Caliphate

The same for the Italians, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Belgians, the Dutch, the Scandinavians, the —'

'What's your point? The world can't support more.'

Mahmoud gestured with his chin at the television, the screen of which showed thousands upon thousands of young women and girls, each wearing at least hijab, and many in burkas. 'Tell them that. Those girls will be married by the time they're eighteen, sixteen or seventeen for some of them. They will pump out four or even five children each. The half of those children who are girls will do the same. In a hundred years, if things don't change, one Moslem women will have increased her gene pool—more importantly, her religious and cultural pool— at least thirty-two times over. Still more girls come in illegally from overseas and are entered into arranged, often polygamous marriages. Maybe they'll have fewer children, sharing a husband; maybe they won't, either. But from the point of view of the imams, it's all good, all free increase in the numbers of the faithful, here, on the battlefield they believe matters.'

'You can't know that that will happen,' she countered.

Mahmoud shook his head, sadly. 'No, I can't know. But that's the way to bet it.'

He thought about it for a minute and then announced, 'Tell you what, Gabi. This Friday, we're going to drape you in a burka—don't worry, I'll buy it; they're already very easy to find here now. Then you and I are going to a mosque, one that preaches in German. I want you to hear what the people you're defending say about you.'

Chapter Four

'These Germans, these atheists, these Europeans don't shave under their arms and their sweat collects under their hair with a revolting smell and they stink. Hell lives for the infidels! Down with all democracies and all democrats!'

—Imam Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah Al-Amari,

Preaching the Friday sermon in a Berlin Mosque, 2006

Kitznen, Province of Affrankon, 25 Jumahdi I, 1531 AH

(18 May, 2107)

It wasn't all, nor even mostly, fun and games and learning to read and shopping. Petra was still a slave, and as such, she had work to do.

The work was easy, not least because Besma, though not at all a slave, was required to do as much or, because she was older, more. Indeed, much of Besma's work involved teaching Petra how to perform domestic duties.

Often, even the work was fun and games. Two girls, who truly care for each other, can turn a broom and dustbin into tools for a game of an odd kind of catch.

'Enough silliness!' Petra felt the switch of Abdul Mohsem's current wife, Al Khalifa, across her back as she lined up the dustbin for Besma to slide a pile of dirt towards. 'You're a slave, Nazrani slut; act like it.'

'Bitch!' Besma whispered after her stepmother had left the room. She had to whisper it. While she was pretty sure the mutaween would not molest the daughter of Abdul Mohsem, she knew for a fact that al Khalifa could punish her slave with impunity. She ran and knelt by Petra, who was crying with her face in the dirt. Besma lifted the slave girl's head, pressing it in to the juncture of her own neck and shoulder. 'Bitch!' she repeated. 'If she's cut you, I swear I'll kill her.'

'She . . . didn't,' Petra sniffled. 'I'm all right.'

'Her father had a Nazrani slave girl he preferred to her mother,' Besma said. 'That's why she hates the Nazrani. But I think she hates almost everyone. She surely hates me but can't do anything about it.'

Besma had a horrible thought. Except she can get to me through you. She kept the thought to herself for now.

'What happened to your mother?' Petra asked.

Besma sighed. 'She died, giving birth to me. My father said she didn't have to, that if the American devils weren't so cheap with their medicine she could have lived. It's why I hate them; because I never knew my mother. And instead got stuck with that bitch—already with a son from a prior marriage to a man who divorced her and wanted nothing to do with their rotter of a child—because my father wanted me to have a mother.'

USAF TCA (Troop Carrier Airship) Retaliation, over the ruins of central Kansas City, Missouri, 19 May, 2107

In a world where energy is fairly abundant, but easily packaged and transportable fuel much rarer, airships can begin to assume an ascendancy over faster, more convenient, but more fuel-guzzling winged aircraft. This becomes even more true when, as in the case of the Retaliation and her several score USAF sisters, the airship itself can become a wing, allowing it to be slightly heavier than air, and thus much more controllable. Add in a pebble bed modular reactor for power and, cost-benefit-wise, the airplane can't even come close.

As important, airships were about seven times faster than wet water ships. This meant that they could make the flight, Fort Stewart to Manila, nearly nine thousand miles, in about two and a half days. Taking the slight detour to show the departing troops the remains of Kansas City didn't add appreciably to that.

Five such—and indeed, Retaliation was the lead of the five ships in the lift—are capable of picking up and moving halfway around the globe an entire mixed brigade of Light Infantry, Mechanized Infantry and Suited Heavy Infantry, plus support, and enough in the way of supply to operate for at least a month without further resupply. And why not? The ships were nearly two kilometers long, half that in beam, and about four hundred meters from AAA Deck down to the landing apparatus.

This five-ship lift consisted of the First Brigade of the 24th Infantry Division, the Victory Division, sharing Fort Stewart, Georgia as a home base with the 3rd Infantry Division and the Constabulary Infantry School. The brigade consisted of 2nd Battalion, 21st Infantry (Light); 2nd Battalion, 34th Infantry (Mechanized); 2nd Battalion, 19th Infantry (SHI); 1st Battalion, 52nd Field Artillery (LRB), along with batteries, troops and companies of engineers, operational reconnaissance, aerial reconnaissance, aerial interdiction artillery, heavy-armor direct fire support, tactical airlift (Chinook W), and a whopping headquarters and service support battalion. In all, and even counting some individual replacement for units already committed to the Philippine campaign, it was just over five thousand men and women.

Two of those, one man, one woman, fairly recently assigned as lieutenants to Company B, 2nd Battalion, 19th Infantry, sat in the officers' lounge looking out over the no longer radioactive ruins of one of America's heartland cities.

Everyone staring at the skeletal remains was quiet, eyes jerking back and forth over what was once a vibrant city filled with their countrymen and women. Indeed, the airship itself had grown quiet after the captain made the announcement over the PA system.

Laurie Hodge thought and said, 'That's the saddest thing I've ever seen.'

Over the PA, the captain countered, 'You ain't seen nothing yet, folks. We'll be passing over Los Angeles in a few hours. That's worse.'

Kitznen, Province of Affrankon, 26 Jumahdi I, 1531 AH (19 May, 2107)