Caliphate

command detonated by a Moro who was likewise killed.

The company was Miles' now and Hamilton was Miles' exec. After two years of combat and forcible resettlement operations, Miles had gone from beefy to thin and Hamilton—despite the calories from the drinking—from thin to almost skeletal.

The tall, now thin, newly promoted black captain signaled the bartender in the lounge for a beer and sat beside Hamilton.

'Pretty awful, isn't it?' Miles said, gesturing towards the destruction spreading out below.

'Worse than any village or town we cleared out for Christian settlement,' Hamilton agreed, taking another sip at his scotch. 'Though those were bad enough.'

Miles nodded agreement. After a time—once they'd realized that they weren't going to win; they weren't going to hold; and the combined Imperial and Philippine forces were going to drive them completely out of their homeland—the Moros' fighting had grown desperate, even suicidal. And, in the long run, it had made no difference to the outcome. They were gone from the Philippines, their fields and homes now the property of the settlers who came after.

'I had relatives down there, so say the family legends,' Miles sighed. 'Must have been awful.'

'Yeah . . . at least we left alive those Moros who wanted to live . . . most of them anyway.' Hamilton sounded perhaps a bit bitter.

'It did get old after a while,' Miles agreed.

'Where are we going next, do you think?' Hamilton asked. 'I mean after refit and retraining at Stewart.'

'Nobody knows,' Miles said. 'The PI campaign is over. Class Two statehood for them within two years.' Class Two Statehood was like normal statehood excepting only that the state had but one senator, and representation in the House operated under the new three-fifths rule. In was one way of centering control of the empire in the original fifty states. 'The Canadian rebels—'

''There are no 'Canadian' rebels,' Hamilton parroted. 'There are Americans. Then there are imperial subjects. There are also rebels, allies—''

''—and enemies. No Canadians, however.'' Miles shrugged. 'Yes, John, I know the Pravda. In any case, the rebels in the frozen north have been quiet for a while now. And with the Latin provinces being admitted to Class Two, slowly but surely, troubles down that way are dropping, too. Basically, we've got the world pretty much the way we want it.'

Not entirely, Hamilton thought. Not entirely the way I want it. If it were, I'd still have Laurie.

'I hear Charlie Company is opening up and the colonel's thinking of putting you in command,' Miles said.

'I heard the same rumors,' Hamilton agreed. He shook his head in negation, 'I'm really not interested. I've had it with burned villages and resettlement and feeling like some kind of monster. Thompson had it right; you've got to find a reason to sleep at night and I never did. What's worse, I deliberately never looked for one. After Laurie was killed . . .'

There was, after all, a reason the colonel was considering putting Hamilton in command of Company C. For the last two years he'd been the most unflagging butcher of Moros in the battalion. There was also a reason the colonel hadn't yet put Hamilton in command. In those two years he'd lost something of his soul, or 'whatever it is that keeps a man on two legs instead of four.'

Miles shrugged again. 'I know. You still thinking of punching out? You've got two years to go, you know.'

'There's a way around that. The Office of Strategic Intelligence'— this was the successor to the old Central Intelligence Agency which had been renamed following the purges—'can get two years waived— even three, actually, though I don't need three—for people who sign up with them. As to whether I want to or not . . . I'll listen to them. I've an appointment with their recruiter at Kevin Barry's in Savannah when we get back.'

'I have a hard time seeing you as a spook, even if you're thinner than a corpse.'

'Just something I've been thinking about. I don't know myself. I know something though.'

'What's that?'

'If I keep up at this Einsatzgruppen shit, I'll go crazier than I am.'

'They do dirty shit, too,' Miles said.

'Dirtier than us? Not possible.'

'Never know what the future holds,' Miles observed.

Kitznen, Province of Affrankon, 17 Jumadah II, 1533 AH (18 May, 2109)

Al Khalifa was thinking about the future. My first husband wants nothing to do with our son, preferring to lavish his substance on his Christian slave girl's bastard. If I am to secure my son's position for the future, it can only be by having Abdul Mohsem make him his heir. But he fawns on his bitch of a daughter so, spoiling the little tramp rotten.

She glanced up, to where twelve-year-old Petra scrubbed a hallway floor on her hands and knees. Al Khalifa snarled, thinking, Nazrani bitch! And soon enough Besma will be married off and I'll lose control of her unless I can keep this little twat under my control. I know they've been plotting to get the Christian girl her freedom. Bah! As if a Christian is worthy of freedom.

Then again, if I can't keep control of the Nazrani, and lose my power over Besma, perhaps I can make it so that Besma infuriates her father enough that he cuts her off from her inheritance? She's hot tempered; that will help. Maybe if . . .

I must consult the law, was al Khalifa's thought. And then, if the law supports what I have in mind, I must consult with my son . . . and he with his friends.

Savannah, Georgia, 25 May, 2109

The strains of ancient music wafted up the stairs, seeping under the door of a small, green-painted room. Hamilton and another man— he'd given his name as 'Caruthers'—sat at a wooden table covered by a checked tablecloth. Between them sat a bottle of Irish whiskey, two glasses, and a small metallic box the size and shape of a pack of cigarettes.

'All clear,' announced a metallic voice, emanating from the small box.

Caruthers, a deliberately nondescript, middle-aged black man, with a receding hairline and clothed lightly against the city's oppressive late spring; He said, 'It had best be all clear, Atkinson, or you will be canned. By that I mean—'

'—that I will be ground up, melted down, and stamped out into cat food cans. Yes, sir, I know. The room is clear.'

Hamilton raised one eyebrow. 'I've never before met a machine with personality. Atkinson?'

Caruthers chuckled slightly and said, 'Atkinson was an intelligence warrant and the stupidest human being I've ever met, so I named the machine for him. It doesn't have a personality, but then neither did the real Atkinson. I programmed a certain number of smart-ass answers into the thing because, frankly, my job permits me minimal human interaction. And since the original Atkinson was barely human, and a smart ass, it sort of fits.'

How does a recruiter have 'minimal human interaction'? Hamilton wondered.

'Even recruiting,' Caruthers continued, 'isn't really human interaction. To me you're just a file, Lieutenant Hamilton, a block to check. Don't take that personally; if I allowed myself to think of my recruits as human it might bother me when they fail to return from a job.'

Ah, wise, very wise. If we can avoid thinking of our losses as people then the pain is much less.

Caruthers said, 'Atkinson, you moron, pull up Lieutenant Hamilton's file.' Immediately a hologram mimicking a brown file appeared above the table. Caruthers didn't pretend to study it, nor even order the machine to open it.

'You were well regarded in your battalion, I see,' the recruiter said.

Hamilton pursed his lips and shook his head slightly. 'I think they felt sorry for me.'

'Yes, perhaps,' Caruthers agreed. 'A pity about young Lieutenant Hodge; we always have openings for husband-wife teams. They draw much less suspicion and are about three times more effective— synergy, don't you know; that and teamwork—than two single operatives or artificial couples. Never