“Don’t say nobody,” said Esa Mboya in a voice as crisp as the gunfire bursting anew from the Bordj. “Because that’s just what you’re going to see this lot do.”
The dead end of Juma’s street had been blocked and turned into the company maintenance park between the time Esa left to observe the Bordj and his return to his brother’s house. Skimmers, trucks, and a gun-jeep with an intermittent short in its front fan had been pulled into the cul-de-sac. They were walled on three sides by the courtyards of the houses beyond Juma’s.
Sergeant Scratchard halted the jeep with the bulky commo equipment in the open street, but Mboya swung his own skimmer around the supply truck that formed a makeshift fourth wall for the park. A guard saluted. “Muller!” Esa shouted, even before the skirts of his one-man vehicle touched the pavement. “What in the name of heaven d’ye think you’re about! I told you to set up in the main square!”
Bog Muller stood up beside a skimmer raised on edge. He was a bulky technician with twenty years service in the Slammers. A good administrator, but his khakis were clean. Operation Feirefitz had required the company to move fast and long, and there was no way Muller’s three half-trained subordinates could have coped with the consequent rash of equipment failures. “Ah, well, Captain,” Muller temporized, his eyes apparently focused on the row of wall spikes over Esa’s head, “we ran into Juma and he said—”
“He what!” Mboya shouted.
“I said,” said Juma, rising from behind the skimmer himself, “that security in the middle of the village would be more of a problem than anyone needed. We’ve got some hot-heads; I don’t want any of them to get the notion of stealing a gun-jeep, for instance. The two households there—” he pointed to the entrances now blocked by vehicles, using the grease gun in his right hand for the gesture— “have both been evacuated to the Bordj.” The half-smile he gave his brother could have been meant for either what he had just said or for the words he added, raising both the grease gun and the wire brush he held in his left hand: “Besides, what with the mine closed, I’d get rusty myself with no equipment to work on.”
“After all,” said Muller in what was more explanation than defense, “I knew Juma back when.”
Esa took in his brother’s smile, took in as well the admiring glances of the three Tech I’s who had been watching the civilian work. “All right,” he said to Muller, “but the next time clear it with me. And you,” he said, pointing to Juma, “come on inside for now. We need to talk.”
“Yes, little brother,” the civilian said with a bow as submissive as his tone.
In the surprising cool of his house, Juma stripped off the gritty jellaba he had worn while working. He began washing with a waterless cleaner, rubbing it on with smooth strokes of his palms. On a chain around his neck glittered a tiny silver crucifix, normally hidden by his clothing.
“You didn’t do much of a job persuading your friends to your Way of Peace,” Esa said with an anger he had not intended to display.
“No, I’m afraid I didn’t,” the civilian answered mildly. “They were polite enough, even the Kaid, Ali ben Cheriff. But they pointed out that the Arabizers in al-Madinah intended to stamp out all traces of Kabyle culture as soon as possible . . . which of course was true. And we did have our own martyr here in Ain Chelia, as you know. I couldn’t—” Juma looked up at his brother, his dark skin glistening beneath the lather— “argue with their military estimate, after all, either. The Way doesn’t require that its followers lie about reality in order to change it—but I don’t have to tell you that.”
“Go on,” said the captain. His hand touched the catches of his body armor. He did not release them, however, even though the hard-suit was not at the moment protection against any physical threat.
“Well, the National Army was outnumbered ten to one by the troops we could field from the backlands,” Juma continued as he stepped into the shower. “That’s without defections, too. And weapons aren’t much of a problem. Out there, any jack-leg mechanic can turn out a truck piston in his back room. The tolerances aren’t any closer on a machinegun. But what we didn’t expect—” he raised his deep voice only enough to override the hiss of the shower— “was that all six of the other planets of the al-Ittihad al-Arabi—” for Arab Union Juma used the Arabic words, and they rasped in his throat like a file on bars— “would club together and help the sanctimonious butchers in al-Madinah hire the Slammers.”