Besides failing to account for the cost of a given good, it is a great moral and logical fallacy of the universe, or at least upon the two planets of it which know Man, to measure good and evil only by their intensity and scope and never by their duration. War is the greatest of evils, so might Man (or at least Cosmopolitan Progressive, or Kosmo, Man) say, and so might he say, too, that we must never wage war even against the greatest oppression. And yet wars inevitably end while oppression goes on and on (and typically ends, if it ends, in war anyway).
War, however, is only the obvious extreme case. Consider reproductive rights. Surely a woman has a right to her own body to do with as she pleases. This is a certain, plain, obvious, and irrefutable good. But just as surely, the children of the women who do not feel that way will soon outnumber the children of the women who do. Those children will learn and carry the values of their parents, as will their children. Also, they will vote. And then expansive, liberal reproductive rights will democratically disappear to join with the children never born to the women most dedicated to those rights. Thus will a generation or two of free reproductive rights for women be followed by one hundred or one thousand generations that scorn them. Thus, the plain, certain, irrefutable and obvious good is meaningless, because it cannot last, because it destroys itself as it destroys the conditions which permitted it.
So, too, unlimited democracy . . .—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,
Historia y Filosofia Moral,
Legionary Press, Balboa,
Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468
The tree was decorated, the stockings hung, and the Hamilcar's Pashtun guards had even managed to figure out where the exterior lights went. (Also, since the lights would have tended to silhouette them, they'd figured out that they'd better double the number of guards and push them out, away from the house. As Lourdes said, "Paranoia, thou art a Pashtun. Thank goodness.") Now, as the clock neared midnight, Carrera and Lourdes had the Casa Linda mostly to themselves but for the guards outside and the ones keeping watch over Hamilcar, upstairs.
As midnight struck, Carrera walked to a console and removed a small box, the kind that would contain a necklace. He handed the box to Lourdes. She opened it to find a string of pearls, large and perfect, shining pink and iridescent in the subdued light. Lourdes made a happy sound, reached up to kiss Carrera heavily, and ran to where she had hidden her gift to Carrera.
Lourdes' gift was in a box, about three feet long—or a bit more, and four inches on a side. When Carrera had removed the paper he found that the box was wooden. He removed the lid to discover a sword, old and, from the inscription, Spanish.
Lourdes said "I had to send all the way to Taurus to find it for you. It is from the 16th century on Old Earth. The dealer told me it wasn't the sword of anyone famous. But he believed and showed me why he believed that it once belonged to a Conquistador. I thought it would go well with your collection. I hope you like it."
Carrera took the sword from its box. He drew the blade from the scabbard. It was very well preserved, he saw, for something nearly a millennium old and made of steel. The lights from the tree gleamed along the shimmering metal of the blade. Carrera made an appreciative sound. "It's wonderful, Lourdes. You understand, though, it's too rare for me to carry around."
Holding the sword to catch the light better, Carrera saw small flakes of rust and that the blade was, in a few places, pitted. This was no surprise. He said softly, to no one in particular:
"How dull it is, to pause, to make and end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use,
As though to breathe were life."
By his tone, and his eye, Lourdes knew he was pleased. She paused, took a deep breath. "I have another present for you, Patricio. I hope you like it as well. But you can't have it for a while."
Carrera raised a quizzical eyebrow.
"I'm going to have another baby . . . in about seven months."
"Really?" he asked, then, smiling broadly, said, "Coool."
"Well," she said, eyes sparkling and lips turning wicked, "it's not like you've left me with my legs together too often lately.
"Just making up for lost time."
The university was rapidly becoming as split an entity as the country which supported it. True enough, most of the facilities were here on the main campus, in what many were beginning to call "Free Balboa," as opposed to "occupied Balboa." Even so, that portion which was in the Transitway Area, plus the few buildings in the small portion of the city owned by the rump government of Rocaberti and his cronies, had pretty much ceased responding to anything emanating from the University Rectory.
Professor Ruiz, de facto propaganda minister for the Legion and the rest of the country, at the moment not only did not but could not care a bit about the split in the country or the split in the university. He was nursing a splitting headache, courtesy of the New Years' party held by his department the night before.
Still, work had to go on, even on Terra Novan New Years' Day. Work, in this case, consisted of reviewing a series of two minute long commercials the Legion's junior military academies.
This was a tough one, Ruiz thought, through the pounding in his head. We couldn't show the military side of the cadet program . . . too likely to frighten away parents. Besides, Carrera was explicit that that was to be downplayed. So all we have is some martial music, staged pictures of fourteen and fifteen year olds dressed up in gray fatigues while attending class, and a few shots of kids marching in parade. Still, though, the Legion is so tightly woven into the fabric of the country by now that all they need is a reminder, I think. And for that, these commercials will do well enough.
* * *
Not many miles from where Professor Ruiz underwent his ordeal by hangover, a poor boy from a poor family sat through an interview. The boy's parents and his own teacher conversed while trying to find a way to pay for the boy's continued education. The family was named Porras; the boy went by Julio. He was a handsome kid, if a bit on the skinny side. Porras' family had not always been so poor.
Although education was free in the Republic of Balboa, the uniforms and books required were not. The Porras family had been able, by scrimping and saving, to send Julio's three older siblings to school properly attired. But Julio's younger brothers and sister also needed school clothing, and the father was without a steady source of income. There just wasn't enough money.
The teacher said, "Señor and Señora Porras, I wish I could help. But I have only a teacher's salary. It isn't too generous. Julio is my best student, my best by far. And a good boy, too."
Not a tremendous fan of the military, less still of military education, the teacher was reluctant to suggest to the boy's parents that he try to go to one of the new schools the Legion had started.
Still, the teacher thought, for a bright boy like this even a military school would be better than nothing.
"There is a possibility. I don't know how you would feel about it. Maybe you should ask Julio. There are schools run by the Legion del Cid that provide everything . . . books, uniforms, room and board. I understand there's even a small stipend for the boys, though I'm sure it's nothing lavish. But you must understand, this will be a military school. It is intended to educate young men so that they can volunteer for and serve in the Legion upon graduation."
Julio's father asked "Will the boys be soldiers as soon as they enroll?"
"No, I understand they will receive some military training, mostly as an exercise in character building. But they are not supposed to be a part of the Legion until after they graduate. Even then, I've heard, it will be up to them whether they actually join or not."
The teacher turned to Julio. "Would you like to go to that school, son? It will be difficult."
Julio, who knew better than anyone the struggle his parents faced every day just to feed him, assented without a second thought. "Madre, Padre, I would like to go to one of these school. Very much."
The mother asked "Do you think Julio can get into this school, Señor? Will he be far from home?"
The teacher reached into his desk and pulled out a piece of paper. "It lists here the desirable qualities the school is looking for. Grades? No problem there. Extracurricular activities and leadership? Julio has captained our soccer team, and won the school prize for a writing competition. Teachers recommendation? If you are truly willing to let him go, I will give him as good a recommendation as anyone will receive. I think he should be able to get in. As for being far from home, I understand that the Legion assigns boys where it has an opening, without much regard for where they may live."
The father asked the last question. "How soon must Julio leave for the school?"
"This paper says initial cadet training begins on the 31st of this month. We have until the 14th to have Julio's application in."
Drivers honked with gleeful abandon. Honking right back, Mitchell used the greater mass and intimidation power of his rather beat up vehicle to force his way through traffic to a spot not far from an office building's door. Wordlessly, Carrera got out. Equally wordlessly, Mitch drove off and turned the corner.
The sign on the door said, "Balboa Yacht Corporation, S. A." The sign was a bit of misdirection. Not only did the BYC have little to do with yachts, it rarely had much to do with the sea, though there had been at least one significant exception to this.
BYC was a front, a wing of Obras Zorilleras, or 'OZ,' the Legion's research and development arm. More specifically, it was that section that dealt with the aerial combat and the air defense of the Legion and the Republic. Moreover, it dealt with them in their material, tactical, and systemic aspects, all three.
BYC was a front in more ways than one. The door with the sign did lead to a suite of offices that could, for example, tell the prospective yacht purchaser, "Oh, no, señor, we are much too busy—Julio, you lazy swine, did you finish the drawings for the Duke of Belgravia?—as I was saying, señor, we could not hope to—Marissa, you wretch, I said get in touch with Borchadt Marine Engines now!—Where was I, señor?" and keep that up indefinitely or until the prospective buyer walked off in disgust.
Of course, there was no need to do that with Carrera. He nodded as he passed by on his way to a small office. That office, in turn, served as a cover for the door that led to the real BYC suite. The real BYC suite was normally entered from an alley off of a completely different street.
* * *
The offices were plain, if not bare. There was little decoration on the off-white painted walls. The desks and chairs were functional, but no more than that. There was but a single telephone in the suite. Of its computers, all but one were sealed off from the outside world.
"Miguel," Carrera said to Legate Lanza, chief of the Legion's Ala, or air wing, as he emerged from the front put on by BYC.
"Duque," Lanza nodded back. Balding, his waist thickening, a bit stoop-shouldered and generally showing his age, Lanza was dressed in mufti, gray trousers and an embroidered silk, short-sleeved, guayabera dress shirt.
Carrera asked, "What have you got for me?" In truth, he'd made his plans so far in a partial vacuum. It could all fall apart if there proved no way to nullify his likely enemy's air power. That knowledge, rather, that uncertainty, was a frequent cold spot in the pit of his stomach.
"A concept," Lanza answered, "and some recommendations. You know our people here?"
Carrera shook his head. "I know some of them but go ahead and do the introductions anyway."
"This way then, boss." Lanza inclined his head and turned away towards a hallway.
* * *
The group was small and entirely composed of ex-Volgans, ex-Jagelonians, and a single ex-Sachsen. All but one were pilots. Of the pilots, two had sub-specialized in military intelligence.
"Duque," began one of the latter, a compact Volgan who went by the name of Grishkin, "let us begin by telling you what we think you are going to face if it comes to war between you and the Tauran Union, or war between you and the Tauran Union allied with Zhong Guo. We are assuming in this that the Federated States will not support you. If they would, you need not worry about an air threat at all."
"That's about the way I see it," Carrera agreed, running fingers through his hair. "Go on; worst case it."
"Very well," said Grishkin. "Basically you are looking at an aerial assault from as many as five medium aircraft carriers, three Tauran and two Zhong. In all, that's only about three hundred aircraft, only about two hundred and forty of them combat aircraft. You could, conceivably, handle this if you're willing to spend the money and devote the personnel to the problem."
"But it won't just be aircraft carriers, correct?"
Grishkin nodded. "We think not, Duque. We think that, if it came to a general war, you can count on the Taurans paying any price to gain access to air bases in Santa Josefina, to your east. Moreover, since the collapse of the Volgan Empire, Cienfuegos to your south has become an economic basket case. Mere sharing of language and culture will not be enough to prevent the Cienfuegans from opening their legs to Taurus and giving them whatever they want. And you must assume that Maracaibo, being itself a new Tsarist-Marxist state, will ally with the TU happily and eagerly."
Carrera nodded. This was nothing too far off from what he had considered on his own. Moreover, he had at least a partial solution.
"Assume," he said, "that I can redirect sufficient of our foreign born legionaries to their home countries to punish any nearby Latin state badly, with an insurrection, for opening themselves to the TU."
"Except for—"
"Yes," Carrera cut him off. "Except for Cienfuegos. I have no appreciable number of volunteers from there. They're a closed society, so infiltration would be very difficult. Basically, I've no useful connections, no good way to punish them, yet, for what amounts to cultural treason. I'm working on that."
"I'm sure," Grishkin shrugged. "That still means you're going to be facing up to twelve hundred sorties a day, from the east, from the west, from the south, and from the sea to the north and south. That's a lot of God damned ordnance dropped on your head, Duque."
"Look," Carrera said, waving one hand, brusquely, "I already know it's going to hurt. Give me something I can work with to cut down on that pain. Give me something I can use to get some maneuver time and space to defeat a landing or landings."
"There is a way," Grishkin answered, for the first time smiling.
"I'm listening."
Grishkin looked at one of his compatriots. "Fuckoffski," he said, "you're up.
"My name is Yakubovski," the latter reminded. His face was completely devoid of humor, grimmer than cancer, in fact. "They make a little joke and call me, 'Yabukovski.' In effect, that means, 'Fuckoffski.' " The Volgan gave an evil smile. "I'll get them all, later, in my own way."
"There are basically two ways an air force can come at you, Duque," Yakubovski said, "en masse and by what is sometimes called a 'conveyor belt.' They much prefer the latter. Indeed, just assembling the former, gathering and organizing a major strike, is so wasteful of fuel—which cuts into ordnance carried, wears out the planes so badly—while they're hanging around waiting for the rest of the strike package to assemble, uses up so much time, and is so hard to coordinate, that air forces will usually only do it to establish initial air superiority or supremacy, or to support a major effort on the ground.
"The conveyor belt, on the other hand," Yakubovski continued, "has none of those flaws. Small strike packages are quickly assembled and easily controlled. They do not overstrain fuel and ordnance units on their way out, or maintenance units when they return. Airfields are orderly and efficient. Aerial refueling is easy. Conversely, aerial refueling of up to twelve hundred aircraft in a few hours is impossible for the TU. Even the Federated States cannot handle so much.
"However, the conveyor belt has its own flaws. It cannot be used efficiently until air superiority or, in preference, air supremacy, is established. If one tries, one finds that an altogether inefficient mix of aircraft must be used, fully a third of them equipped not for ground attack but for aerial combat. Still others must carry munitions for suppression of air defense."
Yakubovski stopped speaking for a moment, searching Carrera's face for a glimmer of understanding. The latter, on the other hand, kept his face blank while leaning back in his chair and staring upwards at the junction of off white-painted wall and white hung ceiling.
After perhaps a minute's quiet, Carrera asked, "You're trying to tell me that if I can maintain the ability to engage and destroy small strike packages . . . hmmm, define small."
Yakubovski didn't miss a beat. "About fifty or sixty aircraft, maybe half of them strike aircraft."
"Okay. If I can meet and defeat something that size, then they'll have to go to larger, less efficient, strike packages, that are also less deadly on a per aircraft basis?"
"Yes, which for all the reasons mentioned, plus the difficulty of planning and coordinating a major strike, will not come all that often."
Carrera lowered his head, closed his eyes and held up one finger for silence. He pictured, in his mind's eye, a major air raid coming in to Balboa . . .
"So I need to be able to defeat a raid of sixty aircraft?" he mused.
"Something like that," the Volgan agreed. "If you're willing, it might be well to plan for twice that. In fact, we have."
"What does that take?"
"Besides the barrage balloons you are calling 'Project Sarissa,' and the lavish air defense suite you are building, either two hundred or so fairly modern fighters or three to four times that in obsolete fighters with some improved capabilities. We recommend the latter."
"Why?"
Grishkin answered. "Partly it's cost, Duque. Two hundred modern fighters, on their own, without even counting training and maintenance, will cost more billions than you can lightly afford. Six or seven or eight hundred obsolete fighters cost . . . well," Grishkin handed Carrera an advertisement, torn from a newspaper printed on yellow paper.
"You're shitting me," Carrera said. "Under twenty-five thousand FSD for a depot rebuilt Artem-Mikhail 82 Mosaic-D? That's a typo, right? They left off a zero or two?"
"No, Duque, it's not a typo. In fact, it's practically an attempt at piracy. Larceny, anyway. I ran down—I have my contacts after all—the original source for the aircraft and the markup in that advertisement has been quite high. For that price we can get the aircraft, several replacement engines, and spare parts for years of operations. And for a few hundred thousand FSD, each, we can upgrade the things to where they would have a reasonable chance of killing TU fighters and strike aircraft at about two for five. If you are willing to risk men in training, we might get that up to three for five."
"They'll bomb the shit out of our airfields and we'll never get a plane off," Carrera objected.
Grishkin laughed and wagged a finger. "Oh, no, Duque. The AM-82 is very rough field capable. Moreover, we can get true vertical takeoff for them, or at least for some of them, in the form of a Zero Length Launch system. This is basically a trailer mount with a blast shield and some Rocket Assisted Take Off, or RATO, bottles mounted to the plane. They've been done. They work. Nobody's ever really used them because guided missiles took over. In your case, and Balboa's, they might make more sense."
Carrera shrugged. Maybe. Air war was not really his forte.
"Explain to me how you see an air war developing," he said.
Grishkin pointed. "Fuckoffski, you're up again."
Yakubovski stood and said, "Still using the TU as a template, Duque, the first attack will probably come en masse. Your Air Defense Artillery would unmask, briefly, but shut down, run and hide as soon as the individual systems and batteries have any reasonable excuse to. The TU would then pound a lot of empty jungle. Oh, sure, they'll hit legitimate targets, too. We aren't saying this will be easy.
"After a day or two of that, maybe three at the most, the TU would declare "air supremacy" or make some such meaningless public relations point.
"At that point, expect the TU to go to the more efficient conveyor belt type of operation. After putting up with that for a few days, you unmask your air defense, lift your aircraft, and attack with very heavy odds in your favor to engage a smallish TU strike package. Hurt it badly, even if it hurts you, too.
"The TU then has to revert to larger, all capacity, aerial task forces. The Legion hides for a while.
"After a bit, you could expect the TU to again declare 'air supremacy' and go back to conveyor belt operations. Once again, the Legion hits a small raid and hurts it.
"At about that point they'll try to get clever and do small raids but with a larger air to air group waiting to ambush. You ignore all such attacks until the larger group is not in evidence. Small fishing boats, coast watchers, and spies, plus whatever technical intelligence you can develop, will be important here. The effect is still virtual attrition on the TU, since planes not bombing are . . . well . . . not bombing, which is fine."
Yakubovski sighed. "I know, we all know, you've never told us your end game. Still, a blind man could see that, if you can drive out the TU and if the TU later lands, you must attack and crush that landing. Now imagine you can time it so that your artillery prep for that counterattack begins just as a TU air raid is departing."
"The TU's going to say, 'Oh, shit,' and start trying to assemble a major strike package. But the ground pounders are going to be screaming bloody murder for support. Politically, that will force the TU air forces to start scrambling and trying to assemble whatever can be assembled to help the ground pounders. Then your AM-82s lift. Your barrage balloons lift. Your ADA unmasks. The TU comes in, but in small groups and facing something truly awful, old planes, but a lot of them, and with good weapons, and a thick air defense umbrella.
"You're going to pay, of course. We're undecided about whether the air force you must build will be annihilated, or just butchered. The smart money is on annihilated. But you can get the time, through expending their lives and planes, to fight and win a battle on the ground."
Carrera looked questioningly at Lanza. His return look as much as said, They convinced me, boss. Though the idea of my boys being sacrificial lambs is not something I'm too comfortable with.
"How far along in planning are you?" Carrera asked.
"Very far," Lanza answered. "Costs, Tables of Organization and Equipment, training programs, instructor requirements, land usage, facilities . . . give us the money and we can start tomorrow. The boys have even done the redesign work to bring the Mosaic almost into our day and age."
* * *
"Something still bugs me," Carrera said. "Two things, really. I don't understand: Why so cheap and why so many?"
Grishkin shrugged, answering, "For the latter question, the Red Tsar never threw anything away and neither did his allies and clients. For the first question . . . basically, nobody wants them anymore so their value is reduced to not much more than the metal . . . and even metal prices are down. Everyone's looking for the most modern planes, whether or not they can maintain them and whether or not they've got the training system and the social system to procure sufficiently high quality human material for pilots. Over much of our world, it's a prestige thing, mostly, a way to keep the sons of the ruling classes amused and give them more reason to strut and better ways to talk girls into bed.
"The average air force, in the world, is nothing but an expensive indulgence. There are only a few air forces that even matter. One of those, sadly for you, is the Tauran Union's."
"Yeah . . . no shit." Carrera hesitated, perhaps only due to an innate conservatism, before agreeing, "Fine. Lanza, get your cost estimates to the Estado Major. We're going to go for it.
"And God help the poor kids who will, I have no doubt, volunteer in droves for this."
* * *
Carrera looked genuinely happy as he slunk out the entrance to the real offices of BYC, into the trashy alley, and then into the nondescript car driven by Mitchell and guarded by Soult. The latter two shared a look that said, Dunno why but it can't be bad.
"Estado Major building, Mitch," Carrera said.
"Sure thing, boss," Mitchell said, turning the key and bringing the engine to life. "Umm . . . boss, if you don't mind my asking, why so chipper? It just ain't like you."
"Two reasons," Carrera answered. "One is I've got a little more hope of survival than I did have. The other is I'm going to cut a little cancer out of the system at the Estado Major. Meanwhile, ignore me for a bit. I have to work myself into a fury."
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.
Balboans self describe their state as a "Timocratic Republic," where Timocratic is taken to mean "the rule of virtue," as opposed to the rule of wealth which has all too often been presumed, despite copious evidence to the contrary, to be virtuous. Balboa is more properly said to be a mixture of a popular republic and a limited military near-dictatorship, existing side by side but with the better funded, more aggressive military branch gradually taking over more and more of the functioning of the country, even as it becomes less dictatorial. That process continues as of this writing.
In structure, the government of Balboa appears conventional, with three branches, Executive—consisting of the President, two vice-Presidents, a cabinet and sundry executive agencies, Legislative—with both Senate and Legislative Assembly, and Judicial—consisting of a national level Supreme Court and lower, provincial, and district courts.
In terms of domestic politics, the geography of the country is profoundly subdivided. The bulk of the state is split into two parts, eastern and western, by the existence of the Tauran Union-occupied, World League-mandated, Transitway Area, running approximately through the center. Of the remainder, a fair chunk of the capital, Ciudad Balboa, is under the sway of the previous government as a result of an order, intended to prevent civil war, from the Federated States of Columbia.
The bulk of the state, the Republic of Balboa, proper, is further subdivided in two ways. Conventionally, it consists of eleven provinces, ranging from Valle de las Lunas, in the east, to La Palma, in the west. Although provinces sometimes have a considerable emotional pull on their inhabitants, politically they do not mean much in Balboa. They have no degree of individual sovereignty, no independent police or militia, nor any right to make province-specific laws. Even provincial governors are appointed by the national government.
The military division of the country is the more profound one. In the year 470 AC, the Senate, initially an appointed lawmaking body composed entirely of military veterans (though gradually becoming an elected body, still composed entirely of military veterans and elected by veterans), divided the national geography into several overlaying and overlapping grids, which grids paid absolutely no attention to existing provincial or district lines. These grids, the exact boundaries of which fluctuate slightly, are regimental.
One grid layer is composed of combat regiments, of which it is believed there are about forty. Parallel to that is another grid which defines combat support regiments—artillery, combat engineers, air defense artillery, military police, and the like. Parallel to those is a grid layer of headquarters and service support regiments. There are further grids for the air and naval arms, as well as for certain unique regiments, such as the Tercio Amazona (qv), which is female, the Tercio Gorgidas (qv), which is male homosexual, the Tercio Socrates (qv), for the elderly, and the Tercio Santa Cecilia (qv), for the handicapped. Which grid a given citizen belongs to, if he or she belongs to one, is determined at the time of their voluntary enlistment into the armed forces of Balboa, the Legion del Cid. It is believed that age, health, sex, and, where applicable, sexual orientation are the primary factors in assigning a prospective recruit to a layer of the grid and a regiment.
A Balboan may or may not have a deep emotional attachment to his district or province. If he is an immigrant, as many are, of late, he probably has no attachment to his district or province. His devotion to his regiment, however, if he belongs to one, is profound. His regiment has recruited and trained him, given him the most exciting years of his life, and paid for his education after service. It may well have fronted the loan for his house, his farm or his business. It may have built his house.
If he is married, the odds are good that the reception was held in the regimental hall, of which there are about one hundred and fifty scattered about the country, and the ceremony itself presided over by the regimental chaplain. His young children may be educated at a regimental school or attend a regimental summer camp. He and his family likely receive primary medical care, at low cost, at a regimental clinic. He drinks with his regiment. He goes fishing with his regimental comrades, at the regimental fishing hole. He shops for food and clothing at the tax-free regimental exchange or commissary or at the larger exchanges at legion or corps level. When he takes his wife or girlfriend to dinner, it is probably at that same, low cost but not inelegant, regimental hall, he was or will be married in, surrounding by the tokens of glory he helped earn, and of which he is a part. Moreover, his regiment is his primary political representation, via the Senate, elected by the regimental centuriate assemblies.