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.
Cruz Residence, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova
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.
Individual Combat Training Center, Eighth Legion, Isla Real, Balboa, Terra Nova
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."
Batería Pedro el Cholo, Isla Real, Balboa, Terra Nova
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.