"How large a force do they have?" Malcolm asked. "How much does it cost us? How big a force could they field?"
This information Rivers had at his fingertips. He'd been, in a partial and roundabout way, instrumental in the Federated States' hiring his old friend Patrick Hennessey, now going by the name Carrera, and the force he had raised. He'd kept up on developments. After all, Hennessey had always been entertaining.
"In theory, Mr. Secretary, they have four divisions. They call them 'legions,' which is a little confusing as the overall organization is called "the Legion." Then again, we call the Army 'the Army' even though we have eight 'armies' under it.
"Of those four, one is forward deployed in Sumer. That's the only one that, officially, we pay for. The other three are back in Balboa in varying states of training and manning. The forward legion usually numbers around twelve to thirteen thousand men. The total active force is about thirty-three or thirty-four thousand and rising. There is also a reserve force but they are very tight lipped about that. We don't think it's as large as the active force . . . yet. They could probably double or triple their force if they wanted to. So far they have given no indication that they do want to. What they have raised, so far, costs us on the order of seventeen billion drachma a year."
Malcolm's eyes bugged. "We pay seventeen billion drachma to some pisspot North Colombian city state?"
"Actually, no, Mr. Secretary. We pay it directly to the Legion. They give a portion, a very small portion, less than a percent, to the government of Balboa. But they're only a non-governmental organization, sponsored by that government. They are not controlled by it. They're not controlled by anybody."
"Oh, really? We'll just see about that."
Goodbye, third star.
"No, Mr. Secretary," Rivers answered forcefully. "Don't see about that. They're quite capable now, financially, of continuing the war on their own for quite a few years, if not quite indefinitely. If you try to control them you'll just find you've let slip any control we have for a control we can't have. I know their commander. Don't try to control him. It just won't work."
31/9/466 AC, Isla Real, Quarters #2
I think the thing I like about this, thought Lourdes, on her knees with her head bobbing and her tongue working, is the control it gives me, not just over the sex, but over Patricio. But then, she thought as her husband pulled her head off, stood her up and pressed her back to the wall, but then he doesn't always let me keep control.
Despite having borne two children, a boy and a girl, Lourdes' body was unmarked, well shaped and still very firm. Tall, almost as tall as her husband, she was quite slender except in those places a woman should be more full. If anything, her breasts had improved from her pregnancies.
Cupping one of those, Carrera bent his head to tease the nipple of the other with his tongue. Lourdes loved that, he knew.
She let him continue in that for a long while, moans of sheer desire occasionally escaping her lips. When she couldn't stand it anymore she pulled his head up to kiss more intimately.
Balancing her back on the wall, Lourdes arched her hips forward and reached down to guide. A small gasp escaped her lips as Carrera thrust up and forward. The gasp became a long moan as he filled her fully.
And, for a while, she didn't think of much of anything.
* * *
"Do you really have to go so soon?" she asked Carrera, later as they lay in bed. "You only come home about five or sometimes six weeks a year. Are you so anxious to leave me."
Carrera sighed, then answered, "I take more leave than the troops get."
"Yes," she conceded, "but they only spend one year away for ever three years they spend here."
"That's only now," he countered. "Most of the leaders have been gone half the time since the war began."
"And you've been gone eighty percent of it."
To that Carrera had no really good answer. He went silent, thinking, They don't carry the curse I do, the obligation to destroy those who murdered Linda and the children.
After a short time he offered, "You were with me there until you came up pregnant with the second child. Besides, the war won't last forever."
"It will last too long; long enough for me to become a dried up old prune."
"Never happen," he answered, adding, "You're one of those women who will keep her looks into old age. I can tell."
Lourdes shook her head, doubtfully. "I'll age, the same as anyone. And you'll grow tired of me."
"Never happen," he repeated, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her head onto his shoulder. "For one thing, you're a lot younger than I am. By the time you're a wrinkled up old lady, I'll be using a walker, too old to get tired of anything except pissing myself."
She giggled at the image. "Now that," she said, "will never happen."
"Yes it will." Unless I'm lucky enough to be killed before it does.
"Speaking of the future, what's on for tomorrow?" Lourdes asked.
"Mass review of the Corps of Cadets at Puerto Lindo, then rechristening of the old HAMS Venganza. Want to come watch? The boys are bussing in from all over."
"No . . . no. I'm not comfortable with turning fourteen-year-old boys into soldiers."
"I love you for that, too," Carrera whispered, "for that among many other reasons."
Lourdes never asked if her husband loved her more than he had his first wife, Linda. She was much, much too afraid of the answer.
Interlude
Munich, Germany, European Union, 15 May, 2077
The first thing Martin Hoyer the Third noticed about the envelope was that it was pink and flowered on the outside. How like the government to send bad news in such bright packaging, Hoyer thought. Perhaps if grandfather had not been such an untalentierte teilzeit schmierfink we would have had enough money of our own not to have to rely on the state's largess to see us through our old age. Instead he wasted his life writing books no one would read . . . even in German.
Not that Martin or his wife, or their one—unemployed —child, were particularly old. He and she were only fifty-seven and had been drawing on the state's pension scheme for a scant two years. The boy, Martin Hoyer the Fourth, received unemployment compensation, despite never having worked a day in his life. But even in two years they had seen the system go from penny-pinching to outright miserly.
At least we haven't been reduced to eating dog food. Yet.
He opened the envelope and began to read:
Dear Sir or Madam:
In accordance with the European Union Directive 2076/015 for the preservation of the public fisc and extra-planetary colonization, you and you spouse have been identified for reduction of benefits or transportation, with assets, to the planet of New Earth.
Hoyer took a quick glance at what "reduction of benefits" meant in concrete, Euro, terms and thought, Dog food.
You and your spouse have thirty (30) days from the date of this letter to decide. Thereafter, should you decline transportation, on each anniversary of this letter you will have another thirty (30) days to change your minds, transportation schedule permitting.