The Lotus Eaters

El Estado Major, Balboa City, Balboa, Terra Nova

There were over a hundred senior officers and non-coms present. Of those, only two, Jimenez and McNamara, knew what was the occasion for the assembly. Even Jimenez's Chief of Staff and Sergeant Major hadn't been told by their commander. As for Mac, Letting out the word about the boss going to the island so he can have a proper reception is one thing. But this . . . this really needs to be a surprise.

Legate Pigna of the Seventh Legion, recruited and based in the east by the border with Santa Josefina, thought if anyone knew what was up, it would be Carrera's Sergeant Major-General. He walked over and asked Mac directly.

"No clue, sir," McNamara lied, then retrieved his integrity by adding, "which means I know exactly, but am forbidden to say. I'd tell you if I could."

Mac actually rather liked the Seventh Legion commander, both at a personal and a professional level. He consider Pigna somewhere around the bottom of the top third of legion commanders and knew Carrera shared approximately the same opinion. Moreover, the Balboan legate looked like a soldier, from narrow waist to broad shoulders to strong chin to pencil thin mustache. If the man was a trifle ambitious, and Mac thought he was, that ambition tended to come out in the form of pushing the troops hard. This, the Sergeant Major didn't disapprove of. He wore a high decoration for bravery at his neck, the Cruz de Coraje en Oro con Escudo, so Mac couldn't fault him on his combat performance either. If Pigna had any flaw, in the sergeant major's opinion, it was perhaps that he had a trifle too much personal pride.

Pigna sighed. "I hate being surprised."

"I understand, sir." And I wish I could warn you that this is going to be a really unpleasant surprise, too.

Jimenez's voice sounded off, "Gentleman, the Duque, commanding."

* * *

I so wish, thought Jimenez, while braced at attention, that I had never taught Patricio to smile while chewing ass. It's unnerving, being on the receiving end.

Carrera had been chewing for a while by now, and the tongue lashing showed no sign of flagging.

"I thought," he sneered, "that you were all soldiers . . . real soldiers . . . not neversufficientlytobedamned pimps! Not bendoverandgreaseyourass whores for bureaucracy!"

A good ass chewing is a rehearsed operation. Carrera had spent days rehearsing this one.

Present, besides Carrera, were the five corps commanders, thirty-two commanders of legions and sub-legions so far designated, the chiefs of staff and sergeants-major for all of those, plus six members of the primary Legion staff, including the acting chief, standing in for Kuralski. McNamara was there, too, but he stood behind Carrera, immune to and exempt from the ass chewing.

Kuralski, himself, had been sent one of those letters that sometimes drives the recipient's blood pressure up into the Never Never land of apoplexy and cerebral stroke.

Pounding his fist on a table with each syllable, Carrera continued, "I turn my back on you for one miserable year and you revert to pencil pushing bureaucrats?" The pounding ceased and his voice took on almost the quality off weeping. "God! God! God! Where did I fail? How could I have been so wrong about you all?"

It could be worse, Jimenez thought, philosophically. Napoleon, back on Old Earth, used to beat his marshals over the head with a stick.

From the table Carrera picked up the top copy of a sheaf of papers perhaps a quarter of an inch thick. "Suarez," he said, reverting to a facial and verbal sneer. He crumpled the paper into a tight ball and threw it directly into the face of the Second Corps commander. "Pussy."

The next name he . . . well . . ."read" wouldn't be quite accurate. "Cursed," perhaps, would be closer. "Brown."

Aaron Brown, a short black legate who had been, before being recruited by Carrera, a tanker with the Army of the Federated States, steeled himself for the coming blow. Not that a sheet of crumpled paper would hurt, except deep inside.

Nor did it, when it struck him square on the nose . . . except deep inside.

"Chin, you stupid . . ."

* * *

Only the corps and legion commanders were blessed with a paper projectile to the nose. All the other flypaper reports Carrera saved for the acting chief of staff.

"And you . . . you wretch of a pencil pusher!" Carrera crumpled a flypaper report and threw it into the acting chief's face. He continued crumpling and throwing as he screamed, "Who cares about your silly fucking reports?" Another report struck the chief's face. "Who needs them?" And another. "Who told you to have your fucking staff suck my commanders away from training their units? Are you some kind of fucking Tauran saboteur?" Carrera reached up and ripped the legate's insignia from the chief's shoulders.

"Get out! Get out now. You are retired effective today."

No doubt about it, Jimenez thought. The son of a bitch is good at what he does.

"Obviously I have made a number of serious mistakes," Carrera said, his voice growing terribly calm. "I made you legates and put you in command of legions and corps, or made you my key staff, because I thought you had enough courage to stand up to the inevitable bureaucracy. Or, at least," he looked directly at the bent back of the departing acting chief, "not to make the bullshit grow.

Carrera sighed, as if brokenhearted. "Where I am going to find real officers, now . . . men of talent and courage . . ."

That was just a little too much. "We're sorry, sir," Brown said. "It just sort of . . . grew on us."

Carrera stopped in mid tirade. He nodded slowly and said, "All right. Enough then. Don't let it happen again. Don't just let the bureaucrats nail you to your desks with endless demands for information.

"You are all on probation. You have disappointed me . . . badly. If you let the administrative shit the staff has been laying on you distract you from training your men you have let them, and the Legion, and the country down . . . badly. In the future, try to remember that your duty is to prepare for war, not to shuffle paper.

"Except for Jimenez and McNamara, dismissed."

* * *

After the others had left, Jimenez said, "I didn't deserve that. Neither did the others."

Carrera cheerily agreed. There wasn't a sign of anger on his face now. "I know, Xavier. If anyone's, the fault was mine for letting administration get out of hand."

"So why the ass chewing?"

"Because I'd already chewed my own ass and, after that little session, the next time someone starts asking for useless information, your brother commanders will tell that person to take a flying fuck for himself. Besides, I've been thinking about dumping the acting chief for a while. This way, more people benefit from the lesson."

McNamara shook his head, doubtfully. In his accented English he said, "I t'ink you were maybe a little too hard on t'em, boss. T'ere's such a t'ing as overacting."

"It's possible," Carrera agreed, still cheerily. "But they're big boys. They'll get over it."

Jimenez shook his head. "The acting chief won't. You fired him. He wasn't a bad sort, you know."

"You want him in your corps?" Carrera asked.

"I didn't say that."

"Well then—"

"—but now that you mention it I do have a place for him."

"As? Besides 'Assistant Corps Vector Control Officer,' I mean."

Jimenez thought upon that for a minute or so. "He was a better commander than a staff weenie. He never wanted to be a staff wienie, not even chief of staff. I think he could be a decent to good tercio commander."

"What tercio?" Carrera asked.

Jimenez already had the answer for that. "Forty-fourth Artillery, Fourth Legion. We're really running short competent artillerymen, you know."

"Fine," Carrera said. "But let him stew for a few days first, so that he appreciates the grace."

"I wouldn't wait t'at long, boss," McNamara said. "Whatever his faults, and t'ey were many, the old acting chief was pretty damned dedicated. He's going to take t'is hard. Maybe even terminally hard."

"You really think?" Carrera asked.

Hmmm. I suppose it's possible.

"Okay, Mac," he said, then turning to Jimenez he added, "Xavier, invite him to dinner. Tell him you are going to work on me to rescind my order and to get him a slot. That will give him a lot of well deserved suffering along with a reason not to decorate the wall.

"Fair enough?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," Mac said. "T'ank you. I t'ink t'at's t'e right t'hing."

"It's fair, Patricio," Jimenez agreed.

* * *

All but two of the dismissed officers and non-coms looked downcast. Of those two, one, Arosemena, the former acting Chief of Staff, looked borderline suicidal, he was so upset. The other, Legate Pigna, kept his face carefully blank. Inside, though, Pigna was seething.

How dare that bastard gringo, how dare he insult me to my face? Humiliate me in public? Heap scorn on me and all these men? This is an insult that can only be washed out in blood.