Carnifex

inherent in the ship's computer, she was able to track both war fleets as well as the pirates and their targets. Symbols stood in for full views of the ships.

That is to say, she was able to track everything but didn't see the need. Once she'd identified that the mercenary fleet was in no position to interfere with the pirates with their own ships, she focused in on the carrier to ensure it wasn't launching aircraft at the pirates. That kept her rapt attention. The only thing that had bothered her was the disappearance of the two patrol boats from the ocean surface. This had not troubled her long, however, for she had found them sitting under tarps atop the ship the screen identified as the Harpy Eagle.

BdL Harpy Eagle

The boatswain spared a glance overhead, silently praying that his camouflage job would do.

The hardest part had been assembling the frames in the midst of the storm, with the wind roaring and the waves sometimes washing over the deck. It had actually been fairly easy to construct the frames out of cheap lumber down in the cargo hold. Taking them apart and stowing them in an open space within the deck level of the superstructure hadn't been hard. But getting the frames out and built when no man could hear a word, or sometimes even see another for all the spray in the air? The boatswain rather hoped they'd not have to try this trick again and certainly not in a storm like the last one.

Safe enough bet, though, he thought. Like most tricks, it's unlikely to work more than once.

Still silently, the boatswain said a small prayer for the success of the Trinidad and the Agustin.

BdL Santisima Trinidad

The sea state, so long after the storm, was low and the bow rode high, skipping over the waves, propelled by twin screws driven by sixty-two hundred horsepower. Pedraz stood at the helm, giving light taps to the wheel to cut expertly across the waves. His body bounced in time with the beating of the hull.

Up front, on the 40mm, stood Seamen Clavell and Guptillo. The pair wore Legion standard (plus) body armor and helmets, though Clavell's helmet covered a set of headphones that were hooked into the boat's intercom. The 'plus' came in the form of a silk and liquid metal apron that extended over the crotch, and liquid metal greaves covering chins and knees. There wasn't a hell of a lot of cover on a patrol boat.

A few paces behind the gun crouched two more of the crew, likewise accoutered. One of these carried a clip of five 40mm shells and was close to the forty. The other had the same but was closer to the magazine well from which more shells would be passed upward.

Pedraz looked to port where Seaman Leonardo Panfillo clutched the spade grips of a .41-caliber heavy machine gun. The shiny brass belt draped down before disappearing into a gray painted ammunition can. Pedraz looked for signs of worry in Panfillo's face. There weren't any—and perhaps this made perfect sense after having braved the hair-raising transfer during the storm—but only a look of grim determination.

Satisfied with Panfillo, the skipper glanced to starboard where Esteban Santiona manned the .41 on that side. He was heavyset, was Santiona, but the weight helped him control the vicious vibration of the HMG. Something, at least, made the sailor such a bloody good gunner; in informal competition with the gunners of the other boats in the tercio Santiona had, frankly, kicked the rest of the patrol boat maniple's posteriors.

'Esteban,' Pedraz shouted over the roar of the engines and the pounding of the water. 'Leave a couple of the bastards for the rest to practice on, got it?'

'Si, mi skipper,' the rotund gunner answered without looking up.

The Ironsides and Pedraz had worked out a simple method by which the supercarrier could vector in the patrol boat to the targets without being too obvious about it. The method was that the Trinidad and its sister ship were assigned a flight number, Blue Jay Four Three. The Ironsides' radio room broadcast vectors under that flight number. Pedraz heard and adjusted his course while Agustin's skipper merely followed Pedraz. The carrier couched the directions in terms of naval aviation but had schooled Pedraz to ignore the parts irrelevant to him. They'd also told him not to acknowledge the directions. For further deception, Ironsides had put up an aircraft which would follow those directions.

One never could tell who might be listening.

UEPF Spirit of Peace

The computer on Robinson's desk spoke. 'Captain Wallenstein, I have discovered an anomaly.'

'Go,' ordered the captain, simply.

'There are two small surface craft in the area of focused observation that should not be there. Moreover, when the largest of the vessels in the area broadcasts certain directions, an aircraft responds by taking those directions, but so do the surface craft.'

Crap! 'Show me.'

The Kurosawa immediately panned in to show the Trinidad and the Agustin skimming the waves, leaving broad V-shaped wakes behind them. Resolution was just fine enough for Wallenstein to make out darkened blobs on deck that had to be men.

She hit an intercom button. 'Admiral? Marguerite. Come back to your quarters immediately.'

* * *

Abdulahi could read a chart as well as the next pirate. When Robinson called to warn him of the position, direction and speed of the patrol boats bearing down on his men he knew immediately that they were on an intercept course. He tried frantically to call the leader of the band on the radio but, maintenance being what it was among the Xamari . . .

It took longer than a radio would have, had it been working, to get through via cell phone. It was pretty amusing, really, that Xamar couldn't have police, fire or medical services, that courts were right out, and that transportation was catch as catch can. Even so, somehow they managed to keep cell phone service up and running. Some called it 'connectedness.'

What a silly word, Abdulahi thought, while waiting for his son to answer the phone. It's touted as the route to civilizing the more barbaric parts of Terra Nova, whatever 'civilizing' may mean. In practice, it means that a slave dealer in Pashtia can know whether the price for fourteen year old female virgins or fat little boys is higher in Kashmir or among the brothels of Taurus. It means the drug smuggler can easily learn both where he might obtain the best price for his merchandise and where the risk of arrest is least. It means money laundered from crime and corruption. It means corruption extending its influence to yet new places from its more familiar paths.

'Connectedness' means that, when you mixed a gallon of cat piss with a gallon of goat's milk, the mix tastes a lot more of the former than of the latter.

When we in Xamar were still a real country then being connected to the rest of the globe would probably have been a good thing, for us and for everyone else. As is? It makes everything worse. I couldn't be the pirate I am, nor what used to be my country the mess that it is, without our 'connectedness.' And I'm not sure it wasn't our 'connectedness' to the rest of the globe that ruined us.

* * *

'Lungile' he was called by his Bantu-speaking concubine mother, herself taken as a girl in a slave raid by Abdulahi. 'The good one,' it meant, and to his mother he had indeed been a good son. As son of Abdulahi, Lungile was the leader of the three pirate vessels. Nineteen-years-old and closing to action, Lungile didn't hear the ringing at first over the straining, gasping sounds of his boat's overused and undermaintained diesels. On approximately the fourteenth ring he noticed it and answered, 'Yes, Father?'

'My son, it's a trap. How far are you from the target?'

'Perhaps forty minutes, Father.' The boy's voice sounded calm enough. 'What it is this time? More of their silly sound machines? We can face those. What to fear from a demon's wail?'

'Ai, forty minutes? Then it is too late for you to take hostages. And it may be too late also for you to turn around and make it back to shore. Lungile, my son, it is not the sound machines. There are two small