Carnifex

16/9/467 AC, Mazari Omar, Pashtia

Press conferences with the Legion were rare, very rare.

Still not rare enough to suit me, thought Carrera. Even so, I suppose I owe it to the legionaries left behind, and the families of those who are here, to let them know what's happening.

The limited number of pressies, deliberately limited, actually, was clustered around Carrera in a town square in front of a mosque that was little more than rubble.

The whole town was considerably the worse for wear, Carrera saw. With the awful task of blocking escapes, driving the enemy from a roughly triangular area two hundred miles wide and one hundred and fifty deep, and searching out the thousands of little towns and villages, and likely cave complexes, his forty-eight maniples of infantry, fifteen of Cazadors, and dozen of mechanized troops were, to say the least, stretched.

Still, the town had blocked the only possible supply route from Thermopolis and so the problem of the town had had to be solved. He'd solved it by flattening the town in substantial part. Not for him the risking of his own troops to limit collateral damage and loss of civilian life. He didn't have enough troops for that and the collateral damage meant almost nothing to him.

"They know we're coming," he'd said. "It's up to them to get out of our way, not up to us to tiptoe around them."

Not that he'd blasted the town indiscriminately, far from it. Rather, with his one hundred and eight long-range, Volgan-designed and built 152mm howitzers, his thirty-six Tsunami multiple rocket-launchers, hundreds of sorties by Turbo-Finches and Nabakovs in the bomber role, and, over the last twenty-four hours, his thirty-six heavy mortars, he'd pounded every known and likely enemy hiding position with considerable precision, aided by real time reconnaissance from both his own air assets and the FSC's.

Since the enemy insisted on trying to hide among civilians, however, his precision had meant more civilian casualties rather than fewer.

"Tough shit," he said to a reporter who asked about civilian casualties. "If they want to save civilians, let them not hide behind the women's skirts. I'm certainly not going to pander to their deliberate violations of the laws of war."

One might have thought that the global press would have intervened and interfered. They said not a word. They'd learned, over the years, the Legion had no compunction about killing members of the media they considered to be in the enemy camp. There was not, in fact, a member of the FSC's or Tauran Union's press within thirty miles of Mazari Omar. And of the members of, say, the Islamic world's press, particularly al Iskandaria . . .

"That's them over there, gentlemen," Carrera told the remaining assembled members of the Fourth Estate, all carefully vetted members of the Balboan and other Northern Colombian media. "Yes, those dozen swinging from the lampposts. We caught them with enemy propaganda in their video recorders. They were then duly turned over to our Pashtian allies who tried them and hanged them as enemy combatants found not wearing uniforms. The chief mullah for my Pashtun, Mullah Hassim, approved the sentences completely."

* * *

Not all the buildings of Mazari Omar had been damaged. Most were, in fact, still standing and even in reasonable repair. Of these, many were requisitioned by the Legion. In the case of public buildings there would be no recompense, though the few owners of private real estate that the Legion needed were compensated with cash on the spot.

In one such, an apartment building of three floors that had the distinct advantage of having a very open ground floor, the MI, or military intelligence, maniple had set up shop.

Larry Triste was not in command of the MI maniple; that was far too low a posting for the Intelligence Officer for the entire deployed corps. Still, the MI maniple worked for him; its commander, a Tribune III, took his orders from him. Sometimes, that same tribune muttered, "I'm not in command. I'm just the XO for Legate Triste."

That wasn't quite fair but it was at least understandable. And Triste really did try to keep his hands off the day to day running of the maniple. Still, when he asked . . .

"Goddammit, where did that fucking guerilla battalion go that the air engaged by Sanda yesterday?"

. . . people hopped to find the answer.

"Sir," answered a junior warrant, "If you'll look over here"—the warrant pointed at a map hanging on one wall—"we've tracked that battalion for the last several days. Based on their normal daily progress, and accounting for slowing down as the hills begin their ascent to the mountains, they're somewhere between Sanda and this pass." The warrant's pointer touched lightly on a spot where the track ran through a ridge.

"They're not there, however, or at least not in the strength we've been tracking."

"Yeah, so? Where are they? What strength are they in?"

The pointer touched lightly on seventeen towns spaced about three miles apart within an oval on the map.

"We think they've split up. We think that one group, maybe the core of the battalion, took all or at least most of the horses and ran for it. That would explain why we can't find them where they ought to be. The others are likely in these towns."

Triste sat silently for a minute, gazing at the map and thinking on it. Finally, he nodded his head, once, decisively.

"I think you're right. Get me the ops shop."