"That's just so wrong. I'm sorry, Petra."
"It's all right. It wasn't your fault."
"Let's start over at the beginning," Besma suggested, thinking to get Petra's mind away from thoughts of jihad and slavery.
The girl thumbed the pages back and started over:
"A is for Americans, devils incarnate . . . Why are the Americans devils, Petra?"
Besma shuddered. "Because they tried to exterminate us."
Private Rodger W. Young Range, Fort Benning, Georgia,
10 November, 2106
"Kill 'em quick, before they get away!"
Hamilton didn't know whose voice it had been, shouting over the comm system. He thought it sounded like Hodge but, if so, her voice had never been quite so full of passion, not even in bed. He checked his heads-up display to find her position, then looked over to where she stood above a trench, pouring fire down into it. The bullets, all tracers, looked like some alien weapon from a movie about the future.
The range (rather, the range which bore the name) had seen many uses over the years and had once been in a different place. One major use, in the other place, had been as a close assault course. In the original version of this, machine guns had fired at about waist level over the heads of troops crawling forward. Later on, this was deemed too unsafe and the guns were fixed to fire well over the heads of even the tallest man. That this had totally destroyed the already limited moral training value of the range was deemed acceptable by those more concerned with safety statistics than with victory on the battlefield.
They didn't do that anymore, for Suited Heavy Infantry, at least. Now rifles and machine guns, the same kinds as favored by the Moslem enemy across the globe, were aimed by remote control and fired to hit. Since with full-up armor the suits were more or less invulnerable to those rifles and machine guns, it was still a very safe exercise. On the other hand, it was a great way to build confidence in the troops in the armor's ability to withstand direct hits.
While Hodge fanned the trench with lead-tipped flame, Hamilton passed her by, bouncing up and over it and taking a kneeling firing position—trees and sandbags being not as good a protection as four millimeters of liquid metal armor—to begin peppering a bunker farther downrange.
As he did so, Hodge knelt beside him and changed out the helical magazine on her left-wrist-borne CCW, or "close combat weapon." Colloquially, among the troops, the things were known as "Slags," as in "Slag 'em,"—turn them into something wet and runny.
Once that was done she took her own weapon, a fifty millimeter semi-automatic grenade launcher, and fired a salvo of four rounds of training practice—it had the same ballistics as a high explosive service round but only as much explosive as one might find in a blasting cap—at the bunker, one of which went directly through the aperture. The bunker decided it was dead and cut off control to the remote operator.
Hamilton directed his comm system, "Closed circuit, me to Hodge," and said, after the beep that indicated the changeover, "Good job, you bloodthirsty bitch. Glad you're on my side."
They both heard, through the platoon net, "Action right. Enemy platoon counterattacking. Kill 'em."
No sooner had they heard this than a flurry of bullets swept over both of them. The suits shrugged those bullets off, but they still had enough energy to rock the two troopers back.
Hodge began slow fire—one round per two seconds—at the advancing robotic targets. As she did, she said, "Closed circuit; me to Hamilton" and then, "Did I ever mention this shit makes me horny?"
Kitznen, Provence of Affrankon, 13 Duh'l-Qa'dah,
1530 AH (10 November, 2106)
"Now he," Besma said, "is a beautiful man."
"Do you suppose he really looked like that?" Petra asked, "Or do you think maybe my great-grandmother sort of . . . what's the word?"
"Idealized?"
"Yes, that one. Do you think she idealized him or did he really look like that?"
"Either way, he's a dream. And there's something about that."
"That" was a male appendage, plainly visible in the drawing.
To that Petra agreed. Mohammad had had a point. Even at nine, a girl is still in good part already a woman.
The drawing the girls were looking at in the journal was labeled "Mahmoud" in the artist's superb handwriting.
"He's one of my people, I think," Besma said.
"Not one of mine, for sure," Petra agreed. "What do you think he was to my great-grandmother?"
"I don't know. Let's try to read some more. Maybe we can find out."
Private Rodger W. Young Range, Fort Benning, Georgia,
12 November, 2106
"No," Hamilton insisted, "we are not going to dump our groin armor so we can fuck."
"Scaredycat," Hodge taunted.
"Nothing of the kind," he answered. "It's just that the thought's preposterous. It'd be like two robots going at it."
Unable to help herself Hodge started to giggle. "It really would look ridiculous. But then, who's going to see?"
"Everybody. We don't have thermal imagers for nothing and the heat waves rising from your hot little ass would be sure to be noticed."
"You think my ass is hot?"
"I think all of you is hot, Laurie."
Some things, she thought, are better than sex. Being thought "hot" is sometimes one of them. "Okay. I'll leave you alone for now. But when we get back to Olson Hall you better show me that you really think all of me is hot."
"Deal," Hamilton agreed.
Though they were lying on their backs in the dirt next to each other, she didn't bother to snuggle in. Hamilton was right; there was something obscene about two robots cuddling.
"You done good, today, Laurie," Hamilton said.
"Thanks. You, too. Though this suit is a damned uncomfortable thing and pretty unflattering to a girl's figure."
At first Hamilton said nothing to that. After a few moments, though, she realized he was laughing.
"What's so funny?"
"Well . . . I was just thinking, a girl in a heavy infantry suit is perfectly dressed under the enemy's law. What's the difference between wearing a burka and wearing Class B armor?"
She thought about that for a few seconds before answering, "I can't kill people as easily wearing a burka."
Kitznen, Affrankon, 14 Duh'l-Qa'dah,
1530 AH (11 November, 2106)
Ishmael escorted the two burka-clad girls from the house to the market. That was part of his official duty; he didn't hit Besma up for baksheesh for it. This was to the good as Besma only had the two dozen dirhem she'd begged from her father to buy some new clothes and shoes for the new girl in the house. Her father's wife had objected, and her older stepbrother, Fudail, had sneered, but still her father had given over the money. Besma was, after all, the pearl of his heart.