The Lotus Eaters

as a Class One I'll have all the time in the world, and put me in a position to elevate some other Class Twos—that Moore fellow seemed unhappy enough at the current set up—and maybe, just maybe, I can reform this planet. Make me a Class One, give me those assistants, and leave me in command of the Peace Fleet and what would the diadem wearers have to stop me with?

Which still doesn't answer the question: What does one do to reform a planet gone so rotten? But, again, as a Class One, I'll have all the time in the world to figure out the answer to that.

If, that is, I can stop the barbarians on Terra Nova from springing out of their hole like Temujin's hordes and upsetting everything here before we can right ourselves.

That's my advantage over Martin. He could only think of a way to make Terra Nova cease being a threat to us as we are. That's why he had to be so absolute. I, on the other hand, can think of a way to make us something Terra Nova will not be a lethal threat to . . . given the power and given the time.

Wallenstein looked around at her temporary quarters, which went way past adequate and even opulent all the way to decadent. And there are some perks to the effort.

Casa Linda, Balboa, Terra Nova

'We've kept Quarters One open for you, on the Isla Real,' McNamara said.

Jimenez snorted. ''We'd have had a mutiny if we tried to fill them.' More seriously, he added, 'Really, Patricio; we've been able to keep things going as well as we have in good part because we could tell the troops you would be back. That's been getting pretty threadbare for a while now.'

'I've missed the boys,' Carrera admitted with a sigh that sounded as if it were of longing. 'But you might as well have turned the quarters over to the commander of the Training Legion. And your own, as well.'

'Why's that?' Mac asked.

'Because we're going to have to move the legions and tercios—yes, almost all of them—from the Isla Real to the mainland.'

'We're?' Jimenez asked.

Carrera sighed once again. 'Yes. 'We're.' Bastards.

'And I'll need to talk to Raul . . . and the leaders of the legislature. I'm not taking sole responsibility for the shit that I do anymore, if only because I don't quite trust my own judgment anymore.'

Chapter Three

Valid moral judgment is not a question of saying, 'Wouldn't it be nice?' or observing, 'Isn't it so awful?' and then insisting that the universe be or cease to be whatever the speaker thinks would be nice, tomorrow, or is bad, today. Valid moral judgment must also be realistic judgment. It does not become so merely for taking a favored fantasy and insisting it is reality. And yet so many, throughout human history, have done just that.

—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,

Historia y Filosofia Moral,

Legionary Press, Balboa,

Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468

Furiocentro Convention Center, Balboa City, Terra Nova

Nearly everyone who really mattered in the Legion was there: Four thousand officers, six thousand optios, centurions, and sergeants major, about four thousand warrants, and as many junior non-coms as could be spared from their day to day duties. Even the schools had been shut down for two days to allow the cadres and some senior students to attend, while key civilians who worked for the Legion had also been dragged in.

The Golden Eagle of the overarching Legion del Cid, plus those of the legions, themselves, First through Fourth, also golden, stood in a rank on an elevated dais, legionary eagles flanking the sacred eagle of the entire Legion. Ahead of those, and slightly lower, were sixteen silver eagles. Ten of these belonged to the ten tercios, or regiments. Then there were the eagles for the classis, the fleet, and the ala, the aviation regiment. The two for the training units, initial entry and leader and specialist training, stood alongside that of the Opposing Force Tercio, composed mostly of highly combat experienced expatriate Volgan paratroopers. Technically the Volgans were not part of the Legion, their official contract being with the Foreign Military Training Group. Some of the Volgans were now citizens of the Republic, others not. Lastly, on the left as the eagles faced, was the eagle for the Tercio de Cadetes, the elite youth regiment, itself nearly twelve thousand strong, in six schools, and not counting the adult cadres for those schools.

The place was stuffed to roughly twice its capacity; there were no chairs as there hadn't been room. (All the chairs sat outside under tarps.) Moving everyone to the Center, too, had been a logistic task of no little magnitude, involving use of busses, airplanes, airships, hovercraft, helicopters, Balboa's one useable train line and, in a few cases, privately owned vehicles and even movement by foot.

Every military man and woman present wore either undress Class B khakis or the mostly green, pixilated tiger- striped, slant-pocketed battle dress worn by the Legion when at home in Balboa. Mufti-clad civilians were present, most of them either propagandists for Professor Ruiz's propaganda group, operating out of the university, or scientists and researchers from Obras Zorilleras, the Legion's research and development arm.

Standing in the back, behind closed doors, Raul Parilla, Presidente de la Republica, and Patricio Carrera waited with McNamara.

Parilla, short and stocky, with brown skin highlighted by steel-gray hair, wore mufti, as befitted a civil chief magistrate. Conversely, Mac and Carrera wore their battle dress, Mac carrying his badge of rank, the baton of the