"What do you want?" Abdulahi asked, hopelessly.
"That's simple. You must cease all piratical activity against shipping under our protection and return all hostages held. Your son will not be executed, though he will be held for some years, if you comply. Otherwise, he will hang, along with a number of his men, the very next time there is an attack at sea. More will hang with each further attack. When we run out, we'll grab more. After all, you're all guilty; we can take anyone we want. We also want your means of communication with the UEPF. We will know if you retain the means, I assure you."
And what good did the supposed "intelligence" I got from space do for me? Nothing. I can give that up. But end our attacks at sea . . . ?
"I cannot control my followers," Abdulahi answered. "If I once could have, that ability was lost to me when you destroyed my column. There will be more attacks," he mourned, "and then you will hang my most beloved son." His chin sank on his chest. Barely, the heartbroken old man restrained his tears.
"I think," Puente-Pequeño countered, "that after the example we just set in your town of Gedo you will have less problem controlling your people than you suspect. Besides, we didn't say you must stop all piracy, only that you must never again touch a ship under our protection. Some shipping we want you to attack."
"Eh?" The pirate's chin lifted and his eyes lost a part of their mournful look.
Smiling the naval officer said, "There are certain shippers who have paid you not to attack their shipping, is this not so?"
Warily the pirate chief nodded.
"Good. Who are they?"
Abdulahi rattled off the names. Mentally, the naval officer checked off all those known to have been buying off the pirates, plus some others who had been unknown. There was only one missing.
"You forgot Red Star Line," the officer said.
"Oh, yes. Sorry. It's just that they've been paying us so long . . . "
"No matter. We want you to attack them, all those who paid you off, until such time as we say 'halt.' As you attack them, we shall make them pay a great deal for protection, all they should have paid us this last year plus interest and penalties. By the time they have broken, you should have enough of a ground force built up that you can maintain control in the future. Moreover, we will send some first rate infantry to protect you and your family, and to help you keep control, while you rebuild."
Abdulahi looked wonderingly. He had thought himself powerful and ruthless. He had followed Mustafa because he thought he had found one even more powerful and ruthless than he was. But these mercenaries? They were beyond anything he or even Mustafa had contemplated. And their power, though small in the big scheme of things, was magnified by their callousness, lack of pity, mercilessness, cruelty and heartlessness to terrifying heights.
Perhaps the deal is not such a bad one.
25/1/468 AC, Commodore's Quarters, BdL Dos Lindas
One of Kurita's ancestors, back on Old Earth in the early twenty-first century, had had an interesting theory. Possessed of an ancient sword, a family heirloom dating back to before the Sengoku Jidai, the Period of the Country at War, that ancestor had observed that the sword was old and "tired," as the Japanese said. It had seen too much use, had been polished too many times. It was thin and most of the high carbon layer had gone from it.
"All weapons are living beings," had said this ancestor, "This is merest revealed truth. They have souls. Is my family's sword less alive because it has lost weight? I think not. I think that all it ever was is still contained within that weary core of metal. And yet, does it not look sad?"
The ancestor had mused upon this, neither resting nor eating nor drinking, for three days. At last, with his mind free of normal mortal limits, he had had an insight. "We live as well. And we do not become different, or lose our souls, by changing our kimonos. Perhaps this sword merely wants a change of clothing."
Kurita's ancestor had spent two years searching out the right swordsmith for the work he had in mind. In Japan's revival of its ancient art, many swordsmiths had appeared. Few were of sufficient artistry for his family sword, however. Of those few, none initially would undertake the job. Screams of "Heresy! Blasphemy!" arose wherever he'd tried.
At last he had found one, a smith willing to try new things or—in this case—old things in a new way.
For two more years this smith studied the Kurita family heirloom. Looking at the temper line, the little dots of pearlite and martinsite, he saw back to the technique used by the earlier smith, saw the painting on of the clay wash, saw the precise glow of the charcoal in the brazier.
The smith took a gunto sword, a relic of Old Earth's Second World War, and experimentally attempted what Kurita's ancestor had wanted with it. He was disappointed to find that this really told him nothing, that the solid make up of the new sword did not replicate the problems of recladding a properly layered sword. Moreover, he found he had wasted much of the rare and expensive tama-hagane, the traditional steel produced from iron rich sands in the last remaining tatara smelter in Japan, in Shimane Prefecture.
Next the smith had experimented on a worn out tanto, or dagger, though not one as old as the Kurita sword. This tanto, unlike the Gunto sword, had been made in the traditional manner. The result worked, for certain values of work. Still the smith was not satisfied.
Armed with the insights gained from working on the tanto, the smith then obtained a sword forged in the seventeenth century and falsely labeled as the work of the great smith, Kunihiro. The forgery had been well made—how else could it even hope to pass itself off as the great master's work?—and much was learned from resheathing this.
At length, the smith felt ready. He took several pounds of tama-hagane and from it forged a four thousand layer, high carbon skin, or kawegane. Using the old Kurita sword for the base, he forged around it this new skin, welding the two together with heat and the strokes of his hammer. Did he hear the sword scream under the pounding. No matter; I scream in the dentist's chair, too. Then he tempered it in such a way as to recreate a temper line, or hamon, essentially indistinguishable from the original.
Last of all, the smith added every distinguishing mark found on the sword prior to recladding it. A warrior is, after all, entitled to the honor of his scars.
* * *
Fosa and Kurita sat opposite each other, cross-legged on a rice straw mat on the floor of the Commodore's quarters. The sword lay between them on a silk scarf. Though it glowed from the daylight streaming in through the portholes, to Fosa is seemed to glow with an inner light as well.