Carnifex

so. It must be thought upon.

For now, I have the fight in Pashtia to worry about. And, even though I am a son of the Prophet, peace be upon him, I find I must worry, that I must not leave everything to Allah.

What a strange thought that is. The filthy Nazrani say that 'God helps those who help themselves.' How odd that this seemingly impious notion should infect me, and yet it may be so. I must set the mullahs to searching the Holy Koran and the Sacred Hadiths to see if this idea may be religiously supportable.

In any case, if it is not supportable, I do not know what is. Allah has turned his face from us everywhere we relied upon him too heavily. In Pashtia we were slaughtered in weeks. In Sumer, the holy warriors could not face the infidels. Millions have gone over to them, keeping only the shell and shadow of the Faith and none of its meat and drink. Perhaps Allah . . . 

Mustafa sipped at qahwa, unsweetened coffee brewed from beans still green, and filtered through a piece of hemp rope stuck in the spout. There was a thought there, an important thought that had gone skittering away. Perhaps Allah . . . .  what?

Perhaps this is another test of our faith in him? Perhaps. But . . . Aha! There is the thought. What if it is as much a test of His faith in us?

A serving boy, a slave but not a Tauran, bent to refill Mustafa's cup. The Emir of the Ikhwan stopped the boy by covering the cup with his hand.

'Go,' he said. 'Find and bring me Nur-Al-Din, the Misrani, and Abdul Aziz who helps manage the accounts. Bring me, too, Mullah al Kareem, that we might use his insight into the holy words. When that is done, brew more qahwa. It will be a long night.

16/10/466 AC, Training Area Thirty-Five, Isla Real

Leave was never quite 'leave' when Carrera returned from the war. Rather, it was his opportunity to observe, direct and correct the training and administration taking place behind him.

There was only one moon up this evening, Eris, but she was full, casting sharp shadows on the ground. At that, Eris only provided perhaps twenty percent of the maximum illumination possible from Terra Nova's three moons.

Under that moonlight, battle-dressed and wearing night vision goggles, Carrera watched an infantry platoon from Fourth Tercio going through their paces in setting up a night ambush. It looked professional; it looked well-oiled. Yet something bothered him about it and he wasn't sure quite what.

'What's wrong with this, Jamey?' he asked Soult.

Soult shrugged. 'No clue, boss. It looks fine by me.'

'Yeah . . . yeah, that's it. It looks fine. How does something look that fine? When does real war ever look that fine? Let's go trip into the objective rally point, shall we?'

The two were challenged by the team left behind at the objective rally point, or ORP, with the platoon's rucksacks. That was fine, too, but not in a way that bothered Carrera.

'Don't tell anyone I'm here,' he told the sergeant in charge. 'I just want to watch for a bit.'

The sergeant was obviously not happy about that. If his tribune, Cano, came back and found Duque Carrera waiting for him without his having been warned, there'd be hell to pay later on.

Carrera understood that. 'Jamey,' he said, 'stick with the sergeant so that when his tribune comes to rip his balls off he can plead superior orders and no opportunity.' Soult went and stood next to the sergeant while Carrera walked to the side of the ORP nearest the ambush and waited. With his goggles on, he could just make out the ambush position, though not the men in it who had all gone prone. He continued forward until he could make out the waiting legionaries, then stopped and went to one knee to watch.

Mannequins joined to each other and suspended from a cable strung tightly between two trees began to enter the kill zone, in single file, pulled by someone off to the right, somewhere. Carrera saw them move across at a walking pace, a pace a group of Salafis might well take up when they thought they were safe but had to get somewhere.

The target mannequins—there were twelve of so of them, Carrera thought— were fully in the target area when the entire scene was brightly, if momentarily, lit by the flashes of two directional mines. Carrera ducked his chin onto his chest against the backblast and the fragments.

There followed rifle and machine gun fire; dozens of weapons sending out streams of tracers into the jungle downrange. Mannequins began to drop to the ground as bullets found the inflated balloons within sandbags that held them to the cable overhead. The bullets pierced the balloons, collapsing them and letting them and their sandbags flow through the harnesses, detaching them from the overhead cable.

This continued for a minute before there was a whoosh as a star cluster launched into the sky. The ground was suddenly lit in a bright magnesium light. Carrera heard a whistle and then voice commands. Men began to move rapidly across the kill zone, shooting every mannequin once more in the head as it lay on the ground. Special teams searched the 'bodies,' collecting documents of intelligence value, communications devices, and weapons. The documents, cell phones and one radio were turned over to the platoon leader. A pile was made of the captured weapons, which pile a two-man team prepared for demolition.

At some point— Carrera presumed it was when the intel collection team reported to the platoon leader that the bodies were clear —another star cluster was launched. Men began to scurry back to the ambush line, even as the demo team shouted 'Fire in the hole' and pulled the igniters that led to the charges they'd placed on the arms.

Once the demo team had cleared away, there was another whistle blast and, once again, the rifles and machine guns poured lines of death into the jungle opposite the ambush line. Voice commands followed and, by ones and twos the ambushing platoon began to form up to fall back to the ORP.

'It's too smooth,' Carrera whispered.

* * *

Cano was pissed. Being taken by surprise, ambushed himself by the Duque, was just too fucking much. Bad enough that . . .

'Relax, Tribune,' Carrera said, not ungently. He was actually impressed with the kid. 'I just have some questions. It was a good ambush. Really. What bothers me was that maybe it was too good. Why do you think it was so good?'

Cano didn't relax. Sure, he wasn't a signifer anymore; he was entitled to tie his boots in the morning without tying the left one to the right one. Even so, this was the bloody Duque. He was a bastard; everyone knew it. Cano could just see his career flying off to parts unknown and unknowable. He could . . .

'I asked a question, Tribune,' Carrera reminded.

'Oh . . . sorry, sir. I was . . . I just wasn't expecting you to—'

'I asked a question, Tribune.'

'Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Well . . . sir . . . we've done this ambush here maybe a dozen times just since I've been leading the platoon. The boys know what to do and, then again, we drill the shit out of it . . . '

Aha.

'Jamey! Call the Chief of Staff, the I and the Ia. I don't give a shit if they're asleep. Get 'em up.'

17/10/466 AC, Main Officers Club, Isla Real

Normally, in every day life, Carrera was a surprisingly gentle sort. He wasn't particularly aggressive, or vicious. He'd probably never done a deliberately cruel thing, outside of line of duty, in his life.

In line of duty, however, or especially in action, he changed. The change wasn't like that of a man turning to a wolf; that kind of transition, even in myth, took time. Instead, for Carrera, there simply came a moment when stress impended and he changed.

It was something like a click.

'I'm so glad you could all make it,' Carrera hissed to the assembled senior officers and centurions of the Legion.

As a single man, they thought, Oh, shit, we're in trouble.

'You people suck mastodon cock,' Carrera began, with his usual fine sense of tact. 'Where the fuck did you get the idea that your job is to train people to follow formulae, rather than training them, mentally and morally, as individuals and as units, to solve unique problems? You've been fighting for five fucking years now. When did you all forget that war is always different?

His face was livid as he continued, 'Can