Carnifex

Clap 'em forward with a Loo! loo! Lulu! Loot!

Kipling, Loot

15/8/469 AC, Gunoz Karez, 200 feet down

Robinson had no compass. It seemed such a primitive thing, really, that the thought had never occurred to him to bring one, even had one been available aboard his flagship. Then, too, with the twists and turns of both escape tunnel and karez, he was really quite lost. The only objective measure he had to go by was that the karez was, however gently, ascending. That meant . . .

'We're heading to Pashtia?'

'Yes,' Nur al-Deen answered. 'It took you long enough to notice.'

'But . . .  why?'

'Three reasons,' the Salafi answered. 'The first is that they are less likely to look for us there. The second is that the enemy base, the enemy who attacked us in Kashmir, is there. The third, closely related to the second, is that there we can use the bomb we have brought to destroy the enemy in that base, in accordance with the will of Allah.

'Not without my key, you can't,' the High Admiral insisted.

'You will use the key as we direct,' Nur said, quite definitively.

'I will not.'

'Yes, you will.' The Salafi sounded, to Robinson, unaccountably confident.

'There is no way you can make me.'

The Salafi sighed. Could this UE fool really believe that?

'Admiral Robinson,' he began, patiently explaining, 'we will take the bomb to Pashtia. We will get it moved near the enemy camp. At that point you will either detonate it, as we command, or we will begin rearranging your skin.'

'Torture doesn't work,' Robinson countered. 'People will say and do anything under torture, but you cannot tell if anything they say or do is the truth.'

'This is true, High Admiral of the infidels. That is to say, it is true unless one has a way of checking the truth in part or getting immediate feedback. In this case, we will, if necessary, rearrange your skin—oh, yes, eyes and internal organs too —until the bomb goes off. Thus, since you agree that people will do or say 'anything' to stop the pain, you must agree that you will do this.'

'You can't know if I send the key to set the bomb off or to disarm it permanently.'

Nur al-Deen's laugh echoed off the karez wall. 'Foolish infidel, if you disarm it permanently then it won't go off at the time we demand. Then the pain will begin again and never stop.'

* * *

Khalifa heard the laugh. She thought it belonged to Mustafa's number two, Nur al-Deen, though she couldn't be sure; it was rare for her to be privileged to serve at the leaders' feasts. For the most part she was a woman who tended her own hearth. Still, she couldn't imagine what it might be, here, that could possibly be worth laughing over.

She was hungry, painfully so. What little food she had managed to grab before her hurried flight from the cave she had thought of as home had gone to her children, mostly to the boy, as the Holy Koran and custom commanded. The girl, younger, weaker, and hungrier, already knew her place in life and kept quiet but for an occasional understandable sniffle. It was even more understandable given than the girl was down in thigh-deep cold water while the boy, though older and taller, nestled warm against his mother's breast.

As bad as it was down here in the karez, and it was even more cramped than the narrow escape tunnel had been, there was at least breathable air and a modicum of light from the air shafts so high above.

UEPF Spirit of Peace

'Yes, I can find them, Captain,' answered the intelligence officer. 'What's in it for me?'

Like the Captain, the IO was a Class Two, almost—but not quite—the highest caste. Like most other Class Twos he lived for the chance of that rare rise in caste, a rise in caste almost unobtainable outside of the Peace Force and the Clergy.

'A rise in class, of course,' Wallenstein answered.

'You can't give me that.'

'I can if the High Admiral never comes back and I take his place and become a Class One myself.'

'What proof do I have you won't just raise yourself and tell me to screw off?'

'The best of all possible reasons; I have no vested interest in keeping Class One so aloof and elite, not being one myself, and I will need friends at the same level.'

The IO considered this for a moment. 'Give me a couple of hours, then.'

Camp San Lorenzo

Carrera had found himself, over the last several years, sleeping more, rising later, and still always bone weary. He'd left Jimenez to clean up back at the enemy base, finishing the search, extracting their men, pulling back the mechanized cohort that had moved forward into Kashmir to guard the operation, and taking out the prisoners, of which there were some.

For his part he slept. He was so tired, of late, that even the nightmares generally failed to wake him when they came. Thus, the orderly had to pound on his door for several minutes before getting an answer.

'Sir, there's . . . someone . . . someone on the radio for you. Said to tell you it was 'Marguerite.' Sir, why would a stranger be calling on our tactical push?'

'I'll be there in a few minutes,' Carrera answered, rising from his bed and beginning to pull on his boots. He'd slept in uniform. 'Have my vehicle brought around.'

'Already done, Duque.'

* * *

'Carrera.'

'Why, Duque, how pleasant to speak to you again,' Wallenstein said, over the radio. 'Do you have a map that shows the karez system near your camp?'

'Near my camp? Yes, of course but . . . near my camp?'

'Yes, Duque, near your camp. I don't know why they'd be heading there but there they are definitely heading. I mean, if they still had one of the . . . packages . . . '

Shit. 'Twelve,' she'd said.

'Give me the coordinates,' he answered. 'Maybe they just think we won't look so close.'

'Makes a certain amount of sense,' Wallenstein agreed. 'By the way, I don't have your grid system. Polar coordinates from the center of your camp are . . . ' and she read off a direction and distance. 'They're moving continuously along that major karez.'

'Thank you, Captain. Carrera out.'

'Good hunting, Legate.'

They've got a nuke, still. What would I do if I had a nuke and no other way to strike the people who had just chopped all my followers to dogmeat? That's a no-brainer; I'd use it.

'Get me the staff! Put the group which just returned from Kashmir on alert! Tell the Cazadors to be prepared to jump again in six hours. I want a maniple of Pashtun Scouts ready to go at the same time. Notify the Air Ala! Now!'

Click. This time, the click hurt.

16/8/469 AC, Jebel Ansar, Pashtia

The karez split, one branch continuing straight ahead into the gloom while the other took a left turn which opened up after several hundred meters to a pool fed by a small stream. The pool was icy cold but the air outside was warm.

Even at the slow pace at which the column moved toward the oval of light ahead, when she finally emerged into the sun, Khalifa's eyes watered and blinked. She had to cover them with one hand to protect them from the sun until they could become accustomed to it once again.

When she could see again, Khalifa saw a half dozen vehicles, several dozen horses, scores of people, men and women both, along with over a hundred head of livestock. The air was filled with the smell of roasting meat.