brought disorder to the world, only shortage of wood saved many Salafis from crucifixion. And those lost hands and feet on opposite sides.
Thus Salafism languished for more than two centuries while the new world progressed around them. In fact, while Uhuru, Urania and other continents were carved up by Taurans, Zhong, Yamatans and Columbians, the Salafis of the Yithrab were left in peace. This was neither altruism nor respect but a simple reflection of the fact they had nothing anyone wanted.
The resurgence of radical Salafism can be dated to the discovery of substantial energy deposits, in the form of fossil fuels, in the Yithrab Peninsula and its environs, beginning in the year 348 AC. Having access to Earth's history prior to the end of emigration, the peoples of Terra Nova were never in ignorance of the value of the stuff. Civil war within the Salafi reach erupted within a few years of the discovery, the al Rashid clan eventually emerging triumphant.
Oil revenues were initially more or less trivial to the buyers, though significant to the then-poor Salafis. Especially during the Great Global War, when all civilized constraints of behavior were thrown off, the Salafis were altogether too frightened of conquest to exert the power implicit in control of so vast a reserve of energy.
With time, however, growing awareness of the value of their resource, coupled with the post-GGW nuclear standoff between the Federated States, the Volgan Empire and the UEPF, placed the al Rashid in a position to take control of their own oil and their own destinies. Others, not merely on the periphery but around the globe, followed suit. Fossil fuel prices rose precipitously. In point of fact, they did not stop their continuous rise until the fall of the Volgan Empire freed the Federated States to credibly threaten the use of military force should prices get out of hand.
Oil brought unprecedented wealth. Money received from it went into the creation of welfare states, impressively armed if indifferently effective military and naval forces, and provided obscenely lavish lifestyles for the ruling clans. No small amount, too, went to the spread of Salafism.
Among the Misrani at the edge of Southern Uhuru, to Kashmir, to Sukarno, madrassas sprang up like mushrooms. Providing free room and board, as well as a free-if highly constrained-education, the madrassas were highly popular among the disenfranchised lower classes of the Moslem portions of Terra Nova.
And that was the problem. Most of the population of Moslem states on Terra Nova were disenfranchised and frighteningly poor. Moreover, while the first two hundred and fifty years of settlement had seen them prosper approximately as well as colonization efforts by non-Moslems, after approximately the middle of the third Terra Novan century this was no longer true. Increasingly, they had fallen behind. Increasingly they were seen to be militarily inept. Increasingly, the pride of a very proud set of people was pricked. Increasingly, they heard the message of the Salafis to return to the older, purer ways… to fight back with fire and sword.
PART III
Chapter Seventeen
Behold, the fool saith, 'Put not all thine eggs in the one basket'-which is but a manner of saying, 'Scatter your money and your attention'; but the wise man saith, 'Put all your eggs in the one basket and-watch that basket!' -Mark Twain
Multichucha Ridge, north of Mangesh,
Sumer, 21/1/461 AC
The land was compartmentalized by east-west running ridges that arose, one after another, and dominated the valleys between. A highway, a mix of gravel, dirt, potholes, and-in rare spots-asphalt, wound through the valleys and narrow gaps that appeared occasionally between sections of ridge. The highway eventually led to Ninewa and, beyond that, Babel.
Joint patrols, Yezidi and Sumeri, walked the demarcation line between the Federated States-guaranteed Yezidi Safe Zone and that portion of the Republic of Sumer still under Sumeri control. This demarcation line, in the vicinity of the town of Mangesh, was a river. The patrols chatted amiably enough across the river despite the certainty on the part of all concerned that the area would see fighting in no more than a Terra Novan month.
In a marginally heated four wheel drive vehicle followed by a truck holding a squad of Cazadors with an engineer team to operate a mine detector, Parilla and Carrera rolled north.
'So there really is a Multichucha Ridge,' Parilla observed with wonder in his voice.
'Oh, yes,' Carrera, sitting in the back, agreed. There, stretching out east to west before them were five sets of enormous, naturally occurring, grass, bush, sand, rock and gravel simulacra of female genitalia.
'The one farthest east doesn't look all that realistic,' Parilla continued. 'But the two to the west are frighteningly real.'
'Don't know about you two, sirs, but it sure makes me homesick,' commented the driver.
There was a Chaldean, a native of Mangesh, in the back of the four wheel drive, next to Carrera. Fahad had grown up in the shadow of the ridge. His people had their own phrase for the terrain feature but that, too, translated as 'Multi-pussy Ridge.'
'Fahad,' Carrera questioned in English, 'are you absolutely certain you know a way to the top of that ridge where we can observe the Sumeri positions and that getting to which won't run us into a minefield?'
The Chaldean considered. He spoke Arabic, English, and Yezidi, along with his native tongue. It was in English that he answered. Why not? He had done his first term of military service in the Sumeri Army teaching English at the Sumeri War College outside of Babel.
'Yes,' Fahad said. 'No problem. The snow makes it tougher but the path I know is broad. We should be fine.'
Carrera translated for Parilla's benefit but to the latter's considerable doubt and plain discomfiture.
'I don't even like the idea of land mines,' Parilla muttered.
'No one does,' Carrera agreed. 'Not until you have a horde of screaming motherfuckers coming to kill you and all that stands between their bayonets and you is a belt of land mines.'
At Fahad's point of a finger the vehicles pulled over to allow the leaders, plus the Cazadors and the engineers, to dismount. Fahad led the way upward, stopping occasionally to check his memory of the path against what he believed to be certain terrain features somewhat hidden under snow. He must have guessed right; there were no loud explosions on the way up.
Just below the summit Parilla and Carrera stopped to allow the Cazadors to scout forward. At the squad leader's signal that all was clear they, too, crouched low and advanced. A dozen meters or so before the actual summit of the ridge, they went to their bellies and crawled through the hard-packed, icy snow to the top.
The sun was setting to the west. There would be no telltale flashes from the glass of the binoculars they used to scout out the opposite ridge, Hill 1647, which was to be the legion's initial objective.
'Fuck,' Carrera said.
'Chingada,' Parilla agreed.
From where they lay the pair saw the highway as it ran between two fortresses. Each of the fortresses was just under a kilometer across and, according to photo recon, about two thirds that deep. They were entrenched, bunkered and wired in. Moreover, according to the Yezidi, there were deep minefields in between the belts of wire. To add to the problem, a twenty-meter-wide river, low and slow moving but very cold, crossed the valley near to the base of the Sumeri held ridgelines.
'Too steep to get armor up,' Parilla observed. 'Even if they could get across the river.'
'Maybe the lighter vehicles could make it. Maybe.' Carrera countered. 'If they could follow the most advantageous paths. If they could go slow. If they were not being shot at. If the best paths were clear of mines which, by all reports, they most definitely are not.'
'An infantry attack?' Parilla queried. 'Maybe at night.'
Carrera didn't answer immediately. Looking back through his binoculars again at the thick rows of barbed wire, Carrera saw them as they might be if he ordered an assault to clear the hill, thick with the bodies, and parts of bodies, of his troops. Half a dozen possible plans flashed through his head. Each was quickly discarded before he settled on something that might be workable if short of brilliant.
