stand. 'Tell us where,
Led by legionaries scattered among them and dressed in mufti, the crowd chanted, 'TELL US WHERRRE.'
'How much was the bribe to your family that turned management of the Transitway over to the Zhong?
'HOW MUUUCHCHCH?'
'Where are the donatives the boys of the
'WHERRRE?'
'How much have the Taurans paid you to let us become their colony?'
'HOW MUUUCHCHCH?'
Parilla stopped speaking briefly, to allow the crowd to compose itself. After all, this was a speech to announce candidacy, not an incitement to riot.
He smiled broadly, then joked, 'For the answers to these and a hundred other questions on how the old families have robbed the Republic and the people, stay tuned for election night results, my friends, because today, now, this minute, I, Raul Parilla, am announcing my candidacy for the office of
That was the cue for both the band and Artemisia. After a drum roll, and the playing of the first bars, she began to sing,
* * *
'
The President's hand lanced to the remote, to cut off the images shown on the screen as the camera panned along the galleries. They were all singing, all fifty thousand plus of them.
His nephew stopped him. 'No, Uncle, we need to see this.'
'We're screwed,' he said.
'We're screwed without some desperate measures,' Arnulfo agreed. He didn't add, but thought,
'
32/6/467 AC, Panshir Base, Pashtia
Every day got a little worse. What had begun with directed terrorism and the distant siege of ambush of roads and blowing of bridges had grown to the point that most of the Tauran Union troops were confined to their bases, under frequent if not quite constant mortar and rocket attack. The Anglians and Secordians fought to keep the roads open, to rebuild the bridges, even to combat the terrorism on behalf of the TU troops that were forbidden by their governments from actively seeking battle.
In the larger sense, though, those English-speaking men and women were fighting to let the Progressive administration in Hamilton keeps it promise not to commit further Federated States troops to the war, but to rely on their 'allies.' In the largest sense, they were all fighting to prevent what their governments considered the ultimate disaster.
That ultimate disaster? It was not that the Salafis should regain control of Pashtia, nor even that they might use it for further attacks. No; the TU leadership—though many around the globe considered that expression to the ultimate oxymoron—lived in desperate fear that the fickle populace of the Federated States might once again elect an administration that quite simply considered the TU, indeed the rest of the world, to be largely voiceless and irrelevant.
'And even
''Fighting never settled anything,'
'Tell it to the city fathers of Carthage,' Marciano retorted. 'You know what bugs me about it, Stefano?'
'No, sir. I mean, other than the unnerving blasts, the wounded troopers, the sheer frustration of being here and not allowed to do our fucking jobs, sir, what could possibly be troublesome?'
Barely, Marciano restrained the urge to slap his cynical aide with his helmet. Instead, he said, 'What bothers me is that they're able to keep this up at all. I mean, without the roads—which our masters made us give away—we can still get enough to eat. Our enemies are not only apparently eating; they've got the logistic wherewithal to bring in shells by the ton-load.'
Del Collea sighed. 'I know, sir.'
* * *
About five thousand meters to the southwest, in a small village the Tauran command had made into a no-fire zone, Noorzad looked on approvingly as one of his newer recruits, Ashraf al Islamiya, strained to carry forty kilograms worth of heavy mortar shells to the guns. He ported them—two at a time, one over each shoulder—from a small cave in which they had been painstakingly secreted over the last several months, to the firing position in the town square. There, two 120mm mortars chunked out their twenty-kilogram cargos toward the infidel base.
Noorzad had chosen this firing position precisely because it was an absolute no-fire zone, a place where all fire, even in self defense, was forbidden to the Taurans. Had some other village in range been a no-fire zone he'd have used that. If there had been no no-fire zones, he'd have forced all the villagers to squat around the mortars anyway. That, he had learned, would stop the Taurans from shooting back no matter
Still, the patent idiocy of the Taurans was not Noorzad's reason for approval. Rather, it was the spirited way in which Ashraf put his whole body and will into carrying the shells. It showed Noorzad the power and the truth of Islam. It reinforced in a most satisfying way that of which he was convinced anyway; that his way of life, his religion, and
* * *
With a grunt, Ashraf flipped one shell off his shoulder to be caught by an assistant gunner. The assistant likewise grunted as he took the shell, but paused to pat Ashraf lightly on the arm and smile encouragement. Then the assistant turned, took the shell in both hands, and eased the finned base of the thing into
