by Tom Kratman
Soldiers on the march, the march, the march
And for you your own field mail is waiting
But hark the trumpet calls
And soldiers march on.
—“Soldat y’ve put,”
Volgan Traditional
Palacio de las Trixies, Ciudad Balboa, Republic of Balboa, Terra Nova
It was evening, with a pleasant breeze blowing from off the Mar Furioso. The presidential palace was quiet for the nonce as the trixies had left the roost for a while, hunting antaniae. To Parilla, Carrera seemed exhausted, and not from the post adrenaline let down after the battle with the Taurans. No, his exhaustion seemed to go all the way to the soul.
My friend, thought Parilla, is in serious need of a break.
Damn, thought Carrera, I so need to take a couple of weeks . . . or months . . . or years mostly off.
“You, my friend, are one lucky bastard,” said Presidente Parilla. “So are all of us.”
“How’s that?” asked Carrera. Before Parilla answered he chugged down a good three fingers’ worth of sipping rum then reached for the bottle to add more.
“No war. The shocked-ever-so-silly Taurans are going to give up on trying to get rid of us.”
Carrera shrugged. “War might have broken out, it’s true. But only if the Tauran Union had been of a single mind. Fortunately, the Tauran Union has never—‘What, never? No, never!’—been of a single mind in its history, to date.
“Among conservative circles there was a strong feeling that nothing in Balboa—or anywhere in the world that had no oil reserves or rare metals—was worth a drop of Tauran sweat, to say nothing of Tauran blood. Revenge did not seem like a good enough reason to go to war when it did appear—good old Fernandez and his man with the camera!—that we had only been defending our own country.”
Carrera then sneered, more or less by instinct. “More liberal groups were more radically split. Some—the remnants of those who hated their own countries and cultures so much that they had once thought it a fine thing to support any guerrilla or terrorist movement so long as its aims were anti-Tauran or anti-Federated States—cheered what they saw as a defeat of Tauran arms. Others, and I find these the more respectable by far, mourned any loss of life, Tauran or Balboan, or just plain old human, for that matter. Of course, revenge was a completely inadequate reason for any of these to want war.
“Then there are our own sorts, Latins living in the Tauran Union. They were torn between patriotism for their adopted countries and a certain cultural pride. I understand there were refugees from Tsarist Marxism, who totally hated Marxism in all its versions, who—Zhong or Cochinese or Uhuran—were still full of pride when their former peoples beat Taurans and South Columbians.
“You know,” observed the president, “that the Tauran Union has renounced neither its stated right to intervene in Balboa, nor to maintain bases on Balboan soil in perpetuity, nor to avoid provoking the legion.”
“They’ll get sick of staying,” Carrera said. “A riot here, a riot there . . . their own people pushing to get them to leave . . . and our budget to support those people isn’t even especially high. They’ll be gone in time and instead of losing twenty or thirty or forty thousand fine young men, and some women, too, of course, we got off with a few hundred dead and wounded.”
“There are still some major issues,” said the president. “The drachma embargo remains in place . . .”
“Sure,” Carrera agreed, “in theory. But—years after unsuccessful years of trying to break us that way, our people and theirs always find a way around it. I don’t think the Taurans even try to prevent it anymore.” Carrera snorted, mirthfully. “Hell, if anything, the drachma embargo makes your government more popular than ever.”
“Yes, I suspect it does,” said Parilla. “It’s also gotten us sympathy to help us form mutual defense treaties with half of the other states of Colombia del Norte.”
“That’s even better at the moment,” said Carrera. “You need to lean on the diplomatic folks because the rest, maybe minus Santa Josefina, should be joining us very soon, too. After several hundred years of outrageously pushy and arrogant Tauran imperialism, there are pro-Balboa demonstrations in the streets from la Plata to Atzlan.”
“Hmmm . . .” Parilla mused on the prospect of killing a couple of birds with one stone. “Why don’t you and the wife take a tour? You can see some sights about this part of the world, while standing in as a national symbol in those countries sympathetic to us.”
“Maybe . . . just maybe,” agreed the Duque.
“I hear they’re pulling Janier out?” said Parilla.
“Yeah,” Carrera agreed. “Fernandez passed that to me, too; kicking Janier upstairs to some caretaker position, maybe, or maybe putting him in as Chief of Staff to the new Tauran Union Combined Staff. I’ll be interested in seeing who they appoint here to take his place.”
Carrera and Lourdes did take their vacation, while from his end Parilla pushed for a mutual defense treaty with all of the other states of Colombia Latina. There was already a treaty with many, but Balboa needed more. True, it was something of a rush job but in the general euphoria over Latin troops holding their own against Taurans, the treaty was ratified everywhere but Santa Josefina, where President Calderón refused to submit it to the legislature, and Cienfuegos which, as one of the last Tsarist-Marxist states on the planet, found Balboa’s timocracy loathsome in the extreme.
Why it passed so easily everywhere else was a matter of some conjecture. Some said it was pride. Others fear. A few cynics maintained that the rest of Colombia Latina signed on only because there was so little prospect, after the battle, of actually having to fight Taurus.
The key points of the treaty, from Balboa’s perspective, were that specific military organizations from other Latin states were identified for defense of the Transitway. Atzlan, for example, pledged its Parachute Brigade and committed to rotating its battalions through Balboa, one for a few months every year to train with the legion. Lempira and Valdivia offered highly trained battalions of mountain troops, one each. La Plata offered a regiment of Marines as did its Portuguese-speaking rival to its south. Other states offered battalions of infantry as they were able, twelve in all. To help ensure quality, Balboa began to supplement training for these units; some in their own countries, others with training rotations at the training center in Balboa’s Fuerte Cameron. Balboan military schools, including Cazador School, were opened up rather liberally to allied Latin states.
Four extra tercio headquarters, Fortieth through Forty-third, were authorized and raised. These took over the training and partial support of the twelve miscellaneous Latin battalions under their wings. Fifth Tercio did the same for the mountain troops. In assigning allied Latin battalions to the headquarters, great care was taken to keep traditional enemies and rivals apart. Thus, for example, one newly formed allied tercio had troops from La Plata, Pizarro, and Bolivar, but certainly none from Valdivia and definitely no one who spoke Portuguese. And for the battalions from Colombia Central, one had to be most careful not to put Lempirans and their neighbors together. Since everyone in Colombia del Sur detested Stroessnerns, they were meshed with two battalions from Colombia Central.
The service support and combat support troops the new tercios would need were raised in Balboa itself, although in three different ways. Additional maniples were authorized in the already existing service support tercios of the legion, as a whole. The combat support tercios of the brigade, legions, and corps which would receive the foreign troops also added maniples. The artillery already existed in the artillery tercios of the legion.
There was also a brigade of Sumeri Presidential Guard promised by Adnan Sada, but that was a personal agreement between him and Carrera, and not a matter of treaty or diplomacy.
Despite the expense, and it was not small, of raising those new troops and supplementing the training of the foreign units, Carrera was able to cut back on military expenses to a significant deg
ree. The primary reason for that was that, except for the Megalodon class coastal defense submarines, and the Condors—which were still coming off the local assembly lines and slipways—plus ammunition for training, Carrera had already bought and stored almost all of the equipment and supplies he believed he needed to defend the country. It had cost many billions and had a limited useful life span, but he was able—for a time—to sharply reduce capital expenditures.
There followed what was probably the greatest surge in the Balboan economy since the FSC had gone home after their invasion and the government had been able to sell off abandoned real estate to insiders. With massive investment in the economy made possible by the Cristobal Free Zone Tax, drug lords’ tribute, various sources of foreign aid, some of it somewhat reluctantly given, unemployment nationwide dropped to the lowest level in Latin Columbia. Among veterans and volunteers, some ten percent of the population, unemployment was almost precisely nothing. The exceptions were the very few; rich members of the legion, and there were some, and the rather larger number going to school full time. And those last weren’t precisely unemployed. Carrera’s enterprises were also able to increase Balboa’s exports to a healthy degree; lumber, scrap steel, canned food, clothing, footwear, minor electronics, weapons, ammunition, and other goods flowed from Balboa as far north as La Plata and as far south as Secordia. Some also went to Uhuru, Taurania, and the island country of Wellington.
Although “trickle down economics” garnered much scorn in most of the planet’s progressive circles, it seemed to work well enough in Balboa. In part this was because most of the money spent by Carrera and the legion went into common people’s pockets where it was reasonably sure to be spent, almost always on something that would help another Balboan stay employed. The rest was because the average resident of Balboa expected, and received, so little of his or her government in the way of social benefits that the policy caused no reduction in government income and no loss to already nonexistent income redistribution programs. The government had little in direct tax revenues to redistribute in any event.
Tourism—the Transitway was still a big draw—enjoyed something of a renaissance as well. After all, Balboa City was cheaper, warmer, cleaner, more cosmopolitan, and—especially for older and wealthier tourists—safer than anyplace else they were likely to find. Moreover, English was widely spoken. Only the capital of Cienfuegos could boast an equal degree of safety . . . but that capital, Batabanó, was almost entirely run down after decades of embargo and Tsarist-Marxist misrule and economic mismanagement. Also, and unlike Balboa, no appreciable percentage of the world’s commerce, in fact, none of it, actually had to pass through Cienfuegos.
Of course, that safety came at a price. The domestic criminal code of Balboa, it was said, was written in blood, not ink. And that whole thing about cruel and unusual punishments being bad things? Yeah, completely lost on the Balboan Senate.
On the other hand, freedom of religion, the right of free peaceful assembly—indeed, most of the rights once enshrined in a constitution of a long disappeared major state on Old Earth—were respected scrupulously, albeit under interpretations that Thomas Jefferson would have found more understandable than did the Federated States Supreme Court. And with over a third of a million fully automatic weapons in the hands of individuals, gun control would have been something of a joke.
Freedom of the press was more problematic. The legion had always taken a dim view of people who used their position as journalists to fight for, spy or scout for, or serve as propagandists for, the other side. This had been true in Sumer, in Pashtia, in La Palma Province, and was still true in the country as a whole.
Several reporters—local and international—had been shot or hanged for espionage or some other infraction before the rest took the hint. The actual rule was quite simple: “Look at anything you want that you can get physical access to (most facilities were well guarded); report what you wish; but give up the smallest scrap of militarily valuable information, or demonstrate that you’re working for our enemies and you become the enemy . . . and go before a firing squad or to the hangman if we can catch you. And we’ll certainly try.”
Mostly the media contented itself with reporting the allegedly widespread dissatisfaction with Balboa’s government. In fact, such dissatisfaction was fairly widespread among certain elements of the population. At another level of society, however, among people who had well-paying jobs—by Balboan standards—and hope for a better future for the first time in memory, it was said that with Parilla there was no freedom to starve . . . unless one really wanted to.
Still, a small community of Balboan expatriates grew up around the capital of Hamilton in the Federated States of Columbia. A hundred or so of these were disgruntled police cast off by Carrera in the years after the attempted coup by the late (crucified) Legate Pigna. These tended to look to Endara-Rocaberti as their natural leader and spokesman. They were also obvious enough to attract the attention of the high admiral, from her perch aboard the Spirit of Peace.
Wallenstein could hardly help take note of a minor crisis, involving the press. This came about when, in accordance with established Tauran and Federated States jurisprudence concerning jurisdiction, a bound and gagged Wally Barker was deposited on the doorstep of the criminal court building in Ciudad Balboa. Mr. Barker had been kidnapped by a team from the Fourteenth Cazador Tercio while he was on vacation in Atzlan, allegedly with the aid of the Atzlan Brigade of Paracaidistas. The Supreme Court of Balboa, taking its cue from the Tauran Union’s Supreme Court, determined that it was not its business precisely how the weasel reporter had arrived in Balboa. He was in Balboa and the Court had jurisdiction.
Barker was tried in camera within days for “Attempting to Foment Aggressive War” and sentenced to loss of his nose—some poetic justice there—one hundred lashes, death by hanging . . . and fifty drachmas in court costs. He was publicly flogged and the money taken from some found in his wallet, but the execution and loss of his nose were temporarily suspended. The Tauran ambassador was told not to protest and to advise his government not to interfere unless they were seriously interested in war, because if the Tauran Union did interfere Barker would be mutilated and hanged.
When the Tauran Union Security Council kept silent but for a couple of “Tsk-tsk’s,” Carrera determined that the Tauran Union really had finally given up on the idea of invasion. After all, he had told them he was prepared to give them a good excuse to invade and they had not taken it. A week after the flogging Barker, his back still in shreds, was deposited on the embassy doorstep. A note pinned to his shirt advised that his remaining sentences were suspended indefinitely on condition he never return to—or publicly mention the name of—the Republic of Balboa.
And, outside of furious but impotent protests from the news media, that was the end of that. Even the media soon realized that in the eyes of most readers and viewers, for the potential magnitude of the crime, the Balboans had been fairly merciful.
With the Legion del Cid, an exhausted Carrera simply had to loosen the reins. As often happened with well-trained units in any army, this loosening of the reins did not mean that the legion fell to pieces. Rather, the tercios began to pick up speed in their training. Carrera had long since ruthlessly purged the force of every slug that could be identified. Now, with nearly four hundred thousand imaginations brought to bear, just as the imagination of Corporal Ruiz had come up with a unique way to hide landmines, so the legion became, if anything, tougher, smarter, and quicker.
The more than decimated Second Cohort, Second Tercio was given a massive influx of support. Recruiting boundaries were shifted slightly to give it more of a population base to draw recruits from. Both the rest of Second and Third Corps were combed for volunteers to refill the one cohort that had fought the Taurans to a standstill. There were many volunteers. In addition, Carrera authorized additional training days for the unit to allow it to bring its new men back up to the same standard as the rest of the legion. Cruz s
tayed on as cohort sergeant major, while Porras received an early promotion to junior tribune.
Lourdes used the extra time Carrera spent at home or traveling with her wisely and well. Her fourth child, another girl, was ushered into this world without problem about ten months after the battle with the Gauls. Unfortunately, Lourdes was slender and her babies large. On her doctor’s advice, the fourth child, also named Lourdes, had to be her last.
Carrera discovered that he liked being a family man again. More to his surprise, he found as much satisfaction in dedicating a new school building, library or clinic as he did in watching a cohort go through a deliberate attack. For the first time in two decades, near enough, he found himself to be happy, and his life balanced and full. He still woke up from time to time with richly satisfying dreams of warring against the Tauran Union. He still planned and prepared for having to do so. But he did not, as he had once planned, do anything to provoke such a war.
Casa Linda, Balboa, Terra Nova
Pililak was devastated. Ham would be home on leave from the academy in just a few months and she still hadn’t been able to escape to join him, proving thereby her devotion to him in a way that would set her apart from his other wives . . . or, for that matter, his sisters.
She could almost cry. She would have cried if she hadn’t been from a people who were about as hard as nails.
Every time I thought I was ready, I thought of something else that needed doing or, if not needed, would at least be good to have ready. Or, if I thought of it early, it took much time . . . or it took much time and then, as with the food I stashed, the rats and bugs got to it. And then there were the things Alena the witch said, that made me think of still other problems.
And now he’s coming home and I will just be one among many. I don’t even deserve for him to think I’m special or important, since I’ve failed so miserably in this one thing I set my heart on.
“Ah, to Hell with it,” Ant said, in her native tongue. “If I haven’t got everything ready in the next five weeks I am going to go anyway.”
