Chapter 1

The official Confederacy line is that the Steel Veil is off-limits. Operational requirements tend to scuttle dogma like that. I was somewhere in the Middle East on official business. My official mission was to coordinate anti-Sa'am operations with a Colonel calling himself Mubarak. Think about it for a moment: letting the Sa'arm get a foothold anyplace on Planet Earth means that they can dig in and multiply. Eurasia is the largest land mass on Earth and the consensus is that the Sa'arm must not be allowed to land a hive ship. When they do land hive ships, those ships must be destroyed immediately. Should that prove impossible, battling the Sa'arm underground was going to be a losing enterprise—battle experience against Sa'arm on the surface demonstrated that the Sa'arm could be destroyed, at a high cost, if they were unable to burrow underground.

"Salaam malickum," they wore combat fatigues and berets.

"Malickum salaam," I responded.

"We won't have any peace when the Swarm arrive," Achmed said in English. "Your accent is as atrocious as ever, friend Thomas."

"I recall that you used to be a mere sergeant, Colonel Lawrence," Colonel Mubarak k new me from earlier American Army missions to the Middle East. I was actually a lieutenant in the Confederacy Navy—sort of. I hadn't much more than sleep trainer learning—the Confederacy was relying upon my raw talent and previous experience. "I have had much respect for you even if you are not a believer. Anybody who can hit silhouette targets at 100 meters with a 9mm pistol has my respect."

"You did well yourself, Colonel," I replied.

"Fifty meters only," Mubarak said. "I know enough to be humble in front of a master. You never made me feel inferior—except for that time you lined up ten silhouette targets at the 100 meter mark, had us examine them, and then fired ten magazines from ten issue pistols using issue NATO ammunition from the standing position."

"There are many who can do that at 300 meters," I countered. "Besides, I only hit the targets 116 times. I missed 34 shots, and my hits were marginal with a low powered weapon. The Sa'arm might not even feel the 9mm NATO—that bullet frequently fails to stop humans."

"Which is why I had you train my bodyguards and why they were equipped with those forty-caliber SIG pistols," the colonel continued. "The Emir used Mohamed to train his own bodyguards, but Mohamed isn't you. You were able to pass on your skills to others."

The Arab way is to socialize before getting down to business. There is method to that madness. In the absence of binding structure, personal relationship is everything. I had been running Army pistol qualification on Colonel Mubarak's small arms range because my own colonel acknowledged the deplorable pistol marksmanship of his own Military Police and officers. I ran a combat pistol school that brought people up to Army marksmanship standards and then taught them gun fighting. My Arabic was very limited, two semesters of night school, but actions speak louder than words. I was better with rifles and machine guns and grenade launchers. At the moment I wore traditional Arab dress with full combat gear beneath—full human combat gear that wasn't out of place in the Middle East. It seemed that the region had dissolved into perpetual civil war.

"So what can you do for us?" Mubarak asked. He meant 'what can the Confederacy do' and not what Thomas Erwin Lawrence could do. I didn't have much to offer.

"Your air defense network could be improved easily and cheaply," I said. "It's more than radars to see with. You need to talk to each other, then guide your missiles and laser beams on target in a coordinated attack."

"We don't have lasers," Mubarak pointed out, "and the Russian missiles are inferior. Chinese missiles are worse. I don't even want to associate with North Korean missiles."

"You could buy French," I pointed out.

"Since cheap fusion power replaced petroleum power we have had no influence," Mubarak commented. "That wasn't what destroyed our leverage on European governments. Freezing our financial assets disrupted our government. We could no longer purchase Western politicians. How are we going to get lasers? Steal them? And then what? Who will operate these lasers?"

"You have competent teachers," I remarked. "Who's to know where they learned their craft? Just remember that it is fire control more than artillery systems, and you need to have the logistics chain to back you up."

"The Imams will take credit," Achmed said. "They always do, Thomas."

"So?" I said. "You and Colonel Mubarak can handle that. We have to deal with the Sa'arm if there is to be anything left for us humans to fight over. There isn't a viable alternative."

"No," the third man had been quiet until now. "I saw what you Crusaders did when we Arabs didn't cooperate. You simply bombed everything, killed everybody. When the Swarm lands you Americans will simply bomb everything, just like you did to Iraq twice."

"The Americans were using restraint, Soloman," Achmed objected. "I was in Thomas's world history class. Believe me, when they lack restraint, nothing will survive. The only nation to use nuclear weapons on civilian populations was America. The Imperial Japanese government sought peace but got two atomic bombs."

"Imperial Japan and their god-emperor had a credibility issue with the United States," I countered, "one that began with bombing Pearl Harbor while still making peace noises. And during the last year of the Pacific war Japan was trying to broker peace through Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. Stalin had another agenda. The two atomic bombs were unmitigated horrors, but there were sixty other Japanese cities destroyed by B-29 bombing raids, and starvation induced by unrestricted submarine warfare, and then the United States Navy and the Army Air Force began tearing up internal communications with fighter sweeps and mining the inland water ways and bombing railroads. If not for the atomic bombs, plans were to unleash chemical warfare on Japan. The American Navy had been testing captured German V-1 buzz bombs launched from Navy four-engined bombers at what was left of Japanese cities. Don't forget that Hirohito stepped down from godhood at the end of the war."

"Americans are arrogant," Colonel Mubarak said, "and they are stupid little children, but they play the war game well when their political masters stay out of the way. What Colonel Lawrence is offering is little more than an umbrella to keep the Swarm from landing hive ships in our soil. The alternative is to watch the Americans and off-worlders fight in our skies, and when a hive ship puts down, they will destroy that hive ship. That will result in every living thing within a hundred kilometers perishing."

"I remember being hunted by the Americans," Soloman remininced. "I got rid of my cell phone. I learned that my SUV had a computer that they could locate. Killer drones roamed the skies at will."

Chapter 2 »