War World X: Takeover

by John F. Carr

  “We already did.”

  Janis said he’d killed two and then they’d shot a horse herder, unless Janis had counted the herder as one of the two. There could hardly be more than two Kazakhs left to fight here—maybe none at all. I’d just told myself that when there was a shot from inside the bunkhouse, then screaming, and more shots. I went inside to see. It was the pregnant girl that was screaming, lying on the floor, while the other woman was swearing—it sounded like swearing—and emptying her pistol at a window in the other side of the bunkhouse.

  I turned and ran out, around the corner of the bunkhouse, then around the back corner. Behind, crouched below a window but looking right at me, was a Kazakh. I don’t think he knew what was happening, even then; he probably thought it was all a slave uprising. If he’d shot right away, he could have killed me. Instead I killed him with another short burst.

  I stood there panting and shaking for a minute, till my mind started to work again. Then I replaced the magazine in my rifle. Was there another Kazakh? Or had we shot them all?

  I went back to a front corner of the bunkhouse and called out in Navajo: “Cody! Are you all right?”

  He called back to me from somewhere. “All right except for one arm. It may be broken. The blacksmith hit me with a hammer.”

  Another voice called in Navajo. It was Arnold, the man I gave the rifle to in the cow pasture. “Boulet! Where are the Kazakhs?”

  “Most of them are dead,” I called back. “Shot, anyway.

  “Maybe all of them. Have you seen any?”

  “Just one. He’s dead now. He rode past me without seeing me. It was impossible to miss.”

  “Janis!” I called in English. “I think we’ve got them all. Lets be careful not to shoot each other now. But keep an eye open, in case one of them is still running around.

  Actually there were four still alive, all of them wounded and out of action. We dragged them into the bunkhouse to leave them there.

  We had thirty-six horses and about eighty cattle. Yaks. I was only a fair horseman, but four of the five Navajos, all but one who grew up in Flagstaff, were pretty good and had herded livestock before. Four Latvians said they wanted to come with us. Another had been killed, and the pregnant girl had been shot in the chest. She’d gone into premature labor from the shock, and her breath came in and out of the bullet hole, making bloody bubbles that smelled bad. I was pretty sure she’d die soon and so was she. The older woman said she’d stay with her. I think she probably killed the wounded with her butcher knife, after we left. She really hated them.

  None of the other four Latvians—one a pregnant woman—had ever ridden a horse. The Kazakh ponies were well trained, but thought that whoever was on their backs should know how to ride. Also, the Latvians didn’t know how to control them, so the ponies took advantage of them, giving them trouble. Finally Cody made them double up, two to a horse. They saddled the ponies up and also made less for us to keep track of. It would be up to the Latvians to stay with or follow us.

  We all had guns now, a rifle and two pistols each. We also put a saddle or pack saddle on all the spare horses. Three of the Navajos knew how to load a pack saddle; they loaded the spare rifles and pistols, and all the ammunition boxes and swords, on pack horses. Also we filled the waterbags and canteens we found there. Then, with Navajos running the show, we headed east, driving the cattle ahead of us. The spare horses trailed behind, tied in a string.

  We went slowly. We didn’t know how these cattle would act if we hurried them, and with Cody injured, and two of us not as skilled on horseback as we needed to be, there were only three men qualified to handle the herd. We’d traveled as fast earlier on foot.

  There was time to think about the fight. How had we won at so little cost? The Kazakh’s had outnumbered us and had many more weapons. But they had suspected nothing. Even after we began attacking them, they didn’t know what was happening; probably they thought they faced only their slaves. It wasn’t warrior skills that won for us, or virtue, although their own evil treatment of their slaves had allowed us to attack them and win.

  If we had fought them in other circumstances, it would have been different. The Kazakhs had a reputation as a tough people, and those who went with the herds almost born on horseback. I remembered reading about the Kazakhs who wanted to be colonists: they were traditional herdsmen from the dry steppes around Lake Balgash. Probably they’d grown up in the saddle. I also remembered my reading on biogeography: wolf packs still ranged there; the herdsmen had probably grown up with guns, too.

  Reading about them, I’d felt affinity with them. They had wanted to continue their way of life in freedom. Now I knew them and didn’t like them anymore.

  When we came to the big water hole where we’d separated from Frank Begay and his five men, Cat’s Eye was swollen, gibbous and dim-day seemed about as light as a stormy day in Minnesota. I had not ridden for almost two Earth-years before and my buttocks were sore from the saddle.

  We’d had water to drink, from canteens, but we stopped to let the animals drink. One of my men rode eastward on the trail, the direction that Frank and the others had taken, to see if he could find any sign that they’d returned before us. Then he came back, shouting that at the edge of vision, in that direction, he’d seen dust raised by animals. Either a herd was being hurried, or some Kazakhs were coming fast on horseback.

  I took charge again at once, and told the men to get the herd moving toward the canyon. “Get them started, I said, “and drive them at a run! Get the pack horses there too! Nelson may need the guns.”

  The three skilled Navajos began at once; the rest of us helped as well as we could. Even the Latvians tried. They’d been keeping their seats better than at the beginning, but now, as we began to hurry, and to harry the cattle into a gallop, one of the Latvians fell off his horse, and the others seemed likely to. One of them, the baldheaded man, shouted in their own language, and they stopped their horses. All but one, the pregnant woman, got off with their weapons. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw the other three lie down behind bushes. Their ponies stood by till one of the Latvians got up and charged at them, shouting. Then the ponies wheeled and started after the rest of us.

  It seemed that the Latvians were going to sell their lives to kill some of their ex-masters. It wasn’t easy to ride away from them, but we had to get the herds, the cattle and horses, to Nelson Tsinajini, so he could drive them down the canyon to the people. We’d sell our lives afterward, if we had to.

  As the herd began to gallop, they raised a cloud of dust. The Kazakhs would notice, and come after us. Probably they’d seen Frank and his men scouting their camp, and killed or caught them. None of Frank’s people had more than a knife. Maybe the Kazakhs had even made one of them tell.

  I dropped back a little and to the east, out of our dust cloud, to see better. I could make out the dust cloud the Navajo had seen, maybe a kilometer away now, or a little more. The horses would run faster than cattle; the Kazakhs would gain on us if they wanted to. And as they saw our direction, they could cut the angle and save distance.

  I hurried and caught up with the others. Cody, riding with his one good arm, was leading the horse string past the cattle, with one of the other men harrying them from behind, to get the extra guns to Nelson. Behind me I heard gunfire, and for a minute I didn’t know what it meant. They hadn’t come to the Latvians yet. Then I realized: the Kazakhs had had prisoners with them, some of Frank’s men, probably tied onto horses. And the prisoners were slowing them up, so they were dumping them off and shooting them.

  How far had it been from the canyon break to the big pool? More than an hour and a half on foot through bunch grass and dwarf shrubs; seven or eight kilometers. Could we get there before we were caught? Surely the horses would, and the rifles, but would the cattle, and those who were driving them? I heard another flurry of shooting that quickly, increased. The Latvians! How many Kazakhs would they kill, the three of them? Would the Kazakhs stay long enough to
kill them all, or were they exchanging shots in passing, hardly slowing? Did they know how important a few minutes were for us?

  The other Latvian, the one who had tried to stay with us, fell off her horse. I saw her trying to get up as I passed; it looked as if she was injured. For a minute I thought of circling back and picking her up, but my horse would slow too much, carrying two, and I was needed. I felt guilty anyway. I slowed a little and looked back. She had turned, lying on her belly looking back down the trail. Her rifle was un-slung; she was ready for the Kazakhs. I speeded up again.

  Soon the cattle began to slow. They were tiring. I told myself that I should have tried to rescue the Latvian woman after all, but by then she was a kilometer back. So I rode out to the side again, away from our dust, to see how close our pursuers had gotten. It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared; their horses had been running longer than ours. But even so, they were more than a dust cloud now; they were objects. Soon, even by dimday, they would appear as men on horseback. I decided to stay to the side. If it seemed they would catch the herd, I would fall back and begin shooting at them from the flank. Perhaps I could lead some of them away.

  But not yet. We still might reach Nelson Tsinajini before we were caught, and some of his men would have guns by then and be on horseback.

  There were more shots, but they lasted only seconds. They’d come to the Latvian woman. Not long after that they began to shoot at us, just a short burst now and then. They could hardly be aimed, that far away in dimday, and there was little chance they’d hit one of us. It would be a waste of bullets to shoot back, and I’d have to stop. Or else shoot backwards, twisted in the saddle. I looked forward then, past the herd, and saw men coming on horseback. We were getting close; these had to be some of Nelson’s men coming to help us. We closed fast and in two minutes they were passing us, four of them, with more in sight ahead. Almost at once the four began to shoot at the Kazakhs, veering off to both sides. The Kazakhs would either have to stop, or split up, or run a gauntlet of rifle fire.

  Then I felt my pony flinch, stumble a little, and begin to limp. I didn’t know if he’d been hit, stepped in a hole, or what. I reined him to a halt and jumped off. He stayed, obedient to his training, so I ran from him, throwing myself down behind some dwarf shrubs for cover.

  The Kazakhs were coming up, maybe a dozen of them. Most would pass a hundred meters away, but one veered off toward my horse. He must have known I’d be somewhere near it. I shot at him almost face on, but his horse’s head must have gotten in the way. It went down, and its rider unloaded from it even as it fell, landing on his feet but unable to keep them. He tumbled, rolling, and then I couldn’t see him anymore. The others passed, paying no attention. I shot at the two hindmost, and one of them went down too, horse and rider crashing.

  I started crawling to get farther away from my horse.

  Three more of the people were coming. Of the four who’d already come, I could see none, only three horses standing, moving in little circles. The Kazakhs swerved toward those who were coming. There was a lot of shooting, and when it was over, those three of the people were gone too, shot off their horses. There were nine or ten Kazakhs left. It seemed as if they shot more accurately from a running horse than we did.

  I had crawled some more. Now the Kazakhs looked as if they weren’t going to chase the people anymore. They gathered in a loose group two or three hundred meters away, as if talking to one another. Then they separated, and went to round up the horses they could see standing around. I started crawling on my belly again, till I came to a couple of thorn shrubs. There I put a fresh magazine in my rifle. If one of the Kazakhs came close, I’d get up and shoot him, then shoot as many more as I could.

  I got pretty cold, lying there on the ground. After a little while, when nothing had happened, I got to my knees. I saw the Kazakhs trotting off with some spare horses behind them. My horse was gone, When they were too far to see, I got up and went to look for the one whose horse I’d shot, who’d landed on his feet. I couldn’t find him. I started walking toward where the people should be and the cattle herd.

  They had left the small water hole and on horseback and foot were herding the cattle into the head of the small arroyo that grew to become the canyon. I was in time to help them. When all the cattle were in the arroyo, headed downward to where the rest of the people were, the armed men brought up the rear, in case some Kazakhs came. I was with them. Nelson saw me and we talked. He’d heard what had happened, heard enough of it to know I was responsible. He said I was truly one of the Dinneh, a spirit from the old times taken flesh again.

  When we got to the main encampment, we kept going, taking the herd down to the desert basin below. The Dinneh followed. Eighty head of cattle were not enough to keep the people; we needed many more. Tom Spotted Horse was still the chief and he chose men to go back and get more livestock. Especially sheep—a big band of sheep that could be distributed to many people. I was one he chose. Half the horses and most of the rifles went with us.

  The other horses were used to scout the desert while we were gone, and the people were told to explore, to taste every fruit, every seed, every root, every small animal. Quite a few people got sick and died. That was how we learned what was food and what was not. A few died the first time that truenight lasted forty hours, a night as cold as winter. Over the next few Haven days and nights, those who did not really want to live, died.

  We brought almost fourteen hundred sheep down from the plateau. Pretty soon a force of Kazahs came to punish us and take back their livestock. They used the same canyon we had used, but we had left men behind with rifles, to watch from side canyons. When the Kazakhs passed by, they followed them, and when truenight came, they crept into the Kazakh camp from up-canyon. The Kazakhs had sentries out below but not above, so our warriors went in among them and killed some of them in their sleep with knives. Each time they killed one, they put his rifle in the stream.

  By the time an alarm was raised, about a dozen of the Kazakhs were dead. The rest left, went back up to the plateau. By then they would have seen that we were many people and wouldn’t know we had only the rifles we’d taken from them. Afterward we took their rifles out of the stream and cleaned them the best we could. The ammunition we had, we hoarded in case the Kazakhs came back.

  After that we traveled for quite a while, slowly, driving our herds. Till the weather started to get colder. We wanted to be far from the Kazakhs and perhaps find better land. Meanwhile we learned to make bows and arrows, and spear casters, and bolos, and learned how to use them. We learned to drive muskylope into box canyons, where they were trapped.

  Quite a few of the women who gave birth that first year died, and most of the newborn, but that was only part of it. We got so worried about the women that Tom Spotted Horse said only the men should eat unknown things. But that was too late for Marilyn. She died of a poison root. Then Marcel was killed by a tamerlane, and for a time, I wished to die also. In the first long Haven winter, more than half of the Dinneh died from cold and hunger—mostly men. The women were given more food than the men were and each woman was allowed to take more than one husband.

  Tom Spotted Horse said we would not butcher more than half our cattle, or more than half our sheep. For the rest of our needs, we had to use what the land had to offer. Some of the Dinneh wanted to have a different chief, but the council said that Tom was right. They said that any group that wanted to leave could leave, and take their share of the livestock with them, but if they left, they could never come back. So no one left.

  That was a long time ago. Tom Spotted Horse was killed in a rock fall, and I was named “master sergeant,” which is what the Dinneh had come to call their chief. Me! A Chippewa-Sioux mixed blood, chief of the Dinneh! I have lived through fourteen winters on Haven, and I am old. There aren’t many left of those who came here on the Makarov. I think we get old faster here. I remember reading that there are minerals in the water on Haven that gradually poison you. For a time it
seemed that the Dinneh might die out, so many died and so few infants lived. But some lived, and the yaks lived, and many of the sheep, which were also Tibetan.

  The horses had almost as much trouble birthing as the women, and we learned to ride the muskylope. Now we number eight hundred and seventy-three, last count, which is up again, and our herds and flocks are large. We have found a lower valley where we take our women when their term is near, and mostly they live. Their mothers were ones who lived. The breed grows stronger.

  The young people think this world is good. Except for the Kazakhs, years ago, you are the first outsider we’ve seen since the shuttles left us on the mesa. The CoDo Marines have never found us; I don’t think they ever looked; I don’t think they care. We may be here forever.

  Business As Usual

  John F. Carr

  2074 A.D., Haven

  Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson sat in his palatial office in the CoDominium Consul-General’s Building. The CCG Building, also known as the Government House, was the largest and most impressive structure in Castell City; and, in fact, the entire planet since Castell City was the center of civilization—as it were—on Haven.

  He had been appointed as Haven’s first Consul-General eight years ago by the CoDominium Colonial Bureau. It hadn’t hurt that his uncle Grand Senator Adrian Bronson had championed his commission. His primary job, as far as the Bronson family was concerned, was to see that Dover Mineral Development kept control of as much of the shimmer stone market as it could corner, as well as developing new mines to compete with Kennicott Metal and Anaconda Mining’s hafnium mining operations on Haven.

  Dover had had a good run with the shimmer stone monopoly since it had been a company held secret until 2052, when the shimmer stones were rediscovered in the hills outside Redemption by an Earth immigrant named Samuel Cordon. Once the secret of the shimmer stone’s planetary location was revealed, there had been an exodus of miners and ner-do-wells from all over the CoDominium to Haven.