spread.
Pashtia, which had fallen very quickly to the FSC led coalition, was already showing some signs of future problems as the Ikhwan reconsolidated in neighboring Kashmir and sent teams forward to contest the land. Carrera expected it to become a major theater of war again, though it would be, he thought, some years.
Within the oil states of the Yithrabi Peninsula there were terrorist strikes wherever the local government chose to accommodate the wishes of the FSC. From Mustafa's point of view the results of these strikes were a very mixed bag. In some cases, true, the government had ceased such support to the infidel. In others, disastrously, it had instead struck back at the Ikhwan, arresting and imprisoning holy men, sometimes even as they preached the jihad from their pulpits. Worse, the government security and intelligence forces had taken to searching out and destroying Ikhwan cells, seizing weapons caches and, most damnably, interfering with the flow of money to the cause.
Along the northern border of the Volgan Republic there had been some remarkably effective strikes, proof to the Ikhwan of the holiness of the cause. No longer could Volgan mothers pack their children off to school without fear. No longer could Volgan soldiers march with impunity, even within their own country.
Uhuru was beginning to see flare ups, some trivial but many quite bloody, between Christian and Moslem factions. Overall, the Moslems had the edge there, however. Long lines of black Christians and Christian-Animists now marched as coffled slaves towards the markets of Yithrab. Meanwhile highly civilized Taurans and progressives in the FSC wrung their hands and wept at the plight of the Uhurans. That, however, was all they did. After all, weeping and hand wringing made them feel virtuous while forceful action would have been a rebuke to their worldview.
It was actually quite easy to trace the troubles. All one had to do was run one's finger over a map of the planet. Wherever Salafis or Salafi inspired or controlled Moslems shared a border with anyone else-Christians, Christian-Animists, Buddhists, Confucians, Hindus… anyone- that border was awash in blood. Even at sea blood was beginning to flow as Salafi pirates in the Nicobar Straits and along the coast of Xamar attacked shipping for loot, ransoms, and slaves.
Santissima Trinidad, Bahia de Balboa, 3/1/462 AC
The surplus special operations and patrol boat was capable of mounting up to ten. 50 caliber machine guns or some combination of those and either 30mm or 40mm grenade launchers. It could have been fitted for missiles or torpedoes as well, but in this case was not. Indeed, only four of the possible ten weapons stations were filled.
She was low and lean and predatory. Made of aramid and carbon fiber composites, the boat was eighty-four feet from stem to stern and seventeen and a half feet in beam. Capable of better than fifty knots, it was one of, if not the, fastest things smoking on the water.
That his crew was only half trained, the boat's skipper, Warrant Officer Pedraz, knew. Then again, I'm only about half trained, too. How much training do you need to run down a yacht moving at fifteen knots? Not much, I think. It's an easy target to practice intercepts on. Hopefully they won't mind too much.
The target yacht was named The Temptation. This seemed fitting to Pedraz, since his patrol boat had Santissima Trinidad painted across her stern.
It was just a routine run, a training run. They approached from astern to within one hundred meters of the Temptation. Pedraz had no idea that there was anything amiss with the yacht until he heard frightening cracking sounds splitting the air overhead.
'Holy shit, Chief, that fucking boat is firing at us!'
The speaker was Able Bodied Seaman Miguel Quijana, a young recruit to the legion's classis. At barely seventeen, Quijana had never before been shot at.
Well, dammit, neither have I, thought Pedraz as he ducked low behind the boat's superstructure, his finger pressing the klaxon for 'battle stations.'
When you've got the range advantage, use it, the chief remembered one of his FMTG instructors telling him. Gunning the engine, Pedraz twisted the wheel hard left and swung his boat past the Temptation. The Trinidad 's wake caused the Temptation to rock, upsetting the aim of the men aboard. The chief kept a nervous watch behind him until he had determined his ship was out of small arms range.
He put his head up. Each of the. 50 caliber machine guns was manned by two anxious looking crewmen. He nodded to them and turned to face the yacht. Moving at only twenty knots or so, the Trinidad closed the distance, aiming for an intercept point about two hundred meters ahead of the yacht.
'One hundred rounds per gun,' Pedraz ordered, when he judged the position right, 'FIRE!' Immediately the air was rent by hundreds of powerful muzzle blasts a minute. The recoil wasn't enough to rock the boat or upset the gunners' aim. Downrange, however, the superstructure of the yacht began to come apart under the hammering of high velocity fifty caliber slugs. Even with a half-trained crew, the fire was fierce enough that several of the gun- wielding men aboard the yacht went down, ripped apart by the heavy bullets. The others soon dropped their weapons in abject terror.
Slowly, the Trinidad approached, her crewmen rocking with the boat and keeping their machine guns trained on the yacht. One two- man gun crew could not see the yacht as the Trinidad's own cockpit blocked their line of sight. These Pedraz selected to board with him, along with the boat's cook and one of the radar crew.
'Spoon!' Pedraz shouted to the cook. 'Draw five submachine guns out of the armory. Francais,' he said to his second in command, 'take the con. I'm boarding.'
'I've got it, Chief,' Francais answered.
Thus armed, all five men of the boarding party loaded a small rubber boat with a motor. This sped, cook manning the outboard, to cross the short distance between the two boats, leaving a white wake V-ing out behind it.
Blood dripped out the runnels in the yacht's side, Pedraz noted, as the rubber boat touched the target's side. He went first, keeping the yacht's passengers covered until a second sailor, ABS Dextro Guptillo, could board. Then he tied the rubber boat to the yacht. The rest of the sailors followed.
None of the yacht's crew resisted. Most were down anyway, dead, wounded, or having shat themselves silly. After making sure the remaining few were disarmed, Pedraz ordered the Trinidad over. The crew conducted a thorough search of the yacht, stem to stern.
Pedraz expected drugs. There weren't any. Failing that, money? Not much. Arms? Only what had been used to shoot at his boat.
He was puzzled, really puzzled. Why the hell did they shoot at me? Makes no sense. It was a serious overreaction to our playing games. He asked one of the unwounded men on the yacht and got a sullen answer. That also made no sense. And then it hit him, Castilian accent… bombings in Castilla… similar bombings here. Bingo.
Balboa Base, Ninewa, 3/1/462 AC
Fernandez's daughter's murder remained a festering hate within him. He nursed that hate, guiding and developing it from a small planting into a full-blooming tree. He didn't let it distract him from his work.
'Where-where the fuck- are the explosives coming from!?' Carrera asked Fernandez as he looked over the latest casualty figures from roadside bombings in the BZOR. His anger was not at his chief of intel, but at the enemy.
Fernandez rubbed a finger over his upper lip. He answered, 'The… ummm… ship reports that they're coming in from Farsia right across the border and from Bekaa by way of Bilad al Sham. They're being bought from either the Volgans-the criminal organizations there, not the government-or the Zhong. Some, too, may have been bought in other places. A fair amount was bought right here. The money appears to have come from Sachsen.'
'Sachsen? That Westplatz twat?' Carrera asked.
'So I would surmise, her and some of the others.'
'Evidence?'
Without a word Fernandez turned in his wooden swivel chair and, opening a cabinet, extracted a thin red file. This he handed over.
Taking the file and opening it, Carrera began to read. When he was finished, he said, 'Get Sada and bring him here. I have a mission or three for some of his special workers.'
'Wilco, Patricio. By the way, next week I need to go visit the Hildegard Mises. We have some special prisoners I want to see to… personally.'
