John Ringo: Choosers of the Slain

“I’ve even got most of the houses wired with some fumble-fingered help from the Keldara,” Meller said, proudly. “The big difference was getting the additional equipment.”

“What about the channel to bring the other stream over?” Mike said. It was clear the streams hadn’t been joined up, yet.

“I used the spare Keldara to put a temporary dam in up there,” Meller said. “Then I blasted the channel. It created an embayment so the hydrostatic force wouldn’t be so bad. We’ll partially fill this with the current stream, then open that up, slowly, to add that stream in. That dam will probably wash away in the spring, but by then you won’t need it. You want to do the honors?” the engineer concluded, waving at the wheel that controlled the weir. The controls were propped out over the water on a pier and had an automatic lifting device for when the water rose too high.

“No,” Mike said, shaking his head. “You built it. You close it.”

“Okay,” Meller said happily. He stepped out onto the pier and calmly spun the wheel, dropping the metal plate into its slot and stopping the water from the stream, which immediately started to back up. “We’ll open up the other one in a few days when this gets about six feet deep.”

“How long to fill it?” Mike asked.

“About two weeks,” Meller said. “At which point you and the Keldara will have your power. And we can start running water lines to the houses as soon as we get material.”

“Start on that next,” Mike said, nodding. “We’ll have to figure out something for treatment; this stuff isn’t drinkable as is.”

“Chlorine’s cheap,” Meller said, shrugging. “I’ll look into it.”

“It’s nice to mostly have the house back,” Mike said, walking into the dining room. Nielson was drinking tea and looking over some papers while Adams was finishing off a plate of ham and eggs.

“Fewer fights over the girls,” Adams said.

The Keldara were well into their patrolling phase of training and that required fewer instructors. With “basic” over, most of the trainers had left. A few were still around for patrolling and advanced training and some, like Adams, Nielson and Vanner, looked to be permanent additions. But the house was definitely less full than it had been. Especially with most of the remaining trainers out running the Keldara around the mountains.

“The girls” were local hookers that Mike had hired for the aid and comfort of poor trainers far from the joys of home. The owner of the local brothel had given Mike a good deal on long-term rental eventually giving up the business entirely, and sending his one remaining girl to join the others.

Four of the five girls were completely standard Third World working girls. Three of them were from the local area farms, girls with no better prospect than being working girls for the rest of their lives, while the other two were Russians. One of those, Katya, was somewhat different. Poisonously mean when she could get away with it, the girl had never adjusted to being “owned” in the way that was common in the area.

Mike, who had nicknamed her “Cottontail,” was slowly shifting her out of being a working girl and into pursuits more suited for her high level intelligence and utter sociopathy. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with her long-term — the option of putting her in an unmarked grave was still out there — but he saw lots of potential in the girl if he could just trust her even a bit.

That, however, would not be a smart thing to do.

“Speaking of the girls,” Mike said. “I’m going to move Cottontail fully into intel. I wish we had a good Humint trainer around; I think Katya would probably be a good agent.”

“If you could trust anything she gave you,” Nielson pointed out, looking up from his papers. “Could you?”

“Depends on what was in it for her,” Mike said, shrugging. “She really hates Chechens, probably more than she hates the rest of the world. If we use her to develop Humint in the Chechen region it might work.”

“She’ll need to learn Arabic,” Adams said, wiping his plate with a biscuit.

“Berlitz has a course available,” Mike said. “Of course, that means letting her out of the house. Hell, I’ll give her a handful of cash and tell her she can go if she wants. Win/win proposition.”

“What about ‘your’ girls?” Nielson asked.

In addition to the hookers, Mike had more or less inherited a harem. Sexual slavery was rife in the region and most of it was controlled by the Chechens who used it, along with drugs, as funding for their ongoing war with the Russians. Most of the girls were bought from orphanages or their parent,s since the farmers in the region could get nearly a year’s income for otherwise “useless” women. But the Chechens weren’t above snatching a girl off the street.

One such group had snatched one of the Keldara girls from the local town where she had gone to market. When they took off in their van they passed right by Mike’s caravanserai.

He had taken five shots from a Barrett .50 caliber to stop the van, fortunately missing the girls all in the back. Then he and the reaction team of trainers had taken down the two Chechens in the van.

This left Mike with seven girls ranging in age from twelve to seventeen on his hands. Inquiries had indicated that they were no deposit, no return; the various farms that had sold them had no interest in getting them back. After discussing the situation with his local advisers, Mike had accepted that the best course of action was to take them in as concubines. He’d considered various alternatives, but none of them would really work. He’d drawn the line at breaking in the really young ones, but the rest now were his bed warmers.

However, he’d immediately seen the problem with having a house full of teenaged girls to manage. So he’d gone to Uzbekistan, where harems were traditional, and hired a professional harem manager. Anastasia had turned out to have far more skills than just harem management. Not only was she great in the sack, she spoke multiple languages and was at home in almost any social environment.

Mike had also hired a female tutor for the girls. His long term plan was to get them trained to a level that they could get into college and get a “real” life. But in the meantime, he couldn’t exactly bitch about having five very good looking teenage screw-bunnies at his beck and call.

“None of them are the right mindset to set on something like this,” Mike replied. “But Anastasia is fluent in Arabic. Maybe I’ll have her teach Cottontail.”

“Be careful what she teaches her,” Adams said, without looking up. “You might get a very nasty surprise.”

“Are you talking about Anastasia teaching Katya or the other way around?” Nielson asked, grinning.

“Yes.”

“Genadi,” Mike said, as he pulled up in his Expedition next to the farm manager. “I haven’t spoken to you in weeks. How goes the farm?”

When Mike had bought the Keldara farm, which essentially meant the entire multithousand acre valley, he had been less than satisfied with the overseer that came with it. In short, Otar Tarasova was a blow-hard and a bully that didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. The local police chief had turned up Genadi Mahona, who was not only school trained in agronomy but a member of the Keldara. Otar and Genadi had earlier had a run-in and the former manager had forced him off the farm, to the level of having him thrown out of the Keldara.

Mike was impressed by the young man. Genadi knew the problems of farming in the valley with its very short growing season, but he was also more than willing to bring in modern techniques and equipment to improve conditions. He was also willing to face down the Keldara elders over his changes. The Keldara were open to many new ideas and ways of doing things even while being dead stubborn on others, and many of the elders thought that Genadi was going to starve them all with his new seeds, planting methods, fertilizers and “herbicides.” After all, anything that killed the weeds would certainly kill the crops. This year was going to be a test of how well he knew his stuff. Mike was betting that things would go well.