The Lotus Eaters

Furiocentro Convention Center, Balboa City

Carrera, a bit battered perhaps but beaming all the same, ascended the stage and walked to the podium with its microphone. He already knew, from McNamara's command to the boys to "Cease and fucking desist," that the volume was properly adjusted anyway.

Well, you'd expect little things like that to go right with a good organization.

"Without belaboring the obvious," Carrera began, "It's good to be back. I'm . . . I'm truly sorry it took so long." He shook his head slightly. "I'm not going to give you any explanations. That's not because you don't deserve them; it's that there aren't—"

A warrant officer near the front shouted out, "We don't need any explanations, sir. It's enough that you are back."

Carrera smiled, half shyly. "Thank you, then, again, for that. So let's get to the meat of it; where do we go from here and why?

"The why should be obvious, our base, our country, is under occupation, both by foreigners and by an illegal rump of a corrupt government that those foreigners protect. To get rid of them requires at least the threat of war, and possibly the actuality. They know this, and so we can and must assume that they, too, are preparing for war.

"We've got three things," Carrera continued. "We've got a home base—or most of one—with a government that cares for us. We've got twenty-four regular line combat cohorts in the ground elements, plus another eighteen drilling reserve cohorts, mixed infantry, mechanized, and cazadores, and individual reservists enough to fill twice that. We've got supporting arms for all of those, generally in plenty though we are short in some areas, notably artillery and air. And . . . we've got enough money, over eighty billion Federated States Drachma, to make every regular in the Legion here or elsewhere wealthy for several lives, let alone one."

He gave a shrug and waved a hand deprecatingly. "I don't want the money. I never have, for its own sake. As far as I'm concerned, you could split it up among yourselves. But there's one big problem. I could give you the money, but I couldn't then give you a safe place to raise a family. I couldn't keep the United Earth Peace Fleet off your backs. I couldn't get rid of the Tauran Union which has occupied the most important and valuable chunk of Balboa, or the rump of a false government that shelters under the Taurans' greedy claws. I couldn't get rid of the stinking Kosmos"—Cosmopolitan Progressives—"that insist every form of decay is progress and do everything they can to hasten that decay. I couldn't keep them from taxing it all away from you and giving it to their"—Carrera sneered—"no doubt deserving selves."

Carrera scratched beside his nose as his lips formed the tiniest of smiles. Rhetorically, he asked, "You all already knew all that, right?

"That, however," he continued, "does not mean that you are not going to be earning more money. Note where the emphasis was in that last sentence. 'Earning.' You're going to earn it because we are going to change the force radically. To expand it, yes—and that's how you are going to be earning more money, as you advance in rank much faster than any other soldiers on the planet—but also to change it.

"Our days of providing a regular force so that we could rent ourselves out to foreigners to fight their wars for them are, for a while, at least, over. Our days of concentrating on counter-insurgency are over, too. Our first fight, in Sumer, a decade ago, has more to say about our future than any number of operations we have undertaken since."

"There is one possible exception to that," Carrera said. "We might—it is at least within the realm of the possible, and we are mutually bound by treaty—have to send troops to support President Sada and the Republic of Sumer against Farsia. Even that is only a partial exception, as a fight with Farsia would be heads up, conventional combat. Conversely, though, we have a finger on at least one good legion from Sumer that will come to us at need. If you doubt that, let me remind you that in Pashtia, Sada sent us everything he could spare, and then some."