"Dustoff's already on the way, sir," one of Carrera's radio carriers announced.
Poor bastard, Carrera thought, with that part of himself he allowed to actually feel. Neither you nor I wanted you to go home like that.
5/5/468 AC, Cruz Residence, Ciudad Balboa
He's been this way for the last three and a half weeks, thought Cara, unhappily, as she did the evening dishes by hand.
Her husband, with a smile on his bruised and battered face, sat on the living room floor playing with the children. He seemed content with the world, as he had most definitely not been content since he'd left the regulars.
And I know why he's this way, too. He got to fight. He got to be a man among men. He was able to test himself and rise above the normal human plane . . . if only for a few minutes. Oh, Ricardo, what have I done to you?
Putting the last of the plates on a rack to drip dry, Cara went and sat on the couch overlooking the rest of her family. She sat there, in inner turmoil, for about a quarter of an hour before saying, "Children, go out and play until it's dark. I need to talk to your father."
Cruz looked at her curiously until the kids were out the door and she began to speak.
Cara wasted no time. "I'm sorry, Ricardo. I didn't know what I was doing when I made you leave the regulars. I didn't understand how much you need it. So . . . if you want to go back, I won't interfere and I'll do my best to put up with the separation and the fear."
"What brings this on?" Cruz asked, raising one very suspicious eyebrow.
Cara sighed. "I'd hoped I could be enough for you. But you were miserable. And then I saw you fight, and you were happy, and you've been happy for weeks. But how long can that last, Ricardo? You need the fight, the struggle. You need it in your memory; you need it in your present; and you need the anticipation of it in your future. I see that now. I should have seen it then. I should have known it since we first met and you saved me from those rabiblanco assholes. You were meant to be a soldier first and a husband second. The man I love is meant to be a soldier first and a husband second. And . . . I'm going to have to learn to live with that."
"Can you learn to live with that?" Cruz asked.
"I don't know. I can try."
"Fair enough," her husband answered. Then he went silent for a while, apparently thinking. "You know," he said, "I've fought with and shed blood with the men of my reserve cohort, too, now. There's a good chance that fighting will break out here, come the next election. They'll need me then, if it happens. There aren't that many senior centurions in the reserves. How about if I stay with them, in the seventh cohort of the tercio, until this term of school is over? That will be after the election and we'll know what the future holds a little more clearly. If it looks best to go back, I'll go back. If it looks like it's best to stay with the seventh cohort, I can do that instead."
"It's only a reprieve for me," Cara pointed out. "One way or the other you're going where the fighting is going to be."
"Yes . . . but I promise to try really hard not to get killed."
7/5/468 AC, Matera, south of the Nicobar Straits
Pour encourager les autres, thought al Naquib. He spoke excellent French, after all.
The spark for the thought were the dozen slaves, now made redundant by the arrival of the first of the relief parties provided by Parameswara. The slaves had spent the previous evening digging their own graves under the watch of al Naquib's troops. Now they knelt by those graves. Their hands were tied behind them. Most of the slaves wept. A couple pleaded weakly. The rest remained in a sort of catatonia induced by their coming obliteration. The slaves had been chosen for their weakness.
"The rest will work that much harder, afterwards," al Naquib had explained to his men. "We've already lost nearly a dozen. These are the ones next mostly likely to die. Best we get some use from them first."
Behind each slave stood one of the Ikhwan, one hand holding a slave by the hair and the other clasping cruel knives poised at the victims' throats.
Al Naquib raised a hand and then lowered it, quickly. The knives were drawn across emaciated flesh. Blood from a dozen living fountains spurted forth to the jungle floor in an audible gush. The weeping stopped immediately.
"For the rest of you," al Naquib announced to the other slaves standing by to witness the executions, "let this be your warning: the weak and the slackers will be put to death with no more mercy than I would show a scorpion or an antania. Pull your lines as if your lives depended upon it. They do."
9/5/468 AC, Academia Militar Sargento Juan Malvegui, Puerto Lindo, Balboa
A long line of twenty tanks stood outside the physical training shed cum classroom. Inside, a Volgan instructor droned on in marginal Spanish about the capabilities and limitations of the Jaguar II tank and the Ocelot light armored vehicle Behind and slightly to the right of the Volgan was a table. Upon that table a black cloth covered an object.
Like many another fifteen year old in the wide shed that served as classroom and physical training pit, Cadet Sergeant Acosta paid little attention. For one thing, the information was already in his cadet handbook. For another, the Volgan instructor would surely put him to sleep in no time if he actually tried to listen. The walls were decorated with cadets who'd been caught nodding off. Their feet were against the walls, about four feet in the air, and their hands widely spaced on the sawdust of the pit. From experience Acosta knew, and hated, the modified push-up position used by the Academy cadre.
Instead, while pretending to take notes, Acosta wrote a letter home. He wrote:
"Dear Family,
In the first place let me apologize for not having written in over a month. But, as I told you the last time I wrote, we are given little free time. Monday through Thursday we cram five days of academics into four. Friday and Saturday we train as soldiers. Sunday is parade, church, and inspections in the morning; getting ready for the next week in the afternoon and evening. I couldn't write now except that I am in a class that I really don't need to pay attention to.
Thank my sister, Betania, for the cookies she sent. My whole platoon enjoyed them. (And no, sister, I didn't want to share them, but we are not allowed to keep any kind of food in the barracks.)
To little Eduardo; you tell me you want to be a soldier. I must tell you back, it is hard, little brother, very hard. Never enough sleep, running, marching, harassment all the time. If you are still interested when you turn fourteen in three years, we will talk about it again. In the interim, just keep your grades up in school and obey our parents. That is the best preparation you can do.
Mother and Father, I will be home the week before Christmas until three days after the Intercalary.
Not everyone will be returning to the Academy. Of the eighteen hundred who started here with me, six hundred are already gone. Some of the others remaining will be invited to leave. Do not fear that I will be one of those. My grades are high and my evaluations for leadership also good enough to be retained. I would not fail you, you can be sure."
Acosta stopped writing as the Russian instructor was replaced with a Balboan one, a rather short type. As usual the cadets began to chatter quietly among themselves the moment one class ended. The new speaker was a Cristobalense, Diaz thought. For one thing, he was black. For another, the cuff band on his sleeve said "Barbarossa" which the cadet knew was the local tercio. A silvery cross hung by a ribbon around the instructor's neck.