The Last Centurion

by John Ringo

  On the other hand, we were in mountains and we had Nepos and Kurds.

  Hit a defense point in a pass. Lay in intermittent fire. Send the Nepos up the hills on one side and the Kurds on the other. Tell them whoever got the pass cleared got priority on the trucks to ride. The other formation got to walk.

  They'd race each other to clear the pass.

  Move on.

  It was at one of those passes that we had "coffee" while under artillery fire. Was dick all we could do about it. The Nepos and the Kurds were flanking and our job was to be targets and smile. "Would you care for a (FUCKING WHAM! as an artillery round landed) finger cake?" Veddy British.

  We took Gebze. Bit of a battle with some remaining Leopards near Pelitli. But the Mongrels, those who were left, were very much their betters. Like "Who's your Daddy?" their betters. Which is what the Mongrels painted on their tanks after Pelitli.

  This time we didn't hold it. We hit the Caliphate defenders in Hereke from behind. Lots of surrenders.

  By then we were getting into serious urbanization but we kept doing the same thing. Hit a defense point? Swing short, swing long, whatever. Hit them from behind or in the flank. Move on. Alliance forces pushed straight in since they had a harder time with command and control. We'd swing wide and low sweet chariot.

  Push 'em back, push 'em back, waaaay BACK.

  There was a whole nother Caliphate "Army," more like about a division, up by the Black Sea. They got cornered and surrounded by Alliance forces at Bali Bey and surrendered en masse.

  We hooked and we flanked and they fell back. They were dealing with desertion en masse and we occasionally routed forces and "had a good killing."

  The Caliph blew the Abdullah Aga bridge leaving a shitload of forces on the "Asia" side of the Bosporus. They surrendered. We hooked up to the E80 bridge and, lo and behold, it was still up.

  Hooked back down.

  We were outrunning most of the Alliance forces at this point. Okay, I was going a bit hog-wild. But, hell, how often do you get a chance to take a major historical city?

  Fuckers tried to blow up the Hagia Sophia. Man, that pissed me off. I sent in the Nepos with orders to prevent it with extreme prejudice. There went a bunch of their remaining hardcores.

  The Caliph made his final stand, with a core of about a battalion of hardcore Sunni fundamentalist motherfuckers, in the Topkapi Palace. It was mostly a museum before the Plague but it had been the palace of the Ottoman emperors for four hundred years.

  The motherfucker was big. And there were about a billion fucking rooms. Turned out the Caliph had turned the harem back into a harem. That was really damned interesting when we hit it but we were just passing through, alas.

  (Me? Running around in the Topkapi? When I should have been carefully controlling my elements? They all knew what to do and I had a good commo guy. Used to work for a satellite company.)

  Found the Caliph, finally, in a throne room. Called the Hunkar Sofasi, which apparently means "Throne Room." I'm afraid to say that it took a certain amount of damage. That's what plaster masons are for. And, okay, you're going to need some lapis lazuli to patch the murals. Sue me.

  It took most of the night to run down the last holdouts. Most of them weren't asking for quarter and we weren't giving it.

  Okay, let me say a little something on the subject of "looting." Yes, there did seem to be some trinkets missing from the Palace when the Turks, finally, showed up the next day. I performed a very thorough shake-down of my Nepo, U.S. and Kurdish troops. None of those trinkets were found. Given that the Caliph had the palace for months, I suggest you ask him. Except you can't, he's dead.

  As to the various shopkeepers along the way that accused my Kurds and Nepos of looting, fuck 'em. We hadn't been paid in months. And I never saw looted item one. I've so stated in various reports on my honor as a U.S. Army officer.

  WE TOOK ISTANBUL YOU IDIOTS.

  OF COURSE WE FUCKING LOOTED.

  Jesus.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Been Down So Long

  Looks Like Up to Me

  Can we go home now?

  The Turks couldn't get rid of us fast enough.

  Here's a very nice gold-encrusted sword that was carried by Pasha (I'd have to look it up) in his great battles against the (I'd have to look it up, it was Europeans is all I remember; I think there was a subtle insult there) to go along with all the other shit that's missing now get the hell out.

  The Air Force, again, came in and picked up all the Kurds. Food was going to be delivered as soon as a couple of passes got cleared. There was already a ship in the harbor. They dropped off technical specialists in oil pumping to help get the pipelines back up. They took the Kurds home. Wounded were flown to England for treatment then U.S. and Nepos went to the States. (Oh, clearance for the Nepos to immigrate had been granted. Thank you INS or whatever. The acronyms keep changing.)

  Incirlik was back up. It started getting more back up.

  There was a very nice ceremony where they gave me the sword. All the other officers got similar stuff except Samad who they barely deigned to recognize. It was okay. I believe he'd picked up a couple of souvenirs. Sentimental value only, of course.

  The ceremony was somewhat marred by the fact that the Mongrels, who had somewhere found some huge fucking concert speakers, were playing Manowar so loud you could, literally, hear it on the other side of the fucking Bosporus. The tanks were lagered about a klick away but it didn't matter. I rather liked their taste in music but "Swords in the Wind" clashes, badly, with the Turkish national anthem.

  However, I do think just about everyone in the formation got tears in their eyes when they started playing "The Fight for Freedom" over and over. The Turkish general trying to be heard seemed somewhat pissed. Especially when we started singing along to the chorus.

  Where The Eagles Fly

  I Will Soon Be There

  If You Want To Come

  Along With Me My Friend

  Say The Words

  And You'll Be Free

  From The Mountains

  To The Sea

  We'll Fight For Freedom Again!

  God knows we'd been from the mountains to the sea. More like from sea to sea and over the mountains and . . . Just work with me here. We were very happy to be going home.

  The day the C-17s landed to fly us home, I really had a hard time believing it. I mean, sure, I'd worked on cutting the orders, had done the arrangements, had "integrated" with the Air Force. But "The World"? Going Home?

  Well, it wasn't the home we'd left. But, yeah. We were going home.

  We landed at a base outside of London. They drove us by bus to Heathrow. There were food lines. It was snowing. I mean like a bitch. London's weather was never great but it ran to rain, not snow. Not in early December, 2019. Still doesn't run to rain. Might not for a couple of centuries. But before the chill, the Brits were famous for umbrellas not those fur hats they all wear now.

  The Skynet guys were already home. They promised that they'd get the last episode of Centurions right. Actually, there were two last episodes. "Crusade" about taking Istanbul and "Centurion" about me. Murdoch, I found out later, told his senior producers that he would "break their fingers" if they thought about touching the "creative control" of the guys who had been producing Centurions all along. The same kid from Bravo had written both scripts. He's now working for ABC. And they don't get why he wears a Sith t-shirt all the time.

  There was a ceremony at Heathrow. People turned out, despite the depression and despite the fucking snow. They cheered. It was weird. I hoped it was over after that. We got on a 747 where we rattled around like peas. The stewardesses (sorry, flight attendants) treated us like they wanted to have our fucking babies. I think a couple of the guys got "relieved" on the flight home. It was weird.

  There was a ticker-tape parade in New York. Okay, from what we were getting from the Skynews guys we intellectually understood that we were celebrities. Emotionally, it t
ook a while to kick in. We were a group of worn-out grunts who were just looking forward to a real fucking barracks and quarters. Someplace with working heat and a mess hall. Maybe some chow that resembled real food and not MREs or goat fucking stew. For those of us who still had family and someplace to go, maybe a little leave. We knew that even those of us who were "over time" were going to be staying in. We were in "for the duration" according to our current orders.

  We were just grunts.

  Oh. My. Fucking. God.

  A fucking ticker-tape parade. In what amounted to a blizzard. You could barely sort out the confetti and shit from the snow. We had to march. It was worse than the fucking Taurus. And people were lining the God damned street in that fucking blizzard cheering us.

  We were hooked up with "Public Information Officers." I now know where they put the guys who cannot survive in Protocol Office which is where they send the guys who are fuck-ups in line units. There is no greater Fobbit than a PIO asshole.

  I had essentially been overseeing a damned docu-drama every week, more or less, and now I had some shit for brains telling me how we were going to "present the Army in the best possible light."

  Eat. Me.

  Things were more or less under control from NYC to DC. They put us on a train that stopped at every stop along the way. We had to make speeches. The troops were paraded in the fucking snow. Guys gave interviews. There were contests to meet people's "favorite Centurion."

  It had not been my intention. I swear to fucking God. I wish I'd never thought of that stupid fucking idea.

  I got put on talk shows. I tried to stay terse. I'm Minnesotan. It's our job. I got angry at some of the lame-brain questions though and ate a few assholes.

  People fucking Ate It Up with a spoon.

  People called me Centurion.

  Look, my name is Bandit Six. You can call me Bandit if you really outrank me or I really like you. Otherwise it's Bandit Six. Whatever my rank Bandit Six if we're being formal. Mr. Bandit Six when I finally took off the uniform.

  Do. Not. Call. Me. Centurion.

  And I don't like Cincinnatus much, either.

  It went on and on and fucking on. They put us on tour. We had to kiss babies.

  I couldn't tell if we were rock-stars or politicians or fucking what.

  All we wanted to do was grab a fucking snack and get back to fucking work. Maybe some leave for fuck's sake.

  But the worst part was, we were back in commo.

  Hell, I could have picked up the phone any time and called Bob. But if I did it, then the troops should get to do it. Before I did. Rank has certain privileges but it doesn't work that way. And there was only so much commo. So we were sort of in information black-out from home.

  So I didn't find out until I borrowed the PIO asshole's cell phone that I didn't really have a home to go to.

  The farms, all of them, had been "nationalized."

  Bob was still, sort of, running two. He had some dipshit in DC telling him what he was supposed to do. The guy was an "agronomy expert" from the USDA. Actually, he was an "environmental agronomy" expert from the USDA.

  The guy was in DC trying to tell a farmer in Minnesota, who has twenty times his experience and a hundred times his savvy, what to do in the middle of the worst natural disaster in history. Especially for farmers.

  Like a lot of people, Bob was tuning as much as he could out. But he had to go through that guy to get supplies. Seeds, basically, since, you know, herbicides and pesticides and all those other 'cides were icky.

  And plowing has to be this way and planting has to be that way and none of it was anything resembling what was actually going on. The guy was getting his "forecasts" from hand-picked "climatologists" in the department of the USGS that was the leading study farm for "global warming" and they were still using the same fucking models.

  Bob was only directly running two of the farms. The other seven had been turned over to "hand-picked" experts in "environmental agronomy." Tofu-eaters. They gave my farms to tofu-eaters. It was Lamoille County all over again. It was the Zimbabwe Plan, the Cambodia Option. It was nationwide famine in the making.

  It was going to make 2020 and 2021 suck like a gigantic vacuum. Even without an ice age.

  I went back to shucking and jiving.

  I was an officer of the United States Military. Legally and ethically I could not say anything contrary to the policies, military or domestic, of the Commander in Bitch. Said so right on the package. I know that there have been officers and enlisted who have ignored this doctrine. The officers should be stripped of rank and thrown out. The enlisted should be made privates and sent to somewhere like, oh, Minot. Or Iran.

  I slipped up one time. I'd just gotten some particularly bad news from Bob about the state of one of my farms. (The Hanska property, as it happens, where the dipshits had let the fucking well-pump not only freeze but just about self-destruct. And then called Bob to come over and "get their water running.")

  So right after that I'm talking to some reporters about stories I've already had to tell a dozen times and clearly not as "up" as Bandit Six normally is and one of them asks me why and I lay out something like "bad news at home."

  Well, by then my bio was so public record it practically was platinum. They all knew Dad was dead. So what's the bad news? So some reporter started sniffing around.

  Before I knew it, I was only being asked what I thought of the Bitch's farm policies!

  Oh, Christ. I didn't like any of her policies. Taking my farms was just icing on the cake. (And, yes, they were my farms. Dad was dead. I was his legal heir. My. Farms.)

  That was into late December of 2019. Much had already been made of the fact that "Centurion" and his forces had been the ones responsible for opening up the Kurdish oil fields to start supplying Western Europe and the U.S. Quite a bit had been made, now that reporters could get in and interview others in the area, of that fact that Bandit Six had:

  1. Established a new nation called Kurdistan with which the U.S. now had formal relations and which hadn't existed prior to the plague and only existed (so the story went) because of the Centurions and especially The "Centurion."

  2. Had participated in diplomacy to essentially rewrite a good bit of the Middle East and had groups talking together and working together amicably who had been enemies for thousands of years.

  3. Was held up as the major reason that there was a new republic forming around Iraq and the area that was very friendly with the U.S. It was expanding slowly but might soon have all of Iran and Iraq back to some semblance of civilization. And The Centurion was the primary cause.

  Look, all I did was talk on the phone. It was the rest of those guys who were doing the hard work. But it's very hard to stop a meme once it gets started. I Was The Shit.

  Because:

  Heating oil, which was at a premium and rationed anyway, was only available because of "the heroic actions of these Last Centurions" who had somehow saved the world while doing nothing but running out of the Middle East with our tails between our legs. (Okay, not quite, but there were nights when that was what was going through my head.)

  Ditto gasoline, natural gas, etc.

  And politicians were already "declaring" their run for president.

  And suddenly the fact that "The Centurion" had had his farms seized (months ago) by the U.S. government was a political hot potato. People were trotting out, I shit you not, that old story about Maximus that Russell Crowe did a pretty good job with in The Gladiator.

  I was off the news so fast it was incredible.

  I was "unavailable for comment." I was "on operations." I was "working hard for the nation."

  I was in the fucking Pentagon.

  Book Three

  The New Centurions

  Chapter One

  Ruminations on Durance Vile

  It's said, justifiably, that in the Pentagon, light birds are the coffee bitches.

  I was a fucking major. A very junior one. On temporary duty no
less. I carried the piss-pot.

  It didn't matter that I was "Centurion." The REMFs were just jealous and pissy. The warriors who were stuck in durance vile knew it was all a crock, anyway.

  I thought they were just hiding me out. Oh, no. They were putting me to work.

  I got stuck in "The Department of Emergency Supply Methodology."

  Okay, an "oxymoron" is when two words don't go together. Jumbo shrimp. Happy marriage. (Wife edit: HEY!)

  What is it when three words don't go together?

  In an emergency, plans always leave out the emergency. So no matter what method you'd planned on using, you always end up finding out it don't work. "No plan survives contact with the enemy" or the disaster as the case may be.

  And supply is always short.

  Troxymoron?

  So what was the "Department of Emergency Supply Methodology"?

  It was the Army's Department of the Agriculture and FEMA combined.

  USDA was just about the largest department in the government. It had, I shit you not, more county farm agents than there were total counties in the U.S. The one thing that is eternal, forget the stars—they burn out in a few million to billion years—is a government program. The USDA had programs that went back to the horse and buggy days. It had programs that were designed to "ensure critical military supplies of . . ." stuff that the military hadn't used in decades. Like, say, mohair wool. (I think that one actually finally got cut in the '90s.)

  Were farmers at least in part to blame. Oh, hell yeah. We'd been major lobbyists since it referred to some hotel in DC where guys would hang out in the lobby to snag the arm of visiting congressmen. Back then, nobody stayed in DC if they could possibly avoid it (it was listed as a "hardship post" by the State Department) and most of Congress stayed in various hotels. The most powerful stayed in one in particular (damned if I can remember the name. The Lafayette?) and guys hired by various interest groups would hang out in the lobby hoping to snag them. And Farmers were one of the interest groups.