Fucking Fosa; thought the classis exec. What kind of miracle worker does he think I am? Worse, how the fuck am I supposed to train replacement crew here with only one working elevator?
The exec heard something very soft behind him. He turned and saw the Yamatan engineer, Keiji Higara, pensively tapping his lips while looking out across the bay at where a seaborne crane was in the process of removing turrets from one of those Suvarov Class cruisers not schedule for refit.
"I am idiot," Keiji announced.
"Why's that, Hig?" the exec asked.
"I been worried . . . you know . . . getting this ship someplace where is crane powerful enough lift the elevator assembly out from hull. That was problem since docking facilities in Ciudad Balboa under . . . enemy control. Then, too, ship immobile. And whole time I been worrying . . . there was that." He pointed at the crane ship.
"You mean we can do it."
In answer, Higara snapped his fingers.
33/6/468 AC, Quarters Number 2, Isla Real
"Look, it only makes sense, Patricio," Jimenez said, punctuating with a snap of his fingers. "I'm shipping over to Pashtia with the Fourth Legion in the not too distant future. So I'll have no use or need for this big old white elephant. Even when I come back, what do I need? A bedroom? An office? Someplace to eat? Artemisia and Mac can give me all that, right here. And they'll have a place to stay suitable for their position."
Jimenez, Lourdes, and Carrera sat on the upper balcony, looking over the parade field. On the table between them was a bucket of ice and some scotch. The air was heavy, both with the natural humidity and the smoke of Xavier's and Carrera's cigars.
"Have you mentioned this to them, Xavier? Mac's a serious stickler for protocol and propriety." Carrera asked, wearily, flicking an ash over the railing and onto the lawn. He'd just flown in this morning from Pashtia with the tail end of 1st and 2nd Legions and was clearly feeling the toll of both the long flight and the time zone change.
"No," Jimenez admitted. "Why should I? It's your house and your Legion; you get to decide."
It does make a certain sense, Carrera admitted to himself. I get to billet my best friends and number one and two subordinates right next door where I can harass them mercilessly. Mac gets a house to go with the wife he's getting. Artemisia—God, she's achingly good to look at, isn't she?—gets the house she probably deserves. Probably? No probably about it. She makes my sergeant major happy and she deserves whatever I can give her.
Jimenez continued, "Besides, Pat, Mac's living in the senior centurion's bachelor quarters. That's no place to raise a family and if you want your sergeant major happy you had better make his wife happy . . . and Arti wants a family. Soon. As soon as possible."
Jimenez smiled and then began to give off a most unmilitary giggle.
"What's so funny?"
With some difficulty, Xavier got control of himself and answered, "I was just thinking about how badly Arti wants to bear Mac's children. It isn't like they didn't start work on that months ago."
So much for Lourdes giving them the use of a room for privacy, Carrera thought, drily, looking over at his wife. She, too, was laughing, even while she tried hiding her face with her hand.
"Well, Patricio, I tried," she said.
"What about when you get married?" Carrera asked.
Jimenez snorted. "What sane woman would marry me? Not an issue, Patricio; it's never going to happen. Besides, I'm married to the Fourth and that's bitch enough for me—no offense, Lourdes. No . . . I'll be just fine as a sometime guest here."
Carrera shrugged, thinking, No . . . actually you won't be a sometime guest here, since we're going to be moving the legions to the mainland over the next year. So . . . I suppose . . . why not?
"Yeah . . . okay," he conceded. "Mac and Arti can have Number Two. Now that she's about to be married at least the young signifers and tribunes will stop trying to serenade her under her window."
"Tell me about it," Jimenez said. "I mean, it wouldn't be so bad if they could sing."
Quarters Number One
Lourdes hummed the wedding march softly to herself as she crossed the hundred and twenty meters from her old home, Number Two, to Number One. Having Mac and Arti as next door neighbors was going to be great; she just knew it.
And, better still, when they thump the bed against the wall all night, I won't be able to hear it. Besides, it reminds me of what I am missing when Patricio is away.
Entering by the front door, Lourdes took one look at McNamara and Artemisia—coming down the stairs arm and arm, he looking guilty and she like the cat who fell into the vat of cream—and she started laughing again. She ran to the nearest room, her husband's library, to hide her discomposure. She closed the door behind her and covered her mouth again to try to stifle her laughter.
"What's so funny, Mama?" little Hamilcar asked, looking up from one of his father's books.
"I'll tell you when you're older," Lourdes answered. Curious, she walked over to the desk and picked up the book that her son had been reading. That he was reading was no surprise; the child had been literate for almost two years. The title, however, she found worrisome; The Battle of Kuantan by Tadeo Kurita.
Can it be genetic, somehow? she wondered, suddenly growing utterly serious and seriously worried. Did my son inherit his father's taste for battle? God, please don't take my baby from me. He's not even five yet.
* * *
After his mother had left, Hamilcar returned to his reading. Kurita's dry account of the exchange between his battlecruiser and the Federated States Navy's superdreadnought, Andrew Jackson, soon had the boy quivering with excitement and a wordless longing to be there, to trade shot for shot and blow for blow. Never mind that he was, half ways, from the Federated States, nor that his other half had had little involvement in the Great Global War. It was the battle, itself, that drew him. And, he already knew, it always would.
He knew, too, that he already understood things that were forever barred to most human beings, at any age. He understood, instinctively, without Kurita explaining it, what it meant to cross the Jackson's T and why Kurita had accepted a couple of bad hits to get his own ship in position to do that. Hamilcar understood, without anyone explaining it, the logistic and time-space factors that had dictated why the Battle of Kuantan had happened where it had and when it had.
In short, Hamilcar Carrera-Nuñez already knew, at age four, that he had the knack.
He closed the book, sighing, and thought, Mama and I need to have a long talk.
4/7/468 AC, Main Parade Field, Isla Real
"I've seen you under fire, Sergeant Major, and I've never seen you look nervous like today."