Carnifex

10/7/467 AC, Isla Real

The airplane, a legionary Cricket but fitted out with VIP seats, landed in the typical Balboan swelter. Its landing roll was a bit under eleven meters. As soon as the door opened Rivers felt a wilting blast of wet heat. Carrera's AdC, a junior tribune named Miranda, met Rivers at the airfield with apologies from Carrera for not being there personally. The tribune took Rivers' single bag, himself.

"The Duque is in the field with a cohort at the moment, sir," Miranda explained. "He'll be along within the hour and hopes you will understand."

Rivers grunted a noncommittal response, while thinking, He's got to know why I came. Is this his way of saying, "Stuff it; I won't work for the FSC while the Progressives are in charge," I wonder.

Miranda showed Rivers to a gleaming staff car, a Yamatan job, and then held the door for the general to enter. He then took over the front passenger seat and directed the driver to proceed.

You've got to be impressed, thought Rivers as the staff car took him on the short ride from Punta Coco airfield to Legion Headquarters. Seven years ago a single brigade without a home; now it's grown to a fair-sized corps with a damned nice home.

On the way in, Rivers had counted the ships anchored in the bay from his aircraft porthole. Now, on the ground, Rivers took the trouble to count filled and empty aircraft parking spots as the car eased along the road. What he counted impressed him still more. Over five hundred aircraft. Christ, he's outwinged PanColumbian Airlines and half the Tauran Union. Of course, most of his aircraft are smaller.

And the troops looked fit, well-fed and disciplined, he thought, too, as the car passed a company-sized unit. The troops wore helmets and body armor, but had a spring in their step that told of a light and comfortable panoply. I like that camouflage pattern.

The pattern was a pixilated tiger stripe material Carrera had had made up by a company in the FSC that specialized in such things. The material was printed, and the uniforms cut and sewn, by a factory in the City he and Parilla had set up to provide employment to war widows, reservists and their wives, and disabled legionary vets. Those folks put a lot of care into the uniforms they made. They made other clothing, too, which sold rather well in the Republic and had even begun to acquire a small overseas market.

The staff car stopped at an intersection as a column of nineteen Volgan-built tanks rolled across, each preceded by a walking ground guide. And they're pretty professional in other respects, too. Well . . . I suppose I should have expected that.

The car turned left at Miranda's direction and entered into a long, tree-lined thoroughfare before ending at a ring road surrounding an amazingly green parade field with a large, white-painted headquarters building on the other side of the field. It navigated around the parade field, pulled up to the columned front of the building and then stopped. Miranda got out, opened the door for Rivers, and led him between the columns and into the building.

The door opened into a broad interior vestibule, reaching up three floors to a battle scene-mural painted on the ceiling. On the upper floors it was surrounded by a marble rail. The bottom floor, the planta baja, was of a locally cut and polished, golden oak-colored granite. Upon the floor stood a slightly larger-than-life-sized marble statue of a fully equipped legionary holding a bayoneted bronze rifle in "charge bayonets" pose. The walls were mostly bare, though portraits of uniformed men with decorations for valor about their necks hung in places. Officers, a few, plus centurions, noncoms and enlisted men, all in undress khakis, bustled from room to room, across the vestibule and through the corridors. The whole place had an air of elegant efficiency.

If he can afford to build this, Rivers thought, he's not hurting for money. Oh, Lordy, is this going to sting.

Miranda beckoned Rivers on, through a door, up two flights of steps, down a quiet corridor and, finally, into Carrera's office. Rivers noticed the secretary was male and uniformed as well. He also noticed the boy was missing an arm.

Waste not, want not.

"The Duque said to make you comfortable, sir. Is there anything I can order for you? Coffee? A beer? Whiskey or mixed drink from the mess in the basement, if you like."

"Coffee would be fine . . . ah . . . Tribune. Just fine, thank you. Cream and sugar."

"Very good, sir."

Miranda turned and left as Rivers sat on one of the chairs. In a few minutes, the one-armed boy brought in a tray holding a cup of steaming hot coffee. He set it down and left without a word.

The rear wall of the office was mostly a very large window, Rivers noticed. He walked over to it and looked out on the scene of cows and the solar chimney that ran up the island's central massif. The cloud formed and continuously renewed above the chimney was . . . rather soothing to watch, Rivers decided. He was still watching when he sensed a sudden stiffening that seemed to take in the entire building. A few minutes later Carrera entered the office.

"Sent you back to try to rehire us for Pashtia, didn't they?" were the first words out of the Duque's mouth. "Good to see you, Virg," were the second set, uttered as Carrera stuck out a hand in friendship.

Rivers shook his head, then Carrera's hand. "How do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Predict things like that."

Carrera shrugged, then answered, "I keep up with the news. I also spy on the Army."

Yes, and you have enough friends in the Army—Marines, too, now, for that matter—to keep pretty up to date, too, don't you? Rivers thought.

"I meant what I said back in Sumer," Carrera continued. "The Progressives pissed me off royally. They're going to have to pay through the nose to get back in my good graces and get my troops into the war."

"I think they know that, Pat. That piece of filth undersecretary, O'Meara-Temeroso has been . . . let's say, offered up as a sacrifice."

"Was he? Good. Do they? Do they know how much?"

Carrera went to his desk, bent to a drawer and pulled out a file. From this he took a small spreadsheet and passed it over.

"That's what I need to re-establish something like control over the important parts of Pashtia, if I begin moving in three months. I'll only begin moving in three months if the FS hires me now."

He pulled out another sheet. "This is what it will cost next month." Another. "And the month after." Another. "And the month after that."

He pulled a fifth sheet out and handed it to Rivers. "And that's the penalty for trying to stiff me in Sumer."

"Jesus, Pat," Rivers said, more than half in shock. "We can't pay that. Congress would freak out."

Carrera smiled. "Oh, yes, you can. It will cost you a third of your gold reserves and that's the form I want it in. For that, you don't need congressional approval. The President owns it."

Rivers went from half shocked to fully so. Gold was . . . special. To give away a third of it . . . ? Sure, that asshole, Malcolm, mentioned gold, but I don't think he was serious.

"For that you get a small corps with the equivalent of twenty-six FSA combat battalions, with adequate combat support, service support and aviation, for a year," Carrera continued, "of which I guarantee two hundred and fifty days' of active campaigning. After that, if things work out, I can cut back both the scale and the intensity to the point that you won't have to pay all that much more than what it cost to keep a full legion in Sumer. Tell that orange-faced, windsurfing gigolo, Malcolm, that he can take it or pound sand. It makes no difference to me. Tell him I'll also have a list of various war materials the FSC will let me buy and intelligence and support they will provide or it's no deal.

"In addition, there is the matter of support to my naval forces . . . "