Carnifex

dirty wooden deck and the quiet splashing of men easing themselves over the side to the waist-deep, murky and polluted water.

Mustafa's man—called, simply, al Naquib—sniffed at the unpleasant smell composed of mixed smoke, salt sea, rotting jungle vegetation, and pollution. It was so unlike his native desert that inside he cringed.

Still, the mission was important and if al Naquib had to put up with a few esoteric smells to complete it, then so be it. He, too, eased himself over the side and into the foul water. Parameswara followed.

'Place not far,' the Malay bandit advised. He spoke a sort of pidgin Arabic that served as a lingua franca along the Straits.

'I hope not,' al Naquib answered. 'My men are not used to the jungle. I am not used to it either.'

''Not far,'' the Malay repeated, then left to take the lead to guide the mujahadin toward their target.

* * *

The village sat on a low promontory above a slow flowing, greenish river. Culturally and ethnically the place was Chinese, part of the diaspora on Old Earth that had been replicated by forcible immigration to the New. The ethnicity could be seen in the architecture, smelled in the aroma of cooking, and heard in the sing-song speech of early-rising women. Boats were tied up to the riverbank, below the village. Most were unpowered. One, however, sitting low and lean and rakish, had a powerful outboard mounted to the stern. This was the boat the men of the village used for their piratical forays.

Parameswara eyed the boat hungrily. It would make a fine addition to his small fleet. Only let the Yithrabi, Al Naquib, do his job as Mustafa promised me he would.

In the dank, green jungle surrounding the village, al Naquib was doing just that, positioning the men of his company by squads. The early morning calls of birds covered the sound of his movements, and it did those of his men and Parameswara's, and the few words he spoke. Even without the birds, it is doubtful they would have been heard over the chatter of the village's women.

* * *

Yuan Lin was the village chief's senior wife. This didn't protect her from having to rise early, just like any of the other women, to clean and to cook. At most, her position allowed her to drop some of the more onerous duties on the younger women.

She was doing just that, slapping into submission the chief's newest concubine, a fifteen-year-old Cochinese girl seized from a refugee barge, when armed men began emerging from the steamy jungle surrounding the village. Lin opened her mouth to call out a warning. She stopped and closed it again when she saw just how many fighters were swarming the place and how quickly they were doing it.

Wide-eyed, Lin stood with a basket of laundry on one hip, her free hand still raised to strike the Cochinese, when a man materialized in front of her and made pushing motions with the rifle held crossways in front of him. She used her free hand to grab the Cochinese by the ear and pulled her in the direction—the center of the village—where the armed man had indicated he wanted them to go.

The thing that was surprising, perhaps, was that Lin was neither terribly upset nor terribly afraid. She had herself been seized in a raid when she was even younger than the Cochinese. As she'd discovered then, she was a woman, she was not a threat or competitor, and she had value. She might be raped but she'd been through all that before and survived well enough. Nothing worse was likely to happen to her now. As a matter of fact, Lin didn't even necessarily object to being raped as long as she wasn't going to be permanently damaged by the experience.

* * *

Al Naquib and Parameswara stood in the village center, watching as the people—men and boys, women and girls—were herded, cattle-like, inward.

'Fine,' al Naquib said, 'you have control of the village. Who do you want killed?'

'Maybe . . . nobody,' Parameswara answered. 'Dead, they no use . . . me . . . anybody. I see how it fall out.'

Mustafa's man merely shrugged, Up to you.

Parameswara nodded and walked out into the center of the square.

'I'm glad you were all so eager to talk to me,' he began with a smile, eliciting a nervous chuckle from the villagers. 'And I hope you don't mind that I invited a few close friends along.' Parameswara's hand swept around, taking in the more than two hundred that accompanied him.

That earned another mass chuckle, a bit more sincere than the first. After all, why not? He hadn't killed anyone yet and it never hurt to laugh at someone else's jokes. Even Chang Tsai, the chief of the village, joined in the laugh. He, most especially, feared being dead soon. What better reason to try to ingratiate himself with Parameswara?

The Malay chief had a gift for oratory. He spoke of the rising sun and the setting sun. He talked of the low tide always returning as a new high. He talked of the Prophet and he spoke of the Buddha. He waxed eloquent over the future and the past.

What he means is, we join him or he kills every man, woman and child in the village, thought Chang Tsai. It would be better to join.

15/3/467 AC, Kamakura, Yamato

Yamato had this much difference with the Salafis; whereas the Salafis emigrated to Terra Nova to recreate the seventh century of Old Earth, Yamato had preferred recreating the latter third of the nineteenth and earlier third of the twentieth, with a profound nod of respect to the thirteenth through seventeenth. About the entire Pearl- Harbor-to-the-deck-of-the-USS Missouri fiasco, back on Old Earth, they preferred to forget (though the rebuilt Yasukuni Jinja had some hundreds of thousands of mementos). They were none too interested in delving too deeply into the mistakes of the Great Global War, either.

That meant, in practice, that the Imperial Court still had tremendous power within the country, though the power was almost always expressed subtly. Indeed, it was usually expressed so subtly that no one could really be certain what the Emperor actually meant, most of the time. Some of this was, of course, in the way questions to the Throne were phrased.

'His Highness said what?' asked Mr. Yamagata of his colleague, Mr. Saito. Each was a representative of a major shipping company. Yamagata's brought in oil; Saito's exported finished goods.

'I mentioned to His Highness,' answered Saito, 'that ships bringing oil to our land endured many dangers. He answered, 'Sometimes we must endure the unendurable.''

Yamagata took off his bottle-thick glasses and cleaned them with his tie.

'That is a remarkably forthright answer from Him,' he observed. 'It seems clear enough, then, as clear as it ever is, that the Imperial Navy is not going to help us. What do we do then?'

'I came to the same conclusion. As to what we must do, I asked the Emperor, 'Shall not the sons of the Son of Heaven resist tyranny and robbery?' He answered with the questions, 'Does not the law forbid private persons from bearing arms? Has the land not seen untold misery from uncontrolled violence?''

'Shit!' exclaimed Yamagata.

'Shit,' echoed Saito more softly. 'It was a curious audience. Before I left, His Imperial Highness said, 'Sometimes, we must allow ourselves—like Miyamoto Musashi—to be tossed about by the waves of the sea.''

Yamagata's left eyebrow lifted, subtly. 'Wave tossed? Ronin?'

Ronin meant, in Japanese, 'wave man,' as a masterless samurai was said to be tossed through life on the waves. Many ronin, throughout the history of Japanese culture (which history and culture were largely carried over to Yamato on Terra Nova), became mercenaries. Miyamoto Musashi—old Japan's 'sword saint'—had been ronin.

Saito shrugged. 'That much of His Highness' words I did not comprehend.'

'Perhaps I do,' answered Yamagata.

BdL Dos Lindas, Mar Furioso, 3/22/467

The seas were calm and the waves were light, the ship barely taking notice of them.

Montoya took his meal standing in the crowded wardroom. There were seats, a few of them, available, but he'd discovered he really enjoyed watching the maintenance crews in the hangar deck at work. There was a euphony to it, a symmetry. Of course, the irregular pounding from the engine repair shop next to the wardroom was anything but euphonious.

Working in harmony together or not, the crew was frazzled; there was no