Abdul ibn Fahad wasn't entirely comfortable with the new calendar system. He still went by the old, though he also-as a very holy man-kept both sets of religious holidays and festivals. That took up quite a bit of time. Worse, celebrating two Ramadans a year was exhausting. Fortunately, at least occasionally they coincided.
In twenty-one years they had coincided twice. In twenty-one years the population of the colony had blossomed. Not only did the women bear children in vast numbers, but every month it seemed new ships arrived bearing colonists from among the most faithful, the most traditional, back on Earth. The colonists, of course, brought many slaves with them to tend to the farming. It was well that they did so; the life expectancy of a slave was naturally lower than that for a freeborn man.
Sitting, as it did, at the confluence of two streams, Makkah al Jedidah was green and lush and lovely. This was as it should be, as this was a holy place, especially marked by Allah to be a reminder of the blessing of Paradise that awaited the Faithful.
Farther out, the greenery lessened. It was hardly noticeable to the new colonists, coming as they did from the barren deserts of Old Earth. As more people arrived, more trees had to be cut for their homes. As more people arrived so, too, they brought more domestic animals with them. These ate the grass. The goats, in particular, ate the grass down to the roots. Without trees, without grass, the sand blew. Already, one of the two streams that fed the settlement was noticeably shallower than it had been.
Abdul didn't worry about that. It is good, he thought, if by the Grace of Allah we return here to the desert from whence we sprang. Life has been too easy. Too much green and the faithful might forget that greenery is the gift of the Almighty. A green and holy Makkah al Jedidah should be enough to remind them of the bounty that awaits in the hereafter.
The hereafter was more and more on Abdul's mind of late. He hadn't been precisely a young man when he'd made the hejira to the new world. Now he was well advanced in years. Soon, very soon, his time would come.
Chapter Thirty-One I will leave your flesh on the mountains, and fill the valleys with your carcasses. I will water the land with what flows from you, and the river beds shall be filled with your blood. When I snuff you out I will cover the heavens, and all the stars will darken. -Ezekiel 32: 5-7
Northern Boundary, Ninewa Province, Sumer
It began with a gradual repositioning of troops along the boundary. From all appearances, this was merely an attempt to seal off infiltration into the BZOR from the insurgent held city of Pumbadeta. There were a fair number of firefights, mostly in the nature of ambushes, over the following week. Some of those were staged purely for show but some really did stop infiltrating vehicles and small units of insurgents.
The other effect the move had was that it placed the troops an average of fifty miles closer to the town. It also put them within one day's very hard march. Moreover, a fair amount of artillery was moved into range, ostensibly to support the interdiction line. Lastly, because the interdiction line was somewhat remote from any substantial place of habitation, it lessened the chances that anyone would report the sudden move away from that line, either by foot or by helicopter, in anything like a timely fashion.
Pumbadeta, Sumer, 1/7/462 AC
The stars were unseen through the cloud cover over the city as the remotely piloted vehicle made its pass. The RPV was nearly silent. Certainly, it was quiet enough that no one noticed it over the normal noise of the place.
Normally it might have been seen, of course, by any of the city's population of nearly three hundred thousand or by any of the now three thousand, approximately, of the mujahadin who had also taken up residence. The cloud over the city prevented that. The cover did not, could not, prevent the thermal imagers the RPV carried from seeing down and recording the town below. Among other things, the operator of the RPV, sitting comfortably in a cool adobe building in Balboa Base, was counting dogs and cats running free in the town.
Cloud cover overhead could not prevent the people, or the mujahadin, from seeing outward, though, as hundreds of helicopter sorties landed and took off, removing the FSMC troops who had been partially investing the city for some months. After giving the populace of the town a good look at the Marines leaving, the Marine artillery and mortars expended their white phosphorus and HC, hexacloroethane-zinc, shells to screen the pickup zones.
Thus, the mujahadin, no great shakes at patrolling in the desert anyway and very loathe to risk fighting the Marines in the open, really didn't see the men of the deployed cohorts of the 1st through 4th Infantry Tercios of the Legio del Cid as the men landed in the helicopters ostensibly coming in to pull Marines out. Nor, given the dark, did they notice that not all the helicopters inbound were of the types favored by the FMC's armed forces.
Camp Balboa, Ninewa, Sumer
In the cool adobe building, more of a bunker really, the RPV's controller watched his screen. He pulled back on his stick slightly and nudged it to the left, causing his bird to begin a slow left-banking spiral up to height. As it gained altitude, more of the city spread out below on the green-toned control monitor.
The city abutted the river at a spot where it turned south, then north, then south again to form an N. By that N, coming from the city to the west of the river and continuing on, was a highway that cut through the center of town. East were two bridges, close together. It was too far up for the RPV pilot to make out how many bodies were hanging by the neck from the spans. Previous flights had seen a variable number from four to, on one day, thirty-one. Some of those bodies had seemed very small, even to the distant pilot.
The town jutted out west of the river. It was almost rectangular and about three kilometers, north to south, by perhaps five, east to west. A multilane highway ran northwest to southeast, west of the town. The narrower highway, Highway 1, ran through the town from a cloverleaf on the major highway to the two bridges over the river.
As the RPV inched higher, more and more of first the city and then the surrounding lands became visible. Lights marked landing/pickup zones where groups of men, their body heat gleaming on the monitor, boarded hot-engined helicopters.
The command post for the legion was lit red inside. The usual ceiling fans turned slowly and, for the most part, silently overhead. Messengers and staff officers hurried to and fro on various missions. Not all of those messengers were legion troops, either. There were plenty of Sada's Sumeris and more than a few FS Marines. Briefings were being
conducted in three languages in different corners of the CP.
"I wish to hell my men and I were going in with you," the crusty FS Marine Corps colonel told Carrera.
"No, you don't," Carrera corrected. "Trust me on this; it's going to be nasty and the nastiest part isn't even going to be the fighting."
"Even so," the Marine countered, "It's going to be the best brawl since Gia Long, in the Cochin War. My boys will hate to miss it."
"Well… maybe we'll save you some. You just make sure that things here don't go to shit while we're gone."
"No chance of that," the Marine assured the legate. "I've got all three of my battalions, plus another two coming from the army, to hold down your ZOR. Plus, you're leaving me enough Sumeri and Balboan liaison that we won't exactly be strangers. And I'll have that one battalion of Sada's troops; they look pretty competent. We'll do fine."
I hope to fuck you do. Carrera was actually desperately worried about the situation in the BZOR. He, Sada and most of their troops were going to be gone for over a month, possibly two. A lot of unpleasantness could come to pass in even a month.
Still, they are FS Marines, good troops. Campos could have given me Tauros to cover my sector in my absence. Thank God for small blessings.