The Lotus Eaters (65 page)

You don't need to know what it is, old man
, thought Fernandez, hand still caressing the thing.
It's only important that
I
know what it is. It's a flight computer for a shuttle and, more importantly, it's the same dimensions, probably the same model, and can probably be fit into the shuttle we captured a few years ago in Pashtia. It looks like it can, anyway.

We dug through everything. Everything! And then one of my bright boys suggesting checking probate accounts. And that led to a court record of an old estate fight . . . which led to a branch of a family . . . which led to another probate record . . . and to another, and another . . . to a woman who died rich and childless . . . and finally, to you.

And you, my lovely little black box, are going to lead us . . .

Fernandez's eyes turned upward, toward the stars.

The deployment's first wave was leaving at night. Stars shone down, twinkling off the waves of sea and bay that surrounded the Field of the Frogs on three sides. Loudspeakers placed around the field blared out a marching song, occasionally interrupted by commands from the headquarters, 8th
Tercio
, in charge of the movement.

Like the commander of the corps to which they belonged, like the population of the area from which they sprang, the 8th
Tercio
, was mostly black. As such, their marching song was
Cara Morena
, Dark Face, a glowingly appreciative piece on the girls of the province. They sang it from a dozen departure points, as they boarded a mix of hovercraft, coastal freighters, helicopters and medium cargo aircraft for their deployment to
Jaquelina de Coco
and
Sangre de Dios
, down in
La Palma
Province.

With much less fanfare, a number of
Cazador
teams had been shuttled down by submarine, over the past several weeks, from Puerto Lindo, just down the coast. They would land on the coast and infiltrate by foot to take up positions well in advance of the general interdiction line—some, in fact, into Santander, itself—the better to cover the coming relief in place of 2nd
Tercio
by 8th. Those teams would cross into Santander, if for no other reason than to remind the Santandern guerillas that there was no sanctuary for them, anywhere.

From loudspeaker and voice the song echoed:

"The hour of deliverance is nearing;
The day of liberation's surely coming;
The era when our
Patria
is sovereign,
No longer underneath the Kosmo boot.
Cara morena, mi chica linda . . ."

I really don't care for that song,
Jimenez thought.
Just doesn't grab me. But what the hell does it matter what
I
think
,
if the boys like it.

Jimenez's driver, Pedro, pulled up next to where he had let off his commander, sometime prior. "Legate Higgins"—there were a large number of Anglic names among the black denizens of the province—"wants to know if you've any last minute instructions," Pedro said.

Shaking his head, Jimenez answered, "No. I'm only even here because I'm bitter I can't go along. Just . . . go back and tell him I wish him and his boys good luck."

"Roger, sir."

I
am
bitter, too. I
liked
being a company commander, way back in the day. Now? Commanding a corps, three hundred times bigger than a company, or a maniple, as we say now, is too much like work, and too little like fun. I haven't even gotten to go out on a training exercise in months.

How much worse it would be, Patricio, if you didn't hate both excess paperwork and meetings, I shudder to think
.

"Cara morena, mi chica linda . . ."

Oh, well; could be worse. At least I'll get to visit the boys down there, keep 'em on their toes to the extent the guerillas don't.

Though he wasn't precisely sleepy, having slept on the helicopter that had brought him back from Jaquelina de Coco, Cruz had an inner fatigue no ordinary rest could touch. Wearily he trudged up the concrete path to the door of his house. Wearily he turned the knob and opened the screen door. Wearily he dragged himself, his rifle, and his pack inside. Wearily he set them down, and, with exhaustion in his voice, he called out, "Cara?"

He heard footsteps and then saw her, momentarily frozen in the rectangular corridor that led to the bedrooms. He saw his wife's swollen belly initially with mixed feelings.
Let's see . . . last time was . . . ummm . . . match that to girth . . . yeah, it's mine. Well . . . assuming.

For her part, she took one long look at her husband, framed by light streaming in through the front door, and launched into a very rapid waddle to throw herself into Ricardo's arms. She stood that way, wrapped up, for several minutes before she could manage to get out, "You didn't tell me you were coming home, you bastard."

"Secret," Cruz explained, while running his hands gently over her back. " 'Pain of death' secret. They
just
got another
tercio
sufficiently trained to take over from the Second. We couldn't say a thing until they had taken over by more than fifty percent. And I couldn't send you our code phrase because there were no computers out in the
jungla
and my last scrap of writing paper had gone to a 'We deeply regret' letter for one of my privates."

His hand wandered from her back to her belly. "Why didn't you tell me about this?"

"I wasn't sure until just after you left for La Palma, and I didn't want you to worry about me when you had more immediate things to worry about."

He nodded. The explanation made sense. For Cara, anyway.

"Did we win?" she asked.

"What's a win?" he half answered. "We drove the guerillas and druggies out of La Palma. But they'll be back if we let down our guard."

He grasped her shoulders in his hands and pushed her back far enough to look down into her face. "Hey, I've got some good news. At least I think it's good news."

"And that would be?"

"New assignment for us. We're going back to the island so I can be First Centurion of the
tercio
training maniple. Promotion, more money, and—since most of the troops have moved back to the mainland—the standard house out there for a senior centurion is what they used to put senior tribunes and junior legates in. Also"—he glanced down at her stomach—"the Legion still has most of its medical capability there."

Cara's eyes lit up at that. "Oooo . . . shiny."
And I won't have to worry about you being killed all the time, either. A nice safe training billet would be just the thing.

She immediately got suspicious. She'd learned long since that nothing too very good and nothing too very bad lasted for too very long.

"How long?"

He shrugged, shaking his head. "Til we go to the island? A few weeks. How long will we be there? Sorry, don't know, love. Everything's in flux. But a year, at least, I think I can guarantee. Maybe two or three years."

"Oh, that would be wonderful," she whispered, laying her head against her man's chest.

Esteban Escobar, late of the
Frente Nacional Liberacion Santandereño
, shivered in the early morning fog and the salty sea breeze. His thin physical training uniform was no help at all. And somehow the gravel underfoot was sharp enough to hurt his feet, even through his shoes.

Even if he'd been more warmly clothed, or the air had been warmer, the former guerilla might still have shivered. The corporals, sergeants, optios, and centurions he'd met so far might have made any man shiver.

Beasts in human form
, was Esteban's learned judgment.
Was that ferret-faced bastard, Fernandez, doing me a favor when he pulled a couple of strings to let me enlist?

Well, that's not fair. He did get the judge to dismiss the charges against me, and without even a hearing. That, at least, was a favor. Though, then again, I might have gotten credit for time served while I was being held in Fernandez's headquarters. In which case . . .

The fog was too thick to see the source of the command, "Maniple . . . Atten . . . SHUN."

Thought forgotten, Esteban stiffened to attention, head and eyes locked to the front. He heard the command, "Open ranks . . . MARCH!" and automatically took two steps forward to allow the squad behind to take a single step.

Esteban heard the leaders of the other three squads in his platoon give the command, "Parade . . . REST." His own first squad remained at attention. Keen ears heard the sharp gravel crunching under booted feet, somewhere off the right. He couldn't turn to see, but assumed that was the new first centurion they'd been warned about, inspecting the troops.

Vicious bastard they say he is, too.

Someone, the top of his head being at about the level of Esteban's chin, stepped in front of him and faced sharply to the left.

"I don't fucking believe it."

Esteban looked down, slightly, and his previous blank expression was replaced by a very nervous smile. "Hello," he said, lamely. "Ummm, Centurion."

Ricardo Cruz put the tip of his centurion's stick, his sole badge of rank, under Esteban's chin and pushed upward until his head was back in the proper position.

"I will someday want to know the rest of your story, Private Escobar," Cruz said, sternly. "But it can wait. In the interim, do try"—for punctuation, Cruz tapped his stick twice, hard, against Escobar's chest—"
do
"—tap—"try"—tap—"to remember how to stand at the position of attention."

"Yes, Centurion. Sorry, Centurion."

"And shut up."

The bronze plaque by the rolled-open steel doors proclaimed the battery was named for an indian, a man without surname, who had been a follower of Belisario Carrera in his war of independence from Old Earth. Each of the eight batteries ringing the island was named for a different character from that long ago conflict. Jorge and Marqueli Mendoza had a common ancestor among those so honored, while Marqueli had yet another.

The battery's armament consisted of two triple six inch turrets, themselves removed from one of the cruisers scrapped by Carrera as not needed for naval efforts. The turrets sat atop artificial hills, the sodded and tree-planted dirt surmounting thick hollow cones of concrete. Behind the twin hills for the two turrets, various ammunition bunkers, twelve of them, were situated to either side of a rail line, a spur running from the ring that encircled the island about three kilometers inland from the coast. Eight of those twelve bunkers were on the coast side, with their large steel loading doors facing toward the central massif, Hill 287. Short rail lines ran right from the main spur into the ammunition bunkers. The turrets themselves, while capable of all-round traverse, were oriented primarily to sea. Unseen, underground and connected by tunnels, were concrete headquarters, the fire direction center, and quarters and mess facilities for the battery's troops.

Sig Siegel was there, watching, as a railroad car bearing a shipping container was gently pushed through the doors. With Siegel were the Cochinese girl, Han, now free and his freely employed administrative assistant and translator, as well as a couple of hundred other Cochinese Sig had purchased from the highly corrupt chief of a re-education camp.

"Han?" Siegel said, once the flatcar was inside.

"Right, boss," the tiny girl answered, then walked to the railroad car and scampered up the side. In their own tongue she addressed the workers, daintily.

"All right you dicklessclapriddenpussies, get the cables and shackles on this thing and get it into the air so we can get rid of the railroad car. Once it's been hauled off, and the doors are closed, then you fuckfacedrefugeesfromthevendorsoffatlittleboys are going to lower it, open it, and reassemble the big gun you disassembled back in Prey Nokor. You will then fix the gun on the railway mounting in the big metal box. Don't try to pretend ignorance.
You
semengarglers took the things apart and packaged them up. Now if you backpassagewhoreswhodon'tevenknowenoughtochargeextraforaswallow can do that before dinnertime, I
might
, and the operative word is 'might,' tell our gracious and beloved boss"—she turned and gave Sig a blinding smile—"that you deserve to eat real food tonight.

"What? What? I could have sworn I told you shiteatingtrollops to get moving . . ."

Oh, Han
, Sig thought, smiling broadly, himself,
wherever have you been all my life?

All my life, I suppose
, Carrera thought, with a sigh, his eyes glancing back and forth from the printout on his lap to the map on the wall,
all my life I've wanted to lead a lot of men in a great, desperate battle. And in this particular case, that battle—the final one, not the one to toss out the Taurans—looks like a losing proposition.

The figures don't lie. On my eastern flank, all those coastal ports along the
Mar Furioso
—little enough, individually, but collectively enough to support an army—mean I'm going to be facing a corps or two—Zhong or Tauran, but most likely Zhong—and I'll have nothing left to face them with. Everybody else will be committed.

And recruiting is about maxed out. I can finish building the force, and financing it, but that's it. No more. In any case, a regiment of two of men would stand out like a sore thumb in a area full of refugee camps loaded with women and children.

Kuralski's plan of moving the civilians, mostly women and kids, out of
Ciudad
Balboa to provide a block is a clever one . . . maybe cowardly, but clever. The invaders will have to feed those civilians, and a half million mouths to be fed, at a distance from the ports, makes the logistic problem insurmountable.

For a couple of weeks, until whoever it is forces the civilians to move nearer the ports. Which guerillas could interfere with, maybe even defeat, as long as the guerillas could blend in. Which, being men, they won't be able to.