Carrera felt a sudden drop as the pilot reduced power to the propellers. Next came a lurching bounce as the first wheel touched down, followed by another. Carrera was forced to his right, and Menshikov against him, as the pilot reversed thrust on the propellers to slow the plane. Whether the pilot screwed up the timing, or a landing wheel had found a soft spot, or the great god, Murphy, had touched the plane with his evil finger, the thing began slewing its tail to the right. That was bad enough, but when Carrera twisted his head to look out the small porthole window he saw through a great cloud of dust that the right side wing seemed to be trying to dig itself into the dirt of the airstrip.
* * *
Up in the cockpit the pilot fought frantically with his controls. He managed to get the plane pointed in the right direction, only to discover that he'd overcompensated as the tail began to swing to the left.
* * *
The moons' light glowed off of the cloud of dust, provided just enough illumination for Chapayev to see the front of the incoming plane, wreathed in dust and twisting left and right as the pilot fought for control.
* * *
It could have gone either way. As it went, the left side landing wheel hit another soft spot. This was just enough to nudge the plane to an inclination the pilot could deal with. Slightly. Sort of. In the few seconds of proper orientation the plane slowed a little. This gave the pilot a little more control over the wild swinging of the fuselage. A little more control helped him slow the plane a bit more and reduce the oscillation. That gave him . . .
* * *
'I think I shit myself,' the pilot said to his copilot.
'No 'think' about it,' the copilot answered. 'I
Both men, trembling like leaves in a strong wind, peered through the windscreen and the thinning cloud of dust at the first plane to have landed, sitting no more than a dozen meters to their front.
Behind them, the paratroopers and Carrera bustled out of the side door. There wasn't time to fuck with lowering the ramp.
* * *
As his feet his the soft ground, Carrera was met by a pale Chapayev and four civilian clad Balboan
Carrera's first words to the Volgan were, 'I don't know if the pilot fucked up or if the airstrip is fucked up. No matter. I want these planes bunched at the other end of the strip, and manually turned around to face where they came from. Now! Before another goddamned Nabakov tries to land!'
Chapter Seventeen
Civilization is not coequal with aesthetics, however many people who consider themselves civilized may tacitly insist that it is a matter of aesthetics and nothing but. Nor must what we like to think of as civilized conduct be universal or eternal. Indeed, there has never been any such civilization except in the sophomoric pipedreams of the willfully ignorant.
Aztec priests cut the living hearts from captives. The Aztecs were highly civilized. Old Rome's Crassus crucified over six thousand rebellious slaves along Rome's Appian Way. Rome, too, was civilized.
On the frontiers of that Old Earth empire, or along those of the Chinese Empire, when facing the barbarians, barbaric conduct was the required norm. Inside those empires, when dealing with their home grown barbarians and criminals, barbaric punishments were the preferred norm.
On our own planet, when faced with the barbarism of fanatical Salafi nomads, those nomads were treated as barbarically as they had treated others.
This is not a flaw of civilization, nor even a feature. It is a necessary pre-condition for the maintenance of civilization. Civilization must meet barbarism and either convert it, destroy it, contain it, or terrorize it into submission or withdrawal. This is so, among other reasons, because barbarism is the natural state of mankind, the state to which man gravitates on his own and has the hardest time rising from.
—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,
Legionary Press, Balboa,
Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468
Anno Condita 471 Florencia, Santander, Terra Nova
Female mosquitoes buzzed outside the protective net, slamming themselves repeatedly into the gauze, following their instinctive drive to obtain a blood meal for the fertilization of their eggs. Further away, fearful of approaching the camp, antaniae, Terra Nova's genengineered winged reptiles, cooed softly.
