The Lotus Eaters

capability there.'

Cara's eyes lit up at that. 'Oooo . . . shiny.' And I won't have to worry about you being killed all the time, either. A nice safe training billet would be just the thing.

She immediately got suspicious. She'd learned long since that nothing too very good and nothing too very bad lasted for too very long.

'How long?'

He shrugged, shaking his head. 'Til we go to the island? A few weeks. How long will we be there? Sorry, don't know, love. Everything's in flux. But a year, at least, I think I can guarantee. Maybe two or three years.'

'Oh, that would be wonderful,' she whispered, laying her head against her man's chest.

Individual Combat Training Center, Eighth Legion, Isla Real, Balboa, Terra Nova

Esteban Escobar, late of the Frente Nacional Liberacion Santandereno, shivered in the early morning fog and the salty sea breeze. His thin physical training uniform was no help at all. And somehow the gravel underfoot was sharp enough to hurt his feet, even through his shoes.

Even if he'd been more warmly clothed, or the air had been warmer, the former guerilla might still have shivered. The corporals, sergeants, optios, and centurions he'd met so far might have made any man shiver.

Beasts in human form, was Esteban's learned judgment. Was that ferret-faced bastard, Fernandez, doing me a favor when he pulled a couple of strings to let me enlist?

Well, that's not fair. He did get the judge to dismiss the charges against me, and without even a hearing. That, at least, was a favor. Though, then again, I might have gotten credit for time served while I was being held in Fernandez's headquarters. In which case . . .

The fog was too thick to see the source of the command, 'Maniple . . . Atten . . . SHUN.'

Thought forgotten, Esteban stiffened to attention, head and eyes locked to the front. He heard the command, 'Open ranks . . . MARCH!' and automatically took two steps forward to allow the squad behind to take a single step.

Esteban heard the leaders of the other three squads in his platoon give the command, 'Parade . . . REST.' His own first squad remained at attention. Keen ears heard the sharp gravel crunching under booted feet, somewhere off the right. He couldn't turn to see, but assumed that was the new first centurion they'd been warned about, inspecting the troops.

Vicious bastard they say he is, too.

Someone, the top of his head being at about the level of Esteban's chin, stepped in front of him and faced sharply to the left.

'I don't fucking believe it.'

Esteban looked down, slightly, and his previous blank expression was replaced by a very nervous smile. 'Hello,' he said, lamely. 'Ummm, Centurion.'

Ricardo Cruz put the tip of his centurion's stick, his sole badge of rank, under Esteban's chin and pushed upward until his head was back in the proper position.

'I will someday want to know the rest of your story, Private Escobar,' Cruz said, sternly. 'But it can wait. In the interim, do try'—for punctuation, Cruz tapped his stick twice, hard, against Escobar's chest —'do'—tap—'try'—tap—'to remember how to stand at the position of attention.'

'Yes, Centurion. Sorry, Centurion.'

'And shut up.'

Bateria Pedro el Cholo, Isla Real, Balboa, Terra Nova

The bronze plaque by the rolled-open steel doors proclaimed the battery was named for an indian, a man without surname, who had been a follower of Belisario Carrera in his war of independence from Old Earth. Each of the eight batteries ringing the island was named for a different character from that long ago conflict. Jorge and Marqueli Mendoza had a common ancestor among those so honored, while Marqueli had yet another.

The battery's armament consisted of two triple six inch turrets, themselves removed from one of the cruisers scrapped by Carrera as not needed for naval efforts. The turrets sat atop artificial hills, the sodded and tree-planted dirt surmounting thick hollow cones of concrete. Behind the twin hills for the two turrets, various ammunition bunkers, twelve of them, were situated to either side of a rail line, a spur running from the ring that encircled the island about three kilometers inland from the coast. Eight of those twelve bunkers were on the coast side, with their large steel loading doors facing toward the central massif, Hill 287. Short rail lines ran right from the main spur into the ammunition bunkers. The turrets themselves, while capable of all-round traverse, were oriented primarily to sea. Unseen, underground and connected by tunnels, were concrete headquarters, the fire direction center, and quarters and mess facilities for the battery's troops.

Sig Siegel was there, watching, as a railroad car bearing a shipping container was gently pushed through the doors. With Siegel were the Cochinese girl, Han, now free and his freely employed administrative assistant and translator, as well as a couple of hundred other Cochinese Sig had purchased from the highly corrupt chief of a re- education camp.

'Han?' Siegel said, once the flatcar was inside.

'Right, boss,' the tiny girl answered, then walked to the railroad car and scampered up the side. In their own tongue she addressed the workers, daintily.

'All right you dicklessclapriddenpussies, get the cables and shackles on this thing and get it into the air so we can get rid of the railroad car. Once it's been hauled off, and the doors are closed, then you