Carnifex

it.

Wallenstein sipped coffee shipped up from below. To all appearances, she was calm and composed. Inside, though, she was worried. An unhappy High Admiral is a High Admiral who is less likely to get me a caste lift. This will not do. But . . . still, I have to tell him or he'll be even less likely to give me the boost I need.

'Martin, we've got a decoded message we intercepted between the mercenary fleet and its commander. Not only is the ship not going to sink; it's going to be reinforced.'

'With what?'

'A heavy cruiser. I believe it's the only heavy cruiser in commission in any wet navy down below. Good armor, ten six-inch automatic, long range guns in five twin turrets. It's also nuclear powered, just like the carrier. I'm sorry, Martin, but the mercenary fleet is not only not substantially weakened, except in the very short term, it's growing. Worse, the Yamatan Zaibatsu appear to be so eager to get it back on station that they're paying two thirds of the cost of restoring and refitting the carrier. I'm afraid that using piracy to both raise funds for the Ikhwan and to undercut the economy down below is . . . ' Wallenstein hesitated.

'Doomed to abject failure?' Robinson supplied. 'Tell me something I don't know.'

15/6/468 AC, BdL Dos Lindas, Hajipur, Sind

'I don' know, skipper,' the master of the ship fitting company said, shaking his head. The master was an old man. Underneath his turbaned head, Fosa thought, his hair was likely as gray as his beard.

The Dos Lindas rode at dock, Cazadors guarding from the landward side while corvettes and the Agustin watched to seaward. Getting her here? Through one of the worst storms in the history of the Sea of Sind? With waves battering at the temporary patch welded over the spot where the Ikhwan cruise missile had struck home? That would take a volume. Suffice to say that there were a lot more Cruces de Coraje earned by the crew. Some heroism was never recorded. For that, for those unknowns washed over the side, Carrera had issued the first unit citation in the history of the Legion del Cid.

'I don' know,' the master repeated, tapping the temporary patches on the flight deck with his cane and he and Fosa toured the ship with an eye to damages and estimates. 'It gonna cost.'

'That's not the point,' Fosa said. 'I don't care what it costs, as long as my fleet isn't being cheated. The point is, can you repair my ship?'

'We do flight deck, hull, hangar deck' the master shipfitter, answered, with a shrug. 'Those . . . easy. Cut sections from old ship up coast; drag down. Weld into place. Paint. My people tell me can replace lost AZIPOD, if you buy, and fix other. Have to wait for dry-dock open up but . . . no sweat. Form and weld on new gun tubs? Also, no sweat. Replace guns? You get guns, we replace. Radar? You get radar; we replace. Same, same; laser up top. Got nephew at SIT, Sind Institute Technology. He good with shit like that. Him got friends good, too.'

'Buuut?' Fosa asked.

'But got build new fucking elevator from scratch. Hard. Tough. Expensive. Never do before.'

'Hmmm. What if someone made an elevator and shipped it here?' Fosa asked.

'Like other shit; you get elevator; we replace.'

17/6/468 AC, Kamakura, Yamato

'Kurita did request, in his last will and testament, that we continue to support the ronin as much as possible,' Yamagata said.

'I know,' Saito agreed, 'and it's hardly that grand a request. The problem is that nobody here has made or designed an elevator for an aircraft carrier in decades. Many decades. And the ronin need their elevator now. Between design, tooling up, and actual production, we're looking at half a year to a year.'

'And no one makes elevators like this anymore, do they?' Yamagata asked, rhetorically.

Saito shook his head in the negative. 'The nearest thing to what the ronin need—or, in any event, could use—is a side mounted elevator the Federated States put on some of their amphibious carriers. The ship, however, is not designed for that.'

'Could it be modified?'

'I have sent a naval engineer to enquire. There is also one other possibility that gets them an elevator quickly and gives us time to have one custom designed and built.'

20/6/468 AC, Isla Real and Bay of Balboa

The waters quaked with the pounding of newly christened BdL Tadeo Kurita at gunnery practice a few miles away. From the bridge of the conning tower of the spare carrier, never given a name but referred to simply at BdEL1 (Barco del Entrenamiento Legionario Numero Uno, Legionary Training Ship Number One), the exec of the Classis Don John could see the top of Isla Santa Josefina, the artillery impact island. The place was wreathed in smoke and flame, only the crest of the central massif visible, and that not all the time.

Overhead came a near continuous freight train rumble as Tadeo Kurita lobbed salvo after salvo toward the impact area island. If the classis exec cared to, he could have climbed topside and seen the cruiser as she fired. Even in daytime, the clouds above flickered with an orange glow with each broadside.

On the bridge, the exec studied diagrams of the ship. The schematics were old and the paper crisp and yellow with age. Worse, they were in Portuguese which was more or less intelligible to Spanish speakers, but always a strain.

'Ah, well,' muttered the exec. 'Could have been worse. Could have been in something uncivilized . . . like English.'

And with that, the exec set himself to solving the problem of how to disassemble a major component of one ship, the elevator, get it loaded aboard another ship, somehow, and move it to a foreign harbor wherein sat a third ship, the Dos Lindas.

Fucking Fosa; thought the classis exec. What kind of miracle worker does he think I am? Worse, how the fuck am I supposed to train replacement crew here with only one working elevator?

The exec heard something very soft behind him. He turned and saw the Yamatan engineer, Keiji Higara, pensively tapping his lips while looking out across the bay at where a seaborne crane was in the process of removing turrets from one of those Suvarov Class cruisers not schedule for refit.

'I am idiot,' Keiji announced.

'Why's that, Hig?' the exec asked.

'I been worried . . . you know . . . getting this ship someplace where is crane powerful enough lift the elevator assembly out from hull. That was problem since docking facilities in Ciudad Balboa under . . . enemy control. Then, too, ship immobile. And whole time I been worrying . . . there was that.' He pointed at the crane ship.

'You mean we can do it.'

In answer, Higara snapped his fingers.

33/6/468 AC, Quarters Number 2, Isla Real

'Look, it only makes sense, Patricio,' Jimenez said, punctuating with a snap of his fingers. 'I'm shipping over to Pashtia with the Fourth Legion in the not too distant future. So I'll have no use or need for this big old white elephant. Even when I come back, what do I need? A bedroom? An office? Someplace to eat? Artemisia and Mac can give me all that, right here. And they'll have a place to stay suitable for their position.'

Jimenez, Lourdes, and Carrera sat on the upper balcony, looking over the parade field. On the table between them was a bucket of ice and some scotch. The air was heavy, both with the natural humidity and the smoke of Xavier's and Carrera's cigars.

'Have you mentioned this to them, Xavier? Mac's a serious stickler for protocol and propriety.' Carrera asked, wearily, flicking an ash over the railing and onto the lawn. He'd just flown in this morning from Pashtia with the tail end of 1^st and 2^nd Legions and was clearly feeling the toll of both the long flight and the time zone