The fleet needed things like the balloon. The ships were old, irreplaceable, and almost unmaintainable. Things went wrong. Things were wrong that simply could not be repaired without resort to drastic measures. He'd been on station for four Old Earth years and had had to order progressive cannibalization of some of his ships to keep others going.
Clever prole, who thought of the balloon trick, thought the High Admiral, as he walked to the shuttle's hatch. I wonder if I should have had him spaced after all as being too clever a prole. No, I suppose not. After all, it might be me he saves next.
The symbol of United Earth—northern hemisphere at the center and southern exaggerated out of size, the whole surrounded by a laurel wreath—split as the hatch opened to either side. A small walkway emerged and down the walkway strode the blond and leggy Captain Wallenstein, a pistol strapped to her hip and some black cloth held in her arms. Blue eyes flashed angrily. Wallenstein did not look happy.
"Never!" she shouted, throwing the black cloth at Robinson. "Never will I go down to that stinking cesspool again."
The High Admiral smiled, letting the burkha fall to the deck. A prole would see to it, later. "I gather then that Mustafa was his usual warm and friendly self."
Wallenstein's eyes were flame. "Warm and frie . . . arghghgh! Do you know that bastard made me dress in a sack? That he never spoke to me directly but made me talk through a slave? That he . . . ah, what's the use? Of course, you knew."
"Yes, and isn't he just lovely, my dear Captain? Can you imagine Terra Nova under him and his sort? We could all go home, Marguerite, with never a care that this hellhole could ever become a threat to our people."
"Yes . . . yes, I suppose so," the captain agreed. "Except that they can't win, Martin. It's just as you said, Sumer is lost. I saw that on my sojourn there. Oh, yes; the Ikhwan will likely drag it out. But they can't win."
Nodding sagely, Robinson said, "I don't care about Sumer. That's been a lost cause since the Balboan mercenaries showed they were more ruthless than the Salafi Ikhwan. Tell me about Pashtia."
An underling came up to take charge of Wallenstein's pistol. She unbuckled the weapon and gave it over, then said to Robinson, "Later, in your quarters."
* * *
"It's going to be a long, slow struggle to reopen Pashtia fully, Martin," Wallenstein insisted. "But Mustafa, the filthy barbarian, is making some strides. In particular they're doing well at rearming, at limiting the degree to which government control can be spread, and at training some of what I think will eventually be very good leaders. It's a race though, between how long they can keep the Federated States occupied in Sumer while building up in Pashtia."
"How long do you think before the war there kicks off with a bang."
"I've been thinking of little but that," Wallenstein said. "I think . . . five years."
"So long? Damn!"
"It won't do to hurry," the Captain insisted.
"I know," Robinson admitted. "But I keep thinking about what the engineering officer said. They might have interstellar flight in as little as twenty years . . . and he said that six years ago."
"It would help, Martin, if you went down and coached Mustafa. He won't listen to me, of course, but maybe you can push him to do the things he needs to in order to win."
"Which would be?" Robinson asked. In point of fact, he outranked Wallenstein through caste, not through military ability. It was, if anything, her superior military talent that would keep her from ever being raised to the highest caste. She was simply too dangerous in her abilities ever to trust, fully.
"He needs a thorough grounding in the principles of war," she said. "He needs to take control of his movement, not just to leave it entirely to individual initiative. He needs to wage a global war."
Robinson nodded agreement. Even as he did so, though, he started to chuckle.
"What's so funny?"
"I was just thinking about an individual who is waging a global war. Perhaps he'll teach Mustafa."
9/3/463 AC, the Base, Kashmir Tribal Trust Territory, Terra Nova
Under the light of two moons, a tall and slender, bearded and swarthy man, Mustafa ibn Mohamed ibn Salah, min Sa'ana, purified himself with water, for water was plentiful here, though the desert began not far away. With the last drop of water Mustafa felt the last and least of his sins wash away as well. He then faced to the northeast toward Makkah al Jedidah. He uttered the words, "I take refuge in God against Satan the accursed," then knelt upon his small and austere prayer rug, and abased himself before his God.
Allah, Mustafa prayed, thou art my God. None is your equal, none is your peer. Help me, Your humble servant, to do Your work. Aid me in Your righteous vengeance. Guide my hand, steel my heart, preserve my soul.
Allah, this world is a place of wickedness, as You know well. Unclean men, who lie with men, prosper. Women, whom you created to be under men, assert their equality. Men, whom You created to be under You, make laws as they will, defying Your will. Forbid it, O Allah. Punish it, O Mighty One.
Though you permit to your followers the ownership of those under our right hands, the slaves, wicked men, knowing not your wisdom, would prohibit it. Though you have set the law for which women we may and may not know, women flout it and men permit that. It is an abomination.
I am but a man, O Allah, yet I am Your man. Other, likewise Your men, follow me. Use us. Help us. Smite the wicked. Crush the infidel. Destroy above all the Jews, as You promised us you would do.
Mustafa felt a sudden sharp pain emanating from his kidneys. They'd been getting progressively worse over the last several years. He added to his prayer, O Allah, let me live only long enough to see your cause through to victory.
Prayer finished, Mustafa again tapped his head multiple times to the prayer rug. Then he arose, and looked skyward. He had the eyes of an eagle, so said his followers. With those eyes he spotted, dimly and distantly, one of the spaceships of the Earth infidels.
Mustafa nodded and added to his prayers, aloud, "Smite them too, O Lord, but not before we have full use of them.
Interlude
Shuttle 11, USSS Harriet Tubman, Cape Canaveral, Florida, 23 February, 2075
The first major colonization ship had been built, unsurprisingly, in the United States. Also, unsurprisingly, it had been built by private firms to government specifications. While the European Union was still struggling to apportion widget production between England, Scotland, France, and Germany, and struggling with how much of it to have done in China to make up for the inflated wages demanded by European trade unions (which was another way of saying how much would eventually show up in government revenues, of course, given Europe's confiscatory levels of taxation), America simply acted.
Curiously, no one in the EU screamed, "Unilateralism." They had their reasons for wanting America to be first with practical, large scale, colonization capability.