Carnifex cl-2

by Tom Kratman

  Cruz heard the maniple commander call out, "Maniple . . . right wheel . . . MARCH."

  He stepped off as did the rest of the unit, but adopted a half step to keep the front rank relatively dressed. The half step continued until the wheel was complete. At that point, all moved out with a full step down the field. At the right edge, as the troops faced, there was a shiny coffee can lid nailed to the ground. Here the commander ordered, "Left wheel . . . MARCH." Another thirty meters on there was another shiny lid. Here the unit wheeled left yet again. At that point they were very close to the pipes and drums. Whatever randomness was in their step, and the legions didn't practice parading all that much so there was some, was beaten out of them by the heavily pounding drums. As the maniple approached the band and reviewing stands, and the music and the "ooohs" and "ahhhhs" from the crowd grew, the legionaries threw their shoulders back and walked even more proudly erect. Cocks of the walk, indeed.

  Instead of eagles, maniples carried small upraised palms atop their guidons. Cruz saw the palm rise on the commander's preparatory command, "EYES . . . " The entire maniple gripped the slings of their rifles with their left hands, freeing their rights. When they saw the palm and pole drop parallel to the ground on the order, "RIGHT," they turned their heads toward the stand and brought their right hands up to salute.

  * * *

  On the stand, Parilla and Carrera—Carrera to the left—returned the salutes and held them until the guidon had passed. Once the two leaders had dropped their own salutes, the maniple commander ordered, "READY . . . FRONT." Immediately, salutes dropped, right hands returned to rifle slings, left arms lowered to the sides to swing normally and eyes returned to the front. From that point, it was only a question of marching off, and meeting the families. There was no need to turn in individual weapons; in the legions, soldiers were trusted to keep their weapons at home or in the barracks. This was so despite a few suicides and a couple of unfortunate incidents where a legionary had come home to find out his wife had not been all that lonely in his absence.

  * * *

  Cruz's mind was just beginning to dwell upon unpleasant possibilities when he felt a light and gentle tap on his shoulder. He turned around and . . .

  Holy shit!

  Cara was there. So were the children. So were two women he didn't recognize. The two unknown women, however, were with a couple of men he did recognize.

  "Señores!" he said, bracing to attention and saluting.

  Both Carrera and Parilla returned the salute; then Carrera reached over and took Cruz's rifle from his shoulder.

  Smiling, Carrera said, "See to your family, Centurion. I think Duque Parilla and I are competent to watch your rifle for you for a while. I'll have my driver drop it by your quarters this evening."

  * * *

  Later—much later—in bed, Cruz asked Cara, "Where did you meet Parilla and Carrera?"

  Cara snuggled into his shoulder and answered, "Actually I'd never met them before today. But the day you went off to the war the first time, when I saw you off at the airport, Lourdes Carrera—well, actually her name was Nuñez-Cordoba back then—and Mrs. Parilla were nearby when I started to cry. They came over to comfort me and we all ended up crying together. They saw me and the kids outside the reviewing stand and invited us up. That's where I met the duques."

  "Oh."

  The couple lay silently for a long time, neither sleeping but both enjoying the warm feeling of being together again; that, and the afterglow from making love. Admittedly, this separation had been much shorter than most. Still, Cruz had been away at the war for two and a half of the last six years and had spent more than half the remainder training in the field. More than three quarters separation in the first six years of marriage would have done—indeed, had done—for many marriages. That theirs had lasted so well so far was mostly attributable to Caridad. Even so . . .

  "Ricardo?"

  "Si, mi amor."

  "When this enlistment is up . . . " She hesitated, nervously, before continuing, "when this enlistment is up, could you consider getting out?"

  "I'll have to think about it, corazon. I'm forty percent of the way to earliest retirement. That would be a lot of money to throw away."

  "You can't spend it when you're dead, Ricardo." Count on a woman to come up with a reasonable answer. Dammit.

  14/2/467 AC, Puerto Lindo, Balboa

  Carrera could be pretty damned unreasonable. He had given Fosa, Dos Lindas' skipper and commander of the classis, eighty-seven days, from commissioning to first sailing. This would probably have been impossible except that Fosa had begun training nearly four months prior to commissioning and for certain elements, pilots and maintenance crews, three months before that.

  It would be another three months, too, before the ship was expected to be fully operational. Oh, yes, each of the parts worked. The pilots could take off and land from the short, narrow and pitching deck. The aircraft maintenance personnel were fully capable of keeping the planes serviceable. The deck crews could recover the planes and strike them below; or refuel them and rearm them on deck. The navigators could navigate; the cooks could cook; the black gang could oversee and keep up the reactor and the generators. Intel was getting fairly deft at incepting radio and cell phone transmissions, along with the more routine intelligence gathering skills. The demi-battalion of Cazadors was perhaps the most ready of the ship's divisions, as there was really nothing important aboard ship that changed things when they got to the land: load helicopters, fly, dismount; then spot, capture or kill; then reload and go home.

  Simulators and training exercises aboard ship helped, of course. And there was one simulator for every third aircraft except the remotely piloted ones. For those, their normal control stations with a simulator program loaded were sufficient. Moreover, all the simulators were linked onto the ship's main computer so that entire exercises could be run without ever leaving port.

  The Cazadors could not be fully linked into that simulation system, though the leaders could, after a fashion. Instead, every fourth or fifth night for the last month, they'd launched from the stationary ship via helicopter to raid some or another spot ashore. Most of the rest of the time, when not spent planning a raid, the Cazadors trained on the limited training facilities of the Academia Militar Sargento Juan Malvegui; there or at Fort Tecumseh, on the other side of the Transitway to the east.

  Underway replenishment, or UNREP, had not been practiced. The nearest the Dos Lindas' skipper could come was to force resupply through the means that would be available at sea; via air and from ship to ship. This was a substantially different undertaking, though, in the calm waters of Puerto Lindo, than it would have been in a Force Twelve hurricane. (Actually, nobody tried doing UNREP in Force Twelve. Fosa intended to give it a shot, though.)

  In any case, none of it could yet be said to work together properly, under exactly realistic conditions. They'd not yet really tried.

  Tonight, with almost no moonlight and bay lit only by the lights of town, the shipyard, and the military academy, that would change.

  It began to change as soon as Dos Lindas' skipper, Roderigo Fosa, turned to his executive officer and ordered, "Take her out, Tribune."

  19/2/467 AC, High Admiral's Quarters, Atlantis Base

  In the end, Mustafa had refused to travel unless the UEPF sent a shuttle for him. Even a private charter was impossible, especially so as—whatever their other failings, national security-wise were concerned—the FSC's Progressive administration was even more fanatically dedicated to getting him than even the Federalists had been. Mustafa didn't know that the Progressives were so determined to get him precisely so they could have an excuse to call off the war. There had been days when, had he known this, he might just have turned himself in, if only in order to take pressure off of his movement to allow it to rebuild from the twin disasters of Pashtia in 460, Sumer beginning in 461, and continuing on to the current day.

  The shuttle, a pumpkin-seed shape, had come almost si
lently in the night, to a spot Mustafa had picked that would be safe from prying eyes. There he had boarded through the lit rectangle of the hatch, been strapped in by the crew chief—an act Mustafa felt deep down to be highly impious—and then been flown at a very high speed to the UEPF's base colony on the island of Atlantis, in the middle of the Mar Furioso. A darkened limousine bought by the UEPF from Sachsen had picked him up at the landing field and whisked him briskly to the High Admiral's quarters.

  Most Salafis, most Arabs or Moslems of whatever sect, would have sent anywhere from hours to days in small talk, beating around the bush, before getting to the point. Mustafa was not like that. Perhaps it was his nature, perhaps merely because he was not a well man and felt he might have little enough time left. Whatever the case; when Robinson went directly to the point Mustafa picked right up without further waste of time.

  "You've got to stop this decentralized mayhem, to assert real control over your movement, and to begin to seriously plan, not just leave everything up to the will of your god," Robinson began, after the usual, but curt, greetings.

  "I know," Mustafa said, and then lit a cigarette.

  "You've got to begin a campaign of finan . . . what did you say?"

  "I said that I know. The Nazrani have taught me; Allah helps those who also help themselves. Faith is still key, of course. Yet the Maker of Universes would not have allowed us to fall as low as we have, despite our perfect faith, unless He also wanted us to think, work and plan for our own good, and His."

  "Oh . . . " Robinson was momentarily nonplussed. "Well in that case, we can begin to plan and fight a war, together."

  "Before that, infidel, tell me why. Why are you willing to help us?" Mustafa raised his hands as if fending off a blow . . . or a lie.

  "And do not speak falsely. I know you have no love for us. Not only do you not share our religion you do not share any religion."

  Robinson poured himself a drink. And why not? If the Salafi can smoke, a custom I abhor; I can drink. And, indeed, the Salafi said not a word. That, too, suggested a very changed outlook.

  "I don't really care who wins." The High Admiral admitted. "Or if anyone does, provided that the Federated States and the civilization they share with the Taurans . . . oh, and Yamato, too, of course . . . provided they all lose. If the cosmopolitan progressives win this planet they will turn it into something that is not dangerous to my home, Earth. If you win you will turn it into something that would not have been dangerous to my world even a thousand years ago. Either is acceptable to me and I see no reason why it would matter if both of you got half a world. I care only that those who could be a threat to my world never become one."

  Mustafa, lips pursed, rocked his head from side to side for a minute, thinking about that. "Are you so sure my people could never become a threat?"

  "Yes, I am that sure. To be a threat you must travel space. To travel space you must progress technologically. And that kind of progress is everything your movement abhors. That much, at least, you share with the Kosmos. At least your side is honest about it."

  Robinson hesitated briefly before adding, "And . . . frankly, the Kosmos have little long-term chance of global success, not here. They only succeeded on Earth because immigration patterns to Terra Nova pulled away more and more of the traditional, religious and nationalist sorts, leaving the Earth behind for my ancestors. There is no new world such people can leave for from here."

  Mustafa nodded. That wasn't important. "And you wish to help, more than you helped with the attacks that began this war?"

  "I will help more, much more. Still no nukes, though."

  Mustafa shrugged an indifference he did not truly feel. Nuclear weapons . . . what a dream to have them and use them on the Nazrani and the atheists.

  "Details?"

  "First, I need your support in taking over the direction of the pirates operating off the coast of Xamar and the Straits of Nicobar. They can—"

  "Xamar I already control," Mustafa interjected. "The Nicobars listen to no one. I've tried."

  "Then the question is whether they should be attacked and brought to heel or if they can be induced by incentives."

  "What sort of incentives? And how do you provide incentives to ten thousand men, every one of whom considers himself a chief answerable to no one?"

  "By helping one chieftain to become paramount, to rise above all others."

  20/2/467 AC, Isla Santa Josefina, Balboa

  Montoya loved flying. He'd hardly imagined, as not much more than a boy standing in a Legion enlistment line, the power and the freedom and the sheer joy of flight. Though he'd known then that the Legion had, or at least intended to have, aircraft, he'd never imagined himself actually conning one. What was he? Just a poor farm boy from the interior. Who was he to think he'd someday be a pilot?

  But the Legion del Cid was an equal opportunity employer, he'd found. It was also a miserly employer of human talent. While he'd not shown any remarkable leadership ability at Cazador School, he had shown toughness, determination, and at least a modicum of brains. He could be taught. Moreover, when he'd been talked into volunteering for some hit missions by Cruz, he'd shown considerable personal courage and determination. There were places in the Legion for people like that. In Montoya's case, that place had eventually come to be in a cockpit. And he just loved it.

  What he hated, though, were the carrier takeoffs and the landings. Those scared him silly. Every time.

  No, not landings on the ground, even on pretty rough ground; he'd had lots of experience in those, flying a Cricket. His plane could take it, no problem. On the other hand, landing or taking off from a pitching, weaving, postage-stamp-on-the-ocean? Trying to catch the arrestor cables? Reversing thrust at the last minute so he didn't overshoot and end up crushed or drowned –most likely, both—under the prow? Trying to time his take off so that he hit the leading edge of the flight deck on an upswing? (The deck crew was becoming a big help there, though, he had to admit; especially as they gained experience.) That sinking feeling as the plane dropped almost like a rock as he left the flight deck behind? Gag . . . shiver . . . barf.

  He shivered again, half at the memory of the last take off when his landing gear had plowed furrows in the ocean before pulling up and half at foreboding over the next landing.

  It got progressively worse, too. It seemed like the skipper was actually looking for rough seas and bad weather to launch in. They'd lost one pilot already, and cracked up both that plane and a Yakamov-72 helicopter. At least the Yakamov crew had gotten out.

  From this and other evils, deliver me, O Lord.

  In some ways, Montoya wished he'd been picked to fly a Cricket, as he used to, rather than a Turbo-Finch Avenger, usually called a Finch. With the Dos Lindas facing into the wind, and even a mild headwind, the Crickets took off practically straight up. And for landing, their stall speed wasn't much above the carrier's cruise speed. Piece o' cake.

  On the other hand, Crickets don't generally fight. I'd prefer to fight, even if getting to and from the fight soils my flight suit. And speaking of which . . .

  The island—the Isla Santa Josefina—loomed out of the gloomy dusk ahead. Montoya adjusted his throttle to pick up speed, veered a little left, then right, and mentally reviewed his firing run. Trees began near the water's edge. A slight pull back on his stick, then an equally slight push forward, lifted the Finch and set it on a heading and altitude that would allow its fixed landing gear to just skim over the trees.

  The central hill dominating the Isla Santa Josefina lay ahead. Again Montoya eased back on the stick, causing the plane to just miss the jungle below. He felt a pressure in the seat of his trousers. As soon as the plane cleared the summit, Montoya pushed forward to drop the nose, causing his stomach to lurch.

  There's the target.

  Ahead, in Montoya's view, three old, rusty armored vehicles sat in the open. As he aimed the plane by feel, his thumb flipped off the safety cover on the firing button over his stick and be
gan to press. With each press of the thumb two rockets, one from under each wing, lanced out. As soon as he had bracketed the target Montoya pulled the stick to the right. The nimble Finch acted like the crop-duster it was and turned away athletically.

  Damned good thing, too, thought Montoya. Looking to the left he saw the next bird in the training attack was firing almost before he had cleared away.

  * * *

  The Isla Santa Josefina had been purchased by the Legion as a range. No one actually lived there for the excellent reason that the Federated States had used it as a chemical warfare testing ground during the Great Global War and never spent a drachma or expended an ounce of sweat cleaning it up afterward. It had come to the Legion pretty cheaply.