War World III: Sauron Dominion Read online

  And on this day, even that inner peace was to be shattered. No sooner were the men in their prayers then explosions in the surrounding hills announced an attack, and the response by Yurek and the other men of the village was immediate.

  Snatching their weapons from the prayer mats beside them, each moved quickly to their assigned positions. They passed the huts wherein the women and smallest children of the village worshiped, and who were now also leaving that worship to arm themselves for defense of their home. The mid-morning prayer would not be finished this day, but Allah would understand. No less pragmatic a God could ever have won the hearts and minds of such people as Yurek’s, descendants of Old Earth’s fierce Afghan mujahadin.

  Yurek’s station was the house of old Fahd the Healer, in the southwest corner of the village. His fire team commander, Aga Yani, was already in position, scanning the perimeter with his binoculars.

  “Salaam, Yurek,” Aga Yani greeted Yurek without turning. “You are the first here.”

  Yurek nodded at the compliment as he dropped to his belly and crawled up to the firing slit. He nicked the safety off and watched his area very carefully; Aga Yani could not see everything at once, not even with the precious binoculars, and it was part of Yurek’s job to warn him of any approaching attackers he might miss.

  “It’s the Chin, again,” Aga Yani explained, the binoculars never leaving his face. “North wall outposts spotted several of their patrols just before dawn.’

  Yurek did not need to ask why they were thus guarding the southwest so carefully; Haven’s Chin nomads had not earned their reputation for cunning with suicidal, frontal assaults; nor had her transplanted Afghan population survived so long by accepting the obvious.

  Mulli, another member of the fire team, arrived with a machine gun. He unfolded the bipod and positioned the weapon in the firing slit, then pulled an ammunition case from the bag slung over his shoulder, all without a word.

  “Salaam, Mulli,” Aga Yani said, then lowered his binoculars and looked at him. Mulli’s blank face was streaked with tears. “Where is your ammunition feeder? The new boy, what is his name?”

  “Sadhar,” Mulli answered. “Killed in his prayers by a Chin bullet.” He added: “My sister’s son,” in a voice meant only for himself and God, but Yurek heard it, too.

  “Insh’allah,” Aga Yani said compassionately, and went back to his binoculars.

  Was it, though? Yurek wondered. And if it truly is God’s will that the boy be taken in the act of prayer, is there a message to be seen in the fact? There must be, for God gives both life and death, and there is nothing He does that is without purpose. Yurek sighed, putting the matter in perspective: A youth, and devout; surely Sadhar was taken directly to Paradise.

  “There, a Chin squad, just to the left of the marker stone,” Aga Yani said, carefully storing his binoculars and picking up a portable rocket launcher.

  Yurek squinted at the serrated rock walls in the distance, their surface lit with the diffuse glow of both Byers’ Star and the yellow-brown gas giant Cat’s Eye that Haven orbited. The plateau that held his people’s village dropped off sharply to the south, and the mountains rose up sheer on the other three sides, so that on the left side of his view their rippled expanse dropped at a sixty degree angle to the floor of the Shangri-La valley below. It was on just such a horribly difficult attack route that the mujahadin expected the Chin to come, and the infidels did not disappoint them.

  Yurek suddenly picked out movement in the rocks, but he was well-trained; Aga Yani would tell them when to open fire. Part of the effectiveness of this position was its field of fire over an area which an attacker had every right to expect would be lightly defended, if at all.

  “They’re coming very slowly, Aga Yani,” Yurek said after a moment. He was still young, and his eyesight was very good, despite his years of work with the intricate tools and precise tolerances of his trade.

  “Yes,” Aga Yani said. After a silent minute, he picked up the binoculars with one hand. Finding the Chin squad’s position, he spoke: “Three men on the ridge, watching this area. Nine seem to be looking for something; if it’s a full strength squad, that leaves three unaccounted for.” Aga Yani abruptly hissed through his teeth. “Aah! The dogs have a mortar! The squad is looking for a flat area to emplace it!”

  Yurek looked to Mulli, but the gunners face was pressed into the stock of his machine gun like a bridegroom’s face to his wife’s thigh, his eyes never leaving the ridge. A mortar was very bad indeed. Yurek’s village, tucked safely into the mountains, had endured many raids over the years, and while it had always survived, it had suffered greatest at the hands of raiders with mortars. Even the Walls of Allah, as Yurek’s people called the Atlas Range, did not protect the faithful from death that could be dropped within those walls from above. And a mortar situated here, firing into the village from the southwest, would bring uncounted tears.

  “Yurek, come with me. We’ll try to get above them. Don’t try to keep their heads down, Mulli,” Aga Yani said, slinging the rocket launcher over one shoulder as he rose. ‘We’ll soon be high enough on the slope for them to shoot at us without standing up. Wait until they expose themselves to fire at us, then kill as many as you can.”

  Yurek was grateful to get off the cold floor of Old Fahd’s house; Haven’s icy air and frozen stones leached the warmth from a man’s body faster than Mulli’s gun could draw Chin blood.

  “Allah-u akbar,” Yurek heard Mulli say behind them as they left, then something like “Sadhar,” and they were off and away up the hill.

  With the sound of the first shot from the cliffs above, Sauron Squad Leader Gav had dropped to one knee and signaled the nine men in his patrol to do the same. Looking up into the mountains above him, his normal vision saw clouds of smoke and debris rising and spreading into the air, while his infrared sensitivity defined the ripple of greater fires beyond, and his preternatural hearing discerned the cries of men in battle and the chatter of weapons.

  Gav turned to his assistant squad leader, Goren.

  “Mak twa; cho dah hum vwa.” It was a long series of commands in the Battle Tongue, but Goren had shown he was capable of remembering and carrying out the most complex orders.

  Gav looked up the mountain once more. No other Sauron patrol had been assigned that area; it was regarded as too high for habitation by human norms. Haven’s thin atmosphere dwindled gradually up to about eight thousand feet, then dropped off drastically to almost nothing. At fifteen thousand, it wasn’t much more than vacuum. Yet now it seemed as though human norms were not only living up there, but fighting as well. To Gav, that could only mean there was something up there worth fighting over, and that had to be a settlement. Gav estimated the firelight to be occurring at eighty-five hundred feet, at or even above the ceiling of the breathable atmosphere. Gav swung his half of the patrol in the opposite direction from Goren, executing his part of the complicated encirclement to approach the fighting above.

  Within ten minutes, they had captured a wounded norm, and spirited him away from his village without any of his comrades being aware of it.

  If the human norms have a settlement up here, Gav thought, living, working, and most importantly, birthing, First Citizen Diettinger will want to know about it.

  More explosions and the rattle of gunfire could be heard from the far side of the village; that would be the Chin’s main assault, meant to draw off men while they set their mortar up here. Once emplaced, the device could bombard Yurek’s people until they were all dead or the Chin ran out of ammunition, whichever came first. Even the Chin were not so foolish as to believe the mujahadin would surrender.

  Yurek and Aga Yani raced up the glassy hill behind the house. The snow on the floor of the plateau was months old; the mountains of Haven were far too dry to get much snowfall at this altitude, and almost none was left now. Thus, their footing was sure and the gray-brown sheepskin coats they wore blended well with the rock slopes up which they ran.

&n
bsp; Neither man spoke; breathable air was thin everywhere on Haven, and thinnest here. Their people had acclimated over the years in exile, but there was still only so much the human body could be expected to do. In any case, both knew where they were going: a spot in the rocks chosen for precisely this purpose, months ago. The Afghans had learned long ago the value of knowing the terrain, and it was no exaggeration to say that Yurek’s people knew every inch of the territory surrounding their village.

  They were almost there when a hollow thump was heard, the sound of the first mortar round being fired.

  “Down!” Aga Yani pushed Yurek to one side as he fell, and both men curled up into the shelter of the rocks. They waited, straining to hear the whistle of the incoming mortar shell. In Haven’s thin atmosphere, those sounds were so long in coming that a new round could be well on the way before the first was even heard.

  Below and behind them, a fiery blossom of snow and stone leapt up from the plateau not twenty yards from Old Fahd’s house. Yurek looked to Aga Yani; the fire team leader raised one hand, counting to himself. The next round came less than ten seconds later, closer to the stone hut by the same distance in yards.

  “Mulli!” Aga Yani shouted through cupped hands, “Mulli, get out! Get out of there!”

  Yurek watched, gripping the stock of his rifle with one hand and the lip of stone before him with the other. Mulli did not come out, there was no shooting from the house of Old Fahd the Healer, and the next Chin mortar shell was a direct hit that obliterated the building.

  Aga Yani dragged Yurek to his feet, and they continued up the slope. The squad guarding the Chin mortar crew had seen them, and the rocks all around were shattering under the impact of their bullets, filling the air with stone splinters and fragmented steel-jacketed slugs. They had reached the position to fire down on the Chin when Aga Yani stopped and abruptly sat down, turning to reveal that the left side of his head was gone.

  Instinctively, Yurek grabbed for the rocket launcher in Aga Yani’s hand, but the weapon slipped from the dead man’s fingers and went clattering down the slope, gaining speed, bouncing off the rocks to fly over the heads of the jubilant Chin and disappear into one of the great rifts of the mountain range below.

  Yurek felt himself struck by two bullets in the thigh and another in the chest, out there was no pain. Insh’allah. Yurek acknowledged his destiny. Only let me live long enough to kill but one Chin, he prayed. Perhaps Allah heard him, for his pain was slow in coming.

  Another bullet grazed his forehead as he pressed himself against the rocks and pulled another of the rockets from Aga Yani’s pouch. Yurek had no launcher, but the rocket was fin stabilized, and he knew how to arm its warhead manually. Many said such a thing could not be done, but Yurek knew differently; it was but another part of his Gift, the khan used to say in admiration. The warhead was a shaped charge, not meant to be used against men in the open, but it would have to do.

  The Chin had stopped firing as they made ready to move onto the plateau, where their observers could direct their mortar’s fire into the village with deadly accuracy. Yurek looked down on them from the ambush point, and saw them gathered in the tiny bowl of cleared rock, some even pointing to him and laughing, or taking the occasional stray shot to keep his head down. No matter. Crouched behind the rocks, Yurek was completely hidden. Let them think him a coward. The Chin’s opinions of his fighting prowess meant nothing to him, for they were but infidels and he was not a soldier, but an artisan.

  Yurek plunged his knife into the rocket tube at the base of the warhead, cutting free the solid propellant engine. The black rod of hardened powder dropped into his lap, and he stored it in the lining of his coat for reuse later; Yurek’s people wasted nothing.

  Another thrust of the knife, this time into the tip of the warhead, and he had exposed the detonator. Below, the Chin had detached the mortar from its base and were preparing to carry it over the lip of stone that had concealed their approach. Yurek pulled the detonator from the base of the shaped charge explosive, pushed it hard into the nose, and spliced two wires. Jumping to his feet, Yurek took brief aim and threw the makeshift bomb high overhand into the air.

  One of the raiders yelled something that might have been “grenade” in Chin, and Yurek had the satisfaction of seeing them all look frantically about the crater for cover that did not exist. Yurek watched as his throw, guided without doubt by the Hand of Allah, put the bomb directly into the center of the Chin. The blast scoured the crater, throwing the mortar tube over the side to follow the rocket launcher that Aga Yani had dropped earlier.

  Moments later, Yurek had retrieved his rifle, and was methodically squeezing off single shots into the Chin that were still moving below. Allah-u akbar, he prayed, tears of gratitude streaking his face. God is great, God is great; I testify that there is no other God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet.

  He was starting to put second shots into the dead raiders when a shadow fell on him from behind; he tried to turn, but his assailant was far too fast. His weapon was wrested from his grip. Yurek rolled over, but his assailant was silhouetted against the morning sun. He tried to draw his knife, but he had lost too much blood, and his shock was worsening in Haven’s cold; the knife was batted from his hand with insulting ease, and Yurek lost consciousness without ever seeing his foe.

  Heart pounding, his vision closing in at the edges, Mulli fought to draw air into his lungs; he was too high; the mullahs warned every child in the village not to climb above the rim when the wind was low. But he had disobeyed Aga Yani, leaving his post to get a better firing angle on the Chin, and a good thing as it had turned out, for their accursed mortar would have killed him, and his nephew Sadhar would have gone unavenged by a blood relative.

  Mulli was racing up the back slope to a position even higher than that which Yurek and Aga Yani sought; the air was thin up here, dangerously thin, but he begged God that he be allowed to survive it for the few moments he would be above the rim. He was just crawling over a blade-thin ridge when he heard, far below, the sound of Yurek’s makeshift grenade, amplified by the bowl the Chin had been hiding in; Mulli at first feared they had something larger than a mortar.

  Standing too fast, Mulli blacked out, and losing his grip, saved his own life. The vengeful mujahadin slid a dozen meters down the slope, back down into the rim, pain threatening to split his skull from within-- the first symptoms of anoxia. He opened his eyes and saw that ne had not dropped his machine gun.

  Allah-u akbar. He grinned fiercely. Below him, he could see Yurek firing into the dead and wounded Chin, and he was about to shout a cheer when he saw--something.

  A black shape flowed over the rocks toward Yurek, and before Mulli could recover his wits, the devil was upon the tribe’s weaponsmith. In seconds, the strong, agile Yurek was beaten senseless, and with a gesture, the black shape called more of its fellows to the scene.

  Whimpering with frustration, Mulli twisted the useless machine gun in his hands; what good were bullets against demons? Then, squinting against the late morning glare, Mulli saw one of them pull back a hood, to reveal a pale face and yellow hair. The figure raised a hand to its mouth and appeared to speak, then he and his comrades were gone again, moving across the rock faces like shadows on water.

  Mulli stared after them for some time, trying to convince himself that firing the machine gun would have killed Yurek; the weaponsmith had been in the middle of those men--if they were men--and Mulli could not have avoided hitting him.

  Mulli breathed deeply, slowly, gathering his thoughts.

  They looked like men; they must have been men. Yet what sort of men could do the things he had seen them do? What tribe bred such warriors?

  Revenge for Sadhar would have to wait. Mulli climbed carefully down the slope; it would not do to fall and die without bringing back the news that their best weaponsmith had been captured by warriors of an unknown tribe.

  Mulli had to get this news to the khan.

  While Gav was leadin
g his men down the mountainside with their captive, First Citizen Galen Diettinger stood on a parapet of the Citadel and looked a little way to the northeast and a very long way down.

  Four thousand feet below on the valley floor, the narrow pass into the Shangri-La from the Northern Steppes was a bustle of activity. Down there, Combat Engineer Denbannen’s men were clearing the ground for the foundation of the most ambitious Sauron project on Haven since their invasion three years previous. Among the Saurons, only a handful understood Diettinger’s reasons for believing the endeavor was necessary, and only Denbannen Believed it could be done.

  Diettinger turned and walked across the patio into his office in this, the highest meeting hall in the highest tower of the Citadel. On a table within stood a scale model of the project as Denbannen had proposed it: A featureless slab of gray concrete wedged between the southeastern point of the Atlas Range and the northwestern extents of the Miracle Mountains.

  Five thousand feet high, far above the highest passes into the Shangri-La, a wall of stone and steel to forever seal off the valley from the Northern Steppes, and make the Saurons undisputed masters of the most crucial land mass on Haven. The wall would shut out the steppes nomads and raiders beyond the valley, ending their attempts at depredation of the Shangri-La. More importantly, it would prevent any escape of the valley dwellers who had survived Haven’s first two winters since the Coming of the Eye, as the locals sometimes called the advent of the Sauron race on Haven.

  But it was not a solid wall, of course. Denbannen’s detailed model included the dozens of gates at the wall’s base which would allow the flow of tribute from the steppes and the valley, tribute that would allow the steppes dwellers to enter the Shangri-La for their birthing women and allow the valley dwellers to trade with the more tractable nomads. It would be some time yet before Haven’s economy would stabilize sufficiently to require all those gates, but already the human norms from within and without the Shangri-La had sent representatives to the Saurons asking permission to institute trade. Diettinger had agreed to accommodate them, eventually. And he would, for he was nothing if not a far-thinking man.