followed and supported at a distance, suppressing with machine guns or clearing the way with the main gun. They'd proven particularly useful in clearing streets of the mines and booby traps the Sumeris had laid down lavishly.
The really bad part was that the streets made it impossible to use the armor in mass. Instead, one tank or sometimes two would be attached to one infantry century. Sometimes they'd have an Ocelot or two in support and sometimes not. In either case, though, when the rifle, sniper and machine-gun fire came in the crews had to button up and hope the infantry could keep the enemy's antitank teams away while the tank dealt with the threat that it sometimes couldn't really see very well.
In the close confines of the town of Ninewa, and despite having quite good night vision equipment, Perez, del Rio and Mendoza just couldn't see very well, generally. Not having slept much in days didn't help, either.
Still worse, they had no really good communications with the infantry century they were supposed to support. Their blasted antennae had been replaced; that wasn't the problem. Nor was it negligence on the part of the infantry. The grunts had simply lost so many leaders that a sergeant was leading the entire group with the senior section leader a mere corporal, and only one of those. The century had basically lost its ability to coordinate with their supporting tank.
Even worse than that, this century was not the original one. The tanks were in such short supply, never more than sixteen to begin and four had been lost completely, that they had to shunt around from unit to unit.
Neither Perez, nor del Rio, nor Mendoza could remember when they'd slept last. Mendoza thought he might have eaten something the day prior but couldn't be sure. The stewed camel over rice was not something the cohort mess section was really used to preparing, but they'd been reduced to that for the last three days. He might have skipped it yesterday; hard to remember. Too sleepy, too 'Jorge, back up! Back up! Back up! Gunner, HE, RGL, two o'clock. Jorge, goddammit, back UP!'
Still half asleep Mendoza automatically shifted gears and backed the tank fifty meters. Before he had gone that distance, though, a rocket-launched grenade lanced out from the half-shattered wreck of an adobe building. It missed the tank, barely, and exploded against a wall behind Jorge and to his left. The tank's automatic defense system hadn't fired because all the blocks on the front had been used up and there hadn't been any spares to replace them. Maybe tomorrow…
Del Rio was apparently not half asleep since the main gun roared even before Jorge applied the brakes. That woke him up fully and in time to watch the adobe building to his right front disintegrate to dust.
Ninewa, Command Post, Legio del Cid, 6/3/461 AC
A Cricket's engine sputtered outside where it had come to a hasty landing just a few seconds ahead of a heavy machine gun's tracers. A short, dark, and stout man, chest still swathed in bandages, climbed painfully down from its high door.
Parilla had to be helped into the building. The first thing he heard upon entering was Patricio Carrera, cursing a storm into a radio. 'Listen carefully, you miserable son of a bitch. I said I want…'
Parilla sat heavily and wearily in a folding chair inside. Outside the Cricket that had brought him had its tail picked up by four legionaries and turned to face away from the wind. Once loaded, it would taxi again and face into the wind for takeoff. Another pair of men, wearing white armbands with red crosses, loaded a stretcher in through the rear of the aircraft, then helped another legionary with his chest and shoulder heavily bandaged to climb into the front passenger seat. Loaded, the Cricket took off again in a cloud of propeller-raised dust. Behind the Cricket a NA-23 Dodo with 'Lolita' painted on the nose waited patiently while more wounded either boarded or, if stretcher cases, were loaded.
Carrera took one look and asked, 'Raul, what the fuck are you doing here? You're still hurt.'
Parilla sighed and answered, 'I couldn't stand it anymore, lying there while they brought in more and more wounded kids, most of them worse off than I was. So, one of the advantages of being Dux,' and he emphasized the title as if to say, which means people do what I tell them to, generally, 'is that when I say, 'I want to be flown to the front,' someone is going to bust ass to get me flown to the front.'
Carrera smiled. 'I missed you, you old bastard. Things are not going all that well and we sure needed you here.'
'That's why I came, Patricio.'
'Are you up to running things from here?' Carrera asked.
'Yes… with help,' Parilla admitted.
'Okay then. Let me show you how things stand.' Carrera walked to the map and began to trace with his finger. 'We've got about twothirds of the town, plus this airport,' Carrera's head inclined in the direction of the Nabakov-23. 'The Sumeris are still hanging on to the local university, backed up here against the river, and this corner.' The finger showed the northeast area of the town, marked as being still in Sumeri hands. 'This group didn't go into the school, by the way, to try to gain shelter by hiding in an off-limits target. They knew we wouldn't feel terribly restricted by that and sent a parliamentaire to assure us we could engage them there. They're only in it because it's all they have left.'
'Fighting strength is down' Carrera continued, 'dangerously down. We've got nothing but MPs and walking wounded guarding prisoners and we've cannibalized the rear echelon for riflemen. Even so, average century rifle strength is only about three-quarters, more in some, less in others. That's even with the four hundred replacements fresh out of training that Christian rushed us from Balboa.'
Parilla raised a finger. 'I can shed a little light and hope on the replacement situation. Another one hundred and fifty… ummm… fifty-four are due in day after tomorrow. And another one hundred and eighty or so in ten days.'
'That might help; the next contingent, I mean. If we haven't finished taking this place before ten days are up, I'll resign.'
Parilla inhaled deeply and, with obvious reluctance and distaste, said, 'And that's another problem. The papers back home are howling for your head over these reprisals. Some of the politicos are, too. You haven't been up on international news here, have you?'
'No, why?'
'The Taurans are talking about putting out a warrant for your arrest from the Cosmopolitan Criminal Court.'
'Fuck 'em,' Carrera answered, with no noticeable degree of concern.
'Okay, just thought you might like to know. Anyway, I can handle things here.' Parilla looked over the manning charts hanging on one wall. 'Legate, you need to get forward to lead this legion.'
Carrera looked at the same charts, even as Parilla did. 'Can you get by without a couple of the staff?' he asked.
'Who did you have in mind taking?'
'Rocaberti, Daugher, Bowman. Plus Mitchell and Soult. I had to shift Johnson to 3rd Cohort to replace its commander.'
'Where's Carl Kennison?' Parilla asked.
'Here, Duce,' Kennison answered unexpectedly from the door.
Carrera raised a single eyebrow, which Kennison answered by saying, 'I'll be fine for now, Pat. We can talk later, after the battle's over.'
Carrera nodded. 'Fine. I'll be on my way then.' He glanced around to make sure all five men he'd said he wanted to take were present. 'You people I mentioned; on me in ten minutes, ready to rock.'
Manuel Rocaberti had done his level best to be as useful at headquarters as possible, hoping thereby to escape being sent anywhere but. He wasn't lazy, after all; he just wasn't too terribly brave. He'd learned that over a decade ago when, in the face of an FSC attack on Balboa he had run, deserting his men and his command. He'd have been shot, he knew, if his side had actually won. Fortunately, for him, they had not and in the chaos after the fall of Pina, the ex-dictator, no one had thought to prosecute him. Rather, no one in a position to had ever thought to. He was reasonably sure that Jimenez, among others, would have been glad to see him dead.
Thus it was with a mix of relief and trepidation that Rocaberti found himself suddenly placed in command over an understrength infantry century with a single tank attached. The relief came from the fact that no one in the century or the cohort over it had any obvious reason personally to want Rocaberti dead. The trepidation came from the fact that the century was facing a large number of Sumeris who did want him dead, albeit only in an impersonal way. That was small comfort.
Even so, Rocaberti was an experienced officer, an experienced commander, and well above the rank normally
