"No physical discipline, sir?" The corporal sounded incredulous.
"Didn't say that," Carrera corrected. "There's nothing wrong with an occasional kick in the pants. And if someone mouths off to you, you deck him on the spot; hear me? There are some crimes that demand punishment public, graphic and as immediate as possible. But I do not want you frightening people into staying with us that really have no business in this business. Let them go. Encourage them, even. Make the training- the training, I say!- so fucking hard that only the best can make it. That will give you soldiers to count on. Now finish up these two-I don't want anyone thinking their corporals can do wrong-as soon as I leave. But don't do it again. And pass the fucking word."
Cruz had heard none of that. The white officer had left, the beatings had resumed but then ended shortly thereafter, and the miscreants were marched out of camp under guard. He fell asleep with dread in his heart about what tomorrow would bring.
Hotel Metropole, Saint Nicholasberg, 21/3/460 AC
In the hotel bar pretty, but altogether too young, Volgan prostitutes solicited the business that might keep them fed for another week or even another day. Easterners-journalists and businessmen, mostly-flirted, or negotiated, or simply bantered with the whores. Along the bar sat a balding, Russian-looking, man. The hookers paid him no mind. He didn't seem like he had the money they, or their pimps, required.
Being a bureaucrat, thought Dan Kuralski-seated at the bar, ought to be a capital offense. He sipped at his nearly frozen vodka. And I was so happy to be coming here for this mission, Patrick, old friend. "One big shopping spree," isn't that what you said?
In the days since arriving in "Saint Nick" in search of arms, Kuralski had been up one dead end after another. One bureaucrat in the Ministry of Defense told him that MoD didn't have authority to sell arms to other nations, let alone NGOs; that was for the Foreign Ministry. In the Foreign Ministry he had been told that, "Sorry, no, the actual sale of arms was being conducted by the military itself." Kuralski had managed to corner one Volgan general. This hadn't worked either; the general was too drunk at the time and reportedly too much of a worm when sober. Dan was about ready to go directly to a factory and make a private contract for what was needed. He would have, too, if it had been possible to go to a single factory and get each of ten thousand different items. There was no such factory or warehouse or, so far as he'd been able to determine, business. And precisely where the particular items required were being manufactured was still a closely guarded state secret. It was sometimes even a silly state secret. Who cared who made one-liter water bottles, anyway, for Christ's sake? But that was still Top Secret, Special Compartmentalized Information in Volga.
Preferably something slow and painful, Kuralski amended his earlier thought. He contemplated the very unhappy tone Carrera had used when last they'd spoken. He did not want to disappoint Carrera or to fail in his mission. The legion needed that equipment, dammit!
Kuralski sipped again at his vodka. Attention on the glass, he failed to notice at first the man who sat down beside him. When he did notice, and looked up to see, the Russian asked him, quite directly, if he was "the Balboan arms agent who was looking for heavy equipment for the upcoming war in Sumer?"
Arms agent? Me? I am just an errand boy.
"Not just heavy equipment," answered Kuralski. "We need virtually everything from rifles and machine guns on up. Why do you ask?"
In slow, heavy but correct English the newcomer said, "Ah. Permit me to introduce myself. I am Pavel Timoshenko. Word came to me of a Russian- and English-speaking Balboan looking for reasonably modern arms. Since I am in Economic Planning, I thought I might be of assistance. And you would be?"
"Forgive my rudeness. I'm Daniel Kuralski."
Timoshenko reached out a hand. "A Volgan?"
"Sorry, no. My grandparents were. They fled the Red Tsar, though. I was born in the FSC. I live in Balboa now. It is perhaps a silly question, but what does Economic Planning have to do with arms sales?"
Timoshenko smiled. "In this country, Daniel, Economic Planning has to do with everything. Yes, even now, even after the fall of the empire. Not that the plans work, mind you." Timoshenko looked wistful, sighed resignedly. "When I was young it used to seem that they did, somewhat. In any event, nothing much works anymore." He shook his head dismally.
Timoshenko continued. "Right now, we are planning our upcoming economic collapse. It will happen, too; that plan we can be sure will work, unless we can get a major infusion of hard currency and technology. Which is why I am here to see you. What are you looking to buy?"
Kuralski answered, "Equipment for a large brigade, with technical experts to teach our men how to use it. However, whatever you might sell to me, I don't think we are in a position to regenerate the Volgan economy."
"My new friend, after three generations of Tsarist-Marxism, no one is in a position to regenerate the Volgan economy, at least, no one who would be willing to do so. We can still help each other, though."
Immediately suspicious, he didn't really believe in win-win situations, Kuralski asked what the Volgan was getting at.
Timoshenko looked up. For a moment he seemed lost to philosophy. When he spoke, he said, "What we need is good advertising. For decades we have been selling shitty equipment to everybody who couldn't afford better or was cut off from better for political reasons. Now that particular chicken is about to roost. The Volgan Republic is sitting on more than thirty thousand tanks; actually a lot more than that, if one counts everything. Some of them are crap, of course; the kind of dreck we used to barter for political influence to the undeveloped world. Still others are relics from the Great Global War. But we have first class equipment, too. Who will believe that, when the East's second best has been beating what we have been calling our best for so long that no one remembers that we-not the Sachsens, but we- built the best armored vehicles of the Great Global War?"
Blood will tell. Kuralski, too, felt a small pride in his ancestors and relations in thinking of both their tanks, and their courage, in fighting the Sachsen.
Timoshenko shifted gears a bit. "Tell me something; when you get over there, to the war zone, I mean, are your men going to fight?"
Kuralski thought about it for a minute. "My boss, though he is officially the deputy for the legion, is really in charge. He will fight. I don't think he would obey orders that kept him out of the fighting." Kuralski laughed, "He's pretty selective about obedience in general. So, yes, if there is fighting we will be in it."
Timoshenko turned his bar stool around to lean his back against the bar. "That's what we need. If we sell you some of our best equipment-maybe better than our usual best, and you take it to battle against the Sumeris, then the rest of the Yithrabis-especially the Oil Yithrabis-will see that we can still be their best buy for defense. It is only necessary that a couple of our tanks survive hits and kill the older tanks we sold Sumer for the point to be made. Besides the Federated States and the Sachsens, who would never help us, the Oil Yithrabis are the only ones with the money to make a difference to our economy."
Kuralski shook his head. "We couldn't afford to buy your best if it cost half, even a quarter of what the FS, Sachsen, or Anglia would demand for their equipment. We are not a rich country and the legion's-Carrera's-private resources are limited."