Caliphate

guaranteed employment in the Empire?'

'You can't guarantee such a trade,' Retief answered.

'Watch him,' Matheson told the remaining cargo slave guards. He then turned away, walked to the empty copilot's chair, and sat down. His eyes closed.

'What's going on?' Retief asked.

'He's communicating with higher,' Lee/Ling answered, while deftly tapping some control or other. 'Shut up and let him do so.'

Castle Honsvang, Province of Baya, 23 Muharram,

1538 AH (3 November, 2113)

'I'm pulling up to the castle gate,' Hans told Hamilton through the earpiece communicator. 'Be very still.'

'I understand,' Hamilton sent back. He felt the brakes bite, heard their screech. The truck slowed and then shuddered to a stop.

'Evening, sir,' the gate guard said. 'You're back late.'

'I was out looking for a place for a night exercise,' Hans lied. 'I think I found a good one, too.'

'Allah help us, sir,' the guard answered, rolling his eyes heavenward but then smiling to show it was a friendly joke. He turned around and lifted the crossbar from across the roadway. Without another word, but with a friendly wave, Hans guided the truck into the compound. Before reaching the castle proper, into which the truck would never fit, Hans turned right and drove toward the motor park. There he stopped, put on the emergency brake, but left the engine running for the moment.

'We're here,' he whispered into his communicator. 'There's a roving guard walking by. I may have to speak to him. I'll let you know when it's clear.'

Castle Noisvastei, Province of Baya, 24 Muharram,

1538 AH (4 November, 2113)

Sig the armorer sipped at something clear and cold and not strictly legal. Through a window he looked down at the other castle, brightly lit by security lights. He saw a truck pull in and though it was too far away to make out the driver, Sig thought it was the odabasi, no doubt returning from some late night foray to find some new training opportunity for the unit.

And isn't that just like the boy? thought the armorer. When he could be here, enjoying the warmth of the women, instead he's out on a cold night looking for ways to make of our company better men. A fine lad, that he is.

The first sergeant stopped by Sig's booth, a young houri in each arm, and said, 'Not too much of that, you hear, Sig?'

'Never fear about me, Baseski. I never take more than Allah is likely to forgive me for.'

Interlude

Nuremberg, Federal Republic of Germany,

11 September, 2016

A glass of a clear liquor grasped in one hand, Gabi switched channels from one covering a Moslem march in Paris to another showing a similar celebration in Berlin. Ghastly, she thought. Simply ghastly to be celebrating the murders of four million people. What kinds of terrible oppression must those poor people have suffered to make them so vindictive?

It was all too distasteful. Gabi switched channels yet again, this time to CNN International. That was, in its way, far worse.

The big story on CNN was the rise of a new political party in the United States, Pat Buckman's new Wake Up, America Party was sucking voters and contributors from the Republicans and Democrats like the Sahara would suck moisture from a sponge. Worse, senators, congressmen, and state governors were likewise defecting. CNN's commentators were actually concerned that the lunatic might win the election in a couple of months. And that just doesn't bear thinking about.

Whether it bore thinking about or not, though, Gabi couldn't quite tear her eyes from the screen nor switch channels yet again. Why? Because the image was one remarkably frightening to the modern German soul. There was a march there, too. Instead of disarmed rabble chanting slogans, however, this march showed thousands of armed, disciplined men and women, in ranks, under what appeared to be their old officers and NCOs. They sang as they marched, past the old Iwo Jima Memorial, over the bridge across the Potomac, and on into Washington in complete violation of that city's ordinances.

And the police did nothing, so said the commentators. How can that be? Gabi wondered. Don't they know, haven't they learned from our history, what that means?

CNN said there were other marches taking place in the United States. None of those were in Boston, Los Angeles, or Kansas City, of course. Those cities had ceased to exist. But in Houston? In Chicago? In Nashville and Atlanta and a score or more others? Men and women marched and sang and chanted for revenge.

9 November, 2016

When the returns came in from Massachusetts, neither Gabi nor the commentators were all that worried. With a sixth of the state's population—and the most liberal sixth at that—killed in the Boston bombing, it was only to be expected that there would be a serious swing to the right from those who remained. And besides, Massachusetts only had twelve electoral votes. (It would be fewer in coming years, so said the press, after the losses from the bombing came out of the official census.)

Still, Gabi had gone to bed with a sense of dread in her heart. California's fifty-five votes could not be known in Europe until the next morning. When she turned on the television that next morning to see the final results, her heart sank like a stone. Not only was that lunatic, Buckman, about to become President of the United States, he was doing so after carrying every state. Red State-Blue State: all wanted revenge. This had never been done since the uncontested election of George Washington, two hundred and twenty-seven years before. What a President might do with that kind of mandate was a frightening prospect. What this particular President would do was altogether terrifying.