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  Both men stood on short, unpainted wooden stools, about half a meter high. Around their necks were hemp ropes, tightly wound into nooses and leading to a simple wooden frame with cross piece. Both trembled not so much in fear as in shame. This was going to be a hard and, especially, a shameful death, a kicking, choking, pissing and shitting your pants death, and both knew it.

  The legionary's cohort was drawn up in formation before the gallows. Under some tranzitrees, planted for shade, the Sumeri's family elders stood witness as well, as did some of the clan's women. Nobody even thought to touch the beckoning fruit of the tranzitrees. Inviting green on the outside, luscious red within, the fruit of the tranzitree was poisonous to any forms of life with highly developed brains. Still, they provided good shade, were immensely hard to kill, and had pretty flowers.

  While Sergeant Major Epolito Martinez, a fireplug-shaped, dark-skinned sergeant major with his hair in a severe buzz cut, harangued the cohort on the wages of sin, Major General Adnan Sada, Army of the Republic of Sumer, had some choice words for the family.

  "I have consulted with my brigade chaplain," Sada said, "on the question of honor killing of raped females. Mullah Thaquib informs me—and he is an educated man, an Islamic scholar, who has studied in Yithrab—that there is not one word, not one, to permit or condone such a crime. He tells me that it is unIslamic, that it is murder. As such . . . " Sada turned and nodded to his own sergeant major, Na'ib 'Dabit Bashar, standing not far from Martinez.

  "Epolito, time," the Sumeri sergeant major announced. Bashar was tall and rail thin and had but a single eye. He'd lost the other in the fight for Ninewa, facing, among others, Martinez's own cohort. It was just business; Bashar held no grudges.

  "And furthermore," finished Martinez, "I'm glad to be hanging this son of a bitch who brought shame on all of us, and I'll be glad to do the same for any of you."

  With that Martinez executed a smart about face and marched a few paces to bring himself parallel to the Sumeri. There he halted a few seconds until the Sumeri said, quietly, "Forward . . . march."

  "Man, I hate this shit," Bashar said. His Spanish had gotten rather good over the last few years.

  "Nothing for it," Martinez answered, "but it makes me sick, too." But I deserve it. Who failed to train you to keep your cock in you pants, boy, who failed to train you not to rape women, if it wasn't me?

  At the base of the gallows, both noncoms stopped and placed one foot each on one of the stools. Together they looked toward Sada.

  Sada heard one woman begin to wail. He supposed it was the mother who had lost a daughter and was about to lose a son. Nothing for it, he thought. If you have more sons, woman, raise them better.

  He turned towards the gallows and raised one hand. When he dropped it both Martinez and Bashar tipped the stools over and backed up. The condemned men dropped less than six inches each. Their feet immediately began to flail in panic. The nooses hardly tightened at first.

  It was going to be a very slow hanging.

  * * *

  Patricio Carrera, aka Patrick Hennessey, Dux of the Legion del Cid, forced himself to watch the hanging from the second floor window of his adobe brick office. Though no one was looking, he kept his face a stony mask, even while the two doomed men struggled and twisted at the end of their ropes.

  For the slowly strangling Sumeri who had murdered his own sister Carrera felt no pity. You stupid bastard. I'd have paid recompense money and moved her out of the country, married her off to one of my troops or maybe sent her to school somewhere. Even in your fucked up culture there's such a thing as out of sight, out of mind. You didn't have to kill the girl. And I'd still have hanged the man who raped her.

  His own soldier was a different matter, for Carrera loved his Legion and loved the soldiers who composed it. Watching one of his own die slowly and disgracefully hurt.

  Carrera sighed. But what choice have I, boy? When one of you rapes a girl he drives up resistance and endangers all the others. And it wasn't like we didn't have whores available for you. There was no excuse. And if I loved you, son, I hate you, too, for what you've made me do to you.

  * * *

  The definition of a bad death could be said to be one in which two or more deadly factors race at a snail's pace to kill the victim. In this case there were three such factors. While gravity pulled the men down, straining their necks and threatening to break them, the ropes tightened slowly, cutting off air and blood to the brain, even while the combination of impeded blood flow and terror promised eventual cardiac arrest. All this the two men suffered until, finally, the Sumeri's skinny neck gave way. His legs thrashed once, twice, and then he went still except for the unconscious rippling of dying muscles and the steady drip, drip, drip of piss and liquefied shit off still wriggling toes.

  The choking and gagging Balboan legionary had a tougher time of it. With his much more muscular neck there was no chance of breakage. Nor did the rope cut off blood to the brain or induce cardiac arrest. Instead, his thrashing and his weight gradually tightened the noose until there was no more passage for air. Only then, and even then not for some time, did he lose consciousness and, finally, die.

  * * *

  All this Carrera watched, unwilling that he should not witness what he himself ordered, however horrible. Only when it was over, when the doctor in attendance placed his stethoscope to the victims' chests and made the signal that they were dead, did the Dux step away from the window.

  Even as he did, he could still hear a Sumeri mother wailing.

  8/3/463 AC, Ninewa, Sumer

  An ambulance siren wailed in the distance, racing to the scene of the latest bombing in the provincial capital. They weren't as common here as they were some other places in the country; yet they were far too common still.

  Carrera, Sada, and their respective military formations did what they could to aid the local police and even to search vehicles themselves. It helped . . . somewhat . . . sometimes . . . in some places.

  * * *

  They'd tried both high-tech and low-tech solutions, from explosive sniffing machines to explosive sniffing dogs. Both methods had faltered under the simple terrorist expedient of sending forth small boys with spray bottles to spray underchassis and wheel wells, signposts and curbs with a solution containing various explosive compounds in low dilution. To the machines and the dogs, explosive was explosive. They were soon alerting on nearly everything. When everything smells like explosive nothing does. The machines were retired and the dogs sent to other duties.

  There had been some successes of course. Early on in the campaign aircraft equipped to spit out every imaginable cell phone number and every possible radio frequency had overflown likely areas for bomb construction. This had blasted a goodly number of bomb manufacturers into the next world over a short period of time.

  Those who lived had reverted to using infrared garage door openers to detonate their bombs. The Legion had not yet figured out a way to prematurely detonate those until they were already emplaced, which was all too often all too late.

  * * *

  The bomb which had just gone off in a market had been detonated in just that way. Fortunately, something had warned the civilians nearby who had, for the most part, gone scurrying. Casualties were remarkably low and for those there were there was a catch all phrase, il hamdu l'illah, to God be the praise.

  Now, to either side of that attack site and the few bodies it held, other groups waited for some special targets to show up to detonate their own little gateways to Hell.

  * * *

  It had been a hell of an argument really. After the assassination of their three local leaders by men purporting to be from the news media, the first assumption had been that it was the foreign mercenaries' doing. As one of the remaining terrorist chiefs, Faisal ibn Bahir, pointed out, though, "Really not their style. They never even searched the place for files. And they only took personal arms when they left and not all of those. No, I think it was a personal hit, maybe ev
en because of that pressie that was blown up."

  "But the infidel press has shown it's been on our side from the beginning," objected another of the leading terrorists, this one a representative of the Salafi Ikhwan.

  "That's very true," agreed Bahir, with a serious nod. "And yet, does it not strike you as suspicious, my brother, that this same infidel press supports and advances the very things we loathe and fight against? Freedom for women, for queers, for atheists? Are they not the very essence of perfidy? Are they not the mothers of lies? Why then should we accept anything they say or do at face value? The only thing we can be sure of is that they take care of each other. And that, brother, is completely consistent with them assassinating, more likely paying someone to assassinate, our fallen comrades."

  "But . . . if the infidel press is against us, what chance have we?"

  "This is why we must strike them," insisted Bahir, "to let them know who their masters are. After all, the 'courageous' infidel press is brave only when not pressed."

  "Should we assassinate then, or take hostages for ransom?"

  This, Bahir contemplated. After a bit of deep concentration, he answered, "Nobody expects us to honor ransoms anymore, not since that Masera houri was fed feet-first into a wood chipper."

  Giulia Masera, a progressive journalist from the Tauran Union, had volunteered to be a hostage for ransom early in the war. Her mistake had been in surrendering herself to Sada's boys, rather than the actual insurgents. These had taken the ransom, then murdered her for the cameras in just the way Bahir had said. This had had the salutary effect of stopping such voluntary hostage takings pretty much entirely.

  "No," Bahir continued. "Let's pay them back in the same coin; kill a team or two and leave our calling cards on the bodies."

  * * *

  "Don't press too soon," cautioned the leader of the five man bomber team. "Wait for the vultures to show up on their way to gorge on the meat from the bodies that lie dismembered in the market."

  The bomber with the infrared switch in his hand smiled at the metaphor. Good one, Anwar. What are the pressies, after all, but carrion feeders?

  They didn't have long to wait. Ambulances passed. Military vehicles passed. And then came the word from an observer a further half mile down the road, "Tauran News Network, yellow van, eye painted on the side."

  Placing a hand, fraternally, on the shoulder of the bomber with the detonating switch, Anwar said, "On my signal, Brother . . . . and . . . FIRE!"

  Infrared, despite sending a signal at the speed of light, activated a mechanism that was much slower. Anwar knew the time it would take between sending that signal and his bomb exploding. He had mentally calculated the time, and done so rather well. The yellow painted van with the TNN eye on the side was only a meter or so past the bomb when it went off.

  The explosion came in the form of a fiery dark cloud and the whizzing of hot chunks of steel. The bomb, itself, was of the concave directional type. It was mid-sized, and just perfect for sending a very heavy concentration of metal chunks in a fairly precise direction.

  The rear tires of the van were blown off as the rear three fourths of one side disintegrated under the steel hail. The van's tail was forced about ninety degrees from its direction of travel. Forward momentum, however, had not been lost. The van had no option, given the laws of physics, but to begin to spin along its long axis as it tumbled down the street. It crashed, finally, at a store front. Between the bomb and the wildly careening van, some numbers of innocent people were hurt or killed.

  No matter; the bomber team was well sheltered and they emerged moments after the bomb went off, ignoring the dead and wounded and racing afoot for the van. Their faces were covered by their keffiyah. Once at the van, rifles went into action, pouring lead into the stunned and bleeding men—oh, and there's one woman, too. Infidel slut!—inside the wrecked vehicle. One or more bullets must have found the gas tank, for the air quickly filled with the stench of gasoline. One terrorist carried a grenade. This he donated into a broken window. The van was soon blazing merrily and, based on the screaming, finishing off whichever of the infidel vultures had survived bomb and bullet.

  Nodding satisfaction, Anwar gave the order, "Leave the rifles; plenty more where they came from. Now go and disperse. We'll meet at my house this evening."

  As the men ran off they heard another bomb, and more rifle fire, coming from what sounded like about a mile in the other direction.

  * * *

  All three moons were up, Hecate, Eris and Bellona, when Khalid, representing Adnan Sada, met with Bahir in a walled in courtyard in a suburb of Ninewa. "That was well done," Khalid congratulated. "My liwa is pleased."

  "He is pleased even over the twenty-three innocents we killed?" Bahir retorted.

  "No . . . no, of course not," Khalid shook his head. "But there is always what the Balboan mercenaries call 'collateral damage.' If you had not killed the innocents then it would not have seemed as if it were an attack by the resistance. The question is whether the damage is less than there would be if we did not take the action. He thinks it was worth it, however regrettable it may have been."

  And how am I different, then, from the people who blew up my family? Khalid wondered. In this only: they blew up my family; I only blow up others' families. That is as much moral difference as can be.

  From inside his dishdasha Khalid drew several packages of Tauran money which he placed on a low table between himself and Bahir. "This is for your expenses. There is a bonus in there, as well, for a job—well, two jobs, really—well done."

  "It was three jobs, including getting you the introductions and passes to bring your 'news team' to murder the chiefs."

  "You were already paid for the first," Khalid insisted.

  "I know. That isn't the point. But after three such jobs, is that not enough to earn the release of my father's son?"

  Khalid sighed. "I have told you this before, Bahir. Your brother will be pardoned and released when the war is over, really and finally over. He hasn't been subject to the question since he gave us your name. But until the war is over, you dance to our tune if you do not want your brother to dance to a very different tune."

  Under the shadowless light of the three moons, Bahir scowled even as he raked in the money.

  8/3/463 AC (Old Earth Year 2518), UEPF Spirit of Peace

  From space, Hecate was up and appeared full as Captain Marguerite Wallenstein's shuttle touched down on the Spirit's hangar deck. Robinson was there to meet her. He waited for the hangar doors to lock, and the air previously pumped out to be released back into the open space, before cycling the airtight doors. Even then, he didn't trust the green light that came on to signal that air pressure was adequate. Rather, he waited for the balloon visible from the port hole in the hatch to collapse.

  The fleet needed things like the balloon. The ships were old, irreplaceable, and almost unmaintainable. Things went wrong. Things were wrong that simply could not be repaired without resort to drastic measures. He'd been on station for four Old Earth years and had had to order progressive cannibalization of some of his ships to keep others going.

  Clever prole, who thought of the balloon trick, thought the High Admiral, as he walked to the shuttle's hatch. I wonder if I should have had him spaced after all as being too clever a prole. No, I suppose not. After all, it might be me he saves next.

  The symbol of United Earth—northern hemisphere at the center and southern exaggerated out of size, the whole surrounded by a laurel wreath—split as the hatch opened to either side. A small walkway emerged and down the walkway strode the blond and leggy Captain Wallenstein, a pistol strapped to her hip and some black cloth held in her arms. Blue eyes flashed angrily. Wallenstein did not look happy.

  "Never!" she shouted, throwing the black cloth at Robinson. "Never will I go down to that stinking cesspool again."

  The High Admiral smiled, letting the burkha fall to the deck. A prole would see to it, later. "I gather then that Mustafa was his
usual warm and friendly self."

  Wallenstein's eyes were flame. "Warm and frie . . . arghghgh! Do you know that bastard made me dress in a sack? That he never spoke to me directly but made me talk through a slave? That he . . . ah, what's the use? Of course, you knew."

  "Yes, and isn't he just lovely, my dear Captain? Can you imagine Terra Nova under him and his sort? We could all go home, Marguerite, with never a care that this hellhole could ever become a threat to our people."

  "Yes . . . yes, I suppose so," the captain agreed. "Except that they can't win, Martin. It's just as you said, Sumer is lost. I saw that on my sojourn there. Oh, yes; the Ikhwan will likely drag it out. But they can't win."

  Nodding sagely, Robinson said, "I don't care about Sumer. That's been a lost cause since the Balboan mercenaries showed they were more ruthless than the Salafi Ikhwan. Tell me about Pashtia."

  An underling came up to take charge of Wallenstein's pistol. She unbuckled the weapon and gave it over, then said to Robinson, "Later, in your quarters."

  * * *

  "It's going to be a long, slow struggle to reopen Pashtia fully, Martin," Wallenstein insisted. "But Mustafa, the filthy barbarian, is making some strides. In particular they're doing well at rearming, at limiting the degree to which government control can be spread, and at training some of what I think will eventually be very good leaders. It's a race though, between how long they can keep the Federated States occupied in Sumer while building up in Pashtia."

  "How long do you think before the war there kicks off with a bang."

  "I've been thinking of little but that," Wallenstein said. "I think . . . five years."