“What’s so hard?” the ensign replied, picking up a sheet of paper with a vague sketch on it. “It’s just bridge design.”
“It’s the schedule he required,” Van Krief answered. “I can design the bridge, it’s a straightforward pile bridge like we made in Blood Lords school, just bigger. But first you have to come up with the materials list, then a plan to gather the materials, then implementation. With a single legion.”
“Legion and supports,” Destrang said, sitting down. “Don’t forget the camp followers. You’re allowed six hundred camp followers as well; which is low according to the texts. Of those, some two hundred are going to be male. Some of them are semicritical servants, make it a hundred and fifty available. You don’t assemble the materials and then get started, you start to assemble the materials and then as soon as you have a certain amount you devote most of the legion to building while the camp followers continue cutting trees. You’re the one that keeps reading ahead, you might want to think back instead to Gallic Wars.”
“Ah,” Van Krief replied, with a smile. “But there’s no mention of using the camp followers in there.”
“The Romans didn’t organize theirs the way that we do,” Tao noted. “All the sutlers and other… ahem… ‘support -personnel’… have to be bonded.”
“’Ahem?’ ” Van Krief asked with a frown.
“Whores.” Destrang chuckled. “And the latter have to be examined by bonded medical personnel as well. But the latter don’t enter into the equation, much, because pregnancy rates run as high as thirty percent.”
“Dear God,” Van Krief replied, thinking about trying to keep up with a legion while pregnant. From her own time with the legions she was aware of the “ahem… support personnel” but she’d never accessed any of them or done much more than nod at the occasional one that she met outside the female latrines.
“It’s not as well organized as it could be,” Tao said, frowning. “Dame Daneh has been bitching about it for the last several months.”
“And when Duke Edmund’s wife is unhappy,” Destrang said, grinning, “everybody’s unhappy. I can see the mass distribution of latex condoms in the near future.”
“We’ve gotten a little afield here,” the female ensign said, unconsciously crossing her legs. “How much do you think we can work together on this?”
“The engineering project we probably can complete as a team project,” Destrang replied. “Herrick’s going to want individual answers. I’ve got mine for Myanmar in mind already. But you guys are going to have to come up with them on your own.”
“Damn,” Tao muttered. “Mind if I look at that book?”
“Not at all,” Destrang said, tossing it through the air. “Catch.”
“I’m wondering if it’s going to matter,” Van Krief said, biting her lip.
“Why?” Destrang asked.
“Why did Duke Edmund send for our instructor?” Van Krief replied.
“What is that… delightful smell?” Herzer asked as he walked into the duke’s office unannounced.
“Coffee!” Edmund cried, standing up and going over to a samovar. He poured some black liquid out in a cup and handed it to the captain. “Taste!”
“Bleck,” Herzer said. “Tastes like used oil.”
The duke was looking a bit older every year, Herzer thought. He was still moving with fluid grace, but there was getting to be more salt than pepper in his beard and the motions weren’t quite as fluid as when Herzer had first known him. That seemed like a long time but it had been barely four years since Herzer and Edmund’s family had stumbled into Raven’s Mill after the Fall.
“Try some sugar,” Edmund suggested, ladling in a spoonful. “And cream,” he added, dumping a dollop in the cup.
Herzer stirred and then sipped again, smiling appreciatively. “Now that’s more like it.”
“Not as good as a cup of tea, damnit,” Edmund replied, walking back around the desk and sitting down. “But there have been ships coming up from the Southern Isles with it. Unfortunately, they’ve all been calling at Blackbeard Base where those Navy bastards have been diverting it. But Jason managed to get his hands on three hundred kilos for me in the last shipment. Just arrived. How’s the class?”
“Good,” Herzer admitted. “They think, which is a blessed relief compared to the first group of jugheads that got sent. They don’t take what I say for granted so I set them to doing research projects until the reality sinks in. Of course, most of them haven’t seen the edge of a blade wielded in anger, but I think they’ll do.”
“And all qualified Blood Lords?” Edmund said.
“They have to be to attend the Academy,” Herzer pointed out. The advanced infantry training course for the growing UFS legions was a ball-buster on purpose. Its graduates were the hard core of the legions, an elite that had proven that they would stop at nothing to excel. The course had proven its worth in the first months after the Fall, defending Raven’s Mill from a force ten times their size and stopping it butt cold.
But the course was not just about “fight until you die and drop” but about creating a force that could outmaneuver the enemy in almost any terrain. A force that could drop a hard legion of utter bastards on the enemy’s rear and cut off their supplies until they died on the vine. Or run an enemy, even an enemy on horses, ragged. The final exam was four weeks of tortuous marching and camp-building on the route of one of the greatest generals of all time, a man who had personified using inferior force to destroy his enemies by maneuver. The Blood Lords’ proud boast was that they could, while wearing full infantry armor and carrying their field gear, run any cavalry unit into the ground over the long haul.
The course was also the go/no-go course for potential officers of the United Free States Federal Army. Any person who wanted to become an officer in the UFS Army, at least in its infantry which was the core of the UFS force, first had to spend time in regular units, at least a year in most cases, then prove they could “hang” with the Blood Lords. Those that did not could run the supply depots or become engineers. They might even make it into the archery corps that gave the Blood Lords a run for the elite money. But they were never going to command legions.
The top graduates from the Blood Lord course were then sent for polishing to the burgeoning Academy. They had a variety of teachers. Civilians who had been history buffs before the Fall. Others who had studied the techniques of preindustrial -engineering, people who knew not only how to use a slide rule, but how to make one. And a small group of instructors, like Herzer, who more than anything knew what it was to stand before the charge of a thousand screaming Changed enemies, and beat them into offal. Herzer hadn’t gotten his prosthetic by getting his hand caught in a sawmill.
“It’ll do,” Herzer said, waving the coffee mug. “You didn’t call me out of my class just to grill me about my students, or to tell me you’ve gotten your hands on coffee.”
“No, but it’s almost a good enough reason,” Edmund said. “Four years since I’ve had a decent cup of caffeinated beverage. Almost makes the other news pale by comparison.”
“Ah,” Herzer said, leaning back and sipping at the coffee again. Yes, not bad at all. “And the other news is…?”
“New Destiny punched their combat fleet,” Edmund replied. “Their orcas and ixchitl have pushed back the mer and delphino scouts, but there’s no indication that the main invasion fleet has sailed.”
Herzer thought about that as he took another sip. The UFS’ New Destiny enemies in Ropasa had started building an invasion fleet almost immediately after the Fall, while the UFS was still being conceived. The fleet was mostly unwieldy caravels and merchant ships. But it included a fair smattering of surface combat units. And, since the UFS had demonstrated the ability of their dragon-carriers to destroy any other ship, dragon-carriers of their own.