"The girl?"
"You sang in the choir, didn't you? You wore a white hat and a yellow print dress."
"Sometimes. How did you know?"
"I didn't, I had no idea until my mother mentioned it. I always stayed in the back and I used to watch you, you were so beautiful."
Marqueli's heart leapt. He remembered.
Interlude
Earth Date 16 May, 2104 (Terra Novan year 45 AC), Continent of Southern Columbia, Balboa Colony, Isthmian Region, Terra Nova
The raiders had come before, though not to Belisario Carrera's newly founded settlement of Cochea. Still, even with word of mouth and jungle telegraph, he was not surprised when one of the village boys ran to the center of the spread out, ramshackle town to breathlessly report that a helicopter was disgorging armed men.
Taxes? Belisario wondered. No, not that. We have nothing much to take. These are looking for something else.
At that moment Belisario's beautiful wife-she would one day have a multi-great-granddaughter named Linda who would be her very image-emerged from their hut. He knew then what the armed men were coming for.
"What is it, husband?" she asked.
"Trouble," he answered. "Raiders. Gather up all the women and children, except for the boys over twelve. Take them to the caves downstream from here to the east. Send the men and the older boys to me. Tell them to bring their guns and bows."
Trade is all well and good, Kotek thought, but why trade for what you can take?
The base was already well established. Command of the Amistad took little of his time; after all, he had "people" to do that sort of thing for him. So Kotek spent much of his time hunting. He'd already bagged half a dozen saber-tooths, well over a score of impressively tusked mammoth, and sundry other bits of wildlife useful for their pelts and feathers (the antifur fetish on Earth-as with all such fadshaving long since passed into mere quaintness).
Indeed, he'd grown rather tired of the game. There really wasn't much challenge in shooting stupid animals and the rewards, while reasonable, were far off in time. What Kotek wanted was more immediate satisfaction.
Besides, while he had purchased a couple of female slaves from a reputable Yithrabi dealer, they were poor, drab and miserable things. Anything beyond bending over or kneeling down and quietly accepting was beyond them. No, Kotek wanted some females with a bit of life in them. And for those, he had to go hunting himself, as his ancestors in distant Ghana had hunted to feed the slave markets of Virginia, Panama, Cuba and Brazil.
Then, too, it was reputed that there was a great deal of gold found in these parts and that would be even more negotiable upon his return to Earth than matched pairs of mastodon or mammoth tusks.
The helicopter had landed Kotek and two squads of UN Marines, nineteen men in total, not far from a small village set in this mountain-fringed part of Balboa colony. One squad of Marines Kotek sent sweeping south of the village to set up a cordon while he and the other prepared to drive the inhabitants out of their village and into the net. The Marines were armored and armed with both lethal and nonlethal weapons, the better to take worthwhile females and young boys alive.
I might get a decent price on some of the boys, too, Kotek thought, or at least be able to trade them to the Yithrabi for a better class of female.
Kotek Annan stood up when he and the Marines had reached a line within two hundred meters of the village. They began firing immediately, but only over the heads of the villagers. They assumed the sound would panic the people into running into the cordon. It was a great surprise for Kotek when, instead of panicking, the people disappeared and began returning fire with their primitive rifled muskets. His accompanying Marines looked, if anything, more surprised. But the next surprise, a few minutes later, was better, as two dozen or more clouds of smoke suddenly bloomed to Kotek's right flank.
Even so, the best surprise was the. 57 caliber ball that smashed into Kotek's right thigh, rending the flesh and smashing the bone. It also nicked the femoral artery but not so badly that Kotek didn't have the chance to see a hard, hate-filled face, lighter than his own but still quite dark, that came up to glare down at him. The face spoke some words in a language Kotek didn't understand.
Belisario was no soldier. Still, he had three great assets, common sense, knowledge of the lay of the land, and the sure knowledge that he had to kill these raiders or see-or rather more likely not live to see-his wife and daughters dragged off to serve foreign masters. This much he had learned on Old Earth; the progressives who said they came to do good only came to do well.
It also didn't hurt that his enemies were clumsy, being unused to genuine field work. He heard their twin columns, even as small as they were, before he ever saw them.
"One coming from the north, one from the south. They won't attack from two directions at once; that might cause them to shoot each other. So… one's a driving force, the other's a net. We hunt that way, sometimes, after all. But which is the net? South, I think, on the other side of the river."
South of the town there was a river that ran east to west. It was down this Belisario had sent his wife and the other women, girls and very small boys. His wife had carried her own escopeta, or shotgun, as had some of the others. The town itself was a mere twenty-three huts holding perhaps one hundred and fifty people of all ages.
Belisario counted heads at the people assembled around him, their faces looking frightened but determined. Sixty-one men and older boys with rifles, another dozen with homemade bows and arrows. All right. The raiders are… not many, based on little Pablo's report, but they'll be better armed.
Dividing his men into three groups, Belisario explained his plan quickly. No one interposed a better one. Leaving one group-about a quarter of the total-behind at the village, he sent another quarter downstream to cross the river at a ford he knew and which the raiders were unlikely to. The others he, himself, led to a tree line to the northeast.
"Keep low, dammit," he whispered. "For your lives, your wives and your children, for God's sake keep low."
The men following Belisario through the woods lay down along the edge and waited. Surely enough, ten men, nine of them armored and all of them armed, emerged into the open and began firing generally at the village. The group that had been left there went low and returned fire, generally ineffectively.
That doesn't matter, Belisario thought. I don't want you to be effective. I want you to be enticing.
The skirmish line advanced toward the village, their own rifles firing low now to suppress the defenders. Belisario waited… waited… waited… "READY… Fire!"
Over the sound of their own fusillades, the raiders didn't hear him. Thus, it was with considerable shock that the heavy bullets slammed into them, knocking half down immediately. Some of the villagers had climbed into trees to fire down on their enemies. Soon enough, there was not a single man left unhurt among the UN Marines.
"Reload," Belisario ordered before leading the men with him out. "Kill them all, then we'll go after the other group." Desultory firing to the south told him that the cordon, too, was being engaged.
One man, differently clothed from the Marines and less well armored, lay on his back trying to staunch the flow of blood that poured from a shattered thigh. Belisario walked up to him, kicking the man's expensive looking rifle away from his reach. The man put one arm up, either begging for mercy or trying to fend off the machete Belisario drew from a scabbard at his waist.
"I should burn you alive," Belisario said. "I should burn you alive, you bastard, but there isn't time. Still, you won't live to gain revenge for this." He raised his machete high.
Four hundred and fourteen local years later all that remained of a very beautiful woman, one of Belisario's many multi-great grandchildren, would be interred very close to the spot where High Admiral Kotek Annan's hand and head rolled free of his body.