Carnifex by Tom Kratman Page B

drew closer he heard the wailing of women, infidel women he was certain, coming from the enemy camp.

    His men must have heard it, too, as they slowed their fire and picked up the pace.

    The camp's denizens were not soldiers. Rather, they appeared to be civilians, about two thirds men and the remainder women. Nor were they all dead. Many screamed and moaned. A few seemed to be begging for help. The pleas cut off one by one as Noorzad's followers killed the men. They seemed less eager to kill the women, though some of those were shot as well.

    Malakzay arrived at the burning encampment leading his band of gunners. "What do we do with them?" he asked. "What were they?"

    "Non-Governmental Organization types, I think," answered Noorzad. "Hand wringers and bleeding hearts. Kill the men; they're just infidel dogs. As to what we do with the women?" He smiled. "Fuck 'em. Then kill the ones who look like they won't make the march back. The rest we can sell back in Kashmir. Might raise enough to get a few more heavy weapons."

    "But first we can fuck them?" Malakzay asked again, the eagerness in his voice palpable.

    In answer, Noorzad raised his voice to carry to all his band. "As the Prophet commanded, 'Go and take a slave girl.' These women are your fields; plow them as you will."

34/8/466 AC, Isla Real, Balboa

    At first, and for some years, the Legion had raised its own beef on the island. Little by little, though, the cattle fields had given way to casernes and training areas. They still kept cattle, but only in small numbers and only for dairy. Carrera watched the dairy cows at work through the glass door that led from his office to a railed, tiled and partially shedded roof. The orientation of the roof was at ninety degrees from the window facing the solar chimney. Much like watching tropical fish in a tank, the cattle gave a sense of calm. This was important to a man with great responsibilities who also happened to be in a very bad mood.

    There was a tapping on the glass below. Carrera looked down and saw Jinfeng, his late wife's pet trixie tapping impatiently. He'd brought the bird out some years prior, leaving her in his current wife's, Lourdes', care. Trixies were smart though, as smart as a gray parrot, and Jinfeng had quickly learned the way to his office. She showed up most mornings that he was actually on the island, rather than in Sumer, looking for a handout, or just to be skritched atop her head.

    Carrera and the bird had never been more than tolerably friendly before Linda's death. Afterwards, when the bird had no one else, she'd warmed considerably. As soon as Carrera opened the door, she gave a loud screech and stepped into the office, boney tail scraping the stone floor and claws from her partially reversed big toes click-clacking as she walked.

    Carrera bent to pat the proto-bird, raising a more contented call. He then walked to the intercom on his desk. "Do we have any—"

    "I'll bring it right in, sir," his aide answered. Jinfeng and her appetite had become well known at the headquarters.

    * * *

    Terra Novan ecology was a very mixed up thing, courtesy of the Noahs—aliens about whom nothing was known and whose very existence was only inferred, albeit very strongly inferred. After all, someone, some thing had to have brought to the planet the life forms from Old Earth, sometime in the impenetrable mists of prehistory. Jinfeng and her increasingly rare kind were but one example of what the aliens had brought. Besides the trixies, archaeopteryxes, in the air, there were carcharodon megalodons at sea, the great carnivorous birds, phorohacos, on land, and thousands upon thousands of other terrestrial species, most long extinct on the home world.

    There had once been more species but, man being man, many of those which had been saved by the Noahs and gone extinct on Old Earth tended to be driven to extinction on the new once man put down roots.

    Besides those living relics of Old Earth, other species,