Carnifex

Sada revealed seven nuclear weapons to Carrera, three of which were functional and the rest restorable. These Carrera quietly removed, telling no one except a very few, very close subordinates.

The former government of Sumer had a cadre and arms for an insurgency in place before the Federated States and its allies invaded. In Carrera's area of responsibility, this insurgency, while bloody, was contained through the help of Sada's men and Carrera's ruthlessness. In the rest of the country, however, the unwise demobilization of the former armed forces of the Republic of Sumer left so many young men unemployed that the insurgency grew to nearly unmanageable levels. Eventually, Carrera's area of responsibility was changed and he was forced to undertake a difficult campaign against a city, Pumbadeta, held by the rebels. He surrounded and starved the city, forcing women and children to remain within it until he was certain that every dog, cat and rat had been eaten. Only then did he permit the women and children to leave. His clear intention was to kill every male in Pumbadeta capable of sprouting a beard.

After the departure of the noncombatants, Carrera's Legion continued the blockade until the civilians within the town rebel against the rebels. The former he aided to take the town. Thereafter nearly every insurgent found within Pumbadeta was executed, along with several members of the press sympathetic to the rebels. The few insurgents he—temporarily—spared were sent to a ship for rigorous interrogation.

PART I

Chapter One

But my dreams

They aren't as empty

As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely

My love is vengeance

That's never free

—The Who, Behind Blue Eyes

25/10/462 AC, United Earth Peace Fleet Starship Spirit of Peace

The traditional Christmas orgy was in full swing on the hangar deck. Since it was supposed to be a time to celebrate universal brotherhood, even the proles were invited. Indeed, so universal was the sense of brotherhood implicit in the season that Lieutenant Commander Khan, the fleet's sociology officer, was laying, rear up and breasts down, on an ottoman with a prole at each end, one in each hand and short lines emanating in four directions. Khan's husband cheered her on. And why not? He had bet a month's salary on her performance for the night.

Sitting on a plain chair on an elevated dais, High Admiral Martin Robinson, Commander of the United Earth Peace Fleet, watched through his blue-gray eyes without much interest. In truth, Robinson was bored silly by the whole thing. It's as bad as a party back home. Same old faces, same old events . . . same old, same old. Bah. Never anything new.

Robinson had reason to be bored. Though he looked to be in his mid-twenties, face unlined and back unstooped, the High Admiral was a beneficiary of the best anti-agathic therapy Old Earth could provide. His blond hair was untouched by gray and without any recession in his hairline.

On the other hand, Robinson had had better than two centuries in which to grow bored, two centuries of peace, two centuries of orgies, two centuries of . . .  Well . . . nothing, really. Nothing until I came here. This, at least, hasn't been boring. It's been frustrating.

Frustration wasn't the half of it. Mixed in, and perhaps in greater quantity than the frustration, was fear; fear for his class, fear for their rule, and fear for his planet.

And there's nothing for it but to change the cesspool down below from a near cognate of Earth, as it was, into a perfect clone of Earth, as it is. That, or plunge the whole thing into a Salafi sect dark age. Either would be acceptable. Indeed, having the planet fall under the Salafis would probably leave my world safer. Let them be content to pray five times a day to a non-existent god via a rock in a building in a nothing-too-much city. Let them keep better than half their people as cattle. Let them keep themselves poor and ignorant and, above all, incapable of space flight.

But if I fail, if the non-Salafi barbarians down below achieve interstellar travel, my home will be taken and pillaged, my class will be cast down, and my entire civilization will be plunged into barbarism. And Khan—here Robinson looked up to see that Khan was an easy half dozen partnerings ahead of her nearest competition— Khan assures me that when a civilization like that meets one like ours, ours hasn't a chance. If they can get to us, they can and will ruin us.

Unconsciously, Robinson lifted a thumb nail and began nervously to chew.

So I do what I must, dirty my hands, as I must, and fight . . . well, fight though others, of course; I can't risk the loss of my fleet. That, above all, I must preserve.

Robinson laughed at himself. I must preserve it until it falls apart around me. Preserve it while the Consensus back home does nothing to maintain it.

Dropping his thumb and shaking his head at the bloody damned frustration of it all, Robinson stood to leave the hangar deck. He'd call the captain of the ship, Marguerite Wallenstein, later, if he needed sex. For now he just needed to be alone.

Ahead of him, an oval hatchway dilated to permit the High Admiral passage. As the hatchway leading off the hangar deck whooshed shut behind him, Robinson heard Khan frantically pleading for more.

25/10/462 AC, Parade Field, Balboa Base, Ninewa Province, Sumer

The troops in the camp stood in ranks and sang lustily and in their thousands:

'Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;

The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide;

When other helpers fail and comforts flee,

Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.'

Patricio Carrera, commander of the troops of the Legio del Cid in Sumer and of their thousands of compadres in training back in Balboa, didn't join in the singing. Any other song and he might have. But this song, a favorite of his late wife, Linda, figured prominently in one of the recurrent nightmares he endured of her death, and of the deaths of their children. He just couldn't sing it. It was all he could do not to cry. Instead, his blue eyes, normally fierce, became indescribably sad as, indeed, did his entire face.

Carrera's closest friends stood or sat around his office, drinking Christmas cheer that had, until that moment, seemed very cheerful indeed. Yet the mood the song brought to Carrera instantly transformed the mood of every man and the two women in the place.

Two of those closest friends, Sergeant Major John McNamara and Legate Xavier Jiminez, both coal black, very tall and whippet thin, looked meaningfully at each other. Note to the chief chaplain: next year that particular song does not go in the Christmas