Carnifex

cannon ammunition for their fixed, side-firing guns, plus a dozen each five hundred pound GLS-guided thermobaric bombs which would be dropped from altitude out the rear ramps to strike certain key targets.

While the ordnance crews strained and sweated, mechanics and avionics repairmen poured over the planes, checking status and making necessary repairs. There was to be no waiting for parts; Carrera had decreed they could strip the other, non-flyable aircraft down to the ground to make sure the minimum necessary were fit for flight and fit to fight.

Miguel Lanza, much older and a legate III himself now, watched the progress intently from outside. No sense in getting under the feet of men who sure as Hell know their business well by now, he thought.

A voice came unexpectedly from behind. It was Carrera.

'Your boys going to be ready on time, Lanza?' he asked, wearily.

Lanza nodded in the semi-darkness. 'No problem.'

'What are you planning to fly, Miguel?'

'Gunship,' Lanza answered. 'Lets me in on the action and gives me a copilot so I can control the operation. Also gives me the best commo and sensor suite of any plane we have. Besides, I'm really not up to CAS anymore.' Lanza sighed at the injustice of aging.

'Good choice. Carry on.'

Lanza watched Carrera amble away like a man ten years older then he was.

The Base

Oh, Annan, yes, thought Arbeit, this is exciting.

The bomb sat to one side of the deep cavern. Mustafa ran his hands over it lovingly. Lost in his visions of an entire infidel city turned to a smoking charnel house, he barely heard the words of the High Admiral.

'Broadly speaking,' Robinson said, 'if you continue to carry on the way you are, you are going to lose. Moreover, you'll lose in the worst possible way from both our points of view.' Unconsciously, the High Admiral reached up to stroke his right breast pocket. Yes, the detonation device is still there. The way Mustafa is looking at that bomb it's a damned good thing, too.

He spoke in a dimly lit cavern attached to a deep tunnel by a narrow, roughly hewn rock side tunnel. This far below the ground no sound penetrated from above. The air was uncomfortably cool and, despite an attempt to pump in fresh air, rather stuffy.

Nur al-Deen objected, 'Every day new fighters, some in groups, come to join the struggle. Our strength is growing, not weakening. The enemy, the Great Demon called the Federated States, is weakening!'

'Not enough,' Robinson countered. 'Their use of mercenaries is not only keeping the financial costs of their war down, it is keeping the casualties down below critical mass as well. And there does not appear to be a practical limit to how many mercenaries they can field.

'Alternatively,' he continued, 'the mercenaries' unproven but obvious penchant for targeting families even in the Yithrabi Peninsula, Southern Uhuru, Taurus and the Federated States, itself, has slowly reduced your available recruiting pool to the ignorant children of your madrassas. Their murders of sympathetic media types hurt you as badly. You are losing.

'That is why I want you to use one of the weapons I have brought here on Balboa. That's the breeding and training ground for the Legion. Rather, I want you to emplace one there, in order to threaten the Legion out of any further cooperation with the FSC.'

'And that's another thing,' al-Deen objected. 'You have brought us twelve nuclear weapons. This is enough to do incredible damage to the FS, damage from which they will never recover.'

Robinson scoffed. 'On the contrary, they will recover. Look at Taurus and Yamato and the number of cities they saw erased during the Great Global War. You can't even tell anymore that the war happened. On the other hand, if you use these weapons more than once the FSC will obliterate you and your religion. You are the most urbanized population on this planet. The contents of just one of their nuclear missile carrying submarines would be sufficient to kill one third of you outright, and leave another third to die slowly of starvation and disease. And they would probably not stop there. Don't you recall what they did in the GGW when we hit two of their cities to stop their use of nuclear weapons against Yamato? They imposed a blockade that killed a third of that country's people by slow starvation. They would hate you more and do more to you.' Robinson left unsaid, and they're quite likely to obliterate my fleet while they're at it, if I even suggested trying to prevent it.

Mustafa stood back from the bomb, removing his caressing hands with regret, and paced the cavern for a few moments, head outthrust and hands clasped behind his back. 'Sadly,' he said, pointing at Robinson, 'this infidel is right. But that doesn't mean he is completely right. The Blue Jinn and his people must pay.'

'I want the control of three bombs.'

'One,' the High Admiral answered.

'Three,' Mustafa insisted. 'One in the FS which will be used. One on Balboa which will be used. And one on Anglia with another in reserve.'

Robinson considered this. One used and one threatened knocks Balboa and the mercenaries out of the war. Two in Anglia, one used and one as a threat, probably prevents them from retaliating. That leaves eight for the FS, one used and seven threatened. Maybe . . . 

Robinson looked at Arbeit. Although only her eyes showed through the burkha her head nodded deeply. 'Done,' he answered.

Hoti-Chobolo Highway, Kashmir, 12/8/469

The road which had been smooth from Hoti turned into a kidney-pounding washboard five minutes after turning off toward the enemy base. Speed dropped, out of sheer necessity to maintain health, to under ten miles an hour.

The convoy traveled with lights on. Anything else would have been suspicious. Even so, a suspicious group of tribesmen did stop the lead vehicle carrying Jimenez and Masood.

'What you here for?' a rifle bearing brigand demanded, once Masood had stopped and dismounted.

Bold bastard isn't he? Masood observed to himself. Bet there are half a dozen machine guns covering us right now or he wouldn't be nearly so bold.

'We come to join the great Prince Mustafa,' Subadar Masood answered which was, after a fashion, true enough.

The suspicious tribesman ignored the answer, or seemed to. Instead, he went to the vehicle and looked over the passengers. He reached in and pulled away the scarf Jimenez had pulled across his face. Jimenez white eyes shone against his coal-black skin even in the darkness.

'What this one?'

'He's from among the faithful of Uhuru, come all this way to fight for Allah.'

The tribesman asked a question of Jimenez, who stared pleadingly at Masood.

'He doesn't speak our language,' the Subadar said. 'Do you, perchance, know any of the Arabic dialects of Southern Uhuru?'

Scowling, the tribesman answered, 'Not even know where this Uhuru place is. How speak language?' he asked, rhetorically.

Masood shrugged.

'Mustafa great man,' the tribesman announced. 'Give my people many gifts. You give gifts?'

'As the Prophet, peace be upon him, said, 'Give gifts to each other and love each other and hatred will disappear.' We would be happy to share our blessings with our brothers,' Masood answered.

'Prophet, PBUH, he say that?'

'Indeed he did. We are brothers in our faith, are we not?' the Subadar asked.

'Not know nothing about no brothers. You give gifts?'

'Would money do?'

'Money do fine,' the tribesman answered. 'You give . . . one hundred rupees per man.'

Two drachma, near enough, per man? About a thousand in all? Sounds very reasonable to me.

Masood reached into a pocket. 'Can you accept FSD?'

'FSD good.'

12/8/469 AC, The Base

Robinson had slept in better places. Indeed it was hard to remember ever having slept in a worse.

Oh, the Salafis had tried to make him comfortable. They'd laid out for him and the marchioness a bedroll of stacked rugs and provided blankets. They'd even made provision of a slave girl—Volgan, Robinson thought—to warm the bed and entertain their guests.

She might have been more entertaining but for the whip marks Arbeit had added to her bare back; the girl already had a fair collection. Robinson had to turn off the