War World: Jihad! by John F. Carr

Author:John F. Carr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pequod Press

FIVE

ONE of the universalities of human nature is the tendency, when confronted with some strange and revolting meat, to say, “It tastes like chicken.” In the case of camel this is a libel even unto those unfortunate fowl who hatched into the Plastic Age and reached their hormone-spurred insipidity in four weeks. Bactrian Camel tastes—very remotely—like mutton. Not lamb. Mostly though, camel tastes like an animal evolved to extract the ultimate in efficient use of whatever water is available. Who stands downwind of a urinating camel does so at considerable personal risk. Whoever eats one is experiencing hunger in the extreme.

Colonel Trelawney’s mount was renewed each day and was partial expiation for his trips into town. Evenings he walked downhill and made do with whatever his wife had been able to scrounge up. The remainder of the Fort Camerone garrison ate camel. The only thing worse was muskylope which tasted so bad it had to be eaten to be truly appreciated.

Officers and men suffered in the democracy of deprivation at the same trestle table. They were just settling in to scarf down the gag-worthy camel and lentil stew when the first incoming round came.

Captain Yeovil had never before experienced combat, apart from a few patrols before it became too dangerous to venture out into the desert, but he knew the thump-crump of a mortar. This sounded more like a recoilless rifle!

The Cornish garrison, like their Cousins Jack who mined throughout the CoDominium worlds, were hard men inured to danger and no strangers to explosives. Without waiting for orders, each snatched up his bowl of stew and trotted quietly off to battle stations. The recoilless rifle settled down to pouring a round every thirty seconds into the east-facing wall of the fort, which faced the desert, looking toward Crater Lake and away from Eureka. The shells were hitting low, where the wall joined the rocky mesa.

Colonel Trelawney had stepped out on his nightly hike downhill into Eureka some fifteen minutes before the first shell hit. Captain Yeovil hoped the old man made it. He had no high opinion of the colonel’s intelligence or ability but Trelawney was a likeable old fart and Yeovil would not have wished being out there alone in the dark on his worst enemy.

All battle stations were manned. Only the darkest of Haven’s moons was high enough to illuminate anything. Yeovil risked his night glasses and his head to peer down through the crenellations at the outside base of the wall. The captain had read his history and could see exactly what was happening. In 1453 the Turks, with cherry wood-barreled cannon, had stitched away at the walls of Constantinople and within a week walled towns were obsolete on Earth. Now the Mahdi’s gunner—there seemed to be only one gun out there—was doing likewise to Fort Camerone.

What in hell, Captain Yeovil wondered, was wrong with the radar that it couldn’t pick out a piece of metal as big as a recoilless rifle? Then he remembered that damned solid metal core of the ice ball that had come skidding and thumping in.

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