Mexico, too, wanted a land border with the gringo colony. From the point of view of the upper classes that had ruled Mexico to their own benefit for so very long, how else could they hope to export the masses of the jobless and hungry their preferred system was sure to create unless there were to be a labor hungry and prosperous land nearby? They were reasonably certain the Americans, wherever they went, would create such a land.
Not everyone was a volunteer, of course. The nations of Earth sometimes used their allotted ships to send off their criminals en masse. Unsurprisingly, their criminals often did very well in the new land. Others used it as a population control measure. China's people often took the space route to fecundity, since the one-child policy, except for party leaders and the rich, was being strictly enforced again. India's poor were given the choice of departure or continuing to sleep on the pavement and starve. They went in droves and died in droves.
Weapons were permitted to the new settlers by most Earth governments, if the settlers could afford them. Wisely, most elected to bring a level of technology, roughly that of late seventeenth- to early eighteenth-century Earth, which could be sustained. Some Earth companies, for example, made not-so-small fortunes building flintlock rifles for the emigrant trade. Flint could be found; percussion caps required industrial manufacture.
This load, leaving the solar system and transiting the rift on the 12th of April, 2092, consisted of colonists from the Republics of Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras, all in the vessel Amerigo Vespucci, Captain Ngobe Mzilikazi, UNSN, Commanding. The Vespucci departed without incident, accelerated to the requisite speed for transition, reached the rift, and disappeared from Earth's view.
Chapter Twenty-Four The courage of your enemy honors you. -Arab saying
Ninewa, 9/3/461 AC
It took two days to contain and clear out the remnants of the spoiling attack Sada had launched. When it was finally done, the legion was pleased to discover that about half the century that had been under assault had managed to hold out in a stout adobe building and beat off all attacks. Even the wounded who had not made it to the building were found, as often as not, neatly laid out and, to the extent practical, cared for, in nearby structures. The sergeant in charge, though wounded, was still ready to fight when the first relieving troops reached him.
He didn't have a bad word to say about the Sumeris, but he had more than a few for Manuel Rocaberti. After hearing the sergeant out, Carrera had returned to the command post and had a long conversation with Parilla.
Parilla and Carrera were still talking as Manuel Rocaberti entered the legion's command post. A private, looking very frightened, stood to one side under a guard supervised by McNamara. The Dux and legate immediately stopped whatever the conversation had been and turned to face the tribune. The private was the same one who been stopped and arrested for desertion under fire.
"Manuel," Parilla began, "The legate and I were just discussing what to do with this man. Carrera wants him shot before the legion. I think maybe we should be kinder, under the circumstances. You're still officially his commander. What do you think?"
Rocaberti had been surprised that he had not been arrested when he'd shown up to report the destruction of his century. He assumed, then, that they must have all been killed but for this private. It was either that, or the position of his uncle, that was acting to save him. Perhaps it was both. Still, that also made the private the only possible witness against him.
"Shoot him," Rocaberti answered. "Court-martial him and shoot him. Discipline ought to be maintained."
Though it jarred his half-healed wound, raising a wince, Parilla's fist lashed out of its own accord, catching Rocaberti on the jaw and knocking him to the floor. He was surprisingly fast for someone nearly in his sixties.
" That was your last chance, Manuel," Parilla said. "Sergeant Major McNamara, arrest this man. He is charged with desertion under fire. And release the private back to his unit."
University Quarter, Ninewa, 10/3/461 AC
The sun was up enough to cast long shadows across the streets and parks of the town.
Carrera sighed, a bit wistfully, looking from his high perch down onto the grounds of the university below. Be a shame to destroy it; it's the only bit of decent architecture I've seen since coming here.
The University of Sumer at Ninewa was smoothly white and surrounded on three sides by a three-meter high wall that, but for the bullet marks, would have been equally smooth and equally white. The river bank made up the fourth side. A green strip of park, fed from the waters of the river, framed the university. Two-lane, one-way boulevards ran to either side of the park.
Because it was older than most of the smashed city behind him, Carrera knew that the University predated the current dictator of the country and so hadn't suffered his megalomaniac urge towards heroic monumentalism or outsized construction. It was low-lying, for the most part, and tasteful in the way that traditional Arabic architecture almost always was, all high windows and graceful arches, with geometric decoration on the walls where those walls were not smooth.
There were three gates into the compound, one in the center facing to the southwest and two more flanking that one to the northwest and southeast at a distance of about four hundred meters. Another broad boulevard led from the town directly to the main gate.
"Patricio, I think you're insane," commented Parilla, standing next to Carrera and looking out over the same scene. "Let someone else go. Send me."
Behind the two, Soult added in, "Goddamn straight."
"Besides," Parilla continued, "you don't know you can trust this man."
Not turning his head to address his friends, Carrera insisted, "He's fought like a soldier so far. No tricks… well, no dirty tricks. He's been a tricksy enough bastard in every permissible way though; that I'll give you."
Clasping his hands behind his back, Carrera began to pace. "Raul, we can't send you," he said. "Your English is, at best, so so. Fahad doesn't speak Spanish. I'm the only one with the right combination of languages and rank. And I don't think it's right to insult this man by sending anyone lesser."
"We could just blast them out, you know," Parilla objected.
"Yes," Carrera agreed slowly. "But then how would we get any future use of them? And I think we're going to need them in the future. I think we've got the best group of Arabs on Terra Nova, right here."
The party went silent then as two assault teams composed of mixed armor and infantry moved into firing position and spent five minutes or so each blasting two large gaps in the university walls. A " practicable breach," Carrera had called it.
"Order the troops to cease fire except in self-defense," he commanded. "Get the air ala circling overhead."
" Amid, there's a white flag showing near the main gate," Qabaash informed Sada. "Just three men, one holding the flag, another with a small loudspeaker, and the last standing there with his arms folded. You suppose they want to surrender? The loudspeaker asked for you, personally."
Sada looked around at some of the remnants of his filthy, ragged command and answered, "Somehow I doubt they intend to surrender to us."