Carnifex

18/5/467 AC, HQ, Legion del Cid, Isla Real

"Gentlemen, I need a plan," Carrera announced at a special meeting called with certain key staff officers.

This was no big deal; his staff was used to it. They knew, too, that whatever he wanted they could almost certainly deliver on. After all, they'd never failed him yet. His next words, however, were a bit out of the ordinary.

"Rather," he continued, "I need a transformation plan, one that converts the legions as they are into a corps. I need to be able to do that without irreparably breaking the system that we have. I further need to be able to transport that corps to the southern border of Pashtia with full supplies for six months' intensive operations. After that takes place—in fact I need it before the deployment takes place—we need to be able to fight our way from Mazari Omar to Chabolo. Following that, we will need a plan to redeploy most of that corps, leaving a standard legion behind for interdiction and counter-insurgency."

Now that was ambitious. The staff sat silent until Dan Kuralski whispered, "Holy shit."

Kuralski looked up, asking, more loudly, "Do you have any idea what you're asking, Pat? To transform from legions to a full corps, to get those to an inland railhead . . . We'll screw everything up, organizationally. Do you have a contract for this?"

"Not yet. But my family senator tells me that Hamilton, FD, is getting into a panic. The Taurans are crumbling in Pashtia. The Progressive Party administration can't commit more FSC troops without crumbling, too. That leaves us. Harriet is pushing—and, yes, it is costing us, costing me, to have her push—for them to rehire us for Pashtia. By the time they do that the country will be half lost. I could be convinced otherwise but for now I think nothing less than a corps can fight its way to Chabolo and retrieve the effort there. Do you think we could get by with less?"

Kuralski didn't answer that question. Instead he started thinking aloud on what a corps might look like.

"We could take three legions. Then we strip off the mechanized cohorts and the Cazador cohorts—maybe minus one maniple each—to create a brigade of each. For headquarters and support for those brigades we can raid the schoolhouse for cadre, the head of the Armor School and Cazador School and their staffs becoming brigade headquarters. Maybe we should do the same with the air alae from those legions. That leaves the infantry legions with four infantry cohorts, a heavy maniple and a Cazador maniple, the combat support and artillery cohorts, and the service support and headquarters cohorts. Maybe, too, we strip off one maniple of heavy artillery each to form a corps artillery, the Artillery School providing headquarters, as well. We could do something similar with the other combat support branches like engineers, air defense and MPs. We can probably curtail courses for the D echelon legionary cadre to fill in gaps. God, though, that leaves little enough here."

"I know," Carrera agreed. "Assume we'll actually call up some of the reserves for the first time. Assume that we'll leave D echelon to fill up to replace the corps later on. Beyond that, you're chief of staff. So go staff it, chief. I want to see a preliminary OPLAN within . . . oh, two weeks."