passed in a hall.
Carrera, himself, was rather more restrained. He had a plan. He had all the diagrams. He had tables of manning and equipment, pay scales, grade requirements, training schedules…
And I have guilt. Is it my fault, my doing, that these people were attacked? Or would it have happened eventually, anyway? I suppose I'll never know.
Lourdes interrupted his thoughts with a cup of coffee. She pretended not to notice as he quickly wiped a forming tear from his own eye. 'What happens now, Patricio?'
'I don't know, not for sure. I don't yet have the authority. I don't have the money; I don't have the equipment, I don't have the men. I don't have the land to train on. I don't have the uniforms, the ammunition, the barracks… even tents we lack. All I have is a plan and control of some money, with more on the way… that, and a few connections.'
Lourdes glanced down at the newspaper, then back to her boss. 'But you and General Parilla have an appointment with the acting president in just three days, Patricio. Isn't that about getting all those things?'
'Yes. But Parilla and I both have our doubts about how easy it will be. Even after this,' he said as his hand gestured towards the paper.
'I have faith in you, Patricio. You will get what you need.'
He sighed. Maybe the girl was right. 'Lourdes… you're a reasonable girl, as reasonable as anyone in the country. Do you believe we… Balboa should go to war over this?'
Lourdes' eyes flashed pure Castilian fire, glowing hot with rage and hate. This fire would have been commonplace during the Reconquista , the centuries-long drive to rid Spain of the hated Moslem. On Cortez's march to Tenochtitlan to conquer the Mexica a similar flame had lit the eyes of his conquistadors. Aboard the ships of the Holy League the night before the bloody naval battle at Lepanto, Don John's sailors' and marines' eyes had shone so. It was the very fire that had once made Spain 'the nation with the bloody footprint.'
'Oh, very much, yes. Yes, yes, yes.' Her foot stamped. 'You must make them pay for this!'
Carrera nodded, satisfied. A hand reached out for a cigarette. 'Lourdes, would you get Professor Ruiz on the phone for me? Then call Parilla's secretary and see when he will be available.'
Saint Nicholasberg, Volga, 30/9/459 AC
Smoke curled up from half a dozen vile Volgan cigarettes to gather and congeal along the ceiling and walls of the room. A small buffetand that was not vile at all-sat pillaged on a table near the room's only door. Inside, men no longer young argued over their state's future.
'Stefan Ilyanovich, I tell you for the last time there is no more foreign exchange to be had.' The speaker, Pavel Timoshenko, a subminister of finance for economically moribund Volga, spoke, on behalf of his chief, to an assistant to an industrial minister.
A note of something like hysteria crept into Ilyanovich's voice. 'Our factories are crumbling. We are losing even the ability to extract our own oil. We are in desperate need of the technology that only the East, the FSC and the TU, or Yamato can supply us. And you tell me we cannot even buy it.' Ilyanovich looked despondent, almost crushed. He hung his head in despair.
Timoshenko, not wanting to appear unsympathetic, said, 'My friend, it is not that we would not buy it if we could. It is not even that the East will not sell to us. Since the Reds'-for the tsar who had instituted Tsarist- Marxism in Volga had, like his philosophical predecessors, chosen that color to symbolize his social revolution'have been gone, the East, most of them at least, are quite willing to sell. But they will not give it away. Welcome to the free marketplace.' He reached over to squeeze Ilyanovich's shoulder.
Ilyanovich looked up. 'Then sell something, before we have nothing left to sell.'
Timoshenko shook his head sadly. 'That's just the point. We have nothing but the very raw materials to sell. And no one wants to buy. The world is glutted. Even the price of gold is down, what with all the precious metal the UEPF has dumped, or we would sell that.'
'Weapons?' Ilyanovich held out his hands in plea.
Timoshenko shook his head, shrugged. 'Ordinarily we could sell our weapons. But all of our former clients deserted us as fast as we deserted them. It doesn't matter; they have no money. And those who can buy don't want what we have. They want newer, more modern, Columbian or Tauran arms.'
The men present looked to the representative of the ministry of defense. After finishing off the caviar-laden cracker in his fingers, and wiping the corners of his mouth with a napkin, Vladimir Rostov answered the unspoken question.
'We make good weapons,' he said. 'Yes, they're different from the East's but, in the main, about as good-in some cases better, used properly-and always much, much cheaper. How could they not be when we pay the workers who produce them about ten percent of what their western equivalents earn? But after decades of selling 'chimp models'-they look the same as the best equipment but have all of the really good features taken out-no one wants to buy who can afford better. Forty years of our arms, in Moslem hands, being bested by Zion and the FSC hasn't helped matters. We have managed to sell some heavy rocket launchers to al Jahara, true, but that is all. When they wanted tanks they went for FS models. When they wanted infantry vehicles they bought Anglian. They could have good, top of the line, T-38s-hell, I would sell them T-48s!-for what they can afford to pay. But they aren't even asking.'
This was a bad sign indeed. For forty years the old empire had bartered its weapons for hard currency, needed raw materials, and political influence. Now its successor, the Republic of Volga, couldn't sell them even without the political strings. And weapons were about all it had to offer. Millions upon millions of tons of finished arms and munitions sat rusting, unused and unwanted, in military storage yards all over the country. The times were bleak.
Rostov tapped the table top in anger. 'It is worse, even, than the picture I have painted. The FSC are already beating the Salafi fanatics in Pashtia like they own them. As soon as that is done they'll be going after the next state on their list; quite possibly Sumer again. Then they'll go after another. Then another. In a few years, not more than six the General Staff thinks, most of our former ex-clients are going to get the living shit kicked out of them by the Federated States-Kingdom of Anglia Alliance. The Sumeris still have almost exclusively Volgan heavy equipment. Even what we didn't build ourselves is mostly based on our systems; closely enough that few can tell the difference from the outside. They're almost all 'chimp models,' but who will care about that? When the FSC and the Anglians are through, our reputation for making arms will be destroyed for a century. Two centuries!'
Rostov rubbed a chin perplexedly. 'Hmmm. I wonder if… no, I suppose not.'
Ilyanovich reached for a glass of hot, overly sweet Volgan tea. 'Is there no way to save that reputation? We have the arms, thirty thousand tanks in storage or more, enough possibly to see us through some of the hard times ahead if we could sell them for even a fraction of their value, at something better than scrap metal value anyway.'
Timoshenko held up his hand to silence the others. He had studied and traveled in the East, even during Imperial days. During that time he had picked up a few decidedly un-Volgan ideas. One such was coming to him now.
'Comrades, it occurs to me that there is one chance. If we can somehow show that our arms are second to none-okay, okay… at least good enough- we can sell them in the future. The money we get from that will give us the ability to buy some high technology, enough to continue getting our oil and other minerals out of the ground. That will bring more hard currency and a favorable, or at least less unfavorable, trade balance. We must have positive advertising. Can we not get our forces to Pashtia?'
It was the representative of the Foreign Ministry's turn. 'Forget it, Pavel. We are definitely not invited in any major way. Border and convoy guard maybe. Probably not even that.'
'Not even that.' The one soldier in the group added, 'It wouldn't make much difference even if we sent in the Guards. Since we left Pashtia and since the breakdown of the government, our army is a wreck, good soldiers-some of them anyway-in a broken organization. Besides, the point Pavel wants us to make is, I think, that our weapons are good in rich undeveloped world hands. This point cannot be made if they are in Volgan hands.'
Timoshenko ended the discussion by suggesting, 'Comrades, let us await developments a bit, shall we? Perhaps the horse will learn to sing after all.'
Las Mesas, Republic of Balboa, 30/9/459 AC
Young Ricardo Cruz looked into and past the television screen. It cannot be said he really even saw the images. He had no need to. He had seen them before, or others much like them, over and over, perhaps one
