Carnifex (86 page)

"Cruz, that you?" rang out in Spanish from up ahead.

The thudding hearts slowed immediately as men exhaled with relief. If there had been anything more terrifying than closing to bayonet range in these infernal caverns the men couldn't imagine what it was.

"Yeah . . . yeah.
Dominguez?"

"Oh, Cazador
compadre
!" came the laughing answer.

Cruz felt the fear drain away. "Christ, 'Minguez, you scared the shit out of me."

"Tell you what, Cruz; you clean my drawers and I'll clean yours and we'll see who has the hardest job," Dominguez answered as he strode forward. "Hey, what the fuck is this?"

In the IR, using only his monocular, Cruz didn't understand at first. He pulled out one non-IR chemlight and, ordering his men to shut one eye, broke and shook it.

"Holy shit!" he exclaimed, looking into what appeared to be a very shallow tunnel with many large boulders blocking it a few feet in. "You don't suppose . . . "

"Buck it up to higher." In this case Dominguez meant both higher in the chain of command and higher in elevation.

"They fucking
what?
" Carrera raged.

"It looks like they got away," Jimenez explained. "Whichever direction that tunnel goes in, and I'd be willing to bet it doglegs somewhere, they'll have gotten into the karez system and that's extensive enough they could be heading anywhere.

Carrera felt his heart sink and his energy drain away.
All this, for
nothing?
All my men lost or crippled, for
nothing?
War for almost nine fucking years, for
nothing?
Why, God?

He sat down, right on the dirt and grass.
Click.

Jimenez sat next to him. "Hey, we hurt the bastards," he tried to cheer.

"Not enough," Carrera answered distantly. "Never enough."

"Wonder who that is?"

Carrera looked up to see an FSA helicopter, sporting a red placard with three stars on it, winging in. "Rivers," he answered, "come to claim the nuke."

"
The
nuke?" Jimenez asked. "There were eleven of them."

Carrera answered, tiredly, "I know that. You know that. He doesn't. We're going to keep ten . . . just in case. They've already gone back to base."

"Dangerous game, Patricio. I know we have the seven but those were
really
unaccounted for."

"It'll be fine."

Rivers was escorted up the top of the massif by the same
naik
who had seen to Carrera earlier. Neither said a word.

Rivers didn't offer to shake hands; he was still furious at being maneuvered as he had been.

"So there really was a nuke."

Carrera nodded. "Yes. I was always certain there would be," he answered. "But their chiefs got away. All we managed to get here were a lot of indians."

"Well, intelligence will be interested in getting their hands even on just indians."

"No . . . that's not going to happen. We'll develop our own intelligence and share it with you," Carrera corrected. "Besides, there weren't very many indians taken, either."

Changing the subject, in large part because he knew that, if Carrera said he was not going to turn over any prisoners, then no prisoners would be turned over, period, Rivers asked, "How did the chiefs get away?"

"Tunnel. We had no clue before we hit this place but it apparently leads to the underground irrigation system here, the karez."

Rivers thought about that one. "You are planning on giving me the nuke, right?" Seeing Carrera's listless nod, he continued, "Well . . . just because you share
all
your intelligence with us"—Rivers didn't really believe that—"doesn't mean we share all
our
intelligence with you."

Carrera cocked his head to one side, raising an eyebrow.

"We
might
be able to tell where they are underground. Don't bother asking how, but we sometimes can."

Hmmm. He means what? Seismic? Maybe, but probably not. Ground penetrating radar? Too deep. Carbon dioxide emissions? No . . . that wouldn't work as CO2 sinks. Maybe . . . 

"Thermal? From so far underground? Some of these karez are a thousand feet down."

"It
might
work," Rivers shrugged. "I'm promising only to try."

Water there was in plenty; all one had to do to drink was stoop. Since it was well above ankle-deep, one didn't even have to stoop that far. Food was another issue entirely. And, since there was none to issue . . . 

"There will be food ahead," Nur al-Deen promised. The word filtered up and back the long line of refugees. "Food ahead . . . food ahead."

Progress would have been slower but that the karez was dark enough that the women and older girls could lift their burkhas up out of the water and away from tangling their legs in wet folds of cloth. In the light they'd have been too fearful to do so. In Salafi lands girls had been forced to roast to death rather than leave a burning building improperly clothed.

On the other hand, it was a long walk. The men and women simply
had
to go to the bathroom. Since there was no way to fully undress, no privacy at all but the darkness, they simply pissed and shat themselves. The stench made Robinson gag. Arbeit's vomit added to the stench.

I've never really understood these people,
he thought,
not until now. I was a fool even to think of trying to make a world government here. All I ever really needed to do was help the Salafis to take over. They'd have knocked this world back so far into the stone age that they'd never have gotten off planet and become a threat to us. When . . . 
if
I get back, I am going to throw all the backing I can to the Salafis. It's Earth's best hope.

Trying to get his mind away from the stench, Robinson contemplated his flagship and his fleet.
Wallenstein must be in a panic. She would have seen the attack from space. No doubt she is frantically trying to rescue me, poor little girl.

Wallenstein had the radio traffic from below piped directly into her day cabin. She exulted with grim satisfaction at the news she received.
Cheat me, will you, you piece of rat filth?

She pressed a button on the intercom atop her desk. "Intel, can you identify the frequency the enemy commander is using?"

"They're using frequency hoppers, Captain, but we can copy it," the Intel officer answered. "If I can ask, why?"

"Never mind that. Send the key to communications. Communications?"

"Here, Captain."

"When you get the code, patch me through to the ene . . . coalition commander down below. Direct from him to my cabin here with no other listeners, understand?"

"Roger, Captain. Only take a few."

The RTO's brown eyes went as wide as saucers. "
Duque
? There's someone on our push who says she's in command of the United Earth Peace Fleet."

Except for color Carrera's eyes became a mirror of the RTO's. He put out his hand for the microphone.

"Carrera."

"This is Captain Marguerite Wallenstein of the UEPF ship,
Spirit of Peace.
In the absence of our High Admiral, I am the ranking officer in space,
Duque
. I just called to offer my congratulations."

"For?"

There was a moment's hesitation on the other end before Wallenstein came back with, "You
did
find the . . . packages, did you not,
Duque
? The
twelve
packages? You do have my High Admiral in captivity, do you not."

"I found your packages, Captain," Carrera admitted.
TWELVE Packages? Shit.
"As for your High Admiral, I am still looking."

"Look well,
Duque
," Wallenstein suggested. "The packages were his idea, not mine. Besides, if you find him there'll be a gap in my social schedule I'd be happy to let you fill." Though he didn't know anything about the captain, Carrera could almost see the sultry smile on the other end.

"That's all right, Captain. I think I'll be looking very carefully even without such a tempting offer. On the other hand, assuming you would prefer for your High Admiral never to return, as this conversation suggests, perhaps you can help me find out where he's gone."

"Always willing to help in the 'spirit of peace,'" Wallenstein quipped. She sounded positively thrilled to help.

Some interesting politics going on above,
Carrera thought.
Pity Rivers hasn't been able to deliver the location of the enemy, yet
. He asked, "Can you scan for unusual heat signature coming out of the ground in an area of about twenty kilometers around me?"

"Piece of cake,
Duque
."

"Get me that, then, and I can guarantee your High Admiral won't be coming to take command ever again. Until then, Carrera, out."

To the RTOs he said, "Not a word, ever, to anyone."

The huge lightsail was deployed to brake the ship as it assumed orbit around Terra Nova. Down below the year was 334, AC.

Times there were actually pretty happy. The Federated States of Columbia, a generation past the bloodletting of the Formation War, enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. In the Volgan Empire the Tsar was experimenting with the freeing of the serfs. The continent of Taurus had not seen war on its soil for
two
generations, which was something of a record. Moreover, the Moslem and Salafi portions of the globe were, by and large, under the rule of the Taurans, a result of the crushing of the last Salafi jihad. The discovery of oil on the Yithrab peninsula was still a dozen years away.

The rate of technological progress, down below, was worrisome, though. This was why, after much hemming and hawing, the Consensus had finally agreed to build the last four starships—
Spirit of Peace, Spirit of Unity, Spirit of Harmony
and
Spirit of Brotherhood
—required to bring the fleet up to the strength that had been decided on centuries before.

It isn't so much that the Consensus
acts
slowly,
mused the new commander of the fleet, High Admiral Jonathan Saxe-Coburg,
as that it
thinks
so slowly. Something about the anti-agathics seems not to help with the mind after the third century, or at least it doesn't help with a number of us. His Excellency, the SecGen, seemed particularly badly effected when last we spoke. And the Caliph of Rome? Hopeless.

Or maybe it isn't the failure of the anti-agathics. Maybe it's the sheer stultifying boredom of Old Earth that slows the minds of the people who brought us to where we are today. I confess, I don't know.

And I don't know what I'm going to do about the problem of Terra Nova, either. We haven't changed, technologically, in centuries. You can
watch
the change as it happens down there. Sure, they're at the level of breech loading small arms, railroads and steam, right now. Where will they be in another century?

Bloomin' loot!
That's the thing to make the boys git up an' shoot!
It's the same with dogs an' men,
If you'd make 'em come again
Clap 'em forward with a Loo! loo! Lulu! Loot!

Kipling,
Loot

Robinson had no compass. It seemed such a primitive thing, really, that the thought had never occurred to him to bring one, even had one been available aboard his flagship. Then, too, with the twists and turns of both escape tunnel and karez, he was really quite lost. The only objective measure he had to go by was that the karez was, however gently, ascending. That meant . . . 

"We're heading to
Pashtia
?"

"Yes," Nur al-Deen answered. "It took you long enough to notice."

"But . . . 
why?
"

"Three reasons," the Salafi answered. "The first is that they are less likely to look for us there. The second is that the enemy base, the enemy who attacked us in Kashmir, is there. The third, closely related to the second, is that there we can use the bomb we have brought to destroy the enemy in that base, in accordance with the will of Allah.

"Not without my key, you can't," the High Admiral insisted.

"You will use the key as we direct," Nur said, quite definitively.

"I will not."

"Yes, you will." The Salafi sounded, to Robinson, unaccountably confident.

"There is no way you can make me."

The Salafi sighed.
Could this UE fool really believe that?

"Admiral Robinson," he began, patiently explaining, "we
will
take the bomb to Pashtia. We will get it moved near the enemy camp. At that point you will either detonate it, as we command, or we will begin rearranging your skin."

"Torture doesn't work," Robinson countered. "People will say and do anything under torture, but you cannot tell if anything they say or do is the truth."

"This is true, High Admiral of the infidels. That is to say, it is true unless one has a way of checking the truth in part or getting immediate feedback. In this case, we will, if necessary, rearrange your skin—oh, yes, eyes and internal organs too—until the bomb goes off. Thus, since you agree that people will do or say 'anything' to stop the pain, you must agree that you will do
this
."

"You can't know if I send the key to set the bomb off or to disarm it permanently."

Nur al-Deen's laugh echoed off the karez wall. "Foolish infidel, if you disarm it permanently then it won't go off at the time we demand. Then the pain will begin again and never stop."

Khalifa heard the laugh. She thought it belonged to Mustafa's number two, Nur al-Deen, though she couldn't be sure; it was rare for her to be privileged to serve at the leaders' feasts. For the most part she was a woman who tended her own hearth. Still, she couldn't imagine what it might be, here, that could possibly be worth laughing over.

She was hungry, painfully so. What little food she had managed to grab before her hurried flight from the cave she had thought of as home had gone to her children, mostly to the boy, as the Holy Koran and custom commanded. The girl, younger, weaker, and hungrier, already knew her place in life and kept quiet but for an occasional understandable sniffle. It was even more understandable given than the girl was down in thigh-deep cold water while the boy, though older and taller, nestled warm against his mother's breast.