Carnifex

* * *

'I recognize the face, boss, but who is that kid?'

'I think it's a centurion, junior grade named Cruz,' Carrera answered. 'Volunteer for the original Legion. Decorated twice . . . mmm, maybe three times; not sure. Two kids. Wife's name is . . . ' and here Carrera had to struggle to remember, ' . . . mmm . . . Cara or . . . . no; Caridad, I think. Good kid. Going places if he stays with us.'

Unseen by Carrera, Soult smiled. Gotta admire the boss' memory.

'You actually know his wife? I mean, we've got fifteen hundred officers, twenty-five hundred optios and centurions, maybe a thousand warrants and you know his wife?'

'Long story,' Carrera answered.

Soult shrugged, then asked, 'Hey, boss; does it bother you when . . . you know . . . when you have to meet the wife and kids, or the parents, of somebody who got killed?'

Carrera was a long time answering. 'Jamey, it bothers the hell out of me. But you know what keeps me going?'

'Revenge?'

'When we first started, sure, that was all I had. But the fact is, I keep going now for two other reasons. One is that we have to win this war for the sake of our civilization, for our kids and grandkids.'

'And the other?'

Carrera sighed. 'The other is that I love this shit; that I'm addicted to it.'

* * *

Cruz didn't have time to think any deep thoughts until he reached the top of the cliff and secured and lowered the rope. After that, he thought, Maybe Cara was right. Maybe I should give this shit up.

If only I didn't love it so.

10/3/467 AC, UEPF Spirit of Peace

I love it when a plan comes together, thought High Admiral Robinson, as he watched a distant image of Xamari pirates in half a dozen boats swarm, engage and board a Balboan registry freighter.

It hadn't been all that easy for Robinson, setting things up as he had. It had helped, though, that nearly half of Terra Nova's global shipping was registered with the Republic of Balboa and most of the rest was with an otherwise insignificant country in Uhuru. The Balboan Government needed merely to be reminded of the World League's discountenancing of privately armed merchant vessels and that, with a large, uncontrolled and potential hostile army inside its borders the government needed whatever friends it could get . . .  or should we arrange to pull out the TU troops that are there to safeguard you, Senor Presidente?

Robertsonia, the other large flag of convenience registry on Terra Nova had needed a bribe that was so low it was pitiful. The Tauran Union had, of course, begun to enforce the World League's edicts. The rest of down below, except for the Zhong, didn't much matter. And to the Zhong, every non Zhong ship seized by the pirates was all to the good.

While the currently in-power Progressive Party in the FSC also frowned on armed merchant ships, it had a large and powerful surface navy, more powerful in fact than all the other navies combined, to protect its own shipping. A task force of this had been sent off to suppress the piratical scourge along the Xamar coast. It was signally failing to do so. In part this was because Robinson was passing to Abdulahi which ships could be attacked without risking engagement with the FSN; in part because the FSN's Rules of Engagement, or ROE, forbade taking any seriously deterrent action even if they happened to be in a position to engage. The Progressive Party's domestic 'mandate' was not so strong that it could afford to alienate any of it constituencies, progressive, pacifist, racial, environmental, or other.

Neither the World League nor the other—marginally—significant naval powers on the planet were taking any significant action to suppress the pirates.

Even better; Mustafa's man among the Nicobars is gradually bringing the other pirates under his control.

11/3/467 AC, Nicobar Straits

A thick haze floated over the water, reducing visibility to no more than two hundred meters in the daytime. At night, a sailor could, sometimes, see the end of his nose. The haze was not from the weather. Rather, it was mostly smoke from grass and brush fires that raged uncontrolled upwind of the Straits.

On any given clear day the Straits would have a steady hum as more than one hundred and fifty ships made passage through it. When the haze closed down like this, though, all the ships stopped engines and dropped anchors. Even the risk of pirate attack was better than risking a wreck.

Parameswara, chieftain of his own band of pirates smiled in the silence. Tonight was not a night for piracy. The ships were safe for the nonce from him and his men.

I have a better fish to catch tonight, he thought

* * *

One remarkable feature of Nicobar piracy was not that it was entirely Islamic, but that it was not entirely Islamic. Indeed, there were Hindu pirates, Sikh pirates, animist pirates, Buddhist pirates . . . even 'Christian' pirates. There were Chinese pirates and Tamil pirates. There were white, black, brown, and yellow pirates. In all, there were—and not counting mere part timers—some thirty-three large bands of pirates, plus substantial numbers of small time freelancers, not more than half of either Moslem.

They all hated each other; that was key.

It had taken some time, and considerable intelligence support from Robinson, before Mustafa had determined the solution to his problem. It was really elegant in its conceptual simplicity. Mustafa would help and direct one not terribly large or powerful Moslem group, under the leadership of a fat, middle-aged Malay cutthroat named Parameswara, to take over, one by one, all the non-Moslem pirates. That band would then be large to take on the largest of the Moslem bands. That united band would then be large enough to have little difficulty taking over the rest of the Moslem bands. At that point, there would be enough Moslems under cohesive leadership to exterminate the previously allied non-Moslem pirates.

That was one elegant concept. More elegant still, so much so that Mustafa nearly shivered when he thought upon it, was that the ultimate targets of the pirates, his ultimate target, the shippers of the industrialized world, would pay to have Parameswara do this.

In the short term, the Malay would do precisely as he said, suppress piracy. The shippers, like all their ilk, rarely thought in the long term. Short-term returns were what kept them in their cushy jobs. Short-term returns were what got them golden parachute packages. Indeed, that much at least Terra Nova's capitalists shared with its progressives. There was little practical difference between a progressive, or an outright socialist, promising to rape an economy for short-term gain to buy votes from the masses and a capitalist raping a company for short-term gains to buy votes from the stockholders.

So, at least, Mustafa thought of it. And, in principle, giving money to Parameswara to protect their ships from pirates was not substantially different than paying it to Abdulahi, as an increasing number of shippers were, to keep his merry boys from seizing their ships.

The part Mustafa had the greatest difficulty in understanding was the failure of the shippers to arrange for their own ships' protection. Is it that we are charging one drachma less than it would cost the shippers to hire mercenaries for protection? Are they really that short-sighted? They must be.

One form of aid Mustafa had given Parameswara was a company of his own mujahadin. That company had also brought with it modern weapons ranging from rifles to heavy machine guns and rocket grenade launchers, or RGLs, sufficient to arm ten times Parameswara's band. In addition, they had brought money, a doctor, night vision equipment and radios.

Mostly, they brought expertise. The war to gain control of the pirate factions of the Nicobar Straits would be fought mostly on land.

* * *

The engine was killed even as the boat's pilot turned the wheel hard a port, toward the coast. Landfall was a subdued scraping of muck along the lead vessel's bottom, followed by a shuddering stop. There was no sound except the lapping of small waves on the hull of the boat, the sound of feet scraping along a