"Brigadier, I have an Ultimate priority message coming in from New Delhi. The wrapper says it's from General Mahdi and it's 'eyes only' for all operational commanders. If you want me to decrypt it without looking at it myself, it will take a minute."

"Go ahead and do it right, Rani. I may show it to you after I've read it myself, but we need to be able to say we followed our orders."

Now what? In the month since the aliens had landed south of us, we had gotten an amazing stack of Ultimate messages. Very few made any sense at all, and the few that did were very disturbing. Sooner or later, the General Staff was going to have to make up its mind.

I leaned back and thought of my wife, safe in America visiting Sanjeep at University. Well, I hoped she was safe at Stanford with our son. The aliens had landed in America, too.

I had to read it three times before it sank in. All operational commands were ordered to immediately mobilize and advance on the aliens. Commanders of units actually on our various borders were requested to liaise with our opposite numbers if possible, to let them know what we were doing.

Eventually I looked back up at my communications and code clerk. "Rani, please get me General Ali over in Cockraper, or whoever has the watch if he is away."

The village of Khockropar was no more miserable than any other north Indian village before the Partition, and a good deal more prosperous than most since it was on the old British railroad between Hyderabad and Jodhpur. After the Partition, of course, it and our own Munabao were nothing more than convenient collections of buildings that our troops had taken over.

Between Hindu expansionists and Moslem fanatics, India and Pakistan stayed in a state of low-level war and the civilians from both villages were long gone. And, since neither village really existed any more, there was no valid reason to honor the inhabitants by remembering their names. We called the Pakistanis the 'Cockrapers' and what they called us in Munabao doesn't bear repeating.

Using either village for a major headquarters was idiocy, of course. Cockraper was well within range of the artillery we had positioned safely behind a rise several kilometers back. If those guns were ever ordered to fire, Cockraper would be a sterile field of rubble within minutes. Munabao was even worse, it was less than two kilometers from the border and even small-arms fire could reach it. However, the railroad made this section of the border critical and on both sides the political leadership had stepped in to ensure that if we ever started shooting in earnest both sides would lose horribly.

Me, I had come to think of my opposite number as my brother. I would lose much karma if I ever had to order his death. It would take dozens of lives of penance before I was allowed to be a human again. It would be better if he got the orders to kill me first. That way my karma would be safe, he would lose his religion's idiot one chance at paradise, and he would be killed anyway in the war that followed.

Even our names reflected the differences between our cultures. Me, I proudly bore the name of an officer who had come from Europe to help the British Raj subdue the natives. He had married and raised a family, and when he retired he had gone native. We may be glad the Raj was gone, but we were proud of all the Raj had built, and what we had built on top of it.

Ali, well, Ali was Mohammed's brother or son or second cousin three times removed, and that made it a proper Moslem name, one with power. His family had probably adopted it a hundred years ago, when they first became wealthy enough to actually own their own goat.

I was still staring at the message when Rani told me "General Ali on line 3, sir. It's a satellite connection." It was silly needing a satellite connection to talk to someone nine kilometers away, but the land-lines between India and Pakistan were not reliable.

When the latest alien invasion fleet brushed aside our remaining defending fleet, as part of their mop-up they had completely destroyed Earth's ring of satellites. Weather cameras, communications repeaters, weapons platforms, all gone. On the other hand, when the surviving Confederacy ships had recovered from the attack, they had eliminated all remaining alien ships and promptly replaced all our satellites with new ones that worked better than the originals. A satellite linkup would be far clearer than a land-line.

I picked up the phone and heard Rani's voice saying "General Rasmussen is on the line now. Thank you for holding."

"My brother, this is General Ali. How can I help you today?" He sounded in a good mood. At least he was willing to speak English. There had been times where he had insisted upon speaking Urdu. I had to wait for a translation, then I would speak in Hindi and he would have to wait for a translation. Those calls never accomplished anything, since when we were like that neither would admit knowing the other's native tongue.

"My brother, I have orders to confer with you. I bring what may sound like good news to you, but you will quickly realize it is not. Can I come for a quick visit?"

"Of course. I will have an escort ready for you. Um, one of my superiors may be available also. Should I invite him?"

"If he is trustworthy, of course. I will be there as quickly as I can."

After I hung up I looked at Rani. "Get me a driver. We're going to Pakistan for a few minutes. Meanwhile...." I looked at Col Singh, my chief of staff. "We will be pulling out and joining the fight to save India. Get everyone moving. Staff meeting when I return."

I was shown to a well-appointed conference room and served coffee. I'd been there before, and got comfortable. After a few minutes General Ali walked in, followed by the Caliphate's most senior soldier, the Emir Mohammed Mubarak. Mubarak had jumped to the head of the class several years before when he had somehow talked the US into selling the Caliphate their most advanced missile and laser air defense system.

"Emir!" I jumped up and saluted him.

He waved at me. "Sit down, General Rasmussen. I am delighted to meet you at last. This sector is one of the quietest ones we have, and that's because you and General Ali keep your men in hand. Thank you for that. Now, what can we do for you?"

I pulled the message out. "Can either of you read Marathi?"

Both of them shook their heads, a distinctly Anglo gesture. They started rattling off languages. Ali's native Urdu of course, the Emir's native Arabic, Pushtu, Farsi, Hindi, English naturally, Russian some, a smattering of German. Not Marathi. Ali said "I can get one of our intelligence people in here if it's needed. Some of them can read Marathi."

I smiled and said "Well, it's good to know that SOME of our messages are secure. It says..." and I translated it for them, following up with "It appears that the security of our border with Pakistan is no longer important. We will be leaving as quickly as possible. Our leading elements will leave today and our last vehicle should be clear of Munabao sometime tomorrow. I will arrange to have a flare sent up when everyone is over the first rise and out of sight. I would suggest that you not send anyone across the border until then. You are, of course, free to do whatever you want but I pray that we will be back here in a month pushing you dirty Pakis back across the border where you belong."

The Emir sat down. Ali and I did, too, of course. "General Rasmussen, we have heard far more of the news than is good for us. I will pray for you. It would be a wonderful thing for the land of peace to have you filthy pagans staring at us again, across the border. Tell me, have you seen the aliens yourself?"

"No, sir."

"I have. Please, allow me to tell the story. It won't take long. Last year, I had the opportunity to visit a Syrian infantry company defending Khartoum. It took a while to set it up, as I had my whole entourage of security troops and the usual useless baggage, but they prepared an exhibition for us."

"We were led to a shallow ditch with an embankment, where a single platoon was calmly awaiting a coming Sa'arm patrol. I was given to understand that these were veterans of several ambushes. Besides my people, I counted 13 riflemen. The platoon had an officer and a radioman, but no other long weapons."

"Having heard of this sort of ambush before, I examined one of the rifles. They were all armed with the American 'Barrett' rifle. They were using one of the magazine-fed bolt-action sniper versions with absurdly long barrels and scopes to match. Not as rapid firing as the semi-automatic versions, but far more reliable and accurate at long range."

"Their officer insisted that we all disarm ourselves by removing magazines and ejecting chambered rounds. They were happy with us carrying our weapons as they might be needed, but they wanted to ensure that it was not possible for us to spoil the ambush. After the first shots, we were free to reload and indeed requested to do so just in case they turned out to be needed."

"We were there for some time, as the Syrians could not predict how often the aliens would stop to investigate whatever they passed. When they arrived, though, I got an excellent view of the battle thanks to one of the Confederacy's toys. A rock at the top of the embankment had a sensor stuck to it, and several of us had binoculars that could show the feed from the sensor. Believe me, it is far safer to observe the enemy from the bottom of a ditch!"

"While we were waiting the lieutenant showed us their ammo. As I'm sure you know, the Barrett is a rifle that uses the same ammunition as the American M2 .50-caliber machine gun. I'm told that that weapon was developed in the decade before World War Two for use in aircraft. To make it useful in aerial combat it has an astounding range."

I knew that. We still used the M2 ourselves. The weapon was more than a century old, and just like the .45 pistol its inventor had developed for the American Army, it was still regarded as the last word in its subject. It had an accurate range of two kilometers, and a usable area-effect suppression range of more than six kilometers.

"They were using two different cartridges. For long range fire, greater than 1000 meters, they use the original armor-piercing tracer round. For shorter ranges, though, they showed me what they had loaded that day. It had a segmented jacketed hollow-point bullet. It's not quite an explosive round, but the effect is much the same."

"One of the Syrians reported 'enemy patrol in sight', and soon afterwards 'patrol verified to be nine djinn on foot with no close support'. Their lieutenant explained that this makeup was the reason that his men had been selected for our show. If the alien tank had caught up with the foot patrol, he had orders to get me out of there immediately. However, since their support vehicle was out of position to help them he was allowed to continue the show."

"After cautioning us all yet again to do nothing to attract attention until after they had started firing, he started giving orders to his men. 'There are nine aliens. We are, unfortunately, down to only thirteen soldiers of God with weapons that can kill them. The two rifles at each end of the line will hold their fire until after the volley and they will take down any survivors. The nine rifles in the center will select their targets and, upon my command, volley fire to kill them all at once and immediately drop prone to avoid return fire."

"They waited until the aliens were within 800 meters before they fired. Nine of those rifles firing at once is not a sound. It is a physical blow. Even with ear plugs, it hurt. In my binoculars I saw that the aliens all immediately returned fire, then seven of them fell."

"One of the two remaining aliens just stood there like it didn't know what to do but I have been assured that they knew all of their options perfectly well. It was simply waiting for its weapon to recharge. The other alien dropped his weapon and started to walk over to a fallen alien, but both aliens were killed by the remaining Syrians in their first shots. After that, the lieutenant ordered the position evacuated and we were all running back to our transport just like that."

"Once we were on our bus and moving, the lieutenant hooked up his binoculars to one of the briefing screens, and then took my binoculars, did something, and hooked them up to a second screen, saying 'This is why we evacuated'."

"One of the screens showed the view in front of our position, probably from that same sensor as before. The other screen showed our own position from the side. The lieutenant said 'We set up another sensor off to the side once we learned you were joining us.'"

"Within a few minutes, the view down the valley showed a vehicle come over a rise. It had a large gun of some sort in front. As soon as the bore cleared the rise, it started firing at the position we had evacuated. That sensor stopped sending immediately. The other sensor, the one off to the side, showed the entire embankment that we had been hiding behind being blown away by a series of explosions."

"The lieutenant continued 'That's all there is to our exhibition. We killed nine aliens, we had two of God's warriors injured, and we surrendered another two kilometers of the Nile valley. We have learned to run after every contact. Their weapons are too fearsome, they don't miss, and our own weapons don't always kill them. What's worse, they key on our gunfire. If you shoot at them they shoot back immediately, even before our weapons hit if the range is too great. These Barretts are the best we have found at killing the aliens, especially with the split hollow point bullets. However, the bullets take time to reach their target. At any range beyond 500 meters or so, they start to return fire before our first shots have even hit. And they are telepathic. What one of them knows they all know. Even if we kill all of them at once, the next aliens to show up already know exactly where we are unless we move. We cannot build any barrier that resists their weapons, so we cannot hold any position. If there had been an anti-tank team available, we could have also killed that tank but we don't know if we could have extracted the team afterwards. The only way we can kill any of them at all and live to tell about it is to fire from ambush as you saw, kill all of them immediately, and run before more come up.'"

"He then stopped acting like he was teaching school, walked over to me, and knelt. 'Emir', he said, 'I am sorry. If we are ordered to buy some time for an evacuation, we can do that. We will make a stand and stay until we die. If we are given orders to hold a position, though, I cannot accept those orders. We CANNOT hold any position. If I am to be punished, please spare my men. They are the best soldiers in all of God's army.'"

"I had no idea what this was about, but when I looked around, his sergeant said 'Emir, he is trying to cover for me. Last week, an Egyptian officer came from headquarters demanding that we stop retreating and stop the aliens' advance. I was tired, I was in a bad mood, I didn't want to hear it. I shot him while he was yelling at us. You are the first we have told of this.'"

"I was thinking that this was truly a great leader of men, to accept the blame for this, when one of the soldiers stood up and said 'He's lying! I'm the one who shot that bastard!' General Rasmussen, before they were done I had a lieutenant, a sergeant, and seven privates all insisting that they had been the one to murder the Egyptian officer. What was I to do? One of my aides asked how many Egyptian officers there had been. The lieutenant smiled at that, and admitted that there had only been one. But, there would be two if another idiot came with orders to stand and hold his ground."

"My friend, soldiers like that cannot be defeated. They can only be killed. And, if they are given freedom to fight the way they know how, they are very hard to kill. In the name of the Caliph I declared them to have been abandoned by their commanders, and claimed them for the Caliph's personal guard. That made me their commanding officer, and I told them all that I would not listen to rumors of things that had happened in the past. Soldiers brag after battle. An experienced soldier will discount most of what he hears. I promoted the lieutenant to Bashar, and authorized him to take in any other soldiers that he found similarly abandoned as long as he found them fit to fight beside his men."

Ali interjected "The only real difference between Bashar and Major is that a Bashar is an independent commander, expected to act without guidance from any superiors. And, I guess, that he is prohibited from having more than a thousand men under his command. If that man somehow managed to get a thousand men following him he needed another promotion anyway."

The Emir leaned back in his chair. "I cut my tour of the Nile defenses short and flew to America, to talk to the Barrett people. In the defense of the Ummah, any amount of funding will be made available. When I was shown in to talk to their military suppliers, I started with a completely outrageous demand, one that I knew could not be met. I asked for 100,000 of their sniper rifles as quickly as possible, and told them that cost was no object. They told me that they had six plants around the world and they could not keep up with demand. They shrugged and said it was fairly popular. The only counter-offer they could give me was a reduced sample order and a promise for the rest when they could do it."

"I then told them that what I really wanted was a few weapons for demonstration and the complete data set to build our own under license. We were willing to pay for one million rifles, and we were willing to build them ourselves if we had to. They eventually accepted that offer, and our first Caliphate Barrett was test fired several months ago. Different parts are made in several factories and we are up to assembling more than twenty per day without anyone else's help at all."

"When the aliens landed again last month, a contact I have in the Confederacy got us several replicators large enough to make the entire weapon at once. Rather than do that, we are having them make just the barrel and chamber assembly while our own factories make the rest of the parts which don't have such exacting quality standards. That method is giving us just less than three hundred complete weapons per day, although we are still doing it the old way as well. What if the replicators stop working?"

"My friend, you are going to do Allah's work. Your men's rifles are good enough to kill Allah's warriors if that is His will, but they are not good enough to kill the aliens. I want you to take a thousand of our Barretts with you, and I will pray that they are enough for you to return here and thank me for them. They are being loaded on trucks as we speak. We will also provide ammo but I expect that you have plenty from your machine guns."

"You would do that?" I blinked in disbelief. "It is one thing to share intelligence with each other, but you would actually give us weapons which we could turn against you?"

Ali nodded. "My brother, your new mission is Allah's work. I will pray that these rifles are enough to protect you."

The Emir smiled ruefully. "And when you return safely, only then will we worry about the nature of your thanks."

I stood up and shook my head. "Even with that gift, I won't be coming back. The reports are too bad. But, the rifles are very welcome and will be used to effect. There will be fewer aliens when they get to you."

Ali stood as well, walked around the table, and hugged me. "I will be here, my brother, waiting for them. And soon after that I will see you in Paradise. Surely Allah can see that even a filthy pagan deserves Allah's reward when he dies defending the Ummah."

There wasn't anything else to say. Perhaps, in our next life, we would share our mother. I would do my best to earn that in my karma. And I had no doubt that my brother would as well.

** END **