"Maniple . . . forward . . . mark time . . . right wheel . . . mark time . . . forward . . . MARCH," carried down the serried ranks.
* * *
Cruz stood in the first rank of his maniple, fourth from the right, next to Arredondo. His eyes scanned the reviewing stands for signs of his wife and children but, with the stands packed to capacity and then some with well-wishers and close family come to give the returned legion a good homecoming reception, there was no way to pick out one small cinnamon woman and two still smaller children from the mass. No matter; I'll find them when the parade's dismissed.
Cruz heard the maniple commander call out, "Maniple . . . right wheel . . . MARCH."
He stepped off as did the rest of the unit, but adopted a half step to keep the front rank relatively dressed. The half step continued until the wheel was complete. At that point, all moved out with a full step down the field. At the right edge, as the troops faced, there was a shiny coffee can lid nailed to the ground. Here the commander ordered, "Left wheel . . . MARCH." Another thirty meters on there was another shiny lid. Here the unit wheeled left yet again. At that point they were very close to the pipes and drums. Whatever randomness was in their step, and the legions didn't practice parading all that much so there was some, was beaten out of them by the heavily pounding drums. As the maniple approached the band and reviewing stands, and the music and the "ooohs" and "ahhhhs" from the crowd grew, the legionaries threw their shoulders back and walked even more proudly erect. Cocks of the walk, indeed.
Instead of eagles, maniples carried small upraised palms atop their guidons. Cruz saw the palm rise on the commander's preparatory command, "EYES . . . " The entire maniple gripped the slings of their rifles with their left hands, freeing their rights. When they saw the palm and pole drop parallel to the ground on the order, "RIGHT," they turned their heads toward the stand and brought their right hands up to salute.
* * *
On the stand, Parilla and Carrera—Carrera to the left—returned the salutes and held them until the guidon had passed. Once the two leaders had dropped their own salutes, the maniple commander ordered, "READY . . . FRONT." Immediately, salutes dropped, right hands returned to rifle slings, left arms lowered to the sides to swing normally and eyes returned to the front. From that point, it was only a question of marching off, and meeting the families. There was no need to turn in individual weapons; in the legions, soldiers were trusted to keep their weapons at home or in the barracks. This was so despite a few suicides and a couple of unfortunate incidents where a legionary had come home to find out his wife had not been all that lonely in his absence.
* * *
Cruz's mind was just beginning to dwell upon unpleasant possibilities when he felt a light and gentle tap on his shoulder. He turned around and . . .
Holy shit!
Cara was there. So were the children. So were two women he didn't recognize. The two unknown women, however, were with a couple of men he did recognize.
"Señores!" he said, bracing to attention and saluting.
Both Carrera and Parilla returned the salute; then Carrera reached over and took Cruz's rifle from his shoulder.
Smiling, Carrera said, "See to your family, Centurion. I think Duque Parilla and I are competent to watch your rifle for you for a while. I'll have my driver drop it by your quarters this evening."
* * *
Later—much later—in bed, Cruz asked Cara, "Where did you meet Parilla and Carrera?"
Cara snuggled into his shoulder and answered, "Actually I'd never met them before today. But the day you went off to the war the first time, when I saw you off at the airport, Lourdes Carrera—well, actually her name was Nuñez-Cordoba back then—and Mrs. Parilla were nearby when I started to cry. They came over to comfort me and we all ended up crying together. They saw me and the kids outside the reviewing stand and invited us up. That's where I met the duques."
"Oh."
The couple lay silently for a long time, neither sleeping but both enjoying the warm feeling of being together again; that, and the afterglow from making love. Admittedly, this separation had been much shorter than most. Still, Cruz had been away at the war for two and a half of the last six years and had spent more than half the remainder training in the field. More than three quarters separation in the first six years of marriage would have done—indeed, had done—for many marriages. That theirs had lasted so well so far was mostly attributable to Caridad. Even so . . .
"Ricardo?"
"Si, mi amor."
"When this enlistment is up . . . " She hesitated, nervously, before continuing, "when this enlistment is up, could you consider getting out?"
"I'll have to think about it, corazon. I'm forty percent of the way to earliest retirement. That would be a lot of money to throw away."
"You can't spend it when you're dead, Ricardo." Count on a woman to come up with a reasonable answer. Dammit.
14/2/467 AC, Puerto Lindo, Balboa
Carrera could be pretty damned unreasonable. He had given Fosa, Dos Lindas' skipper and commander of the classis, eighty-seven days, from commissioning to first sailing. This would probably have been impossible except that Fosa had begun training nearly four months prior to commissioning and for certain elements, pilots and maintenance crews, three months before that.
It would be another three months, too, before the ship was expected to be fully operational. Oh, yes, each of the parts worked. The pilots could take off and land from the short, narrow and pitching deck. The aircraft maintenance personnel were fully capable of keeping the planes serviceable. The deck crews could recover the planes and strike them below; or refuel them and rearm them on deck. The navigators could navigate; the cooks could cook; the black gang could oversee and keep up the reactor and the generators. Intel was getting fairly deft at incepting radio and cell phone transmissions, along with the more routine intelligence gathering skills. The demi-battalion of Cazadors was perhaps the most ready of the ship's divisions, as there was really nothing important aboard ship that changed things when they got to the land: load helicopters, fly, dismount; then spot, capture or kill; then reload and go home.
Simulators and training exercises aboard ship helped, of course. And there was one simulator for every third aircraft except the remotely piloted ones. For those, their normal control stations with a simulator program loaded were sufficient. Moreover, all the simulators were linked onto the ship's main computer so that entire exercises could be run without ever leaving port.
The Cazadors could not be fully linked into that simulation system, though the leaders could, after a fashion. Instead, every fourth or fifth night for the last month, they'd launched from the stationary ship via helicopter to raid some or another spot ashore. Most of the rest of the time, when not spent planning a raid, the Cazadors trained on the limited training facilities of the Academia Militar Sargento Juan Malvegui; there or at Fort Tecumseh, on the other side of the Transitway to the east.
Underway replenishment, or UNREP, had not been practiced. The nearest the Dos Lindas' skipper could come was to force resupply through the means that would be available at sea; via air and from ship to ship. This was a substantially different undertaking, though, in the calm waters of Puerto Lindo, than it would have been in a Force Twelve hurricane. (Actually, nobody tried doing UNREP in Force Twelve. Fosa intended to give it a shot, though.)