A Desert Called Peace

XIII.

Among the weapons found in the supervisory office's armory had been a single sample of a very special type. This was a magazine-fed, bolt action rifle in 14.5mm, with its own limited visibility scope, recoil absorption system and a muzzle brake to further reduce the otherwise shoulder-shattering recoil of the piece. For all that, it was no different in principle from any of the bolt-action rifles in use on Earth. It was this simplicity that recommended the weapon to both Belisario and the UN, though the latter used it exclusively for hunting mammoth, not men nor their machines.

Belisario lay now beside the sniper he had chosen, a cholo from Panama with a deserved reputation as a marksman. The cholo 's, or Indian's, name was Pedro.

"Pedro, can you hit the gas tank?" Belisario asked.

"No, senor," the indio answered. "I don't even know where it will be. But I can hit an engine, no problem."

"Make it the engine then, compadre. But make it the engine. We can't afford a miss."

The pair lay in a shack overlooking the UN office. More particularly, their field of fire covered the marked, concrete shuttle landing pad to one side of that office. What they would do if the shuttle landed elsewhere, Belisario didn't know. His men were scattered in small groups in other buildings. Perhaps that would be enough.

He'd told them no cooking fires, an order that had not gone over particularly well. He hoped they'd listen, but had less than absolute confidence that they would. What he could do about it he didn't know. Rather, he hoped he didn't know.

Will it come to that? Belisario wondered. Will I someday end up having to shoot some of my own men if they won't follow orders? God… if there is a God… deliver me from this, please.

His thoughts were interrupted by the whine of the UN shuttle circling the area before coming in for a very soft, though leaf and dust churning, landing.

Belisario was just rising and turning his head toward Pedro to give the order to fire when the cholo fired sua sponte… and immediately screamed and rolled from the gun, clutching a broken shoulder. So much for recoil absorption systems. The muzzle blast half-stunned Belisario, knocking him right back on his arse.

"What the-?"

On hands and knees, shaking his head, Belisario crawled back to the low window through which Pedro had engaged the shuttle. As he neared the opening, he heard and felt the familiar blasts of his own men's muzzle loaders, combined with the rattle of machine guns. Belisario hoped at least some of those machine guns were among those he and his followers had captured at the UN's office armory.

The first thing Belisario saw from the window was smoke. True to his word, Pedro had struck an engine. The engine had then caught fire, a fire which spread to other parts of the shuttle. The entire machine seemed about to burst into flames.

While Belisario watched, it did burst into flame, the fireball catching several of the UN Marines, sending them running as shrieking human torches. The Cochean felt no satisfaction at this, but only pity and perhaps even a bit of regret. He regretted, too, that any equipment that might have been on the shuttle was now irretrievably lost.

A near miss knocked bits of wood off of the wooden window frame causing Belisario to duck. Taking a moment to steel his soul he returned to his observation point. There were no more near misses, however. Instead, with his head now rapidly clearing from the shock of Pedro's muzzle blast, Belisario saw a dozen or fourteen-it was hard to be sure under the circumstances-UN Marines, cowering at the edges of the burned area. He suspected that those, plus the ones he had seen burn, were all that had gotten out of the shuttle. Those survivors were tightly pinned by the machine gun fire coming from Belisario's looted weapons.

Between the machine gun and rifle fire, plus the real fire from the shuttle, first one, then another, then a group of three of the Marines dropped their weapons and stood up, arms raised high. It wasn't their bloody fight and if the locals were willing to take prisoners they were willing to become prisoners.

Belisario was still in the first phase of a very steep upward learning curve. He'd never thought to arrange for a signal to cease fire. Fortunately, his followers were not cold-blooded killers but simple farmers and ranchers and artisans who would kill only most reluctantly. Fire ceased as the gunners and riflemen saw that the Marines were, in fact, trying to surrender. As the fire let up, and seeing those trying to surrender standing unharmed, the rest of the UN troops quickly put down their weapons and stood, as well.

Saying, "I'll send someone for you, Pedro," Belisario left the room and walked out of the shack towards the UN Marines. He was met, not too far from the burning shuttle, by one very shaken Botswanan major with his arms raised high over his head.

Chapter Twenty-Nine It is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people. -John 11:50

Las Mesas, Balboa, 28/2/462 AC

Was there ever a sweeter sounding word? Cruz was home!

Admittedly, it was only for four weeks leave and, even worse, he had an allegedly nasty leadership selection course to run through, to be followed by more advanced training. But he was home, he was a sergeant, and at last he could marry his lovely and sweet Caridad.

Actually, there was one sweeter word… or rather, one sweeter phrase. Standing beside him in a white dress-well, she was still, technically, a virgin-surrounded by both their families and with Cruz wearing the new, black and silver dress uniform of the legion that he'd been issued at Fuerte Cameron, Cara had said, "I do."

Feast followed and honeymoon, altogether too brief a one, followed feast. As for the honeymoon… well, newlyweds are entitled to a certain amount of privacy.

Main Bus Terminal, Ciudad Balboa, 8/3/462 AC

It was just after midnight, with the lights of the city washing out the stars overhead. Under the bright streetlamps, Caridad MoralesHerrera de Cruz fought to keep control of her voice. But it was just so damned unfair. She and her Ricardo had barely had time to get to know each other again before he had had to go.

I refuse to cry. I refuse. I refuse.

She cried anyway.

Around the young couple, hundreds of other Cazador hopefuls and their nearest kin awaited the buses that would bring them to the nearest thing to Hell man's imagination could create on Terra Nova. Many a young girl and elderly mother wept. Cazador School had gained a well-deserved reputation for misery and danger in its brief existence.

Cruz stiffened and Cara began softly to cry with the sound of the first horn. Cruz pulled her close, stroking her long midnight black hair and murmuring words of comfort into her ear. Around them, unnoticed, others left behind by loved ones joined in a low floating wail.

Camp Gutierrez, Balboa

A long line of students wound from the class headquarters building down to the tiny unkempt parade field. To either side of the students CIs roamed like ravenous beasts of prey.

Standing at rigid attention, shorn of hair, rank, and the external trappings of personal dignity, Cruz listened attentively to the CIs' grandiloquent vituperation. Might come in useful someday.

The students had managed a couple of hours' sleep on the buses to Camp Gutierrez. No breakfast had been offered, as a matter of policy. Cruz listened to the rumbling of his deprived stomach: Hey, asshole, don't you remember me? You know, the one you're supposed to fucking feed? Your stomach?

As classmates ahead of him completed their in-processing, Cruz neared the school headquarters building. Ahead was a large curved sign, yellow with black letters, held up by columns. CAZADOR, Cruz read. He could see concrete pyramidal blocks lining both sides of the trail past the sign. A student did pushups, hands on the ground, feet elevated on the concrete at each block.

The rain began to fall. Still, the students stood and marched forward at attention. The rain lifted and the bright Balboan sun turned the sodden uniforms to clinging, stinking, steamy prisons. Cruz passed under the CAZADOR sign.

"Get your feet up on that block, Cazador! Fifteen for the ones who preceded you," commanded an impersonal CI. Cruz mounted his feet on the block and began to perform push ups, as the others before him had. His arms pumped out the pushups smoothly.

Turning his head to one side Cruz saw an inscription on the concrete block opposite. It was from the Bible: "And his meat was locusts: Matthew 3:4." Below that were written the names of three Cazador students who had lost their lives in training. Cruz moved up to the next block as the flow of students moved onward. The inscription Cruz read now was: "And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered: Matthew 4:2." More names of the dead were proclaimed below that quote. "I came not to send peace, but a sword: Matthew 10:34" followed that.

Hours later, still unfed and wanting sleep, Cruz and his newly assigned " Cazador Compadre," Rafael Montoya, a lanky boy from Valle de las Lunas, emerged from the headquarters building with all that they would be allowed to possess as Cazador students. A huge pile of sandwiches, cookies, cakes and other goodies fed the ants and birds in the field behind the headquarters.

Camp Gutierrez, 22/3/462 AC

Already Cruz's uniform was beginning to hang on him loosely. The purely technical aspects of Cazador School were behind him- map reading, the steps in troop-leading procedures, radio communications, physical fitness tests, and so on. He could do all those things perfectly well before coming here. But-and this made it special-all of it had been done on under an hour and a half's sleep per night and with a constant pain in the belly.

Almost a fifth of those who had begun the course with Cruz had already dropped out or been dropped. None had yet been killed, though two had been injured badly enough in the hand-to-hand combat pits that they had to be recycled. These did scut work in a separate compound called, none of the students knew quite why, the "Gulag."

This was the first patrol. The patrol, really a large squad, was halted in a cigar-shaped perimeter. Men looked out to all sides, fighting to keep their eyes open. The CI took a position in the center, watching Cruz more closely than Cruz knew. Mosquitoes buzzed in ears, taking their part of each student's daily donation of a pint of blood to the jungle pests. Outside the perimeter foul-mouthed antaniae murmured, " mnnbt… mnnbt… mnnbt." No one really worried about the antaniae. They were too nasty to eat and, while their mouths were septic, they were a cowardly species which, for the most part, posed danger of infection only to the very young.

"Montoya. Goddammit, Montoya, wake the fuck up!" Cruz whispered as he jostled his assigned buddy.

Montoya snapped up with a start. "I wasn't sleeping, Centurion."

"Save the lies for the CI. It's me, Cruz. Pull out your poncho and put it over us."

Cruz took a red filtered flashlight and his acetated map in his hands and joined Montoya under the cover of the poncho. Unheard by either, the CI crept to within a couple of feet to listen.

"Cazador Cruz, you have failed this patrol." The CI laid his judgment out without cushioning. Cruz hung his head in shame. The CI then proceeded to explain precisely why Cruz had failed: improper contingency plan so that when the perimeter had been hit, Montoya hadn't known where to take the patrol to link up; inadequate supervision on Montoya's part after Cruz's departure leading to sleeping troops who couldn't detect the approaching enemy, failure to navigate properly so that the patrol had to stop too close to the objective leading, so the CI said, to interception by a random security sweep by the unit at the objective. Of course the security sweep hadn't been random at all, but Cruz couldn't know that.

The rain began to fall once again as Cruz made his miserable way back to his patrol.

Camp "Greasy" Gomez, 26/3/462 AC

Balboa's climate was hot and wet. Ordinarily, it wasn't possible to become cool there in the outdoors, let alone cold. Still, when deprived of food and sleep, worked too hard, and kept soaking wet for days on end, men would shiver.

Where the swamp water came midway up Cruz's chest, it was closer to neck deep on Dominguez. That was why Cruz never noticed that Dominguez was shivering until his teeth began to chatter.

" 'minguez, are you okay?"

"No, Cruz… cold, getting colder."

Shit. Cruz told Dominguez to wait in place-the patrol wasn't going anywhere fast-and waded forward to find the CI.

"Centurion, I think one of my men is coming down with hypothermia." They'd been lectured on that particular danger early on in the course.

The CI waded back with Cruz, both of them sloshing through the darkened water to where Dominguez still stood. None of Terra Nova's three moons were up much so the CI broke out a blue filtered flashlight and played in over the shivering man's face. After a briefest visual inspection, plus a quick feel of the all-too-cooled forehead, he decided Cruz was right.

"We've got to get him out of some of this water. It's not so deep up ahead. You two, pick him up and carry him forward." Montoya and another man named Saldanas lifted Dominguez bodily out of the water.

At the shallow spot, the CI took his knife out and stuck it perpendicularly into a tree. Then he took a blue fuel tablet out of a metalicized pouch. He laid the fuel tablet on the knife. Reaching into the student's web gear, the CI took out Dominguez's steel canteen cup and filled it with water. He lit the fuel tab, letting it begin to burn over its entire surface, before placing the cup squarely upon it. He pulled both knife and cup away from the tree, holding them together.

The CI looked around and announced, "I need a crap load of sugar."

Montoya went around the gathering students. "C'mon. Give it up, goddammit. Dominguez needs sugar." The men reached into hidden stores for sugar packets filched from the mess on those rare occasions the students were allowed to eat in the mess.

The CI gently slid the knife out from under the cup. The fuel tablet stayed, magically stuck to the cup's bottom. With its own bottom exposed to the air, it flared into a respectable flame. Soon the water was hot enough for a decent cup of coffee, heavily laden with sugar.

Montoya, standing with his hands cupped around sugar packets, looked with wonder at the CI's method of coffee preparation in a soaking wet environment. "I believe that is the neatest thing I've ever seen," he said, mostly to himself.

Lago de Ajuela, Balboa, 28/3/462 AC

Today was a test day of sorts. Its objective was to run out a portion of those students who could not overcome physical fear. All the candidates had already been in combat, of course. This proved little as, in combat, no one was really watching to see how they reacted to danger.

"This is more like what I signed up for when I volunteered for this stinking course," announced Montoya, looking over the various tests.

Saldanas, standing on the other side of Cruz from Montoya, looked ghastly pale. "Man, I am terrified of heights." Saldanas was a sailor with the still growing naval classis. In the legion even sailors and members of the air ala had to demonstrate combat leadership before being allowed leadership of any kind.

Another student-Dominguez, Saldanas' Cazador buddy- answered "Cheer up, friend. You're a squid. At least you can swim well."

The class tac, a retired FSA master sergeant working for the FMTG and named Olivetti called the class to attention, then "at ease."

"The purpose of today's exercise," the CI said, "is to separate from the school those who lack an essential characteristic needed in a combat leader-physical courage."

At Olivetti's last words twin explosions erupted from the water. The students shuddered from the shock. A Balboan CI, carrying a pulleylike device with a handle attached, ran from the woods toward a steel I-beam set upright in the ground, with a small platform on top and a wire cable running at an angle down to the water. The CI howled as he ran.

Reaching the I beam, the CI rapidly clambered up its seventy-five odd feet until he reached the platform. There he hooked the pulley around the wire cable, grabbed hold of the handle and lifted his feet off the platform. He sped down the cable gathering speed. Another CI, standing on a floating platform near where cable met water, signaled when it was time for the slider to let go of the handle.

Montoya watched, wide-eyed, as the slider's feet struck the water first, causing him to spin head over heels a half dozen times before knifing headfirst below the surface.

That has got to take practice, thought Cruz admiringly.

Fifty times the son of a bitch does it right in rehearsal, thought Olivetti, then he screws it up in practice. Idiot.

The CI surfaced and then swam toward the shore. Olivetti announced "What you have just seen is called the 'Slide for Life.' The CI is now approaching the Log Walk/Rope Drop."

Still howling, the demonstrator ran from the shore to the Log Walk. This consisted of three on-line poles set upright into the muck below. At a height of some thirty-five feet-shrewdly calculated to be the most frightening height to be at for a human being-the poles were surmounted by a log, topped by a flat plank, with steps in the middle. The logs swayed as the CI raced upward. At the top the CI bound down the plank, not stopping or slowing even for the steps in the middle. He took a quick seat at the far end.

Olivetti continued his explanations. "Once you have successfully negotiated the Log Walk you will take a seat while awaiting your turn for the Rope Drop."

The demonstrator CI rolled to his side and began to pull himself out onto another steel cable that ran slightly upwards toward the summit of a taller pole. Set more than halfway up, a Cazador tab painted on wood hung. The CI slapped it once, screamed, "Cazador!" and eased his body smoothly off the cable until he was hanging by both hands. The CI released his right hand from the cable, executed a smart hand salute and said, "Centurion, Cazador Torres requests permission to drop."

Olivetti returned the salute and answered, "Drop, Cazador." The CI on the cable let go with his left hand, placing it over his crotch as he fell. The right hand went under the chin, fingers cupping the nose. The water splashed more than halfway to the cable when he hit.

Turning his attention back to the students, Olivetti said, conversationally "Easy as Hell, isn't it? See, we don't ask too much of you."

Oh, God, I hate heights, thought Saldanas, as he began the long climb up the I beam. Rather than look upward as he climbed, which would remind him of how far he had to go, or-worse-downward, which would tell him how far he had gone, Saldanas kept his eyes on the rusted steel of the beam, parallel to the ground. Even when his pulley, hanging off his shoulder by a strap, caught on one of the rungs, he freed it purely by touch, rather than risk seeing the ground. He closed his eyes every time a student ahead of him took off down the slide, making the beam shudder. The climb seemed endless and limitlessly terrifying.

"Get your ass up here, Cazador," shouted the CI atop the little platform. Saldanas carefully eased through the little trap door, fingers turning white from his clenching grip on whatever seemed solid. The CI saw this.

"Scared are you, son?"

Teeth clenched to keep them from chattering, he forced out a, "Yes, Centurion."

"No shame in that, son," the CI said, not unkindly. The CI took the pulley from Saldanas' shoulder and hooked it onto the cable. Then he grabbed the back of Saldanas' shirt and pulled him under the pulley. The student resisted giving up his grip on the platform.

"Open your eyes, son. The point is to see what scares you and overcome it." Saldanas obeyed and immediately lunged for the I beam.

"Cazador, there is only one way off this platform. You either get a grip on yourself and take hold of this handle or I am going to kick your shitty butt out into space, hear me?"

Half guided by the CI, Saldanas, trembling, forced himself to stand under the pulley and take a grip on the handle.

"Now when I tell you to go, I want you to lift up with your arms. When you get away from platform a ways, bend your body into an 'L' shape. Watch the man with the flag standing at the anchor dock. He'll tell you how high to lift your legs and when to let go of the pulley. Got it? Oh, yes. One other thing. If you don't keep your eyes open to see the drop signal you are going to slam into the dock at the other end of the cable at about 100 kilometers per hour. Guaranteed fatal. You will keep your eyes open?"

Saldanas could only nod, two or three times, quickly.

"Go!" Saldanas, after a moment's hesitation, lifted off and went… nowhere. The CI still had a grip on his shirt. "Okay. Let's try it again, this time with your eyes open. Go." Again Saldanas didn't slide but he did keep his eyes from closing.

"All right, son. That was fine. Now this time I really am going to let go. Ready?… Go!"

At first Saldanas felt nothing. Then he realized he also could not feel the CI's grip on the back of his shirt. By the time this registered he felt the beginnings of forward motion. He screamed, " Jeeesuuusss!" as he picked up speed. Chuckling and thinking, it's funny how he called upon the only man who can save him now, the CI called out, "Next Cazador. Get your ass up here, boy."

Dimly, Saldanas realized on his way down, It's a good thing I'm landing in water. No one will see the piss.

Caridad Cruz's parent's home, 31/3/462 AC

"Cara? Cara, I have a letter for you from Ricardo!"

At her mother's call Caridad ran, breathless, for the front hall. She tore the letter from her mother's hand and opened it.

"Dearest Cara,

I'm terribly sorry that I haven't written before… there simply hasn't been any time at all. The only reason I can write now is that this is sort of a screw off day; terrifying but not difficult. "Terrifying?" I hear you ask. Very.

We were all (except Montoya, I'll tell you about him later) scared of heights. I still am but at least I can deal… now. The interesting one was Saldanas. He's a sailor who's bucking for officer (did I ever tell you even the squids have to graduate Cazador School to become centurions or officers?). I can't prove it, but I'd almost swear Saldanas wet himself on one of them. But he's a gutsy one. You could see he'd rather have died than walk over some steps that were thirty-five feet in the air. The steps were in the middle of one of the obstacles. But he'd rather die than fail, too. He made it over, with help, but almost in tears. We're all really proud of him.

For the rest, my mates and I are starving, and more than two weeks behind on sleep. They feed us so little here, one scanty ration a day, most days, that there isn't enough to allow the body to heal even a little cut. I have a couple I got early on that are still running sores.

Nonetheless, I am making it so far. I failed my first patrol, but it didn't count. I passed the second. Tomorrow we're off to the mountain school.

Give your parents and mine my best.

All my love,

Ricardo

Cara put the letter back in the envelope. He didn't even mention sex. That's not the Ricardo I know.

Camp Bernardo O'Higgins, Hephaestus,

Valle de las Lunas, 32/3/462 AC

O'Higgins was the mountain training center for the expanding legion and the second phase of the Cazador School.

In this camp Cruz's class had suffered its first fatality. In front of all four hundred odd Cazador students still with the class, a piton securing a rope snaking up the side of a cliff broke free. The reactions of both climber and safety man were too slowed by fatigue to grab a handhold; the next piton broke free as well. A long scream tore through the air, and those nearby heard a dull thud.

An ambulance came to claim the body. Other than that, none of the school cadre took any special pains over the death. In a few days a new name would be added to the monuments that stood by the entrance to the camp and the concrete plinths in front of the school headquarters at Camp Gutierrez. A memorial service was held at the close of that day's training. No other official notice was taken. That night fifteen men resigned.

Unofficially, and unobtrusively, Olivetti made note of those who had not resigned but who seemed more upset than most. These, in ones and two, as the schedule permitted, he spoke to over the next several days. One reported to him now.

"Cazador Cruz, reporting as ordered, Centurion."

"Sit, Cazador." Olivetti made a show of looking over Cruz's school file. He closed the file. "This is counseling, Cazador Cruz. We counsel each Cazador student several times during the course of the school… to help you learn, to improve. That's all this is. In looking over your file, and it's a short file now, I observe that you have been a somewhat better than average Cazador. True, you failed your first patrol. Most do. Nonetheless, the evaluations of your peers in your squad speak highly of you as a leader. And the CI for your first patrol thought that mostly you were let down by your assistant, Montoya."

Cruz bristled. "Montoya's okay. He just took a little longer than most getting used to the lack of sleep."

Olivetti shrugged. Alone he was a much friendlier sort than the ravening beast he usually put on for the students. "Forget about Montoya for now. You have been acting more listless than short rations and lack of sleep alone account for. What's the problem?"

Cruz hesitated to speak for a moment. When he did finally begin to talk, it came out in a torrent. "I don't understand this place. You starve us. You won't let us sleep. You keep us in constant fear of failure. You work and march us to death. And then, when somebody dies because he's too tired to pay attention and too weak to hang on to something, you act like it's just routine business. What's the point of that? This is supposed to be a leadership school. How can we learn when it's all we can do to stay awake? What does losing twenty pounds have to do with the ability to lead men in battle? Or is this all just some initiation rite at the legion's expense?"

Olivetti answered calmly, "No, it isn't an initiation rite, not entirely. Let me try to answer your questions with other questions. Ask yourself what battle is like. I know you have two awards for valor, the Cruz de Coraje in Steel and Bronze. Was battle stressful? Did it put stress on your leaders? Did they need the ability to cope with stress to deal with it? Is that ability innate, learned, or a combination of both? Can we give you all the stress of battle in the form it takes in battle? What kinds of stress can we put you under without surely killing too many of you? Will you be able to cope better with one kind of stress by learning to cope with another? Is it more likely or less likely that graduates of the Cazador School will have shown more of an innate ability to cope with stress? Do men become brave by doing brave acts?"

Cruz remained as silent and sullen as he thought he could get away with. Even so, Olivetti's logic nagged at him. Maybe he has a point. Maybe.

"You don't have to answer. Just think about the questions for a while.

"As for Cazador Enriquez, he was on the centurion track. He will get every benefit of the doubt and be buried as Optio Carlos Enriquez, of the 6th Mechanized Tercio, with a Cruz de Coraje in Gold; he already had Steel, Bronze And Silver. Very brave trooper, was Enriquez."

Olivetti grew thoughtful. "One of the things I like about how the legion does business is that you"-as part of FMTG Olivetti was not technically or legally a legionary-"don't distinguish between training and battle deaths."

He continued, "What more do you want us to do? Would Enriquez be happier, do you think, if his mates had missed valuable training? In battle would we stop a fight while it was ongoing to mourn a fallen comrade?

"You feel bad about Enriquez. So you should. You're sorry he died. So am I. And the training killed him, no doubt about it. Was Enriquez's life more valuable than the lives of the men he would someday have led? More valuable than yours and the men you will someday lead? Don't those men, and their mothers and fathers, their wives and children, deserve the best leaders we can give them?

"Your main complaint, however, seems directed at the fact that we don't seem to emphasize the… oh… skills a leader needs as much as we do the character. More questions for you to answer for yourself: Are those skills something that can be taught or only learned? Do we give you the opportunity to learn even though no one can necessarily teach them? Don't we coach you to learn them for yourself? And do we not teach them, too, in a way? When, Cazador Cruz, will you in the future forget that men need food and sleep to keep going at top performance? When, in battle, when you're a centurion leading a platoon, will you forget to take care of your troops because if you don't they won't be able to take care of you? When will you forget that fear and fatigue are interchangeable, that frightened men get weak fast? That tired men frighten easily? Enriquez died so you would learn those lessons in a way you will never forget.

"Finally, ask yourself what character a leader in battle must have. I think when you do you may discover that no one who graduates this school can be very deficient in any important aspect of it. But you'll have to find the answers to those questions yourself. Send in Saldanas, please."

Camp O'Higgins, 34/3/462 AC

Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, thought Cruz as he trudged his weary way along the side of the mountain. His legs and back ached mercilessly from the uneven path and off-center walk it required.

The patrol stopped suddenly. Cruz almost walked into the back of the man ahead of him, despite the dim glow of the two florescent strips sewn on the back of that student's hat.

Men took a knee at alternate sides of the patrol's perimeter, forming a rough cigar shape on the ground. Cruz struggled to keep his eyes open. The assistant patrol leader came forward from the rear of the little column to inquire about the halt. As he passed each man he whispered, "Take off your hats."

The students complied without argument. They'd learned that the hat became a little house and they'd fall asleep in a heartbeat if they felt themselves at home. A sleeping Cazador was a Cazador who would be left behind by his patrol. There was no greater shame and no more likely cause for dismissal from the course.

At the point of the column Cruz heard the CI loudly berating the patrol leader, Montoya, for becoming lost. Montoya fumbled verbally, trying to make an excuse. What Montoya didn't do was insist that he did know where the patrol was, even though he did.

The CI gave Montoya a location on the map that seemed plausible but was incorrect. Rising to their feet again, the men took off in a new, and false, direction. They would march all night up and down the side of this one mountain, with no time for sleep or to eat even the wretched amount of food they carried.

With each step, the burning pain in their legs increased. When they realized that they were walking in circles around a single summit, getting nowhere, the frustration, and the pain, brought tears to the eyes of some. In the morning, the CI would tell the patrol leader that he hadn't been lost at all, but that his lack of self-confidence had cost everyone. Montoya, the leader, told the squad what had happened. He hung his head for days.

Unknown to the patrol, it was all planned. Cazador Instructors evaluating each patrol did the very same thing at about the same time. Each patrol, as a result, became lost and wasted the night. The number of students dropped still further.

Jungle Camp, Yaviza, Balboa, 13/4/462 AC

Now what's the holdup? Cruz cursed under his breath at the school, the CIs, the rain, the piss warm swamp water that sloshed around his waist. Wiping rain from his brow-the hat he wore was so soaked that it didn't shed water anymore-Cruz felt his feet sinking slowly into the mud below him. He shifted to a fresher spot and let the sinking process begin anew. Lightning flashed, illuminating the murky scene.

I am so hungry. So very hungry. He thought warmly for a moment of his wife, Cara. He felt a moment's chagrin as he realized that he didn't think of sex anymore, hadn't in weeks. And a sad thing it is, too, when your pecker stops working. The stress- and starvationinduced impotence was something of a class joke for every Cazador class. "Hung our balls on the centurion's office wall when we reported in."

As he sometimes did when there was time and nothing better to do with it, Cruz played a mental game. He had discovered, almost two months prior, that just dreaming of having enough to eat was unsatisfying. Instead, he gave himself an imaginary twenty drachma, then went on an imaginary shopping spree at the supermarket with only that twenty to spend. The limitation, imaginary and artificial as it was, gave more substance to his dreaming. It also, sometimes, caught his stomach up in the dream so that the organ stopped nagging, Feed me, Motherfucker, feeed meee.

He roused himself back to reality as he realized the patrol was moving on. The man to his front reached back to tap him; too many times a patrol had become separated after a halt to a seemingly interminable march. Men had learned that they could fall asleep on their feet. The students no longer took chances. Cruz likewise tapped the man behind him. "Come on, Montoya. We're moving out again," he whispered.

Montoya nodded. Speech took too much energy. The group continued their fight with the water and the muck.

Jungle Camp, 16/4/462 AC

A light rain, unusually light for Balboa, fell on the patrol. Montoya walked back to the center of the perimeter, where Cruz minded the radio. "I failed another one, Cruz."

"Shit."

Montoya collapsed in a heap next to the radio. "Not to worry, friend. They're going to keep giving me back-to-back leadership phases until I pass. I'm leader, again, for this one. I'm fucked. You all are even more fucked."

Cruz, who had already tabbed out-made the requirements to graduate the course-made sympathetic sounds. Saldanas, Ramirez, and Dominguez walked over and sat down as well. They, too, already, had made the grade.

"Heard you're on the intensive track, Montoya." That from Ramirez.

Cruz interjected, "It just isn't possible. He can't do any more." Montoya didn't argue the point.

"He can't, but we can. Listen." Cruz listened as Saldanas laid out his plan for how the four of them would do as much of Montoya's work for him as the CIs would permit.

Montoya looked up, hope dawning in his eyes. His eyes clouded. "I can't make it on charity."

Dominguez took his shoulder in a firm grip. "It's not charity, Montoya. When Saldanas, here, froze on the log walk, who went up and talked him across? You, friend.

"And when Dominguez fell off the side of the hill at Camp O'Higgins, rolling end over end while his own machine gun tried to beat him to death, who carried the gun and the pack for two hours until he was capable of carrying them again?"

"Me, too, Montoya," said Cruz. "When I fucked up and didn't order chow for the platoon… and we all had nothing at all to eat for a day. Who talked me up to keep on going. They're right. We can help you, and it isn't charity. It's just paying a debt."

Montoya bowed his head, humbled and grateful.

Ramirez, silent until now, said, tersely, "Now let's get to work."

Graduation Exercise Area, Camp Gutierrez, 5/5/462 AC

Unique among militaries, the legion, at Carrera's insistence, had a requirement that all officers and centurions be combat tested before receiving their commissions or centurion's batons. This was so even though almost everyone sent to the Cazador School, followed by OCS, CCS or WOCS, was a veteran of combat already.

"Eventually, there will be peace, however transitory it will prove," Carrera had said. "The tradition of combat testing starts now so it will be kept then."

This was the most dreaded mission in the school, although much of the danger was still more apparent than real. Nonetheless, students were wounded or killed by design rather than by accident.

The live fire took place on an area of rough ground. The objectives consisted of well fortified battle positions, with bunkers and trenches, protected by broad belts of barbed wire and concertina. Interspersed among the bunkers, sometimes in place of them, very heavily uparmored tank turrets with anti-spalling liners-lead shields to absorb the little splinters of steel that often flew off of the inside of armor when it was struck by fire-were set into concrete. These held the defenders of the positions.

The tanks had the main guns removed. Unlike the ones the school used elsewhere, however, the crews of some of these tanks would try to hit the students rather than merely frighten them. Ordinarily, this would mean serious casualties. To keep these within acceptable limits, the turrets' machine guns only carried one round in ten live. The rest of the belted ammunition was plastic tipped. This was still dangerous close up but the plastic rounds lost velocity rapidly due to their low density. Every burst would be aimed with evil intent, but only one round in ten would actually have a bullet in it. The machine guns were, moreover, set loosely in their cradles to allow the fire to spread to cover an area as a normal ground-mounted machine gun would. Therefore, even if the gunner was dead on target, inclined to shoot that target, and that target was a real student, and the burst happened to have a live round in it, the odds were good that the bullet would go low, high or wide.

Other turrets had both main gun and machine guns removed. These had sniper rifles locked firmly into place. The "sniper" turrets fired all live ammunition, but their job was to try to fire as close as possible to the students without actually hitting any of them. Still, mistakes happened. And, it was widely rumored, the CIs manning the sniper rifles would deliberately shoot a man if provoked by incompetence. The rumor was only occasionally true and they never shot to kill.

Still, the students weren't entirely helpless. The things they had learned, careful reconnaissance, thorough planning and rehearsals, control, and teamwork could, properly applied, allow them to put effective fire on the turrets. The turret crews would cease fire for fifteen seconds after taking a hit from a bullet. There were also two small, upper body shaped, targets on the front of each turret. If the students hit both of these in an area about ten inches in diameter, the tank would cease fire completely. It was possible, though very uncommon, for no turrets on an objective to have a chance to fire.

Turrets never fired deliberately at a CI. Indeed they avoided them as completely as possible.

As an added measure, the students were issued the heavy, fiftyfour pound, ceramic torso armor and extra-heavy helmets. Face, arms and legs were still exposed, but the odds of a fatal hit were lessened. Statistics said that out of a typical class of about three hundred to three hundred and fifty, 8.4 men would be shot as a result of the day's training, 1.4 of them fatally.

Olivetti, wearing more complete body armor, painted white to mark him as a CI, stood in front of the class, explaining these things to the students. "Those casualty rates are only averages. Sometimes a class comes through without a scratch. Once we had seventeen men shot. Four died. If anyone wants to resign now, step to the rear and see Sergeant Major Schetrompf. He'll take your resignations." The CI didn't mention that after that particular day, the course had changed to give sixteen hours unbroken rest and five complete meals to the students before sending them to the graduation exercise. It was better they should believe the course was even more dangerous than it was.

Inside the ranks men wavered, Olivetti could see it in the way they shifted weight from side to side, looked around to see what their peers were doing.

Montoya finished their mental self debate for them. Speaking loudly, he said "You've made me shit myself more than once already, Centurion, although with the little bit you feed us there wasn't much shit. I'll be damned if all that, plus starving us and making us walking dead from lack of sleep, was for nothing. Bring on your fucking tanks, Centurion Olivetti. Besides, I need to pass one more patrol to graduate anyway." A few students laughed nervously. The moment of wavering was broken.

Olivetti nodded, seeing the men quiet down in the ranks. That's why you're still here, Montoya. You can't lead for shit. Your squad has carried you through every leadership phase you passed. But you're a tough little bastard and you don't quit. Your legion has use for those, too. At his signal, the three, much truncated, student companies began to shake out into tactical formations, separating and moving toward their objectives. Olivetti fell in with the center company, talking on his radio as he did so.

Overhead, real artillery, not simulators or preplaced charges, began to rumble across the sky toward small impact areas offset from the objectives. Though frightened, the men grinned. It was almost over.

Parade Field, Camp Gutierrez, 8/5/462 AC

The school commandant, Major Broughton, FS Army (retired), stood on a low reviewing stand. He looked over the ranks, 331 men of six hundred and ten who had started. Four were dead, about par for the course, most of the rest dropped with prejudice or quit. Some of those dropped were medicals. If they recovered, these would have a chance to continue the course with another class. A few others, hospitalized with wounds from the final exercise, would be graduated, and decorated, in their beds later in the day, their squads in attendance.

Broughton walked up to the microphone and began to speak. At his command the class stood at ease. He told the graduating students how tough they were, and brave; how they represented the best of their countries, and some of the best in the world. He said he expected great things of them, as they had proven themselves capable of great things.

Cruz whispered to Montoya, standing at his left, "You feel tough, bud?"

Montoya answered, likewise in a whisper, "He must be talking about some other people. I don't feel tough."

Broughton finished, calling the class to attention and ordering the school adjutant to call the roll.

The adjutant took Broughton's place at the microphone and began to read off names.

"Optio Enriquez."

The entire class answered, as rehearsed "Here!"

"Signifer Trujillo."

"Here!"

The adjutant finished the last names on his list of dead, each with the rank he would have held had he finished Cazador School and the next course for which he was scheduled. Following the last "Here!" he gave the command, "Open ranks, march!"

As the companies opened their ranks, the CIs of Camp Gutierrez trotted out, one to each rank of each platoon, each CI carrying a cloth bag draped over one shoulder. Olivetti came to attention to Cruz's right front.

"Present the tabs!"

Olivetti took one step forward, halted and faced left. He nodded, "Cazador Cruz?"

"Blood tab, Centurion." In the school's short life no Cazador had yet failed to ask for a "blood tab." It was an article of faith among the students that the first one to do so would have his name publicized across the entire legion.

Olivetti reached into the cloth bag and pulled out a full color black and gold half circle with the word "CAZADOR" spelled in bold, gold letters. A safety pin ran through the tab. Olivetti unlocked the safety pin, grabbed Cruz's sleeve near the shoulder, and drove the pin into the emaciated flesh beneath before withdrawing it, pushing it through the cloth, and hooking it back onto itself. Cruz controlled his flinch. What's a little more pain, after all?

"Good job, Cruz." Olivetti held out his hand.

"Thank you, Centurion. You, too." Cruz shook the hand with real feeling.

Olivetti passed on to Montoya.

Montoya smiled. "Blood tab, Centurion." He held his smile as the point pierced him.

"You're a shithead, Montoya. But you're a damn fine soldier. Congratulations."

When the last of the tabs had been awarded, Broughton returned to the reviewing stand. "Pass in review!"

Without further fanfare, the platoons faced right and began to double time past the reviewing stand. They only dropped to a walk when the last of them had passed. The students-no, full fledged Cazadors now-began to sing as they walked back to barracks.

Once he arrived back in Las Mesas, Cruz was very pleased to discover that his impotence was only temporary. Caridad was very pleased, as well.

Interlude

15 June, 2104 (Terra Novan Year 45 AC), Atlantis Base

The acting commander of Atlantis base was at wits' end. High Admiral Annan was gone; reported dead. The Marines and shuttle he had borrowed were gone as well and he had to presume them to be dead or captured, likewise the Supervisory Office in Balboa colony. He had no more Marines to spare. He had no more shuttles and only three helicopters. And until a new ship came in system he had no way of getting any more, either.

It was bad enough that Anglia colony, for now, reported only to its home government back on Earth. No one ever expected anything different from the stinking Americans beginning to fill up Southern Columbia, or indeed anyone from Earth's Anglosphere except for the people settling Secordia. But the colonies from the Earth's Third World? These were supposed and expected to stand by the UN, to toe its line, to build one-world government here to match the one building back home. Otherwise, Terra Nova would become just another twentieth-century Earth. And that, the acting commander knew, spelled danger.

"Commander?" an aide broke in, giving the honorific despite doubt about whether the title would become permanent. "News from our office in San Jose colony. They're under attack by hundreds of men armed with modern weapons."

"Shit!"

"It gets worse, Commander. The rebels are broadcasting from the radio station at our Balboa office-what used to be our Balboa office-calling on everyone to 'throw off Earth's chains.' And we have little or nothing to stop it."

That bastard, Annan, the acting commander thought. He could have bought all the little girls he wanted from the Yithrab, or even bought them from Earth at one of the open markets and brought them here. But nooo, the cheap son of a bitch had to go outside channels and avoid paying the little bit asked for. God save me from hereditary bureaucrats and their offspring. Now I get to sit, helpless, while the world we wanted to construct here falls apart around me.

"Can we contact the leader of the… rebels?"

The aide thought about that for a minute. "He's probably directing the attack in San Jose colony, sir. We can probably contact him after he's finished storming it."

"Great," the acting commander muttered, leaning his weary head down to rest it in his hands. "Advise the office in San Jose to surrender. Tell them to ask him to speak with me. Maybe I can make a deal to keep this from spreading."

" Comandante, " Pedro said, "the Earthpigs want to talk to you. They want to arrange a ceasefire before this war spreads."

Belisario considered. Should I? I could stop the carnage now, probably. But then, what prevents them from using the bases they retain to come back? What do I owe my fellow colonists languishing under the heel of the UN Birkenstock? How will my wife and our children ever sleep safely with slavers and tax gatherers hovering at the edges of our domain?

"Tell the pig to kiss my ass, Pedro," Belisario answered. "The war goes on until we are, all of us, free."