Carnifex (16 page)

"Good of you to come by, James," President Karl Schumann said as the two shook hands by the desk. "Please have a seat," Schumann indicated a couch on the other side of the Trapezoid, as the presidential office was known.

After Malcolm had seated himself, and Schumann had taken a chair opposite, the President asked, "What are we going to do about Sumer and Pashtia?"

"As far as Sumer goes, Karl, we can do pretty much as we like. Their election two weeks ago of a man who has expressly vowed to get rid of the parliamentary constitution we gave them fairly well absolves us of any further obligations there. On the other hand, I am reliably informed that that man, Adnan Sada,
is
very capable and
very
ruthless and quite possibly doesn't need any more support from us. Win-win, and we can start pulling out in a couple of months."

"All to the good," Schumann agreed. "What about Pashtia?"

"That one we must fight out," Malcolm said. "It's the only campaign in the war that has strong bipartisan support. Moreover, the last administration, mostly by virtue of invading Sumer and sucking up jihadi money and fighters that would otherwise have gone to Pashtia, made Pashtia look like it was won already."

"And wasn't it?"

"No, Karl," Malcolm said. "With Sumer lost to them, the
Ikhwan
know they must fight it out in Pashtia or give up all claim to legitimacy. Moreover, the money and fighters that used to go to Sumer will now go there. Worse, they have developed other sources of funding. Worst of all, the programs the last administration tried to use to interfere with that funding we caused to be destroyed to discredit the Federalists in order to regain power. We can hardly use those programs ourselves."

Schumann chuckled. "Are you really a man of principle, James? Is that even possible? Never mind; the same media who undermined the last president to get us back into power will completely ignore anything we do that helps us stay in power."

"I'm not so sure of that, Karl."

"Never mind that, either, James.
I
am sure. The press has a price though."

Malcolm cocked his head, inquisitively.

"The mercenary group from Balboa must go. The editor of the First Landing Times was explicit about that."

"Oh, Mr. President, they're
going
."

Carrera had known what was coming, at least in rough outline. This explained why he had had VIP quarters assigned to Virgil Rivers and a dusty tent with an unmattressed cot to the assistant deputy undersecretary of war, the disgustingly fat Kenneth O'Meara-Temeroso. Rivers, being a gentleman, had, of course, protested. Carrera had answered, "It's the quarters you're assigned or the guard house for both of you." Rivers had then immediately walked in the direction of the guard house before being escorted back to his quarters.

"He'll get even for that, Pat," Rivers said, later that evening, over drinks in Carrera's adobe brick bungalow. The quarters were fairly cool in themselves, made more so by a small and straining window air conditioner and several overhead fans. Rivers was a little surprised to see that his own, temporary, VIP quarters were considerably more ornate and comfortable than Carrera's permanent hooch. He didn't know that the VIP quarters were actually the one's Carrera had shared with Lourdes.

Carrera shrugged. "What's he going to do that he isn't going to do anyway? Don't sweat it, Virg; I'm just getting my digs in first. He
is
here to fire us, right?"

Rivers just nodded, half saddened and half embarrassed.

"Oh . . . cheer up, for Christ's sake. It isn't like there's much to do here anymore. Sada—he's the Sumeri we've been working with since shortly after the beginning—anyway, Sada wants to hire one reinforced cohort of about two thousand men as a back up reaction force. I'll give him a cut rate, something I would never do for your SecWar. That will help pay the bills. And then I think there may be some private contracts here and there from people who need a little muscle. Have to see how that rolls out, though. In any case, we have enough to get by on until the FS realizes it
needs
us again."

"That won't be long," Rivers said. "One of the big advantages you've got is your troops are well trained and well equipped, but they're not spoiled. You can get by in a logistically austere environment better than FS troops can. I give it eighteen months and we'll be begging to hire you."

Carrera agreed, "Yes, we need about a third to a half the transport an FS division does. So, again yes, we're better suited to a place—Pashtia, say—without good road, rail or ports. As for Pashtia, do you really think it will take eighteen months?"

"Maybe not," Rivers conceded.

Carrera checked his watch. "Virg, I'm accompanying a Cazador maniple on a raid tomorrow morning at o-dark thirty. It's more of a training opportunity than a serious problem but I really need to hit the rack now. A driver will be parked outside all night. I won't offer you the full hospitality of the camp but I will point out that the O' and C' Club has several dozen women available for hire."

Rivers held his hands up in mock terror, then said, "Tempting, but no thanks."

"Up to you. We should be done by noon or so. I'll see you and his lowliness tomorrow about fourteen thirty; will that suit?"

"Just fine."

The next morning O'Meara-Temeroso awoke and discovered he had not, after all, slept alone. Filthy, and having no clue about communal washing facilities, he scratched at his obscenely obese and smelly flesh in rage and misery until Rivers found him and drove him to his own quarters and the blessed shower.

Seeing the comfort which with Rivers had spent the night enraged O'Meara-Temeroso even more. After that, the bureaucrat was not only frantically scratching; he was spitting with fury. Rivers made no comment, but merely pointed to the shower and handed the assistant deputy undersecretary of war a bar of harsh but fast-acting flea soap. To add injury to deliberate insult, the soap burned like the devil, especially around the more tender spots.

Thus, when Rivers and O'Meara-Temeroso arrived at the camp and legion headquarters, and were escorted to Carrera's office, the undersecretary was almost apoplectic with anger, rage and hate. Carrera could see a vein throbbing in his head.

The undersecretary proceeded to spit out, "You're fired, you fascist mercenary bastard. Do you hear me? EFF-EYE-ARR-EEE-DEE. FIRED! When your contract runs out in three months there will be no more, d'ya hear me? No more! Moreover, we're going to pay whatever is due you directly to your sponsoring government. You can go to them to beg for scraps from the table."

Click.

Carrera smiled serenely. He admonished, "Please, Mr. Undersecretary; control yourself. Three months, you say? That's no problem. Since you have just announced a material breach of our contract this legion will be gone from Sumer in two weeks. Oh, we'll have to turn over some of our equipment and supplies to the Sumeris; that or burn them. Never fear though. We'll keep track and when you come looking to hire us again everything you've cost us will be added to our fee, with interest from today. Hope you appreciate having to send an additional FS division over here in a hurry even though your administration promised to draw down the war."

The serene smile became positively radiant.

"Good day to you, sir. You can thank General Rivers that I haven't had you shot. But before you leave answer one question; is your name O'Meara-Temeroso because your mother wasn't quite sure who your father was and just decided to split the difference?"

The tough part had been coming up with a single sailor from the Yamatan ship,
Tojo Hidecki Maru
, willing to beg for his life. Twenty-one of the twenty-two captives had simply glared at their captors, returning curses and spit for kicks and blows. Courage was perhaps the most notable trait for the Yamatans. With no other audience to their bravery, they endured for the sake of their ancestors.

One had been younger and weaker. After beating him mercilessly, tearing out his finger- and toenails, crushing his testicles, and applying flame to the soles of his feet, that Yamatan had been turned into a weeping, pleading caricature of a man. He begged for the camera now.

In mid-plea a single shot rang out. In the camera's view the sailor's head exploded in gory technicolor. The body flopped bonelessly to the tiled floor and twitched. The firer raised his rifle over his head and shouted, "
Alahu Akbar!
"

The camera shifted angle to the leader of a Xamari pirate band. The chief's head and face were covered. He spoke no Japanese and so made his announcement in English.

"You were warned. That was one. We hold another twenty-one of your sailors. Meet our just demands or those will also be killed at a rate of one per day, beginning tomorrow at sunrise. The rate—either of payment or of execution—will not change. If you pay us our just demand of twenty-two million FSD by this evening, the remaining twenty-one will be released unharmed. If you do not pay before twenty days have passed, it will cost you the same amount but all you will receive is the last man and the bodies of the other twenty-one. The choice is yours."

Within a few hours copies of the tape were on their way to Yamato . . . and
al Iskandariya
news.

To the four hundred and seventy-four crew of the
Mercy
there was no choice. Rather, the choices were either continuing on, canceling their mission to the small and impoverished Uhuran state of Mpende, asking one of the world's navies to grant an escort, or hiring armed guards themselves. Abjuring violence, they chose, not without a certain nobility, to remain true to their principles and continue on, without escort or guards, and even with the warning that piracy along the Xamar coast was growing completely out of hand.

There was no large cross—hateful symbol to the pirates—to mark the ship. Neither was there a large red star. The cross would have been little more than an aiming point but the star would have declared the ship quite off limits.

The Xamari pirates came at night, a night virtually without moonlight. The engines of their three small craft were muffled. They had arms in their hands.

Their boats, too, had been muffled, with rubber inner tube bumpers around the prow to absorb the shock and sound of coming close alongside a target ship. The boats' captains eased back on the throttles as they came alongside, matching speed with the Mercy.

At each boat's prow a man stood with a grapnel and rope. These they swung to a blur before launching them upward. Two of the three took hold immediately. The third took two tries before it found purchase.

As fast as the grapples were set, other men, one per rope, scampered upward bearing rope ladders on their backs. A single good climber, armed but otherwise unencumbered, followed the ladder bearers and stood guard while the ladders were affixed.

It all went very smoothly after that. A dozen men climbed up one rope ladder, fifteen up a second, nineteen up the third. Once assembled on the deck their leader, a son of Abdulahi by a not very important wife, gave his last minute instructions.

"Go forth from top to bottom. Capture all and assemble them here. Kill only when you can't help it or when the infidels disobey. Rape none of them; there will be a fair division of spoils later. Report to me here when you have found the ship's safe. Destroy none of the medical equipment or supplies; they can be sold. Now go forward and do your duty by your clan and your faith."

Going after the filthy capitalists, down below, was one thing. After all, how much sympathy could one summon for a class always eager to underbid each other for the rope that would be used to hang them all? But going after non-governmental organizations, the shaft of Robinson's spear; that was something else again.

"It's pretty depressing," observed
Peace's
captain, Marguerite Wallenstein. "Bad enough that the local office of Amnesty, Interplanetary was defanged. What do we do when one part of our overall program attacks another?"

Robinson nodded his head glumly at the tall blond. Though Wallenstein was approximately a century and a half old, anti-agathic treatments kept her looking, and acting—in bed at least, like a twenty-five year old. Overall, Robinson much preferred her to the other crew with which he made do from time to time.

"Depressing is hardly strong enough," he said with disgust.

The news was all over television, down below. Likewise, the local net was eaten up with it; a hospital ship captured, its safe robbed, a dozen of its crew butchered for the cameras. Even now the broadcasts showed a long line of impressed civilians in the former capital of Xamar unloading everything from crates of morphine and antibiotics to X-ray machines to cots.

Worse, the captors had announced that unless ransom was paid the crew would be auctioned off as slaves. Since the going ransom was what had become the standard of late, a million FSD a head, no one who was willing to pay was also in a financial position to. No more was Robinson, even had he been inclined.

On the other hand, the new progressive administration in the Federated States, which
did
have the wherewithal to pay, simply could not for political reasons.

Wallenstein rested her chin on slender, graceful hands. "The cheapest way to get them back, you know, would be to send someone to bid on them ourselves. They couldn't go for more than twenty or thirty thousand FSD each, not at open auction."

Robinson smiled. "Aren't you clever, Marguerite? But that's still more than we can lightly pay. This fleet operates on a shoestring, as you know as well as anyone."

"Not us . . . but what if we drop a hint in a friendly ear?"

"Whose ear? The World League couldn't even pay that; it might mean they'd no longer be able to have servants to fill the water carafes at their meetings. The Taurans aren't interested since the crew is Columbian. And the progressives in the FSC would be turned out of office if they paid or even if they bid."