CHAPTER 9 – ENFORCING NEW RULES
Teenage girl being sold in a slave market.
09:18 (Baghdad Time)
Wednesday, March 15, 862 C.E.
Bagdad slave market, al-Karkh District
Bagdad, Abbasid Califate
Abu’l-Qasim Ubaydallah Ibn Abdallah Ibn Khordadbeh, more commonly known simply as ‘Ibn Khordadbeh’ had decided on a whim to go for a walk and had left the Bayt al-Hikma{14} after having breakfast there. Ibn Khordadbeh, who was already of advanced age and who was a famous scientist and geographer from the city of Basrah, had been writing down during the last few weeks his recollections from his last voyage, when he had travelled by ship to the far-off Chinese city of Guangzhou{15} and spent a few months there before returning to Bagdad. He had seen many things there, some fascinating, many intriguing and new, but what had struck him the most there had actually been the sight of other visitors to the city. Those visitors, including a very beautiful young woman whose image he still had in his mind, had arrived in a fantastic flying ship and had then proceeded to buy up much of the reserves of rice and other foodstuff on sale in Guangzhou. What Ibn Khordadbeh had learned then from those people from the future had struck his mind hard and he was still trying to tell in writing all that he could remember about that encounter and those incredible people. His recollections were in fact becoming more and more relevant and important here, as Bagdad had been overflown many times during the last few weeks and months by the flying ships of the people from the future. More importantly, one of those ships had stopped just over the city some four weeks ago, delivering a clear and direct message in a booming voice: to stop the trading of slaves and the practice of slavery or suffer the consequences. Ibn Khordadbeh, who prided himself of being a philosopher as well as a geographer and a scientist, had greeted that warning with hidden joy, as he abhorred the cruelty and abuse that came with slavery. However, few in Bagdad, or across the Abbasid Caliphate, had been happy about that warning, as the institution of slavery was an integral part of the Muslim society and, frankly, of nearly all of the rest of the World. Much of the manual labor in the Caliphate was done by slaves, who were also used for entertainment and sex, while some had become the personal guard force of Caliph Al-Muntasir, who presently resided in Samarra. There had been many discussions, some very passionate, inside the Bayt al-Hikma, about that warning to get rid of slavery, but in the end nothing concrete had followed, with the Governor of Bagdad, Mohammed Ibn Abdalla Ibn Tahir, the slave owners and slave merchants simply dismissing it in a rather cavalier fashion.
Having absentmindedly crossed the bridge over the Sarat Canal and walking into the Al-Khark District, Ibn Khordadbeh found himself entering one of the large open-air spaces occupied by the markets of Bagdad in the Al-Khark District, to the South of the central Round City in which the Bayt al-Hikmah was situated. That marketplace was in fact partly occupied by the displays, platforms and cages of the slave merchants of Bagdad, a very influential and rich social class in the city. There was quite a lot of activity in that corner of the market, with a new lot of slaves being auctioned at this time. Ibn Khordadbeh was in fact close enough from one of the wooden platforms used to parade the slaves on sale for auction to clearly see a pretty teenage girl being led atop of it by a big, brutish slave handler armed with a whip and a club. That poor girl, obviously of European stock, with white skin and black hair, understandably looked both terrified and dejected, on top of being completely naked. Her attempt at hiding her breasts and groin with her hands earned her a lash of the whip of the slave handler and a barked order, making her quickly remove her hands back to her sides. Ibn Khordadbeh felt pity for the poor girl, who could not be more than fourteen or fifteen. For a moment, he toyed with the idea of buying her, in order to at least ensure that she would not end up being sold to an abusive, uncaring owner. He however dropped that idea quickly enough: while he could help that girl by buying her, he could see a good dozen more girls and young women ready to follow her on the platform once she would be sold off. Could he reasonably save one girl at the expense of all the others?
Ibn Khordadbeh was still debating what to do when a large shadow covered him and the part of the marketplace he was in. Looking straight up, he froze on seeing a big flying steel mass now hovering over the market at very low altitude, completely covering it with its shadow.
‘’The people from the future!’’ he could only say to himself while staring at the flying ship.
09:25 (Bagdad Time)
Troop deck, assault barge ‘IRON FIST’
Above the slave market of the Al-Khark District
‘’GO GO GO!’’
On the command of Major Lars Nierman, Corporal Diane Champagne followed him at a run and jumped out with the 260 other commandos from the Toulouse Security Battalion, using the opened access ramp of their assault barge and closely followed by 300 combat robots. Using the integrated directed gravity propulsion system of her combat armored suit, she then flew down towards a large wooden platform on which she could see a naked girl and two slavers. Seeing that both of the slavers were about to turn around and run off the platform, Diane used the video link between the multispectral aiming camera attached to her disintegrator rifle and her viewing goggles, which she wore directly over her eyes and inside her armored helmet, and quickly targeted both men, firing twice. Both slavers, half disintegrated by the energy bolts which produced loud cracking sounds, fell dead before they could jump off the platform. Diane then landed a mere meter from the terrified naked slave girl who had been about to be sold off and who was now on her knees, rolled into a tight ball. Walking quickly to the rear edge of the platform, where its short staircase was, Diane aimed her disintegrator rifle at one of the four slavers now trying to lead away the fourteen teenage girls and young women, all chained together, who had been waiting to be sold off. Fired at quarter power, the energy bolt incinerated off the head of the slaver, with his decapitated, fuming body then falling flat on the ground. Two more commandos, including the gigantic Baya Makwando, then landed next to the platform, cutting off the retreat of the remaining slavers and quickly killing the three men who were carrying whips and clubs. Next, Baya Makwando made forceful signs to the slave girls, telling them to turn around and climb on the auction platform, where they would be safer than among the panicked crowd around the market. Seeing that her comrades had that well in hand, Diane scanned quickly the crowd around the platform, searching for more slaves who could be rescued. She quickly spotted two men, one bearded man in his forties and one younger man with bare torso, hurrying to lead away a young girl wearing iron manacles. Judging that firing from the platform would be too risky for the girl, Diane activated her suit’s propulsion unit and flew off towards the trio, quickly catching up with it before landing right in front of the bearded man. With local people running wildly around her, Diane decided that her disintegrator rifle would be too dangerous to use, thus let it hang from its carrying strap and grabbed the handle of her short sword, pulling it out of its scabbard fixed along her upper right leg. That short sword had a wide, fifty-centimeter-long blade made of a tough chromium-steel alloy with a razor-sharp double edge, which could be used for various purposes. This time, it cleanly decapitated the bearded man in a single slash, following which Diane stabbed in the stomach the slave handler following him. As the man stared at her with wide eyes expressing both pain and shock, Diane spoke to him in Arabic, one of the languages she had learned via mnemotron after being assigned to Toulouse.
‘’Die, you piece of shit!’’
She then pulled up her blade, ripping wide open the belly of the man. Kicking out of the way the dying man, Diane then surrounded with one protective arm the terrified girl he had been leading away.
‘’Don’t worry, girl: you will be safe with me.’’
The teenager apparently could not speak Arabic, as she only stared with incomprehension at Diane. She nonetheless followed Diane without resistance as the commando returned towards the auction platform. As they were climbing the stairs to the platform, Diane was able to see that the situation in the market square, while still chaotic with panicked people running around, was more or less under control. More importantly, all the slaves who had been in the process of being sold off were now free and protected by other commandos, while the slave handlers and merchants in the market were now dead. Looking up, she could see the other three assault barges of the force assigned to Bagdad for this operation hovering over the city, with their embarked commandos and combat robots now occupying and sweeping the various palaces and rich houses of the city in order to find and free all the slaves they could find. She also could hear the loud orders shouted around in Arabic by their combat robots, telling all slaves to come out in the open and seek the protection of the commandos and their robots. This whole operation in Bagdad was in fact only one part of a huge deployment of force covering the various main cities and slaving centers of the Abbasid Caliphate and of the Byzantine Empire, the two biggest contemporary powers around Europe and the Middle East. Once the slaves freed today would have been processed and either repatriated to their old countries or resettled, the forces of ‘Operation Freedom’ would then strike around North Africa, India and Asia, again with the goal of putting an end to slavery around the World. The sight of one Arabic man in particular then attracted her attention: instead of running away in panic, he was instead calmly walking towards the auctioning platform. Seeing another commando raise his disintegrator rifle, she hurriedly shouted an order to him.
‘’HOLD YOUR FIRE! THAT MAN IS NOT A THREAT!’’
Leaving the girl she had freed under the protection of another commando, Diane flew to meet the old man halfway, landing two paces in front of him. She then recognized him, having met him in Guangzhou when she had escorted Vyyn Drelan around.
‘’Mister Ibn Khordadbeh? Don’t tell me that you came here today to buy a slave.’’
‘’I wasn’t planning to buy a slave but, in truth, I was briefly tempted to buy one girl being sold, so that she would not have fallen into the hands of a cruel, uncaring master. I can gather that you came to free all the slaves in Bagdad. While I don’t own a slave, I do know where you can find many of them who are serving the rich people of Bagdad. I know in particular of a large prison where many slaves are held after arriving by caravan or ship in Bagdad. I can direct you to it if you want.’’
‘’That would be most appreciated. Please follow me.’’
Escorting the old geographer to the platform, Diane then took the information he had about the prison he knew about and passed it by radio to her commanding officer, Major Nierman. Some ten minutes later, Nierman contacted her back to say that the prison and been found and invested, with over 168 slaves freed from cells there. Opening the armored visor of her helmet, Diane smiled down to the old Arabic man.
‘’Your information has just been confirmed as accurate, with 168 slaves freed thanks to you. You thus deserve our most heartfelt thanks, Mister Ibn Khordadbeh.’’
Looking around him at the devastated marketplace, the geographer then noticed that a number of local inhabitants living next to the market were now looking at him from their windows and balconies, with some pointing at him. The possible consequences of this became quickly too evident to him and he looked back with resignation at Diane.
‘’You actually may be able to thank me in a more tangible way, miss. Some of the local people have noticed that I freely spoke with you and they may well denounce me to the Bagdad authorities once you are gone, in which case I cannot expect anything good to follow. Will you accept to let me go with you to Toulouse, in order to ask asylum there? I am afraid that my time in Bagdad is now about over.’’
Diane nodded her head nearly at once, smiling down to the geographer.
‘’You would certainly be worthy of obtaining asylum, mister Ibn Khordadbeh. Let me contact my commander about this.’’
‘’If my request is accepted, could I go get my few personal things, like spare clothes, that I keep at the Bayt al-Hikmah? You could also go free a few more slaves there at the same time.’’
Diane nodded once at that, then started a short radio conversation with Major Nierman. At the end of it, she looked back soberly at the old geographer.
‘’Major Nierman agreed to your request, mister. A number of flying platforms will arrive soon to load up the slaves we just freed here in the market. We will use one of them to go to the Bayt al-Hikmah.’’
‘’Thank you, miss.’’ Replied Ibn Khordadbeh while bowing to Diane. He then went to the teenage girl he had toyed with the idea of buying in order to save her and made her get up on her feet. Trying first Arabic, then four other languages in succession, he was still unable to communicate with her. The girl then spoke a few words back in a language that Diane Champagne was able to identify.
‘’That’s Saxon! I can speak it, thankfully.’’ said Diane to the geographer before switching to Saxon and speaking with the slave girl. ‘’What is your name, girl, and where are you from?’’
‘’My name is Ilse and I come from the village of Rutvern, in Saxony. How can you fly the way you do?’’
‘’That is complicated. Let’s just say that we came from 3,000 years in the future. We will soon fly you out of Bagdad and return you to your village, Ilse.’’
Instead of showing joy, Ilse lowered her head in sadness.
‘’My village doesn’t exist anymore. The Vikings raided it five months ago and burned it down, then killed the people living in it after taking me and other girls as slaves. They ended up selling me to a Frankish slave merchant, who in turn sold me to a Muslim slaver. I was then marched for months with other girls before arriving here in Bagdad.’’
‘’I am sorry to hear that, Ilse. Be assured that we will soon put a complete stop to this revolting slave trade…everywhere.’’
‘’What will happen to me now?’’ asked Ilse in a trembling voice, while tears ran down her cheeks. ‘’I have no family left and my village is gone.’’
‘’We will take care of you and will find a new home for you soon, Ilse. I promise you that. All the slaves that we are freeing today will be repatriated or, if they have no homes left to return to, will be resettled in a good land, with ample material support from us. Be patient and we will soon be able to find you a new place to live.’’
Diane then fell silent, scanning the devastated market for any signs of a threat while waiting for the promised cargo platforms. The latter finally showed up some six minutes later, flying down from one of the assault barges. Two of them landed next to the auction platform, with the commandos then leading the liberated slaves to them and making them sit in one of the platforms. Leading Ilse and fourteen more girls and young women to the nearest platform, Diane then gently patted Ilse’s shoulder after making her sit and buckle her seat belt.
‘’I now have to go free more slaves at another location in Bagdad, Ilse. I will see you again later on, on my ship.’’
She then went to the second platform with Ibn Khordadbeh, Baya Makwando and six combat robots, then gave a command to the pilot of the platform.
‘’Take off and fly towards the Round City: I will guide you to our next target.’’
The young female pilot, a Navy technician wearing a protective light suit and helmet, nodded her head and made her cargo platform take off and pick up speed, heading towards the nearby walls of the so-called ‘Round City’, which had been built when Bagdad had become the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Diane then relayed to their pilot the indications given by Ibn Khordadbeh. Overflying the outer defensive walls of the Round City, the platform soon was silently flying down towards a large, squat building sporting a minaret at each of its corners.
‘’That’s the Bayt al-Hikmah!’’ announced Ibn Khordadbeh in a happy tone. ‘’It is the largest library to be found in the Caliphate and other erudite men like me spend their days there to study and translate old texts from all around the World.’’
‘’Hum! It would certainly be worthwhile to preserve such an institution. You said that there are a number of slaves working there?’’
‘’Yes! There are slave boys who help us by maintaining the library, while more slave servants do the cleaning and cooking for the researchers working at the Bayt al-Hikmah. Contrary to many other places in Bagdad, those slaves at the Bayt al-Hikmah have always been well treated. There is in fact a young boy slave there that I consider nearly as my own son. I have now been educating him for a number of years and taught him how to read and write. His name is Hakim. If possible, I would like him to be able to follow me into asylum.’’
‘’I see no problem with that. We…’’
‘’ARCHERS! WATCH OUT!’’
Diane barely had time to half turn around in reaction to the warning given by Baya Makwando before two arrows bounced on her armored suit, while more arrows flew by her. Thankfully, their pilot was protected by her light suit and was not wounded despite having one arrow bounce against her suit. Pointing her disintegrator rifle in the direction the arrows had come from, she quickly located their sources: a group of over thirty guards armed with bows and shooting from behind colonnades supporting the porch of a palace adjacent to the Bayt al-Hikmah. She then opened a dense fire at that group of archers, with Makwando and their robots joining in. The whole porch section of that palace quickly crumbled, its colonnades vaporized, crushing the guards not already killed by direct disintegrator hits. With that threat apparently taken care of, Diane looked at Ibn Khordadbeh to make sure that he was safe and sound. Her blood froze on seeing that the old geographer was now lying down on the platform, an arrow in his throat and a pool of blood around him.
‘’NOOO!’’
Quickly kneeling next to the old man, Diane saw that his eyes were already losing their focus. Despite his mortal wound, Ibn Khordadbeh was able to say a few words in a weak voice.
‘’Hakim… Take care of…’’
To Diane’s despair, the eyes of the geographer then rolled up and became fixed, while his breathing stopped. Despite her past combat experience at seeing deaths, Diane felt tears roll down from her eyes as she contemplated the now dead geographer.
‘’I will find Hakim and will care for him, my friend. Rest in peace.’’
She then covered Ibn Khordadbeh’s face with part of his mantle before getting back on her feet and looking at Baya Makwando.
‘’We have to find a young teenage boy named Hakim who is a slave working at the Bayt al-Hikmah and who this old man was educating. Let’s keep our shooting inside the library to the strict minimum and use stun guns, unless we are attacked.’’
‘’Got it!’’ replied the gigantic commando, who measured 192 centimeters without armor.
11:52 (Bagdad Time)
Vehicle deck, assault barge ‘IRON FIST’
Flying away from Bagdad
Diane, accompanied by an eleven-year-old boy dressed in Arabic fashion, found Ilse among the over 4,000 liberated slaves filling the vehicle deck of her assault barge. Getting up from the metallic deck, Ilse then ran to Diane to hug her, wrapping her arms around the bulky armored combat suit of the commando.
‘’You did come back for me! Thank you for caring about me like this.’’
Diane returned her hug, having set her armor’s exoskeleton to ‘normal strength’ mode, so that she would not crush accidentally the girl while hugging her.
‘’I was not about to forget about you, Ilse. By the way, this is Hakim, a boy who was being educated by Ibn Khordadbeh, the old man who you saw at the slave market and who had been wanting to save you by buying you, so that he could then care for you. Unfortunately, Ibn Khordadbeh was killed by an arrow shot by one of the guards of the Governor of Bagdad. Before dying, he asked me to find and take care of Hakim. Thankfully, I was able to find Hakim easily enough. Ilse, I just talked to my commanding officer, who approved a decision I just took. I would like to adopt you and Hakim, so that you could live with me in Toulouse, where my unit has its base. Hakim already accepted to be adopted by me. I am now asking you if you would also accept to be adopted by me.’’
Ilse was silent for a moment, surprised by this unexpected offer. Tears then appeared in her eyes and she nodded her head as a big lump formed in her throat.
‘’I…I accept. What is your name?’’
Diane mentally kicked herself then for forgetting such a basic formality.
‘’My name is Diane Champagne. I have the rank of ‘Corporal’ in the commandos of the Human Expansion.’’
‘’Are you married, Diane?’’
‘’Not yet, but that could happen soon enough. However, married or not, be assured that I will do my best to care and cherish you too. Soon, the other liberated slaves on this ship will leave for a distant island where they will be processed and then either repatriated to their original places of origin or resettled into new homes. As for you and Hakim, you will accompany me when we will fly back to Toulouse. There, I will be able to offer you a new, happy life with me as free persons. Hakim, come here and hug both of us.’’
The boy didn’t have to be told twice and came to emotionally hug both Diane and Ilse, watched by the other ex-slaves filling the vehicle deck.