are two small surface craft in the area of focused observation that should not be there. Moreover, when the largest of the vessels in the area broadcasts certain directions, an aircraft responds by taking those directions, but so do the surface craft."

  Crap! "Show me."

  The Kurosawa immediately panned in to show the Trinidad and the Agustin skimming the waves, leaving broad V-shaped wakes behind them. Resolution was just fine enough for Wallenstein to make out darkened blobs on deck that had to be men.

  She hit an intercom button. "Admiral? Marguerite. Come back to your quarters immediately."

  * * *

  Abdulahi could read a chart as well as the next pirate. When Robinson called to warn him of the position, direction and speed of the patrol boats bearing down on his men he knew immediately that they were on an intercept course. He tried frantically to call the leader of the band on the radio but, maintenance being what it was among the Xamari . . .

  It took longer than a radio would have, had it been working, to get through via cell phone. It was pretty amusing, really, that Xamar couldn't have police, fire or medical services, that courts were right out, and that transportation was catch as catch can. Even so, somehow they managed to keep cell phone service up and running. Some called it "connectedness."

  What a silly word, Abdulahi thought, while waiting for his son to answer the phone. It's touted as the route to civilizing the more barbaric parts of Terra Nova, whatever "civilizing" may mean. In practice, it means that a slave dealer in Pashtia can know whether the price for fourteen year old female virgins or fat little boys is higher in Kashmir or among the brothels of Taurus. It means the drug smuggler can easily learn both where he might obtain the best price for his merchandise and where the risk of arrest is least. It means money laundered from crime and corruption. It means corruption extending its influence to yet new places from its more familiar paths.

  "Connectedness" means that, when you mixed a gallon of cat piss with a gallon of goat's milk, the mix tastes a lot more of the former than of the latter.

  When we in Xamar were still a real country then being connected to the rest of the globe would probably have been a good thing, for us and for everyone else. As is? It makes everything worse. I couldn't be the pirate I am, nor what used to be my country the mess that it is, without our "connectedness." And I'm not sure it wasn't our "connectedness" to the rest of the globe that ruined us.

  * * *

  "Lungile" he was called by his Bantu-speaking concubine mother, herself taken as a girl in a slave raid by Abdulahi. "The good one," it meant, and to his mother he had indeed been a good son. As son of Abdulahi, Lungile was the leader of the three pirate vessels. Nineteen-years-old and closing to action, Lungile didn't hear the ringing at first over the straining, gasping sounds of his boat's overused and undermaintained diesels. On approximately the fourteenth ring he noticed it and answered, "Yes, Father?"

  "My son, it's a trap. How far are you from the target?"

  "Perhaps forty minutes, Father." The boy's voice sounded calm enough. "What it is this time? More of their silly sound machines? We can face those. What to fear from a demon's wail?"

  "Ai, forty minutes? Then it is too late for you to take hostages. And it may be too late also for you to turn around and make it back to shore. Lungile, my son, it is not the sound machines. There are two small warships almost upon you. Our friends say they are fast, partly armored and well armed with cannon and machine guns. They say the boats are from the infidel mercenaries."

  It was still an even and calm voice that answered, "Then we will run, Father, and if we cannot escape we will sell our lives as dearly as possible."

  The boy's mother had never been a favorite, but Abdulahi had always had a soft spot in his heart for the boy, himself. So brave and forthright he was, so full of fire was his heart. I will miss this boy. I will . . .

  "My son . . . " and the father's voice choked with emotion and pain, " . . . if you must die then, yes, die like men."

  "Il hamdu l'illah, Father; we shall if we must."

  * * *

  In CIC, aboard the Ironsides, a sailor huddled over a screen and watching a real time image from a military satellite. He whispered a curse and announced, "They're turning for home."

  The captain looked at the ops board and answered, "They're probably too slow to escape but they might get in close enough to swim for it."

  "Wouldn't matter, Cap'n," his ops officer said. "If those legion boys catch 'em in the water they'll kill 'em anyway."

  "War crime?"

  "No, sir. In this one type of case the international law enforcement model makes perfect sense. It really is a law enforcement problem and the law says, 'kill 'em,' skipper. Fleeing Felon Rule, it's called."

  The captain nodded. "Call the Trinidad. Give them the code word for we've been made and give them the pirate's new course."

  * * *

  "A stern chase is a long chase," Lungile whispered to himself. "But when one boat is four times faster it isn't long enough."

  His own boat had begun life as a sport fisher, back when Xamar had actually had tourism. As such, it had a flying bridge and a climbable mast above it. Lungile stood atop that mast, gripping the ladder with one hand and surplus Volgan binoculars with the other. Through the binoculars, pressed tight to his eyes, Lungile searched for his pursuers. He'd caught glimpses of them, each one closer, when waves happened to have lifted both boats simultaneously. The mercenaries boats looked . . . Lungile searched for the right word . . .

  "Like sharks," he decided, "like predators."

  Lungile turned away from his pursuers toward the distant beckoning coast and safety. There was no real chance of making it unless he could somehow drive off both of the enemy craft. But to fight them . . .

  "Hard left," he shouted to the helmsman.

  * * *

  Lower, with no flying bridge, Pedraz saw the smoke from the badly-maintained diesels before ever he saw the smoke'
s source.

  "XO, take the wheel," he ordered, backing off and pulling out a set of binocular that hung hard by.

  Immediately his assistant, Cristobal Francés, flashed black eyes and answered, "Aye, aye, skipper." Francés was huge, towering above his captain. His long arms reached out as he right-stepped to take the wheel seamlessly.

  Pedraz raised the binos to his eyes, swept the horizon until catching sight of the smoke, and looked down from that. The smoke grew thicker but the boat was not visible. He waited, keeping the glasses fixed at the lowest part of the column of smoke . . . he waited . . . he waited . . . he . . .

  "They've decided to risk a fight," he announced. "Radio! Get on the horn to Agustin and Dos Lindas. Tell them the pirates are ready and waiting, arms in their hands. Agustin is to stand off at .41-caliber range and engage the two to starboard. We will take on the port pirate ourselves before going to join Agustin."