Carnifex

anything he likes?' Carrera asked.

'Huh?' Sitnikov looked puzzled.

'Munoz-Infantes; is there anything he likes?'

'Ah. Yes . . . according to Fernandez. They include Castille, the Spanish language, the Catholic Church, the Castilian Army . . . and, apparently . . . us.'

* * *

The ceremony concluded, the boys were still singing as they marched off the field.

'Juventud adelante,

No camino tan duro.

Gritamos 'Ave Victoria!'

'We've laid on a little reception, partly for ourselves but mostly for guests and the families of the boys transitioning to senior status next year,' Sitnikov announced. 'Perhaps you might want to chat with Colonel Munoz-Infantes . . . '

Carrera thought on it briefly before answering, 'No . . . I would if I could but I can't. The Dos Lindas is supposed to be recommissioned tomorrow morning and I have another speech to rehearse in my mind. You feel free to feel him out, though, Sasha. Just don't commit to anything and don't let him send anyone to snoop around our facilities.'

'I understand, Patricio,' Sitnikov answered.

Carrera was reasonably sure that the Volgan understood perfectly.

* * *

Most of the tonnage of the Legion's not-so-very-small fleet was, for the time being, here at Puerto Lindo. Besides the aircraft carrier, which dominated all the others, there were five ex-Volgan Suvarov Class cruisers, purchased from a scrap dealer for a total of eleven million FSD, along with thirteen more former Volgan ships, one destroyer, two submarines, six obsolete frigates, one mine-countermeasures ship, and three corvettes.

The Suvarovs had been out of commission and slated for scrapping for over a decade but, in the confusion attendant on the collapse of the Volgan Empire, no one had ever gotten around to actually scrapping these last five. They were virtually scrap anyway, all but one of them, or possibly two. That best one had been kept up longer than the rest to serve as a flagship. Carrera thought that still something might be done with the rest. The one that was in fair shape was being restored in a somewhat desultory fashion. The others? Even if scrapped for their steel, the gun turrets, five dual six-inch mountings each, might be emplaced on concrete pads around the Isla Real's perimeter.

The other warships were newer and in better shape. Among these were even two titanium-hulled submarines, formerly nuclear but in fact as dead as chivalry with the reactors and anything to do with them torn out. Carrera didn't actually know to a certainty what he would do with any of them, but the price had been right. Nobody wanted Volgan ships, not even Volga.

There was a second carrier out there, also an ex-His Anglic Majesty's Ship, the Perseus, the Legion had an option on. It was in truly awful shape though, since some light scrapping had actually commenced before the Legion bought its option. It might, at best, serve as a stationary training ship. It was certainly never going to sail again; it would have to be towed to Balboa to be any use at all.

Though Carrera didn't know what he was going to do with most of the hulls he'd bought; he did know what he was going to do with the Venganza.

We're going to commission it.

The ship had started out as a bargain. Purchased for three and a half million FSD, and needing about twelve times that in overhaul, it had seemed like a relatively cheap, and potentially highly profitable, way of transporting aircraft to the war zone and perhaps even suppressing Salafi piracy in various areas of the globe that had fallen under it. Then the cost of Yithrabi crude had hit eighty FSD a barrel and an oil powered ship had seemed rather less of a bargain. Just moving the ship, slowly, halfway around the globe used about six and a half million FSD worth of diesel. And there was no guarantee that the price wouldn't go up. There wasn't even a guarantee of an adequate supply. Nor were the thermal deploymerization plants –built or building—so far in Balboa really up to more than domestic consumption. Indeed, they didn't even cover most that that, yet.

Someone suggested nuclear. But it was not that big a ship, at about two hundred and twelve meters in length and twenty-four in beam, measured at the waterline. Oh, sure, this was much larger than some of the nuclear submarines in use by the Federated States, Volga, Zhong Guo, Anglia and Gaul. But the submarines didn't have to account for a flight deck, or fuel for aircraft. In any case, no one except the Volgans was willing to sell a militarily capable nuclear reactor to a private military organization for an essentially private warship. It just wasn't going to happen. As far as the Volgans went, they had lots of redundant reactors from their rusting fleet, but nobody really trusted their reactors.

I wonder if the FSC or Anglia would have been more cooperative if they'd known the Legion was already a nuclear power, mused Carrera, standing by the dock.

Enter the Republic of Northern Uhuru, which had a new design for which they needed money. This design used tennis ball-sized spheres of mixed graphite and uranium instead of the more dangerous, expensive and difficult to dispose of uranium fuel rods used by others. The RNU was willing to sell. Even better, since the reactor design was modular, and not all that large, it could be constructed inside the ship. Hooray!

Except that even one miserable module provided more than five times the power the ship needed. Worse, each module cost about one hundred and twenty-five million FSD. Talk about cost overruns. The RNU went back to the drawing board, coming back some months later with a much smaller design, costing about seventy-five million, and producing only twice the power actually needed. Carrera had been offered two of the things for one hundred and thirty million so perhaps that one Suvarov Class cruiser might someday sail again, after all.

* * *

'But that's still twice as much as we need,' Carrera had railed at the design team.

'Yeah, Duque . . . but . . . see . . . there are things we can do with the extra power. Lasers.'

'Laaasssers . . . ,' the ship's redesign team had echoed when their chief said that.

'Lasers?'

'Oh, yes. Lasers. Shoot down incoming missiles . . . aircraft . . . cruise missiles . . . even shells. Lasers.'

* * *

And so the ship had been fitted with three high-energy lasers; one each bow and stern on projecting mounts, plus one over the superstructure, or island. Add another seventy-five million to the cost. Then, once one has a ship into which one has sunk some hundreds of millions of dollars, one starts to give a lot of thought to protecting one's investment. Guns it had. The lasers helped, too. Armor was right out. That left maneuverability.

* * *

'You want me to spend what on this new drive?'

'But it only makes sense, Duque. The electric, podded, variable azimuth drive would make the ship turn within its own length. And we can get substantially increased speed, too.'

* * *

After that, the twenty thousand spent for a bronze figurehead of his lost Linda, with her breasts demurely covered, had seemed pretty cheap to Carrera. In the end the thing had cost just over a quarter of a billion, not counting aircraft. All that just to get eighteen helicopters (three of them equipped for Anti- Submarine Warfare), twelve light attack aircraft modified from crop dusters, eighteen slightly lengthened and widened, and substantially upengined, Cricket light recon birds, eight remotely piloted aircraft, and a demi-battalion of light infantry into some littoral area where they could raid.

Even with that light an aircraft load there had been problems. None of the older Volgan helicopters that were suitable, available, and affordable fit both the hangar deck's 5.3 meters of height and the dimensions of the elevators. Conversely, none of the more modern helicopters produced by the FSC or Tauran Union were capable enough or affordable enough, although they fit the hangar nicely. In the end, they'd decided— rather, the legate of the classis, Roderigo Fosa, had decided, since Carrera had simply