The Lotus Eaters

The deployment's first wave was leaving at night. Stars shone down, twinkling off the waves of sea and bay that surrounded the Field of the Frogs on three sides. Loudspeakers placed around the field blared out a marching song, occasionally interrupted by commands from the headquarters, 8th Tercio, in charge of the movement.

Like the commander of the corps to which they belonged, like the population of the area from which they sprang, the 8th Tercio, was mostly black. As such, their marching song was Cara Morena, Dark Face, a glowingly appreciative piece on the girls of the province. They sang it from a dozen departure points, as they boarded a mix of hovercraft, coastal freighters, helicopters and medium cargo aircraft for their deployment to Jaquelina de Coco and Sangre de Dios, down in La Palma Province.

With much less fanfare, a number of Cazador teams had been shuttled down by submarine, over the past several weeks, from Puerto Lindo, just down the coast. They would land on the coast and infiltrate by foot to take up positions well in advance of the general interdiction line—some, in fact, into Santander, itself—the better to cover the coming relief in place of 2nd Tercio by 8th. Those teams would cross into Santander, if for no other reason than to remind the Santandern guerillas that there was no sanctuary for them, anywhere.

From loudspeaker and voice the song echoed:

'The hour of deliverance is nearing;

The day of liberation's surely coming;

The era when our Patria is sovereign,

No longer underneath the Kosmo boot.

Cara morena, mi chica linda . . .'

I really don't care for that song, Jimenez thought. Just doesn't grab me. But what the hell does it matter what I think, if the boys like it.

Jimenez's driver, Pedro, pulled up next to where he had let off his commander, sometime prior. 'Legate Higgins'—there were a large number of Anglic names among the black denizens of the province—'wants to know if you've any last minute instructions,' Pedro said.

Shaking his head, Jimenez answered, 'No. I'm only even here because I'm bitter I can't go along. Just . . . go back and tell him I wish him and his boys good luck.'

'Roger, sir.'

I am bitter, too. I liked being a company commander, way back in the day. Now? Commanding a corps, three hundred times bigger than a company, or a maniple, as we say now, is too much like work, and too little like fun. I haven't even gotten to go out on a training exercise in months.

How much worse it would be, Patricio, if you didn't hate both excess paperwork and meetings, I shudder to think.

'Cara morena, mi chica linda . . .'

Oh, well; could be worse. At least I'll get to visit the boys down there, keep 'em on their toes to the extent the guerillas don't.

Cruz Residence, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova

Though he wasn't precisely sleepy, having slept on the helicopter that had brought him back from Jaquelina de Coco, Cruz had an inner fatigue no ordinary rest could touch. Wearily he trudged up the concrete path to the door of his house. Wearily he turned the knob and opened the screen door. Wearily he dragged himself, his rifle, and his pack inside. Wearily he set them down, and, with exhaustion in his voice, he called out, 'Cara?'

He heard footsteps and then saw her, momentarily frozen in the rectangular corridor that led to the bedrooms. He saw his wife's swollen belly initially with mixed feelings. Let's see . . . last time was . . . ummm . . . match that to girth . . . yeah, it's mine. Well . . . assuming.

For her part, she took one long look at her husband, framed by light streaming in through the front door, and launched into a very rapid waddle to throw herself into Ricardo's arms. She stood that way, wrapped up, for several minutes before she could manage to get out, 'You didn't tell me you were coming home, you bastard.'

'Secret,' Cruz explained, while running his hands gently over her back. ' 'Pain of death' secret. They just got another tercio sufficiently trained to take over from the Second. We couldn't say a thing until they had taken over by more than fifty percent. And I couldn't send you our code phrase because there were no computers out in the jungla and my last scrap of writing paper had gone to a 'We deeply regret' letter for one of my privates.'

His hand wandered from her back to her belly. 'Why didn't you tell me about this?'

'I wasn't sure until just after you left for La Palma, and I didn't want you to worry about me when you had more immediate things to worry about.'

He nodded. The explanation made sense. For Cara, anyway.

'Did we win?' she asked.

'What's a win?' he half answered. 'We drove the guerillas and druggies out of La Palma. But they'll be back if we let down our guard.'

He grasped her shoulders in his hands and pushed her back far enough to look down into her face. 'Hey, I've got some good news. At least I think it's good news.'

'And that would be?'

'New assignment for us. We're going back to the island so I can be First Centurion of the tercio training maniple. Promotion, more money, and—since most of the troops have moved back to the mainland—the standard house out there for a senior centurion is what they used to put senior tribunes and junior legates in. Also'—he glanced down at her stomach—'the Legion still has most of its medical