First to Fight (16 page)

“Platoon!” the platoon sergeants cried out. “Dis-missed!”

Released from formation, the hundred-plus men of the platoons broke ranks and raced back into the barracks to strip out of their dress uniforms and prepare for the next morning’s exercise. Sergeant Souavi, the company supply sergeant, got busy issuing weapons simulators to the platoon sergeants—just because they weren’t using real ammunition didn’t mean they wouldn’t be able to tell where they were hitting, or that they were hit.

But 34th FIST didn’t go into the field the next morning. The overnight arrival of Admiral P’Marc Willis’s orders canceled the training exercise. Instead, the men of Company L fell out on the company parade ground to get new orders.

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

Many of the tribal leaders sitting around the brightly lighted cavern had traveled far for the council. It was the largest such gathering even the oldest among them could remember. Not even Shabeli the Elder had been able to muster as successfully.

Actually, the younger Shabeli did not need the other tribes called to the council; the Siad alone had sufficient manpower for his immediate intention. Publicly, of course, Shabeli maintained the fiction that he desperately needed their assistance in his great crusade to wrest control of Elneal from Consolidated Enterprises. His real motive in calling them together, however, was to bind them to him as allies. Then, if the Confederation sent in its forces, they would be obligated to fight on his side. He had gotten this idea from a vid he’d seen as a boy, in which a group of assassins, after murdering their leader, pledge allegiance to one another by staining themselves with his blood. If the Confederation intervened and there was serious fighting, Shabeli would sacrifice his allies to weaken the Confederation forces until he could defeat them. If the Confederation forces proved too strong, and defeated his “allies” so severely he knew his Siad could not beat them, he could conclude a favorable peace with the Confederation that would buy him time to lay other plans for seizing full power on Elneal.

Either way, Shabeli knew he would emerge as the single most powerful leader on the planet, with all others paying obeisance to him.

Sitting on Shabeli’s right, the sword-arm side and hence the position of honor among the Siad, was his uncle, Wad Ramadan. Since Shabeli the Elder’s death six years before, Ramadan had served faithfully as his nephew’s adviser and counselor. But Shabeli the Magnificent only tolerated his uncle because of the old man’s powerful connections among the other Siad leaders. He seldom followed the old man’s advice and secretly wished him dead—honorably, of course—and safely out of the way. Now in his seventies, Ramadan was far older than most Siad, who, without the medical care available on the more advanced worlds, seldom lived much beyond their fifties. Shabeli hoped nature would soon take its course and remove the meddlesome old warrior.

On Shabeli’s left sat his consort, Moira the journalist, one of the few outworlders ever to voluntarily remain on Elneal in the society of clans. Her white skin, golden hair, and blue eyes betokened northern European ancestry. Although it would be death to stare or even look directly for more than a few moments at the beautiful consort of Shabeli the Magnificent, the other men in the assembly managed to avoid that fate with sly glances. And she was someone to admire: Only a bit shorter than Shabeli himself, and taller than most of the other Siad or the Bos Kashi men, Moira was a full-figured woman. Some of the Siad resented her presence among them. She was an outsider, and to make matters worse, Shabeli had never formally taken marriage vows with this woman. Some thought she had an undue influence over him. Looking at her, the delegates could understand why. But she was Shabeli’s most valuable adviser not because of her voluptuousness, but because she understood something none of these other men could ever know—the psychology of the Confederation. The only quality Shabeli admired as much as courage in a man was intellect in a woman; she did not even have to be beautiful to earn his respect—but Moira definitely was both.

Next to Moira sat the Bos Kashi delegation. Short, dark-skinned, wiry men, bow-legged from lives spent constantly in the saddle, they bristled with weapons, as did all the other clansmen present in the great underground hall. The one thing not even Shabeli could persuade these men to accept was to go anywhere unarmed. It would be more natural for them to walk about with their bottoms exposed than ever to be caught without weapons. The delegations from the Gaels and the Sons of Freedom, the transmontane tribes, were seated beyond Wad Ramadan. These men were light-skinned with fine hair and beards. The Gaels were known among the Siad as the “Potato Eaters,” and the Sons as the “Beer Bellies.” These nicknames belied the respect the Siad professed to have for them as fighting men, and many among them and the Bos Kashi sitting in peaceful conference in this very hall carried the scars from wounds inflicted by one or the other in past skirmishes.

Beyond the Bos Kashi were the representatives of the Shan, secretive, dark-skinned little men whose sharp facial angles contrasted with their slanted eyes. The daggers that bristled from their waist sashes bore hilts encrusted with precious gems. Even so, these were working knives.

Opposite the Shan were the Euskadi, the truly unknown quantity in the gathering. Where Shabeli was certain of how the Bos Kashi, the Gaels, and the Sons of Freedom would react to his proposal, and was fairly sure of the Shan, he had no idea what the Euskadi would say. The Euskadi representatives sat close, their heads together, whispering to each other in a tongue that was so unrelated to any language spoken by others on Elneal no one could ever learn to understand it.

The headmen of the other Siad clans completed the circle. Wad Mohammad, chieftain of the powerful Badawi clan, sat opposite Shabeli.

Wad Mohammad was the greatest threat to Shabeli’s plans. The fearsome chieftain had never prostrated himself before Shabeli the Elder, and had sworn never to give the great man’s son more honor than he had the father. It was most important to Shabeli that Wad Mohammad be kept under his eye, where he could work no mischief.

Among themselves the tribes spoke the various ancient languages of their clans—the Gaels and Sons an archaic form of English—but in conference they used modem English, the lingua franca of the Confederation. While none had—or would ever—accept a formal school system among them, with individual tutoring and a rude form of home schooling their young learned how to cope with life on Elneal. Leaders were expected to know not only the dialects of the other clans, but modem English as well. While the warrior tribesmen of Elneal hated government and the new ideas gradually filtering down to them from the other worlds in the Confederation, they realized the value of technology—and understood that to master technology, knowledge of English was mandatory.

Realizing this and wanting a secure base of operations for his clan, Shabeli the Elder had secretly contracted with the mining magnates to construct his underground complex and train a few men to run it. The subterranean complex had a modem communications center and more luxurious accommodations than most corporate dwellings in New Obbia and the coastal towns. Shabeli the Elder believed in austerity, but did not believe in being miserable. The son followed willingly in the father’s footsteps. But the old man had been wise, and knew his son could benefit from knowledge of other cultures, so his military training was supplemented by the best tutors in the arts money could buy. His followers considered Shabeli’s fondness for the literary arts and music his only weakness, but none ever dared say that in his hearing once he had succeeded to his father’s place among the Siad.

Shabeli signaled for silence. “Brothers . . . ,” he began in a deep, resonant voice that filled the large meeting hall. He paused to wait for total silence. “Brothers, we have met here today to resolve the vision of our ancestors . . .”

Shabeli talked for the better part of an hour. During that time all eyes were upon him. He played his voice like a great musical instrument, and used it to express every emotion, intense adoration for the memory of his ancestors, pride in the mores and fighting spirit of the tribes—here he extended his arms wide to embrace all the men in the hall—and hatred of anyone who would dare interfere in the independence of the nomadic clans. His words were perfectly phrased, and complemented by gestures intended to accentuate them powerfully: vigorous pounding of fist into a palm to underscore a point; hands extended palms upward, appealing to the delegates for their support; fists slapping the table—
boom, boom, boom
—in time to his thundering sentences; arms thrust mightily toward the sky, beseeching the heavens for confirmation. At times he would shout in a voice so powerful it echoed in the huge room. At other times he whispered in a voice so low and sibilant the men had to lean forward to hear him. Not a man dared to breathe deeply as Shabeli thundered on and on, building to a stupendous climax. In the oral tradition of the Siad, this speech was one of the most stunning ever delivered.

“Brothers! Cousins! Listen to me! The vermin in the city and the towns,” here Shabeli gestured toward the distant ocean, “the dregs of our race, have cast their lot with this Con-fed-er-a-tion.” He spit the five syllables out upon the table as if they were poison. “And what is this Confederation?” His voice rose on the last syllable and his lips twisted in a sneer. Shabeli paused. He glanced left and right, his arms flexed, palms open, fingers wiggling, as if saying, “C’mon, c’mon, tell me, tell me!”

One of the Gaels involuntarily farted, and in the silence it sounded like a gunshot, but so intensely were the delegates following Shabeli’s speech, only one person noticed. Moira cracked a very tiny smile, just a twitch on the right side of her mouth.

“It . . . is . . . an . . . outhouse . . . stuffed . . . with . . . constipated . . . old . . . men, long dead . . . penises . . . dangling . . . in . . . the . . . shit!”

“Aaaarrrrgh!” One of the Gaels howled out his admiration for the original phrase, and the other men began pounding the table with the hilts of their daggers.

“They flit about like pretty little insects,” Shabeli continued, “telling other men—telling us—what is good for us, what is best for us, what is right for us! And when they are done,” here Shabeli raised his arms and looked about at the assemblage, “when they are done, brothers, when they are done, they will take away your arms, and you and your children will live as farmers, and people from the city will tell you when and where to shit!”

The room broke into pandemonium. Most of the delegates shouted their defiance at the cities and the Confederation and begged Shabeli to continue. Not the Shan, though. Those men held expressions so rigid it seemed their faces were veiled. The Euskadi wore expressions of disgust and murmured in their unintelligible language. Only Wad Mohammad among the other delegates maintained a dignified mien. In time the hall grew quiet again.

“Well, brothers, that won’t happen,” Shabeli said in a quiet, determined, controlled tone of voice. “Our ancestors came here to live free, in the old ways, and we will, we will, we will!” Again pandemonium reigned—with the previous exceptions.

When a semblance of calm returned to the gathering, the Great Khang, headman of the Shan, rose to his feet. “Shabeli the Magnificent,” he began, looking at everyone present except the man he was addressing, “you are a fool. I think you do not understand the power your plans will bring against us. The Confederation is monstrously strong. The only way we can treat with them is to go to the sea, or into the mountains and fight them in small bands there, where they cannot mass their forces against us. If you make any attempt to wage open war, you will guarantee that we will be vassals of the Confederation.”

While talking he turned his gaze to Shabeli. “If you bring the Confederation against us, all the work and plans of the Shan will be for naught. We are close, very close, to concluding an arrangement with Consolidated Enterprises to export our drugs. If you will join with us in this enterprise, we will all become wealthy beyond your dreams. If you persist in your plans, you will bring poverty and ruination on us all.”

The Great Khang signaled the rest of his delegation and led them from the cavern. None of them looked back at the disdainful eyes that followed them.

Shabeli raised a restraining hand before anyone could make a motion toward the departing Shan. What the Shan did was no more than he had anticipated. “Any other dissenters?” he asked.

Raymondo Itzaina, the head of the Euskadi delegation, stood. “The only safety for free men,” he said, looking at no one because to look at a man other than a relative or a friend was to challenge him to a fight, “is in isolation. I trust the Shan no more than I trust the Confederation, no more than I trust the Gaels, no more than I trust Shabeli, no more than I trust anyone else who is not of my blood.” Now he looked directly at Shabeli, and there was fierce challenge in his eyes. “If you mix with the Confederation, you will die. Just as treating with the corporation that controls the New Obbia government will ultimately kill you.” He turned his head to look at the other delegates, the same challenge in his eyes. “All of you.” He didn’t have to signal the other members of his delegation; they were on their feet and moving with him before he completed his first step from the table.

Shabeli hadn’t expected this from the Euskadi, but neither did it surprise him. He looked expectantly at the rest of the delegations.

The Gaels all stood and offered Shabeli their side arms in the universal gesture of fealty among the Clans. “None should speak of our being defeated by mere off-worlders,” their leader growled.

Instantly, the other delegations rose and performed the same gesture. These men were no fools. They knew that their only safety lay in numbers. They knew Shabeli wanted something for himself out of the alliance, but they also knew that Shabeli was a leader and a fighter. Later, during the war councils, cooler heads would prevail and Shabeli knew he would have to use a different form of persuasion to get their cooperation, but right now, in this hall, after that rousing speech, the delegates of these tribes, the only ones who mattered, were committed.

“Did you hear the fart that bastard let during your speech?” Moira asked Shabeli. They lay snuggled under skins Shabeli had taken from the animals he killed on his hunting expeditions in the mountains over the years, watching an ancient flat-vid of a funny woman, her handsome husband, and their elderly neighbors. Shabeli laughed in genuine amusement at the exaggerated comic predicaments the woman got herself into. “What do you expect from a man who lives on potatoes and beer?” He laughed.