Chapter One
But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free
—The Who, Behind Blue Eyes
25/10/462 AC, United Earth Peace Fleet Starship Spirit of Peace
The traditional Christmas orgy was in full swing on the hangar deck. Since it was supposed to be a time to celebrate universal brotherhood, even the proles were invited. Indeed, so universal was the sense of brotherhood implicit in the season that Lieutenant Commander Khan, the fleet's sociology officer, was laying, rear up and breasts down, on an ottoman with a prole at each end, one in each hand and short lines emanating in four directions. Khan's husband cheered her on. And why not? He had bet a month's salary on her performance for the night.
Sitting on a plain chair on an elevated dais, High Admiral Martin Robinson, Commander of the United Earth Peace Fleet, watched through his blue-gray eyes without much interest. In truth, Robinson was bored silly by the whole thing. It's as bad as a party back home. Same old faces, same old events . . . same old, same old. Bah. Never anything new.
Robinson had reason to be bored. Though he looked to be in his mid-twenties, face unlined and back unstooped, the High Admiral was a beneficiary of the best anti-agathic therapy Old Earth could provide. His blond hair was untouched by gray and without any recession in his hairline.
On the other hand, Robinson had had better than two centuries in which to grow bored, two centuries of peace, two centuries of orgies, two centuries of . . . Well . . . nothing, really. Nothing until I came here. This, at least, hasn't been boring. It's been frustrating.
Frustration wasn't the half of it. Mixed in, and perhaps in greater quantity than the frustration, was fear; fear for his class, fear for their rule, and fear for his planet.
And there's nothing for it but to change the cesspool down below from a near cognate of Earth, as it was, into a perfect clone of Earth, as it is. That, or plunge the whole thing into a Salafi sect dark age. Either would be acceptable. Indeed, having the planet fall under the Salafis would probably leave my world safer. Let them be content to pray five times a day to a non-existent god via a rock in a building in a nothing-too-much city. Let them keep better than half their people as cattle. Let them keep themselves poor and ignorant and, above all, incapable of space flight.
But if I fail, if the non-Salafi barbarians down below achieve interstellar travel, my home will be taken and pillaged, my class will be cast down, and my entire civilization will be plunged into barbarism. And Khan—here Robinson looked up to see that Khan was an easy half dozen partnerings ahead of her nearest competition—Khan assures me that when a civilization like that meets one like ours, ours hasn't a chance. If they can get to us, they can and will ruin us.
Unconsciously, Robinson lifted a thumb nail and began nervously to chew.
So I do what I must, dirty my hands, as I must, and fight . . . well, fight though others, of course; I can't risk the loss of my fleet. That, above all, I must preserve.
Robinson laughed at himself. I must preserve it until it falls apart around me. Preserve it while the Consensus back home does nothing to maintain it.
Dropping his thumb and shaking his head at the bloody damned frustration of it all, Robinson stood to leave the hangar deck. He'd call the captain of the ship, Marguerite Wallenstein, later, if he needed sex. For now he just needed to be alone.
Ahead of him, an oval hatchway dilated to permit the High Admiral passage. As the hatchway leading off the hangar deck whooshed shut behind him, Robinson heard Khan frantically pleading for more.
25/10/462 AC, Parade Field, Balboa Base, Ninewa Province, Sumer
The troops in the camp stood in ranks and sang lustily and in their thousands:
"Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide;
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me."
Patricio Carrera, commander of the troops of the Legio del Cid in Sumer and of their thousands of compadres in training back in Balboa, didn't join in the singing. Any other song and he might have. But this song, a favorite of his late wife, Linda, figured prominently in one of the recurrent nightmares he endured of her death, and of the deaths of their children. He just couldn't sing it. It was all he could do not to cry. Instead, his blue eyes, normally fierce, became indescribably sad as, indeed, did his entire face.
Carrera's closest friends stood or sat around his office, drinking Christmas cheer that had, until that moment, seemed very cheerful indeed. Yet the mood the song brought to Carrera instantly transformed the mood of every man and the two women in the place.
Two of those closest friends, Sergeant Major John McNamara and Legate Xavier Jiminez, both coal black, very tall and whippet thin, looked meaningfully at each other. Note to the chief chaplain: next year that particular song does not go in the Christmas program. The two women, Lourdes and Ruqaya, exchanged glances as well. As much as the two blacks resembled each other, one could at least be certain they were unrelated, Jiminez being frightfully handsome and McNamara . . . . well, the best one could say of him was that he looked his part, the quintessential grizzled sergeant major, his face heavily lined and never exactly lovely.
Lourdes and Ruqaya, on the other hand, might have been sisters, or at least close cousins. Both were tall and slender. Both had amazingly large and melting brown eyes. Skin color? About the same. Faces? Different, of course, yet each was in the range of symmetrical attractiveness that tended to resemble. However, whereas Mac and Jimenez had shared the same thought, the woman's thoughts were only somewhat related. For Lourdes: Poor Patricio. For Ruqaya: Poor Lourdes; having to share her man with a dead woman.
"Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me."
Carrera gripped one of his disgustingly small, distressing soft, and nauseatingly dainty hands around a tall tumbler of scotch and drank deeply. For the things I do, he thought, and the things I allow to be done, somehow I doubt that the Lord will abide with me.
33/10/462 AC, Hildegard von Mises, Sea of Sind
The conex inside the ship rang with the helpless shrieks. It practically reverberated with them. The conex, soundproofed, also kept in the stench of voided bowels and bladders, and the iron-coppery stink of blood.
You wouldn't think one man could scream that much, especially with the tongue
protector installed, mused Achmed al Mahamda, the chief of interrogations. Mahamda, quite unperturbed, casually munched a Terra Novan olive, the fruit of an odd palm with green trunk and gray fronds. The olive, itself, was gray and about plum sized. Its taste was similar to, but slightly more astringent than an Old Earth olive. Mahamda loved them, as did many of his people.