Carnifex

Outside Panshir Base, Pashtia, 3/6/467

With the noonday sun high overhead, the valley was bathed in stifling heat. Even high on the green hills surrounding the Tuscan Ligurini base, it was oppressive. It was all the more oppressive for those troops of the Legion filling in fighting positions, mortar pits, and ammunition dumps. These, stripped to the waist, wielded their shovels with a will, however. When the marks of preparations for the aborted attack on the Ligurini were erased, they were going home.

With the election over, and with the FS-imposed practical partition of Balboa, Carrera felt reasonably comfortable standing down his troops, barring those surrounding the local base for the Gallic Commandos. For the Gauls, he'd wait and see how well peace held out in Balboa. The rest would move on to Thermopolis, along with their equipment, and from there go home to Balboa via road, rail, sea and air. Even the ones surrounding the Gauls would eventually leave; they were just further behind in the order of movement.

Besides, it isn't like I'm not working on ways to hit them where it hurts even when I give up the ability to get at the Frogs and Tauros here.

Nor could anyone in the coalition really complain about the Gauls being confined to their little rathole. The legionaries surrounding them were also engaged in something the Commandos had signally failed even to try to do (though to be fair this was not the result on any unwillingness on the Commandos' part); hunting down and obliterating the insurgency in the area. In this, the Legion was having some success.

Carrera drew a mental map of the country and the position of his troops within it. His mind clicked over each stage in the evacuation of two legions from Pashtia and he could find no flaw. Gotta love a good staff, he thought.

"Call from the staff, sir," said one of his guards, holding out a microphone. "Secure. Bad news, they say."

Of course, it's bad news, he thought. Here I am enjoying a peaceful moment and pleased that I won't have to butcher ten thousand allied troops so, naturally, there is bad news. God, someday I hope to have a long talk with you about your sense of humor.

He took the proffered radio microphone and announced, "Carrera."

The radio operator at the other end acknowledged and said, "Wait one, sir, while we connect you to the classis."

The classis? My bad news is from the classis? This is going to be really bad.

There was a series of beeps, and then a voice, distorted by the encryption devices and with odd, unrecognizable sounds in the background, said, "Fosa, here." The voice seemed to Carrera to contain an infinity of sadness and weariness.

"Carrera, here. What is it, Roderigo?"

"Patricio . . . I don't know how to tell you this, so I'll just lay it out for you. We got hit this morning, hit hard. I don't even have a final count of the dead and wounded, but both numbers are going to be high. I lost just about half my fixed-wing aircraft and two thirds of the helicopters. I'm holed, though—thank God—it's not below the water line. Even so, I'm taking water at the stern and the hole is close enough to the water line that a big storm could put us down. One elevator is totally out. My drives are down . . . well, one is down. The other was blown clean off. My flight deck is warped, but not so badly we can't loft and recover aircraft. I've no radar. And I lost one of the escorts."

"Holy shit!" Carrera said, though he didn't key the microphone. My brave sailors; where will I find your like again? When he keyed it, he asked, "What happened, Rod?"

"It was an ambush in the Nicobar Straits. Somehow the wogs managed to assemble about a dozen speed boats, half a dozen cruise missiles, two torpedoes, and one big fucking suicide ship. We took one cruise missile hit, plus a near miss that did for the radar, a torpedo hit at the stern, and then the suicide ship . . . Pat, it must have been about a two-kiloton explosion . . . anyway, it went off about a klick away." Fosa hesitated and then added, "Well, it didn't actually go off. One of my escorts, the Santisima Trinidad, rammed it at full speed. That set it off. Pat, if they hadn't rammed it, we'd have been obliterated.

"Pat, I want authority to award gold crosses, four steps, to that crew, and three to it's sister, the Agustin. Three and two just wouldn't be enough."

"Given," Carrera answered. "Is your ship recoverable? What about the wounded?"

There was doubt in Fosa's voice, mixed in with determination. "If I can get her to a port . . . maybe. But getting her back in order will be expensive. The wounded we're flying off with whatever I have that can carry a man or two."

"All right. I'll assume you're flying your hurt men to some safe port. As for the expense; damn the expense; a ship like that doesn't come along every day." In fact, I haven't a clue where we could find another one. Rebuild the static training ship? Probably a lot more expensive. And besides, the ship that survived an attack like that has mana. It has soul. Men will adore her and fight all the better for her. Some other ship just wouldn't do as well.