Carnifex by Tom Kratman Page A

his chief subordinates.

    Noorzad pointed with a finger at a tall, aesthetic-looking fighter. "Suleiman, take your RGLs"—rocket grenade launchers—"that way. There's a rock outcropping and some low bushes. They're progressivines, I think." The progressivines were one of those few species, like the tranzitree, the bolshiberry, and the septic-mouthed antania, or moonbat, that the Noahs, the unknown others who had seeded Terra Nova with life from Old Earth, had set down, possibly to interfere with the development of intelligent life on the new world.

    "You can engage the whole encampment from there," Noorzad continued. "Remember, concentrate on the vehicle with the most antennae first . We don't want them calling for artillery or air support. Your signal to open fire will be when I fire. The signal that the assault is beginning is 'Allahu Akbar.'"

    Suleiman nodded—he rarely spoke much—and turned to collect his seventeen men and eight RGLs. These were every one that the company owned. Noorzad waited until that part of his column was underway before laying a hand on the shoulder of his next subordinate, Malakzay. To this one, in charge of all three of the company's machine guns, he gave similar instructions, differing only in that the low ridge Noorzad had just vacated was to be their firing position.

    As Malakzay and his gunners and their assistants began to creep forward as quietly as their chief had crept back, Noorzad went and picked up the remainder of his organization, the forty-four rifleman that we would lead personally. He led them back, then down into a draw that led almost to the enemy encampment. From there the men crept forward in single file, behind their leader. No sentry barred the way.

    Stinking amateurs, Noorzad cursed. Hardly worth the bother of killing.

    At what he judged was a distance of about one hundred and twenty meters from the edge of the encampment, Noorzad halted. There was a substantial boulder, half the height of a man, perched precariously on the lip of the draw. It was this, as much as the nearness of the enemy, which caused the guerilla to stop. From there he sent half his men left, the other half right. They, like their leader, crept on cat feet.

    Noorzad himself stayed in the draw until the last of the men had gone out to form the assault line and the word, "Ready," had come whispered back. Then he, too, silently scrambled up and posted himself, crouched low, behind the boulder.

    Risking a peek out, Noorzad saw that his enemy had heard and seen nothing. Just pitiful, he subvocalized. Tsk. He gave a last look left and right, just to confirm that his men really were ready. Then he drew his own rifle to his shoulder, drew a bead on a silhouette outlined by the fire and began to squeeze the trigger.

    The shot came as a surprise, as most good shots do. Noorzad's surprise was as nothing though, compared to the surprise of the Taurans when eight rockets streaked from the darkness and caused three of their wheeled vehicles, including the command vehicle, to explode in flame. To this surprise was added the shock of several score, then several hundred, tracers ranging through their camp as the guerilla machine guns joined in within half a second after the first rocket.

    Watching from his boulder, Noorzad saw the enemy knocked on their asses by exploding RGL rounds and sliced down by the searching machine guns. One target, in particular, drew a smile from the way it danced as two guns chopped at it from slightly different directions.

    Satisfied after a minute's steady firing, and by the lack of any return fire, Noorzad stood and in a voice that carried even over machine guns and rocket launchers shouted "Allahu Akbar! Kill the infidels!"

    On command his men stood up and began running forward, firing from the hip as their fathers and uncles had learned to do during the Volgan invasion and occupation of their land almost a generation before. Still there was no return fire. Indeed, as Noorzad