A Desert Called Peace (46 page)

Robinson closed his eyes and said, "Uh, oh."

From
Baen's Encyclopedia of New and Old Earth,
Edition of 442 AC

The following entries are not to appear in the Old Earth edition of the Encyclopedia

The major land mass of Terra Nova, Taurania, lies on its east-west axis approximately midway between the magnetic southern pole of the planet and the equator. The split between the Taurus end of Taurania, in the east, and Urania, in the west occurs arbitrarily along the Volkosk mountains and culturally and ethnically somewhat to the west of that.

Taurus, so called because it resembles an upside down male bovine with an erection, was the award of the old European Union on Old Earth. There being no equivalent supranational organization for Asia at that time, Urania was parceled out amongst various sub-supranational entities, roughly in accordance with their population, wealth, terrestrial patrimony, clout, and willingness and ability to bribe members of the old United Nations Interplanetary Settlement and Boundary Committee, or UNISBC.

To the west of Urania and the east of Taurus, and lying approximately equidistant between the two, lie the Columbias, or—for Spanish speaking areas—the Colombias. These are two continents, joined by a narrow isthmus (of Balboa, q.v.), that run north to south- southeast. The larger of these, called Southern Columbia, was awarded to the old North American Free Trade Area which further subdivided the bulk of the continent almost exactly according to the wishes of the former United States of America. The two Canadas, Mexico and the Central American petty states fell into line fairly readily. Cuba was denied any colony on the new world, which denial it took with very good grace as it was believed that the entire country would depopulate itself if its people were given the chance to escape. (The government of His Revolutionary Highness, Alejandro I, son of Raul Castro, is believed to have been one of only two governments on Earth, the other being that of North Korea, that had to bribe UNISBC
not
to make any grant of land on the new world. This is unconfirmed and investigations into the matter were squelched by the then UN Secretary General, Kojo Annan.)

The other eastern continent, called Northern Colombia, was awarded to the former Mercosur, the Latin American version of NAFTA. Mercosur attempted to form a unitary colony. This, however, broke apart in a series of wars, the results of which plague Northern Colombia to this day.

Uhuru, which lies to the north of Taurania, was given to the Organization of African States. This organization attempted a colonization project much the same as Mercosur, but with even more hideous results. (See Republic of Northern Uhuru, History of, for example. See the Mutara-Kegeli Genocide, for example.)

The Arab League parcel was not made the award of any given state. Rather, the area settled by the Arabs was unitary and later broke up or developed, depending, into something like nation states. A peculiarity of the Arab League Mandate is that a portion of it was given by the Arab League to Israel. Much was made of it, on Earth and at the time, as showing a spirit of conciliation and peacemaking. This was not the case, however. All the Arab League wanted was for some place of settlement to attract out as many Jews from Israel as possible. Arab colonists were not consulted in the matter.

For various reasons having to do with Old Earth politics, Australia was given no award on the new world though New Zealand was. The population of Australia, such as wished to settle elsewhere, tended to gravitate either to Anglia, New Wellington, the Federated States, the Republic of Northern Uhuru, or—as a distant last choice—Secordia in South Columbia.

A final subcontinental sized island, dubbed Atlantis, lies in the Mar Furioso, midway between the Columbias and Taurania. This is the enclave of United Earth . . . 

Time on Terra Nova, on the other hand, is measured since Anno Condita, "the year of the founding." This would not be 2037, the year in which the robotic exploratory vessel,
Cristobal Colon
, actually found the rift and the planet. Rather, AC is the year in which the first, sadly failed, colonization attempt was made from Earth, in the Old Earth year, 2060.

Establishment of a local calendar spelt a considerable problem for those early settlers who followed after the
Cheng Ho disaster
(qv). The Terra Novan year corresponded very closely to the Terran year, there being 31,556,926 seconds to an Old Earth year and 31,209,799 seconds in each orbit of the new world about its sun.

For the Salafi settlers this presented even more of a problem, one made worse by the fact that, rather than the one moon of Earth by which the Islamic calendar ran, Terra Nova had three, none of which quite ran to any schedule that suited the traditional Islamic calendar. The Islamics settled this more or less mathematically, by adding a fourteenth month, to commemorate the "Second Hejira," or Pilgrimage, adding days to some months, and creating a complex set of calculations to keep this calendar in synchronization.

One advantage to the new Islamic calendar was that now, at least, it matched the actual year for the world on which it was practiced.

From all parties—Secular, Islamic, Christian, Buddhist, etc—there was strong pressure to maintain the twenty-four hour day, of which Terra Nova had three hundred and fifty-five, and the sixty minute hour. This was done by increasing the length of the Terra Novan second to 1.017533901 Earth seconds. Ten months (basically the original months of the Roman Republic) of five weeks each were established, with an intercalary period of five or, rarely, six days between 35 December and 1 Martius.

It has worked about as well as any calendar system ever has, and perhaps a bit better than most.

War is too important to be left to generals.

—Georges Clemenceau

War is too important to be left to the politicians.

—Colonel Jack Ripper (in
Dr. Strangelove
)

It would be wrong to say that Campos was personally planning the invasion of Sumer. After all, that was not the secretary of war's job. Instead, SecWar was responsible for administration, for expenditures, for procurement and the like.

On the other hand, when the secretary of war is convinced that he is quite the cleverest man ever to live, that most of his subordinates— indeed most of the human race—are idiots, in short when the secretary of war is something of an arrogant blockhead, one can expect him to take a hand, and perhaps an unduly heavy hand at that, in overseeing the detailed planning.

It was all water off a duck's back to Virgil Rivers. He'd been in the Army for better than two decades, been raised in the army, for that matter. Arrogant overbearing assholes were all in a day's work, provided they were at least reasonably competent.

That much one had to give Campos. He was at least reasonably competent.

Competence, however, was not infallibility. This was a problem for Campos. He aspired to not much more than competence but, since he equated himself with competence and competence with infallibility, he had rather a difficult time of it when things went wrong.

"What the hell do you mean, Virgil?" Campos fumed. "The Kemalis won't let the Fifth Division unload at their ports and won't permit them to cross the country? We
need
that division, plus the 731st Airborne Brigade, to hit Sumer from the south. Howellson from State
assured
me that the Kemalis would knuckle under."

Rivers, who had not been privy to any such conversation and knew the secretary of state, Howellson, extremely well, rather doubted that. But Campos tended to hear what he wanted to hear. Rivers also had good cause to know the Kemalis, immigrants from Turkey on Old Earth, were altogether too proud to knuckle under to anyone. Moreover, they had domestic political problems with being used as a base to attack another Islamic state, even though their own was only nominally Islamic and largely secular. Indeed, the settlers to Kemali had come largely to escape the increasing fundamentalism of their native Turkey.

"Mr. Secretary, no how, no way, are the Kemalis going to let us bring the Fifth Division through."

"Can General Thomas shift a force down to the southern part of the country?" The secretary asked.

"He says no, that everything he has he needs for the major attack from the north." Since the northern attack was already being done on a shoestring, largely as a result of Campos' unceasing nagging to reduce costs, Rivers thought that Thomas had a good argument for not being stripped of forces. Whether Campos would accept that or not . . . 

"Can we fly in something to the area of Sumer we control from the Oil War?"

"Yezidistan? There are airfields there that can take heavy lift, yes. Unfortunately, Mr. Secretary, most of the heavy lift we have we need for the major operation in the north. Even more unfortunately, with Fifth Division's armor loaded on ships and essentially untouchable for anything from weeks to about a month and a half, we would have to fly a unit, along with all its supplies, in from the Federated States. That would take a lot more lift than we can spare, tens of thousands of tons."

"Allies?" Campos asked, hopefully.

"Besides the Yezidis, none," Rivers answered. "The Anglians and the other small packets from our allies are either needed for the major attack or are too small to be of any effect. And the Yezidis just aren't up to it even though they've been supplemented by our own Special Warfare people."

The Yezidis were a caste-based Kurdish group that had left the area of Mosul, Iraq, en masse early in the 22nd century. They practiced what appeared to be a pre-Islamic—pre-Zoroastrian, as a matter of fact—religion with elements of Islam grafted onto it. They had never been accepted by the majority Moslem population who thought them "devil worshippers" and among whom they had lived—usually not amicably—for centuries. The Moslems, mainstream as well as Salafi had
often
fought with the Yezidi, much to the disadvantage of the latter.

With the opening up of mass emigration to the new world the Yezidi had jumped at the chance to be on their own. They had a reputation as fine warriors. Reputation notwithstanding, they had been continuously stomped into the dirt by their neighbors and had seen their original colony parceled up among the Kemalis, Sumeris, Alawis and Farsis in the area. Even the Volgans had, at one time, had a piece of them. Rivers, who had worked with them in the past, thought they were posturing swine but, since the secretary had great expectations from the Yezidi, he kept his own counsel. He couldn't keep a look of contempt off of his face, however, and Campos saw it.

"What? You don't think the Yezidi will come through for us?"

Rivers sighed. Time for some honesty, after all, it seemed.

"Mr. Secretary, everything you need to know about the Yezidi is explained by their conduct during and after the Oil War. We told them if they arose in rebellion, in other words if they
helped
us by drawing off some of the Sumeri troops, we would help them. They rebelled all right, but they waited until after we had stomped the crap out of the Sumeri army on our own. They only rebelled when it seemed perfectly safe to rise up in the vacuum we created, and after we didn't need their help any more. Then they whined when even the shot-and-bombed-to-shit rump of the Sumeri
Haris al Watini
was able to crush their chicken-shit asses. They will do nothing for themselves or for us. Trust me on this. Politically they're unreliable and militarily they're worthless."

Campos started to object but . . . 
he's been there. He should know.

Eager to divert the subject before he said something truly career damaging, Rivers asked, "What about the Balboans? Could we use them down in Yezidistan?"

"One medium-light brigade to do the job of a heavy division, Rivers? I don't think so. Besides, that colonel we sent down, Ridenhour, has very mixed reports on them."

Rivers, who had read the same reports, looked nonplussed. "I don't understand, sir. Ridenhour was very clear that he thought they'd put up a good fight."

"But what about their losses to friendly fire in training, Virgil? According to Ridenhour they've killed nearly one and a half percent of their own people just in training and just in the last year?"

"Well . . . yeah," Rivers replied. "Losses are not something that would deter Pat Hennessey from going ahead. He might eat his own guts over it later, but he would never let that stop him. And . . . frankly, so what? It isn't like those are our people being killed."

"But that's precisely the point, Virgil. If we let a maniac like that loose near
our
people there's no telling how many . . . oh."

"Right, Mr. Secretary. In the mountains of southern Sumer—Yezidistan, if you prefer—there are not going to
be
any of our people, not until the 731st Airborne makes its drop. And if I know Hennessey, and I do, he'll just wave at the 731st as they drop and continue the march to wherever he can find a fight."

"Balboans, huh? Well . . . can Thomas get by without them?"

"Honestly, he doesn't want them. He knows Hennessey from way back and, as he so delicately put it, "If I never see the son of a bitch again, it'll still be too soon." They, ummm, really don't like each other."

"Does
anybody
like Hennessey? Oh, never mind. All right, Virgil. Work out the details and brief me. And by the way, how are we coming in modifying the plan to take advantage of the awesome shocking power inherent in our technological superiority?"

Rivers, who knew that the
only
difference had been to take the basic plan and a word processing program and add in the phrase "awesome shocking power" in one hundred and twenty-seven places, answered, "Just fine, Mr. Secretary. It's a much better plan now."
Yessir, yessir, three bags full.