Caliphate (10 page)

"There shall be no compulsion in religion!" thundered the muscled, graying drill instructor, Abdul Rahman von Seydlitz, to the one hundred and nineteen newly gathered boys in the Hall of Arms. One of those boys was Hans Ibn Minden. "None whatsoever!"

The boys, none of them over twelve years of age, were positioned in what the Imperial Army would have called "the front leaning rest." Most of the world would have recognized it as the pushup position. They'd been that way so long that tears ran down faces even as arms, quivering, threatened to collapse.

In fact, some did collapse until the heavily booted feet of their overseers brought them back up to the pushup position. From those, the tears flowed without cease.

"No compulsion in religion," the senior drill instructor repeated. "Yet there is bounty, under the mercy of Allah, for those who forswear their false religion."

One of the boys, apparently no dummy, raised his head and gasped, "Bounty?"

"Indeed. It is our custom to fete those who join the faithful. It is very hard to do so with someone in the position you are in and so we relieve them of it."

Hans gritted his teeth. His mother's parting whispers echoed in his ears.
My son, whatever they may take from you, do not let them have your soul as well. Keep true to our faith. God will not forget you.

Yet it was hard,
hard
. The work of a rural
fellahin
should have built good muscle in Hans' arms. And so it would have, if food had not been perennially scarce. As it was, he was not so strong as he might have been, either in body or in soul. With the rising agony in his arms, his mother's parting words grew fainter and fainter. When one by one the other boys took the drill instructor up on his offer, repeating the words, "
La illaha illa Allah: Mohamedan rasulu Allah,
"
There is no God but God; Mohamed is the prophet of God;
Hans' will weakened and finally broke.

And this
, thought Abdul Rahman, himself a
Nazrani
weaned from the faith of his fathers,
this is why we take them so young.

Even as Hans and his newfound barracks mates underwent conversion in the Al Harv Kaserne, Petra, too was learning new things. Her instruction was even less pleasant than his was.

Besma, held fast by Fudail's, her stepbrother's, strong arms, struggled and wept and pleaded for her father's wife to lay off the beating. Petra, the object of that beating, wept and begged and chewed with her teeth upon the table over which she was bent. Petra's long skirt was lifted over her back, exposing her buttocks. Al Khalifa, the stepmother, held her neck to the table with one hand while she lashed those buttocks mercilessly, raising welts and occasional bright red drops of blood.

Al Khalifa stopped the beating just long enough to turn to Besma and say, "Didn't you ever wonder why I let your father waste money on this
Nazrani
slut? He might not let me punish
you
as you deserve, but he'll not say a word over punishing a slave."

She turned back to Petra and laid on four more strokes. "Think about that the next time you think you can talk back to me, or disobey me, or fail in any way to show me the respect I am due."

"Please," Besma begged. "I'm sorry; I'm so, so sorry. I promise I'll be good but
please
don't hit her anymore."

"PLEASE!" Besma shrieked as al Khalifa turned back to the slave's bare buttocks and began to thrash her even more viciously than before.
"Please!"

Only when the
Nazrani
girl fainted did al Khalifa leave off. "It will be like this, only worse, every time you fail to please me," the woman said. To her son she said, "Let Besma go," before she, and he, left.

"I didn't do anything; I didn't do anything; I didn't do anything," Petra repeated, over and over, hysterically, without there being anything Besma could say or do to make her stop. Instead, she just held the younger girl and rocked her back and forth, stroking her hair and whispering how sorry she was.

Though it took much time, hours, little by little Petra's shuddering lessened, then finally stopped. Her sobbing, too, let off. Still Besma held her until, certain Petra had fallen asleep, the Moslem girl was able to lay her down on her own bed. She was very careful to lay Petra on her side, lest the pressure on her bruised and bleeding buttocks might awaken her again in agony.

Besma's face was a study in pure hatred.
She waited, that bitch, until I loved you like a sister to use you to get to me. And now what can I do? Have father sell you somewhere else? I couldn't bear it and you couldn't bear being where you would end up. And so now
I
am a slave, because I cannot bear for you to be hurt. Because of that . . . that . . . that . . . stinking-vile-foul-slimy-filthy woman
owns
me.

Her face softened, looking down at the sleeping doll-like figure on her bed. Besma bent and kissed the slave girl's cheek.
But if I must be owned, at least I have the satisfaction of knowing that the price is fair.

"There's a price for everything in life, Lieutenant Hamilton, and the price is always fair when it isn't exorbitant."

Thus spoke "that asshole, Captain Thompson." Hamilton hadn't the first clue what the captain was talking about. The Old Man had ordered him to his office without explanation. "Sit," he'd said, once Hamilton had reported. "We need to have a chat."

Having said that, though, Thompson just stared at Hamilton, studying him, with his left eyebrow lifted and head cocked to the right. The captain's studying made the lieutenant distinctly uncomfortable and did so very quickly. He had a scary look about him anyway and the extended silence only made it worse.

After several long minutes, and having made his lieutenant nervous enough to climb walls, Thompson spoke again. His voice was something between conversational and prosecutorial as he said, "There are no secrets in an infantry company. Have you ever asked yourself, Lieutenant, what the effect on your troops will be if you ever have to order them into a bad situation to save Hodge's ass? If you weren't fucking her, it would be no problem. But since you
are
fucking her,
that
will be the reason they think you're risking their lives, to save your little honey-buns. The same holds true for her."

"Sir, I—"

"Shut up."

"Yes, sir."

"In a country," Thompson continued, "where many civil rights once thought normal and above infringement have slipped away,
you
are in the least privileged class of all, Lieutenant Hamilton. You're an infantry officer. You have no rights. You have no personal interests that cannot be classified as trivial. You exist for the sole purpose of supporting the interests of the Empire through violence. Anything you do that undermines your ability to support the Empire through violence is ethically and morally wrong. Do you understand me?"

"Sir, I have the right to have sex with anyone I want not in my chain of command," Hamilton objected.

Thompson, for once, smiled. "Lieutenant, wherever did you hear that?"

"The bastard said he'd transfer me to 3rd of the 19th in Second Brigade, John. I don't want to give up my platoon. I don't want to be in a different unit from you."

Hodge lay naked with her head on Hamilton's chest and one arm draped over his torso. His chest was wet with the tears she'd shed when she'd told him they had to revert to just being friends.

"He was pretty specific, too, John, the foul-mouthed, tactless son of a bitch. 'No fucking, no sucking, no kissing, no cuddling, no anything, Lieutenant Hodge, that so much as suggests he is anything to you but a brother officer.' I had to give my word or he'd have shipped me out—well, one of us out, anyway—without even the chance to say goodbye. I was lucky I was able to talk him into turning a blind eye for one last night."

Hamilton nodded. "Hard-assed bastard isn't he?" Sighing, he continued, "Well . . . if he had shipped one of us out, we'd never have seen each other at all, not with the way they're going to rotate us and Second Brigade in and out of the field in sequence. At least this way we can be close, if not as close as we'd like. I'd never get a moment's sleep if I had to worry about you all the time without being able to watch out for you."

"Why, John, I'd almost think you cared."

"Silly bitch. I love you. Didn't you know?"

In answer, she gasped, hugged him tightly, and threw one leg over both of his. She then began moving downwards along his chest. While she still could, she whispered, just loudly enough for him to hear, "I love you, too, you bastard. I have since we were plebs."

* * *

Jungle insects swarmed, buzzing in ears and feasting on the exposed faces of three very uncomfortable lieutenants.

"Moose cock," Captain Thompson said, to his three line platoon leaders. "You all suck moose cock. Where the fuck did you people learn that drills were a substitute for brains?"

The line lieutenants stood at attention, suit helmets off and held under their left arms. The weapons platoon leader and the exec were both old Thompson hands,
first
lieutenants. Thus they hadn't fucked up;
they
weren't at attention; and they both wore amused smirks at the other lieutenants' discomfiture. Miles' smile, in particular, shone against his black skin.

"Hodge, what the fuck did you think you were doing leading my boys and girls into a goddamned minefield? Didn't anyone ever tell you mines are
deadly
to us?"

The captain's evil eyes swiveled to Hamilton. "Dipshit," he sneered, "when the terrain doesn't suit bounding overwatch then don't do bounding overwatch. I don't give a flying fuck what the book says; you're paid to use your mind. Use it."

At third platoon leader Thompson didn't swear, nor even sneer. Instead he said, "Even very large directional mines can be fired from quite close to the troop line provided you sandbag behind them. Failure to so use them is an indicator of cowardice.
That
is something beyond my power to fix. You're relieved. Get out of my sight and send your platoon sergeant up. Then turn in your suit to the company armorer and report to battalion headquarters. Maybe Woody can find a use for you that fits your lack of talent."

"Where did he ever learn to be such a bastard?" Hodge asked, over a cold meal from a pouch. She, all fastidious, was trying very hard to eat the meal without at the same time eating the bugs that swarmed it.

Both Miles and the XO, Fitzgerald, laughed. Miles added, "A bastard? You think so? You ain't seen nothin' yet."

"Look, Laurie," Fitzgerald added. "He's got another three weeks to prep us for combat. It wouldn't be so bad if we'd kept our old platoons, Miles with First and me in Third, with the adjutant leading Second. But the personnel shuffle before we deployed wrecked all that. In point of fact the Army might need you someday, but the company doesn't. It would do as well or better with the platoon sergeants running the show and
no
lieutenants rather than still wet-behind-the-ears ones.

But Thompson's stuck with you and making the best of it in the time he has."

"Is that why he dumped Ken Parker?" Hamilton asked. "Is he going to try to get rid of Laurie and me, too?"

"No," Miles said. "Or at least I don't think so. Parker was incompetent, an embarrassment to me as an American, and a worse one because we're both black. If the CO had wanted to get rid of you, he would have, but Parker
had
to go."

"But he's just so
mean
about it," Hodge said.

Fitzgerald shrugged. "The man's short on tact, I'll grant you. Hell, the last battalion commander was actually
afraid
of him, he's such a tactless bastard. But he's long on tactics and that matters more."

"Pretty good loggie, too," Miles added.

Hans was heartily sick of the religious instruction. Sure, they provided some snacks to supplement the otherwise bland diet. Sure, the bearded imam—a Sunni—in charge was an interesting, at least an enthusiastic, speaker and teacher. Sure, and best of all, no one was torturing his body to prepare it for future use as a janissary.