Anyhow the importance of the mission here kept her motivated.

In the year 2037, the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan was a center of tension, as it had been for centuries. For one thing the place was a focus of the continuing worldwide standoff between Christianity and Islam. To the relief of everybody but the hotheads and agitators on both sides, the final “war of civilizations” had never quite come to pass. But still, in a place like this, where troops from mostly Christian nations policed a mostly Muslim area, there was always somebody ready to call a crusade, or a jihad.

There were lethal local tensions too. The standoff between India and Pakistan had not been eased by the war of 2020 that had resulted in the nuclear destruction of the city of Lahore, even though the parties involved, and their international backers, had pulled back from the brink of more widespread devastation. And added to that complicated mix, of course, were the passions, aspirations and plight of the local people: the proud Pashtuns who, although they had been drawn into the civilized discourse of the world, still clung to their traditions, and would still defend their homeland to the last drop of blood.

In addition to such ancient disputes, now there was oil, which kept the rest of the world drawn into this combustible place. Although the long-term possibilities offered by cold fusion, the most promising of the new technologies, were startling, its industrial-scale practicality was still unproven—and the world’s store of rich hydrocarbons continued to be burned as fast as they could be dug out of the ground. So, where once the British Empire and Tsarist Russia had faced each other here over the wealth of India, now the United States, China, the African Alliance, and the Eurasian Union, all crucially dependent on the oil reserves of Central Asia, were locked in a tense, mutually dependent standoff.

The UN’s mission here was to keep the peace by surveillance and policing. The area was said to be the most heavily scrutinized of any territory on Earth. The peacekeeping mission was an imperfect, heavy-handed regime that, Bisesa sometimes thought, created as much tension and resentment as it resolved. But it worked after a fashion, and had done so for decades. Perhaps it was the best mere human beings, and the complicated, flawed but enduring political lash-up of the UN, could do.

Everybody at Clavius knew the importance of the job. But there were few things more boring for a young soldier than peacekeeping.

Suddenly the ride got a lot more bumpy. Bisesa felt her pulse rate rise; maybe this mission wasn’t quite so routine after all.

As the chopper continued to circle, despite the turbulence, Casey and Abdikadir were both working, both talking at once. Abdikadir was trying to raise the base. “Alpha Four Three, this is Primo Five One, over. Alpha Four Three …” Casey was swearing, something to do with losing the positioning satellite contact, and Bisesa surmised he was flying the chopper by hand through the unexpected turbulence.

“Ouch,” said her phone plaintively.

She raised it to her face. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I lost signal.” Its screen showed various diagnostics. “It never happened to me before,” it said. “It feels—odd.”

Abdikadir glanced back at her. “Our comms is on the fritz too. We have lost the command net.”

Belatedly Bisesa checked her own gear. She had lost contact with her own command center, both uplink and downlink. “Looks like we lost the intel net too.”

“So,” Abdikadir said. “Military and civilian networks, both out.”

“What do you think—electric storm?”

Casey growled, “Not according to what those assholes in meteorology predicted. Anyhow, I’ve flown in storms, and none of them had an effect like this.”

“Then what could it be?”

For a couple of seconds they were all silent. This was, after all, an area where a nuclear weapon had been used in anger only a couple of hundred kilometers away, and the center of a city had been turned to a plain of melted glass. Communications knocked out, winds out of nowhere; it was hard not to assume the worst.

“At the very least,” Abdikadir said, “we have to assume this is jamming.”

“ Ow ,” said the phone insistently.

She cradled the phone, concerned. She had had it since she was a child: it was a standard UN issue, supplied free to every twelve-year-old on the planet, in that creaky old organization’s most significant effort to date to unite the world with communications. Most people dumped these uncool government-issue gadgets, but Bisesa had understood the motive behind the gift, and had always kept hers. She couldn’t help but think of it as a friend. “Take it easy,” Bisesa told it now. “My mother told me that when she was young phones lost their signal all the time.”

“It’s okay for you to talk,” the phone said. “I’ve been lobotomized.”

Abdikadir grimaced. “How do you put up with that? I always turn off the sentience circuits. So irritating.”

Bisesa shrugged. “I know. But that way you lose half the diagnostic functionality.”

“And you lose a friend for life,” the phone pointed out.

Abdikadir snorted. “Just don’t start feeling sorry for it. Phones are like Catholic mothers—connoisseurs of guilt.”

The chopper was buffeted again. The Bird tipped and flew level, over bare ground; they sailed away from the village. “I’m out of low cap,” Casey called. “Too damn difficult to hold.”

Abdikadir enjoyed a grin of triumph. “Nice to know we’re exploring the outer limits of your competence, Case.”

“Shove it up your ass,” Casey growled. “This wind’s coming from every which way. And look at the fluctuations in our groundspeed—hey. What’s that? ” He pointed out of the bubble window at the ground.

Bisesa leaned forward and peered. Loose vegetation was being scattered by the rotors’ downdraft, revealing something on the ground. She made out a human figure in a hole, holding something—a long black tube— a weapon.

They all shouted at once.

And the sun shifted, like a dipping searchlight, distracting her.

The chopper had stopped its orbiting and was heading directly toward him, its bubble face dipped slightly, its tail raised. Moallim grinned and tightened his grasp on the RPG. But his heart was thumping, he found, his fingers slippery with sweat, and the dust was getting into his eyes, making him blink. This would be the first important act of his life. If he brought down the chopper he would be an immediate hero, and everybody would applaud him, the fighting men, his mother. And there was a certain girl … He must not think of that now, for he still had to do the deed .

But now he could see people, inside the ugly bubble cockpit of the helicopter. The reality of it suddenly shocked him. Was he really about to snuff out human lives, like squashing bugs?

The chopper surged over his position, and its downdraft, a mighty punch of air, scattered his flimsy cover. All choices had vanished, save one; he must not hesitate, lest he be killed before he carried out his duty.

Laughing, he launched the grenade.

Abdikadir shouted, “RPG! RPG!” Casey hauled on the stick. Bisesa saw a flash, and a smoke trail stitching through the air toward them.

There was a jolting impact, as if the chopper had run over an invisible speed bump in the sky. Suddenly the cabin noise rose to a roar, and from some split in the hull the wind poured in.

“Shit,” Casey shouted. “That took a piece out of the tail rotor.”

When Bisesa looked back that way she could see a tangle of metal, and a fine mist where oil was being lost through a ruptured pipe. The rotor itself was still working, and the chopper flew on. But everything had changed in that instant; battered by the wind and the noise she felt exposed, horribly vulnerable.