Carnifex

thugs. Her head kept twisting back to look at Jorge even as her unsteady feet carried her to where the other women waited.

* * *

There really wasn't a set of commands to govern this situation, so Cruz made it up as he went. 'Look at me, you assholes!' he shouted, pointing at Mendoza once he had the men's attention. 'This man is one of ours. Blind, and not afraid to fight. Blind, and still able to see that it's better to fight than to run. Now . . . maniple . . .  attencion. Dress right . . . . DRESS. Prepare to engage in melee . . . move.'

The stiffening of the skirmish line to attention likewise caused the mixed group of students and hired street rumblers to stiffen and stop for a moment. Cruz took advantage of their loss of momentum by ordering, 'Charrrge!'

Instantly his little command lunged forward, leaving Mendoza behind. Not to worry, though, as within seconds the sound erupted of breaking bones and teeth, ripping flesh, and the screams of the beaten. Mendoza, with his keen hearing, followed that. He could have followed it easily enough with normal hearing.

He heard someone very close shout, 'Death to the fascists!'

That's identification enough. Jorge's fist lanced out precisely at the origin of the sound, catching a student in the face and sending him to the concrete of the plaza. Jorge's keen ears picked up the sound of his foe landing. He grunted with satisfaction and advanced . . . right into the flailing fist of another hireling. Mendoza blinked, was struck and then dropped like a sack. He never heard Marqueli's scream.

* * *

Cruz had to admit it; he was having the time of his life. Why, there were no end of targets, no end to the opportunity to work off his frustrations. He was squatting over one victim, a student he thought, alternately throwing lefts and rights—his club was lost somewhere behind him—at the young man's rapidly disintegrating face—and laughing maniacally the whole time.

'Motherfucker!' Wham. 'Piece of privileged shit!' Kapow. 'Pampered momma's boy!' Crunch.

* * *

Teary-eyed, Marqueli knelt with her husband's head on her lap, cradling his head and sobbing his name repeatedly. Frantically, one hand tried to wipe away the blood that poured from a gash on his head. She nearly burst from inside with relief when she saw his eyes flutter open.

It took him a few moments for his head to clear. When it had he looked up directly into her face.

'I thought you were beautiful when I first saw you singing in the choir in church back home,' he said, groggily. 'You've improved.'

* * *

The Tauran Kosmos were out on the streets of Balboa in force and with all their normal self-righteousness intact. Was there a street brawl in the course of the campaign? (And there were many.) Rest assured, the progressive, TU-supported incumbent regime partisans were the innocent bystanders in every case. Such, at least, was what was reported in the cosmopolitan progressive press. Moreover, no less a personage than the former president of the Federated States of Columbia, Johnny Prince Wozniak, was on hand to give his stamp of accuracy and approval to every claim of the press that tended to put Parilla's followers in a bad light or elevate the standing of the incumbent faction. Wozniak had never met a corrupt politician, dictator, or terrorist faction from the undeveloped parts of Terra Nova that he hadn't instantly loved.

No one on the planet really understood Wozniak's thought processes. Many, indeed, denied he was even capable of thinking. Whatever the case, incapable of higher thought or not, he was all too capable of speaking. Which he did. At every possible opportunity. Moreover, he was terribly bitter that he'd been rejected by the people of the FSC after a mere one term. If he could support cosmopolitan progressivism, support terrorism, support totalitarianism and kleptocracy, while at the same time undermining the long term interests of the Federated States, so much the better.

A very embittered man, was our Johnny Prince Wozniak.

* * *

'I loathe that man,' commented Parilla, at seeing one of Wozniak's more inane pronouncements carried on the airwaves.

'He gave us back the Transitway,' Ruiz objected.

'Yes, he did,' Parilla agreed, 'And thereby deprived us of the pride we would have had if we had fought to get it. And thereby led directly to the dictatorship of Pina. Which thereby led to the invasion. Which led to the destruction of the only force in the country with the prestige to, at least potentially, fight the corruption of the Rocabertis and their ilk.'

'Ah, never mind,' Parilla continued. 'There's nothing to be done about the do-gooding weasel, except to note that the harm he does all over the planet is in exact but inverse proportion to the good he claims he's doing.'

Ruiz shrugged. 'I think Patricio loathes the man even more than you do.'

'It's possible. When our comrade, Carrera, hates someone he doesn't do it halfway. Never mind; no one is persuaded by Wozniak except those convinced in advance.'

'That's really not true, Raul. In this country, the man enjoys considerable status. Some people really are being converted by him.'

'Enough to matter to the election?' Parilla asked. 'Enough to overcome the good will Patricio is buying us through public works and expanding the force?'

'Part way, at least.'

'Chingada.'

'Fernandez isn't worried at all, you know.'

'I know, and I don't understand it,' Parilla answered.

'He says our models are all wrong, that our analysts are contaminated by patterns of voting in the Federated States and Tauran Union. He says that people there will vote to preserve the welfare states they have. He insists that people here will not vote to create a welfare state where we don't have one. He says that they're not weak and spoiled like the Taurans and the Columbians.'

'Is he right?'

'God, Raul, I don't know. I do know that he has his own sources.'

Parilla contemplated that for a moment. Yes, he has his own sources and they are generally good ones. I wonder . . . Nah.

'Has the government budged any on the question of voting on the Isla?' he asked.

'No,' Ruiz answered. 'They insist that any vote taken there by any but the few civilian residents would be inherently suspect. All our men, those who are citizens, must return to their normal home to vote.'

'Which breaks up our unit cohesion for the one legion we have left here,' Parilla observed. 'And deprives us of perhaps twenty-five thousand votes from those deployed to Pashtia and at sea.'

'Is there any chance of Patricio returning the bulk of the force prior to the election?' Ruiz asked.

'Essentially none. He's just about to fan out from the temporary base he established at the north end of the Kibla Pass and he'll need every man he has in order to establish control over the area. And he's already short because of the Cazadors he sent to Xamar to guard the pirate chief.'

'In some ways, he's really an idiot, you know, Raul? The job he does there won't make a lot of difference if we lose our base here.'

18/4/468 AC, Fire Support and Logistics Base Belisario Carrera, Pashtia

The base was north of the line where mountain turned to relatively flat desert. The ambient temperature was, oh, a lot higher. And there wasn't a really good source of water, though the engineers were drilling.

Least of my problems, thought Patricio Carrera.

He was short Cazadors and he was short Pashtun Scouts. They were the most useful troops he had for keeping open the Kibla through which virtually all his supplies must pass. Thus, that's where roughly two thirds of them were, hunting down the remnants of the Ikhwan forces that had escaped the slaughter in the mountains. He was especially short Cazadors, what with having sent two maniples of them to watch over Abdulahi in Xamar as he rebuilt his local force.

Of course, they're not only watching over and out for the bandit, they're also watching him to make sure he keeps his end of the bargain.

He could have made good some of that lack by stripping off the individual cohorts' scout platoons, Cazadors in all but name. Somehow, he didn't think that would work to anyone's benefit. He'd have had to also strip off some of the combat support maniples' headquarters as well, that, or overtask the Cazador maniples'