Carnifex

one. I swear; I'll never hurt him.'

Still looking suspicious, Jimenez had to concede that Arti seemed sincere enough. 'Very well then. You can hunt him, my little Diana. Though I foresee much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Bachelor Officers' Quarters.'

'Will you help, Xavier?'

'Brazen hussy. What is it with you and older men?'

'They're real men, Uncle Xavier, not boys. Besides, I was in love with you when I was a little girl and I guess that just typecast me for impossibly old men.'

Slightly embarrassed, Jimenez thought about that, his head bobbing from side to side. At length, he had to agree. God knows, he'd been not nearly as much of a man at age twenty-five.

'Well . . . I suppose that my own sergeant major could use a little more advice . . . and perhaps I could, as well. And then there's the whole . . . well, never mind. I suppose I have been underutilizing this most impressive training asset. Niece, please invite Sergeant Major McNamara, Sergeant Major Escobedo and his wife, and Legate Guttierez and his wife to dinner, next . . . mmm . . . let's say next Friday. Mess dress? Yes, that will give us an opportunity to show off your not unimpressive . . . assets and give you a chance to see just how impressive Sergeant Major Mac can be in full regalia.'

With a yelp of joy—with her uncle on her side, poor McNamara didn't stand a chance—Artemisia launched herself to wrap her arms around Xavier and squeeze him tight enough to collapse lungs. After a moment she backed up and looked at him seriously.

'Xavier,' she said. 'If you had not been my uncle, I would have gone after you.'

Interlude

7/6/47 AC (Old Earth year 2106), Terra Nova, Balboa Colony

The shuttles came down in broad daylight, the better to intimidate the population.

Belisario Carrera, watching from a jungle-shrouded perch overlooking the ciudad, counted them as they descended. Multiplying by twenty-four, he came up with a number of new opponents that set his teeth to grinding and his stomach to churning.

Still, there's no way to tell from here, Belisario thought, how many are actually aboard, what their equipment is like, or what kind of soldiers they are. Hmmm . . . 

'Pedro?' Belisario called, summoning a short, stocky and dark, loincloth-clad fighter.

'Si, jefe?' Pedro asked when he had crawled up to his leader's observation post. He massaged a sore shoulder as he lay upon the ground, gift of a captured UN rifle with altogether too much kick.

'I want you to . . . ' Belisario began and then stopped. Pedro was a cholo, an indian, but he was also very nearly the brightest of Belisario's followers. He was among the bravest. If Belisario asked Pedro to go into town and spy, Pedro would certainly do it. But the risk?

I must risk it. I must risk him.

'Pedro,' Belisario continued, 'I need to know what we're facing. Can you go into town and look around for me?'

The cholo didn't say much, ever. He didn't now, either, but just nodded and began to slither backwards.

Belisario returned his attention to the town below and the parade of descending shuttles. So even here I cannot escape Earth and its corruption. Ah, well, at least here I can fight and have a chance. But I do wish that before I left I'd killed more slowly that UN bastard who wanted to trade me my own land for my daughter.

* * *

The ciudad wasn't really much of a ciudad. Even Pedro, cholo or not, knew that. Only the stone church had any real presence, at least since Belisario and his men had attacked and burned to the ground the local UN offices. It wasn't difficult for Pedro to keep a smile off his face as he passed the ruined UN compound. After all, there was a substantial group of uniformed men busily working to rebuild it.

Looking carefully at the soldiers, Pedro engraved on his mind the image his eyes saw. Big, strong, tough looking. Red cloths wound around their heads. Cloths look pretty neat. Might get one. Keep rifles close by or slung across backs. Hotter than shit and they still haven't taken off shirts. I smell trouble.

Pedro had his basic letters and numbers. He counted, in all, about one hundred and fifty before moving on.

I thought other fucking UN bastards looked tough, he thought, a few hundred more yards down the street. He, like the civilians of the town, rapidly got out of the way of another group of soldiers, marching silently in three files and about fifty ranks, separated into five groups. They short shits, like me. Eyes different, though. Skin lighter. But little fuckers look mean. And them big fucking curved knives they carrying? Scary.

After three-hundred of the toughest looking men he had ever seen, Pedro breathed a small sigh of relief as he got close enough to see the next group, just emerging from the shuttles.

Hah, that more like it. Them look like Botswanan fellahs we kick shit out of while back. Smell worse, though. Jesus, nobody tell dirty fuckers 'Cleanliness next to Godliness?' I mean, I know water tight on fucking transport ships but . . . ewwww. It ain't like you sweat any in deep freeze. Them nasty fucks musta been stinky when board ship.

Then Pedro smelled something he had only ever smelt once before in his life. That time had been at Tocumen Airport, in Panama, on old Earth, as he had been about to board the aircraft that would take him to the United States to be shuttled up to the Amerigo Vespucci. He didn't know what caused it. At first he thought it might be the helicopters roaring by overhead.

But, no . . . them too far away . . . downwind, too.

A horn sounding behind him half scared Pedro out of his coppery skin. He turned quickly, and found himself staring into eyes that just emerged above a long, green painted, solid-looking slope. He looked above the eyes, looked further up to what appeared to be a pipe sticking out of a half a trash can stuck on front of the universe's biggest frying pan. Up; a machine gun mounted atop a flat roof, with a soldier nonchalantly resting one hand on the gun, while waving with the other for Pedro to clear away.

Oh, shit; they got tanks.

Chapter Thirteen

We could wait no more

In the burning sands on the ride to Agadir.

Like the dogs of war

For the future of this land on the ride to Agadir . . .

—Mike Batt, Ride to Agadir

28/2/468 AC, Firebase Pedro de Lisaldo, Pashtia

'Sayidi, it's not like they don't know we're coming for them,' said Qabaash, in the confines of the conference room tent near the main command post for the Legion's expeditionary force. 'And, to a considerable degree of certainty, when. We can choose the exact time and the place and even the manner, but we cannot choose the fact or the season. The Kibla Pass must be cleared; they know this. They will be waiting and they will be prepared.'

''Prepared' is possibly an understatement, boss,' added Triste. 'Even if what the FS Army has caught moving into the area represents ninety percent of everything that was sent up there by the Ikhwan, and it doesn't, that other theoretical ten percent is going to be a bitch, taken head on.'

'What are we facing?' Carrera asked.

'A reinforced brigade,' Triste answered. 'I can't tell you exactly how reinforced they might