Carnifex

15/4/468 AC, University of Balboa, Ciudad Balboa

The plaza rang with shouts. "Viva Parilla! Viva la Republica! Viva los Legiones!"

Part of the crowd, Jorge and Marqueli joined in the shouts. It was, after all, their Legion, too, just as Parilla was their candidate.

There'd been some question about whether they'd attend the rally. The streets weren't precisely safe for the politically involved of late. Of course the incumbent government condemned the violence, even while President Rocaberti plotted it with his political cronies and the Gaul general, Janier, even while they drummed up radical students (not to say that Parilla wasn't himself radical, after a fashion), and hired thugs with Tauran Union money.

It was to be noted, though it almost never was by Terra Nova's Kosmo press, that the government, the Tauran Union, and the World League only condemned the violence that occurred when the reservists in the legions were out in enough force to pound silly the students, the thugs, and the dregs hired by Rocaberti and Janier. When the thugs had the numbers—and they needed a lot of numbers to outnumber trained men, even reservists—there was nary a word.

This rally the dregs weren't supposed to have the numbers, what with two entire reserve infantry maniples—four hundred men, almost unarmed, but mean and very, very willing—standing by, mixed in with the crowd. Still things sometimes go wrong, intelligence fails, threats arise suddenly and . . .

"Oh, crap, Jorge; it's starting."

From where the couple stood, on some broad steps leading down from street level to the flat, Marqueli saw a crowd of not too well organized, rather scruffy looking types (though there were also a couple of hundred better dressed males of college age and demeanor) entering the plaza from two sides.

* * *

Cruz had the nearly fifty men of his reserve platoon around him, none of them uniformed except for the uniformly grim looks on their faces. Half the men had wives with them, as did Cruz. All of them had small clubs, truncheons, concealed under their working shirts and guayaberas.

"Second Platoon, Third Maniple! To me!" shouted Cruz. Instantly the men shuffled the women to form a cluster behind Cruz and formed themselves in a thick line between the women and the swarming thugs and students. Cruz pushed Cara to join the rest of the women.

"Stay with them, miel," he said. "They won't get through us."

Parilla's followers at the edge where the thugs swarmed went under more or less quickly, though the legionistas took a few, or rather more than a few, down with them as they fell to the ground, bloodied and broken.

Cruz's eyes swept over the crowd, following the progress of the thugs and opposition students. Some of his men turned to look at him. What do we do, Centurion? In answer he just spat at the ground and removed a small club from under his shirt, holding the club up to advise his men to do the same.

The mass of the people at the rally, caught by surprise, ran away from the swarm. Like water they parted and passed around the solid seeming mass of reserve legionaries. Some drew their own clubs, brass knuckles and a couple of knives and fell in with Cruz's men. Some fell in with the double line brandishing only their fists and the sneers on their faces. Still others, from well behind the skirmish line, ran over to join. In moments Cruz found himself commanding the equivalent of a full maniple, over two hundred men.

"I'm Centurion Ricardo Cruz," he shouted to be heard over the panicked sounds of the fighting and the crowd. "Hold your position until I give the word."

He was pleased to see the newcomers turn and nod. Most of them were also soldiers, he suspected. He took a moment to look behind him. Cara nodded. I trust you to defend me, my husband.

* * *

"There are some soldiers forming a line, Jorge," Marqueli said.

"Lead me to them," he answered with grim determination.

"Don't be ridiculous . . . "

"Woman, obey your husband. Lead me to them. For this I don't need to see. I just need to be able to hit."

Marqueli started to object, then stopped herself with her mouth still open. He's still a man, still a legionary, eyes and legs or not. I can't take that away from him.

With a deep sigh she took his arm and said, "This way. You fool."

* * *

"Warrant Officer Mendoza reporting for duty," Jorge said to Cruz as Marqueli stepped back out of the way.

"Cruz. Centurion. But . . . "

"I can still fight," Mendoza answered, his chin lifting proudly, before Cruz could finish the objections.

"All right," Cruz agreed. He'd rather have a blind legionary with him than any other dozen sighted men. "Stand by me. And Miss . . . "

"I'm his wife," Marqueli answered.

"If you would stand with mine and the other women then, Mrs. Mendoza."

Reluctantly, fearfully, Marqueli turned away even as Cruz turned his attention back to the thronging political thugs. Her head kept twisting back to look at Jorge even as her unsteady feet carried her to where the other women waited.

* * *

There really wasn't a set of commands to govern this situation, so Cruz made it up as he went. "Look at me, you assholes!" he shouted, pointing at Mendoza once he had the men's attention. "This man is one of ours. Blind, and not afraid to fight. Blind, and still able to see that it's better to fight than to run. Now . . . maniple . . . attención. Dress right . . . . DRESS. Prepare to engage in melee . . . move."

The stiffening of the skirmish line to attention likewise caused the mixed group of students and hired street rumblers to stiffen and stop for a moment. Cruz took advantage of their loss of momentum by ordering, "Charrrge!"

Instantly his little command lunged forward, leaving Mendoza behind. Not to worry, though, as within seconds the sound erupted of breaking bones and teeth, ripping flesh, and the screams of the beaten. Mendoza, with his keen hearing, followed that. He could have followed it easily enough with normal hearing.

He heard someone very close shout, "Death to the fascists!"

That's identification enough. Jorge's fist lanced out precisely at the origin of the sound, catching a student in the face and sending him to the concrete of the plaza. Jorge's keen ears picked up the sound of his foe landing. He grunted with satisfaction and advanced . . . right into the flailing fist of another hireling. Mendoza blinked, was struck and then dropped like a sack. He never heard Marqueli's scream.

* * *

Cruz had to admit it; he was having the time of his life. Why, there were no end of targets, no end to the opportunity to work off his frustrations. He was squatting over one victim, a student he thought, alternately throwing lefts and rights—his club was lost somewhere behind him—at the young man's rapidly disintegrating face—and laughing maniacally the whole time.

"Motherfucker!" Wham. "Piece of privileged shit!" Kapow. "Pampered momma's boy!" Crunch.

* * *

Teary-eyed, Marqueli knelt with her husband's head on her lap, cradling his head and sobbing his name repeatedly. Frantically, one hand tried to wipe away the blood that poured from a gash on his head. She nearly burst from inside with relief when she saw his eyes flutter open.

It took him a few moments for his head to clear. When it had he looked up directly into her face.

"I thought you were beautiful when I first saw you singing in the choir in church back home," he said, groggily. "You've improved."

* * *

The Tauran Kosmos were out on the streets of Balboa in force and with all their normal self-righteousness intact. Was there a street brawl in the course of the campaign? (And there were many.) Rest assured, the progressive, TU-supported incumbent regime partisans were the innocent bystanders in every case. Such, at least, was what was reported in the cosmopolitan progressive press. Moreover, no less a personage than the former president of the Federated States of Columbia, Johnny Prince Wozniak, was on hand to give his stamp of accuracy and approval to every claim of the press that tended to put Parilla's followers in a bad light or elevate the standing of the incumbent faction. Wozniak had never met a corrupt politician, dictator, or terrorist faction from the undeveloped parts of Terra Nova that he hadn't instantly loved.

No one on the planet really understood Wozniak's thought processes. Many, indeed, denied he was even capable of thinking. Whatever the case, incapable of higher thought or not, he was all too capable of speaking. Which he did. At every possible opportunity. Moreover, he was terribly bitter that he'd been rejected by the people of the FSC after a mere one term. If he could support cosmopolitan progressivism, support terrorism, support totalitarianism and kleptocracy, while at the same time undermining the long term interests of the Federated States, so much the better.

A very embittered man, was our Johnny Prince Wozniak.

* * *

"I loathe that man," commented Parilla, at seeing one of Wozniak's more inane pronouncements carried on the airwaves.

"He gave us back the Transitway," Ruiz objected.

"Yes, he did," Parilla agreed, "And thereby deprived us of the pride we would have had if we had fought to get it. And thereby led directly to the dictatorship of Piña. Which thereby led to the invasion. Which led to the destruction of the only force in the country with the prestige to, at least potentially, fight the corruption of the Rocabertis and their ilk."

"Ah, never mind," Parilla continued. "There's nothing to be done about the do-gooding weasel, except to note that the harm he does all over the planet is in exact but inverse proportion to the good he claims he's doing."

Ruiz shrugged. "I think Patricio loathes the man even more than you do."

"It's possible. When our comrade, Carrera, hates someone he doesn't do it halfway. Never mind; no one is persuaded by Wozniak except those convinced in advance."

"That's really not true, Raul. In this country, the man enjoys considerable status. Some people really are being converted by him."

"Enough to matter to the election?" Parilla asked. "Enough to overcome the good will Patricio is buying us through public works and expanding the force?"

"Part way, at least."

"Chingada."

"Fernandez isn't worried at all, you know."

"I know, and I don't understand it," Parilla answered.

"He says our models are all wrong, that our analysts are contaminated by patterns of voting in the Federated States and Tauran Union. He says that people there will vote to preserve the welfare states they have. He insists that people here will not vote to create a welfare state where we don't have one. He says that they're not weak and spoiled like the Taurans and the Columbians."

"Is he right?"

"God, Raul, I don't know. I do know that he has his own sources."

Parilla contemplated that for a moment. Yes, he has his own sources and they are generally good ones. I wonder . . . Nah.

"Has the government budged any on the question of voting on the Isla?" he asked.

"No," Ruiz answered. "They insist that any vote taken there by any but the few civilian residents would be inherently suspect. All our men, those who are citizens, must return to their normal home to vote."

"Which breaks up our unit cohesion for the one legion we have left here," Parilla observed. "And deprives us of perhaps twenty-five thousand votes from those deployed to Pashtia and at sea."

"Is there any chance of Patricio returning the bulk of the force prior to the election?" Ruiz asked.

"Essentially none. He's just about to fan out from the temporary base he established at the north end of the Kibla Pass and he'll need every man he has in order to establish control over the area. And he's already short because of the Cazadors he sent to Xamar to guard the pirate chief."

"In some ways, he's really an idiot, you know, Raul? The job he does there won't make a lot of difference if we lose our base here."