Carnifex

* * *

Lungile's eyeball was no better calibrated than Clavell's. His weapons were considerably less sophisticated. Yet, as his mother was fond of saying, 'The lion runs for a meal; the antelope for his life.'

He couldn't run, of course, the pitiful ancient engines of his craft would get him nowhere when pursued by such swift opponents. Unlike the antelope, however, he had fangs.

'Fire!'

* * *

Pedraz saw the flash of flame and the balls of smoke erupt from the pirate ship at the same time Clavell opened fire again with the 40mm.

The forty is high velocity, but not that high. I wonder . . .  FUCK!

'Incoming!' Pedraz screamed, loud enough to be heard over the engines even down in the galley, just as half a dozen much larger balls of flame and smoke appeared in the air between his boat and his chosen target.

* * *

Santiona, like the other side machine gunners, scrunched down over his .41 to take any fragments on his helmet and the shoulder-reinforced lorica body armor. This left his legs open and unprotected but for the greaves. The greaves, moreover, didn't quite cover his bulky legs. That, of course, was where he was hit.

He felt a sort of plucking in three or four places on his legs and thought little of it until he looked down and saw his uniform rapidly reddening. Santiona felt suddenly nauseous. Then the burning began, a result of the hot bits of metal lodged in his flesh.

Shouting, 'Medic!' the wounded gunner released the spade grips and sat heavily to the deck, his hands pressing to staunch the flow of blood. As soon as his rear hit he remembered his duty and also shouted, 'Replacement gunner!'

The medic hustled up from a spot at the rear of the deck from which he could normally keep his eyes on all the crew in action. He stopped at the hatchway just long enough to shout down to the engine room, 'Replacement gunner on Number Two!' before dashing over to render aid to Santiona.

* * *

Lungile felt a momentary rush of joy mixed with relief when he saw the half dozen RGL warheads self-detonate and then one of his enemies fall to the deck. That rush was shortlived, as the apparently wounded man was replaced almost immediately and someone else—a medic, Lungile assumed—began tended the man on deck before dragging him off.

Another reason for the short duration of the pirate's joy was that the enemy boat veered sharply to Lungile's right, slowed to about twenty knots and opened fire again. This time, at that slow speed—still twice that of his own bucket—and with the range closed and the bow no longer doing the Samba with the sea, the 40mm proved deadly. Another five round burst lanced out. This time, three of the five shells found the bow of his boat. It half disintegrated in fire and metal shards mixed with smoldering wood splinters. A dozen men screamed in pain as splinter and shard found them.

One of the shells hit very near the waterline, near enough to it, in fact, to blast a hole large enough to let the sea come pouring in. The bow lowered and the boat slowed with the increased resistance. As it lowered, still more water gushed in.

* * *

Clavell switched his fire to single shot, traversing left to right and then back again, raking the gunwales. By this time he knew that his shipmate was hit. Clavell was in no mood for the niceties. His shells smashed in the wooden bulwark, knocking pirates down like ninepins. Especially did he concentrate on those who seemed most willing to fire; for them he would sometimes donate a second shell.

After about thirty rounds of 40mm, two .41-caliber heavy machine guns, one amidships and the other near the stern, kicked in. At that point Clavell felt free to concentrate on the stern and the engine compartment. Four shots and the thing was not only dead in the water and sinking, the parts still above water were beginning to burn. Pirates, such as still could, began dropping their weapons and jumping overboard. Many of those who could not rise to jump began to pray and scream as water rose or fire spread around them.

'Cease fire! Cease fire!' Pedraz ordered. 'Cris, hard a starboard. Let's go help Agustin.'

* * *

Lungile trod water fifty or sixty meters away from the ruin of his boat. His heart seethed with hate for the enemies that had killed his men, robbed him of his first command, and caused him to fail his father.

'I'll make you pay, infidel filth. I swear I will.'

That would have to wait, however, for Lungile's next incarnation. Since the Salafis did not believe in reincarnation, it might have to wait forever. Lungile, struggling in the water, looked over to see an impossibly large shark's fin towering above the surface and veering towards him.

So much for oaths, the Xamari thought, sadly and hopelessly.

The shark slowly cruising a few feet below the water, and not very far from Lungile's scissoring legs, didn't really care about revenge or reincarnation. It did care about lunch and it did care about the invigorating aroma of blood in the water. Mostly it cared that lunch was, apparently, served.

I love Uhuran food, thought the carcharodon megalodon, as it slid over onto its side to take Lungile at the waist, slicing him crudely in two and filling the water with the invigorating scent of very fresh blood.

Interlude

Clichy-sous-Bois, France, 6 June, 2100

The immigrants had served their purpose. They had bought time for the populations to be regularized. They could go now. According to the papers, they should have gone ten years prior.

Spain and Italy were Islamic now, except for the Vatican in the latter. And the Vatican's independence was merely formal. The imposition of sharia law had allowed the central and important European powers, the core of the EU, to cast those southern Latin states out. Both sides were happy enough with that, though the dethroned Pope, residing in a dank dungeon beneath Saint Peter's while awaiting his ritual burning at the stake, was not.

Give the people in charge their due, though; this was not to be a racist pogrom. Former Moslems who had cast off their worn shackles and joined the secular humanist majority of Europe were welcome to stay. It was only these, these wretches still resident in the cramped and filthy banlieues of France, or the slums of England and Germany, who had to go.

Moslem Spain and Italy would not take any. They were poor enough and growing poorer still by the day. There was no room within either of them, or both together, for the forty or fifty million disenfranchised Moslems of the central powers. Switzerland, perhaps the premier military power of the Continent, had said, 'Nein,' and massed its troops on the borders.

That left only one outlet . . .

* * *

While French troops went to England, mostly via Calais, for the great clearing out, and English Guards regiments landed at Bremen before marching to surround the Moslem quarters of Berlin and Stuttgart and Frankfurt; German troops, a full corps of them, had rolled to Paris on a mission that the EU called, 'Human Hygiene.' It was believed that the troops—German, French, or British—would be as harsh as necessary only if they did not share a language with the bulk of the people they were to uproot. The Scandinavians and the Benelux had likewise exchanged troops for the same reasons.

Gendarmes waved—well, not all the French were always sorry to see the Germans roll into Paris, after all—as the grenadiers and pioneers of Second Panzer Division relieved them of responsibility for securing that portion of the electrified wire perimeter. While grenadiers climbed ladders, and others stood by their armored vehicles, the pioneers cut a portion of the wire fence for the rest to pour through.

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