"Spilled milk," the President retorted. "And you don't know that we wouldn't have had to face an election, anyway, a real election. Parilla has wanted to be President for decades and was only kept from the office by the machinations of Piña. Besides, all the money they have gained using our citizens as cannon fodder is rightfully ours."
"They seem to have redistributed quite a bit of that money, Uncle, a lot more than we would have in their shoes. Have you any idea how much they've plowed back in to the Republic? It's in the billions; schools, clinics, factories, banks, parks, job training. The list goes on. They even put some into producing a real competitor for Miss Terra Nova, and, let me tell you, that earned them a lot more in good will than they paid for it."
"And how many sons were lost in earning that money, would you tell me that?" the President asked, huffily.
"It seems that a hundred-thousand-drachma death gratuity and lifetime pension and care for wives and parents, plus education for younger siblings and children, go a long way toward stifling resentment for lost sons, Uncle. Especially when our families are large, and jobs and farmland quite limited."
The President bit back an answer, then sighed. His face assumed a hopeless look. "You mean we are going to lose the election, don't you?"
"As things stand now, Uncle? Stinking. We haven't a prayer. We'll lose the presidency. We'll lose the legislature; both houses, mind you. And a few months after that we'll lose the Supreme Court. And right after that, you can be sure the investigations will start."
"Investigations?"
Arnulfo pointed at the television against one wall. "Listen for yourself, Uncle."
* * *
Parilla scowled and pointed directly into the battery of TV camera's facing the stand. "Tell us where, Presidente Rocaberti, tell us where. Where is the money from the cable television deal? Tell us where."
Led by legionaries scattered among them and dressed in mufti, the crowd chanted, "TELL US WHERRRE."
"How much was the bribe to your family that turned management of the Transitway over to the Zhong? Presidente Rocaberti, tell us how much."
"HOW MUUUCHCHCH?"
"Where are the donatives the boys of the Legion del Cid earned and turned over to the government, Mr. President?"
"WHERRRE?"
"How much have the Taurans paid you to let us become their colony?"
"HOW MUUUCHCHCH?"
Parilla stopped speaking briefly, to allow the crowd to compose itself. After all, this was a speech to announce candidacy, not an incitement to riot.
He smiled broadly, then joked, "For the answers to these and a hundred other questions on how the old families have robbed the Republic and the people, stay tuned for election night results, my friends, because today, now, this minute, I, Raul Parilla, am announcing my candidacy for the office of Presidente de le Republica. And I promise you that when I am elected we SHALL HAVE ANSWERS. I promise you, as well, a better, a more honest, tomorrow. So help me, God."
That was the cue for both the band and Artemisia. After a drum roll, and the playing of the first bars, she began to sing,
"El sol del verano
Es renacido
Libre es el bosque
Por mi . . .
* * *
"O' Patria, Patria, enseña nos;
Tus hijos esperan por ti.
El dia viene quando se levantas
Mañana sera mejor!"
The President's hand lanced to the remote, to cut off the images shown on the screen as the camera panned along the galleries. They were all singing, all fifty thousand plus of them.
His nephew stopped him. "No, Uncle, we need to see this."
"O Patria, Patria, enseña nos;
Tus hijos esperan por ti."
"We're screwed," he said.
"We're screwed without some desperate measures," Arnulfo agreed. He didn't add, but thought, Though sometimes desperate measures might include just coming clean and giving back some of what we've stolen.
"Mañana sera,
Mañana sera,
Mañana sera mejor!"
32/6/467 AC, Panshir Base, Pashtia
Every day got a little worse. What had begun with directed terrorism and the distant siege of ambush of roads and blowing of bridges had grown to the point that most of the Tauran Union troops were confined to their bases, under frequent if not quite constant mortar and rocket attack. The Anglians and Secordians fought to keep the roads open, to rebuild the bridges, even to combat the terrorism on behalf of the TU troops that were forbidden by their governments from actively seeking battle.
In the larger sense, though, those English-speaking men and women were fighting to let the Progressive administration in Hamilton keeps it promise not to commit further Federated States troops to the war, but to rely on their "allies." In the largest sense, they were all fighting to prevent what their governments considered the ultimate disaster.
That ultimate disaster? It was not that the Salafis should regain control of Pashtia, nor even that they might use it for further attacks. No; the TU leadership—though many around the globe considered that expression to the ultimate oxymoron—lived in desperate fear that the fickle populace of the Federated States might once again elect an administration that quite simply considered the TU, indeed the rest of the world, to be largely voiceless and irrelevant.
"And even that's not enough to get the bastards to let us fight," fumed Claudio Marciano, as a large caliber mortar round detonated inside his camp, a few hundred meters to the east of his sandbagged command post. Following on the heels of the explosion he heard the cry "Medic!" and the scream of an ambulance siren.
"'Fighting never settled anything,' Generale," quoted Stefano del Collea, his eyes turned Heavenward in mock piety.
"Tell it to the city fathers of Carthage," Marciano retorted. "You know what bugs me about it, Stefano?"
"No, sir. I mean, other than the unnerving blasts, the wounded troopers, the sheer frustration of being here and not allowed to do our fucking jobs, sir, what could possibly be troublesome?"
Barely, Marciano restrained the urge to slap his cynical aide with his helmet. Instead, he said, "What bothers me is that they're able to keep this up at all. I mean, without the roads—which our masters made us give away—we can still get enough to eat. Our enemies are not only apparently eating; they've got the logistic wherewithal to bring in shells by the ton-load."
Del Collea sighed. "I know, sir."
* * *
About five thousand meters to the southwest, in a small village the Tauran command had made into a no-fire zone, Noorzad looked on approvingly as one of his newer recruits, Ashraf al Islamiya, strained to carry forty kilograms worth of heavy mortar shells to the guns. He ported them—two at a time, one over each shoulder—from a small cave in which they had been painstakingly secreted over the last several months, to the firing position in the town square. There, two 120mm mortars chunked out their twenty-kilogram cargos toward the infidel base.