" Comandante, " Pedro said, "the Earthpigs want to talk to you. They want to arrange a ceasefire before this war spreads."
Belisario considered. Should I? I could stop the carnage now, probably. But then, what prevents them from using the bases they retain to come back? What do I owe my fellow colonists languishing under the heel of the UN Birkenstock? How will my wife and our children ever sleep safely with slavers and tax gatherers hovering at the edges of our domain?
"Tell the pig to kiss my ass, Pedro," Belisario answered. "The war goes on until we are, all of us, free."
XIV.
Resolution 4999 (2127)
Adopted by the Security Council on its 16128th meeting,
On 1 June, 2127
The Security Council,
Recalling its previous resolutions, in particular resolution 4547 of 2107 and 4569 of 2108, concerning the situation off world among the colonies of Terra Nova,
Reaffirming its commitment to peace, prosperity and freedom as expressed and implied in the Charter,
Welcoming a just resolution to the ongoing conflicts on the planet of Terra Nova,
Acknowledging the difficulties inherent in administering and securing a world light years away,
Reiterating in the strongest terms its desire to accord self-determination to all mankind,
Stressing the importance of the recent peace accords between itself and various insurgent governments and movements on Terra Nova,
Welcoming the joint communique between its representatives on Terra Nova and the representatives of the United Front for the Liberation of New Earth,
Expressing its continuing responsibility toward the peoples of that world and its firm commitment to their continuing welfare,
Determining that the maintenance of its rule on the world of Terra Nova is beyond its abilities,
1) Retires its offices and security facilities to its base on the Island of Atlantis on the new world,
2) Requests a cease fire from all still-engaged armed or political agencies, governments, organizations and movements on the new world.
3) Reiterates its request for prisoner of war exchange and repatriation,
4) Directs the redesignation of its fleet around the new world as the United Nations Peace Fleet, to be further renamed the United Earth Peace Fleet at such time as the General Assembly may direct, and
5) Declares the conflict on the new world to be at an end.
Chapter Thirty We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,
We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung, -Kipling, "Gentlemen Rankers"
Ninewa, Sumer, 10/5/462 AC
Fadeel al Nizal's problems had multiplied. On the plus side, though, at least Mustafa was no longer one of them. If anything, the relationship had reversed itself with Fadeel becoming a major financial supporter of the rest of the movement and Mustafa being along mostly for a distant form of moral support. Not that the movement didn't have money. It had a great deal, most of it untouchable for the infidel accountants who watched for the slightest excuse to freeze suspicious accounts. Even Fadeel had lost money that way.
He'd have gladly accepted a great deal more of Mustafa's former chiding if he could have eliminated some of the other things bearing down upon him.
For a while it had seemed that the willing cooperation of the Kosmos-the cosmopolitan progressives who believed in one-world government, under themselves- were the answer to most of his prayers. With the money gained from the crusader governments with the progressives' cooperation, his organization had flown as high as the aircraft he had managed to bring down early on in the campaign.
For a while, rather than having to listen to lectures from Mustafa, Fadeel had found himself in a position to repay the start-up money he'd received and even to make a substantial gift to his principle. That gift had been gratefully received, Mustafa having fallen upon rather hard times. Moreover, he'd managed to knock one crusader state, Castilla, almost completely out of the war. He'd failed to knock Balboa out of the war. That rankled. Worse, they were hunting down and killing his men. And the damnable locals seemed to be helping them do it, which was worse.
Unfortunately, the supply of Kosmo hostages had dried up completely. There were no more Taurans willing to volunteer, nor had there been since that one woman, Giulia Masera, had been fed feet first into a wood chipper and a tape of the murder turned over to al Iskandaria News Network. Fadeel was still puzzling over what had caused al Iskandaria to broadcast the tape. After all, they'd been wise enough to refuse to show the death of one of Masera's countrymen when he had defied Fadeel just before his well-deserved execution. At the time, Fadeel had been rather angry at the television network for refusing the tape. On reflection, though, he had come to agree that showing a citizen of the crusader coalition dying bravely and well would have been damaging rather than helpful.
At that, it would not have been nearly as damaging as broadcasting the death of Masera. She had been emulsified from the bottom up, her mouth opening and closing like a fish stuck out of water as she sank feet first into the wood chipper, her reddened, lumpy remains spitting out the bottom. Fadeel had rather enjoyed the show, naturally, but even he had seen it was a dangerous move for whichever comradely organization had been responsible.
That was another puzzle. Fadeel didn't know and had not been able to find out who was responsible for that execution. He'd thought at first that it must have been one of his own cells, naturally under very loose control due to the circumstances of the fight for God in Sumer. Not one of his people, however, had been willing to admit to it. Nor had any of the ransom money shown up.
I could surely have used another twenty-five million Tauros in the fight against the crusaders.
Not everything was going against him, fortunately. He'd had a few bad moments there, when the satanic Federated States had introduced automatic explosive sniffers. A number of bombs and great quantities of bomb-making material had been lost to the cause of the righteous and the just that way. Then the local mercenaries had brought in dogs to hunt for and warn of bombs.
The solution had been both beautiful and elegant in its simplicity. Fadeel had set some hundreds of young boys with small spray bottles to randomly spraying wheel wells of automobiles and trucks with water with which minute quantities of powdered explosive had been mixed. When everything smelled of bomb then nothing smelled of bomb. The dogs and the operators of the sniffing machines had been driven half insane, Fadeel and his followers had had a few good laughs, and more than a few crusaders had been enticed into the range of actual bombs.
Now the dogs were used only for tracking and the sniffing machines sat uselessly in a warehouse somewhere in Babel. Better still, the flow of explosives continued as it had before the infidels had tried their clever tricks.
Thinking about that, about the machines sitting idle and useless, set Fadeel to laughing yet again.
He sobered immediately. It wasn't enough to make up for the fact that after Masera's grisly execution the weak crusader governments had refused to give any ransoms. More than three dozen kidnappings and executions without so much as a drachma changing hands was enough to convince him it was a losing game.
Fadeel supposed that the charge of bad faith, after the Masera butchery, was enough to shield those governments from the domestic fallout of not paying.
When the governments had a reasonable and obvious chance to get "their" people back alive the pressure was tremendous. Now? Now nobody trusts us to deliver the goods.
Oh, yes, his people still went after the humanitarians and the journalists. The FSC even tried to stop them or rescue the peace-lovers in the other parts of the country. Here around Ninewa, for some reason, the Balboans generally didn't even make the attempt. And the other aid workers, the ones Fadeel thought might elicit a response from the mercenaries? Those were always too well guarded to even try.