A Desert Called Peace

PART II
Chapter Nine

Cui Bono (who benefits)? -Cicero

UEPF Spirit of Peace, 27 April, 2511

The trip back from Atlantis Base had not been uneventful. One hundred and sixty-seven kilometers out from the docking bay a short had developed. Robinson had been the first to notice the distinctive stink in the recycled air. He'd wondered, later, if that had been because the flight crew had simply grown used to such smells.

In any case, it had been he who had first noticed and sounded the alarm. It was a damned good thing he had, too. A short in the lights was one thing, and likely survivable. A short in life support that turned into a fire was something else again.

The pilot, copilot and high admiral managed to scramble into EV suits in time. Sadly, the steward, while even quicker, had a faulty suit and suffocated before Robinson's eyes as the cabin filled with smoke and the pilot broke seal to cut off the fire.

It was that, the image of a man dying slowly and miserably in front of him, far more than the fanatical glare in Mustafa's eyes, that decided Robinson to think further on the wild Salafi's scheme.

To start a war, the high admiral mused back in his cabin aboard the Spirit of Peace. He laughed slightly at the thought. That wasn't exactly in my portfolio, now was it?

On the other hand, he reasoned, there wasn't anything in my orders about not starting a war. And there was that section about securing the blessings of peace for the Earth. I can hardly do that with my fleet crumbling around me, now can I?

Robinson turned his bolted-down swivel chair towards his desk, laying his two elbows down and leaning forward to rest his nose lightly on his two middle fingers.

Difficult, difficult. I'll have to keep it almost all to myself, do it almost all myself. Some of the things Mustafa had in mind? My crews would balk, most of them, and I can hardly afford a mutiny in the fleet.

But the benefits? If we can break the FSC, who on Terra Nova could resist a rising progressive tide? The TU? They're the model for progressivism on that planet. The other, continental, supranationals? They aspire to become like the TU. Bharat? Nationalist in some ways, yes, but such a hodgepodge of ethnicities they could be broken up with little more than a nudge to some of the separatist groups. Zhong Guo? Almost as badly mixed as Bharat. They could be handled.

Then, too, this could be exciting and I'm bloody bored.

"Computer?" Robinson demanded of the Earth-tech model sitting atop his desk.

"Yes, High Admiral."

"Create a file. Label it… mmm… 'Pax 2511.' Restrict it to my voice only, both additions and access."

"Done, High Admiral."

Robinson paused, organizing his thoughts.

"Computer, add to the file all that is known to us about the Terra Novan World League and the Tauran Union. In particular I want profiles of all the major players. Then I want you to find whatever is known about the Salafi Ikhwan. Get me everything available on the subjects of guerilla warfare and terrorism. Lastly, for now, I want an economic analysis of the Federated States of Columbia, Terra Nova. Emphasis is on vulnerabilities. After you are done, erase all traces of your search, except for what remains in the file, Pax 2511. Work."

"Working, High Admiral."

UEPF Spirit of Peace, 28 May, 2511

"Mustafa hasn't the slightest idea of what he's about," said Robinson aloud in the privacy of his quarters. His eyes had grown a bit tired from reading the material he had had collected and which was on display on the Novan-built view sceen mounted on the wall. He looked away, resting them on a painting he had kept for himself out of the recently auctioned Vatican collection.

"He really thinks this god of his-which does not and cannot exist-will do all the heavy thinking and lifting. He really believes that if he and his followers will only sacrifice and fight, then everything else will work out by divine will. Do I really want to entrust the future of my fleet, my planet and my class to a lunatic like that? I think not," the high admiral scoffed.

For over a month Robinson had been studying the problem. In that month he had come no nearer to a solution than he had been when he had last visited Atlantis Base. The FSC, with its three hundred million people, its industry and economy that dominated the planet, its matchless armed forces, was simply too tough to break under the limited attacks Mustafa had in mind. Add in that it was quite capable, albeit at a terrible cost, of swatting the Peace Fleet from space and…

"Not a chance," Robinson said to himself. "And not a chance I will give him the nukes to make his attacks more effective. Simple analysis would tell the Feds where they had come from; they've already got plenty of material to compare them to from the remains of the two cities we leveled in their Great Global War. And they would retaliate; there's no question about that. They couldn't then, with no way to loft a warhead into space, but now they could and they would.

"Tough problem."

He stood and began to pace.

"Should I have the bio people transfer some form of disease to Mustafa? No… no, I don't think so. There are some things that even I can't contemplate doing. Bio war is one of them."

Robinson turned his eyes back to his view screen and continued reading.

UEPF Spirit of Peace, 29 May, 2511

The conference room had been paneled in rare, iridescent Terra Novan silverwood by one of Robinson's predecessors. It lent the room a warmth that was sadly lacking in most of the ship's areas. The table was likewise from below, as were the chairs that now held some nine members of Robinson's staff.

There'd been nothing for it but to bring some of his staff in for some small parts. Not that Robinson had told them anything important or ever intended to; far from it. But there were questions he didn't have time to answer and which the computer was simply unable to bring the required creativity of thought to bear upon. He needed human help.

"First question," Robinson began. "What can we consider to be progressive forces and organizations on Terra Nova?"

"Assuming by 'progressive' you mean the kind of forces which brought peace to Earth and prominence to our ancestors," answered his sociology officer, Lieutenant Commander Khan, a very white and blonde atheist who happened to have one prominent and progressive ancestor from old Pakistan, "then the answer is fairly simple. Progressive forces include the supranationals like the World League and the Tauran Union, the entertainment industry, the news industry, the humanitarian industry, the legal industry-especially that part of it devoted to international law-and those elements of the economy, like Oak Tree Computing, that are detached from any given nation state and benefit from the global economy the Terra Novans have developed in the last ten or twelve years."

"Humanitarian industry?" queried Robinson.

"It's an industry like any other," answered Khan evenly. "What they manufacture is guilt and good feelings. The good feelings they sell at a high premium to those who need to feel good about themselves. They're no different from a company that makes cold remedies, except they are dealing with the relief of guilty emotions rather than sniffles. That, and that those who manufacture cold remedies are not also in the business of making colds."

"I'd always thought of those as existing to do good," the high admiral objected.

Khan, the realist, smiled. "They manage to do pretty well by doing good, Admiral. And it is highly questionable whether they do any real good, at least of the kinds they claim and probably even think they do. Do they feed the hungry? Surely. And they will keep feeding the hungry, as long as the hungry look pitiable enough to collect money for doing so. But the net result of feeding the hungry tends to be the destruction of local agriculture, which ensures a continuing supply of the hungry, a continuing supply of poster children, and a continuing supply of donations to assuage guilt.

"Then, too," Khan continued, "they can afford to pay for the best local housing wherever they go, and that drives the price of local housing beyond the reach of all but a very few locals. Do they educate people? Indeed they do, and thereby ensure that the most capable people get enough education to leave the place of their birth and go where the money and living are better. Alternatively, they will tend to hire highly educated people in these undeveloped hellholes they inflict themselves upon and use them for highly skilled work… like driving around and translating for the humanitarian aid workers. Oh, yeah, that's value added."

The fleet's Druidic chaplain interjected, "I remind you, Ms. Khan, that it was precisely those kind of groups that helped our ancestors bring Earth to peace and stability at last."

"The admiral asked me for analysis, Your Wisdom," answered Khan respectfully. Atheist or not one had to respect the power of Earth's official clergy of which the Druids were a part. "I make no moral judgments. What I have told him is the effective operating method of the local international humanitarian aid community, as it was for our own planet's. They are a plague to whatever place they visit, but they are equally a boon to the cause of international progressivism."

"What Sosh has said is true, Admiral," added the staff communications officer. "But it could not be true unless the news media and entertainment industries of which she spoke were willing to accentuate the positive and cover up the negative."

Khan nodded her head in agreement.

Robinson tapped his fingers against his face, thinking. "How long," he asked, "before the Novans can achieve interstellar travel?"

Estimates ranged wildly from "Fifty years" to "Centuries."

Engineering disagreed. "Twenty years, Admiral. Possibly as few as fifteen."

That was a shock.

"Explain that estimate," the high admiral ordered.

"The state of their technology right now is about where Earth was in the early twenty-first century. But that's only in general. They're already ahead of where we were in some areas-the Federated States of Columbia is, in any case-because a), they know a lot more of what is possible than our ancestors did and b) the FSC has been fanatical about space research ever since your predecessor nuked two of their cities."

"That doesn't mean they will though," Ms. Khan objected. It really was a frightening thought, the barbarians of Terra Nova loose in space.

"No," Engineering agreed. "But they could and that is what the High Admiral asked."

"Could we prevent them from doing so short of war?" Robinson asked.

"No." Everyone agreed. "No."

Khan added, "Though the kind of war might make a difference."

Atlantis Base, Earth Year 14 June, 2511

They met in Robinson's ashore quarters, a spacious house set apart from all other buildings by a high wall and broad, green lawn. Lit naturally by tall, narrow windows, the apartment was furnished in the best of Earth and Novan styles, kept spotless by a crew of dimwitted proles. The tables were gleaming wood; the couches and chairs supple leather. Thick rugs covered the porcelain tiles of the floors and rare art hung on the walls.

"We cannot be directly involved, Mustafa. Understand that much from the beginning. We can guide you, help you, partially fund you and give you a certain amount of intelligence. But we will not get directly involved under any circumstances."

Barely, Mustafa restrained the urge to pronounce UE's high admiral a "coward." Then again, the Salafi doubted that the word would have meant much to the high admiral. Mustafa was certain that the idea of cowardice had left the UE lexicon every bit as completely as had the concept of courage. Besides, coward or not, the man was an infidel, an atheist, and that was, in Mustafa's opinion, infinitely worse.

"Money?" Mustafa sneered. "I have money. Intelligence? Allah will provide victory to us or not, as he wills, without your " intelligence ." I am wasting my time here."

"Not so fast, son of the desert." Robinson was really thinking son of a bitch but that would have been impolitic to say. "Our aid means more to you than you imagine."

In one of those little quirks of fate that sometimes happen, the Fleet chaplain, Druid though he was, had proven of more value than all the rest of Robinson's other counselors. The Druid, at least, understood Islam, though it could hardly be said he approved of it.

"Allah will provide," Robinson echoed. "Allah will provide your weapons, then? Or will you have to find them yourself? Allah will make the Federated States complacent, or will you have to be clever on your own behalf and in His cause? How do you know, Mustafa, that Allah did not provide me? Or do you question that all things, to include me, come to pass only through his favor? I am shocked, shocked, that you think to spurn the gift He has provided."

Robinson keyed the intercom on the table at which he and Mustafa spoke. "Bring my car around for my guest. My business here is concluded."

"Wait," the Salafi said, holding up a hand. "Perhaps I was hasty. We may yet be able to do business together."

Atlantis Base, Earth Year 19 June, 2511

Unni Wiglan was thrilled, thrilled, that the high admiral had invited her, personally, to return to Atlantis Base for consultations. The prestige alone was invaluable. And the comfort of being in the one place on Terra Nova which gave proof that her values were true? Priceless.

She'd shown the high admiral her gratitude, too, in a number of ways.

Better, the high admiral had shown himself to be a man of both caring and culture. He'd been nothing but questions and concern about the very things Unni herself cared about: improving the low regard in which the World League was held, limiting the anarchic and archaic "sovereign" rights of Terra Nova's two hundred and twelve nation-states, the plight of the people of Filistia, groaning under the heel of Zion, among other worthy causes. She'd been especially pleased when the high admiral had dismissed Zion's claims with the words, "Bloody Jews."

United Earth had no more Jews; they'd all been either killed or sent off world to the colony the Arab League had given them to entice them away.

And then there was the great concern the high admiral had shown for the Terra Novan natural environment. He'd himself noted that in the last two hundred years Terra Nova's mean temperature had increased a staggering. 3 degrees Celsius. "It just can't go on, my dear Unni. Why, in a thousand years the planet will become uninhabitable. And did you know, my people say you may already have reached the tipping point; that, or you soon will. There's no time to waste."

Here, finally, was a representative from Earth who understood, who cared. For the first time in her life, Unni Wiglan thought there might be some hope for peace for her planet.

UEPF Spirit of Peace, Earth Date 28 June, 2513

"Computer, view screen on," Robinson ordered. Immediately the computer turned on the wall-mounted Kurosawa. "Find me the news, Federated States. Make it the Global News Network."

"… and it's a bright and sunny day here in First Landing, Hudson," the announcer said. "Not a cloud in the sky and… What the fu-? Oh, dear God… there's been a terrible accident at the Terra Nova Trade Organization."

Robinson winced as the view switched from the studio to a tall tower, standing alone but with other, similar ones in the background. The tower had a gaping hole near the base from which smoke poured out. He winced again when another airship slammed into a second building and then again when a third skyscraper was hit. Both of those shots were seen distantly, as the second and third towers were across the city.

He didn't really feel it, though, until the camera on site focused on people beginning to jump from the upper stories to avoid burning to death. Shivering, he remembered back to the smoke-filled cabin of the shuttle, to the face of the crew chief suffocating in the faulty EV suit.

"Poor people," he whispered. "But what am I to do? Wait until you're strong enough that it becomes my people jumping from burning buildings? I'm sorry for you; truly I am. But it was necessary.

"I hope, I really do, that no more, or not much more, will be necessary."

Interlude

31 January, 2050,

Turtle Bay, New York, New York,

United States of America, Earth

The speech was televised. Moreover, it was watched with keen interest in certain quarters.

Margot Tebaf had prepared long and hard for the occasion. The best speechwriters available to her had taken her thoughts-hers and Dominique's, who had quickly become rather more than a casual fling-and turned them into shining prose, a beacon to light the dark night and turn it to day.

Margot's speech was, from the progressive point of view, exactly on point. Perhaps many, even most, viewers thought it full of pious platitudes, inanities and wishful thinking. She and they simply didn't share the same concepts, even the same vocabulary. In that sense it was a failure, but a predictable one. Moreover, those people really didn't matter. In the more important sense, for people who did share the same world view and did matter-the news media, the European Parliament, the various humanitarian aid and human rights activist organizations around the world (of which there were hundreds of thousands, large and small), and the increasingly hereditary bureaucrats at the United Nations-the speech was a resounding success.

They could read the code phrases put into the speech by Margot's speechwriters. They knew that "increased political stability" was a nicer way of saying "deportation of troublemakers." They knew that "fair distribution of human talent" meant "keep the highly talented from emigrating out of their own hellholes to the United States."

Moreover, the insightful among the viewers saw something that Margot grasped, if at all, only in embryonic form. If they could cut off the flow of immigrants to the United States, and make this new world the only permissible outlet for people who simply didn't care for transnational governance, that would be good. But what would be infinitely better would be the effect of moving those same people out of their home countries in even greater numbers than the United States had ever been willing to accept. For each one that left, say, Europe weakened the resistance to supranational and transglobal governance while each weakening of resistance led to more supranational and transglobal governance. This, in turn, led to more people wanting to leave which, if allowed, would still further weaken resistance to transglobal governance.

It was, the viewers saw, a perfect solution, an elegant solution. Moreover, it did not have the distressing side effect of increasing resistance, and providing an unfortunate counterexample, within the United States. To one another they said, "What's not to like?"

And so the consensus grew-for it was a consensus, not a conspiracy- this new world is the solution to our problems here on Earth.

Chapter Ten Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised. -Machiavelli, The Prince

Casa Linda, 29/9/459 AC

If one picture was worth one thousand words, how many words were saved by half a dozen, in living color? The pictures fronted a newspaper that lay unopened upon the desk. There was no need to open it. That front page said everything necessary with its display of dismembered arms and legs, broken bleeding children, and people burned and blasted almost beyond recognition.

They have given me what I asked for, thought an inexpressibly saddened Patricio Carrera. But I will not thank them for it. I wish they had not.

His eyes wandered down again, down to a picture of a little girl. This one, at least was alive. Bloody, she was; covered in blood from head to foot. In the picture her skin showed through only at the twin tear tracks on her cheeks. The little girl was standing perfectly well. She was quite unhurt.

The baby's mother, however, was a ghastly, exsanguinated ruintorn and bloody meat-lying on the street before her.

Though Carrera was saddened, an element of celebration charged the air of Casa Linda. Men passing in the hallways of the house spontaneously lifted their hands to "high five" as they passed. The Boss can do it now! We're going to war! Daugher and Bowman butted heads, literally and for the sheer violent joy of the thing, every time they passed in a hall.

Carrera, himself, was rather more restrained. He had a plan. He had all the diagrams. He had tables of manning and equipment, pay scales, grade requirements, training schedules…

And I have guilt. Is it my fault, my doing, that these people were attacked? Or would it have happened eventually, anyway? I suppose I'll never know.

Lourdes interrupted his thoughts with a cup of coffee. She pretended not to notice as he quickly wiped a forming tear from his own eye. "What happens now, Patricio?"

"I don't know, not for sure. I don't yet have the authority. I don't have the money; I don't have the equipment, I don't have the men. I don't have the land to train on. I don't have the uniforms, the ammunition, the barracks… even tents we lack. All I have is a plan and control of some money, with more on the way… that, and a few connections."

Lourdes glanced down at the newspaper, then back to her boss. "But you and General Parilla have an appointment with the acting president in just three days, Patricio. Isn't that about getting all those things?"

"Yes. But Parilla and I both have our doubts about how easy it will be. Even after this," he said as his hand gestured towards the paper.

"I have faith in you, Patricio. You will get what you need."

He sighed. Maybe the girl was right. "Lourdes… you're a reasonable girl, as reasonable as anyone in the country. Do you believe we… Balboa should go to war over this?"

Lourdes' eyes flashed pure Castilian fire, glowing hot with rage and hate. This fire would have been commonplace during the Reconquista , the centuries-long drive to rid Spain of the hated Moslem. On Cortez's march to Tenochtitlan to conquer the Mexica a similar flame had lit the eyes of his conquistadors. Aboard the ships of the Holy League the night before the bloody naval battle at Lepanto, Don John's sailors' and marines' eyes had shone so. It was the very fire that had once made Spain "the nation with the bloody footprint."

"Oh, very much, yes. Yes, yes, yes." Her foot stamped. "You must make them pay for this!"

Carrera nodded, satisfied. A hand reached out for a cigarette. "Lourdes, would you get Professor Ruiz on the phone for me? Then call Parilla's secretary and see when he will be available."

Saint Nicholasberg, Volga, 30/9/459 AC

Smoke curled up from half a dozen vile Volgan cigarettes to gather and congeal along the ceiling and walls of the room. A small buffetand that was not vile at all-sat pillaged on a table near the room's only door. Inside, men no longer young argued over their state's future.

"Stefan Ilyanovich, I tell you for the last time there is no more foreign exchange to be had." The speaker, Pavel Timoshenko, a subminister of finance for economically moribund Volga, spoke, on behalf of his chief, to an assistant to an industrial minister.

A note of something like hysteria crept into Ilyanovich's voice. "Our factories are crumbling. We are losing even the ability to extract our own oil. We are in desperate need of the technology that only the East, the FSC and the TU, or Yamato can supply us. And you tell me we cannot even buy it." Ilyanovich looked despondent, almost crushed. He hung his head in despair.

Timoshenko, not wanting to appear unsympathetic, said, "My friend, it is not that we would not buy it if we could. It is not even that the East will not sell to us. Since the Reds"-for the tsar who had instituted Tsarist-Marxism in Volga had, like his philosophical predecessors, chosen that color to symbolize his social revolution"have been gone, the East, most of them at least, are quite willing to sell. But they will not give it away. Welcome to the free marketplace." He reached over to squeeze Ilyanovich's shoulder.

Ilyanovich looked up. "Then sell something, before we have nothing left to sell."

Timoshenko shook his head sadly. "That's just the point. We have nothing but the very raw materials to sell. And no one wants to buy. The world is glutted. Even the price of gold is down, what with all the precious metal the UEPF has dumped, or we would sell that."

"Weapons?" Ilyanovich held out his hands in plea.

Timoshenko shook his head, shrugged. "Ordinarily we could sell our weapons. But all of our former clients deserted us as fast as we deserted them. It doesn't matter; they have no money. And those who can buy don't want what we have. They want newer, more modern, Columbian or Tauran arms."

The men present looked to the representative of the ministry of defense. After finishing off the caviar-laden cracker in his fingers, and wiping the corners of his mouth with a napkin, Vladimir Rostov answered the unspoken question.

"We make good weapons," he said. "Yes, they're different from the East's but, in the main, about as good-in some cases better, used properly-and always much, much cheaper. How could they not be when we pay the workers who produce them about ten percent of what their western equivalents earn? But after decades of selling "chimp models"-they look the same as the best equipment but have all of the really good features taken out-no one wants to buy who can afford better. Forty years of our arms, in Moslem hands, being bested by Zion and the FSC hasn't helped matters. We have managed to sell some heavy rocket launchers to al Jahara, true, but that is all. When they wanted tanks they went for FS models. When they wanted infantry vehicles they bought Anglian. They could have good, top of the line, T-38s-hell, I would sell them T-48s!-for what they can afford to pay. But they aren't even asking."

This was a bad sign indeed. For forty years the old empire had bartered its weapons for hard currency, needed raw materials, and political influence. Now its successor, the Republic of Volga, couldn't sell them even without the political strings. And weapons were about all it had to offer. Millions upon millions of tons of finished arms and munitions sat rusting, unused and unwanted, in military storage yards all over the country. The times were bleak.

Rostov tapped the table top in anger. "It is worse, even, than the picture I have painted. The FSC are already beating the Salafi fanatics in Pashtia like they own them. As soon as that is done they'll be going after the next state on their list; quite possibly Sumer again. Then they'll go after another. Then another. In a few years, not more than six the General Staff thinks, most of our former ex-clients are going to get the living shit kicked out of them by the Federated States-Kingdom of Anglia Alliance. The Sumeris still have almost exclusively Volgan heavy equipment. Even what we didn't build ourselves is mostly based on our systems; closely enough that few can tell the difference from the outside. They're almost all "chimp models," but who will care about that? When the FSC and the Anglians are through, our reputation for making arms will be destroyed for a century. Two centuries!"

Rostov rubbed a chin perplexedly. "Hmmm. I wonder if… no, I suppose not."

Ilyanovich reached for a glass of hot, overly sweet Volgan tea. "Is there no way to save that reputation? We have the arms, thirty thousand tanks in storage or more, enough possibly to see us through some of the hard times ahead if we could sell them for even a fraction of their value, at something better than scrap metal value anyway."

Timoshenko held up his hand to silence the others. He had studied and traveled in the East, even during Imperial days. During that time he had picked up a few decidedly un-Volgan ideas. One such was coming to him now.

"Comrades, it occurs to me that there is one chance. If we can somehow show that our arms are second to none-okay, okay… at least good enough- we can sell them in the future. The money we get from that will give us the ability to buy some high technology, enough to continue getting our oil and other minerals out of the ground. That will bring more hard currency and a favorable, or at least less unfavorable, trade balance. We must have positive advertising. Can we not get our forces to Pashtia?"

It was the representative of the Foreign Ministry's turn. "Forget it, Pavel. We are definitely not invited in any major way. Border and convoy guard maybe. Probably not even that."

"Not even that." The one soldier in the group added, "It wouldn't make much difference even if we sent in the Guards. Since we left Pashtia and since the breakdown of the government, our army is a wreck, good soldiers-some of them anyway-in a broken organization. Besides, the point Pavel wants us to make is, I think, that our weapons are good in rich undeveloped world hands. This point cannot be made if they are in Volgan hands."

Timoshenko ended the discussion by suggesting, "Comrades, let us await developments a bit, shall we? Perhaps the horse will learn to sing after all."

Las Mesas, Republic of Balboa, 30/9/459 AC

Young Ricardo Cruz looked into and past the television screen. It cannot be said he really even saw the images. He had no need to. He had seen them before, or others much like them, over and over, perhaps one hundred times in two days.

Cruz's girlfriend, Caridad, sat next to him. He had his arm around her. Unlike more usual occasions, now she had to make no effort to keep his pawing teenaged hands away. She really liked Ricardo so she didn't always fight very hard. But even token gestures were important and she was a little disturbed that she needn't make any.

He was a good looking boy, was Ricardo, his appearance marred only by somewhat unevenly prominent ears. Olive of skin and brown of eye; at five feet, seven inches, Cruz was a bit taller than the national norm. He towered over Cara's five, one.

"Ricardo," Cara insisted, "stop fretting so. You are only seventeen. There's nothing you can do to help. Only the gringos can avenge us."

Cruz said nothing, but his mind seethed and stomach churned at the harm done his country and his people. The idea of some other country doing the job that he felt deep inside was his own didn't sit well either. He'd always been a boy to take personal responsibility for things.

A fourteen year old Ricardo heard the girl crying. He heard, too, the predatory laughter of what had to be at least three or four boys. Neither the laughter, nor the jeers, nor the numbers much affected him. The crying, however, did.

He began to walk briskly to the door of the three-bedroom adobe house he shared with his parents and three siblings. On the way he paused to consider taking with him the machete he used to help with the harvest in season. It was a good tool, strong, flexible, very sharp and not too heavy. But was it the right tool?

Better to have it and not need it, he thought, than to need it and not have it.

He took the machete.

On the front porch of the house he saw them standing in the road. There were four, plus the girl. They were well-dressed, rabiblancodressed.

Money, he thought. Money come to have a little fun with the farm girls.

He didn't recognize any of the four boys but he'd seen the girl before in a class a grade behind him. He thought her name was Cara and that she lived a couple of miles down the road farther away from town. There were books lying in the dirt of the road, a cheap orange backpack, as well. He thought they must be hers since none of the boys looked the type to care much for schoolbooks.

One of the boys held the girl- yes, Cara's her name- from behind while another unbuttoned her white, schoolgirl's blouse and felt inside. The last two stood to either side until one of them bent down to grab her legs and pick them up. She struggled and cried for help as they began to carry her off to the woods abutting the road.

"I don't think so, maricones."

The three carrying Cara stopped and looked. The fourth member of their party lay face down on the road, blood pouring from his scalp to mix with the reddish dirt of the road. Some lunatic stood over that one, with a bared machete one hand, the scabbard in the other, and a remarkably serene look on his face. The punk with the machete was considerably younger, they thought, and considerably smaller, they could see. This didn't seem to bother him any more than did the fact that they were still three to his one.

"Keep hold of the meat," said the leader of the boys to the one holding Cara's arms. "Come on, Manuel, let's show this campesino piece of shit who he can and can't fuck with."

" Si, Eduardo," answered Manuel.

Little Cruz might have been. But his young arms had been strengthened by many seasons' hard labor with the machete. What work had the rabiblancos ever done much harder than lifting a poor maid's skirt? Young Cruz stood his ground as Eduardo and Manuel advanced on him.

And stopped dead when he didn't run. In that moment's hesitation Cruz sprang forward like a panther. Eduardo was the nearer. Cruz feinted high, then swung the machete around Eduardo's upflung arms and cut inward, below the ribs. The rabiblanco gasped and looked down at where his blood welled out from his deeply sliced side, pouring over the silver metal blade. Eduardo screamed and promptly fainted.

Cursing, Cruz tugged at the machete. Crap, it's caught on the ribs. Shoulda cut even lower. While he was worrying at the machete, Manuel's fist-he was perhaps made of tougher stuff than his chief, Eduardo-struck Cruz beside the head, knocking him to the dirt and causing him to see stars.

With Cruz apparently out of commission, Manuel bent low to see to Eduardo's wound. This was found to be rather a bad mistake as Cruz, stars or not, launched himself directly from the road to crash into Manuel's side. The two went tumbling over in a flurry of punches and kicks, a mix of Manuel's punches to the farm boy's face and Cruz-delivered knees to the groin. Two or three such were one or two more than Manuel's gonads could take. Cruz left him puking in the dirt and walked- staggered, really-to where Eduardo and the machete lay joined.

Using two hands, Cruz roughly pulled the machete from the now moaning Eduardo's side, bringing forth another scream and a renewed flood of bright red blood. Bloody machete in hand, still staggering, Cruz began to close on the last member of the rape party, the one holding the girl. This one lacked Manuel's sense of determination. Having seen three of his friends-all older, bigger and stronger than the little demon who'd attacked them-the last of the would-be rapists simply took to his heels, leaving Cara alone.

She ran to Cruz. "Thankyouthankyouthankyou for saving me!"

"You're welcome," he answered. "But now could you lead me home? My eyes have swollen so badly I really can't see."

Cara shuddered, remembering the way she and Ricardo had met. He's the bravest boy I've ever met, she thought. If he goes to war, he'll surely be killed.

Cara took a very personal view of things. She liked Ricardo… a great-oh, a very great-deal. She didn't want him killed. She couldn't even stand the thought of him being hurt. And the Federated States could be counted on to fix the problem without Cruz's help. So why should he leave her and risk his life, even if it were possible?

Finca Mendoza, Las Mesas, Balboa, 1/10/459 AC

A mere dozen miles from where Cruz had sat with Cara, another Balboan boy, Jorge Mendoza, sat alone in front of a television. In his hand he held a memento, a set of collar insignia, from his brother, Arturo, fallen a dozen years ago in battle against the gringos.

To say that Jorge did not like Federated States was an understatement. His brother had been a hero to him, a great smiling, kindly presence. Ever since Arturo's death beside his commander, Captain Jimenez, Mendoza had hated the Federated States, its people, and everything the two stood for.

Not by any means alone among the population of the underdeveloped parts of Terra Nova, Mendoza had been neither shocked nor even particularly disapproving of the attack on the Federated States a couple of months previously. To him, the people killed had had no faces. They were merely the great, opposed, other which had done his beloved big brother to death.

Other people did have faces though, faces as clear as Arturo's. Those faces smiled out at him from the television; faces of men and boys, young and old; faces of mothers and daughters; faces that could have been his own family's.

Mendoza's hatred for gringos ebbed a bit. Only so much hate could a heart hold and his had to make room for the Salafi Ikhwan.

Vice-Presidential Palace, Ciudad Balboa, 2/10/459 AC

"That bastard!" fumed Balboa's new president, Guillermo Rocaberti, pounding the tabletop. Rocaberti had taken the oath of office as president, but had not yet had time to move into the presidential palace. The palace needed considerable repair anyway, so he was in no hurry.

Surprised at the unexpected bang, the president's aide looked up from the screen. He asked, "Which bastard, Senor Presidente?"

"I'm not sure which one. Whoever put that goddamned 'public service message' on the television."

Rocaberti pointed at a silent television showing row on row of small portrait pictures of the victims of the Constitution Day attacks. Had the TV not been deliberately silenced, a voice would have been heard calling for rearmament and vengeance.

"That is not entirely clear, sir. Ex-General Parilla is reported to have a hand in it, but there is also supposedly some gringo involved."

"Gringo?"

"Yes, sir. There is a small group of them, a couple of dozen or so, we think. They've kept a low profile since they came here a few months back. We don't know much about them except that they have ties to Parilla."

"Soldiers?"

"Maybe ex-soldiers… mercenaries, perhaps."

"Why wasn't I told? Are they planning a coup?"

"Told what, sir? They haven't done anything. And Major Fernandez has reported them to be harmless, on extended vacation, actually."

"Wonderful! Fernandez! Do you think for a moment that Fernandez is anything but an outright enemy of this government? Never mind answering."

What's that bastard Parilla's plan? A new Balboan Defense Corps? A new Guardia Nacional? He half won the plebiscite seven years ago, so we were never able totally to get rid of the armed forces. On the other hand… hmmm. Maybe this might be a way to get them out of the way for a while. But they'll be back. Eventually, they'll be back. They always are. So, no, unless I can figure out a way to make sure they never come back, I've got to fight this.

"Get me Ford Williams on the phone. Now!" The aide quickly dialed the number of the country's second vice-president.

The National Assembly,

Ciudad Balboa, 3/10/459 AC

It had cost Parilla no money but much political capital to arrange this meeting with Guillermo Rocaberti and his Cabinet. This was to the good as, with the cost of the extensive advertising for which he and Carrera had personally paid, immediate funds were beginning to run low. He had no choice but to get the government to agree to send a military formation to the war. Pending funding from Carrera's uncle's estate, neither he nor those who supported him could afford to do this again if the propaganda campaign didn't work. In the president's conference room, richly paneled and decorated, Parilla was being grilled by a very suspicious group of politicians.

"General Parilla, what difference does it make if the Federated States wins this coming war with us or without us?"

Parilla turned his attention to the Minister of Police. " Senor, it could make all the difference in the world. If we help with the upcoming war, to the extent of our abilities, we will have a claim on the Federated States. We can expect further aid, possibly money to improve the Transitway, jobs… a greater prosperity.

"Leaving all that aside, however, the major reason to help them is that we have been fucking attacked. Our people have been murdered. The blood of our innocents has run in our streets."

Parilla pointed to Carrera while addressing the group. "My friend here believes that the FSC is likely to be generous under the circumstances."

The minister of police looked dismally at Carrera. "No blood would have spilled, most likely, had this man not killed six Salafis."

No more than had Jimenez did Parilla want Carrera to say a word about that. He just might tell the truth; that he had been angry and half mad with grief and so had baited the Salafis into attacking him. Not that Carrera had ever admitted it. Indeed, everyone close to him avoided asking precisely because they were sure he would admit it. That particular truth must not get out.

Parilla merely answered, "That was self-defense… so said the investigating officer. So said that officer's commander, Xavier Jimenez."

The policeman lifted a scornful and skeptical eyebrow.

Greasy looking, though said to be an honest man, Balboa's minister of justice, Ruben Arias, turned to Carrera. "You are from the FS, so no doubt you have a claim to understanding them greater than ours. But tell me this; we have a long and unfortunate history of military rule. If we let you and General Parilla bring about this force you have spoken of, what is to keep them from restoring military rule once again?"

Carrera stroked his own face lightly while formulating his answer. "You ask a good question, Senor Arias. I have thought upon it much before coming here today. I think, in the first place, that the lesson of the invasion twelve years ago-that the FSC will not tolerate military rule in this continent-will not soon be forgotten by the soldiers.

"Nor are we speaking of keeping a large standing force. This will be a one time only event. When the war is over you could disband the force or reduce it down to a manageable size, fold it back into the Civil Force or even turn it into a reserve formation." Carrera brought his hands together to illustrate. Of course, since the war is going to last at least a century, reduction in force is a most unlikely possibility. Besides, You'll get rid of my army over my dead body.

Arias continued on that point. "That is very easy to say, senor. But what if they won't lay down their arms afterward?" He folded his arms, looking triumphant.

Parilla took up the challenge. "Who controls the spending in the country? Surely, Senor Arias, you do not think that the men who volunteer for this expeditionary force are going to want to continue in arms if they are not paid?"

Arias saw an opening. "And that is another thing. How are we to pay for this? We are financially… well, if not prostrate, then by no means in good shape."

Without elaborating on Carrera's part in the planning, Parilla answered, "My people have estimated the cost of this operation at just over four hundred million drachma a year over and above the aid we can expect from the FSC. That is, it should be about that if we scrimp a little. Before the invasion Pina was taking almost three hundred million per year in illegal taxes from the Cristobal Free Trade Zone alone. You gentlemen can make that illegal tax a legal one… and a larger one, too. That alone would pay for the operation. But it is still very unlikely that we will have to pay for the whole thing ourselves. The Federated States can be expected to provide support if we ask."

Back and forth the argument went. For each objection raised by the Cabinet, Parilla and Carrera had an explanation of a benefit to be derived. As the opportunity arose Parilla dropped narrow hints of the personal gains that might accrue to the men present if they were to approve. "Just think of the benefits to our economy, gentlemen. We'll take several thousand young, aggressive and unemployed-hence dangerous-men out of circulation for a while. They will earn money that they will spend freely, being young men. Soldiers eat a lot! This can only help our many farmers." Parilla knew that many in the room had significant agricultural interests. "Farmers-and they make up much of the country, you recall-will buy more. New shops will be opened and old ones thrive. And gentlemen, one way or another foreigners will pay for it all. Even if we get not one centavo in aid, these are solid gold to us. My own financial interests will advance as will those of everyone here."

Parilla thought, And if I didn't act as if I were in this for my own financial benefit you would all be certain I was planning a coup, wouldn't you? Then you would fight us even harder. Well, believe the worst of me; it's no more than I know is true of you. To most of you bastards there's no good reason to do anything except for a personal or family profit. So if you want to think Patricio and I are in it for the money so much the better. You probably don't know that Patricio himself is on the verge of enough wealth that any petty graft available in Balboa shrinks to insignificance by comparison.

Still, despite best efforts, Parilla and Carrera could see the politicians weren't buying. Parilla turned to Carrera and said in a whisper, "I told you they wouldn't be reasonable. Fortunately we've planned for such a contingency."

Before going in to confront the president and Cabinet, Parilla had insisted on preparing another means of persuasion. As he had told Carrera, "Patricio, you know how to raise, train, and use military forces for military objectives. Trust me when I say that I know how to use them for other objectives. I've had practice. And I've understudied some of the best."

Parilla gave a signal to Jimenez, who had accompanied them to the meeting. Jimenez slipped out quietly to make a brief telephone call. Within twenty minutes the men in the meeting room could hear the sound of singing, the measured tread of booted feet. Marching men approached.

Outside of the National Assembly Building two thousand former members of the Balboan Defense Corps, most of them also current members of the Civil Force that had replaced the BDC, marched in formation to positions surrounding the building. They were all uniformed and armed.

At Parilla's orders, Jimenez and Fernandez between them had done all the necessary coordination to bring every conveniently located unit-police and paramilitary, both-into position to threaten the government ministers. To any within sight of the demonstration it looked exactly like an impending coup d'etat.

Parilla had not been content merely to show a greater force at his disposal than the government could muster. A very substantial bribe had insured that the president of the Republic's own guard-constitutionally distinct from the Civil Force-would ostentatiously leave the assembly building and join the rest of the demonstrators. Perhaps if Rocaberti had had longer in office to cement his ties with the Presidential Guard they would not have defected. As it was, he did not have those ties cemented.

Loudspeakers carried by the leaders of the units began to state the demands of the defenders to be sent to the war to crush those who had attacked their country.

Looking from the window of the meeting room the assembled cabinet ministers saw their only supporting military force leave to join the demonstrators. Arias was the first to realize that the men meeting with Parilla and Carrera were now defenseless.

"I suppose you planned this?" he accused Parilla, banging his fist on the conference table.

Parilla shook his head and answered, quite untruthfully "No, senor , I did not plan, though I knew it might happen." None present believed him. He hadn't expected them to. The lie was for politeness' sake only.

"This won't get you anywhere, you know. Even if you force us to approve your plan, we are not the Assembly. They must vote on it."

Parilla didn't answer but looked out the window to where a series of automobiles were disgorging a carefully selected quorum of the National Legislative Council, the seventy-two member body that had the power to approve the essential elements of Carrera's plan. It had taken a fair amount of the time he'd had available to determine who would support the move to send an expeditionary force to the war. Two were members, somewhat distant members, of Carrera's late wife's family. Her father, at her mother's insistence, had persuaded them to vote in favor. Others had been bribed or promised bribes for their votes. A fairly large number hadn't needed much persuading. In all, Parilla had assembled enough legislators to both constitute a quorum, just, and to insure that he would win the vote.

After watching the legislators being disgorged from the cars that had brought them, Parilla turned away from the window to address the Cabinet. Sounding sincere, he said, "In a few minutes we will be able to legally enact the legislation the country will need to shoulder its burden of responsibility to the world community and avenge our own dead. I think that the men outside will not permit much debate on the matter. Mr. President, I suggest that you use all of your political skills to push this vote through as quickly and painlessly as possible."

Arias stood straight. "I, for one, have no intention of permitting this to happen. I will not stand by and make some gringo the commander of the forces of the Republic. You can kill me if you wish," he sneered. "But I will not go along."

Soothingly, Carrera said, " Senor Arias, you wrong me. I have no intention of either harming you or being the commander. For one thing, I was a gringo; for all that I live here in Balboa now. The troops have no great reason to trust me. They don't even know me. Moreover, having a gringo commander will make the whole thing smack of an FSC ploy to keep effective rule over Balboa.

"No, sir, I will not be the commander. I wouldn't accept it, at this time, if it were offered. General Parilla, however, is fully suited to command this force. He has my loyalty. He plainly has the loyalty of those men outside. He is the only former military ruler in Balboa's history ever to voluntarily step down from office to return real rule to an elected civilian government. Senor Arias, you may relax. General Raul Dario Parilla will be the commander of this force." I will merely be his executive officer… very executive.

Arias did not, repeat not, trust this gringo son of a bitch in the slightest. He had one last strong card to play to stop him and he used it.

"Gentlemen, there is one little problem," Arias said. "Get the entire legislative assembly to vote for your little project and it still wouldn't matter. It would require a plebiscite to recreate a true armed force for Balboa. That would take months to set up and tally the votes on."

"That is true, senor, as far as it goes," Carrera conceded with a shrug. Thank God for good lawyering. "But it is certainly within the power of the Legislative Assembly to sponsor a nongovernmental organization within the Republic. Much as the Gauls have sponsored Justice Without Borders or Helvetia has sponsored our planet's version of the Red Cross. The… oh, for now let's call it El Legio del Cid

… could even pay to the Republic what the World League pays to contributing states for peacekeepers, one thousand Federated States drachma a month each for troops actually deployed. That is, of course, assuming the FSC supports us as I expect they will. Seriously, General Parilla and I can promise the Republic one thousand drachma per man actually deployed, per month, after operational costs are paid but before any other expenditures are made. Gentlemen, that is, potentially, sixty to one hundred and fifty-six million drachma a year. Where else; how else, could the government increase its revenues by over fourteen percent so easily?" Where else could you find that much extra money to steal?

President Rocaberti scowled darkly. This bastard gringo had been talking to some lawyers, and apparently rather good ones. And the plebiscite had been his next to last card and last really good one. He'd played it and lost. There was only one thing left and he doubted it would work, not if they had serious financing as he had considerable evidence-witness the desertion of his personal guard-that they did.

Looking into Carrera's eyes, the president felt a chill. He's polite enough here, now. But he's got the look of madness about him. One last effort then.

"We cannot tax the Cristobal Free Zone to support what is, in essence, a private activity. The merchants would be up in arms," Rocaberti insisted. "It would be unconstitutional."

Inwardly, both Parilla and Carrera smiled. They'd expected this. Indeed, they'd wanted it. By refusal to fund, the government also gave up any semblance of control. All that blather about controlling the force by withholding funding? Gone now, with the refusal to fund. Moreover, they had a full list of demands to be made. The haggling then began.

By a reasonably large majority the Legislative Council ordered the creation of a nongovernmental organization, or NGO, final name to be determined, of not more than thirteen thousand, five hundred expeditionary troops plus required support back home (and the legislators had no clue as to how much support back home might be required), to secure the Republic from foreign enemies. It further required Raul Dario Parilla to negotiate a memorandum of understanding with the Federated States for the use and support of that force. The NGO so created was to quell the scourge of terrorism wherever it might be found. The legislators passed as well the enabling legislation to facilitate and govern such a force.

Casa Linda, 4/10/459 AC

Down in the cool and damp basement of Carrera's headquarters, the sergeant major stubbed out another cigarette as he labored to sort personnel files into a semblance of order. The files had been provided by an assistant to Major Jimenez. Except for meals, hasty ones, and brief periods for sleep, no one on Carrera's staff had taken any time off from their duties since Balboa had been attacked. Carrera was working himself no less than he and McNamara were working the men.

Beginning on the night of the 28th the house had been the scene of constant meetings and coordination sessions between Carrera and members of the Civil Force. At some of these the sergeant major had been present. Other members of Carrera's staff attended others.

It wasn't really McNamara's job to be selecting personnel. The Staff's II-the personnel management office, under Tom Christianshould have been doing it. They, however, were tied up in other things, notably coordination between Balboa and Abogado's nascent FMTGRB. So it was left to Mac to fill in the chain of command for the force that Carrera intended to lead into the war. To this end he was currently matching files to positions. The commanders and primary staff had long since been filled. The sergeant major was working on secondary staff now.

Siegel came in burdened by another stack of personnel files. "An action passed on is an action completed,' Top," he announced, dumping the files in front of McNamara. "These ones have been cleared by Fernandez."

McNamara looked at the top of the stack Siegel had brought. There, in plain English, was a summary of each file in the stack. "Sig, what t'e hell are you doing here? You're way too smart for t'is."

"Doing here? You mean with the old man?"

Seeing that this was exactly what McNamara meant, Siegel continued, "Oh… I just follow him out of idle curiosity."

The sergeant major tapped his fingers impatiently.

"I'm only half joking, Sergeant Major. Most people are predictable. The boss is not. Just watching him operate is a laugh a minute; always has been. Oh, I don't mean him, so much as watching the people around him. You and me, for example."

"Get out, Sig. And go tell t'e cook to put on more coffee."

"Sure, Top. But don't you ever wonder about why we're here? You know, you can tell a lot about somebody by what he reads; what he thinks is worth reading. I was up at the boss's desk two nights ago and he had a book out, face down. Know what I saw when I picked it up?"

"No and I don't care, eit'er."

"Yes, you do." Siegel closed his eyes, dredging up the memory. "I read:"

"I loved you, and so I took these tides of men

Into my hands and wrote my will

Upon the sky in stars… "

"Lawrence of Arabia, Top. And the CO had it specially marked."

"T'e cook, Siegel. Coffee."

McNamara watched Siegel make his exit, then made a notation on one file and shoved it aside. He reached for another.

Opening it, the sergeant major saw that this file was for a former BDC officer who had been in command of a company during the '47 invasion. For whatever reason, Fernandez had marked it "Politically Necessary." The officer, a Major Manuel Rocaberti, was a graduate of the Federated States Military Academy at River Watch, Class of 438. The file had not been signed off on by Jimenez. This was odd.

River Watch? This, with Fernandez's notation, was enough for the sergeant major. He had dozens more files to check out tonight. The Balboan officer, Manuel Rocaberti, was assigned to an important billet in the Ia, the operations office.

Office of the President of the Republic of Balboa, 4/10/459 AC

President Rocaberti made a few last minute notes on the speech he would give the people of Balboa telling them that their country had decided to pledge itself-sort of, in an only semi-official, nongovernmental way-to the war against the terrorists. Ultimately, what had decided him to cease resistance and to cooperate was not Parilla's or Carrera's persuasion, nor even the gutless capitulation of the Cabinet and Legislative Council. Instead, Rocaberti had been persuaded by the very attractive prospect of getting the old guard of the BDC out of the country for a while. Given a bit of time, and relief from pressure by the radicals of Pina's old political party and their BDC minions, Rocaberti thought he would have a much better chance of bringing a lasting democracy-which he defined as an oligarchy of the upper classes-to Balboa. It was the silver lining in this very dark cloud.

The president looked up from his note making. It was time to address the nation.

At the signal from the television man the president began.

"People of Balboa, eleven days ago our country was attacked. We were attacked brutally, suddenly, without warning and with no provocation on our part. We did nothing to provoke this attack in which hundreds of our people were murdered. The targets of that attack were not our country's defenders of the Civil Force, but inoffensive civilians going about their daily lives, innocent children, and our women.

"Even now a great army of vengeance and justice is being assembled from all over the world to resist and reverse this aggression, to free the peaceful people of the world from the threat of terror. Free peoples from every corner of the globe have pledged themselves to this worthy and noble task.

"In this desperate hour, the Republic of Balboa cannot shirk its responsibility to the rest of the world. Last night, in a late night session which was attended by myself, my Cabinet, the National Legislative Council, and those men of the Civil Force whose job it will be to carry the fight to come, the government of the Republic of Balboa, by an overwhelming majority, voted to facilitate the sending of an expeditionary force to assist the other democracies to end this plague.

"The patriotic and brave soldiers of the Civil Force will be the vanguard and center of our part of this armada. However, because they are few and the enemy many, because we need to secure our homeland as well as carry the fight to the enemies of civilization, the Legislative Council has authorized only that one thousand and fifty men of the Military Police companies of the Civil Force, exactly one quarter their strength, may transfer to the new. Any men recently retired may also volunteer without cost to their pensions.

"Still, the new organization will need several thousand volunteers to bring its units to the size needed for this operation. I call upon the young men of the Republic to give of themselves by volunteering for this enterprise."

Like hundreds of thousands across Balboa, Ricardo Cruz, aged seventeen, sat among family and friend in front of the snowy screen of the family television. (For while satellite television was in theory available, the premium tacked on by the Rocaberti family that controlled it made it prohibitively expensive for simple farmers.) Cruz contemplated his immediate plans. Tomorrow I will go down to the police station and sign up.

He thought of Cara and her feelings on the subject. She is so sweet… so pretty too. But she'll never understand that I have to go.

Manuel Rocaberti, too, watched his uncle's speech. His feelings on the subject were far different from Cruz's, however. Only that morning he had spoken to his Uncle, the president.

"Shut up, Manuel. You owe this to the family," the president had commanded.

Manuel pleaded, "But, Tio Guillermo, I'm no good. I've tried and I just don't have it. I've no business being a soldier."

"You're not going there to be a soldier, boy. You're going there to be a spy, my spy. I don't trust Parilla and I trust his pet gringo with the electric eyes even less. Those bastards forced this fucking under- the-table rearmament down my throat. I don't like it."

"So what can I do about it? Jesu Cristo, Tio, I'm not going as anything or anyone important."

"Watch, report, impede if possible. It isn't likely that they'll really be able to raise this force, not from scratch. Parilla's never been in command of a real army. And this gringo of his was-what?-a lieutenant colonel? All of that? Even you were a major," the president sneered. "But I want you there to make it as unlikely as possible, even so."

Interlude

29 July, 2067, United Nations Starship Kofi Annan

The ship on-screen bore a name in English letters, though that name was Chinese.

The Cheng Ho drifted slowly in high orbit around the planet people back home were already calling Terra Nova, or something similar in their own languages. In Arabic, for example, it was " al Donya al Jedida," in Chinese, " Xing She Jie," though the Chinese were as likely to say, " Xing Zhong Guo " which meant "New Middle Kingdom." Then again, for the Chinese, very little could be even of conceptual importance that was not China and Chinese.

The Cheng Ho hadn't sent word to Earth in six years, despite having carried several dozen messenger-bots capable of, and intended to, carry news from the ship homeward.

Like the earlier robotic probe, the Cristobal Colon, the Cheng Ho had taken off, in 2060, propelled by Sol's rays and laser stations positioned on planets, planetoids and in space. The laser stations had, by that year, grown much more numerous and powerful, cutting the time of flight to the rift nearly in half.

There had been much celebration on Earth when the ship had begun its long journey to the stars. Every country, every ethnicity, and nearly every interest group had a reason to be proud. Indeed, each had a stake in the voyage, on an emotional level at least, as the passengers had been carefully handpicked to be the best and the brightest representatives of their respective ascriptive, ethnic, cultural or national groups. As a matter of fact, not only were they the best and the brightest, much care had been taken to ensure they were also the most forward thinking, the least intolerant, persons available from those groups.

The crew members were not quite as diverse, being largely American, English, Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Brazilian with only token members from other nations. But the passengers?

There were three hundred and sixty-four Moslems, one hundred and eighty-one non-Moslem Europeans, a like number of Americans, roughly three hundred each Indians and Chinese, and about eight hundred passengers from other groups and nations. The average IQ was over one hundred and forty and the average adult educational level the Ph. D.

Thus, it had come as something of a shock when, a year after launch, the captain of the ship reported a murder. Moreover, the shock to Earth when he mentioned "rioting youths" was enough to cause an initial news blackout against any further reports from the Cheng Ho as tens of thousand more "youths" rioted in sympathy across the globe The blackout itself was followed by considerable censorship on what news was later allowed, yet clearly the problem of "rioting youths" had remained.

"Well, nobody's rioting aboard her now," observed the captain of the follow-on ship, the UNSS Kofi Annan, an exploration frigate, the first of its class, fitted out to search for and bring back news from the Cheng Ho.

"No, ma'am," answered an ensign manning the remote sensing station as the Annan reached the outer limits of its sensing range. "With radiation levels that high there's nobody alive on board. Only one shuttle missing, too. And its bay doesn't look like it saw many dockings or take offs. Only light burning, you see, Captain."

The captain grimaced and nodded, grimly. Hitting a button on her command chair to activate the on-board intercom, she said, "Marines? This is the captain speaking. I want a recon team ready in thirty minutes, full hardened suits upshielded for heavy radiation. Major Ridilla, meet me in my cabin for instructions. Flight deck? Prepare to bring them to the Cheng Ho. I want you to dock and wait to retrieve them. Captain, out."

Chapter Eleven Gold cannot always find good soldiers, but good soldiers can always find gold. -Machiavelli, The Prince

Casa Linda, 5/10/459 AC

For a change the Casa Linda was quiet. Differently from the past month, this day there were no shouting matches, no screaming in the halls. Even the keyboards and printers of the computers bought to design the force were silent. Above stairs, the only sounds were the hum of the window-mounted air conditioners, the sound of the kitchen staff going about its business, and the steady drumming of the incessant rain.

None of those sounds penetrated below to the basement which held, among other things, a plain but well equipped conference room. In this the entire staff, minus Lourdes but with Abogado added, had collected themselves for the final decision brief.

It was informal, that brief, as Carrera (once known as Hennessey) was, himself, informal. He sat at one end of the table that ran lengthwise down the room. The primary staff, some of the important secondaries, and Abogado filled the rest of the spaces. The remainder sat behind Carrera on upholstered chairs in three rows of five. Soult sat at a keyboard, in front and all the way to the right.

There was nothing on the walls but for three projection screens opposite Carrera and thirteen carved poles with bronze placards and topped by gilded or silvered, carved eagles.

This is going to be an insufferable data dump, Carrera fumed. God, I hate meetings. Nothing to be done for it, though.

"Let's get to it," he began. "Matthias, what do we have to work with?"

The Sachsen cleared his throat and answered, "Not as much as I'd like. Ze most-und, Patricio, I mean ze most- I vas able to come up viz vas seven hundred fifty million. Vorse, you can't use all uff it. I leveraged you zo hard zat you simply must keep a reserve to cover any downturn in your family's fortunes… zay, eight perzent. You may be able to use zat, even to dip a little deeper later on, if ze economy improves, generally."

Carrera had hoped for more but…

"Fair enough, Matthias. Let's see the Table of Organization and Equipment you've come up with, Dan."

All three projection screens lit up. The two on the flanks showed spreadsheets. The right one was budget, broken down by major element of expense: Pay, Subsistence, Operations, Major End Items, and the like. Some of those were further subdivided as, for example, Major End Items which showed separate entries for Small and Crew- served Arms, Aviation, Armor, Artillery, Transportation, Command and Control, Intelligence, Medical, Foreign Military Training Group, and so forth.

The left screen was a detailed breakdown by rank and military occupational specialty, or MOS, for the entire force to include the rump that would be left behind to send support forward and train replacements.

The center screen was a diagram marked "Brigade Table of Organization." Carrera knew it already, in general terms. After all, he'd been in everyone's shit for the last five weeks as they struggled through. The chart showed one unit, marked as a rectangle with a large X feeding to each corner and a smaller one above to show the size; namely, a brigade. The larger X indicated the type, infantry. Above that box and to the right was a number, "4997." This was the strength, not subdivided by rank, they'd agreed on.

One line ran down from that box to touch another line that ran almost from one side of the screen to the other. Twelve short lines descended from that longer one to a series of boxes. These twelve boxes had other symbols inside. Four showed large X's for infantry, one marked with the X and oval symbol for mechanized infantry, and one with crossed arrows for special operations troops or "Cazadors." -the word meant basically the same thing as "Jaegers," "Chasseurs," or "Rangers." Still others were marked for Artillery (a single large dot representing a cannon ball), Combat Support ("CS"), Aviation (a propeller), Service Support (SSP), Headquarters (HQ), and Naval (an anchor). Numbers showing above these boxes ranged from "372" for the smallest unit, the Cazadors, to "578" for the largest, the Service Support people.

Above each of that series of boxes were drawn two vertical lines, indicating that the units were "battalions."

"Let's just call a fucking spade a spade, shall we?" Carrera said. "We're forming with the intention of hiring ourselves to the Federated States. That makes us mercenaries even though we may call ourselves 'auxiliaries.' Traditionally, mercenaries form 'legions.' Moreover, we're going to be about the same size as a traditional, Old Earth Roman legion. Additionally, if you subtract the aviation and naval groups, we have ten sub-units just as did the legions of ancient Rome. And while we're at it," he added, "note that the sizes of our battalions are a bit small to really be battalions. Call us a legion and them fucking cohorts. Or celibate cohorts, for that matter, I don't give a shit."

A really good subordinate must sometimes read his leader's mind, even in fairly trivial matters. Carrera had hand picked some pretty good ones. He was unsurprised, therefore, when all traces of the word "Brigade" were instantly replaced with "Legion" and all references to "Battalion" became "Cohort."

"It occurred to several of us, too, Pat," Kuralski explained.

"No comment, General Abogado?" Carrera asked.

"Your command and control is going to be stretched with twelve subunits reporting directly to headquarters," Abogado answered. "On the other hand, when I was commanding the old 391st Separate Brigade here I had one mech battalion, plus two infantry, one special forces, one combat support, one military police, an aviation, a service support, a jungle operations school, an attached infantry battalion attending the jungle school, an international school and a headquarters battalion all reporting to me, plus two full brigades of the Territorial Militia that would have deployed here in the event of war. So I think it's in the realm of the plausible, at least. Moreover, I didn't command the air force and naval commands here. Instead I had to coordinate. Command is easier."

"Yeah, I'm not worried about that. Okay, if we can't afford it, it's a pipe dream. Let's talk money, Dan," Carrera said.

Kuralski nodded. "The biggest element of expense is troop related: pay, subsistence, allowances, operations, training-which includes maintenance-and training ammunition, for the brigade, err, legion. It's based on paying forty percent of FSA scales, housing them in tents, feeding them at local costs for food…"

Clinton, the supply man, piped in, "Sir, myself and the log officer checked local wholesale prices on that and matched them against FS Army ration schedules. No more than one hundred drachma per man, per month to feed the troops well."

"Yes," Kuralski agreed, "but we don't know if that would be feeding them what they like. I suspect feeding a good local diet will be a little cheaper."

"Enough cheaper to make a difference?" Carrera asked.

"Not really. Might save a hundred D per man for the year. Not even half a million drachma, overall."

"Okay, continue."

"Ammunition and personal and crew-served arms are so tightly interwoven that we really need to talk about them together," Kuralski said. "And we never could come to an agreement among us as to which to go with. It makes a pretty whopping difference in cost, at one end, and battle performance on the other, with proficiency in the middle. The short version is that if you buy Volgan, you can afford a war gun, a training gun, and ammunition to the tune of fifty or sixty thousand rounds of training ammunition per man. If you buy Tauran or FS, you can afford one rifle and maybe four thousand rounds per man. Of course, the Volgan arms are simple, reliable, and none too accurate. The best compromise we could come up with was to buy Volgan and add three Draco sniper rifles to each section."

"What's that save us over buying FS or Tauran with, say, fifteen thousand rounds per man?"

"About nine million," Kuralski answered. "That's an estimate, we haven't worked out any deals yet."

"Works. Do it: Volgan, if we can get them. Besides, they're more accurate than they get credit for if they're properly zeroed."

"We can get them, surely. There are also a lot of Volgan equipment clones out there," Kuralski reminded, "so it's probably fairly safe to plan that way. And Sachsen is allegedly sitting on hundreds of thousands of unusually high quality Samsonov rifles and machine guns, too."

He went on, "The next largest element of expense is aviation equipment. That isn't counting training on that equipment."

"Dan and I have worked on that one together, mostly by e-mail and phone," Abogado interjected. "I don't know all that much about training for pilots and such, though I can deal with maintenance training well enough. Most of what he's talking about using is Volgan or really, really simple Tauran and FS birds. I think that, rather than set up an aviation subdivision of the FMTG, we ought to send pilots and maintenance personnel overseas. I've looked into the prices and, in the short term anyway, that would be cheaper… a little. Maybe later, once we've got enough local pilots trained and a larger scale organization, it might be worth it to bring the aviation training base home."

Carrera looked over the screen showing cost factors. Aviation stood out above everything but personnel and training costs. The figure, "FSD 115,000,000," was a little shocking.

"How do we save some money there?" he asked.

"I don't think we can cut numbers, Pat," Dan answered. "What we have listed-eight converted crop dusters for attack birds, twelve medium and four heavy lift helicopters, eight cargo, six recon and twelve remote-piloted vehicles-is about the minimum to do the job. The basis was to be able to lift the critical elements of an infantry cohort and the Cazador cohort in two lifts, assuming an eighty-five percent serviceable rate for the transport helos. Almost everything else was based on that. Oh… and we'll need two more helicopters for medical evacuation. We can save something if you're willing to go with used, rebuilt helicopters and to substitute short takeoff recon birds for choppers for the medevac."

"And save how much?"

"About eighteen million. Note, here, that this is a bad bargain, unless you find more money at some point to buy newer aircraft. Older and cheaper also means sooner to wear out."

"All right. Buy used. You have a line on used?"

"For a lot of it, we do. For some we're still looking. IM-71 medium lift helicopters, for example, can be had for about one point six million FSD, each, used. IM-62 heavy lifters run about two point six. New they run over twice that, by the way. We've found nine IM-71s for sale. We're still looking for three. IM-62s are available."

"Okay, let's talk armor."

Kuralski laughed slightly. "If you think we fought over small arms, that was nothing compared to the fight over armor. If we thought you could afford it, we'd mutiny before letting you buy anything but Zion-built Chariots. Too damned expensive, even used. Sixty of those would cost two hundred and twenty to two hundred and forty million. It would break the bank, in other words.

"Instead, what you've got there under that sum of 'FSD 84,000,000' is our best guess of what it will cost for a mix of Volgan T-38s and PBM-23s. Until I can go over there-"

"You?" Carrera asked.

"I'm the only one who speaks Russian. Until I can go over there, that amount remains an educated guess. We do have fairly hard numbers and figures for some much less capable equipment, T-27s and the like. But that stuff is truly shit, well designed but what's available is so badly made it would be almost as criminal to use it as to not have anything."

Carrera looked like he had a very sour taste in his mouth. He mulled the prospect of losing his chief of staff for anywhere from weeks to months and clearly didn't like it. After perhaps a minute of looking sour, he went along. "All right. You go to Saint Nicholasberg as soon as possible to hunt arms. Moving right along, who do we have among the Civil Force competent to command the mechanized troops?"

Kuralski shook his head. "Xavier says there's no one."

Carrera thought about that for a minute. Harrington or Brown and I need Harrington as a loggie. He then said, "Brown?"

"Sir."

"I dub thee, 'Sancho Panzer.' You'll command the mech and tanks. You're going to go spend about a month and a half somewhere where nobody speaks a word of English to immerse you in Spanish."

"Sir!" The single word meant: I won't let you down, Boss. Promise.

The brief moved along, covering artillery and ground transportation

"Twenty-four 105mm guns and six multiple rocket launchers will cost WHAT?"

"We have an alternate plan to substitute twelve 122mm guns and twelve 160mm mortars, plus six Volgan… "

By the time they got to individual equipment beyond small arms…

"Twenty-two hundred FSD per man for body armor, Pat. Unless you want to go with something Terry Johnson has come up with."

Johnson stood up. "I knew that figure would floor you. It floored me. So, off duty, I started nosing around the Globalnet. There are two developments I think you ought to consider. By the way, Harrington let me dip into discretionary funds to get this stuff."

Johnson bent over and pulled what looked like a thick vest from under his chair. This he passed to Carrera.

"What the fuck is this?" Carrera asked. "It's light."

"It's silk, Pat, regular old silk. Well, not regular. It's specially woven and encased in polytetrafluoroethane cloth. That model is what this company in Rajamangala had available to send us. It's thirty-four layers of heavy duty silk and, yes, at about four and a half pounds, it's pretty light. It will stop anything up to. 45 caliber but not. 44. It will stop damned near all shrapnel. Though both. 45 and heavy shrapnel will hurt. It will definitely not stop high powered rifle ammunition. Neither will the twenty-two hundred drachma vest the FSC makes which is also, by the way, a shitpot heavier."

"Cost?"

"One fifty to five hundred, depending. I say depending because there are some modifications we can make that would make it lighter and make it more effective. Some mods would lower the price but one modification also raises it substantially.

"That modification is this." Johnson again reached down and handed over a four inch by twelve inch metal plate, about a tenth of an inch thick. The plate was deformed in five spots.

"This is what is called 'glassy metal' or 'liquid metal.' It's an alloy of five metals-titanium, copper, nickel, zirconium and beryllium- that really don't like each other. It's cooled very quickly so that the metals can't form crystals. What they do form is an alloy about seven- eighths as dense as steel and two and a half times stronger. It's also precision castable. What that means to us is that we can make a plate a tenth of an inch thick out of this shit and have it be as strong as a quarter of an inch of good steel. We might also consider using it for some other things; bayonets come to mind, and maybe helmets.

"I figure that we can make it something like the old Roman lorica, a series of thin plates maybe four inches by twelve or so and running partway across the chest and back, and over the shoulders, to cover all the really vital organs and the hard-to-rebuild shit, like shoulders, for maybe eleven pounds. Add that to the silk which, because we'll be able to make the chest and back portions thinner will reduce in weight, and you're looking at a fourteen pound set of torso armor."

Carrera looked skeptical. "You tested the metal?"

"I shot at it, yes. Those deformations are what I got firing different calibers. Got to warn you, armor piercing. 30 cal and higher will go through if it hits straight on."

"Fair enough. What's the total cost for a vest with the metal plates, again?"

Johnson put out his hand, spreading his fingers and wiggling them slightly. "A little under five hundred drachma… give or take."

"And that saves us," Carrera summed up, "about eight or nine million drachma. Which, even if this shit turns out not to be as good, is still eight or nine million I could spend on training, training which is at least as likely to save life, by killing the enemy, as a vest is. Okay. I'll think on this one though."

Casa Linda, 6/10/459 AC

Carrera and Abogado spoke privately on the balcony that led from his office to overlook the Mar Furioso. A steady drumbeat of electric crackles told of myriad mosquitoes being fried before they could come to feast.

Abogado handed Carrera a thick notebook with rings. "These are people I've talked to about coming here for the FMTG that have indicated a willingness to come. No, I have not made an offer to any of them. It's set up by rank-former generals in front, then former colonels and lieutenant colonels, then other officers, other warrants, and noncoms-and the position I think they could fill. It isn't alphabetical."

Carrera shrugged, took the book, and began flipping pages.

Flip, flip, flip. "No, you can't have 'Moon' Mullins," he said, tearing a page out and laying it on the coffee table between them. "He's a toad, an incredibly stupid toad, and a sycophant. He brings out the worst in you; I've seen it." Flip, flip. "Hmmm… maybe." Flip, flip, flip. "Good choice on Frazar." Flip. "Lambert? No. He's the 'Salute in the Field' type. Had his Special Services Group operatives shaving when their mission required them to blend in with locals, none of whom shaved. Altogether too stupid for me to let near my boys." Flip, flip, flip, flip. "Bolger? Are you out of your fucking mind? Disloyal and treacherous. Mulholland? Nice guy but almost as stupid as he looks. Well… that's not quite fair; nobody could be that stupid. Maybe Mulholland." Flip, flip. "Mace? You have got to me shitting me! He could be a good stage manager in some major theater, great at putting on a show, but there's never a drop of substance behind the show. Add in… oh, off the top of my head, smuggling exotic birds and falsifying physical fitness tests. If he sets foot in this country again I'll have him shot. I wouldn't let him near my troops except in a sealed glass case marked, 'Be nothing like this man.'" Flip. "Taylor's very good."

Looking up, Carrera saw that Abogado face had become a mix of frustration and worry. "Look… you saw these guys from one end. I saw them as peers or superiors and I saw something very different. The Army of the Federated States does a very bad job, generally, of choosing general officers. For the most part, they're charming men without an ounce of good character. How the hell could it be any different? In an environment where every decision is a moral one, where you get rated by fifty or sixty people before you're looked at for stars, the ones who make general are, almost entirely, those who never pissed anyone off. How does one never piss off the boss? Almost the only way is to have no real character, or at least no good character. The exceptions to that rule are just that, exceptional."

"I had character," Abogado objected.

"You were fucking the secretarial pool at Building Four on Fort Henry," Carrera pointed out. "I'll overlook that because you have other virtues. But let's not pretend that you aren't a rotter, too."

Casa Linda, 7/10/459 AC

True to his pledge, Carrera had not assumed command of the expeditionary force. When Kuralski asked him about that, he answered, "Dan, I don't need to be in the top position to be in control. I don't even want to be. Besides, I'll own every piece of equipment the legion is going to use, and be making the payroll. How much more control do I need?

"Then, too, Parilla's an old soldier, but he doesn't know much of anything about war, less still about modern war. He understands discipline, leadership and politics. I need him for that. But I'm quite sure he'd let me do what I want to train and lead the force, even if I weren't paying for it."

Parilla, escorted by Kennison, Morse, and Bowman, pulled up to the entrance of Casa Linda in Carrera's Phaeton. Once, when he had been the effective ruler of the country, Parilla would have been driven in his own. Since then he had fallen on somewhat harder times, although he was hardly living in poverty. Carrera would have been more than prepared to give Parilla the Phaeton, or to buy him one of his own, to get his cooperation. He knew that wouldn't be necessary.

When the vehicle stopped, Morse got out to open the door. Carrera and Kuralski came to attention and saluted although no one was in uniform. After Parilla returned the salute, Carrera walked down the steps to greet him.

"General Parilla, it is good to see you again." The two smiled conspiratorially.

After shaking hands, Carrera escorted the party down to the briefing room. The rest of his staff was already there. Lourdes served drinks while Carrera introduced Parilla to the staff. Then Carrera began the briefing.

"General Parilla, I have asked you here today to get your approval for a plan for raising, equipping and training an expeditionary force, roughly brigade sized, to participate in the war against the terrorists. I thank you personally for coming out of your way to meet with me here at my home. The Estado Mayor would once have been a more appropriate spot for this but, since this house is air conditioned and the Estado Mayor has been demolished, I thought you might prefer to be brought up to date here."

"And besides that," Parilla added, "this place is secure. There probably isn't another quite so safe in the country."

"This first item of business is the shape of the organization we have planned." Carrera gestured for a slide to be shown on the screen in the front of the briefing room.

"As you can see, General, we've named it a legion. It should be obvious enough why."

Parilla looked confused but let it go. "I confess I don't know, but do you think, do your people think, that this is a good design, Patricio? It seems odd to me."

Carrera frowned, not at Parilla but at circumstance and fate. He shrugged. "Honestly, in some ways it's a crappy design. But it has some serious good points. It actually is not designed for use so much as for expansion. In the expanded form, with every cohort grown to the size of a small regiment of about one thousand to fourteen hundred men, and the legion grown to the size of a division, it would be fairly optimal for the kind of war we expect to fight. As is, it is as much as we can afford, as much as we have the personnel to lead, and as much as we have time to train those leaders for. Matthias, explain to the general, would you?"

Esterhazy nodded and went over the finances. He didn't need to remind Parilla who was paying for everything.

Carrera interjected, "Basically, Raul, the hit my family's fortunes took in the TNTO attack has not been made good. The value of our assets is down to about forty-seven percent of what it had been."

" Ja," Esterhazy agreed. "If he vere to cash out assets now ze loss vould be enormous. His family vould object and he might lose control in a shareholders' fight. As is, if Patrick can vait, zere is no reason for ze assets not to return to zere prior value… in a couple of years."

"Matt's used his contacts to arrange loans secured by my holdings, Raul," Carrera added. "We have a line of credit for seven hundred and fifty million FSD, a personal loan, really, secured by me, er, rather secured by what will be my personal share once the estate is finally probated. That's all we have to count on."

Carrera sighed, a bit wistfully. "I'd have gone for a full division, anyway, and just used shit for equipment until we could afford better but the personnel and training issues make that more than a little problematic. As is, not only are we going out smaller than I'd like, and not organized the way I'd like; we're not going to be able to afford the best equipment either.

"There is no telling exactly how the war will roll out. It could be that Sumer folds immediately and we go right into a counterinsurgency war."

Seeing Parilla's somewhat quizzical look, Carrera stated, "Oh, yes; no matter what, there will be an insurgency, though I have reason to suspect the FSC is not even considering the possibility.

"It could be that there will be a major conventional fight, something like the last Petro War, though on a lesser scale, because Sumer has not managed to make good its losses. What we really expect though, is a campaign-more or less conventional-of about three to seven weeks' duration, followed by an insurgency."

Triste, sitting in the left rear corner, added, "You got that right. Those idiots in the War Department, to say nothing of that king of idiots, Ron Campos-that's the FSC's secretary of war, General-are really being obtuse about this. I don't think I've ever even heard of anyone engaging in such wishful thinking since the FSC got itself into that dumb-assed war in Cochin, forty years back."

Carrera scowled a bit. This was Campos' second stint as SecWar. Carrera had not thought the first sufficiently impressive to justify a second.

He continued. "Anyway, the legion is based in large part around the needs of counterinsurgency. Thus there are four infantry cohorts, each with four infantry centuries, plus combat support and headquarters and support, because a square organization is more suitable for controlling an area and the people on it than a triangular one is. Note though, that triangular is clearly better for maneuver warfare. There are Cazador and mechanized cohorts because the one is critical, and the other useful, for counterinsurgency. The rest is fairly self explanatory except for the size and shape of the aviation ala."

" Ala?" Parilla asked.

"Latin for 'wing,' as in 'cavalry wing.' But all the real cavalry is in the air now, so…"

"Bring up the aviation slide, would you, Mitch?" Carrera asked.

When the slide was shown, Carrera frowned. "General, this one makes only limited sense except in terms of its being a training vehicle for a cadre for a much larger air organization. It's the largest group after the service support cohort. It has fifty aircraft including remotely piloted vehicles. That doesn't include medical evacuation aircraft. Of those fifty, it has sixteen helicopters, twelve medium and four heavy. We don't know yet which medium and heavy lift helicopter we will choose or what we can afford. I am inclined towards Volgan and there are a sufficient number for sale, usually used and rebuilt, at an acceptable price. We are probably going to use modified crop-dusters built in the FSC for the close air support role." Carrera saw Parilla's smile and hastily added, "No, sir, don't laugh. They have impressive capabilities-over two tons of ordnance, thirteen hardpoints and can turn on a dime-and have already been combat tested in the close support role in Santander."

"In any case, in designing the air ala, our twin goals were: every asset that would be in divisional level air support wing must be there, and it must be able to lift the combat elements of one infantry cohort plus the Cazador cohort in not more than two lifts with eighty-five percent of the helicopters operationally ready. This does that but the personnel inefficiency when dealing with numbers of aircraft this low is just appalling.

"Naval slide, Mitch."

Parilla looked that over and saw a few light warships plus a number of merchant ships. He shrugged. Soldiers were soldiers and didn't care about ships. One thing did catch his eye, though.

"What's this intelligence collection ship?"

Omar Fernandez, sitting next to Triste in the left rear of the room piped in, "That one's for me, General."

"We need to have a long talk about that, Fernandez," Carrera said, his eyes narrowing to slits. "And soon. Like, say, after this meeting is over."

"Anyway, General, that's it. You have detailed diagrams of the tables of organization in your packet. Pending your questions…"

Carrera stopped to sip at a cup of coffee. Parilla sat digesting the rest of the chart of the Headquarters. Parilla asked about the unusual staff set up.

"A good question, General. There are basically four staff arrangements in use in the civilized world. The FSC's system of four equal sections, which is what you are used to, and which they inherited from the Gauls in the Great Global War, is designed to be something of a committee. I believe it has a number of defects, chief among them being that these staffs inject an equality into the planning and conduct of military operations that has no place in battle. The Anglian system is needlessly complex and badly over officered; we don't have enough trained officers to hope to emulate it anyway. The Volgans could be said not to really have much of a staff structure below division level.

"Instead, the model we have chosen is the same staff form that the Sachsen used with great success in the Great Global War and before. Historical experience says that this is much the best form for a highly mobile force. To some extent I expect this to make up, partially, for the fact that our organization is not really geared to highly mobile warfare. This staff form also does not suffer the defect of permitting the rear echelon to act as a dead weight upon the fighting line. Instead, everything goes to support the front. Lastly, this form for the staff does not permit the personnel managers to have much of a say in operations. It locates the clerks so that they cannot harass the line with constant demands for timely information that no personnel management system can do anything useful with in a timely manner."

Parilla chewed his lower lip for a few moments before saying, "I don't think I like that, Patricio. Armies are composed of people; hence personnel management is a critical component of the force. It's as important as, maybe more important than, logistics."

Carrera jerked his chin slightly sideways, then chewed his own lip for a bit. "I am put in mind of a story I read once," he said, "a true story, about a day in August, 1944, Old Earth Year, when the American Army in France had a total infantry replacement pool of one rifleman for perhaps twenty or so divisions. Imagine, if you will, General, a situation where thousands of personnel managers are in a position to manage one poor rifleman. How privileged that man must have felt! I have always thought that if those personnel managers had been mostly infantry themselves they wouldn't have been managed quite so thoroughly, but there would have been more than one man to replace the hundreds killed and wounded that August day. Computers, by the way, do not seem to help this problem much once the shooting starts."

Parilla thought about that for a minute and decided Carrera was probably right. His face said as much. He thumbed through his handout packet and said, "I note you have General Abogado in charge of our foreign trainers. How is old Ken doing?" He remembered Abogado rather fondly from his days as commander of FS Army troops in Balboa.

Carrera smiled. "He's fine and raring to go last I saw him, Raul, which was here, two days ago. He asked about you. In any case, he says he'll be ready within six weeks to begin the first course he is going to be running for our senior officers, a sort of truncated CGSC, a command and general staff course. He'll also be running a number of other courses to train and select lower leaders and technicians."

"Good, good," said Parilla. "I remember-with envy, too, I admit-the way he used to train the FSC troops here. A fine old soldier."

"He was that," Carrera agreed. Pity about having feet of clay. Still, Abogado is superb at what he does provided you keep him away from women.

"Where are we going to train the troops, by the way, Patricio? Most of the old FS facilities have been sold off. The Civil Force lacks facilities, generally."

"Mitch, bring up the Fort Cameron slide, please."

The previous slide disappeared to be replaced by a map of a small area well known to Parilla from his days as commander of the Guardia Nacional.

"Sometime, someday when we can afford it, Raul, I hope to buy the Isla Real outright and turn it into a base for us," Carrera explained. The Isla Real, or Royal Island, was about eighty kilometers north of Ciudad Balboa and was about two hundred and seventy square kilometers in area. "But that alone will cost twice our total budget now to buy and build up. It will have to wait. In the interim…"

He pointed at the slide. "This is a map of the old Centro de Instruccion Militar at Fuerte Cameron. As you can see, it is sufficient to our current purposes, with enough range space and well-drained, open, flat areas for tentage. Most of the buildings will go for housing cadre, offices, and school rooms."

Again, Parilla accepted that. He asked, "What about rank structure? I see lots of old Roman military titles, few modern. Is there a reason?"

Carrera nodded. "We'll be working mostly with the Army of the Federated States and the Anglians. They are extremely rank conscious. I simply do not want them, initially, to have the slightest clue as to the ranks of our people they are dealing with. Thus, signifers are roughly second lieutenants, but could be considered first lieutenants or captains. Tribunes I through III are, for our purposes, 1st lieutenants through majors, but could be considered majors through colonels. Legates 3rd through 1st are lieutenants colonel through brigadiers. On the other hand, in Latin 'legate' means lieutenant general, three stars, or ambassador, which is a four star equivalent. The sole dux, or duce, is yourself. The centurionate runs from optio, basically a platoon sergeant, through 1st centurion, the senior noncom of a cohort, and on to sergeant major, of which this expeditionary force needs only one at this time, Sergeant Major McNamara."

"Seems silly to me, Patricio."

"Give it time, Raul. Are you ready for dinner?"

Adjourning to the mess, Parilla asked about a set of thirteen carved and silvered or gilded eagles perched atop poles.

Carrera gestured toward the table and chairs, mahogany and intricately hand carved. "There is a furniture factory in Valle de las Lunas, Fabrica Hertzog, that does fine wood carving and makes some really superb furniture. They made this table, the chairs, the sideboard and the china cabinet. Good work, very good. When you gave me this mission, I gave some thought to what the units' symbols should be. I had Fabrica Hertzog make these up.

"We'll present them to the legion, cohorts, ala and classis at a solemn, probably half-religious, ceremony sometime in the future."

Carrera moved to take one of the eagles from its rack against the wall. He presented it to Parilla. "As you can see, sir, the eagles themselves are of gilded or silvered wood. The plaques we just had made up. They give the name and number of the unit that will carry it. This one, for example, is for the 8th Artillery Cohort, Terremoto." Earthquake. He put down the Eighth's eagle and picked up another. Pointing to its plaque he read off, "Eleventh Air Ala… Jan Sobieski, who beat the Turk at Vienna with his winged hussars." Carrera went down the list, pointing to each in turn. "Legion: Ruy Diaz de Bivar, Legio del Cid for short… First Cohort: Principe Eugenio, Prinz Eugen who led the Austrians against the Turks… Second Cohort: Roberto Guiscard, the Crusader… Third Cohort: Ricardo, Corazon de Leon, the Crusader… Fourth Cohort: Barbarossa, Crusader… Fifth: Carlos Martillo who stopped the Moslem advance at Tours in old France… Sixth: Vlad Tepes who fought the Turk for Transylvania… Seventh Combat Support: the sword of El Cid, Tizona… Ninth Service Support: his horse, Babieca… Tenth: the Headquarters, Santiago Matamoros, Saint James the Moor killer… Twelfth Classis: Don John who crushed the Turk at Lepanto."

"You see where I'm going with this, right?"

Parilla laughed, "Oh, yes, I see, my friend."

Dinner commenced and carried on more or less silently. Parilla was on information overload and the staff knew better than to talk plainly. After all, they worked for Carrera, not Parilla. When it was done, and the maids were clearing the table, Carrera asked the general-no, el Duce- yet again, if he had any further questions.

"No, none. You have done a fine job… by the way, what is your rank in all this?"

"We have to talk about that, privately. At this moment I probably have no official legal rank beyond a mandate from the Legislative Council to be your deputy and to help prepare the Legion. Shall we repair to the living room for a nightcap to discuss just that? We also need to talk about your own rank." Carrera nodded to Kuralski to keep the rest of the staff away while he and Parilla chatted.

"The day after tomorrow I am flying to Hamilton, FD to speak with, umm, my family senator. She owes my family a great deal. She also needs our support for future campaigns. Frankly, I despise the bitch on principle but she ought be a useful conduit to greater FSC support."

An hour and a half later, while Bowman and Morse drove the general home, Kuralski, Sergeant Major McNamara, Fernandez and Carrera relaxed on the back porch of Casa Linda, overlooking the sea. The salty smell of ocean, overlaid with the smell of decayed organic matter from the coast, wafted up.

McNamara chided his boss. "Now, sir, if you had been t'at good at dog and pony shows back in the FS Army you would have gone far. Why I can just picture you as some four star's aide de camp."

Carrera made a gagging sound and then leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head, satisfied at a job well done. "They tried to grab me to be someone's aide de camp three times, Top. The idea made me ill; I despise general officers, for the most part. And, besides, don't confuse inability with unwillingness. I could always dog and pony with the best of them. I just wouldn't do it without a really good reason. Tonight I had a good reason.

"And, Mac, tell the boys to put on the uniforms starting tomorrow. With the ranks I gave them when they first got here, with the proviso that Kuralski and Kennison are Legates I and the ex-captains are Tribunes III. And they can skip the promotion party for my having made Legate III. It's just another tool. Besides, we are going to be much too busy for that nonsense over the next several months."

"As shall I be, Legate Carrera," smirked Fernandez. "So if we could have that talk now…"

For such a sensitive matter neither the front steps to the casa nor even the dining room would do. Instead, Fernandez and Carrera repaired to the basement conference room.

"What the hell do you need an 'Intelligence Gathering Ship' for, Fernandez? There is no way I can afford the equipment you would need to gather intelligence from a ship. You have no people trained for the equipment anyway. I cannot afford more people from Europe or the FSC, either, not with what I am paying for trainers."

Fernandez gave a tiny and wintery smile. "It is not to gather intelligence from the ship. It is to gather intelligence in the ship. I have in mind a prison cum interrogation vessel."

"But why on a ship? We can put up tents and string wire much, much more cheaply."

"Yes, you can, Patricio. And you can have Amnesty Interplanetary, Liberation International, Freedom of Conscience, the World League and every other cosmopolitan progressive organization breathing down your neck and harassing you twenty-four hours a day. A ship- a ship that never comes to port-prevents that."

"But what do I care if… oh, you are talking about them objecting to… what shall we say? 'Rigorous' interrogation methods?"

"Precisely," Fernandez agreed.

Carrera considered for a bit. There was a time I would not have permitted anything like torture. Now? Do I still care now? Maybe not. It would have mattered to Linda and that would have once made me care. Then, too, the bar on torture was a bar to torturing real soldiers, honorable men and women. What consideration do I owe to those who kill innocent people deliberately? Maybe none.

"What do you have in mind and why?" Carrera asked.

"To begin with, Patricio, pain, force and violence, either physical or mental, are always at least implicit in any interrogation, in war or in peace. It may have been the rack and the hot pincers in the Middle Ages, or it could be a longer sentence-or at least not a shorter sentence-to some hell hole of a prison now, for failure to cooperate. The person being interrogated has no-let me say that again, no- reason to cooperate without some threat or violence."

"Yet some do," Carrera objected.

"Oh, yes," Fernandez admitted, "whether in police work or intelligence work, you will sometimes get someone who sings like a bird from the moment you bring him in. In ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, Patricio, even then he is responding to the fear that he might be subject to force and violence. And the other one in a hundred? He's likely to just be a nut from whom you can't get anything of value."

"Witch trials?" Carrera objected again. "Forced, valueless confessions? What about all those people on Old Earth who confessed to being what they could not possibly have been, and to doing what they could not possibly have done?"

Fernandez's face acquired the indulgent smile professionals sometimes confer on tyros. "In the first place," he said, "the price of confessing to witchcraft was, for a first offense, generally nil. Some not too onerous penance, and being watched carefully for a time thereafter. On the other hand, the penalty for not confessing was often quite awful. If we were interested in obtaining confessions for witchcraft, your objection might be valid. We are not. I am interested only in intelligence which can be corroborated, a very different proposition."

Carrera shook his head, unconvinced. "People will still say anything to avoid torture. You can't count on it."

" Anything, Patricio? That is what you said, is it not: 'anything'? Is not the truth also 'anything'? Will people not speak the truth to avoid torture as well?"

Fernandez knew Carrera smoked. He took out a cigarette and lit it before adding, "The trick is that you have to have something to work with, some intelligence the person being interrogated does not know you have that you can use to trick him with. You catch him in a lie and then you apply enough duress that he is terrified ever to lie again. Sometimes it takes catching him in two or three lies before you break him, but break him you will provided that you are ruthless enough and have some means of corroboration. Sometimes, if the interrogator is skilled, he can sense when someone's lying if not about precisely what. Then he applies duress until the man contradicts what he had said previously. That's tricky, though, and not everyone can pull it off.

"And then, too, sometimes you can get instantaneous feedback even if you know nothing. If you catch two people who know the same information, you separate them before they can concoct all that complete a story. Apply duress-oh, all right!- torture, until their stories match. Or, too, if you have a true ticking time bomb scenario, your feedback is when the bomb is found. You torture until then."

"It's sickening," Carrera said. Apparently he had some of his old sensibilities left, after all. He was honestly surprised at himself. "Just sickening."

"So? If you are willing to let men be crippled and killed for you under your command, don't you think you owe them a little nausea on your part to give them the best possible chance to live and win?"

Carrera started to answer, and then stopped cold. Perhaps I do.

"All right, tell me exactly what you have in mind and how it will operate."

Hamilton, FD, Federated States of Columbia, 15/10/459 AC

Carrera wore a suit and tie- God, I hate ties!- and carried an old leather coat over one arm. Unaccompanied, he entered the senator's reception area and announced himself as, "Patrick Hennessey. I believe I have an appointment."

"Oh, yes, sir" the receptionist said. "The senator was very explicit that you were to be given every courtesy and shown right to her office… but…" The girl looked stricken.

"But?"

"She's tied up in a meeting and won't be quite on time. "Fifteen minutes late, she told me, 'no more.' I'm terribly sorry."

"That'll be fine."

"If you will follow me, sir."

Hennessey followed the receptionist to a tastefully decorated office. He noted the probable expense with disapproval, then chided himself for being a cheap prude. Apparently the senator, Harriett Rodman, felt nothing was too good for her comfort and prestige. In the unreal political world of Hamilton, he conceded that she probably had a point.

When he had asked the attorney, Mr. Tweed, about Rodman, he had answered, succinctly, "Corrupt, venal, power hungry. She can be bought, however, and for only a modest interest payment will stay bought. There is, after all, Colonel Hennessey, sometimes honor among thieves."

Hennessey thought, by her description, that Rodman would be perfect. A little money-very little, actually, in comparison to the family trust at full value-and she could be a strong arm at his side, pushing, prodding, nagging and threatening to force the Federated States' military to give things they otherwise might have been most reluctant to give.

He heard a sound from the open doorway. "Colonel Hennessey!" exclaimed Senator Rodman, almost as if she were truly happy to see him for himself. "I am so pleased to meet you… and so terribly sorry about what happened to your family."

Dripping mutual insincerities for the next two hours, Hennessey and the senator worked out a deal favorable to both of them.

UEPF Spirit of Peace

Khan and her husband had asked for a special appointment with the high admiral. Given the offices they held, the appointment had been readily granted. Rather than meet in his office, however, Robinson had, on a whim, told them to meet him on the Peace 's observation deck.

This was a small area, relative to the size of the ship, with a thick, transparent viewing point. Normally, the port was protected by thick, retractable protective shields. Those shields were withdrawn to the sides now, allowing Robinson unimpeded view of the planet slowly spinning below.

Neither Khan nor her husband were privy to the full scope of their admiral's plans and intentions. Some things were better left unsaid, after all. Nonetheless, from the high admiral's questions and interests they'd surmised some important portions of what he wanted, not merely what he wanted to know about, but also what he wanted to happen.

Khan, the wife, began the informal briefing.

"High Admiral, do you recall my saying that the kind of war mattered?" she asked. Seeing that he did, she continued, "Well, there is a new development down below that might change the nature of the war. Note, please, sir, that I only say it could, not that it will or must."

Robinson, who had been watching as the continents of Uhuru and Taurus slowly spun by, lifted his eyes from the planet and looked directly at the speaker. She was informally dressed in a long, flowerprinted skirt. Her bare breasts stood out magnificently in the low, shipboard gravity, the nipples pert from the cool air blowing across the observation deck.

A much more attractive view than the cesspool below, thought Robinson. "What development?"

"One we did not predict and are still investigating," Khan, the husband, answered. "There is a force building, down below, that was not in any of our initial calculations. Right now, all we can say definitively, is that it will be about the size of a brigade, that it will be technologically primitive in comparison to the most sophisticated armed groups on the planet, but that it is unlikely to be constrained by the web of treaties and accords your predecessors have thrown up around most of the planet's armed forces."

"You mean to act like the Federated States?"

"No, sir," answered the wife. "We expect it to be much worse than that."

Interlude

29 July, 2067, alongside Colonization Ship Cheng Ho

The UNSS Kofi Annan adopted almost the same high orbit as the ghost ship, only a touch farther out. This allowed the captain of the Annan to watch as the launch neared the derelict and docked.

"There's still a charge to the batteries, Captain," the Marine officer in charge of the away party announced. "The hatch is cycling and… we're in. Good Lord, the radiation is bad! Skipper, this ship is so hot we couldn't even hope to scrap it for a thousand years."

"Very good, Major Ridilla. Put us on visual please."

"Wilco." The Cheng Ho suddenly disappeared from the bridge's view screen, being replaced by the view from the Marine's helmet cam.

"Where to first, Skipper?" asked Ridilla.

"Check out the bridge to the Cheng Ho," ordered the captain. The image on the view screen wobbled as the Marine walked forward under the small gravity provided by the Cheng Ho 's spin, his magnetic boots gripping the deck lightly.

"Stop," the captain ordered. "What's that writing on the walls?"

"No clue, Captain," Ridilla answered. "I can't read Arabic."

"Hold on the image, Major." The captain looked around the bridge. "Who can read Arabic?" she asked.

"I can, Skipper," answered a lieutenant at life support. "It's from Sura Forty of the Koran. It says, 'Whose is the kingdom on that day? God's, the One, the Dominant!'"

"Thank you, Lieutenant. Stand by and give me translations if Major Ridilla finds more. Proceed, Major."

"Aye, aye, Skipper."

Time passed slowly on the bridge, with little on the view screen but a trembling image and nothing to hear but the hum of the Annan and Ridilla's labored breathing.

"I've got bodies, Skipper… twelve… no… fourteen. Mostly young but there's one old guy with a beard. The radiation must have killed any bacteria and the cold preserved them."

The captain ordered, "Show me." The image on the view screen twisted down to show the fourteen corpses identified by Ridilla. They were all but one young men, half of them bearded and half cleanshaven, apparently locked with each other in deathgrips at a point where two corridors of the Cheng Ho met. One young man, frozen eyes staring blind at the opposite bulkhead, had managed to sit up before he died. The arms were clutched around a stomach wound and bloody icicles trailed outward from the fingers.

Other bodies, singly and in pairs, dotted the way to the ghost ship's bridge. Most had apparently been killed by cutting or stabbing implements. There were only two obvious gunshot wounds, both of those outside the sealed hatch to the Cheng Ho 's own bridge.

"The hatch is locked tight, Skipper," Major Ridilla announced. "We are cutting through."

"I want the log for the Cheng Ho, Major. I want to know what happened on that ship."

Chapter Twelve Hardship, poverty, and want are the best school for a soldier. -Napoleon I (Bonaparte), Maxim LVIII

We become brave by doing brave acts, -Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

I love the infantry because they are the underdogs. They are the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys. They have no comforts, and they even learn to live without the necessities. And in the end they are the guys the war can't be won without. -Ernie Pyle

Fort Cameron, Centro de Instruccion Militar, 20/3/460 AC, 3:30 AM

A shrill blast of a whistle matched with a sudden glaring light awoke Cruz from a rather pleasant dream of Caridad. She was walking toward him, wearing nothing but an inviting smile…

"Get up! Get up, you shitty little maggots. Move your nasty, lazy, chingada asses out of my tent. Put on your sneakers and shorts and move! You, chico! Do you think you're being paid to sleep all day? Out! Out! OUT!"

The infantry corporal-his nametag read "del Valle"-strode quickly down the tent between two rows of cots. As he did so he overturned each one, spilling its occupant out onto the muddy tent floor. Cruz, who had been sleeping on his back, landed on his face, driving mud into his mouth and up his nostrils.

From somewhere off in the distance a loudspeaker was blaring out some sort of martial music at an indecent volume. Dimly heard by the tent's occupants, other new recruits in adjacent tents were being subjected to the same treatment. The corporal no sooner reached the last cot than he began herding, sometimes with punches and kicks, the stunned and bewildered recruits outside into the street that fronted the tent.

Disoriented, tired, confused… and sneezing; Ricardo Cruz followed the rest of his tent mates, sheeplike, into the night.

Cruz had arrived at Cameron only about five hours before. He and seventy-nine other volunteers had been bussed from the police station in Las Mesas starting at seven PM the previous evening. A long and deliberately slow drive to the Centro de Instruccion Militar had brought them through Fort Cameron's front gate just after nine. The bus dropped the new recruits off in front of a mess hall. Met there by a friendly-faced sergeant, they were fed a light snack, and then issued running shoes and shorts, ponchos and poncho liners-thin nylon quilts-and smallish, inadequate pillows. This had taken until just before midnight.

Then that deceptively friendly, warmly smiling sergeant had guided them-they didn't yet know how to march-to their tents. Cruz had gone to sleep shortly after midnight.

So it was that an extremely tired Ricardo Cruz was hustled out into the street at three-thirty in the morning to face the wrath of his new squad leader. On either side of Cruz's tent's group, more of the new volunteers were also spilling out into the street. None had on anything more than their shorts, T-shirt, socks and running shoes. A couple still seemed to be pulling on shorts. One of these went down face first into the mud, a corporal's kick to his fundament providing the motive power.

Cruz had a moment to look around before one of the omnipresent corporals shoved him into the formation that was building in the dirt street. Opposite from where Cruz stood was a line of grim-visaged soldiers wearing running shoes and shorts, black T-shirts and hostile glares. Behind the line of men there was a square podium. From the podium two men oversaw the scene. One of these was short and stocky. He looked to be a rather medium olive color, though in the dark Cruz couldn't be sure. Next to him stood a very tall and slender, graying but not balding black man. The black looked somewhat elderly in the face as well, his skin deeply seamed by what must have been years of exposure to the elements. Still, he carried himself like a young man, a very proud young man. Over the shouting of the corporals and the murmuring of his fellow volunteers, Cruz could not hear what the black man was saying.

Sergeant Major McNamara, standing to the right of First Centurion Epolito Martinez, gave a few last minute words of advice before moving on to look over the next company of new trainees. When speaking Spanish, the sergeant major sounded very like a native of Cristobal, in the Republic, with only rare conversion of the English "th" sound into "t." That was no surprise to those who knew him; his wife was a native of that place.

"There's no moment more critical than this one, Martinez," the sergeant major said. "Too forceful and you'll frighten them silly for months. Too little and they'll stop paying attention in a few days. What becomes of your company in the next several months all depends on what you do here in the next few minutes. You have shocked them. That's good. The shock will keep them in line until you have time to build some discipline in them, especially self-discipline. Remember, though, it is a tricky job, creating self-discipline. The more you impose discipline from the outside, the less they will build on the inside. Tricky."

Martinez, although a soldier for more than fifteen years, was unused to the task of training new troops. He listened attentively to what the big gringo sergeant major had to say. As McNamara stepped off the podium, Martinez stepped up to its edge and began to address the company.

"Welcome, volunteers, to Fort Cameron. I am First Centurion Martinez. You will address me as 'Centurion.' Together with your centurions of centuries, section leaders, and team leaders, we will, I am sure, turn most of you into soldiers the country can be proud of." Martinez shook his head in seeming regret, his face looking sad, even mournful. "Unfortunately, we will probably have to kill some of you first."

In the ranks, the men around Cruz-Cruz, himself, for that matter-gulped. The way Martinez had said it, there could be no doubt but that some of the new boys would be killed in training.

"Today marks your first day as soldiers of the Legio del Cid. It will be a day you will never forget. It will not be the hardest day you will ever face. Each day here will be worse than the day that preceded it. We will make it so, I promise. I promise you also hunger and fatigue, thirst and forced marches, hardship and pain. I promise misery. In the end, your only release will be when you yourselves are too tough to notice anymore. That… or when you die. To me it makes no practical difference which happens first.

"Centurions, take charge of your centuries." Martinez returned the salutes of his subordinates.

It was just ten o'clock at night, as Cruz lay on his cot waiting for sleep to overtake him. Outside a bugle played a soft call.

Oh, God, I hurt. First Bastard Martinez was right. To lie on this cot and not be in pain is the best thing I've ever felt, even though everything still hurts.

The day, too, had been as miserable as the first centurion had promised. From about a quarter to four to six in the morning, the company had learned the basics of marching. Then, from six to seven thirty, had come physical training. Given the number of push-ups awarded during the close order drill instruction, PT was agony. Cruz had lain on his back with his body twisted and his legs to one side until he thought his abdomen would rip apart from the stress. God, it had hurt! Push-ups had been interspersed with other exercises until Cruz's arms would no longer support him.

Sure, his previous life had been hard, as was to be expected on a cattle ranch and farm that occasionally dabbled in pigs and kept a coop of trixies, megalapteryx fowl, for their olive-green eggs. Even so, it was nothing like as bad as his first day in the legion.

A year on the farm wouldn't be as bad as today was.

Arms quivering, Cruz had flopped onto the ground, head held high to keep his face from the muck. Pain lessened immediately, though the horrible burning in his arms did not abate at all. I can't do this anymore, he'd thought. No fucking way. These guys are insane.

He was sadly mistaken, of course, except about the insanity part. Two instructor corporals had come up on either side of Cruz and convinced him he was underestimating his own strength; seriously underestimating it. A sneakered foot slammed into Cruz's left side, by his stomach so as not to break any ribs. Even as he writhed, arms crossing to protect himself, another foot rather more than nudged his kidney. Cruz barely held in a scream. More kicks followed. "Get back to your position, you fucking maggot," said a corporal.

Cruz strained to do so, arms quivering like jelly as he tried to hold himself off the ground.

The corporals waited until he had both his trembling arms beneath him. A shared nod and the feet moved together to kick his arms out from underneath him. Uncontrolled, Cruz flopped belly down to the mud. After his torso stopped descending, his face continued on. Mud filled his mouth and nose. More kicks followed. "Get up, shithead."

Strangely, from somewhere inside, Cruz found the strength to get his body back off the ground. Assholes.

After Physical Training, the corporals had turned hoses on the dripping volunteers. Since no other showers had been made available, Cruz guessed-correctly-that the hoses were all the showering he was going to get anytime soon.

Breakfast had been served, though "served" may not have been precisely the right word, immediately after the hosing. Cruz had taken a full plate before discovering that he was too exhausted to be hungry. Yet another corporal had disabused him of the notion that food could be taken and not eaten. That, too, had been a painful lesson.

Issue of initial equipment had gone very quickly. There hadn't been much to issue: a plastic foot locker with a lock and key, several pair each of underwear and socks, a black baseball cap, a two-quart canteen, another set of running shorts, a toilet kit with toothbrush and paste, soap, shampoo and a razor with blades. First Centurion Martinez had told the troops that, until they had proven they were worth the expense, there was no reason to waste money on uniforms for them. In fact, uniforms were for the time being unavailable, but there was no reason to tell the recruits that.

The rest of the day had consisted of lectures, meals, close order drill, all interspersed with pushups and more creative punishments. Cruz's section leader, del Valle, was very fond of what he called "the low crawl." After hours of dragging his poor tired, scraped and battered body across the gravel and sand, Cruz's elbows and knees were weeping sores. By day's end two cots in Cruz's tent had been folded up and taken away, their former occupants kicked out after an interrupted public beating by the corporals.

Halfway through the beating a relatively tall, relatively lightskinned officer appeared. Cruz couldn't see his name tag and didn't know enough to tell as yet the man's rank. It must have been very high though, so he thought, since the corporals stopped the beatings as soon as they spied him.

"And just what the fuck is going on here?" the white officer quietly demanded.

"Just a little discipline building, sir. We're making an example of these two to convince the others they can't quit."

Carrera held his temper in check, though he was truly pissed. He stood tense for several minutes as he gained control of himself. The corporals' nervousness increased in proportion to the time it took for Carrera to control his anger.

Finally he asked, genially enough, "Tell me, Cabo, just what do you think you can do to these men that the enemy won't be able to do more of and worse?" There was no answer. "At a loss for words, I see. Good. Let me tell you that there is precisely nothing you can do worse than the enemy. These beatings. Why bother? Who wants quitters? You? Would you trust your men in battle if the only reason they stayed was because they were afraid of a little beating?"

"Put that way, sir… I guess maybe not."

"Look, Cabo, I know this is all new to you, that you were probably a private just a few months ago. Maybe there might be a time and place for this kind of thing. But this is not the time and place. We are selecting the future of the legion. Even though we are a nongovernmental organization for now, we are building the future of Balboa, right here, right now. I want, I need, we all need, people who are not afraid of a little pain and people who will do what needs doing on their own."

"No physical discipline, sir?" The corporal sounded incredulous.

"Didn't say that," Carrera corrected. "There's nothing wrong with an occasional kick in the pants. And if someone mouths off to you, you deck him on the spot; hear me? There are some crimes that demand punishment public, graphic and as immediate as possible. But I do not want you frightening people into staying with us that really have no business in this business. Let them go. Encourage them, even. Make the training- the training, I say!- so fucking hard that only the best can make it. That will give you soldiers to count on. Now finish up these two-I don't want anyone thinking their corporals can do wrong-as soon as I leave. But don't do it again. And pass the fucking word."

Cruz had heard none of that. The white officer had left, the beatings had resumed but then ended shortly thereafter, and the miscreants were marched out of camp under guard. He fell asleep with dread in his heart about what tomorrow would bring.

Hotel Metropole, Saint Nicholasberg, 21/3/460 AC

In the hotel bar pretty, but altogether too young, Volgan prostitutes solicited the business that might keep them fed for another week or even another day. Easterners-journalists and businessmen, mostly-flirted, or negotiated, or simply bantered with the whores. Along the bar sat a balding, Russian-looking, man. The hookers paid him no mind. He didn't seem like he had the money they, or their pimps, required.

Being a bureaucrat, thought Dan Kuralski-seated at the bar, ought to be a capital offense. He sipped at his nearly frozen vodka. And I was so happy to be coming here for this mission, Patrick, old friend. "One big shopping spree," isn't that what you said?

In the days since arriving in "Saint Nick" in search of arms, Kuralski had been up one dead end after another. One bureaucrat in the Ministry of Defense told him that MoD didn't have authority to sell arms to other nations, let alone NGOs; that was for the Foreign Ministry. In the Foreign Ministry he had been told that, "Sorry, no, the actual sale of arms was being conducted by the military itself." Kuralski had managed to corner one Volgan general. This hadn't worked either; the general was too drunk at the time and reportedly too much of a worm when sober. Dan was about ready to go directly to a factory and make a private contract for what was needed. He would have, too, if it had been possible to go to a single factory and get each of ten thousand different items. There was no such factory or warehouse or, so far as he'd been able to determine, business. And precisely where the particular items required were being manufactured was still a closely guarded state secret. It was sometimes even a silly state secret. Who cared who made one-liter water bottles, anyway, for Christ's sake? But that was still Top Secret, Special Compartmentalized Information in Volga.

Preferably something slow and painful, Kuralski amended his earlier thought. He contemplated the very unhappy tone Carrera had used when last they'd spoken. He did not want to disappoint Carrera or to fail in his mission. The legion needed that equipment, dammit!

Kuralski sipped again at his vodka. Attention on the glass, he failed to notice at first the man who sat down beside him. When he did notice, and looked up to see, the Russian asked him, quite directly, if he was "the Balboan arms agent who was looking for heavy equipment for the upcoming war in Sumer?"

Arms agent? Me? I am just an errand boy.

"Not just heavy equipment," answered Kuralski. "We need virtually everything from rifles and machine guns on up. Why do you ask?"

In slow, heavy but correct English the newcomer said, "Ah. Permit me to introduce myself. I am Pavel Timoshenko. Word came to me of a Russian- and English-speaking Balboan looking for reasonably modern arms. Since I am in Economic Planning, I thought I might be of assistance. And you would be?"

"Forgive my rudeness. I'm Daniel Kuralski."

Timoshenko reached out a hand. "A Volgan?"

"Sorry, no. My grandparents were. They fled the Red Tsar, though. I was born in the FSC. I live in Balboa now. It is perhaps a silly question, but what does Economic Planning have to do with arms sales?"

Timoshenko smiled. "In this country, Daniel, Economic Planning has to do with everything. Yes, even now, even after the fall of the empire. Not that the plans work, mind you." Timoshenko looked wistful, sighed resignedly. "When I was young it used to seem that they did, somewhat. In any event, nothing much works anymore." He shook his head dismally.

Timoshenko continued. "Right now, we are planning our upcoming economic collapse. It will happen, too; that plan we can be sure will work, unless we can get a major infusion of hard currency and technology. Which is why I am here to see you. What are you looking to buy?"

Kuralski answered, "Equipment for a large brigade, with technical experts to teach our men how to use it. However, whatever you might sell to me, I don't think we are in a position to regenerate the Volgan economy."

"My new friend, after three generations of Tsarist-Marxism, no one is in a position to regenerate the Volgan economy, at least, no one who would be willing to do so. We can still help each other, though."

Immediately suspicious, he didn't really believe in win-win situations, Kuralski asked what the Volgan was getting at.

Timoshenko looked up. For a moment he seemed lost to philosophy. When he spoke, he said, "What we need is good advertising. For decades we have been selling shitty equipment to everybody who couldn't afford better or was cut off from better for political reasons. Now that particular chicken is about to roost. The Volgan Republic is sitting on more than thirty thousand tanks; actually a lot more than that, if one counts everything. Some of them are crap, of course; the kind of dreck we used to barter for political influence to the undeveloped world. Still others are relics from the Great Global War. But we have first class equipment, too. Who will believe that, when the East's second best has been beating what we have been calling our best for so long that no one remembers that we-not the Sachsens, but we- built the best armored vehicles of the Great Global War?"

Blood will tell. Kuralski, too, felt a small pride in his ancestors and relations in thinking of both their tanks, and their courage, in fighting the Sachsen.

Timoshenko shifted gears a bit. "Tell me something; when you get over there, to the war zone, I mean, are your men going to fight?"

Kuralski thought about it for a minute. "My boss, though he is officially the deputy for the legion, is really in charge. He will fight. I don't think he would obey orders that kept him out of the fighting." Kuralski laughed, "He's pretty selective about obedience in general. So, yes, if there is fighting we will be in it."

Timoshenko turned his bar stool around to lean his back against the bar. "That's what we need. If we sell you some of our best equipment-maybe better than our usual best, and you take it to battle against the Sumeris, then the rest of the Yithrabis-especially the Oil Yithrabis-will see that we can still be their best buy for defense. It is only necessary that a couple of our tanks survive hits and kill the older tanks we sold Sumer for the point to be made. Besides the Federated States and the Sachsens, who would never help us, the Oil Yithrabis are the only ones with the money to make a difference to our economy."

Kuralski shook his head. "We couldn't afford to buy your best if it cost half, even a quarter of what the FS, Sachsen, or Anglia would demand for their equipment. We are not a rich country and the legion's-Carrera's-private resources are limited."

Timoshenko gave a deep belly laugh. "I see that you are unacquainted with the miracles of Socialist Accounting. Trust me on this. Things cost precisely what we say they cost. You can afford it."

Interu Inn, New Giza, Misrani Islamic Republic, 23/3/460 AC

On Old Earth it had once been possible to determine to a considerable degree of certainty the degree of oppression in any given country by the words used in its title. Generally speaking, the rule had been: "Republic equals republic. People's Republic equals dictatorship. Democratic Republic equals really oppressive dictatorship. People's Democratic Republic equals really oppressive and corrupt dictatorship, amounting to a family corporation, with genocidal tendencies."

This rule had held good, in general terms, on Terra Nova. Moreover, it had been taken and applied by Moslems, as well, for their own little experiments in statehood and linguistic sleight of hand. Thus, for example, the Misrani Islamic Republic was, in fact, a corrupt family-run dictatorship, with said family being among the most devout atheists to be found in the known universe. Much like "democratic" and "people's," "Islamic was a mere sop.

The suite Kuralski had taken at the Interu Inn of the Misrani "Islamic" Republic was, at best, tacky, all gilt over cheap wood held together by glue. In this, it resembled the country as a whole.

While a hotel servant unpacked his bags in one room of the suite, Kuralski brought Carrera up to date over the salon's telephone line. The hotel's own phone he'd unplugged, substituting an encrypted one. Carrera spoke from Balboa on a similar device.

Kuralski felt flushed with success. Even so, he kept his voice low enough that the bellhop couldn't hear. "Yes, Pat, everything we wanted and more. And they're selling us good stuff, too. Some of it has never been on the general market before. White Eagle tanks, Pat, latest upgrade. Matter of fact, they're offering special upgrades for the thirty we need. Pat, the Volgans have never sold White Eagles to anybody; and it isn't because they're shit, either. They gave me a tour, including a ride and a firing exercise. Harrington would love them if he weren't too fat to fit inside. And we're getting PBM-100s for the light armor and mechanized infantry requirement. They've actually offered to let us have the PBMs at cost plus…"

"Yes, they've got some of their people working on the right allocation of spare parts. They also corrected a few mistakes in the publicly available information on some of their capabilities."

As Carrera's voice sounded in his ear, Kuralski turned to keep a watchful eye on the Misrani bellhop. Yep, still out of the way.

"Right. Their trainers are coming in three echelons, Pat. Expect the first at Herrera Airport on the sixth of the sixth month, and the next on the ninth. The last won't arrive until the end of the month… yes, they're sending enough to train our leaders… Yes, we agreed that their folks get paid Balboan scales. It's princely to a place as depressed as Volga is now. Wait a sec, Pat…"

Waiting until the bellhop left the suite, Dan added, "Yes, from here I'll be moving on to Zion for some of the individual equipment. After that I'll go to Helvetia, then Sachsen followed by Castille. I have a very good line on five to twelve thousand Castilian-made, Sachsen-pattern helmets for cheaps, though the Helvetians are offering what might be a better helmet for about the same amount… Yes, I'll check out both. Both governments are basically dumping them."

Kuralski was briefly silent, then answered, "Right; I'll keep you posted. I'm meeting with a Misrani about the tents tomorrow morning. When I get to Zion, how high are you willing to go on the Remotely Piloted Aircraft? Right…

"Okay, Pat. Of course I'm great. I'm lucky, too…

"Oh, I almost forgot; while I was in Volga I ran into a Volgan Airborne colonel with a serious problem. Things are bad over there, very bad. Even the army is not always getting enough to eat, and that is so even with the troops growing a lot of their own food. This colonel- Colonel Samsonov… yes, he's related, distantly, to the small arms designer-said they were going to close down his unit. I think I can put Samsonov and his regiment on retainer for very damn little. Do you think you might have a use for an airborne regiment, possibly reinforced to maybe two thousand men? Okay, I'll make a deal with this guy. It shouldn't cost more than about fifteen, maybe twenty thousand drachma a month to have them wait for the call. Those poor fucks will soldier for food. Pat, it was sad; Samsonov actually looked hungry."

Kirov, Volga, 23/3/460 AC

The factory was gray and greasy, and stank of ozone and motor oil. It was quiet, however, even more quiet than the lack of business would justify. The workers had ceased what passed for work and assembled on their shop floor to listen to their manager.

While Kuralski spoke on the phone to Carrera, another man, in the Kirov tank factory near Saint Nicholasberg, addressed those workers. Victor Khudenko had taken over the management of the factory almost eleven years before. In that time he had seen production standards slip from bad to worse to unbelievably awful; all in lockstep with the rest of the Volgan economy. Since the factory not only made the White Eagle-the few prototypes that were all anyone had been able to pay for, anyway-and the PBM-100, but also was located near a major port, it had been decided that this factory would fill that portion of the Balboan order.

Khudenko had not received the news with joy unstinted; however. He knew better than anyone what trash his factory had been turning out for the Volgan Army. He thought, sadly, about the superb designs that his workers ruined through their indifference. He also knew- and if he hadn't, Timoshenko had made it abundantly clear-that this would be the last order if these tanks were not the best ever made in Volga.

Desperate times; desperate measures, Khudenko thought. If I just tell them we have an order and we must do better work than we have, it will be like every other exhortation they've heard, and ignored, over decades and centuries of Tsarist rule; in one ear and out the other. No… there must be more. There must be something to shake them up. Sad that I have to terrify them to make them see the truth. Sadder still if I don't and we all end up out on our asses.

"Comrades," he lied, "I have very bad news. The State has decided to close our factory down in two weeks' time. We will all be given severance pay, another two weeks' worth, and, of course, we will have our unemployment coverage. I am told that we will all be given some kind of a priority for some other kind of work, as and when it might become available. What that means in today's circumstances…" Khudenko gave an eloquent shrug of the shoulders.

The factory workers stood in stunned silence. Their world had collapsed in four sentences and a fragment. Khudenko let them stew for a full minute. Then he let them have the other barrel.

"Of course, the State is taking back the factory housing complex. But I have managed to get an extension on the time we will be given before we have to get out. We will have thirty days from today. And we can use the plant trucks to move ourselves to our new homes as soon as we find them."

This time the workers were not silent. They were outraged. This was really too much. How could they explain it to their families? The factory floor erupted in angry shouts.

One worker stepped forward to shout at the manager. "They can't do this to us," he insisted. "We have rights. We have law."

Khudenko smiled. "Josef Raikin, you, of all people, have little ground to complain. How many times have you been heard to say that as long as the State pretended to pay a good wage, you would pretend to do good work? No, no, I am not singling you out, Josef. We are, all of us, equally guilty… of tolerating shoddy work even if we did good work ourselves. And now the time has come to pay the price."

Another worker stepped forward to stand next to Raikin. "It wasn't us that were guilty, it was the system itself. They made it so it doesn't matter whether we do good work or bad so long as the norms are filled. Why should we have to suffer?"

"Who else can suffer?" answered Khudenko, with seeming resignation. "Anyway, you can all take the rest of the day off to break the news to your families. Come back tomorrow at the regular time so we can start the process of shutting everything down." With that, Khudenko left the podium on which he had stood, leaving the workers to ponder dismal futures.

When the factory opened the next day, Khudenko was unsurprised to see a delegation of workers and foremen waiting by his office to see him. Nor was he surprised to find out that they had come to beg him to do something, anything, to save their jobs. Surprised? He'd counted on it.

Khudenko conceded that he had heard of an order for a foreign sale that had recently been received but it was probably going to go to the Mamayev Transport Machine Factory near Novy Kiev. It was only for thirty tanks and about twice that in infantry fighting vehicles, he told them.

The news infuriated the workers. Imagine, they complained, Central Planning throwing good Volgans out into the street and giving the job to a bunch of stinking Kievens. Khudenko told them that, in these troubled times, the State was most likely seeking to avoid starting trouble in what had always been a troublesome region. The workers asked if there wasn't something Khudenko could do to steal the order from Novy Kiev.

Khudenko paused. His hand moved as if groping for an answer that was almost there. "Maybe if I could go to Central with some new plan, some new production technique, that would have us turning out the best tanks in the whole Volgan Republic, maybe then I could get Central to change their minds. Ah, but what's the use? I don't know what hasn't been tried before. Do any of you have any ideas?"

The workers pondered that question for a few minutes. Then one of them, Raikin, tentatively offered one possible answer. "I read once of a system they use in one of those Scandi places to make cars. They form a small team that's responsible for making the car from start to finish."

Another worker retorted, "That's fine for simple automobiles. We're talking tanks here. They're forty to fifty times heavier and a thousand times more complex. Besides, the factory is set up for assembly line operations. We couldn't set up the separate work spaces in time to make any difference."

A foreman piped in, "You're right, we can't do the whole thing the way the Scandis do. We could take part of it though. What if we assign a single worker, or maybe better, a small team to each tank? Automotive, firepower, electronics and… oh, yes, armor and welding. Four workers. They can walk it all the way through production, inspecting each step and having any mistakes fixed before the tank goes on to the next. We are only talking thirty tanks anyway so there will be extra people to do the walk through."

Khudenko raised an objection. "Yes, but who will guard the guards? And how will they control the line workers?"

The foreman pondered briefly. "Well, what if we give the control teams the authority to credit the work done? Do it badly and you won't get paid until it is done right. We have the norms to say how long a given job should take and how much it should be worth if done right. Then we'll have a special team check each tank from tooth to tail at the end… again, it's only for thirty tanks so we have the people. Any mistakes that the control team didn't catch gets taken from their pay."

"I like that," Khudenko answered. "But it's not enough. Give me something else I can go to Central with."

A young man with but one eye, the other being covered by a patch, and wearing a small gold cross at his neck, answered, "How about those new thermal sights? Not so good as the East's, maybe, but they would make these much more effective tanks. I remember that in Pashtia, fifteen years ago, there were times I prayed even to the God I didn't then believe in for a sight to see through smoke and dust."

Khudenko considered. "We can't make them here. And we've never been equipped for installing them."

"Well… maybe we can get the factory that does make them to send us thirty or so along with the workers and machinery to install them. I'm told they were designed to be the same dimensions as the passive sights we normally use so they could be retrofitted."

Hours later, with notebook full of some rather good, and a few silly, ideas, Victor Khudenko went in to his office and pretended to make a phone call. Through the windows the committee could see him gesturing frantically, wiping sweat from his brow, screaming, begging and pleading. They didn't know that acting had been a hobby of Khudenko's back in his college days.

At length, visibly weary, the manager emerged to tell the delegation that Central had agreed to give the factory one more chance. They had an order to produce ninety armored vehicles, thirty top quality White Eagles and sixty PBM-100s, by the first of June, 460. If that worked out they would be given another few months' probationary period. Khudenko then added something that none of the workers or foremen had suggested.

"If anyone drinks on the job; if anyone slacks off on the job; if anyone lets someone else drink or slack on the job; that man will be sacked. And no connections will save them. Spread the word men. Our lives depend on this. Our families depend on this."

Fort Cameron, 3/4/460 AC

From various parts of Terra Nova flowed uniforms, weapons, ammunition, and equipment. Though not yet enough for all needs, it was enough to keep the men training. Cruz now sported locally sewn jungle fatigues, in a digital, tiger-striped pattern. The material came from the FSC. In the absence of a single factory able to handle the order, seamstresses from all over Balboa had contracted to do piecework in their own homes to outfit their boys.

Besides the tiger suit, Cruz now wore jungle boots, and bore a rucksack, load carrying equipment, and a Helvetian helmet. He carried a North Sachsen-made Samsonov assault rifle that matched superior Volgan design with superb Sachsen workmanship. He actually wouldn't have minded going back to just the PT shorts, T-shirt, and sneakers he had been given initially. That uniform would certainly have made the current march a lot more bearable than it was.

The march had begun, as most days began here, well before sunrise. It was a forced march, a six or seven kilometer per hour death march, to a range on the other side of the post. Typically, breakfast would not be served until they reached the range. The century would spend the next week and a half sleeping out, learning about their new rifles and how to use them. Despite the pain in his feet, legs, and back, Cruz looked forward to the training. He passed a road sign that said the rifle range was only six kilometers away. Another hour, then, and they could take a break.

But then First Centurion Martinez, marching beside the century, turned over his right shoulder and gave the command, "Double tiiime…"

The company gave out a collective groan.

"March!"

The sound caused Carrera to stop his evening walk and just listen.

"Bagpipes? Here?" He turned and followed the sound until he saw a lone man, much taller and lighter skinned than most, standing under a streetlamp with, yes, bagpipes held in his arms.

He walked over. The piper stopped playing until Carrera told him, "No… please keep going. At least until you finish the piece."

When he was done Carrera asked, "Where did you learn that?"

"Black Guard of Secordia, sir," the piper answered. He had an odd accent that took Carrera a moment's thought to identify as Gallic.

He asked, "Can you teach others? And what's a Secordian doing here?"

Herrera Airport, Ciudad Balboa, 6/4/460 AC

Generals Parilla and Carrera were on hand to see the first planeload of instructors and equipment rolling down the ramp of the Litvinov-68 heavy transport. The aircraft's Volgan crew supervised as some of the trainers carefully eased the first White Eagle tank ever to set tread in Colombia Central-or anywhere outside of the Volgan Republic and its satellites-out onto the airfield surface.

A Spanish-speaking Volgan colonel, about thirty-eight or thirtynine years old, balding and graying but with spring in his step and a happy gleam in his eyes, ran over and reported to Parilla. Rendering a snappy hand salute, the Volgan said, "Colonel Aleksandr Sitnikov, Fifth Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment, reporting as ordered, sirs."

Parilla and Carrera returned the salute, introduced themselves, and asked the Volgan what he had brought with him.

Sitnikov produced a manifest list showing that portion of the training package on the aircraft that had brought him to Balboa, as well as what was enroute from Volga over the next twenty-eight hours. The manifest had been thoughtfully provided in both Russian and extremely bad Spanish.

"I didn't prepare the list myself," the Volgan apologized.

Without asking, Sitnikov explained that most of what was coming to Balboa were "chimp models" but that a reasonable number of standard and above-standard systems were with him or enroute.

"For purposes of training these are very similar to, if not exactly the same as, what you will receive when the new systems are built. We will use these to train your leaders and maintenance personnel." Sitnikov made several checks on a form. "Where possible and where they are different we've brought subsystems that are the same as you will receive when you deploy to train with as well."

"For the rest, we have a larger number of the sort of "chimp models" the Volgan Empire usually sent to the underdeveloped world…" Sitnikov paused, then continued, "… well, they're better than chimp models, but not by all that much. These will do for teaching driving and basic gunnery. The artillery will be along later. Those pieces are all standard models." More checks were made.

Carrera asked about the trainers and maintenance specialists.

Sitnikov replied, "Each vehicle or artillery piece has either its own praporschik"- warrant officer-"or sergeant for maintenance and training. Most of them speak some Spanish, mostly courtesy of a having spent a tour in Hundred Fires when it was a Volgan satellite. The rest are generally good at the point-and-show technique we use to teach our own non-Volgan speaking recruits. In addition we are bringing a four-to-six man team for each of your companies that will be using our heavy equipment, plus another six to eight for your mechanized and artillery battalions… oh, you call them "cohorts," don't you? In any case, I am in charge overall and of the headquarters support group in particular. That consists of some combined arms and logistic specialists. In all, I bring two hundred and forty-seven men."

Carrera answered, "Very good, Colonel. The government has finally turned over the FS Army's old Imperial Range complex to conduct our training. We'll be billeting your men there. It has enough barracks space, screened and out of the rain, for your group; five large buildings, some smaller ones for the officers, a mess and a headquarters. If there is any spillover, we've got tents. I'll want you to run your own local security. We'll also have a bus service to bring your men to where they can use our recreation facilities… as well as the unofficial facilities-the brothels and bars-of which there are many in Ciudad Balboa. I've got my secretary lining up some Spanish teachers, but the whores will probably do a better job of it."

As the first heavy equipment transporter pulled up near the LI-68, Carrera motioned for Soult to approach.

"Jamey," he said, "I would like you to stay here with Colonel Sitnikov. When he has finished overseeing the unloading, and his men are on the buses to go to Imperial Range, please drive him over to the Officer's Club at Herrera Field."

Turning back to Sitnikov, he said, "Colonel, my friend here will see to your needs. Please accept our invitation to lunch as soon as you have seen to your duties." It was, of course, not a request; nor did Sitnikov take it as one.

Kirov, Volga, 7/4/460 AC

It sounded different, somehow, the factory. Raikin tried to pin down precisely what was different about it, but could not. Machinists ground at metal, as always. The steam hammer pounded, as always. As always, the actinic glare of the welders still strained the eyes. The overhead cranes and tracks squeaked… annoyingly, as always.

Raikin was surprised to find himself on one of the quality control teams, the teams that had to walk each tank through the production line. Odd, that; it wasn't as if he had ever made himself the reputation as an Udarnik- or shock worker-in the twenty-five years he'd worked here.

On reflection, though, perhaps it was not so remarkable. On this team there was Raikin, senior and in charge. He had served once, and cursed often, as a young tank commander in a Guards tank regiment in Northern Sachsen. All the teams-now that he thought on it, all the quality control teams- were composed of people who had served in tank or motorized rifle formations and suffered firsthand from poor quality. Would it make a difference? Raikin didn't know. He admitted to himself that it just might.

Raikin fitted dark goggles over his eyes and bent low over a welder, himself crouching as he joined the tank glacis to the sides of the hull. Raikin was pleased to see the welder taking extra time and care to ensure a solid joinder. He thought about hurrying the welder along, but rejected the notion. He did not want his pay docked over the matter. Let the welder take his time, just so that the tank passed final inspection.

"Josef?"

Raikin stood erect and turned towards the speaker, Stefan Malayev, he of the black patch and single eye. "Yes?"

"The castings people are trying to palm off some second rate road wheels on me. You can see they're crude just by looking. I won't stand for it. I have a wife and two children and no slovenly son of a bitch is going to take food from their mouths."

Raikin nodded solemnly. "Let's go chat with the bastards, then, shall we? And if they won't listen… well… we'll go see Khudenko. That, or kick the fuckers' asses."

Imperial Range, 8/4/460 AC

Jorge Mendoza stood in ranks, eyes shining at the sight before them. If we had had these…

Atop a spotlessly gleaming T-38 tank, Colonel Sitnikov stood proudly, his hands on his hips. In a semicircle around Sitnikov, all around Mendoza, stood the nearly one hundred long-service BDC and Civil Force officers, noncoms, and enlisted men, none over five feet, six inches, plus another slightly larger group of new enlistees. These had been chosen to man the tanks and lighter armor of the Legio del Cid. Five Volgans stood between Sitnikov and the Balboans. Behind him, stretching for half a mile along either side of the access road that led to a number of the rifle and machine gun ranges at the complex, was a staggered double line of twenty-five more T-38s and PBMs. Twenty feet behind the Balboans stood Parilla and Carrera. Just behind them stood Siegel.

Sitnikov spent a few minutes, speaking in good Spanish with hardly a trace of accent, introducing himself and a few of his key personnel. He then explained, in fairly broad terms, the training schedule the tankers-to-be would follow for the next three months. Lastly he went into an enthusiastic description of the tanks themselves.

Sitnikov began, "My friends, what I am standing on is one of the best tanks in the world. "What is it about this tank that makes it so special?" you might well ask. Well, I shall tell you."

Sitnikov turned to his right, walked forward a few steps, and placed his hand atop the long barrel protruding from the turret. "This gun, the 125mm smoothbore, is the most powerful tank gun on Terra Nova today. Firing depleted uranium or tungsten-carbide penetrators, this gun will defeat the armor of any tank to be found on the modern battlefield, not excepting even the Cheetah II, the Federated States' Creighton, the Zion Chariot or the Anglian Contender, although not always in the frontal arc where the armor is thickest. Those tanks often can't even kill each other in the frontal arc. As far as the Sumeri tanks you will face, it would kill them at a range exceeding that at which those tanks can hit and penetrate the T-38's own armor."

Sitnikov moved back a step and placed his hand on a boxlike attachment sitting above the gun on a rail projecting from the turret. "Moreover," he said, "to destroy targets past the range at which the gun can hit or penetrate, the T-38 carries a number of rounds of the antiarmor missile, the AT-111 Mirror. This is a guided antitank missile, fired through the barrel. In all the world outside of the Volgan Republic, only the Federated States' Phillips light tank carries a similar weapon. But the Phillips' gun-missile system lacks the range of the Mirror. It also has the distressing habit of suffocating the crew with exhaust from the rocket motor. The Mirror has no such unfortunate defect."

Sitnikov removed his hand from the Mirror's guidance package, sat back onto the turret, and gave the turret a healthy slap. " These T-38s also boast steel-ceramic-plastic-depleted uranium composite armor similar to the type of armor found on the other most modern tanks. I must be honest, however, and tell you that the T-38's composite is not as strong as the armor used by the FS, the Anglians, and the Sachsens. That, however, makes little difference because the T-38 is much harder to hit than those tanks." At the key word 'tanks,' the five Volgans in front of Sitnikov simultaneously flipped over charts on which were drawn silhouettes of the other tanks he had mentioned, superimposed over the T-38's. Sitnikov continued. "As you can see from the charts in front of you, the T-38 is only about half as big a target as the others. Gentlemen, I assure you, in armored warfare size does matter. You can afford a little less armor when you are twice as hard to hit. Even so, your armor is not much less." His finger pointed at some layered, blocklike additions around the turret. "See these blocks? Your T-38s will boast the newest reactive armor, Engagement-5, giving an additional 120 millimeters worth of steel protection against solid shot and 500 millimeters against hollow charge, HEAT, ammunition. From the front, nothing the Sumeris have can penetrate. Nada, my friends."

Used to second rate, light armor-at best-the long-service veterans of the old BDC breathed a sigh of relief, even as the newer men grinned or, some of them, whistled.

For his part, Mendoza simply grew dreamy-eyed at the prospect of having one of these beautiful war machines under his control.

"Moreover, "Sitnikov continued, "the tanks you will receive once they are ready will have four significant advantages over even the usual T-38."

Sitnikov walked closer to the turret and pointed at a device mounted to the side of the turret, behind the gun. "This is called a "Blinder." When the tank or the infantry carriers are attacked by guided missiles, either automatically or when the tank commander flicks a switch inside, the Blinder will send out coded infrared signals that mimic those sent out by the guided missile. This confuses the missile's computerized guidance system so badly that the missile is usually sent into something like low orbit. That; or into the ground. Think of it as a nervous breakdown, computer style. The Blinder also warns and gives a directional indicator for laser beams "painting" the tank for a laser guided missile. In addition, it launches prismatic smoke grenades to screen you from the view of enemy gunners."

Pointing then at the oddly placed blocks around the turret, then at an ovoid device above them, Sitnikov announced, "Moreover, a number of the tanks you will receive in the desert will have mounted an active defense system, the "Sand Blaster." This is a system which automatically senses incoming projectiles, computes the best intercept point, then fires off the correct one to three of these other explosive blocks to deflect or damage the projectile. I have never personally used this system, but it is said to be amazing… effective against both missiles and kinetic energy weapons. Yes, even against tank-fired long rod penetrators. The Sand Blaster is new, absolutely new. Outside of a few prototypes, our own tanks do not have it yet. My government is giving it to you for combat testing.

"Then, my friends, look here at this box. This is a thermal imager much like those found in other world-class tanks. The tanks you will receive will have an improved version.

"Lastly, your tanks will come with the ammunition carousel and storage inverted to give you approximately three times as many antitank rounds, and fewer antipersonnel high explosive rounds. In the desert, facing tanks, this will be a good thing for you."

As Sitnikov moved back to stand over the tanks engine and wax lyrical over the power plant-in this case the 1250 horsepower turbine engine that replaced the less powerful 1000 horsepower diesel job found on most Volgan heavy armor, Parilla asked Carrera in a whisper, "Do you believe any of that?"

Carrera answered equally softly, "Oh, maybe every other word. That turbine is going to suck gas. Although I could be wrong; don't sell the Volgans short. Still, I doubt that Sitnikov believes it all, either. But it doesn't matter what you, or I, or even what Sitnikov believes." Sweeping his hand across the backs of the mostly young Balboans listening raptly to the Volgan, Carrera concluded, "All that matters is what they believe."

Though Carrera had spoken to Parilla softly, Siegel had heard. He leaned forward over their shoulders and added, "Actually, sirs, what the Sumeris believe is likely to be of some importance, too. You know, 'They can because they think they can' and all. Rather, 'They can't because they think they can't, '"

Carrera was puzzled at the reference. He asked, "Homer? The Trojan assault on the Greek camp?"

"Virgil, sir. The boat race."

"Ah, Virgil."

Parilla said, "You know, Patricio, there is something to be said for naming weapons rather than numbering them. Why don't we give these tanks and the other equipment names?"

"Not a bad idea. Any thoughts?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact. I was thinking that we could name the tanks for a predatory cat." Parilla held up his hands defensively. "Yes, I know, so did some rather unsavory characters both in our history and Old Earth's. Not all their ideas were wrong, merely for them having had them. So… yes, the most powerful predatory cat in this hemisphere."

"Smilodons?" Carrera asked. "I don't like that; having our tanks nicknamed 'smilies.' Or named for captive animals. Or named for a nearly extinct species."

Parilla grimaced. "I hadn't thought of smilodons. They were such a danger, and their fangs and pelts such a prize, that they're almost never found outside of a zoo anymore. How about we call the tanks… mmm… ' jaguars.'"

Carrera shrugged. The jaguars, beautiful as they are, are endangered, but nothing like old saber-tooth. They exist in zoos, of course, but they're mostly free. Maybe… oh, why the hell not?

"What about the lighter armor, Raul, the PBM-100s?"

Parilla thought about that one before asking, "Those things swim, don't they?"

"Yes… yes, they swim pretty well, I understand. They've got waterjets underneath."

"Ocelots?" Parilla suggested. "They swim, after all."

Still atop the tank, Sitnikov was coming to the end of his presentation.

"Now, gentlemen, you may recall that I began by saying this is one of the best tanks in the world. Surely that is a matter of some worry to you, not being the best. Never fear, the only tank better than this is the White Eagle. That, with all the modifications I mentioned, is what you will actually receive for the fight… "

Carrera and Parilla then left for a different part of Imperial Range. There the infantry, artillery, and other professional cadres were going through a training course in staggered groups, some pushing the new trainees while others learned to use the new equipment. Knowledge was power, and Carrera wanted his subordinate leaders to have power over their troops by virtue of their superior knowledge. Therefore, they had to learn the new equipment before the trainees ever laid eyes upon it.

Kirov, Volga, 15/4/460 AC

"Damn your eyes, take it back!" an infuriated Raikin demanded.

"What do you mean 'take it back'? There's nothing wrong with that block. Nothing!"

Raikin reached out his right hand, grabbing a surly looking machinist by the ear. "You smelly little twat," he hissed. "I was boring cylinders when you were pissing on the floor and I know what is and what isn't a good block. Come with me."

Across the factory floor Raikin dragged the shrilly protesting machinist. A few people stopped to look briefly. Not many did, however. This had become normal. The tyranny of the quality control teams had replaced the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Reaching the block where it rested on a cart by his tank, Raikin pulled the machinist's head down. "Show her, Stefan."

With a grimace, the one-eyed man set a micrometer and showed the setting to the machinist. Then he plunged it into an open cylinder and rattled it around. The machinist could not hear the rattling, of course, not over the drone of the factory. But the micrometer moved where it should not have been able to move.

"Now come with me. I am going to show you, once and for all, how to bore a damned cylinder."

Hand Grenade Range,

Fort Cameron, 21/4/460 AC

Private Cruz was feeling rather pleased with himself today. He had been among the first in the century to qualify to throw a live grenade. Earlier he'd raced through the grenade assault course, proving that he could handle one of the little bombs. Now he waited in line to move up to the pit from which he would throw five live fragmentation grenades. One of the instructor corporals motioned for Cruz to stand and move up to the pit.

At about that point it really sank in, Holyfuckingshit! They want me to hold a live bomb in my hand?

When Cruz reached the pit from which he was to throw his grenades he was met by First Centurion Martinez. Martinez looked the new private up and down and asked, "Feeling a little cocky today, are we, son?"

Cruz answered, "First Centurion, I haven't felt cocky since coming to this… establishment."

"That's good, chico, because today cocky can get you killed." Martinez returned to business. "Private Cruz, at this station you will engage targets under a variety of circumstances with live fragmentation grenades. Do you understand why these grenades are called 'defensive' grenades?"

"Yes, Centurion." He parroted, "They are called 'defensive' because if you throw them while advancing or even standing you will be within the burst radius when they go off. Therefore they are only to be used while behind cover."

"That is correct, Cruz. However, cover means different things. Let me ask another question. How long after you pull the pin and release the handle will these grenades explode?"

"About four to five seconds, Centurion."

"Also good. So you understand that if you throw immediately there is a good chance the enemy will throw the grenade back at you?"

Cruz answered, "Yesss… Centurion," rather more slowly and suspiciously. He wasn't sure he liked the direction in which Martinez was heading.

Martinez sighed and continued, a philosophical note creeping into his voice. Idly, he tossed a grenade up a few times, catching it on the descent. "You see, Cruz, any fool can throw a grenade as far as his arm will send it. Any fool can throw one as soon as he releases the spoon. You, however, are going to learn to be a very special kind of a fool." Martinez's tone changed. "Take the first grenade in hand, Private."

Cruz, paling, took a grenade from a table in the pit. Martinez ordered him to remove the safety clip, and pull the pin. Cruz obeyed. Then Martinez grabbed the wrist of Cruz's throwing arm and said, "At my command you will release the spoon and count to three with me. Then you will throw the grenade as far down range as you can. Release the spoon."

Cruz, eyes gaping wide, looked at Martinez like he had lost his mind. Martinez repeated himself, "Private Cruz, release the spoon."

Mouth suddenly open and gone dry, Cruz removed his thumb from over the grenade safety handle and watched as the metal safety handle flew off. He followed Martinez in what seemed an impossibly slow count to three. It's possible that the count seemed especially slow because the private's heart was racing at several hundred beats per minute. Martinez then released the boy's wrist, allowing him to propel the grenade over the walls of the pit. Cruz leaned back against the wall, knees gone weak, at about the time the grenade went off.

Martinez gave the boy a few moments to let his heart stop racing. Then he said, "Very good, Cruz. Now you are going to do it again. This time, though, you will do it entirely on your own. After that, instead of throwing the grenade as far as you can, you will lob one so that it explodes just on the other side of the pit wall. Then we will go out into the impact area. There you will use one of your grenades to clear a section of trench. You will be inside the trench, but around the corner from where you throw the grenade. Then you will take out a bunker. You will not, repeat not, be inside the bunker. The amount of training we have lavished upon you is beginning to make you too expensive to just throw away. Private Cruz, take a grenade."

Later, while marching back to the company tents, Cruz reflected upon the day's events and what they meant to him. Certainly they showed that he could use a grenade. It was more than that, though. In Cruz's mind, the big lesson of the day was that he could overcome mind-numbing fear. His step acquired just a bit more spring to it.

Kirov, Volga, 22/4/460 AC

"Let her down easy. Easy, I say!"

Raikin turned from the crane lowering the fifteen-ton turret to its rest. "Stefan, are you sure, sure that the recoil system is solid?"

"I am sure, Josef. I made the bastards do it over twice. No leaks. No weak seals. I watched them from start to finish."

The one-eyed man hesitated. "Josef?"

"Yes?"

"It feels good, you know… seeing good work done and doing good work."

And Raikin suddenly understood why the factory sounded different. "Yes, it does, Stefan."

"Stefan… why don't you pick up the wife and kids and come by this evening after work. A little vodka. A little food. For you are right; it does feel good. I never knew it could."

Imperial Range, 24/4/460 AC

"Move out!" crackled in Mendoza's headset. He was already shifting gear to reverse. Smoothly he backed out of his tank's hull-down firing position. Another quick shift of the gears and twist of the steering yoke- I am getting good at this- and his Jaguar sprang forward and to the left. Mendoza's body was pressed back against the rough cushion of the driver's seat.

An alarm buzzed in Mendoza's ears. He swore as he brought the tank to a complete halt, brakes squealing as his foot slammed down. His hand felt for the gearshift, then threw the tank into idle. Mendoza popped the hatch and was immediately surrounded by a cloud of red smoke billowing from a canister. The acrid smoke irritated Mendoza's eyes and throat, forcing him to tear up and to cough violently.

Half out of the hatch, Mendoza twisted his body around to see his tank's Volgan trainer climbing aboard, face red with fury. With frantic gestures supplemented by curses in mixed Spanish, Russian and Azeri, Praporschik Suleymanov pounded on turret top, screaming. Reduced to their essence, his words amounted to, "Left! Right! Left! Right! Always you do the same. Don't you think your fucking enemy is going to pay attention? Shift! Vary! Alternate! Don't be so damned predictable!"

"Yes, sir," answered Mendoza's chief, Sergeant Perez, once he was made to understand the problem. To Mendoza, Perez said, "Don't take it to heart, Jorge. It's my job to tell you which way to go. So… my fault. We'll do better in the future."

"Right, Sergeant. Got a set of dice to randomize?" Thank you, Sergeant Perez, for not blaming me. But I could do better and I will.

Kirov, Volga, 3/5/460 AC

"Do you think we could have done any better, Josef?"

"Maybe," Raikin admitted. "But if so, I don't see where. I don't know about the others, but this tank has no flaws." He looked at the vehicle, admiring it from the fresh paint of its hull, to the gleaming treads to the spotless rubber around the road wheels. Soon a heavy transporter would come to take it to the port. He would miss it, miss the sense of purpose it had given his life.

"Did you test fire the commander's machine gun as I told you?" Raikin asked.

"Yes, even that. Two hundred and fifty rounds through the barrel, just as you insisted. Then I cleaned it. Do you think it is enough?"

"Maybe not. But we did do the best we could."

Stefan smiled. "We actually can do a little better."

Raikin twisted his head, looking quizzical.

"Well… I was thinking about that tank crew; the one that will get this tank. I have been out in the desert, alone and scarred shitless."

"So?"

Stefan pulled a liter bottle of vodka from his lunch pack. "Does anyone in the factory write Spanish? I'd like to leave them a note with this."

Fort Cameron Parade Field, 5/5/460 AC

For the first time since it had been formed, the entire brigade stood together in one place. Basic Combat Training was over. The various training centuries had been reorganized into the ten cohorts, one ala and one classis- the naval squadron-that would participate in the war. As part of these cohorts and centuries-basically very large platoons that could be expanded into companies, or maniples, as money and manpower became available-the men would now train on the more advanced tactics, skills, techniques, and weapons they would actually use when they went to war.

In front of the now-formed legion the president of the Republic, General Parilla, the defense attache from the Federated States, Colonel Sitnikov, and various other dignitaries-including the Roman Catholic archbishop-stood on a reviewing stand. Off to one side of the stand, a band played a martial air as the cohorts marched onto the field under the command of Carrera. TV news cameras recorded the event.

Once formed on the field, the officers and the legionary, cohort and century eagle and guidon bearers marched to the center behind Carrera. At his command, they all marched forward to a position directly in front of the reviewing stand. After the archbishop of Balboa had invoked a blessing, the president and Parilla presented the legion, each cohort and each century with the eagle or guidon it would carry as its colors. They were the same eagles Parilla had seen in Carrera's mess. These were gold for the legion and silver for the cohorts, ala and classis. There were miniature bronze eagles for the centuries with guidons attached. Each eagle perched atop an enameled copy of the national shield of Balboa. The shields were attached to seven-foot mahogany poles carved in a spiral design. The eagles' wings stretched upward until they almost touched overhead. A bronze plaque under the shields proclaimed the unit number and motto of each.

After presentation the men swore their oath of allegiance to, "God and the legion," rather than to the Republic. This was not lost on the president of Balboa who made a long-winded prepared speech, even so. Parilla made a rather shorter one which also had the function of promoting all the corporals in the legion to sergeant. The archbishop prayed for God above to also bless and protect the men who would follow the eagles. Then the officers and eagles marched back to a position in front of their units. With the brass band playing-it was borrowed from the Cuerpo de Bomberos, the firefighters, as the pipes weren't quite ready yet-the legion passed in review by the stand. Then-no time for celebrations-they went back to training.

Interlude

29 July, 2067, UNS Kofi Annan, alongside

Colonization Ship Cheng Ho

The man on the view screen was plainly dying. His face was pale, sweat running down it in sheets. His voice was breaking with pain. Even so, he managed to eke out, weakly:

" Captain's log, UNCS Cheng Ho. Final entry."

"Turn up the volume, Coms," the captain of the Annan ordered. "And see if you can get rid of some of the static."

The image cleared; the volume raised. In the view screen the master of the Cheng Ho grimaced with obvious agony.

"I haven't been able to stop the troubles. Maybe… maybe if I'd had more Marines aboard. But rampaging youths…"

Did the captain of the Annan detect a sneer in the words, "rampaging youths?" She thought she did. She almost missed the next few words:

"… have sabotaged the reactor. We've managed… just… to keep it from going critical. We have not been able to… control the radiation. It overheated… melted the shield. The ship's been flooded… with hard rads."

Annan's captain winced. A bad way to go.

"… the Phalange flooded the reactor deck with some poisonous gas they ginned up in the labs… too late… we can't get at the reactor even to build a temp shield… around it."

"What the hell is a phalange?" the captain asked of the bridge crew, generally. Her question was rewarded with blank stares.

"… to anyone who comes after me… I can't explain what happened, how it all fell apart. I don't know why we can't… all… just… get along…"

The captain of Cheng Ho began to sob on the screen. Unable to speak, he clutched as his midsection for long minutes before crumpling and falling off of his chair and off screen.

"Oh, my," whispered Annan 's skipper. Then, setting her face firmly, she ordered, "Major Ridilla, return here with your men. I want the complete log for the Cheng Ho brought with you. Take them to my port cabin and give them directly to me and to no one but me."

"Aye, Skipper."

Chapter Thirteen And the plan of God was being accomplished. -Homer, The Iliad, Book I

Ranges Eight and Ten, Imperial Range Complex, east slope of Hell Hill, Republic of Balboa, 10/5/460 AC

Shift gears. Back up. Shift again. Move forward to the left. Feel the restraining straps cut into your body as it's thrown forward when the brakes bite in. Stop at the next covered position. Shift gears. Back up. Shift again. Move right to the next covered position. Right, again. Left. Left. Right. Stop. Incoming! Back up fast! Pop smoke.

Perez's voice shouts in the microphone. "Two o'clock! Gunner! Sabot! Tank!" Buttons are pushed. The autoloader selects a round of kinetic energy ammunition from the carousel, lifting it easily to the breech and feeding it in. The gunner and commander shy away from the autoloader; it has been known to feed in arms, shoulders and heads. From behind Jorge Mendoza's head comes the whine of a 15- ton turret moving smoothly on its bearings. Jorge braces himself.

"Target!"

"Fire!" The crash of the gun ripples Mendoza's internal organs.

"Hit! Hit!"

"Eleven o'clock. Gunner! Sabot! Tank!"

"Miss!"

"Repeat!" The loader recycles with a fresh round. Again the crash sends Jorge's stomach bouncing against his backbone.

"Hit!"

"Driver, move out!"

Shift gears. Back up. Shift again. Forward. Forward. "Ten o'clock! Gunner! Sabot!…" An alarm goes off in Mendoza's ears. "Shit!" As always after a failure, red smoke floods Jorge's compartment as soon as he opens his hatch. Shit!

Jungle-covered for the most part, Cerro de Infierno jutted up between the Gallardo Trench of the Transitway and the road that ran generally alongside it. The hill overlooked the relatively open maneuver areas of Imperial Ranges Eight and Ten. From his vantage point above the road, Carrera watched one of the legion's tank sections going through its paces. While the rest of the legion had been going through basic training, the tank and PBM-100 crews, largely composed of long service professionals with Basic far behind them, had been doing their individual and crew training on the Jaguars and Ocelots. They were now working up to section and century level operations.

Through his field glasses Carrera saw the four tanks move by bounds toward Cerro Marieta to the east-southeast. As one group of two moved forward, the other protected them, overwatched in military parlance, by searching for and engaging any targets that presented themselves. As he watched a pair bound forward, Carrera's attention focused on one tank in particular. He couldn't see what had hit it, but the expanding cloud of red smoke told him something had. Perhaps the crew didn't know either, though Carrera could see a red- faced Russian, he assumed it was a Russian, screeching a small four wheel drive vehicle to a stop and getting out. In his glasses Carrera saw the tank crew, already emerging, flinching from the anticipated lesson.

Carrera cursed himself for a fool. I've made a mistake in this training plan. This range is simply too hard. Truth be told, this platoon has already been "killed" more than once over.

The primary problem was that the jungle and the hills and ridges made the range available to let the tanks engage targets far too short. This meant that when targets appeared they were so close to the tanks that the Jaguars had little chance to traverse and engage before, realistically, they would have been hit.

Everything is a trade off in tank design. Engineers trade size against ammunition and fuel capacity, height against ability to depress the gun, armor against speed, and engine and speed against fuel consumption and-sometimes, in peacetime-safety.

Politicians trade off expense against numbers. Sometimes, in the industrialized parts of Terra Nova, they traded safety and combat performance for environmentalist sentiment, too. Politicians on Old Earth had once made similar choices. If they'd never paid for those choices, their soldiers often had.

One of the trade offs the Volgans typically made was slow speed of an electrically powered turret traverse against the complexity of a hydraulic traversing system and the danger of its fluid catching fire if hit. The Jaguar, like all Volgan tanks, was notoriously slow in traversing its turret. There were actually ranges, close ones to be sure, where a fast man on foot could run in a circle around a standing Volgan tank faster than the turret could track him. This sounded like more of a design flaw than it really was. Volgans used tanks in mass and with supporting infantry always close by. Try to run circles around one Volgan tank in combat and the odds were good that a dozen others would perforate you before you had a chance to turn the first corner, if the infantry didn't get you first.

Carrera thought, Once they get to the desert this won't really be a problem. Shots there will usually be so long-range that the typical engagement will require only a small angle of turret movement. On the other hand, if the boys start believing their tanks aren't up to it here, they're likely to carry that attitude over to the desert. This is definitely not good.

Carrera reached a decision and it didn't take him long to do so. He told his driver to call on the radio for Brown, Sitnikov and Kennison.

Brown was the first to arrive, having been the nearest. "Sancho Panzer reports, sir."

When the other two showed up, a few minutes later, Carrera told them, point blank, "This range sucks. Not your fault; still your problem. The troops aren't getting the chance to engage targets at a realistic distance and they're getting their clocks cleaned by the targets because they can't traverse quickly enough to engage. Here's what I want done by tomorrow morning. Carl, you go get your hands on a dozen small boats with outboards and a dozen, no better make it two, without. Get five hundred feet of tow cable for each powerboat. Brown, find some ballsy fuckers from among your tankers to man the powerboats. Offer a bonus if you have to. Don't be overgenerous… say, no more than daily combat pay would be. Fit out the others with tank-sized plywood targets. We'll tow the targets behind the powerboats out in the ocean north of the FS Army's old drop zone at Vera Cruz. Sitnikov, move half the Jaguars you've dedicated to gunnery to Vera Cruz. We'll do long-range firing from there."

With a moment's reflection, Carrera added, "Carl, better get the word to the merchant freighters anchored out there to move. And find me a place to do a tank platoon attack where they can shoot at some distance."

Kennison thought briefly. "No place near the Transitway, Pat. Rio Sombrero, maybe? I'll look tomorrow after we get the Vera Cruz affair set up."

"Fair enough."

Santa Clara Schoolhouse,

Balboa, 14/5/460 AC

The training schedule for Cruz's unit-now reorganized as Second Century, 1st Cohort-called for exercises in city fighting. That put them in this paint-chipped and abandoned, multistory and multilevel building. The building had once been a school. Of the two major sections one stood atop a hill, another at its base. A long, covered and enclosed walkway ran up the side of the hill, connecting the two.

No Volgans, except the five that were attached to the cohort for their equipment training, were present. City fighting was an area in which the BDC had been reasonably well trained prior to the 447 invasion. The cohort's own NCOs, therefore, trained their own troops in the tactics and techniques of defending and attacking buildings. Those NCOs had, themselves, spent the previous three evenings in refresher training run by Abogado's organization while their troops rested.

Cruz's section leader, del Valle, took his men from station to station within the building. He showed them how to clear a room, to watch for booby traps, to use a rope to climb up the side of a blank wall, and all the other usual techniques employed in combat in builtup areas.

The upper part of the school was used to practice offensive operations. In the lower part were set up a number of demonstration areas showing how to prepare to defend a building, from making fighting positions to blocking normal passages to making new passages to setting traps. Cruz's section leader explained each, pretty much as it had been explained to him by FMTG. By supper time the company was finished with the schoolhouse. Eating his supper, a heavy stew over rice, Cruz and his friends had to admit that today's training had been the most fun so far. And it hadn't really been very hard work.

After supper Cruz's squad leader rejoined the rest of the squad. He marched them over to one of the abandoned houses the Federated States military forces had kept for the families of its soldiers once stationed in Balboa. The house was on stilts. It was also in very poor shape, which explained why it was abandoned. Underneath the house were several piles of fortification material, barbed wire, lumber, sandbags, shovels, axes and picks. Just outside the area under the house was a huge pile of dirt.

Del Valle gave a half evil smile just before saying, "Fun's over. Tomorrow morning we will be attacked. We will work all night to prepare this house for defense. You can use those two shovels and that dirt for filling sandbags. Sanchez, you are the acting section leader. The rest of you stay here. Sanchez come with me."

Fort Cameron, 17/5/460 AC

Artillery was a mixed bag. The artillery cohort was organized into five firing centuries of six guns each, though in one case instead of guns the century had multiple rocket launchers. Of the other four, two had Volgan-built 122mm howitzers and two had 160mm Suomi- manufactured mortars. The Volgans, too, had manufactured mortars in the 160mm range but those had been one of the rare cases where Carrera had opted for something besides Volgan equipment. The Suomi guns were lighter, more maneuverable, easier to get into and out of action, had greater range and a more effective shell on target. Nor was the price terribly bad, though it was more than the Volgan guns cost. Still, mortars were so cheap, generally, that the price differential for a mere twelve systems was small change, even for a force trying to squeeze out the last bit of value from every drachma.

Carrera had ordered several hundred Volgan "Daredevil" laser guidance systems to be modified for the Suomi shells. These had actually cost more than the other mortars would have. The Volgans were happy enough with the deal.

While only just enough tanks and other armored vehicles to train on had been delivered, the guns and mortars were light enough to fit on just a portion of a single large cargo aircraft. The Balboans had the full complement of what they would take to war with them.

Under their Volgan and Zion artillery instructors (for Zion made the same mortar as Suomi and had a fair number of Spanish speakers to boot-for that matter, the Arabic instructors for the intelligence and Civil Affairs/Psychological Operations troops were Zioni), the drivers were learning to operate prime movers for the artillery cohort while the cannoneers drilled on deflection and elevation changes, fuse setting and charge setting. Under a large tent, with the sides raised to let in the breeze, two more Volgan instructors were working with those twenty-two Balboans who had been selected to be FDCs, fire direction computers. The subject for today was setting up an artillery plotting board.

Nearby, another Volgan, along with Carrera's man Mitchell, was showing ten more Balboans how to use a Global Locating System, or GLS. This was a hand-held device that took coordinates on the ground directly from satellites in geosynchronous orbit. The UE Peace Fleet took very careful notice of any Terra Novan ventures into space, but had allowed these satellites without too much fuss.

Gamboa River, Republica de Balboa, 18/5/460 AC

A large black- and red-painted freighter moved northwest on its way through the Transitway. About a half a mile west of the freighter was the site chosen for the legion's engineers to practice river crossing and some other combat engineer operations.

Like nearly everyone else in the legion, the engineers had only a partial set of equipment with which to work. This was unfortunate but, in an armed force expanding radically and rapidly, it was perhaps unavoidable.

Carrera took it philosophically; other armies in the past had expanded to a greater degree, faster, with less-qualified cadre personnel and less equipment. What the legion had would do.

Touring the place, he thought, with a certain grim satisfaction, Fortunately the area is nearly perfect. The Gamboa River is enough like the one in Sumer at this point, broad and slow, to make a good simulation in case we end up having to force a river crossing.

Even as he watched, some of the engineers, the bridge and ferry troops, practiced ferrying men and equipment across the river to the other side and back again. On the other side was a marginally maintained golf course. The shouts and curses of the engineers reached his ears but faintly. He smiled.

A simulated minefield had been laid out across the golf course itself. Naturally, the greens of the golf course had been chewed up by heavy vehicle treads. Some of the locals were less than pleased at losing their recreation facility. When they had complained, however, Carrera had told the civilians to "go piss up a rope."

From his vantage point Carrera watched as the pioneer century and the pioneer sections of the combat support centuries practiced clearing lanes through the simulated minefields. They showed no more concern for the civilians' feelings than Carrera had.

It will be a long time before the golf course even has a fairway again. Tsk. How very unfortunate.

Once, when the Federated States had maintained a large force in Balboa, the place had been dotted with military facilities. One such was the Cerro Peligroso ammunition dump, located very near the golf course. This consisted of some open areas, a ring road, a fence in absolutely terrible shape, and thirty-three ammunition bunkers made up of very thick concrete. The whole area was badly overgrown. The engineer troops were billeted in some of the bunkers, each of which was large enough to fit forty men comfortably. The bunkers, what with the thick concrete and the jungle vegetation overhead, were cool and pleasant, if a bit damp.

From a demolition range situated at the southeast corner of the long abandoned dump came an irregular concussive thumping. As unhappy as they were over their golf course, the civvies were even less happy about the constant explosions. Carrera had also spoken to them about that, briefly. Go piss up a rope.

Carrera walked by, just to see if the chain of command knew enough to keep the troops busy. Since the bunkers were abandoned but for a guard each, plus the cooks in the mess bunker, Carrera inferred that they did.

Near the bunkers, the ditch and entrenchment excavators chewed lines in the ground wherever they could find an open area. Must insure they know to fill those in. Mosquitoes.

The water purification troops, engineers rather than logistics men, trained on the polluted waters of the Transitway itself. Quality control was easy for these men. The water they purified was all they were allowed to drink.

Amid the hubbub of roaring machinery, sputtering water ferry engines, and explosions, Carrera and the engineer century commander spoke.

"How's it going, Sam? Any major problems?" Carrera left unspoken the and how can I help you? It was possible that he couldn't help. No sense in offering what he couldn't deliver.

The engineer officer was another man from the Federated States. Originally, Sam Cheatham had come as part of Abogado's FMTG. He was tallish and a bit beefy, a graduate of the FS Military Academy at River Watch. Carrera had tapped him one day and asked if he'd be interested in joining the legion and commanding its engineer century. Promised that Carrera would make up the pay differential on the side, Cheatham had jumped at the chance.

Like the Ocelot sections that trained with the mechanized cohort but would eventually return to the infantry cohorts, the engineers of the cohorts' combat support centuries trained with the main engineer century for the nonce.

"Everything's basically going well as far as our own jobs are concerned, sir," the engineer had answered. "One thing does worry me, though. We need to work with the combat cohorts we're going to support. That will happen on its own with the cohorts' own sapper sections. My century is a problem. If we could have even a few days each of working with the cohorts, I'd be a lot happier."

Carrera answered, "Yeah… me, too. After Advanced Individual Training is finished we'll have about eighteen days here in Balboa before we go over to major unit exercises under the legion. We can send your men down to work with the cohorts then."

And then we can pray it's enough. I think it will be enough.

Range 12, Imperial Range Complex, 21/5/460 AC

Cruz's hands still had not healed from all of the shoveling of dirt he had done at Cocoli the week before. His lungs also still hurt from all of the smoke he had sucked down when his squad was attacked. The defense had not gone well. Cruz's section leader, plainly displeased, had simply selected another building and the whole section had done it all over again the next day. The same had happened to all the other sections in the century. That defense had gone better. Best of all, six of the cohort's twelve sections had to do it all a third time. Not only did this give Cruz's comrades a satisfying opportunity to rub it in to those who still had to train to standard; while they were retraining the members of the sections who had passed were allowed to catch up on sleep. Since nobody had slept more than half an hour in two days, this was a most welcome break.

Now, at Range 12, the men prepared to do a dismounted live fire exercise, a fairly simple trench clearing operation. The section would use its rifles, its three Volgan light machine guns, and a medium machine gun in getting to and clearing the trench. Instead of hand grenades they had been given simulators. In the confined spaces of the trench system these were probably dangerous enough.

The men were set, but hidden by the jungle's foliage. At a signal from Cruz-he was acting as leader for this mission-the medium machine gun began to sweep fire across the top of the objective. Near the machine gun, but spread out to either side, were three men carrying "Draco" sniper rifles, which fired the same, high-powered, round. Between the two types of fire Cruz could reasonably expect the target to be judged "suppressed."

When he, personally, judged that anyone who might have been in the target trench would at this point likely have been on the bottom of it, shitting their pants, Cruz gave the signal-a simple whistle blast, for the machine gun to lift fires off the objective. It did, but only to the extent of firing high so that the sound of the bullets passing would at least continue to frighten anyone who might have been in the trench. The Dracos maintained their slow, aimed, deliberate fire. The assault party would just have to move through it, trusting to the marksmanship of the Draco men.

Most armies would have banned this as being far too unsafe.

Cruz then led the remaining men forward at the double, bayonets fixed, to a shallow linear depression in the earth. The men hastily threw themselves down into it. The machine gun resumed firing only a few feet over their heads.

Under his leaders' watchful eyes, Cruz and the rest threw simulators at the opposing trench. At this signal the machine gun lifted its fire off of the objective completely and began to pound a suspicious- looking position higher up the hill. Making ready to use simulators again, the men crawled forward to within a few feet of the trench. Two of them placed simulators directly into it. That was much less nerve wracking than using real grenades. After the twin explosions the rest rushed the last few feet up to the trench, firing downward from the hip as they ran.

The first two men jumped in, turned to the sides and fired at targets that suddenly appeared on either side of them. Meanwhile, Cruz and the rest crawled forward and entered the position themselves. Cruz ordered the rightmost man to stay put and guard the rear. Then the rest turned left and began bombing their way forward, throwing simulators to clear each section of trench before entering it to make a clean sweep with automatic rifle fire.

Fifty meters up the line the trench branched. Again leaving a man to guard that portion that ran parallel to the crest of the hill, Cruz and the others took the branch that went uphill. Bombing forward the entire way, Cruz reached the final objective, a small command bunker. He threw a green smoke canister to signal for the machine gun to come forward and sent one man to retrieve the two who had been left behind. Then he began placing the section in a hasty defense to repel any counterattack.

Behind Cruz, del Valle and First Centurion Martinez exchanged glances. Oooo, that was nice. Good kid; very calm, very determined. He's done well. There's potential here.

Lying on his belly, waiting for someone to start pulling up the targets that would signal the enemy counterattack, Cruz thought, damn, that was fun. He didn't notice that his hands had started bleeding again.

Fort Cameron, 24/5/460 AC

The window-mounted air conditioner hummed loudly, causing the speaker to have to raise his voice to be heard. It didn't really matter; Carrera listened with only one ear, and absently, to the training status brief being presented. He relied more on his eyes and ears than statistical indicia, anyway.

The briefing officer, Tribune Rocaberti, was River Watch trained, Carrera knew. The briefing reflected that. It was also precisely why Carrera paid it little attention. The briefing was thorough, painstaking, and, inevitably, duller than watching paint dry.

Carrera had always found long meetings to be physically and psychically agonizing. He interrupted Rocaberti and told Johnson to stay and listen to the rest. Then he left the conference tent

"Take me to Imperial Range, Jamey," he told Soult.

"Sure thing, Boss."

Soult put the car in gear and pulled away on the packed gravel road for the hour and a half long drive to Imperial Range. Soult drove quietly for the first half hour, before reaching the paved highway that ran west to the Bridge of the Columbias and on to Imperial Range complex. He did risk a couple of glances over at his chief, noting that Carrera's face seemed troubled.

"What's bothering you, Boss?"

Of the people Carrera had assembled for his staff, only threeSoult, Mitchell and the sergeant major-were actually the kind of friends he would trust with a personal problem. He thought about whether this was the kind that he could… or even should.

"I am beginning to feel like a disloyal rat, Jamey."

"Lourdes, right, Boss?"

"Yeah," Carrera admitted. Who said enlisted men were stupid? "I find myself thinking about her at odd times."

"Uhhh… Boss… we all find you looking at her at odd times, too."

"Everybody's noticed?" Pat asked.

"I think so. I mean… well, I'm sure you try not to look and all… but, yeah; sometimes you're pretty obvious."

Carrera sighed and turned his face to the right, watching the trees go by. After several minutes he turned back.

"The problem is, Jamey, that my wife and kids are dead less than a year. It just seems wrong for me to be looking at another woman now. It might be wrong ever to look at another woman with… any… oh… significance."

"If you don't mind my saying so, Boss, that's bullshit. A man needs a woman. A soldier needs one more than most."

"Maybe," Carrera half conceded before turning his gaze back to the passing jungle.

The staff car pulled to a stop near the large asphalt parking lot where Sitnikov had once given his introductory presentation on tanks. There was an infantry cohort-the schedule said it would be the 1st Cohort-sitting on the mown grass east of the asphalt, eating lunch from pouches.

"Hey, Cruz, look. It's the Gringo."

By now, everybody knew who the Gringo was. It was also known that he was a former Federated States military officer. It was rumored that he had lost his family during either the terrorist attacks on the Terra Nova Trade Organization in the FSC or during the attacks shortly thereafter in the Republic of Balboa. No one, no one at Cruz's level, at least, knew for sure which it was, though.

Cruz looked up to see Carrera watching another century as they practiced mounting and dismounting from the Ocelots. Each cohort had four, for general support, in the Combat Support Century. Any couple of sections might need to mount them in the coming fight so all had to be at least familiarized beforehand.

Cruz asked a question of common concern. "Why do you suppose he's here with us?"

Not quite understanding, his squad mate answered, "To make sure we're training all the time, not eating properly, and getting little rest. Why else?"

"Don't be more stupid than you absolutely must," Cruz said. "No, I mean what is he doing here in Balboa? It doesn't make sense to me."

"I heard a rumor that he is planning to overthrow the government and establish himself as dictator. I also heard, from an equally reliable source, that he is an agent of the Gringo imperialists to make sure we never rise again."

"Oh, antania shit. He spends way too much time training us to think he's against us. Nothing he's done suggests anything but that he's on our side. He spends all his time out in the field with us, trying to make sure we're ready to fight. That means he is not trying to keep Balboa down. I heard he refused the command of the legion, so it doesn't look like he wants to be dictator. No. He is here for some other reason. If he really did lose his family, like rumor control says, could it really be that he's here just for revenge?"

Sergeant del Valle, who was at a level to know why Carrera was there, interrupted the conversation to say, "Why he's here is none of your goddamned business, Privates. And since you two seem to have all this idle time on your hands to philosophize, you can wash out the Ocelot tonight after we're finished."

Casa Linda, 26/5/460 AC

While the maids puttered and dusted, Lourdes sang, softly but happily, as she busied herself with preparations. Carrera and his boys, most of them, were coming home from Fort Cameron for the first time in weeks.

"Over there, Maria," Lourdes said to a maid. "Put the whiskey out where they can find it first. After all that time in the jungle they'll want a drink. And I want Patricio…"

Lourdes stopped with sudden confusion. She steadied herself with one hand on the dining room table while pulling a seat out with the other. She sat down heavily.

I want Patricio? I missed them, sure, but… no, girl, be honest with yourself, at least. You missed him; Patricio. It was that name that set your heart to beating fast.

Why? Why should I? He hardly ever even talks to me outside of my job. "Translate this, please, Lourdes." "Is my car ready, Lourdes?" "Lourdes, have you seen the report from Professor Ruiz?" He cares more for his men than he does for me. At least he'll spend time with them when he isn't working.

Lourdes looked into the next room where, over the fireplace mantle hung Linda Hennessey's portrait. How can I compete with that? I'm pretty enough, I guess… no gross defects. Not a lot of equipment but it isn't bad, what I do have. But she's dead, so she's a saint. Sometimes I hate that picture so much!

The woman stood again, a trifle unsteadily, and walked into the living room. She looked up at Linda's portrait and asked aloud, "Do you want him to be alone? I could make him happy; I know I could. But he sits and stares and pines and, when he thinks no one is looking, he cries for you. Would you mind so much…?"

The portrait didn't answer. Lourdes turned on her heel and walked up the stairs to Carrera's room, near her own. She stood there quietly, at the foot of his bed, merely sniffing. It smelled right to her, whatever trace of him was left in the bedding and furniture. She went to the clothes hamper, opened it and pulled out a T-shirt left from his last, very brief, visit home. Have to speak to Lucinda about cleaning out the hampers more regularly, she thought.

Scrunching the T-shirt in her hands she pressed it to her face and inhaled through her nose and deeply. Oh, yes, this smells just right. Why are men so stupid that they can't tell a proper match the way women can?

Presidential Palace,

Ciudad Balboa, 13/6/460 AC

" Tio Guillermo, you were badly mistaken."

"Mistaken, Manuel? How?"

"They are going to get this legion finished, and properly. And there's precisely nothing I can do about it. I haven't ever seen anything like this level of… oh, efficiency. Certainly not since I left River Watch."

"I assumed you would do your duty and sabotage them, Manuel. Obviously you have failed," the president sneered. "You were born a failure. You remain one, a disgrace to a proud name. I wish the gringos had killed you twelve years ago. Your existence is an embarrassment."

Rocaberti cringed under his uncle's tongue-lashing. "Uncle, whatever I am, I can't do this. Parilla? You know him. He isn't so bad. But that gringo of his? Uncle, he frightens me. And Jimenez, you remember him? Jimenez wants me dead. He blames me that he lost the fight at the Estado Mayor; blames me for losing most of his men. I see it in his eyes. Can't you please, please get me out of this?"

"No. Get back to where you belong and report, at least, if you are too much the coward to do anything else. Go and at least pretend you're someone with balls!"

Casa Linda, 15/6/460 AC

Carrera, Parilla, McNamara, Johnson, Kennison, and Sitnikov sipped cool drinks on the rear deck of the house, overlooking the Gulf of Balboa. The atmosphere was informal but there was business to attend to. The legion was almost finished with the second phase of their training, what would be called ACT-or Advanced Combat Training-for infantry and tankers in the Federated States Army.

Setting down his drink, Carrera began, "Aleksandr, how do you rate our men?"

Sitnikov had been asking himself the same question for weeks. He made his answer honestly.

"On a purely technical level your men have done well, especially with the heavy vehicles. My instructors say that they have learned to drive, shoot, and maintain better and faster than a typical group of Volgan recruits would have. This is unsurprising, to a degree, since both the Civil Force and the new Legion have been able to be very selective in the recruits accepted. However, you have weaknesses in higher-level maintenance. Your NCO's seem as good, or probably, since they are regulars, better than average Volgans. However…"

"However?" Carrera prodded.

"However," Sitnikov continued, "I cannot say as much for all of your officers. You have some very good ones, to be sure. Tribune Jimenez, in particular, would be a credit to anyone's army. There are others. Would you like to see what my instructors have to say about the legion's leadership?"

At Carrera's nod Sitnikov turned over a list of the Legio del Cid's commissioned leadership, tactfully without including any of Carrera's hand-picked old friends. Comments were written beside each man's name. Most were in blue, and terse. Carrera quickly gathered that these the Volgans considered good enough. Others, the best, were in black. Jimenez's name appeared in this way. About twenty names were in red. The Volgans viewed these very unfavorably. Carrera noted that Manuel Rocaberti was on that list before he passed the sheets to Parilla without comment.

Parilla noted it too. "We can't dump Tribune Rocaberti, Patricio. Too well connected, he and his family. He's the president's nephew, after all. And the president must have his spy in our ranks. At least with Manuel, we know who the spy is."

"Ummm," Carrera answered doubtfully. "Sitnikov, this about matches my own assessment. Which is why I called you here today. We have a shortage of effective, combat capable officers. I would like to make up some of that shortage from you. Also some of the maintenance deficiency. What do you say?"

Sitnikov sat silent for a long minute. When he answered, it was a deliberate, measured response. "Some of my men, maybe even more than half, would probably like to stay. Many have found girlfriends. Two, to my certain knowledge, are planning on getting married. I do not know how my government would react to that, however. If they say no, the idea of being stateless does not appeal."

Carrera looked to Parilla. Parilla gave a nonverbal assent, a shallow nod.

"What if you men could become citizens of Balboa, Aleksandr, with jobs and ranks in the LdC roughly commensurate with-okay, maybe a bit below-their current ranks in the Volgan Army? Would that sway them, do you think?"

"Some of them have wives, children. They would not leave them behind… well… most of them wouldn't."

"Do you think the current regime would let the men's families emigrate?" Carrera asked.

Sitnikov couldn't know for sure, but thought it likely. He reminded Carrera that not all of the Volgans were, themselves, first class military material. He had been forced to take some marginal characters, men whose only real qualification was linguistic, to meet the numerical requirements of the training mission.

"Yes, I know," answered Carrera. "I wasn't planning on keeping all of you. Moreover, while I can offer you pay and rank, I must insist that Balboans and my own people fill all combatant command positions. Most of your men will be on staff or in support. Some may be serving in positions either below their grade or below their ability."

Sitnikov laughed. "That, Legate, is no problem. It would help, though, if you could hold out a promise of equal opportunity to command once we've been citizens for a few years."

"I can do that," Carrera agreed readily. "Now find out who will stay and who will go at the end of the training period. Get me a list as soon as you can… say, by the end of the week. I expect you to weed out the trash yourself. Give it directly to me as the sergeant major and Tribune Kennison are going over to al Jahara to look things over."

At that moment Carrera spied his slender secretary through a door. Jesus, what a nice rear end. He called, "Lourdes, have you finished making the flight arrangements for Carl and the sergeant major?"

She bridled for a moment. "Have you got the reservations, Lourdes? Where's that personnel file, Lourdes? Why don't you shrink your tits and ass so there's absolutely no possibility I ever notice you are a woman, Lourdes?"

That wasn't fair and she knew it. How would I feel, how would I act, if the person I'd loved most in the world had been murdered? If my children had been murdered? It will take him some time… I suppose.

She answered, calmly enough, " Si, Patricio. I have the tickets, visas and the press passes. And I've gotten yours to go to Hamilton, FD, the day after. I will brief them when you are done here." Her voice held not more than a trifle of anger or sarcasm, and the anger may have been directed at herself. If Carrera noticed, he didn't let on.

Carrera didn't wake up screaming as often anymore, nor did he scream as loudly as he once had. Usually. There were exceptions.

There was a low fire burning in the great stone fireplace in the living room. The troops insisted on calling it the "Dayroom" to Lourdes' immense confusion. This was an English word she had never learned and found distinctly odd, since it was almost never used except at night. The fire was unnecessary, as far as warmth went, but the men seemed to find it comforting in ways she only distantly understood. There was, in any case, never a need to designate anyone to cut firewood or build a fire. It just happened whenever any substantial group of them were in the casa.

Sitting across the coffee table from McNamara and Kennison, Lourdes said, "Sergeant Major, Carl, you are accredited to the Estrella de Balboa, our major newspaper. In theory you are going over there to cover preparations for the war. What you will actually do, I do not know and I know you can't or won't tell me. Your accreditation has been passed through the attache at the FS embassy and is approved by the FSC's War Department."

McNamara smiled broadly and blindingly and was about to thank her when an ear-splitting shriek echoed through the casa. Lourdes looked terribly distressed. Kennison hung his head. The sergeant major muttered something about, "Poor bastard."

"What's wrong? What makes him do that?" Lourdes asked.

"Nightmares," McNamara answered. "I've been next to him twice when it's happened. I think… no, I am sure, he is seeing his family die over and over again."

"But he didn't see…" Lourdes began before stopping herself. "Oh, I see. That makes it worse, doesn't it?"

McNamara nodded, sadly. Hmmm. I wonder what might make it better. He looked once, intently, into Lourdes' huge brown eyes, measuring her. Then he looked upstairs in the direction of Carrera's quarters and back again at the girl.

She looked back, eyes narrowing inquisitively. Do you really think that would help?

The sergeant major's unspoken answer was, How could it hurt?

Flustered and not a little embarrassed, Lourdes went to the bar and poured herself a stiff drink. This was very rare for her. She then left the "Dayroom" and went to her own room. Undressing and lying down atop the covers with her head propped on pillows, she sipped at her drink and asked herself, How could it hurt?

She lay that way for half an hour, thinking, sipping, wondering, sipping… perhaps even daydreaming. Then she arose, pulled a robe around her, and walked to Carrera's room.

She didn't knock. She just put her hand on the doorknob and, after a moment's nervous hesitation, turned it and pushed the door open. Enough moonlight entered through the windows to the room that she could make out Carrera lying on his side, his body shaking.

Walking as quietly as possible she moved to stand beside the wide bed. Then she took off her robe, letting it cascade to the floor around her feet. Her undergarments followed quickly. Again she hesitated, but only very briefly, before pulling the bed clothes down and climbing in behind Carrera, sliding between the sheets to mould her body to his back. She slid one arm around the still-shuddering form and whispered, "There… there… it'll be all right. Sleep…"

She felt his body spin inside the grasp of her arm. Suddenly her lips and face were being covered with kisses. Hands reached out, stroking… grasping… squeezing. Fingers probed, not always gently. She felt herself growing wet and warm. Soon-too soon, perhaps-she found herself on her back with her legs spread and Carrera hovering over. She smelled whiskey strong on his breath.

"Patricio… slowly… please," she gasped, "I've never… ooowww!"

She bit her lip to keep from crying out any louder. And then the strangeness of having someone inside her, thrusting, moving, took over. This was following by a spreading warmth, a sort of glow that seemed to begin between her legs and spread to every distant part of her body. She found herself thrusting back. Hard.

"Lie… on… me," she grunted. "I want… to… feel the weight… of your… body… on me."

She felt the strange thing inside her begin to pulse and throb. It grew as the thrusting increased in depth and force. Carrera whispered, "Oh, Linda… I… love… you."

Lourdes stopped pushing back and began to cry even as Carrera's body, spent, slumped onto hers. The snoring that soon followed suggested he had never really been awake.

Interlude

2 October, 2067, UNSS Kofi Annan, alongside Colonization Ship Cheng Ho

A careful count of the bodies aboard ship revealed that twenty-nine people were missing, all of them either Atheist, Christian, Buddhist or Hindu. They, and the missing shuttle, must have gone below as neither radar nor lidar showed the slightest trace of the shuttle in the solar system. There was no distress signal from the shuttle. The technical manual said that the batteries should have lasted for decades. If the ship had not crashed, someone had deliberately turned the signal off.

The Annan 's shuttles began looking. They were few and the planet was not small. It wasn't made any easier by the fact that the survivors had landed the shuttle in a forest glade.

The continent was in the southern hemisphere of the planet. It stretched nearly ten thousand miles, east to west. On the eastern end, several geographic projections made it look something like a bull, lying on its back, with an erection. The crew named this portion of the continent "Taurus" because of that resemblance.

To the west, the continent was mostly flat, open grasslands with occasional forests and marshes, and some impressive mountain ranges near the equator. The grasslands disappeared to the east, giving way to thick virgin woods with some open areas.

Moving west to east on a sweep, Annan 's Shuttle Number Three caught a glimpse of a flash that was unlikely to have been natural. It moved closer to investigate, finally coming to a landing a few hundred meters from the crash site.

Major Ridilla happened to be aboard that shuttle and was the first to set his feet on the ground. He wore an environmental suit, but without armor, and carried a modern rifle. Neither, as it turned out, was needed. The people, and they were fewer than the twenty-nine missing names even with the babies and young children, came out wearing badly tanned skins, thin to the point of emaciation, and ever so grateful to be rescued.

"We thought Earth had forgotten about us," their leader said. She might once have been pretty, with her high cheekbones and off-white skin with just the hint of Vedic smokiness lying below the surface. But she was a woman aged far beyond her years. "We thought we'd die here." She looked skyward. "Then again, we thought we'd die up there. I'm Marjorie Billings-Rajamana," she said, putting out her hand.

She had a very nice, upper class British accent. Well, of course if anyone's going to survive and keep people alive that person would have a British accent, Ridilla thought. I mean… tradition and all.

"What happened?" he asked, taking the hand and shaking it. "What happened on the Cheng Ho?"

"That's a long story," the woman answered. "And you'd better give me something to drink, something strong to drink, if you want to hear it."

Assuming that the presence of people meant the absence of disease, Ridilla removed the helmet of his enviro-suit. "I'm sorry, I don't have anything like that with me. There's some on the ship. You do want to go home, don't you?"

In answer, the woman laughed. Years fell away from her face, as if she had, perhaps, not laughed in all those years. She asked, "Who do I have to blow? If I never see this miserable place again it will still be too soon."