A Desert Called Peace

VIII.

There was little firing and most of that seemed to be friendly to the signifer in charge of Second Century, Second Cohort. Indeed, the war pipes scattered across the face of the hill were louder than the firing. Even so, there was no sense in taking chances. The officer gave the signal to begin the clearing of the trenches. The century got down and began a wholly unnecessary fire at the top of the trench ahead of them. In the center of the century the signifer and half of one section crawled up to within a few meters of the trench. A half dozen grenades made sure there were no living Sumeris waiting for them. Then they slithered on their bellies over the lip and down. The signifer landed across the inert legs of Sergeant Robles.

It took the officer a few moment to realize that he had landed on a body. A brief moment of horror followed as he noticed the small modified Balboan flag-red, white and blue with a gold-embroidered eagle-sewn to the corpse's sleeve. "Shit, we killed them."

"No, sir," answered a corporal. He fingered the rope twisted around and cutting into Robles' neck. "The fuckers murdered them."

The signifer took stock of the scene. There were five bodies, it seemed, all partially covered with dirt thrown up by the shelling. He and the corporal brushed away at the dirt until they could see that each man showed obvious signs of having been garroted.

The other men of the century, waiting at the ready, grew impatient when his signifer didn't signal the rest of the century forward. Then the man's head popped over the side of the trench, signaling the rest to come into the trench as rehearsed. When the first man in dropped down to the trench floor, the signifer stopped him.

"See that, Sergeant?"

The sergeant looked for a moment in the dim light, before exclaiming, "Jesus!"

"That's right. It's our lost recon team. The cocksucking Sumeris strangled them. So pass the word to your men. No prisoners."

Forward Trench, Stollen Number Three,

0816 hours, 13/2/461 AC

Carrera did three things when he heard that Parilla had been hit. First, he radioed to make sure one of the Crickets configured for medical evacuation, or "Dustoff," was en route. Second, he called for an Ocelot to pick him up and take him up the hill as far as it could go. Lastly, he cursed up a storm that his friend and comrade had been hit.

He needn't have worried about the dustoff. The legion's medical century already had a conveyor belt operation ongoing, whereby the Crickets landed near the bridge over the river. From that point, they were physically turned around into the wind and flew the most severe of the casualties directly to the Aid Station. From there the hurt men could be triaged and evacuated further south to the 731st Airborne's more completely equipped facilities. Less badly hit men were evacuated by ground; the bridge was safe for transit now. There had been relatively few casualties, in any case, so the evacuation capabilities being exercised were more than actually needed.

The Ocelot arrived and picked up Carrera, Soult and one radio. It then sped past the dustoff point, to the bridge, crossed that and cut sharply to parallel the base of Hill 1647. Then began a tortuous climb, zigging and zagging up the uneven slope through the breaches in wire and mines. About a third of the way up Carrera spotted four men carrying a stretcher. A fifth, wearing a medical armband and holding a transparent plastic bag overhead, walked beside. Carrera directed the track commander for the Ocelot over.

It was Parilla, alive but barely conscious. Carrera jumped down from the track and ran to stand beside his friend and nominal commander.

Carrera took one look and shouted, "Jamey, call the CP. I want a dustoff bird there "-he pointed at a spot a few hundred meters down the slope-"now. If I don't get it, people will die… and I don't mean just the wounded."

The medic spoke up, "I shot him up with morphiate, Legate. We've stopped the bleeding, but he lost a lot of blood before we could." The medic's glance went significantly to the plastic bag and down the tube that led from it to a vein in Parilla's neck. "One lung's collapsed but I sealed it off… the entrance wound I mean. I think he'll make it but we have to get him to a surgeon quick."

"Five minutes, Boss," Soult shouted over the rumble of the idling Ocelot's engine.

Parilla stirred. "Sorry… I got… hit… Patricio."

"Never mind that, Raul. A good commander leads from in front. You're good, friend."

"Thanks… compadre. You need to… get up top, now… I think."

"You take good care of him, Doc. We need him back on his feet, soonest."

Then, patting Parilla's shoulder very gently, Carrera climbed aboard the track and directed it upward. As the track reached the top of the trail it slowed down to allow the passengers to jump off. Carrera looked up after landing and saw a Balboan machine gunner blasting away at an improvised white flag sticking out of a bunker. A flame-thrower team moved to a vantage point facing the bunker. A tongue of flame licked out, pouring fire into the entrance. Inside, men screamed like small children, burning alive.

Furious, Carrera stormed over to where a Balboan signifer crouched. "What the hell is the meaning of this?"

The junior said nothing, but pointed down into the trench behind him. Carrera and Soult gazed down at the bodies of Robles and his men.

Carrera remembered something Sitnikov had once spoken of, back in Balboa. Pashtia started like that, the Volgan had said. We didn't go in there trying to kill everything that lived. Hell, we went in as liberators. But one day two young troops from my battalion came up missing after a patrol. We found them, days later, about a kilometer from our base camp. Their hands were bound, eyes gouged out. They'd been castrated and had their throats cut. Not knowing the guilty parties, higher headquarters wouldn't permit retaliation. Can't say I blame them. But the troops retaliated on their own, anyway. I can't blame them, either. Then the Pashtun hit back, raiding a hospital and slaughtering the wounded. Soon enough, atrocity became established policy on both sides.

Carrera pondered for all of five seconds before telling Soult, "Give me the radio." Then he made a call to the entire command net.

"This is Legate Carrera. Duce Parilla has been wounded but is expected to live. I am in command. On Hill 1647 we have found that the enemy has murdered five of our men. I am, therefore, and in accordance with the laws of war, ordering that no prisoners will be taken on Hill 1647. All are to be killed in a legitimate reprisal.

"Let me be clear about this. The normal rules of war remain in effect everywhere but Hill 1647. Enemy who clearly indicate they wish to surrender elsewhere will be taken prisoner and will be well treated. This reprisal only affects the enemy on Hill 1647. All parties, acknowledge."

Ali al Tikriti's Bunker, Hill 1647, 0849 hours, 13/2/461 AC

Ali clearly heard the screams leaking in from men hiding all around him. He heard some of them begging for their lives as they were shot down on the spot. He looked around frantically for something white to wave. Finding nothing, he stripped off his uniform trousers and removed his underpants. He hardly noticed that the white briefs were stained where he had shat himself. He took the briefs and tied them to his riding crop. Then he dragged the boy, still hiding under the bed, out and forced the crop into his hands.

"Wave this," Ali said, as he pushed the poor child out of the bunker. The boy flew back, bloody and ruined, when an enemy machine gun opened up on him. Aghast, Ali retreated back into his bunker, whimpering.

A small dark object flew in. Ali ducked behind his field desk, which he frantically turned over for cover from the expected blast. The explosion, when it came, burst both the Sumeri's eardrums.

Maybe they'll think everyone in here is dead now. Maybe…

Ali's thoughts were cut short as a stream of liquid fire bounced off one wall by the bunker's dog-legged entrance. The fire splashed into the well-appointed room. Before it managed to burn up all the oxygen and suffocate him, Ali felt the flaming stuff touch upon and begin to eat away at his skin.

From outside the bunker, the engineer manning the flamethrower heard a satisfying scream. Grimly smiling, the engineer said, "Teach you how to treat prisoners, motherfuckers."

Interlude

16 Rabi I, 1497 Anno Hejirae, Nairiyah, Saudi Arabia

(15 March 2074)

Times were hard for the Faithful. For a while, for many years, it had seemed they would take Europe by default. And yet the perfidious Euros had found their balls in the end, returned to their roots, and ghettoized or deported the Muslims among them. America had been more generous, in its way. It welcomed Muslims, in considerable numbers. Yet it did so in the sure knowledge that its way of life was so seductive that few, if any, among them would remain true Muslims.

In their home, yes, even in Saudi Arabia, things were no better. The Saud Clan, fickle and faithless, had turned from their Salafist roots and concerned themselves ever more with sequestering the diminishing oil wealth of the country for their own benefit. A large and ruthless secret police organization barely sufficed to keep a lid on things. Mosques were purged; holy men disappeared without a trace. All was black.

The vision came to Abdul ibn Faisal as a dream, yet it was a true dream. He knew it was. No dream had ever seemed so real and when the voice of the Almighty had called in it…

"Servant of the Beautiful One, Servant of the Beneficent, Servant of the Most Compassionate…" and on through all the ninety-nine names of Allah. These, though, Abdul knew for himself. Indeed, he could have recited the ninety-nine names in his sleep. For all those ninety-nine, it could still have been just a dream.

But when the mighty voice had thundered out the one-hundredth name? Then Abdul had known that this was not just any dream, but a sending from the Most High.

The world around the dreaming Abdul was little beyond light and his own prostrate, quivering form. The great voice of Allah seemed to come from everywhere.

"The believers fear going to this new world, this Donya al Jedidah," rumbled the great voice. "They ask, "Where shall we turn in prayers when al Makkah is not even on the same world? How shall we make the hajj, even once in a lifetime, when the vacuum between the worlds prevents it?" Go you forth unto the believers, Abdul ibn Faisal. Tell them that they are to take a single rock from the Kaaba, in al Makkah. This rock you shall know when you see it for I shall mark it for your eyes alone. And it shall be one of those set by Abraham, stone upon stone, as a shelter for Hagar and her son, Ishmael, the Father of the Arab People.

"This stone shall be set in silver after it is taken. And you shall take it with you to al Donya al Jedidah where you shall build a new Kaaba. The believers, such as I shall have given the Grace to know they are chosen, shall follow you, some in one ship and others in others. There you shall settle, as Salafiyah, you and those who follow."

"I am the Maker of Universes. Obey me."

Trembling still, Abdul awakened from his dream to find himself on his bed, on all fours, and with his head down low. His second wife lay sleeping beside him; so he saw when he looked up.

It seemed to him that the light by which he saw his wife ebbed very slowly.

Chapter Twenty By steeping himself in military history an officer will be able to guard himself against excessive humanitarian notions. It will teach him that certain severities are indispensable in war, that the only true humanity lies in the ruthless application of them. -Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege, 1902 Edition

Hill 1647, Topographical Crest, 0909 hours, 13/2/461 AC

It was too cold by far for meat to rot. Even so, the air was thick with the stench of phosphorus, napalm, explosives, blood and shit from ruptured intestines. Smoke floated thickly on the breeze. To the north, the steady whop-whop-whop told of the helicopters returning from dropping off the bulk of the Cazador Cohort. Behind, the muted roar of scores of tanks and other armored vehicles droned.

There were bodies everywhere, enough so that Carrera wanted to puke. He couldn't, of course, not in front of the troops. That would come later. And with it would come, so he strongly suspected, a new set of nightmares to steal his sleep. So be it; so be it. What is necessary is necessary. But if I couldn't compartmentalize, I think I'd go mad.

"The problem with a massacre…" Reprisal, Carrera reminded himself, REPRISAL. "The problem with a reprisal is that it can take just as much out of the men as a battle."

"Sir?" Soult queried.

"Look around, Jamey," and Carrera's hand swept over the hill to encompass hundred of listless, weary legionaries, many of them with horrified looks on their faces. "These guys aren't happy about what they've done here, many of them. They'll be useless for at least a day."

"Then why'd you order it, Boss? I'm not bitching; I'm just curious."

"Two reasons," Carrera answered. "One is that the boys were pissed and were going to do it anyway, no matter what anyone said. If that had happened, discipline would have been shot permanently. Instead, by giving them the order to do it, discipline is maintained. Thus, on some other occasion where maybe the enemy doesn't deserve this kind of butchery, we'll be able to hold the men in check because they know that if a reprisal had been warranted we would have ordered one."

"You said two reasons, Boss."

"Yeah," Carrera answered. "The other reason is that the law requires it. I'll explain later. In the meantime, give me the radio."

Soult handed the mike over. Carrera made a call to the commander of his mechanized cohort. Brown answered, "Sancho Panzer speaking."

Carrera pulled the mike away and looked at it quizzically for a moment. When he returned it to his ear and mouth, he said, "Sancho, my armor!"

"Where you want it, Boss?"

"The pass between the two fortresses. Legate Jimenez will be taking you, plus Third and Fourth Cohorts, plus the artillery and half the engineers forward. You lead. I'll join you later. Xavier, did you copy that?"

"Roger, Patricio," Jimenez answered. "Set up a defense or keep pushing?"

"Relieve the Cazadors, then hold in place. I want to see about bringing up the rest. That, and one other thing."

"I'll need more trucks," Jimenez observed.

"You can have the helicopters for one lift. Trucks we are scrounging up."

"Fair enough. Meet you there. Er… what about my prisoners?"

"Base of the hill. The MP century is coming up to take charge of them."

"Wilco, then, Patricio."

Good old Xavier. On him I can rely.

Carrera handed the microphone back to Soult. "Jamey, get ahold of every one of our units on this hill. Tell them I'll speak to them on this side of the bridge in… oh… two hours. And tell the sergeant major to bring any of the pressies he's rounded up there at the same time. And I'll need the priest. Oh, and send the PSYOP chief and Fahad the Chaldean up to me. We need to make a little announcement."

It was actually closer to two and a half hours before everyone and everything needed were assembled.

Carrera walked out and stood on a little knoll between the bridge and the base of Hill 1647. The officers, centurions and legionaries stood at attention until he called, "At ease. Break ranks. Cluster around." He held up his arms straight to his sides, to show that he wanted the men grouped to where he could speak directly to them all at once. All told, there were nearly seven hundred uniformed men.

Behind the uniforms, still under armed guard but otherwise unrestrained, were approximately thirty-four members of the press, about seven of them bearing video camcorders. As soon as the legionaries were seated one of the pressies raised a hand and opened his mouth as if to speak.

"Shut up," Carrera said, pointing directly at the man. "You have no rights here. You have no say here. You ask no questions here until you are allowed to. Shut up and learn."

Turning his gaze slightly left and then right to take in all the clustered media types, Carrera continued, "Let there be no bullshit among us. You are my enemy and I am yours. Whatever I say you will lie about. Whatever you, in your incarnate ignorance, hear you will not understand and will misreport. If by some strange twist of fate one of you does understand it you will certainly misreport it even more. That is one reason why I have my own camera crew here." Carrera's finger pointed to a small uniformed group with their own video cameras from the PSYOP crew.

"I intend to speak to the men in Spanish," he told the journalists. "If you can speak Spanish, you can follow along. If you cannot, fuck you, I am not going to bother to translate though a translation of the gist of it will be provided sometime later."

Switching to Spanish, Carrera continued, addressing his men. "This is a tale of two hills and one law. The hills you see behind me. One of them you just conquered. The other was taken by the Third and Fourth Cohorts in an action every bit as gallant as your own.

"On your hill you found evidence of a crime committed by the enemy upon our comrades. On the other hill, there was no such evidence. The result is plain to see." Again Carrera pointed, this time at the several hundred Sumeris sitting-either dejectedly or with relief as the mood took them-under guard by the MP century. "There are many prisoners from the unoffending hill; none from the hill and unit responsible for the murder of our men.

"Some of you are looking very dejected. Whether that is because you lost friends in the assault-and let me assure you here and now that our casualties were very light, certainly in comparison to the magnitude of the task-or because you feel dirty at shooting men who were trying to surrender, or because you are worried about some future criminal action against you, FORGET IT! Your friends are in good hands, you no more committed a crime than an executioner does when he sets the rope around the neck of the condemned. I gave the order to shoot those men." Never mind that you would have done it, anyway, if I hadn't. That isn't important right now. Besides. It's my doing that you're here, my doing the way you've been trained. So if there is fault or blame, they are mine.

"I know you have all had instruction in the law of war. I directed that that instruction take place. I monitored it. Let me tell you now that that instruction was incomplete. Almost in the nature of things, for it to be complete would have taken weeks, and we did not have extra weeks. So, like every other worthwhile soldier on the planet, you were trained in a truncated version of the law of war, enough to keep you out of trouble. There was more."

Carrera rather hoped that the men wouldn't begin to nod off once it became apparent he intended to teach a class. He needn't have worried; the men were desperate enough for absolution and benediction that he had their full and complete attention.

"You learned that there are two bodies of law with regard to the law of war, the statutory law-treaties and such-and the customary law. There is a third which one might call 'the common law' of war. The common law of war is that which, like other bodies of common law around the world, was developed by practical men for practical problems. It was not developed by ignorant shits trying to score points with the equally ignorant ' international community of the very, very sensitive.' The third body of the law of war holds, for example, that men who refuse to surrender and keep on fighting after you have closed to close combat range are to be killed.

"This sounds harsh, I know. Indeed it sounds illegal since surrender is held in many circles to be an absolute right. It is neither. In the first place, every man who ever went into a close assault with a fixed bayonet has an absolutely pat insanity defense. Thus, you cannot deter him from killing because you cannot, as a practical matter, legally punish him. Some would say that it is unwise to kill an enemy who fights too long, lest he fight to the death and drive up your own casualties. I, and the common law of war, the practical law of war, answer that without exacting a price for continued resistance, you invite the enemy to drive up your casualties by fighting almost to the death."

Carrera's face changed to contemplative, even musing, for a moment. "That's just an example, by the way. Yet as a fine general on Old Earth, George S. Patton, once observed, the enemy loses his right to surrender if he hasn't done so by the time you close to three hundred meters. Again, by the common law of war and as a practical matter, it just works that way and it is never punished. And, frankly, an enemy who indicates a willingness to fight beyond the point that wisdom should tell him to stop if he wants to live has already indicated he does not want to live all that much and is simply too dangerous and unpredictable to take a chance on."

The face grew hard and cold again. "That's not what we're talking about though, taking the enemy's life because of a potential immediate or fairly short term threat to your own. Those Sumeris up there really did want to surrender. Why did I tell you not to let them?"

Carrera looked around, slowly and deliberately, trying to catch as many eyes as he could in a single glance. "As you probably know, there is, over on the continent of Taurus, a fairly new court, the Cosmopolitan Criminal Court, or CCC. This court purports to have universal jurisdiction over certain crimes, much as any nation's courts have jurisdiction over piracy at sea. Without going into the merits of this 'universal jurisdiction' here, let me ask you what the CCC could have done to you, or to the Sumeris, that was one whit worse than what was done here today? The answer, as I am sure you are all aware, is precisely nothing. Courts are for civilized circumstances where people can be deterred by punishment. There is nothing any court can do to anyone, and even what it could do it cannot do very quickly, that even begins to approach what we do to each other in war, routinely. The CCC, or any similar court, is toothless as far as furthering its stated purpose. It might be effective, mind you, at its true purpose which is undermining national sovereignty and the ability of the civilized world to defend itself from barbarism. That, however, is the subject for another day.

"What is important for this day is that the law of war-customary, statutory, or common-cannot be enforced by any court, ever. Because we live in an anarchic system of sovereign states, and because the stakes in war are so high, the only thing that can enforce the law of war is the law of war itself. To do this it has one recourse: reprisal. Reprisal, which I am sure you are familiar with because Tribune Puente-Pequeno, your law of war instructor, told you about it- I've heard him, is a war crime, or conduct that would ordinarily be a war crime, but which becomes legal and legitimate in order to counter or deter an enemy from violating the law of war. It is all we have, all the world has, to make the law of war work.

"Thus, I ordered you to reprise for the murder of our men. Thus," and here Carrera stopped for a moment and pointed skyward where three Turbo-Finch Avengers were winging it northward, "I have ordered leaflets prepared, in Arabic, to be dropped ahead of our forces, to let the enemy know what we have done and to explain to him the laws which he must follow in the future if he wishes to avoid a repetition. Thus," and his finger pointed at the pressies, still standing in clueless (which Carrera was certain was their natural state) shock (at being treated with open contempt), "I had those… people brought here so that they, too, can spread the word. Let everyone know that if you commit a crime against the Legio del Cid then punishment will be immediate and frightful.

"It may seem unfair to some of you, even horrifying, that we took no account of the innocence or guilt of particular individuals on that hill. The law of war assumes that there is collective responsibility. We know this for two reasons. One is that, in order to be considered a legitimate combatant, and to be entitled to all the protections due a prisoner of war, one must meet four criteria: carrying arms openly, being identifiable as a combatant, being under a chain of command- and in an organization-responsible for your actions, and being in an organization that itself follows the law of war."

Carrera was fudging a bit there. The law did not require "being in an organization," exactly. It required that one operate in accordance with the law of war. Since individuals did not conduct operations, however, and organizations did, his was a logical and reasonable interpretation.

"Thus, if your organization does not follow the laws of war, even if you do, you become an illegal combatant and lose your protected status as a prisoner of war, if captured.

"The other way we know that the law of war assumes collective responsibility is in the doctrine of reprisal itself. Say, for example, that the enemy is violating the law of war by using a hospital as an ammunition storage point. We can bomb the shit out of the hospital, or even another hospital, butchering the wounded. We can do this even though the wounded committed no crime. They may still be held accountable, in practice, for the actions of their side.

"Let me conclude, then, by commenting on the nature of the particular form of reprisal we took, to wit: denial of quarter and refusal to take prisoners. These were crimes. Once again, every reprisal is a crime. They become nonculpable, legal, when engaged in to enforce the laws of war. This is what we did, nothing more. We did what was necessary to support the law of war. We are guiltless. "

Carrera turned to the Chaldean priest. "Father Hanna, if you would give the men a general benediction and absolution…"

Hamilton, FD, 0612 hours, 15/2/461 AC

"I did warn you, Mr. Secretary, that Patrick could be hard to control."

Newspapers littered the desk, each with a screaming headline of "War Crime." The secretary of war's elbows rested on the papers, heavily. Campos adjusted the hands he had cupped around his face just enough to glare at Virgil Rivers with one eye. He did not like being reminded.

"Be that as it may, Virgil," Campos answered, "who would have expected this shitstorm?"

Well, Rivers thought, frankly, I did. I'd have been surprised, as a matter of fact, if Hennessey hadn't done something, at least, to create one. It's one of his two or three natural talents. Wisely, Rivers kept the thought to himself.

Instead he offered, "I've had the JAG here look over the statement Hennessey issued. They say that it's legally true, if unpleasant, except for one small detail."

"And that would be?" Campos asked, still glaring with one eye.

"There are actually seven requirements to making a legitimate reprisal. Hennessey snuck in an eighth. His statement said that a proper reprisal must be 'not merely proportional but also sufficient to deter future violations of the law of war.' The JAG says that is not part of the law, though it is logically and therefore legally defensible."

"But he's just a fucking… what was that rank he used? Legate? What's that mean? Colonel? Lieutenant Colonel? Lieutenant? "

"Umm… no, Mr. Secretary. There is, in the fine print of the contract between us, a little section that says that Legio del Cid ranks will be treated as, and have the power and authorities of, their traditional titles. The actual meaning of "legate" is not lieutenant or lieutenant colonel, but lieutenant general. Therefore, even by our rules, he has all the authority he needs."

"Sneaky bastard," Campos said, without heat.

"Yes, sir. He is a sneaky bastard." Oh, to hell with it. "I warned you."

"So what do we do?"

Rivers took a moment before answering. He walked to the window and looked out at the broad, slow-moving river that separated the War Department headquarters from the rest of the Federal District and simply stared at it for some minutes, thinking.

When Rivers turned around, he asked, "Does it make any difference, sir? I mean, really? What has Patrick done except bring into the open something that would have been just as true, even if hidden, if he had not? The press are the enemy. The 'international community' is the enemy. The cosmopolitan lawyers and bureaucrats are the enemy. They have been since colonization here and, back on Old Earth, for a lot longer.

"A horde of angels could come down from Heaven and make sworn depositions that everything Patrick said was true and that he acted completely correctly. That news would be buried on page one hundred and fifty-five of the First Landing Times. And meanwhile every paper and television station in the world, every cosmopolitan progressive, every humanitarian activist who manages to do pretty well by doing good, would still be screaming 'War Crime.'

"And if he hadn't ordered a reprisal? They would just find something else. There is no satisfying them because the only thing that would satisfy them would be if we lose the war completely."

Ar-Ramalia, Sumer, 15/2/461 AC

"Jesus, it must suck to lose," Cruz muttered as the convoy bearing him and the 1st Cohort moved into the town. The streets were full of garbage. Bodies, mostly uniformed but many not, littered them as well. Green colored leaflets-Cruz recognized them as some of those the legate had had dropped ahead of the legion-blew in the dry desert wind. A Sumeri tank burned to one side of the broad highway, its commander hanging lifeless half out of his hatch. Flames arose around the body, cooking it and lending the smell of overdone pork to the air. Cruz's nose scrunched in distaste.

The convoy stopped with the mass screaming of brakes. The first centurion of the cohort began walking the line, slapping vehicles with his palm and ordering, "All right, boys and girls, everyone off. And buckle up your goddamned armor, Sanchez."

Cruz reached over and slapped the side of Sanchez's helmet, moderately hard, before standing himself, tossing his rucksack over the side, and shuffling to the back of the truck. He jumped off, landing easily on both feet, then walked around to retrieve the ruck. When he returned, the signifer was assembling the century.

"This afternoon," the signifer announced, then consulted his watch, "in about four hours, we're going to relieve 3rd Cohort and continue clearing the town. Orders at…" again he looked at his watch, "… call it noon. Centurion?"

"Sir!"

"I'm going forward with the tribune to coordinate the passage of lines with 3rd Cohort. We own those buildings over there." The signifer pointed out the ones he meant, a series of two-story, cinder block structures with stores below and apartments above. "Take charge of the century; security, weapons maintenance, food and rest, in that order."

"Sir. Century; atten… shun. On my command, fall out and into those buildings the signifer indicated. Section leaders, priority of work is local security, weapons, food, rest. Report to me when you're up on the first. Be prepared to brief me on your rest plan. Fall out."

A PSYOP loudspeaker was blaring out something in Arabic as the small party from 1st Cohort arrived at the 3rd Cohort Command Post.

"What the hell is that?" the tribune asked of the 3rd Cohort's Operations Officer.

"We've had some trouble," that officer answered. "Twice we've had Sumeris come forward appearing to want to surrender and then open up when they got close enough that even their shitty standards of marksmanship were adequate. Another time, one came close enough to detonate himself. We lost three dead and half a dozen wounded. The loudspeaker's telling them that they're all responsible for the actions of each of them, that from now on, and because of their own treachery, if they want to surrender they have to strip buck naked and approach with their hands in the air and absolutely nothing in them."

The tribune snorted. "Any takers under those conditions?"

"Some. A few. On the other hand, we haven't lost any more of our own since we started shooting anyone approaching who wasn't stripped down."

"What about the women? We making them strip, too?"

"We're telling the civilians to run the other way, away from us, if possible. For those who insist on coming this way, the women have to get down to just their panties. We have some sense of decency, after all?"

"Okay," the tribune agreed. "Now, show me where you want our advanced parties to link up with you?"

Waiting for the order to go in, Cruz's heart thundered in his chest.

In the same room, the assistant section leader's tubular feed grenade launcher went foomp-kaclick-foomp-kaclick… foomp-kaclickfoomp. Two 43mm grenades sailed through each of the windows to the building opposite the one the section, which included Ricardo Cruz, had assembled in for their attack across the narrow street. The explosions blew out the windows' remains, and were followed by a horrible, keening cry in Arabic.

"Smoke!" ordered the section leader. Two green canisters popped as their spoons were released. The canisters landed in the middle of the alley, well to either side of the buildings concerned. The section leader waited a few seconds, to allow the smoke from the canisters to build up. Then he ordered, "Covering fire! First Team, go."

Cruz's team, Number Two, and the other one, Number Three, began blasting from their side. First Team raced through the back door and across the alley, flattening themselves against the wall when they reached it. More grenades sailed in through the windows, while the fire team leader and another man from First Team broke down the door. The Arabic cries ceased with the explosion of the hand grenades.

The section leader shouted, "Second Team, with me." Cruz's group stopped firing and followed the sergeant across the street and into the other building. When they had disappeared, the assistant section leader led the last team, plus the weapons team, across.

"Cruz," said Sergeant del Valle, "take your men and clear upstairs. Be careful, son."

The interior of the building was dark, despite the recent destruction of the windows. Cruz took a moment to partially accustom his eyes to the dim light. When he could see the staircase that led upstairs clearly he ordered, "Follow me," and took a bent-legged crouch.

"Sanchez, left side."

Sanchez mimicked Cruz's posture. Behind them the last two men in the team, Privates Rivera and Escobedo, stood mostly erect, rifle and light machine gun pointing over the heads of Cruz and Sanchez.

"Advance."

An ununiformed Sumeri appeared above them with a grenade in his hand. Before Cruz could say anything the light machine gunner opened up, stitching the enemy and spilling his blood and intestines across the far upstairs wall. The Sumeri dropped the grenade, which exploded, further smearing the irregular.

"Up." One step at a time, and almost in step, Cruz and Sanchez ascended. When they could see over the top step they turned in opposite directions, firing down short hallways that led to rooms with closed doors. The bullets pockmarked the doors, sending wooden splinters in every direction.

"Sanchez, guard left. The rest with me." Cruz and the other two reached the landing and sprinted the few short steps to the door on that side. Rather than waiting Cruz threw himself against it, knocking it off its hinges and over into the room. The door didn't land flat, but rather came to rest unevenly and part way atop another Sumeri irregular who had probably been standing behind it when Cruz had opened fire. The Sumeri appeared not to be breathing though blood ran out from under the fallen door.

Noticing the body, Cruz had the somewhat inane thought, drummed into him in Basic, Concealment is not cover.

The thought was interrupted by the entrance, firing, of the last two men in Cruz's fire team. A closet door swung slowly open to allow a Sumeri body to tumble to the floor.

"Room's clear, Cruz," one of the men reported.

"Rivera, with me. Escobedo, stay here. Guard."

Leaving the light machine gun behind, Cruz and Rivera hastened back to where a prone Sanchez lay with his rifle still trained on the door opposite.

Before the three men could storm the next room they heard firing coming from behind them. Escobedo screamed. When they turned around, they saw the Sumeri who had been under the broken-down door turning an assault rifle in their direction. Rivera was a trifle faster than the Sumeri, who went down bonelessly from several close range hits. Cruz rushed back to find Escobedo hit but breathing, shot through the back.

"Motherfuckers," Cruz muttered. He went back to Sanchez and Rivera, stopping to call down the stairs, "Sergeant, I've got a wounded man up here; Escobedo. And the fuckers are not playing by the rules."

"Keep up the assault, Cruz," the sergeant returned. "I'll send up a medic for your man."

Instead of rushing to force down the next door, Cruz fired another long burst through it. Then he and Rivera advanced to take position on opposite sides. Sanchez got on his feet, advanced, and slammed his foot against the portal, which burst open. Cruz and Rivera then sprayed the room with fire.

Entering, Cruz saw three Sumeris, all apparently hit, one with his back against the wall. Without a word Cruz turned his rifle on the first and fired a burst. This was known as "double tapping," or making sure. He shot the second and, as he was turning to the third saw the Sumeri's eyes open wide as he reached for a rifle. Cruz shot him, too, and whispered, "Got to learn to play by the rules. Fuckers."

Looking at the bodies, Cruz felt his anger cool. Turning away from the carnage, he thought, Cara, queridisima, I wish I could come home to you now.

Interlude

17 Safar, 1502 AH, Medina, Saudi Arabia

(22 December, 2078)

The sun was fading away to the west as the muezzin, his voice amplified by speakers mounted on the minaret walls, called the faithful to prayer. Some other place, perhaps, and the royal family might just have ignored the call if business pressed. Not here. Here the force of Allah and of the words conveyed by the Prophet were strong. Here, the king and his brother stopped their discussions, abased themselves, and prayed.

"He wants a stone, just one stone," said Bandar to his brother, the king, once prayers were over. He continued, "One stone out of sixteen hundred and fourteen outside, and who knows how many inside, and it isn't even the Hajar ul Aswad, the Black Stone."

"But the Kaaba is sacred, like the Word of Allah, never-changing and eternal."

"Nonsense, Brother," Bandar insisted. "The Word is eternal but the Kaaba has been rebuilt anywhere from five to a dozen times; no one's really quite sure. The most recent rebuild was eighty-five years ago, in 1417. It has had major components replaced, has had its shape changed from a rectangle to a square to a rectangle to a square and back to a rectangle again. It has had new stones added and old ones thrown away. And all Abdul ibn Faisal wants is one lousy stone to take with him to al Donya al Jedidah."

"We'd have to take down at least one wall to get at the stone he wants," the king objected.

"And we've taken down walls before," Bandar countered, "that same five to one dozen times I mentioned. What's one more time? We can begin right after this Hajj and have the thing rebuilt before the next, possibly even before Ramadan."

The king looked closely at his brother. "And what would be the point, after all? What good comes of it?"

Bandar took a deep breath before continuing. When he did, he said, "Brother, we have problems. The oil is going fast. Europe is plunging into blackness and all our investments there are crumbling away. Our population is growing beyond our ability to care for and beyond the capability of the secret police to control.

"We had hoped that by becoming a major food grower we could break our dependence on western imports. For a while, even, we were the fourth largest exporter of wheat in the world. We export none of that now, and again have to import wheat.

"And the Salafi are growing out of hand. We had thought the Americans would have curtailed their influence once they defeated al Qaeda. It didn't last.

"We have to advance-yes, like the West-and we cannot when every forward step we take is blocked by the Salafi."

The king's hand reached up to stroke his beard. "So you think if we give up the stone, this one of sixteen hundred and fourteen, then some sizable number of the Salafi will simply pack up and leave? Remember the disaster on the first colonization ship."

Bandar nodded. "They were mixed. We shall hire, perhaps even build or, more likely, have built, a ship or ships to take the Salafi away. Will they go? Yes, and quite possibly a large number of them. And if we can get rid of a sizable number initially, we can change this country enough to make it uncomfortable for the rest so that they leave too. Oh, Brother, I am telling you; this Donya al Jedidah is the answer to our prayers."

The king chewed on his lower lip and then reached up one hand to stroke his beard, contemplatively. "You know, there's another potential advantage here, Brother. What if we used our influence to set aside an area for the Zionists on the New World. Surely some would go; they've got to be as tired of the constant fighting as the Palestinians are, if not more so. They've got to be tired of the taxes, the constant military duty. If we can entice away some numbers of Jews, the burdens on those who remain will grow greater still. That might well make even more leave. And each who leaves makes it more likely, just as with our own fanatics, that more will leave. Get enough to go and the Zionist entity falls."

"You're dumping our problems here on the people we send out," Bandar objected.

The king shrugged eloquently. "So?"

Bandar considered. He rocked his head back and forth for a few moments. Finally, he shrugged to match his brother. "Indeed. 'So?'"

Chapter Twenty-One Military necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb of armed enemies, and of other persons whose destruction is incidentally unavoidable in the armed contests of the war; it allows of the capturing of every armed enemy, and every enemy of importance to the hostile government, or of peculiar danger to the captor; it allows of all destruction of property, and obstruction of the ways and channels of traffic, travel, or communication, and of all withholding of sustenance or means of life from the enemy; of the appropriation of whatever an enemy's country affords necessary for the subsistence and safety of the Army, and of such deception as does not involve the breaking of good faith either positively pledged, regarding agreements entered into during the war, or supposed by the modern law of war to exist. Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral beings, responsible to one another and to God. -The Lieber Code, Section 15

Ninewa, Sumer, 22/2/461 AC

The sand tore at Amid Adnan Sada's face. He didn't mind, not in the slightest.

Keeps their damned planes and attack helicopters away, at least, and so, Allah, for this I thank You.

Sada, an Amid, or brigadier general, in the Army of the Republic of Sumer, wore desert battle dress with insignia of his unit, rank and branch sewn on. A khaki colored cloth was tied over his mouth and nostrils; breathing was nearly impossible otherwise.

But, Allah, Sada amended, I would really have appreciated it if you had brought the wind and the dust earlier so I could have brought in enough to feed my men.

"And that's the problem, Amid, " Sada's supply officer had said. "I have the ammunition, building materials, fuel and all that. But food? I have ten days' supply, or maybe fifteen on short rations. No more."

The supply officer, Major-or Raiid- Faush, was one of the good ones, Sada thought. Another man might have sold the lot, or stored it to sell to the FSC when their forces arrived. Faush I can trust. Faush I can count on. And he isn't even a clan member. How often does that happen?

In fact, in Sada's brigade it happened more often than not. He had his ways.

Sada's cell phone rang, sounding loudly even over the roar of the howling wind. He answered it, saw that it was a text message, and began to laugh.

"General?" questioned Faush.

Instead of answering, Sada just passed the phone over. Faush read.

"How did they get our personal cell phone numbers?" he asked, after reading. "I mean, there ought to be something private in life; something sacred."

The text message on the phone was an invitation to surrender from the FSC's Office of Strategic Intelligence.

"I don't know, Faush," Sada answered, still laughing. "Hell, it will probably work for nine out of ten of our top commanders."

"No matter, Amid; it won't work here." Faush sounded more confident than perhaps he felt. Not that Sada would surrender easily. That was never going to happen, Faush was certain. Why, in the Sumer-Farsia war of sixteen years before Sada, then a captain commanding the rump of a cut-off and undersupplied infantry battalion against uncountable and fanatical Farsian human wave assaults, had refused to surrender for weeks. He'd held the Farsians off, too, until relief got to him. There was not a man who survived that ordeal but didn't worship the ground the amid walked on, at least when they thought Allah might not be looking. Faush was one of those survivors, as were most of the key leaders of Sada's current command.

Achmed Qabaash, Sada's operations officer, observed, enthusiastically, "We'd better fight like hell. Everyone says the enemy coming from the south doesn't take prisoners." Qabaash liked a good fight. He was odd that way.

"I wonder if that's true," Sada said. "I know they've make no secret of not taking prisoners if the men concerned are with a unit that violated the western laws of war. But there was a division's worth of men in towns to the south of us. I doubt they killed them all."

Highway One, eighty-seven miles south of Ninewa

Dusty, tired, hungry and miserable Sumeri POWs trekked under armed guard southward, directly into the wind.

Soult, his face like his chief's handkerchiefed against the biting wind and sand, looked at the prisoners with a degree of contempt. He couldn't really understand surrendering, even on the promise of good treatment. Better to die like a soldier.

"Are they all cowards, Boss?" he asked Carrera. "We offer to take prisoners and they surrender. We kill everything moving and they still try to surrender. I just don't understand it. Seems chicken to me."

Carrera, sitting on the canvas seat next to Soult took a moment before answering, simply, "They're no more cowardly as a people than anyone else. Cowards don't fly airships into buildings. Cowards don't load themselves with explosives and try to get close enough to do us some harm before detonating themselves. No, Jamey, they're not cowards. But they have some problems. It's the problems that account for most of the violations of the laws of war they engage in."

Seeing from his eyes, the only uncovered part of his face, that Soult didn't really understand, Carrera continued. "The sociologists call them "amoral familists." What that means is that they are raised in such a way that they cannot really conceive of legitimate loyalty to someone who isn't a blood relation. For that matter, when it is a question of loyalty to two blood relations the one with the closer relationship is the one who gets the loyalty. Religion counts to them, too, and a lot, but that makes very different demands on them. Nation? Means nothing to most… or less than nothing, often enough. The family is where their important loyalties lie, the family is what will protect them from a hostile world, the family is their law and their guide."

"Yeah… but so?" Soult plainly didn't understand.

"It means they're completely alone, Jamey, completely alone in the most terrifying place man can exist, the modern battlefield. They can't trust their squad mates, they can't trust their officers, unless those are also blood relations. For any given soldier in a Sumeri-or Yithrabi, Jahari or Misrani-unit under serious duress the only questions are, 'Can I run or surrender before the rest do? Am I going to be stuck here, alone, to face the enemy while the rest run?' It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, true. But the way a prophecy becomes self-fulfilling is by being destined to be fulfilled." Carrera sounded sad.

"You actually like them, don't you, Boss?"

"Jamey…" Carrera hesitated, "I used to like them a lot. It's… harder now.

"Sometimes they can break out of that self-fulfilling prophecy, by the way," Carrera added, perhaps only to change the direction in which the conversation had turned. "Some of their tribally based units aren't bad, though they've got problems when the tribal chain of command and the military one don't mesh. They've also got problems in that the tribe, while it might fight well, has a very finite tolerance for casualties.

"The other way, and it has happened occasionally, is when some outsider is in command who refuses to have any truck with tribes. If he can assemble a group that has no tribal majority, preferably if he can assemble one where each member has no tribal link with any other, sometimes he can make a good unit. Sometimes. It's harder than hell to do."

Ninewa, Sumer, 22/2/461 AC

Sada walked from building to building, inspecting the positions his men were preparing as they made ready to defend the town. It was a relief to go inside, if only to escape from the dust. Some of his boys were digging up the streets to excavate trenches to connect the buildings. That would, Sada was sure, come in handy.

The lieutenant in charge of the platoon was new. Sada searched his memory. Lieutenant Rashad is from the Bani Malik tribe. His platoon sergeant is one of my old boys, from the Farsian War, an al Hameed. Squad leaders are…

"Sergeant Major?" Sada questioned.

"Sir," began the sergeant major, "no two members of the same tribe in this platoon." Sada's brigade sergeant major, and McNamara would have approved, had grown very good at reading his boss' mind over the preceding decades.

The units of Sada's brigade were organized in one of two ways. About a third of them were strictly set up along tribal lines, the only caveat to that structure being that the leadership of the unit and the leadership of the tribe within the unit had to match. The amid had run off more than one sergeant, senior in the tribe's hierarchy, who had thought to ignore his captain, who was junior.

The other two thirds, roughly, Sada and his right-hand man, the sergeant major, went out of their way to ensure had no tribal identity. It seemed to Sada that one of the problems-and he understood them even better than Carrera did-was that extra-tribal loyalty couldn't grow wherever there was a focus for tribal loyalty, but could, potentially, where there was none. The toughest part had been the officers, whom one could ordinarily have expected to loot their units if the men in those units had no blood ties.

Give the dictator this much, thought Sada. He kept his own tribe out of my brigade, excepting only a couple of spies, and didn't mind how many men from other tribes I had shot for corruption.

Sada had shot a few of them personally. He still smiled sometimes at the memory of Faush's predecessor, caught with his hand in the till. Sada had simply drawn his pistol and shot the man at point-blank range. That was how Faush had inherited the job.

Pity what the blood did to the books though, Sada thought regretfully.

The lieutenant of the platoon misinterpreted the look on his amid's face. "Sir, the men are working as hard as they can…"

"Show me your hands," Sada ordered.

Still uncomprehending, the lieutenant held up clean hands with unbroken nails.

Sada smiled indulgently. He leaned over to whisper in the young officer's ear. "You're new, my son. So I'll forgive you… this once. But officers in my brigade work. Officers in my brigade lead. You will work if you want to continue to lead. Or would you prefer to go to the penal platoon, minus your rank, now?"

Eighty miles south of Ninewa

The sun was setting on a desolate scene, made all the more so by the dust that covered everything in swirling, choking eddies. Red leaflets, prepared by the Psychological Operations Century and dropped by Cricket recon plane ahead of the legion as it advanced, also blew in the breeze. The leaflets proclaimed the list of Sumeri violations of the laws of war, to date, and the legion's bloody-handed response to them.

The press was… stymied. When no one responded to their charges, except to admit them and insist the reprisals were lawful, they found they had no recourse. There was no blood in the water, no struggling body filled with fear of the righteous wrath of the media. The sharks couldn't go into a feeding frenzy.

On the other hand, admitted Carrera to himself, as he exited his vehicle, while the press is defanged, if the Sumeris had a half-functioning chain of command at army level and a couple of battalions of working armor, I'd be fucked.

Logistically, the legion was a mess. Carrera had one cohort detached from the line to guard prisoners. There were so many of these that his one century of military police camp guards, even supplemented by the field police century, the walking wounded and as many service troops as could be spared, simply couldn't guard them all. In point of fact it was more important that he was feeding his prisoners than that he was guarding them. For food, they'd stick around. Guards? Eh? They could be ducked in a thick enough sandstorm.

The rest of the legion was strung out over forty miles of bad road. The trucks were overtasked, especially given the sandstorm. The helicopters were grounded. Roughly half the armor was stuck, broken down or about to break down and waiting along the side of the road for recovery or repair. And the artillery? It was more disorganized and strung out than any other cohort in the legion.

Thank God I listened to Harrington and Lanza and paid for the B300 Dodos. Otherwise we'd have no means of reliable resupply. As is, the Dodos can drop us enough, just enough with what the trucks can bring through, to keep us going.

About the only good thing one could say was that, between the Yezidi taking over security in the towns the legion cleared and the fact that Carrera was taking and holding prisoners rather than letting them go to become a threat to his communications, at least the trucks were getting through. When they didn't break down… or get lost… or crash into something invisible at ten feet for all the dust in the air.

There was a small school house just outside this small, insignificant Sumeri town. Kennison had grabbed it for the legion's command post. All three of the operational staff teams, Operations itself, Logistics and Intelligence, were set up there. The doors were off as were the windows, though actually it was a matter of some conjecture whether the place had ever had doors and windows. In any case, blankets were hung over whatever openings there were. It cut the dust down, but could not entirely eliminate it.

Carrera pushed aside a blanket and entered. Behind him, in the road fronting the school, a column of infantry struggled forward against the biting sand. The men were too tired to even curse. He thought this a bad sign.

Inside, Triste and Fahad the Chaldean were engaged in a low volume but still heated discussion. A Sumeri officer, a captain, Carrera saw on closer inspection, sat in obvious incomprehension on a folding metal chair off to one side.

Looking up, Triste saw Carrera observing himself and Fahad. "Boss, we gots problems," the intelligence officer announced.

Carrera made a give forth motion with one hand.

"The captain here," and Triste indicated the seated Sumeri, "has been most cooperative. He's a supply and transportation type and before we captured him had passed directly through Ninewa. He says the commander there is a Sumeri brigadier named Sada."

"I know this man," Fahad interjected. "I know him well. As Tribune Triste says, 'We gots problems.'"

"Where do you know him from, Fahad?" Carrera asked.

"I was his instructor in English at the War College outside Babel. That's one way. But I also know him from elsewhere, when I was medic on the Farsian front twenty years ago. He was my commander."

"Fahad says this guy is really good, Boss, tough and brave and smart. Says the men love him."

"Oh, yes," the Chaldean interjected. "Best officer in whole fucking Sumeri army. Should be in command of whole army, too, but… wrong tribe." Fahad shrugged.

"Does he play by the rules, Fahad?"

"Rules, sayidi?"

"Laws of war? Treatment of prisoners? Maintaining status of lawful combatancy?"

"Oh. Yes, Legate. Sada is straight up. Tricks, yes. Dirty tricks? No."

Carrera pondered that for a few minutes, standing in the dusty room in silence. When he had thought it through, he ordered, "Get me the PSYOP people. And Fahad, sit down and prepare to translate. Kennison, have we got a Cricket pilot crazy enough to fly in this shit?"

Ninewa, 23/2/461 AC

The sun was far from up when Faush knocked on Sada's room door.

"What is it?" Sada demanded as he sat up and began pulling his boots on.

Faush hesitated, not because he feared his commander's wrath at being awakened but because he himself was very confused.

"Is that you, Faush?" Sada thought he had recognized the knock.

"Yes, Amid, " Faush answered through the slightly cracked door. "There is something you need to see. Leaflets from the enemy. The streets are full of them."

"Come in then." Sada struck a match to light a kerosene lantern on a table next to his narrow bed.

Faush handed his commander a green piece of paper. On the paper was printing in Arabic script. Sada read:

To the defenders of Ninewa:

It has come to my attention, from a reliable source, that despite the near continuous pattern of violations of the laws of war which have come to characterize the Sumeri defense over the last ten days, it is a distinct possibility that these violations will not be repeated in your town or by your unit. Thus, although I have previously given orders that no prisoners will be accepted unless they strip completely naked to demonstrate that they have no hidden weapons or explosives, and that-because of treachery on the part of men pretending to be wounded to gain an advantage-all remotely suspicious bodies, apparently dead or plainly living, were to be shot again for security's sake, I am temporarily rescinding these orders in your case.

Those orders will remain rescinded for so long as, and not one moment longer than, the defenders of Ninewa themselves continue to obey the laws of war. It is up to you to police your own. If some of your men pretend to be wounded to gain a treacherous advantage, all of your wounded will suffer. If some abuse the flag of truce, the flag of truce will no longer be honored. If some use the symbols of the Red Crescent Organization treacherously, those symbols will not be respected further. If surrendering men attack, surrenders will not thereafter be accepted. If any of my men who fall into your hands are mistreated, yours will be butchered in return. If you fight from hospitals and mosques they will be obliterated. If you fight from behind women and children, we will take extra casualties to capture you alive so that you can be hanged in front of those same civilians whose sanctuary you will have violated.

The choice is yours.

You are reputed to be good soldiers. I hope, personally, that you and your commanders choose well.

Signed,

Patricio Carrera

Legate, Legio del Cid

Acting Commander

"What do you think of it, Amid? " Faush asked.

Sada didn't answer immediately. This was a strange development, unique in his personal experience. An enemy lecturing you on the law of war? Bizarre. On the other hand, he's got a point. The conduct of the irregulars… and even the regulars, has been a disgrace to this army. Perhaps here, maybe, we can redeem ourselves and our country's reputation. It will take some thought…

"I think I need to talk to my senior officers and noncoms," Sada finally answered. "Assemble them at daybreak, here. And have a few dozen of these leaflets, enough to pass out, collected."

Interesting, thought Sada, that my enemy is giving us this chance.

Surrounded by a dozen men he trusted, Sada's sergeant major listened attentively as the instructor explained to fifty of the Fedayeen as-Sumer, the civilian irregulars ordered raised and armed by the dictator, the finer points of convincing the enemy you were harmless in order to get close enough to them to detonate an explosive belt. The design of the belt, in particular, he thought clever.

When the instructor had finished the sergeant major stood up and asked, enthusiastically, "Are you all prepared to give your lives like this?"

" Aywa! Aywa!" the fedayeen answered, with an enthusiasm to match the sergeant major's own. Yes! Yes!

"Good," the sergeant major said calmly. Then he said to his men, "Arrest them and put them in the penal platoon. All except for their instructor. Take that one outside and shoot him."

"Ah," said Faush. "Very clever indeed." The object of the major's admiration was an ambulance bearing the Red Crescent symbol which had had its sides reinforced with plate steel to serve as a clandestine armored personnel carrier. Two others in the hospital bay had been likewise converted, while a fourth and fifth had been made into suicide truck bombs.

"Don't you agree, Sergeant Achmed, Private Omar, that this is a clever set up?"

"Oh, yes, Major," the two submachine gun bearing enlisted assistants to the logistics officer agreed. "Very clever. Absolutely clever!"

"Yes. Now please shoot the men responsible."

The major was out the door and on his way to his next inspection before the submachine guns stopped chattering.

The damnable thing is, thought Sada, I can't help but use the hospital. It's the tallest building in town and the only one that will give the miserable air defense guns half a chance of covering the troops.

He stood in the walled yard of a mosque, looking up at the hospital building that dominated the skyline even through the dust that still swirled in the air. A company of Sada's soldiers were engaged in removing a substantial armory of everything from small arms to explosives from the mosque's interior. It was neither a small mosque nor a small armory.

While most of the company were busied with demilitarizing the mosque, one squad was engaged in removing the bodies of the mullah, two fedayeen, and one operative from the national secret police. Another squad had marched off the rest of the fedayeen to the penal platoon, which had grown to be a very large company.

Sada looked around, thinking hard. This compound would do for a hospital, he thought. Big enough. Covered. And there's a generator inside, which is more than the hospital can say. Still, using a hospital for an air defense site…

Then he considered the other reason, the secret reason, the really, really big secret reason he had to play by the rules. His gaze wandered in the direction of the local university- Damned secret police had better get here and take those packages off my hands- and then back to the hospital.

Well, I am the local governor, after all. I have the authority to close or move a hospital. Outside of a mosque a place doesn't become sacred merely for what it once was or could have been or even what it might be. Then again, what do I get out of it? One aircraft, maybe two. Then they flatten the building anyway.

Sada sighed. Still, one or two are better than nothing. And I have to try.

"Faush?" Sada asked, "How long to totally move the hospital from there to here?"

" Amid… I'm not sure," the logistician answered. "It could be done in a couple of days, I suppose. It might be less time if you let me use the penal platoon as slaves."

"Do it," Sada ordered. "But when you do it remove every trace that suggests the building is a hospital. And paint big target symbols on the sides. Yes… big ones."

Command Post, Legio del Cid, 25/2/461 AC

"Pat," Triste began, "it's the funniest thing. We got a message over the radio, from the enemy commander. It was in the clear. He wanted us to know that the hospital has been closed and may be considered a legitimate target. He spoke really excellent English, too."

Fahad's chest swelled ever so slightly; the Chaldeans hadn't been given to excessive pride in a very long time. Even so, you could hear the pride in the man's voice when he said, "Well, Legate, I did teach him, after all."

"The other thing is, Boss, we've taken fire from the hospital. They took out an RPV. Before the RPV went down, it got some good shots of the other side of the town. The civilians are moving out and being escorted by uniformed soldiers."

Interlude

5 Duh'l-Qa'dah, 1507 AH, Makkah al Jedidah, Al Donya al Jedidah (19 January, 2084 AD)

If he had ever doubted that his bedroom vision was a true one, those doubts were dispelled when Abdul ibn Fisel took his first look out the window of the transport and, peering through the clouds, saw the new homeland below him. It was watered; it was green. Wonder of wonders, there were trees, not merely around oases, but in forests large and small scattered across the landscape.

Animals grazed, Abdul saw, as the shuttle descended lower to fly over the landscape. Great herds of them wandered, heads down in the verdant grass or muzzles submerged in the flowing water of the land's many rivers and streams. Abdul did not even try to count them; he knew that all was as Allah had foretold in his vision.

Some of the elephants seemed impossibly large and incredible hairy.

The view of the new land disappeared behind flying grass and dust as the shuttle came to a hover by the spot Abdul had selected-rather, that he had known as soon as he had seen it on a map-for the first settlement. The engines squealed and the landing struts thrummed as the ship settled down to a jarring landing. There was another hydraulic sound as the two ramps, one on the side for passengers and one in the rear for cargo, lowered themselves to the ground.

Accompanied by his dozen closest followers, Abdul and his Salafis stood and moved, rifles in hand, to the relatively open area by the landing ramp. The rifles were of the older style, muzzle loading and flintlock fired. They were Salafis, by Allah, and dedicated to doing things in the old way. Admittedly, even the muzzle loaders post- dated the true Salafis, those generations of the Prophet's time and the two that followed. Nonetheless, the muzzle loaders pre -dated the influx of contaminating western ideas and, so, Abdul had judged them, in the absence of guidance to the contrary from above, as being fit to carry to the New World.

Four of his followers, specially selected for their piety and their physical strength, carried the Stone, the single oblong rock he had been instructed and allowed to take from the Kaaba in Mecca. From this stone, the spiritual link to the original Holy City would be maintained. Toward this stone, and the new Kaaba that would be built, the faithful would pray and their prayers be carried across Allah's infinite space.

With deep piety, the party moved down the ramp, Abdul leading the four selected to carry the Stone and the other eight flanking the porters as an honor guard. Abdul led the group to a spot far enough away that the litter-carried stone would not be sullied by the blast when the shuttle took off to bring in the next load. He told the four porters to guard it and then made a motion for the other eight to follow him. These he led to the shuttle's cargo ramp. Already the first of the camels, horses, sheep and goats were being offloaded by others among his followers. The armed men were not needed for that.

In all things Abdul and his followers intended to follow the ways of those who had known, or followed closely in the footsteps of, the Prophet. What was permitted by Allah must never be forbidden. What was forbidden must never be permitted. All things must be as they were.

What the guards were needed for was the other large portion of the cargo. These walked on two feet. They had been purchased from several sources. Some came from among those who had made the Hajj to Makkah. These sometimes found then that they lacked the money to return to their homelands and sold either themselves or their children. Some came from various places on Earth where certain otherwise illegal transactions were permitted, notably northern Africa, Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, and the Balkans. It was this cargo that would actually do the work of cutting the stone and building the new Kaaba. It was this cargo that would warm the bedrolls of the Salafis at night.

There were those "possessed by the right hand" of Abdul and his followers. These were the slaves.

Chapter Twenty-Two The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it. -Winston Churchill

Outskirts of Ninewa, Sumer, 28/2/461 AC

The sandstorm had lifted two days prior. With that lifting winter ended and a terrible, oppressive heat descended onto the playing field. With the lifting, also, planes and helicopters were able to fly in parts and men from the main depot at the airport and the smaller one at Mangesh. Convoys wandering lost in the desert or hunkered down were scouted for from the air, found and directed. Tanks were recovered and sent forward. It had even proven possible for Christian, the legion's "II," or personnel officer, to ferry in two just-graduated classes of replacements, about four hundred privates, to make up for losses suffered to date, plus a bit.

Jorge Mendoza, Stefano del Rio and the tank commander, Sergeant Perez, pulled up in their Jaguar II to a dun-colored building fronting a small square. They were pleased to have made it this far. To this point in time, there had been little action for the tankers of the legion. In fact, only two tanks of sixteen could claim kills on enemy armor, and less than half could even claim to have fired a shot in anger at other targets.

The crew was also a little surprised. Good workmanship the Jaguar might have, and good design as well. But it had been designed for the continent of Taurus, not the desert. Half a dozen times since the sandstorm had begun the air filter had clogged with a mass of grit, choking the engine to a whining, sputtering death. The Ocelots had fared little better. Eventually Brown, the commander of the mechanized cohort, had simply said, "To hell with it," and radioed in to legion headquarters that he and his command were simply frozen. "Better we stop now," Brown had explained to Carrera, "before we ruin every engine in the command, than keep going another few miles and never move again until you fly us in a few dozen new power packs."

Since they had stopped before the dust had done their engines to death, once the sandstorm had cleared the mechanized cohort had made good progress, reaching Ninewa in less than a day and taking up positions overlooking the bridge that spanned the broad, slow- moving, and brown-silty river behind it. The bridge stood in plain view about three thousand meters away.

Perez climbed out of the tank and stood atop the turret. From there he could see the bridge easily enough, plus the tall white building his map labeled as a hospital that looked over the entire town, dominating it.

"It's got to come down," he said to himself.

Perez heard a series of foomps, so close together as to seem to be one, single, long explosion. He waited for a few seconds, half in analysis and a quarter in surprise. Then he shouted, "Incoming!"

Del Rio and Mendoza said, together, "What the fu…?" before dropping down into the tank and buttoning the hatches behind them. Perez dived through his own hatch face first, twisting around inside the tank to get one arm onto the turret handle. This he pulled shut with a clang as the first mortar rounds began impacting nearby.

The tank shuddered under the barrage. Inside all three of its crew prayed fervently that no Sumeri shell would find the lightly armored top of the vehicle. Even a smaller shell would be dangerous if it exploded there. A 120mm, as they assumed the enemy shells were, would burst the top like an overripe grape.

The barrage ended as suddenly as it began. Giving the order, "Wait inside until I tell you it's safe," Perez popped the hatch and risked a careful look around.

"Damn," he said aloud, though without keying the tank's intercom.

His tank had survived, but not unscathed. Where once the thing had carried two whiplike radio antennae, all that remained of these were roughly sheared off nubs. It was worse farther away.

The infantry that had dismounted from their Ocelots once these had halted and had been caught in the open and flat footed. Their bodies-the bloody, torn remnants of their bodies, rather-lay stretched out, torn or eviscerated, across the square. Perez didn't try to count them but there had to be at least ten or a dozen men killed.

The wounded, and there were more of these, were worse. They screamed for pain, for "Mama," for lost legs, arms and eyes. Already medicos were busied trying to staunch the flow of blood, to keep intestines from falling out, to field-set broken bones.

A single Ocelot apparently had taken a direct hit on top. It burned on the opposite side of the square from Perez and his tank. Someone inside of it screamed. No one tried to perform first aid on its unfortunate occupants, though Perez did see a lone soldier cross himself before firing a single round into the track. The screaming stopped.

South of Ninewa, Altitude 14,000 feet,

Dodo Number Seven, 28/2/461 AC

One of the nice things about modern technology-for some definitions of "nice"-was that it didn't take an ultramodern bomber or jet fighter to drop even a very large bomb accurately. Any old thing that would get off the ground with a sufficient payload would do, provided it could fly above the ceiling for light air defense or that there was no real air defense deployed.

The Dodo, as rebuilt, met these minimal requirements. It could carry, handily, six bombs of two thousand pounds each. Moreover, after a blistering tongue lashing by Carrera, the commander of the ala had seen to it that four of his Dodos had wooden frameworks installed internally to allow them each to carry five such bombs, with a sixth on a dispenser rack. The cursing ground crews had worked through the night, cutting, lashing and bolting together the wood scrounged up by Harrington for the purpose. Then they'd worked half the morning using the three-thousand-pound crane integral to each aircraft to load the bombs.

The bombs, themselves, came courtesy of the FS Air Force, an easy and profitable trade in which Harrington had passed over a dozen cases of eighteen-year-old scotch and received in return two dozen bombs. (It was actually more complex than this, since Harrington also had to bring in an ordnance officer from the FSAF, that officer's commander, and a couple of others to see the deal go through and the planes effectively fitted to carry and use the weapons. For simplicity's sake, though, it is accurate enough to say that one case equaled two bombs with guidance packages.)

In prior times, no plane like the Dodo could hope to place a bomb on target with anything approaching accuracy unless the planes were substantially modified. In this case, though, the bombs had been modified. Each of the two-thousand-pounders had had its normal fusing taken out and replaced with a sophisticated guidance package. The guidance package operated off of the Global Locating System the United Earth Peace Fleet had, reluctantly, permitted the FSC to loft into space. Once released, the bombs became self-actuating, if not self-aware. They would guide themselves onto target with a CEP, or Circular Error Probable, of mere meters.

(Of course, the bombs needed to be programmed and the ala 's ordnance folks had not the first clue as to how to do that. Moreover, they had to be kept charged until released and this required some rewiring of the Dodos. Thus, as part of the deal two ordnance men from the FSAF had had to accompany the load to teach the Balboans how to do it. As mentioned, the deal was complicated. It became more complicated when Harrington went back, some days later, for several score five-hundred-pound bombs with similar fusing and guidance packages.)

"Evacuate the hospital," the amid ordered abruptly.

"Sir?" asked Qabaash, the operations officer, in confusion.

"Just a feeling," Sada admitted. "But get the men out. Leave the guns. Now go!"

There is very little one can do with a computer that one cannot also do, albeit more slowly and with more difficulty, with a pen and paper, map and compass. The rate of fall of the bombs had been calculated and from that the release point was decided. This had been compared with the bomb's ability to guide itself and an oval shaped area was drawn on the pilot's map, now strapped to his thigh.

Back in the cargo bay, the crew, supplemented by a couple of cooks and a medic, strained to get the bomb moving down the rollered ramp that ran along the plane's center line. It was tricky and required timing.

"Five… four… three… two… release." The pilot, Miguel Lanza, pulled back on his yoke to point the nose of the plane upward slightly. This made the roll easier.

The five men of the crew, all clustered behind, heaved and pushed. The bomb began to roll to the door, picking up speed as it went down the heavy wooden ramp. The bomb disappeared from view as the plane, lightened by a ton, lurched upward. Lanza, stomach sinking as the plane arose, immediately applied throttle to get this Dodo out of the way of the next one-number two of four on the mission-coming in to the release point.

"Okay, boys," shouted the sweating, panting crew chief, leaning with one arm on the wooden frame. "Let's go back and slide the next one into position.

Amid Sada sat on a folding chair on the flat roof over his bunker, sipping a tepid fruit juice. His eyes were fixed on the hospital, standing tall and white except for black bull's-eyes painted on each side. He heard, distantly, the drone of aircraft.

Suddenly the interior of the darkened hospital lit up, showing a montage of broken glass and torn-out cinder blocks cascading from every window.

"I will never again doubt one of your hunches, sir," Qabaash admitted.

"Wait for it, my friend," Sada chided, wagging a finger. "The building still stands. It won't for long."

Seconds passed. Once again the former hospital building flashed with internal fire. This time, one corner began to sag. In half a minute another bomb, this one not so accurate as the first two, struck it on the side, almost exactly on one of the painted bull's-eyes. An entire section of masonry peeled away to fall crashing to the street below.

Qabaash looked awed. "It was likely a fluke, my friend," Sada announced.

It was nearly two full minutes before yet another bomb hit the building, again internally. That one managed to start a fire, though the next put it out while crumbling one wing completely.

"How many, do you think, Amid?"

"Why, as many as it takes, Qabaash," Sada answered calmly. "And if what they have tonight isn't enough, they'll be back tomorrow. The enemy has plenty of time, and apparently no shortage of munitions."

Command Post, Legio del Cid, outskirts of Ninewa, 29/2/461 AC

"Truth is, Carl," Carrera admitted to Kennison, "that I'd have spared the building if I could. I couldn't. The other side probably had no choice but to use it, and made the right choice of at least not hiding behind it. But because they used it, it had to go."

"Seems like a bloody awful waste to me, Pat." For some reason Kennison seemed more troubled by the destruction of the former hospital than by anything that had gone before. Or perhaps it was a cumulative thing, with the hospital being the final straw. In either case, he had tendered his resignation to Carrera that morning, just before sunrise.

Carrera's face was a stiff mask as he folded the written resignation carefully and placed it in one pocket of his battledress, rebuttoning the pocket when he was done. "In any case, Carl, no, I won't let you go. You signed on for two years and for two years you will stay, in irons if necessary. You were under no illusions about what I intended and you've known me long enough and well enough to know how I think and how I operate. None of this should be a surprise to you."

Kennison looked utterly miserable, haggard and drawn. "That's not the surprise, Pat. Everything you say is true. The surprise is how I feel about it. That, I never had a clue to. I don't even disagree, in principle, about the things you've done. It just bothers me in ways I can't deal with. Pat… I haven't slept in a week and it isn't just because of the cluster fuck the sandstorm caused."

Carrera turned away for a moment, thinking hard. I don't have a decent replacement here for him. Kuralski could do it, but he's out of country. Jimenez could, too, but I can't afford to pull him out of Fourth Cohort. I need Harrington where he is. Triste? No. Great intel guy but not an operator. Parilla could run a staff well enough provided someone else gave him the overall plan. But he's still bedridden.

Fuck. I'll have to try to do it myself. That, and try to get Kennison back on track.

"Sergeant Major!" Carrera called.

"Sir."

"Tribune Kennison has not slept in a week. He is currently unfit for his duties. Place him under arrest. Go to my vehicle and ask Soult for a bottle-no better make it two bottles-of scotch. Take the tribune back to the last town we passed and get him drunk as a skunk. Then put him to bed. Place a guard on him with instructions to fill him with more booze when he awakens. Have the legion's chief surgeon check on him from time to time."

Kennison looked at Carrera skeptically. Fine, we'll play it this way for now. But I don't think that's the problem.

Sada's Command Post, Ninewa, 32/2/461 AC

The bombing had become more or less continuous, with one Dodo overhead at all times ready to drop a self-guiding bomb- mostly lighter, five-hundred-pounders-any and every time a group of Sada's men showed themselves. The bombs seemed to come down every five or ten minutes even without a visible target.

This is becoming a problem, Sada thought to himself. Another bomb fell somewhere in the town, not so far away that it didn't shake the commander even down in his bunker. At night we have these things, during the day it's the smaller, single engine dive bombers; those, or helicopters configured to carry rockets and machine guns. Both times, day or night, we have their RPVs patrolling for targets for the aircraft, the artillery, and the heavy mortars.

If it's becoming hard on my morale it must be worse for the men.

Right, then. Best get out of this frigging hole and go see them.

Command Post, Legio del Cid, 32/2/461 AC

"That's him!" Fahad shouted in the CP. "That's Sada." An RPV pilot began calling off the grid coordinates of the spot where the enemy commander had been seen.

Carrera, who was spending a lot more time at headquarters than he liked since he had sent Kennison away to sleep and rest, hurried to look at the monitor that carried an image from a circling RPV.

"Are you sure, Fahad?"

"I'm sure. No one walks quite like he does. That's him."

Already the fire direction center was on the radio, giving precise coordinates to one of the Dodos circling overhead.

"Belay that!" Carrera shouted. All chatter in the CP stopped as every face turned to their chief with looks that said plainly, "Are you out of your fucking mind?"

Carrera swept a glare back at his headquarters troops. "Yes, I am probably out of my fucking mind. But I want him alive. He's worth more to us, over there, enforcing the rules than he would be dead and some other asshole breaking them."

He did not give his real reason. I have a use for this man, in the future, if he lives.

Assembly Area Principe Eugenio, just east of Ninewa

Cruz ducked into the trench as the black flower blossomed just a hundred meters away, sending steel shards zinging through the air like homicidal bees.

"They're getting better," Sanchez said. "You've got to admit it; they are getting better."

Cruz knew that shells were in short supply for the legion. Allegedly, they'd been given number one priority for both trucks and aircraft coming down the highway from Mangesh Base. The problem was, so the tribune had explained, that "number one priority doesn't mean the only priority." Food had to be brought, and that was bulky. Nor had the water purification point been moved right up to the river that fed the city yet. The legion needed a lot of water, too, about forty thousand gallons a day. Other items of ammunition, notably high explosives, grenades and small arms, were also needed and took up shipping space. The rockets for the big multiple rocket launchers wouldn't fit the legion's trucks except for the trucks that accompanied the launchers, and they were already carrying what they could.

Making things worse, the gringo commander of the 731st Airborne was pissed at Carrera-no, Cruz didn't know the full story- and had pulled out his own heavy transport.

So shells were being hoarded, for now at least, and the Sumeri mortars-they didn't seem to have any artillery available, but they had a shitpot full of mortars-were having a field day.

One of the century's snipers fired a single round from his Draco. He must have missed; he cursed the thing roundly as soon as he looked through his scope. He fired again.

The flyboys claimed to have gotten some. So far as Cruz could see it hadn't made a lot of difference. The Sumeri mortars barked whenever someone from the legion had the temerity to show himself.

Still, shells were coming down the pike. Stockpiles were being built.

"Won't be long now," Cruz muttered.

"Incoming!" Sanchez shouted.

About four kilometers behind the trench in which Cruz sheltered, Mendoza, del Rio and Sergeant Perez sat in the shade of a tarp stretched out from one side of the tank to block out the setting sun. Even with the tarp it was hotter than the hinges on the gates of Hell. The air shimmered. Mendoza knew it would be even worse inside the tank. Many virtues the Jaguar had. Air conditioning was, sadly, not among them.

About seven hundred meters away a century of heavy, 160mm, mortars barked together. The blast was enough to make the tank pitch slightly. The mortars, like the tank, were out of Sumeri range.

"Bastards could warn us when they're about to do that," del Rio complained, sticking a finger in his ear and rotating it slightly to emphasize the point.

Perez shrugged, indifferent. Mendoza seemed hardly to notice.

"Something bothering you, Jorge?" Perez asked.

Jorge shook his head no, but then added, "I was thinking about a girl back home, Sergeant."

"Girlfriend?"

"No… no. Just a girl I used to see at church. Beautiful girl, perfection in miniature. I don't even know her name, never had the courage to ask. But I remember her, wearing a yellow print dress and a white sun hat."

Both Perez and del Rio turned to look.

"Never had the courage to ask her name?" del Rio asked. "What? Am I sharing my tank with a pussy? What are you going to do when we roll into town?"

"I'm not afraid of that, Stefano, but girls can be scary. "

Perez laughed. "Yes, Jorge, girls can be scary. But I'll tell you what; we get out of this, I am going to march you to that church and when the girl shows up again march you over to her and introduce you."

"Jeez, Sarge, would you?"

"I said they were fucking getting better. I didn't want them to get this fucking good," Sanchez cursed as he fired his rifle at a Sumeri raiding party that had sprung seemingly out of nowhere.

Rivera's light machine gun chattered, sending streams of mixed ball and tracer out toward the enemy. Cruz simply moved his rifle sights from one shadow to another, firing as the sights lined up. He didn't think he was hitting anybody but one had to try.

From Cruz's right another, heavier, machine gun began to trace lines across the ground. As if the machine gun were a spur to action, one of the Sumeris shouted, " Allahu akbar," God is great. Firing from the hip the whole crew began charging at Cruz's position. The machine gun killed a number of them but, without wire to slow the Sumeris down, they were quickly out of its arc of fire and descending on the century's forward trench.

"Shit, there must be a hundred of them," Sanchez said between shots and bursts.

Cruz set his rifle down and reached for the clackers-detonating devices-that led to a couple of directional antipersonnel mines out to the front. An earlier generation, on a different planet, might have called the mines "claymores." Cruz squeezed both clackers and was rewarded with a double blast. Perhaps as many as twenty of the attackers went down, some silently, some moaning, still others screaming. The rest plunged on.

"Fix bayonets! Fix bayonets! Fix bay-" screamed Sergeant del Valle. He never finished as an unlucky bullet hit him from the side and, breaking through the softer armor there, passed through his chest. He fell without another sound.

Cruz fumbled nervously for his own bayonet, fixed to his side by his web belt and its carrier. Then he unsnapped the leather strap that held the blade in place, withdrew it, and fixed it onto the end of his rifle. He didn't have time to see to Sanchez and Rivera before the Sumeris were upon them.

A bearded face approached, shouting something unintelligible. Above the face a rifle, also with fixed bayonet, was held in both hands. It was intimidating looking, but bad technique. Cruz went under the upraised rifle and plunged his own bayonet deep into the Sumeri's gut. The Sumeri's eyes went wide as his mouth formed an "O" of surprise. His knees crumpled and, as he went to them, his body pulled Cruz's lodged rifle down with it. Cruz struggled to free the blade.

Shit! What is it about me that keeps causing sharp pointy things to get stuck in people?

" Allahu akbar," sounded from another of the enemy, too close in space and time for Cruz to risk trying to free his rifle. He dropped it and faced the Sumeri, left arm and leg bent and forward, showing as little of his own body to the enemy as possible.

The Sumeri lunged. Cruz batted the rifle slightly to one side, just enough to get inside its reach. His right fist lanced upward, catching the Sumeri on the jaw. The blow wasn't enough to knock his opponent out, but it did manage to stun him. Cruz took advantage of that to land another two blows onto the enemy's solar plexus. The Sumeri dropped the rifle and went down, gasping. Cruz took the rifle away from the Sumeri, grasped it in both his own hands and smashed the butt down onto the Sumeri's head, twice.

"Cruz!" screamed Rivera from where he lay, flat on the ground.

The team leader looked up and saw two of the enemy standing over his light machine gunner. Before he could fire both had driven their bayonets down. One, it was later determined, glanced off the glassy metal plate of Rivera's armor. The other sank into his throat.

Shrieking something incomprehensible even to himself, Cruz charged, firing his captured weapon from his hip. At this range, even that way he couldn't miss. Nor did the Sumeris have body armor. They went down. Then the magazine of the captured rifle went dry. Cruz reloaded from his own magazine pouches-for both sides carried, after all, the same model rifle-and fired again, one burst each, into the two enemy soldiers.

When he turned Cruz saw two things. One was that, on the left, the rest of the century was charging to his aid. The other was Sanchez, snarling and cursing and holding off three of them on his own, his bayonet flicking back and forth to threaten each in turn.

Without help, and soon, it would be a losing game.

Cruz charged. One of the Sumeris broke and ran back from whence he had come. Still others, from different parts of the battlefield, were fleeing as well. One of the two still facing Sanchez turned instead to face Cruz.

The two Sumeris saw the rapidly approaching rest of the century. First one, then the other, dropped their weapons and raised their hands. Sanchez was about to kill his man, even so, when Cruz ordered, "No."

"Three dead, sir," Cruz told Carrera the next morning on the same spot as the previous night's action. Bodies still littered the ground. "No wounded, ours or theirs. It was… you know… too close for that. Too close to take chances."

"I understand. Who was killed here?" Carrera asked.

"Sergeant del Valle, he was my section leader," Cruz answered, "plus my own light machine gunner, Rivera, and Private Aguinaldo from Second Fire Team."

The signifer added, "One of the other sections lost a man as well, Legate."

"Prisoners?" Carrera asked.

"Cruz and Sanchez took two, Legate," answered the century signifer. "I've already had them escorted to the command post. There weren't any others. Not that we've found so far, anyway."

As if to give the lie to the signifer, one of the medics forward of the trench and examining the bodies felled by the directional mines and the machine gun fire shouted, "Hey, we need a field ambulance. I've got two live ones here."

The signifer shrugged. It had been a long night and the morning was young. No surprise they found some men wounded who hadn't been in the close fight.

Carrera looked around again, counting the Sumeri bodies in and around the trench. He noted the clackers lying inside it and the swath of bodies stretched out in two triangles in front of it. He nodded at the signifer who, by prearrangement ordered, "Corporal Cruz, PFC Sanchez, Attention." The signifer, the centurion, and the few legionaries standing nearby also went to attention.

"Orders will come along later," Carrera explained, as he reached into the chest pocket of his battle dress. "We'll make it formal then, too. For now, though, I see no reason to wait. Gentlemen, I am awarding you the Cruz de Coraje en Acero. This is the first step in the six steps of honor the legion has instituted to recognize and reward bravery. You two are only the fourth and fifth such awards we have made since coming here though I rather doubt you will be the last." Carrera hung a medal, a simple cross on a ribbon, around the neck of Cruz. He then did the same to Sanchez.

"This medal is, as I said, only the first step. You will wear it today, as this is the day I awarded it to you. You will also wear it on the day we make it formal, read official orders over you-bless you, so to speak-and present them in front of the legion. On other days you will not wear it, until you earn the next step, the Cross of Valor in Bronze." Carrera smiled slightly. "If you like how they feel on this day and that future day, you will just have to be mindlessly brave one more time."

Clapping both men on the shoulders and shaking their hands, Carrera turned and walked away.

Cruz didn't think too much of the award. Still, he thought, I'm a corporal? Really? Damn.

Sada's Command Bunker, 33/2/461 AC

"What was the butcher's bill, Qabaash?"

" Amid, we sent out ninety-seven men, nearly a full company. Only forty-three returned."

"A bitter price," Sada said. "Bitter but necessary." Sada looked at Qabaash. "You don't understand why it was necessary, do you?"

Qabaash raised his chin and shook his head. Being mostly out of the action was hard on him and very depressing. "No, Amid, I don't. I wish I did."

Patiently, Sada explained, "What's it worth paying to make sure the enemy doesn't sleep well at night, Qabaash? What price should we pay to make sure that he spends more of his effort watching out for a surprise attack than preparing to attack us here? You're a fine fighter, Major. You have to learn to be a thinker as well."

Command Post, Legio del Cid, 35/2/461 AC

"Well, it's not like I didn't try to accommodate them," Carrera said, watching the mass of aircraft overhead and on the other side of the river. The aircraft, a mix of C-31 and C-41 medium and heavy lift, were disgorging the better part of the 731st Airborne Brigade, Federated States Army. The air was thick with parachutes.

"You robbed t'em, t'ey t'ink," answered McNamara. "T'ree times t'ey planned a drop, t'ree times we overran and passed by t'e drop zone before t'ey could execute. An', Boss, you know as well as I do t'at planning a drop takes time and effort. So, yeah, t'ey're pissed at you. T'at's why t'ey stopped letting their forward support battalion help us, to slow us down so t'ey could make a jump… a 'combat' jump."

"Interesting application of decision cycle theory, anyway, Sergeant Major. First time I've heard or read of an occasion where a military organization is outmaneuvered by its friends because its friends just decide faster and move faster than the organization is capable of."

McNamara shrugged. Fancy theories were fine, to him, provided they didn't interfere with the actual fighting.

"Anyway, we've got a problem or, rather, several. I've got a tacit agreement with the Sumeris on the rules for this fight. The 731 ^ st is not a part of that agreement. I know their commander, and he's a dickhead. Jeff Lamprey, ever heard of him?"

McNamara scratched a cheek, idly. "Name only," he answered.

"Stuffed-shirt, stick up his ass, prig," Carrera said, disdainfully. "Tall, handsome, manly… who happens to be a stuffed-shirt, stick up his ass prig. Not too manly, though, some say. I've been told, by people in a position to know, that when he was a captain commanding a company his wife-beautiful girl, too, they say-used to fuck his lieutenants. I don't think he ever quite recovered from that. That's one of the reasons I'm inclined to believe the story. He's the kind of guy who insists on saluting in the field and that troops should shave daily even when drinking water is short.

"Now, technically," Carrera continued, "by the contract Campos signed with us, I outrank him. I know him though and he won't listen to that. Frankly, Sergeant Major, we loathe each other at a really deep, sincere and personal level. So we are faced with the prospect of two forces trying to take the same town at the same time, with essentially no chance that the two forces will or even can cooperate. Hmmm… what to do, what to do?"

Carrera paused, obviously thinking hard. McNamara stayed quiet for the moment, worrying about what his boss was thinking. Then Carrera nodded to himself, turned around, and entered the CP.

"Fire support, have we got an armed Dodo overhead?"

"Yes, sir. Two of them, actually."

"Good. Drop the bridge on the other side of town. Immediately."

McNamara, listening, thought, Got to hand it to him. He cuts right to the heart of the problem and finds a solution. It might not be an elegant solution. It might even piss off everyone in the entire world. But he does come up with a solution, every time. Jesus, I see no fucking end of trouble out of this one.

Lamprey and a picked group of paratroopers hit, rolled and recovered. In an instant they had doffed their chutes, prepared their weapons, and were racing on foot to seize the one bridge over the river that led into the town.

The commander of the 731st Airborne saw a dark streak above the bridge. Even without knowing he was still pretty sure what it meant.

"Everybody, DOWN!" he shouted, while still seven or eight hundred meters away from his objective.

KABOOM!

Lamprey looked up to see several concrete sections of the bridge flying up in what looked like an attempt to achieve low orbit.

"Come on, follow me," Lamprey shouted, getting to his feet and resuming his race. He had gained perhaps another hundred meters when the bridge erupted again. Again Lamprey threw himself to the ground.

KABOOM!

"That son of a bitch, undisciplined, insubordinate bastard," he muttered when he reached the bridge only to discover it really didn't exist anymore.

Sada's Command Post

"But, why? I don't understand, I really don't understand, why they dropped the bridge, Amid."

So far his enemy's actions had made a certain sense to Sada. He had to confess, though that this…

"Makes no sense to me either, Qabaash. So it must be a trick. Move Fourth Battalion from reserve to facing the river."

"That's going to leave us stretched facing the other enemy," Qabaash objected.

"I know. But I am guessing that they dropped the bridge precisely to lull us into thinking that no attack would be coming across the river. Thus, there almost certainly will be an attack from across the river."

Dodo Number Two, above Ninewa, 1/3/461 AC

The load this time was five-hundred-pounders, twenty-four of them. Each of the other five birds in the mission carried a similar load, except for Number Four, which carried five two-thousand- pounders. Four was flying somewhere off to the left. Its bombs were programmed for several hardened targets, which did not include Sada's command bunker, within the town.

The navigator-who was doing double duty as the bombardier, to the extent the guided bombs even required a bombardier- announced, "Release in… five… four… three…"

Command Post, Legio del Cid

"-two… one," intoned Triste from where he stood between the bank of radios and the operational maps. There was a delay of about half a minute between his announcement of "one" and the first rumblings of huge aerial bombs exploding in the city.

"It takes a while for the bombs to hit ground," he explained, a little sheepishly, when Carrera turned an uplifted eyebrow towards him.

Carrera shrugged-a few seconds one way or the other didn't really matter under the circumstances-and returned his attention to the operational maps.

One of these, the largest scale one, Ridenhour was updating with the latest information from Thomas's headquarters, still ensconced in al Jahara. The Federated States had made rapid progress, despite the false start at the beginning of the campaign. Even now its armored columns closed on the capital of the Republic of Sumer, Babel. Whether they would lunge right into the town or wait to allow slower moving infantry to catch up and do the detailed clearing was a matter of some debate within the legion's own headquarters.

Ridenhour, himself, didn't know. He was reasonably sure that Thomas was still undecided. True, the Sumeri Army had mostly folded up whenever FSA troops had gotten close. But there had been exceptions, a few times and places where they'd fought like demons. This was usually the doing of some local commander. Let one or two of that sort be inside the capital with a good sized body of troops under his command and a bold lunge with armor into the town could turn into a disaster.

There's not a lot of difference it makes to us, Carrera thought, with a mental shrug. And it's not like I can affect it one way or the other.

He turned his attention away from the map that showed events he could do nothing about and towards the local map that detailed the actions of his own force. There, things appeared to be going pretty smoothly. Third and Fourth Cohorts were holding position. First, Second, Fifth and Sixth were either in or moving to their jump off positions south of the town.

And, he thought, since there isn't a whole hell of a lot I can do here, I may as well go forward and at least see the action and be seen.

"Mitch, Soult; grab your radios. We're going up to see First Cohort move in."

Assembly Area Principe Eugenio

Corporal Cruz, PFC Sanchez, and the two new men just arrived a few days prior, Robles-younger brother to the Cazador sergeant strangled on Hill 1647-and Correa, got as low and as forward into shelter as the shallow trench permitted.

"Any time now," Cruz said, after consulting his watch. "Any time n-."

To the east, the sky lit up as one aerially delivered bomb after another slammed in, disintegrating buildings and the men those buildings contained. Cruz and the other three, even at this distance, were buffeted and shaken by the bombardment. Bits of hot metal, some of them substantial, flew overhead or careened into the friendly side of the scraped-out trench.

The bombardment went on and on, averaging one major explosion every twelve to fifteen seconds. Cruz lost track of the time. Even before it was finished, every mortar and gun of the legion opened up, lighting up both the open desert skyline and the interior of Ninewa.

Anticipating that the regular bombardment would stay fairly regular, Cruz waited until one of the really big blasts had gone off, waited a few prudent seconds for the metal shards to either pass over or come to rest, and stuck his head up for a risky look.

"It's all smoke and fire," he shouted to his men. "I can't see everything on the edge of town for the smoke, but what I can see has been better than half obliterated." As he watched he saw a substantial building fall to the ground, pouring off bricks as it came down.

He ducked again and just in time as another aerial bomb went off.

Between the distinct sounds of the bombing, Cruz made out the sound of engines, a lot of them, swinging in from the left until they were directly behind him. Then the engines began to grow louder as they moved toward the town, coming closer.

The mechanized cohort had feinted first to the west of the town, then-leaving behind one century to maintain the deception-the rest had turned around and swung wide to three-quarters circle Ninewa again and take up a position to the east. There, behind the First Cohort, they lined up, the remaining three mechanized centuries on line, tanks leading, followed by the Ocelots carrying the infantry.

Perez stood in the hatch of his tank, scanning ahead with his eyes while del Rio, below in the turret, scanned through the tank's thermal imager. Jorge Mendoza just drove, his eyes and crown only just sticking up out of the cramped driver's compartment.

Mendoza felt his heart begin to pound when he heard the century signifer call over the radio, "Roll."

Perez acknowledged the order and echoed it, adding in the directions, "Jorge, aim for those chemlights ahead and stop when we reach them." Mendoza put the tank into gear and began rolling forward, picking up speed quickly as he went. The tank lurched into a shallow trench and then, as Mendoza applied the gas, pulled out of it. It stopped on the other side, rocking back and forth for a moment.

Perez looked around until his eyes rested on a small group of infantry, just rising out of the scraping. "Come on, come on; climb aboard. We haven't got all day." Doubting the infantry could hear him, Perez used his arms to signal that it was time.

Cruz saw the tanker frantically waving for him and his men to climb aboard. He'd never trained on this, but it seemed straightforward enough: climb on, hang on for dear life and hope that the damned thing doesn't fire the main gun until you can climb the hell off.

"Mount up, boys," he ordered over the diesel's roar. "Sanchez, take the tail."

Cruz climbed aboard first, arms grasping for purchase and legs scrambling and slipping on road wheels and treads. He eyed the reactive armor, uncertainly. Rather, he was absolutely certain he didn't want to be anywhere near the damned rolling target if it took a hit and one of the explosive bricks went off.

Then again, if it takes a hit does it really matter? Probably not; probably not even a little. Just be adding insult to-mortal-injury.

Once safely mounted, Cruz reached down an arm to help the next man, Robles, climb up. With Sanchez pushing and Robles pulling they soon had Correa up. Correa and Robles helped Sanchez while Cruz tried to speak to the tank commander.

"I'm Perez," the sergeant shouted over the engine's roar. "We're going to close to within two hundred meters of the edge of town, firing the machine guns like maniacs. Then you grunts get off, along with the rest of your people and clear the edge. After that, we'll lead and you support."

"Why just the machine guns?" Cruz asked.

"Son, you don't want to be on this tank if we fire the main gun," Perez answered. "It… hurts."

"I understand, Sergeant Perez," Cruz shouted back. "Just give me the high sign when it's time to get off."

Perez replaced his combat vehicle crewman's helmet and said something, presumably to the driver. Cruz barely had his men positioned when the tank took off again with a shudder and a lurch.

Mendoza was probably the loneliest man in or on the tank. Perez had del Rio for close company. Even the grunts on back could see each other. All he had was his lonely, isolated compartment… that, and the intruding memory of a beautiful light brown girl in a white hat and yellow print dress singing "Ave Maria," in a church choir.

Brutally, he pushed aside the thought of the unknown, nameless girl to concentrate on his driving. He had a set of Volgan-manufactured night vision goggles on. These were plugged into the tank for juice. They were infrared, the oldest technology, but had the advantage of being able to pick out any mines that the tank's infrared light might illuminate. Jorge saw none but maneuvered around a few suspicious spots anyway, his abrupt movements throwing Perez and del Rio around the turret and certainly pissing off the grunts hanging on over the engine compartment.

Mendoza actually smiled slightly, a sort of schadenfreude, when he thought about the grunts trying desperately to hold on despite his maneuvers. He felt a little ashamed. It isn't that funny, he told himself. Well… maybe it is.

He heard in his headphones, "Tank, halt. Gunner, coax, eleven o'clock, antitank gunner in building."

The coaxial machine gun began to chatter as Cruz felt the sergeant in the hatch tap his shoulder. "Off now, and get low," the sergeant shouted, then turned to use his own pintle-mounted heavy machine gun to fire forward.

Obediently, Cruz pushed Correa off the tank, then turned to give the boot to Sanchez and Robles. Cruz then dove off himself and rolled to a stop next to Correa.

No sooner had he done so than the tank's main gun spoke, the muzzle blast assaulting Cruz's ears painfully and causing his internal organs to ripple. Downrange a building flashed, then exploded, as a high explosive round with delay set on the fuse burst through its wall and detonated inside. Men and parts of men flew out with the walls. The tank rolled forward, its machine guns still spitting at the buildings opposite.

Even though stunned by the muzzle blast, Cruz stood up to a crouch, Correa doing likewise beside him. He looked to the left and saw Sanchez and Robles doing the same. Cruz pointed at the tank's rear panel and pulled Correa along to get them both behind it. Sanchez and Robles joined them there a split second later.

Advancing with the tank, Cruz leaned out and fired a burst at nothing in particular. He hoped the tracers would remind the commander of the tank that he had infantry following. The only thing more frightening to a foot soldier than a friendly tank lurching about without control is an enemy tank lurching about with malicious intent. And the difference in fear factor is not large.

Other tanks, to the left and the right, fired machine guns and high explosive shells into the town. To these suppressive fires were added those of the Ocelots and the supporting infantry. There was some return fire, but the wall of lead put out by the attackers made it, at best, unaimed.

At the very edge of the town, taking cover behind still smoking buildings, the tanks stopped. Like the other infantry, Cruz and his boys surged into the town, to root out the defenders with rifle, bayonet and grenade.

Interlude

13 May, 2092, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden, European Union

Her breathing was labored now. No matter, it wouldn't be long and Margot Tebaf already had had a life with much to be proud of in it.

It has worked out, she thought. It has worked out as we hoped it would.

The pattern of outworld emigration, demographic flux, and expansion of political control by the United Nations, other supranationals, nongovernmental organizations and their supporters had been intimately linked.

The toughest part had been maintaining a working population sufficient to meet needs while getting rid of only enough useless mouths that the progressives of the European Union could maintain power. Once that power had solidified, though, it had become possible to so undercut the semblance of democracy that the votes of the elderly and indigent, the culturally unassimilated and inassimilable had become superfluous.

Old people don't riot when their pensions are cut or eliminated and their children, if any, refuse to take them in, Margot thought. They just die.

Without off world emigration to dump the Moslems, their departures spurred by almost total elimination of welfare and the unavailability of work, it wouldn't have worked either.

Yet their colony on the New World was also a great draw. May they have luck with it.

Better and more satisfying, the cut-off of European immigration forced the United States to accept larger and larger numbers of immigrants as inassimilable as the Moslems were here. Now? Better than half their population owes and feels no loyalty to America, and votes for what it does feel loyalty to. And as we have expanded our power around the world, we have been able to force the United States to accept more and more of our way of doing things. They're still an economic powerhouse, but they can't impose their will anymore.

Even better than that, though, has been the effect of off-world emigration on the Americans. For each one that left has made the place less comfortable for those that remained. And each drop in the comfort level has made more leave. They still think of themselves as a real country. But they're dying. They predicted demographic death for us, but we will be at their funeral.

It was a cheery, if not perfectly accurate, thought for Margot. Thus, when the evening nurse came to check on her, her corpse was smiling broadly.

Chapter Twenty-Three Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure. -Leutnant Weiner, 24th Panzer Division,

Stalingrad, 1942

Ninewa, Revolution Square, 6/3/461 AC

Cruz turned and began to throw up at the base of the half-crushed wall behind which he had his team sheltered. It was bad enough seeing the things done to men in the town. But when a donkey staggered by, dragging its entrails on the ground until its rear legs twisted in them and it fell, bleating piteously? That was just too much.

Sanchez apparently couldn't stand it either. He took the Draco he was carrying, sighted it, and put the poor animal out of its misery. Sanchez beat Robles, carrying the light machine gun vice Rivera, by only a fraction of a second.

"How long we been here?" Robles asked.

" Here, here, or in the town, here? Five days in the town. Here by the square maybe twenty minutes," Sanchez answered. "This time. Last time we got here we lasted a whole hour before they kicked us out again."

"Anyone know how Correa's doing?" Cruz asked through a dry, dusty and overtaxed throat.

"He… died, Cruz," Sanchez answered, sadly. "Yesterday. The medics told me last night."

"Damn," Cruz said, too tired to show any emotion. "Kid was only eighteen."

"Hey, Corp," said Robles. "I'll be sure to let you know when being eighteen saves you from anything. Besides, what are you? Nineteen?"

"Yeah… almost nineteen," Cruz answered.

As Sanchez had said, the square had changed hands numerous times. The statue of Saleh, the Sumeri dictator, that stood in the center of it was pockmarked and missing an arm. Bodies, both from the legion and from the Sumeri Army, littered it. The bodies, like those of Cruz and his two remaining men, were covered with a mix of dust, minute particles of pulverized adobe, concrete and stone, sweat, explosive residue and-in the case of those lying in the square- blood. There were many times more Sumeri bodies than Balboan, largely a function of the body armor worn by the legionaries; that, and their superior training in marksmanship.

"Heads up," Cruz ordered. "White flag, two o'clock."

"Surrender?" asked Sanchez.

"No… don't think so. The Sumeri looks like he still has fight in him. To me it looks like a request for truce to let medical and burial parties in."

Robles lifted his light machine gun as if to fire. Cruz saw this, understood the anger and bitterness that might lead a young man to violate the flag of truce and said, "Knock it off, Robles. We got even for your brother one hundred times over." The private, reluctantly, lowered the weapon's muzzle.

The signifer for the century, a broad but filthy bandage covering half his face and one eye, walked out into the square, a white-well, it had started as white-flag tied onto a pole he held up and ahead. He and the Sumeri met midway, almost at the colossal statue. They nodded at each other in a way that was, if not quite friendly, at least respectful.

The Sumeri made a sweeping gesture which took in the square and all the bodies, living and dead, within it. Then he made something like the sign of the cross, but on one arm, pointing for emphasis at the bandage over the signifer's face.

The signifer nodded agreement, then pointed to his watch. He held up the fingers of one hand, twice. Ten minutes?

The Sumeri shook his head regretfully, once again sweeping around the square with one arm. Too many bodies… and our people are stretched.

Agreeing, the signifer held up all the fingers of the same hand, and repeated the gesture four times. At this the Sumeri seemed happy… or as happy as one could be under the circumstances. He then flashed his five finger sign once again and made as if putting a pistol in his holster. Start the truce, officially, in five minutes. The signifer agreed.

The Sumeri then made a sign as if drawing his pistol and firing it three times into the air. That will be the signal to resume.

At this the signifer nodded, as well. Then both shook hands and walked back.

Five minutes later, parties of legionaries and Sumeris warily entered the square, no weapons in evidence. They searched impartially for the wounded, of which there were a few. These the Balboans took away, irrespective of uniform. They could care for the wounded much better than could the Sumeris' poor medical staff. Moreover, while there was some advantage to making the Sumeris take their own wounded, to make them eat up the little food remaining, Carrera had ordered that starvation was not, in this case, to be used as a weapon.

The dead were taken away by their respective sides, the Sumeri dead to a mosque that had been turned into a morgue not far away, the Balboans to another ad hoc morgue that had been set up in the gymnasium of a captured high school. All the dead were treated with the greatest respect by both sides.

Both sides moved as briskly as exhausted men could be expected to. It was not quite briskly enough. Nearing the end of the truce the original Sumeri officer-lacking decent body armor, generally, they had many more dead to carry away-asked for another ten minutes, which was granted.

Then, exactly thirty-eight minutes and twelve seconds after the first white flag was shown, the bagpipes picked up, three well-spaced shots were fired into the air, and the slaughter resumed.

The only way tanks could lead in city fighting was if there was no real fighting to be done, in other words, if the enemy was either nonexistent or worthless. With a brave and competent enemy, and Sada's boys had shown themselves to be that, it was generally suicide for armor to lead. In that case, and in this, infantry led while armor followed and supported at a distance, suppressing with machine guns or clearing the way with the main gun. They'd proven particularly useful in clearing streets of the mines and booby traps the Sumeris had laid down lavishly.

The really bad part was that the streets made it impossible to use the armor in mass. Instead, one tank or sometimes two would be attached to one infantry century. Sometimes they'd have an Ocelot or two in support and sometimes not. In either case, though, when the rifle, sniper and machine-gun fire came in the crews had to button up and hope the infantry could keep the enemy's antitank teams away while the tank dealt with the threat that it sometimes couldn't really see very well.

In the close confines of the town of Ninewa, and despite having quite good night vision equipment, Perez, del Rio and Mendoza just couldn't see very well, generally. Not having slept much in days didn't help, either.

Still worse, they had no really good communications with the infantry century they were supposed to support. Their blasted antennae had been replaced; that wasn't the problem. Nor was it negligence on the part of the infantry. The grunts had simply lost so many leaders that a sergeant was leading the entire group with the senior section leader a mere corporal, and only one of those. The century had basically lost its ability to coordinate with their supporting tank.

Even worse than that, this century was not the original one. The tanks were in such short supply, never more than sixteen to begin and four had been lost completely, that they had to shunt around from unit to unit.

Neither Perez, nor del Rio, nor Mendoza could remember when they'd slept last. Mendoza thought he might have eaten something the day prior but couldn't be sure. The stewed camel over rice was not something the cohort mess section was really used to preparing, but they'd been reduced to that for the last three days. He might have skipped it yesterday; hard to remember. Too sleepy, too "Jorge, back up! Back up! Back up! Gunner, HE, RGL, two o'clock. Jorge, goddammit, back UP!"

Still half asleep Mendoza automatically shifted gears and backed the tank fifty meters. Before he had gone that distance, though, a rocket-launched grenade lanced out from the half-shattered wreck of an adobe building. It missed the tank, barely, and exploded against a wall behind Jorge and to his left. The tank's automatic defense system hadn't fired because all the blocks on the front had been used up and there hadn't been any spares to replace them. Maybe tomorrow…

Del Rio was apparently not half asleep since the main gun roared even before Jorge applied the brakes. That woke him up fully and in time to watch the adobe building to his right front disintegrate to dust.

Ninewa, Command Post, Legio del Cid, 6/3/461 AC

A Cricket's engine sputtered outside where it had come to a hasty landing just a few seconds ahead of a heavy machine gun's tracers. A short, dark, and stout man, chest still swathed in bandages, climbed painfully down from its high door.

Parilla had to be helped into the building. The first thing he heard upon entering was Patricio Carrera, cursing a storm into a radio. "Listen carefully, you miserable son of a bitch. I said I want…"

Parilla sat heavily and wearily in a folding chair inside. Outside the Cricket that had brought him had its tail picked up by four legionaries and turned to face away from the wind. Once loaded, it would taxi again and face into the wind for takeoff. Another pair of men, wearing white armbands with red crosses, loaded a stretcher in through the rear of the aircraft, then helped another legionary with his chest and shoulder heavily bandaged to climb into the front passenger seat. Loaded, the Cricket took off again in a cloud of propeller-raised dust. Behind the Cricket a NA-23 Dodo with "Lolita" painted on the nose waited patiently while more wounded either boarded or, if stretcher cases, were loaded.

Carrera took one look and asked, "Raul, what the fuck are you doing here? You're still hurt."

Parilla sighed and answered, "I couldn't stand it anymore, lying there while they brought in more and more wounded kids, most of them worse off than I was. So, one of the advantages of being Dux," and he emphasized the title as if to say, which means people do what I tell them to, generally, "is that when I say, 'I want to be flown to the front,' someone is going to bust ass to get me flown to the front."

Carrera smiled. "I missed you, you old bastard. Things are not going all that well and we sure needed you here."

"That's why I came, Patricio."

"Are you up to running things from here?" Carrera asked.

"Yes… with help," Parilla admitted.

"Okay then. Let me show you how things stand." Carrera walked to the map and began to trace with his finger. "We've got about twothirds of the town, plus this airport," Carrera's head inclined in the direction of the Nabakov-23. "The Sumeris are still hanging on to the local university, backed up here against the river, and this corner." The finger showed the northeast area of the town, marked as being still in Sumeri hands. "This group didn't go into the school, by the way, to try to gain shelter by hiding in an off-limits target. They knew we wouldn't feel terribly restricted by that and sent a parliamentaire to assure us we could engage them there. They're only in it because it's all they have left."

"Fighting strength is down" Carrera continued, "dangerously down. We've got nothing but MPs and walking wounded guarding prisoners and we've cannibalized the rear echelon for riflemen. Even so, average century rifle strength is only about three-quarters, more in some, less in others. That's even with the four hundred replacements fresh out of training that Christian rushed us from Balboa."

Parilla raised a finger. "I can shed a little light and hope on the replacement situation. Another one hundred and fifty… ummm… fifty-four are due in day after tomorrow. And another one hundred and eighty or so in ten days."

"That might help; the next contingent, I mean. If we haven't finished taking this place before ten days are up, I'll resign."

Parilla inhaled deeply and, with obvious reluctance and distaste, said, "And that's another problem. The papers back home are howling for your head over these reprisals. Some of the politicos are, too. You haven't been up on international news here, have you?"

"No, why?"

"The Taurans are talking about putting out a warrant for your arrest from the Cosmopolitan Criminal Court."

"Fuck 'em," Carrera answered, with no noticeable degree of concern.

"Okay, just thought you might like to know. Anyway, I can handle things here." Parilla looked over the manning charts hanging on one wall. "Legate, you need to get forward to lead this legion."

Carrera looked at the same charts, even as Parilla did. "Can you get by without a couple of the staff?" he asked.

"Who did you have in mind taking?"

"Rocaberti, Daugher, Bowman. Plus Mitchell and Soult. I had to shift Johnson to 3rd Cohort to replace its commander."

"Where's Carl Kennison?" Parilla asked.

"Here, Duce," Kennison answered unexpectedly from the door.

Carrera raised a single eyebrow, which Kennison answered by saying, "I'll be fine for now, Pat. We can talk later, after the battle's over."

Carrera nodded. "Fine. I'll be on my way then." He glanced around to make sure all five men he'd said he wanted to take were present. "You people I mentioned; on me in ten minutes, ready to rock."

Manuel Rocaberti had done his level best to be as useful at headquarters as possible, hoping thereby to escape being sent anywhere but. He wasn't lazy, after all; he just wasn't too terribly brave. He'd learned that over a decade ago when, in the face of an FSC attack on Balboa he had run, deserting his men and his command. He'd have been shot, he knew, if his side had actually won. Fortunately, for him, they had not and in the chaos after the fall of Pina, the ex-dictator, no one had thought to prosecute him. Rather, no one in a position to had ever thought to. He was reasonably sure that Jimenez, among others, would have been glad to see him dead.

Thus it was with a mix of relief and trepidation that Rocaberti found himself suddenly placed in command over an understrength infantry century with a single tank attached. The relief came from the fact that no one in the century or the cohort over it had any obvious reason personally to want Rocaberti dead. The trepidation came from the fact that the century was facing a large number of Sumeris who did want him dead, albeit only in an impersonal way. That was small comfort.

Even so, Rocaberti was an experienced officer, an experienced commander, and well above the rank normally associated with the command of a single century. There was some good he could do. He began well enough, reorganizing the century and letting one badly overtasked sergeant become his assistant, rather than having the entire weight bearing down on the poor sergeant's own young shoulders. Then he'd seen to the supply situation, ensuring especially that more ammunition was ordered. Lastly, after talking amiably with some of the men, he'd set upon the cooks. There would be something better than boiled camel over rice this evening.