Caliphate

exercise. On the other hand, it was a great way to build confidence in the troops in the armor's ability to withstand direct hits.

While Hodge fanned the trench with lead-tipped flame, Hamilton passed her by, bouncing up and over it and taking a kneeling firing position—trees and sandbags being not as good a protection as four millimeters of liquid metal armor—to begin peppering a bunker farther downrange.

As he did so, Hodge knelt beside him and changed out the helical magazine on her left-wrist-borne CCW, or 'close combat weapon.' Colloquially, among the troops, the things were known as 'Slags,' as in 'Slag 'em,'—turn them into something wet and runny.

Once that was done she took her own weapon, a fifty millimeter semi-automatic grenade launcher, and fired a salvo of four rounds of training practice—it had the same ballistics as a high explosive service round but only as much explosive as one might find in a blasting cap—at the bunker, one of which went directly through the aperture. The bunker decided it was dead and cut off control to the remote operator.

Hamilton directed his comm system, 'Closed circuit, me to Hodge,' and said, after the beep that indicated the changeover, 'Good job, you bloodthirsty bitch. Glad you're on my side.'

They both heard, through the platoon net, 'Action right. Enemy platoon counterattacking. Kill 'em.'

No sooner had they heard this than a flurry of bullets swept over both of them. The suits shrugged those bullets off, but they still had enough energy to rock the two troopers back.

Hodge began slow fire—one round per two seconds—at the advancing robotic targets. As she did, she said, 'Closed circuit; me to Hamilton' and then, 'Did I ever mention this shit makes me horny?'

Kitznen, Provence of Affrankon, 13 Duh'l-Qa'dah,

1530 AH (10 November, 2106)

'Now he,' Besma said, 'is a beautiful man.'

'Do you suppose he really looked like that?' Petra asked, 'Or do you think maybe my great-grandmother sort of . . . what's the word?'

'Idealized?'

'Yes, that one. Do you think she idealized him or did he really look like that?'

'Either way, he's a dream. And there's something about that.'

'That' was a male appendage, plainly visible in the drawing.

To that Petra agreed. Mohammad had had a point. Even at nine, a girl is still in good part already a woman.

The drawing the girls were looking at in the journal was labeled 'Mahmoud' in the artist's superb handwriting.

'He's one of my people, I think,' Besma said.

'Not one of mine, for sure,' Petra agreed. 'What do you think he was to my great-grandmother?'

'I don't know. Let's try to read some more. Maybe we can find out.'

Private Rodger W. Young Range, Fort Benning, Georgia,

12 November, 2106

'No,' Hamilton insisted, 'we are not going to dump our groin armor so we can fuck.'

'Scaredycat,' Hodge taunted.

'Nothing of the kind,' he answered. 'It's just that the thought's preposterous. It'd be like two robots going at it.'

Unable to help herself Hodge started to giggle. 'It really would look ridiculous. But then, who's going to see?'

'Everybody. We don't have thermal imagers for nothing and the heat waves rising from your hot little ass would be sure to be noticed.'

'You think my ass is hot?'

'I think all of you is hot, Laurie.'

Some things, she thought, are better than sex. Being thought 'hot' is sometimes one of them. 'Okay. I'll leave you alone for now. But when we get back to Olson Hall you better show me that you really think all of me is hot.'

'Deal,' Hamilton agreed.

Though they were lying on their backs in the dirt next to each other, she didn't bother to snuggle in. Hamilton was right; there was something obscene about two robots cuddling.

'You done good, today, Laurie,' Hamilton said.

'Thanks. You, too. Though this suit is a damned uncomfortable thing and pretty unflattering to a girl's figure.'

At first Hamilton said nothing to that. After a few moments, though, she realized he was laughing.

'What's so funny?'

'Well . . . I was just thinking, a girl in a heavy infantry suit is perfectly dressed under the enemy's law. What's the difference between wearing a burka and wearing Class B armor?'

She thought about that for a few seconds before answering, 'I can't kill people as easily wearing a burka.'

Kitznen, Affrankon, 14 Duh'l-Qa'dah,

1530 AH (11 November, 2106)

Ishmael escorted the two burka-clad girls from the house to the market. That was part of his official duty; he didn't hit Besma up for baksheesh for it. This was to the good as Besma only had the two dozen dirhem she'd begged from her father to buy some new clothes and shoes for the new girl in the house. Her father's wife had objected, and her older stepbrother, Fudail, had sneered, but still her father had given over the money. Besma was, after all, the pearl of his heart.

They went into a women's and girls' shop, a simple door into an old brick building with a sign to one side and the windows painted black. Ishmael had to wait outside with the other various mahram, the men suitable as escorts for women because sexual intercourse was prohibited between them and the women escorted.

Ishmael was not exactly in that category. He could legally have had intercourse with either Besma or Petra, had they been married. Ishmael, however, was a eunuch, having been castrated as a boy, just before he was sold. He couldn't really be expected to have intercourse with anyone and so was mahram as a practical if not a legal matter. Even so, Ishmael's master, Abdul Mohsem, was taking some risk by having him escort the family's womenfolk.

One aspect of that risk was visible just across the street from where Ishmael and the rest of the mahram squatted outside the women's store. Ishmael didn't know what the crime was, but he saw a group of mutaween, wearing their traditional brown robes, drag a man from another shop and force him up the street to one of the usual sites reserved for executing the judgments of the police for the prevention of vice and the promotion of virtue. There was a stout pole there, affixed into the cobblestones. From the pole hung a looped rope.

The man being forced blubbered and begged for mercy. It was not forthcoming.

First, one of the mutawa knocked the man to his back by a blow to the face. Then two others gathered up his legs and lifted them. A fourth dropped a loop of rope over the ankles while a fifth pulled on the rope to raise the feet. Once this was done a sixth lashed the rope to a pintle on the pole. The man's shoes were removed, and the senior of the mutaween took a long, stiff but flexible stick from another and bared his right arm to the shoulder.

Even from as far away as he was, Ishmael heard the hiss of the stick. He could have been considerably farther away and still heard the scream of the victim.

The shop was small and the shelves and racks something less than full. Dust gathered here and there showed that the emptiness was not a recent phenomenon. And yet Besma had said that this was one of the better women's shops in the town.