Carnifex

long.'

'But I just told you . . . '

'Never mind that,' Carrera interrupted, reaching for the map he had earlier pushed aside. 'The FSC's War Department may not want to renew our contract for Sumer. I can hardly blame them. But there's still a piracy problem at the edges of the Islamic and Salafi world and the old Venganza'—a Great Global War era aircraft carrier the Legion had purchased for a song—'is about to be recommissioned . . . though we still haven't got a name for the ship. I think they, or somebody, may hire us for that. Moreover, they're going to need a good infantry division for Pashtia here,' his finger indicated the map, 'before too very long. More specifically, the FSC is going to need a good infantry division capable of operating with very constrained logistics. We're the only ones who fit that bill, the only ones on the planet.'

Esterhazy contemplated that. He had good reason to trust Carrera's military judgment. He had no reason to trust his financial instincts, however.

'Patricio, if you are that certain of a renewed contract, why not take the greater chance on the PMCs?'

Carrera's eyes narrowed as he glared at Esterhazy. 'Sneaky fucking Magyar.'

'With Magyars for friends you don't need enemies,' Esterhazy quoted. 'Still, I am your friend and this would be a tremendous opportunity.'

'You want to put ten billion FSD into metals? Ten billion?'

'Patricio, I can use that much and triple it.'

Carrera sighed, deeply. Yes, he was that sure of a new contract for Pashtia. He just couldn't be quite sure of exactly when.

'Two and a half billion now,' he offered. 'I'll double that in six months if it's working out. When I get a contract for Pashtia I'll go for the rest. Fair enough?'

Esterhazy nodded, shallowly. If it wasn't quite fair or quite smart, he could still work with it.

'Good. Do it. By the way, when's your flight back to the FS?'

'Tomorrow morning. Airship from Herrera Airport direct to First Landing.'

'Excellent. Dinner with my family, then, tonight. Say . . . nineteen hundred.'

'I'd be honored, Patricio,' Esterhazy answered. 'By the way, who did you leave minding the shop back in Sumer?'

'Sada.'

'You trusted an Arab to be in charge?'

'Matthias, everybody trusts Sada,' Carrera answered warmly. 'He's as reliable as the moons and as strong as the sun. Has he got his own agenda? Sure; he wants to run the country. And, to the extent I can, I intend to help him do just that. If everyone over there were like him—'

Esterhazy didn't know Sada very well. They'd only met a few times, those rare occasions when Carrera sent Sam Cheatham on leave and let the Sachsen-Magyar come out and fill the duties of legionary chief engineer. He did, however, know Carrera very well.

You need Sada, Esterhazy thought, don't you? Not just because he's a fine soldier and a better politician than you. You need him because he's your proof to yourself that you haven't gone all the way over the edge, that you're not a genocidal maniac, that you can humanly and humanely distinguish between enemies and those who just share some form of a religion.

'Speaking of being over there,' Esterhazy said, 'what do I have to do to get the fuck out of First Landing and do another tour?'

Carrera thought on that. At length, he answered, 'I don't think you do, not in Sumer anyway. I do have some things I need a competent engineer to look at for me in Pashtia, though.'

27/8/466 AC, Sharan, Pashtia

With the relative positions they were in, Terra Nova's three moons cast shadowless light. Cautiously, not least because of the lack of shadow, Noorzad the one-eyed crept forward. Another man might have been nervous. Another man's heart might have pounded. Noorzad was ice.

He was followed by seventy-seven of his men, most of them, unlike their chief, at least apprehensive. This was only a large fraction of the force Noorzad commanded. The rest of his company had stayed behind, guarding the pass through which the group would escape after completing their mission. That pass led to theoretically enemy—but, at least along the tribal lands by the border, in fact, allied—Kashmir, a state caught up in internal conflict between Salafism, more moderate versions of Islam, secular democracy and secular fascism.

In some ways, and while it certainly irked Noorzad and his followers to have only half-hearted support from Kashmir, and even that only from certain elements acting unofficially, overall the arrangement had this much going for it: the boundlessly evil infidel, the despised Federated States of Columbia and their Tauran lackeys and Balboan mercenaries, were content with Kashmir's shadowy status and never crossed over the border openly in order to avoid embarrassing their 'allies.'

The infiltrating guerillas of the Salafi Ikhwan—based, trained and supplied from the Kashmiri side of the border—felt no such restraint.

'Restraint,' Noorzad muttered, as softly as a butterfly landing on silk. 'We'll show them some restraint.'

A regular army unit would probably not have had its leader on point. Sometimes, too, Noorzad felt comfortable ordering one of his platoons to lead out. In action, though, a leader of the Pashtun in war had little choice but to go first, and to leave last. There was no other way to gain and keep the respect of the men who followed him. They were, after all, Pashtun, the freest men on this world. Even the Arabs in the company, volunteers from far-off lands, were no different in that. They followed where they would, and no one could make them do otherwise.

There were a lot more Arabs, Noorzad knew, ever since the war to free their lands had gone so badly against the faithful in Sumer. Their fighters killed, their support chains betrayed; the Arabs no longer even had a decent way into Sumer, let alone a way to prosper and succeed there. So instead they came—eyes all aglow with the hope and expectation of martyrdom—to where there was still a chance, to where their brethren still fought with some success. They came to Kashmir and then to Pashtia, or sometimes to Pashtia directly.

There was a glow ahead, as if from a small fire. Noorzad stiffened, his eyes searching and his keen nose sniffing for signs of the enemy. Satisfied that the enemy were neither dangerously close nor expecting him, he continued forward to a low, rock-strewn ridge between the source of the glow and the column he led. The guerilla leader stooped lower as he closed on the ridge. A few meters from it he got to his belly and crawled forward, still as soft and silent as a kitten's breath.

It had been a fire, wonder of wonders. In similar circumstances Noorzad's men would have gone cold, eaten cold food, rather than reveal their positions like that. The Tauran troops—he could see they had Tauran vehicles in the glow from the fire—had been spoiled, it seemed, by no contact this far into Pashtia in years.

That was about to change.

Carefully, Noorzad counted his enemies. Six vehicles, all soft skinned. Thirty-eight men, near enough . . . soft hearted and weak as are all the Tauran infidels. Fools do not even keep their weapons to hand. Am I some soft woman that they should not fear me? As carefully as he had counted the enemy, he marked firing and assault positions in his mind.

Still careful, still as quiet as a cat, the guerrilla leader backed off from the ridge and, in hushed tones, issued last minute instructions to his chief subordinates.

Noorzad pointed with a finger at a tall, aesthetic-looking fighter. 'Suleiman, take your RGLs'—rocket grenade launchers—'that way. There's a rock outcropping and some low bushes. They're progressivines, I think.' The progressivines were one of those few species, like the tranzitree, the bolshiberry, and the septic-mouthed antania, or moonbat, that the Noahs, the unknown others who had seeded Terra Nova with life from Old Earth, had set down, possibly to interfere with the development of intelligent life on the new world.

'You can engage the whole encampment from there,' Noorzad continued. 'Remember, concentrate on the vehicle with the most antennae first. We don't want them calling for artillery or air support. Your signal to open fire will be when I fire. The signal that the assault is beginning is 'Allahu Akbar.''

Suleiman nodded—he rarely spoke much—and turned to collect his seventeen men and eight RGLs. These were every one that the company owned. Noorzad waited until that part of his column was underway before laying a hand on the shoulder of his next subordinate, Malakzay. To this one, in charge of all three of the company's machine guns, he gave similar instructions, differing only in that the low ridge Noorzad had just vacated was to be their firing position.

As Malakzay and his gunners and their assistants began to creep forward as quietly as their chief had crept back, Noorzad went and picked up the remainder of his organization, the forty-four rifleman that we would lead personally. He led them back, then down into a draw that led almost to the enemy encampment. From there the men crept forward in single file, behind their leader. No sentry barred the way.

Stinking amateurs, Noorzad cursed. Hardly