“It is this branch of the original which made it to space, under a colonization contract which they promptly disavowed. They organized their own colonial government, based on a military unit found in the original state. Apparently, a mythology had arisen surrounding the Texas Rangers, so they denoted their elected officials ‘rangers,’ and appended the names of historical figures from the brief period of Texas nationality. That’s important, because we have learned to track splits in the original group by their choice of names for their rangers. For instance, there’s a branch that denominates their leaders Rangers McCullough, Davis, King, Austin, and Crockett. Another uses Crockett, Bowie, Houston, Travis, and Lamar. However, they all have in common a council of five rangers, headed by a captain. We’ve included a listing for each of the six known branches.
“Because this group formed by splintering, and considers individual liberty of utmost importance—individual liberty of males, that is—they are constantly breaking up and reforming alliances among themselves.”
“Do they exchange prisoners?” asked another admiral.
“Almost never. We’ve retrieved a few men from them, by hefty threats. But never women. There’s a double problem with their attitude towards women. They believe that allowing women in space, for instance, is a form of neglect—that men are bound by faith to protect women. So if they capture women, they consider that they are actually saving them from a worse fate.”
“But they mutilated and killed those women—”
“That’s the other problem. Their religious beliefs are, as with most such groups, extremely rigid on anything having to do with sex or reproduction. They believe women were created by God to serve men and bear children . . . and that they must be guided, if children, or forced, if adults, into the role divinely intended for them. They also believe that only male-female sexual activity is permissable; anything else is what they call abomination. So also is contraception and genetic engineering. So if they capture women who have contraceptive implants, evidence of genetic engineering, or who are, by virtue of their rank or behavior, ‘usurping the authority of men,’ they usually kill them.”
“Brun’s a Registered Embryo,” Lord Thornbuckle said. “She’s got the mark—what would they think of that?”
“Abomination, certainly. Interfering with God’s plan for humans . . . and I assume like most unmarried young women, she also had a contraceptive implant?”
“Of course,” Lord Thornbuckle said. “And beyond that, REs require a positive fertility induction. Brun wanted the implant mostly so she’d be like her friends, some of whom weren’t Registered Embryos.”
“It’s surprising they didn’t kill her,” the Guernesi went on. “They must have considered her political importance worth taking the chance that God would punish them for allowing her to live. That’s undoubtedly why they did such a thorough job with muting her, and proceeded immediately to induce fertility. In their own minds, they were reclaiming her for God’s purposes, and sending a message to you and the rest of the Familias—”
“Then they’re free-birthers—”
“Rabidly so; each adult male is entitled to as many wives as he can support, and free access to what they call ‘whores of Satan.’ All live-born children, however, are considered equally legitimate property of the acknowledged father—and if no father boasts of it, there are always people ready to adopt. If any of their own women rebel—and it does happen—they are muted and handed over to these breeding houses.”
“How do you know so much?” Thornbuckle asked.
“Well, we share a border with two of the five systems they control, and they’ve come after our people repeatedly. Their beliefs name us as one of the abominations. If anyone is interested, we can provide copies of what they consider to be divinely inspired prophecy and law. They also trade with us, in very limited ways—in spite of our being, in their view, perverts and abominations, they have need of our skills sometimes. In order to protect our people, we’ve had to find out more about them. In fact, I’m afraid we may be indirectly responsible for this incursion into Familias space.”
“What!”
“They had attacked one of our passenger ships, the third time in only a few months. It got away, but we felt they were becoming too bold. So, we smacked them, hard—went in and blew some of their fixed defense platforms, and told ’em God was punishing ’em for their errors. They know most of our people are what they call ‘spiritual’—though of course, not the same faith. Anyway, my guess is that they reacted to this by looking for some way to regain their prestige. Stayed away from us—and the Emerald States, on their other side, had whacked ’em before they bounced off us—so they went after you. I should warn you—they probably have agents somewhere in your commercial networks, because every time we’ve caught them trying to hijack a big cargo ship, it’s had illegal arms shipments on it.”
“There was nothing like that on the Elias Madero manifest . . .”
“No. There wouldn’t be. The way they operated in our space was they’d get something on a shipping agent, get the access to a hold—sometimes only one, sometimes several—then they’d have it stuffed with anything they could buy on the gray market.” He tipped his head. “Lot of it came from the Familias, you know. You folks have a thriving arms industry.”
“We’re not alone in that,” Lord Thornbuckle muttered.
“No. But of the stuff we’ve confiscated when we’ve caught them, around seventy-three percent comes from Familias sources, eleven percent from ours, and the rest from the Emerald Worlds.” He paused; no one said anything. “I’d recommend a very thorough look at the Boros Consortium shipping agents, especially the one upstream of where the attack occurred. They don’t usually wait long to grab after they’ve coerced someone into loading. Patience is not their strong point. You might also want to check your official military inventories; in both the Emerald Worlds and the Guerni Republic, they’ve attempted to gain converts within the military. Their emphasis on male supremacy and personal honor does find welcome in some cultures, and you’re a multicultural entity.”
A chill fell on the room; Barin recognized both fear and denial in the silence. As if they did not already have concerns about loyalty, after Lepescu and Garrivay. But before any of the military spoke, Thornbuckle did.
“So now you’ve narrowed it to—what—five planets? Six? But she could be anywhere.”
“In theory, yes. But here’s what else we’ve got . . .” A still shot of enhanced vid went up. “Thanks to Shrike’s extensive scavenging of the hijacking site, and the quick thinking of someone in the Elias Madero crew, we have video data of the hijackers themselves. “You can see that enhancement gives us the engraving on the leader’s insignia . . . here . . . you can just make out bowie. So we know that this raid was led by a Ranger Bowie, and we know from other sources that only two of the settlements, Our Texas and Texas True, now title one of their rangers ‘Bowie.’ Knowing that, we’ll need to get visual confirmation of which Bowie we’re dealing with—and that may take some time.”