made up of very thick concrete. The whole area was badly overgrown. The engineer troops were billeted in some of the bunkers, each of which was large enough to fit forty men comfortably. The bunkers, what with the thick concrete and the jungle vegetation overhead, were cool and pleasant, if a bit damp.
From a demolition range situated at the southeast corner of the long abandoned dump came an irregular concussive thumping. As unhappy as they were over their golf course, the civvies were even less happy about the constant explosions. Carrera had also spoken to them about that, briefly. Go piss up a rope.
Carrera walked by, just to see if the chain of command knew enough to keep the troops busy. Since the bunkers were abandoned but for a guard each, plus the cooks in the mess bunker, Carrera inferred that they did.
Near the bunkers, the ditch and entrenchment excavators chewed lines in the ground wherever they could find an open area. Must insure they know to fill those in. Mosquitoes.
The water purification troops, engineers rather than logistics men, trained on the polluted waters of the Transitway itself. Quality control was easy for these men. The water they purified was all they were allowed to drink.
Amid the hubbub of roaring machinery, sputtering water ferry engines, and explosions, Carrera and the engineer century commander spoke.
'How's it going, Sam? Any major problems?' Carrera left unspoken the and how can I help you? It was possible that he couldn't help. No sense in offering what he couldn't deliver.
The engineer officer was another man from the Federated States. Originally, Sam Cheatham had come as part of Abogado's FMTG. He was tallish and a bit beefy, a graduate of the FS Military Academy at River Watch. Carrera had tapped him one day and asked if he'd be interested in joining the legion and commanding its engineer century. Promised that Carrera would make up the pay differential on the side, Cheatham had jumped at the chance.
Like the Ocelot sections that trained with the mechanized cohort but would eventually return to the infantry cohorts, the engineers of the cohorts' combat support centuries trained with the main engineer century for the nonce.
'Everything's basically going well as far as our own jobs are concerned, sir,' the engineer had answered. 'One thing does worry me, though. We need to work with the combat cohorts we're going to support. That will happen on its own with the cohorts' own sapper sections. My century is a problem. If we could have even a few days each of working with the cohorts, I'd be a lot happier.'
Carrera answered, 'Yeah… me, too. After Advanced Individual Training is finished we'll have about eighteen days here in Balboa before we go over to major unit exercises under the legion. We can send your men down to work with the cohorts then.'
And then we can pray it's enough. I think it will be enough.
Range 12, Imperial Range Complex, 21/5/460 AC
Cruz's hands still had not healed from all of the shoveling of dirt he had done at Cocoli the week before. His lungs also still hurt from all of the smoke he had sucked down when his squad was attacked. The defense had not gone well. Cruz's section leader, plainly displeased, had simply selected another building and the whole section had done it all over again the next day. The same had happened to all the other sections in the century. That defense had gone better. Best of all, six of the cohort's twelve sections had to do it all a third time. Not only did this give Cruz's comrades a satisfying opportunity to rub it in to those who still had to train to standard; while they were retraining the members of the sections who had passed were allowed to catch up on sleep. Since nobody had slept more than half an hour in two days, this was a most welcome break.
Now, at Range 12, the men prepared to do a dismounted live fire exercise, a fairly simple trench clearing operation. The section would use its rifles, its three Volgan light machine guns, and a medium machine gun in getting to and clearing the trench. Instead of hand grenades they had been given simulators. In the confined spaces of the trench system these were probably dangerous enough.
The men were set, but hidden by the jungle's foliage. At a signal from Cruz-he was acting as leader for this mission-the medium machine gun began to sweep fire across the top of the objective. Near the machine gun, but spread out to either side, were three men carrying 'Draco' sniper rifles, which fired the same, high-powered, round. Between the two types of fire Cruz could reasonably expect the target to be judged 'suppressed.'
When he, personally, judged that anyone who might have been in the target trench would at this point likely have been on the bottom of it, shitting their pants, Cruz gave the signal-a simple whistle blast, for the machine gun to lift fires off the objective. It did, but only to the extent of firing high so that the sound of the bullets passing would at least continue to frighten anyone who might have been in the trench. The Dracos maintained their slow, aimed, deliberate fire. The assault party would just have to move through it, trusting to the marksmanship of the Draco men.
Most armies would have banned this as being far too unsafe.
Cruz then led the remaining men forward at the double, bayonets fixed, to a shallow linear depression in the earth. The men hastily threw themselves down into it. The machine gun resumed firing only a few feet over their heads.
Under his leaders' watchful eyes, Cruz and the rest threw simulators at the opposing trench. At this signal the machine gun lifted its fire off of the objective completely and began to pound a suspicious- looking position higher up the hill. Making ready to use simulators again, the men crawled forward to within a few feet of the trench. Two of them placed simulators directly into it. That was much less nerve wracking than using real grenades. After the twin explosions the rest rushed the last few feet up to the trench, firing downward from the hip as they ran.
The first two men jumped in, turned to the sides and fired at targets that suddenly appeared on either side of them. Meanwhile, Cruz and the rest crawled forward and entered the position themselves. Cruz ordered the rightmost man to stay put and guard the rear. Then the rest turned left and began bombing their way forward, throwing simulators to clear each section of trench before entering it to make a clean sweep with automatic rifle fire.
Fifty meters up the line the trench branched. Again leaving a man to guard that portion that ran parallel to the crest of the hill, Cruz and the others took the branch that went uphill. Bombing forward the entire way, Cruz reached the final objective, a small command bunker. He threw a green smoke canister to signal for the machine gun to come forward and sent one man to retrieve the two who had been left behind. Then he began placing the section in a hasty defense to repel any counterattack.
Behind Cruz, del Valle and First Centurion Martinez exchanged glances. Oooo, that was nice. Good kid; very calm, very determined. He's done well. There's potential here.
Lying on his belly, waiting for someone to start pulling up the targets that would signal the enemy counterattack, Cruz thought, damn, that was fun. He didn't notice that his hands had started bleeding again.
Fort Cameron, 24/5/460 AC
The window-mounted air conditioner hummed loudly, causing the speaker to have to raise his voice to be heard. It didn't really matter; Carrera listened with only one ear, and absently, to the training status brief being presented. He relied more on his eyes and ears than statistical indicia, anyway.
The briefing officer, Tribune Rocaberti, was River Watch trained, Carrera knew. The briefing reflected that. It was also precisely why Carrera paid it little attention. The briefing was thorough, painstaking, and, inevitably, duller than watching paint dry.
Carrera had always found long meetings to be physically and psychically agonizing. He interrupted Rocaberti and told Johnson to stay and listen to the rest. Then he left the conference tent
'Take me to Imperial Range, Jamey,' he told Soult.
'Sure thing, Boss.'
Soult put the car in gear and pulled away on the packed gravel road for the hour and a half long drive to Imperial Range. Soult drove quietly for the first half hour, before reaching the paved highway that ran west to the Bridge of the Columbias and on to Imperial Range complex. He did risk a couple of glances over at his chief, noting that Carrera's face seemed troubled.
'What's bothering you, Boss?'
Of the people Carrera had assembled for his staff, only threeSoult, Mitchell and the sergeant major-were
