Carnifex (9 page)

I
love
my job
, he thought.
Where else could I get both revenge and excitement in these quantities and to these qualities.

Fuck, this sort of "excitement" I can live without,
mused Virgil Rivers, waiting impatiently, and even nervously, at the office of the secretary of war for the Federated States. River, a tall, slender, café-au-lait colored general officer could not be said to be handsome. He had, however, a friendly manner and infectious grin that most women found very attractive. He'd married well as a result of it.

Ron Campos was gone as SecWar, gone with the outgoing Federalist administration. Truth be told, nobody much missed him. That is, nobody missed him
yet.
Virgil Rivers suspected a lot of people were
going
to miss him, to miss him badly and soon. The new SecWar, James K. Malcolm, Progressive, was Campos' match in arrogance, in Rivers' opinion, but lacked both the former SecWar's patriotism and his determination. Indeed, it was widely believed that, given a choice between advancing the interests of the Federated States, or looking out for the interests of his childhood summer home, the Gallic Republic, Malcolm would always choose Gaul. Nonetheless, Malcolm was one of a very few Progressives with any military background at all. Thus, he had been a seeming natural for secretary of war in the new administration.

He's a natural buffoon,
Rivers thought,
a natural gigolo, a natural panderer and an
un
natural citizen. On the other hand, his goddamned tan is just a little too orange to be natural. Well, what can one expect from a natural fake.

Rivers' collar sported the two stars of a major general now. He'd always known he'd rise at least this high, even as a little boy.
Thank you, Daddy, for training me as well as you did.
The only question was would he rise any higher. He considered it no better than even money that he would. Rather, he
had
considered it no better than even money. With Malcolm as SecWar, he would now have given long odds against.

Still, I've had a good run, a
damned
good run for someone who's great-grandpappy retired as a master sergeant in the horse cavalry.

Rivers ported a laptop under his left arm. It contained the SecWar's daily briefing on the ongoing war. Briefing the secretary was so unpleasant, however, that it had quickly become a rotating duty. Today was River's day and he was not looking forward to it. He'd already been kept standing in front of the secretary's desk, rudely ignored, for almost ten minutes while Malcolm pretended to be busy with a file. It was another five minutes before the secretary closed the file and looked up. He didn't bother to rise or offer to shake hands.

Just as well; I'm pissed enough right now that if he did I'd probably do or say something that would move my chances of another star from dismal to none.

"Have a seat, Rivers," Malcolm ordered.

Rivers sat next to the desk, opened the laptop and faced it toward the secretary. The outside of the computer's top had a smaller screen that showed the same images as the main one. Rivers controlled the images with a small device he retrieved from his shirt pocket. He pressed a button on the device. A color map of the Republic of Sumer, highly annotated, appeared on both screens.

Malcolm looked the map over briefly. There wasn't much to see; the war in Sumer had been steadily winding down for two years. While the first three and a half years had cost the Federated States an average of just under one hundred men a month, killed, this had dropped down into the low double and occasionally single digits.

Rivers had been told not to offer commentary; that the secretary, being a lawyer, liked to direct the briefings like cross examinations in court.

"I see the Balboan sector has almost no incidents, General. To what do you attribute that?"

"They started off well and were able to enlist a great deal of Sumeri help early on," Rivers answered. He did not add, though he considered adding,
and they're so ruthless almost nobody in their sector is willing to cross them.

"And we're paying for that?"

"Yes, Mr. Secretary. Under your predecessor we had an arrangement whereby the Balboans fielded, or sponsored the fielding of, combat capable forces, for a price that was originally about fifty-five percent of what the same force would have cost us. In addition, we had to provide medical care equivalent to what we give our own, but in Balboa. The price has slowly crept up as the cost of living rose in Balboa in response to all the money they earned from us. Right now it's about two thirds of our equivalent cost. That's still a bargain, since the blood is theirs, not ours."

Malcolm frowned. He'd known about the Balboans and had mostly negative feelings. Many of these feelings stemmed from rumors. He'd heard the Balboans used torture with gleeful abandon, though no one had ever provided proof. It was said they were conducting an international campaign of terror and assassination against both the common enemy, the Salafi
Ikhwan,
and any critics of their Legion; though, here too, they covered their tracks well. In a sense, it didn't even matter if the charges were true; the international and progressivist press believed they were true and acted accordingly. There was very little criticism of the Balboan force in the newspapers or on television.

He knew they'd put to death a number of international journalists for spying, war crimes and generally aiding the enemy; they made no secret of any of that. Neither did they make any secret of their penchant for enforcing the laws of war in the most forthright and barbaric fashions. Indeed, they made it a point to broadcast those reprisals.

They did not
broadcast
reprisals taken against family members though that, too, happened. So it was said and widely believed, in any case.

"How large a force do they have?" Malcolm asked. "How much does it cost us? How big a force could they field?"

This information Rivers had at his fingertips. He'd been, in a partial and roundabout way, instrumental in the Federated States' hiring his old friend Patrick Hennessey, now going by the name Carrera, and the force he had raised. He'd kept up on developments. After all, Hennessey had always been entertaining.

"In theory, Mr. Secretary, they have four divisions. They call them 'legions,' which is a little confusing as the overall organization is called "the Legion." Then again, we call the Army 'the Army' even though we have eight 'armies' under it.

"Of those four, one is forward deployed in Sumer. That's the only one that, officially, we pay for. The other three are back in Balboa in varying states of training and manning. The forward legion usually numbers around twelve to thirteen thousand men. The total active force is about thirty-three or thirty-four thousand and rising. There is also a reserve force but they are very tight lipped about that. We don't think it's as large as the active force . . . yet. They could probably double or triple their force if they wanted to. So far they have given no indication that they do want to. What they have raised, so far, costs us on the order of seventeen billion drachma a year."

Malcolm's eyes bugged. "We pay
seventeen billion drachma
to some pisspot North Colombian city state?"

"Actually, no, Mr. Secretary. We pay it directly to the Legion. They give a portion, a very small portion, less than a percent, to the government of Balboa. But they're only a non-governmental organization, sponsored by that government. They are not controlled by it. They're not controlled by
anybody.
"

"Oh,
really?
We'll just see about that."

Goodbye, third star.

"No, Mr. Secretary," Rivers answered forcefully. "
Don't
see about that. They're quite capable now, financially, of continuing the war on their own for quite a few years, if not quite indefinitely. If you try to control them you'll just find you've let slip any control we have for a control we can't have. I know their commander.
Don't
try to control him. It just won't work."

I think the thing I like about this,
thought Lourdes, on her knees with her head bobbing and her tongue working,
is the control it gives me, not just over the sex, but over Patricio. But then,
she thought as her husband pulled her head off, stood her up and pressed her back to the wall,
but then he doesn't always let me keep control.

Despite having borne two children, a boy and a girl, Lourdes' body was unmarked, well shaped and still very firm. Tall, almost as tall as her husband, she was quite slender except in those places a woman should be more full. If anything, her breasts had improved from her pregnancies.

Cupping one of those, Carrera bent his head to tease the nipple of the other with his tongue. Lourdes loved that, he knew.

She let him continue in that for a long while, moans of sheer desire occasionally escaping her lips. When she couldn't stand it anymore she pulled his head up to kiss more intimately.

Balancing her back on the wall, Lourdes arched her hips forward and reached down to guide. A small gasp escaped her lips as Carrera thrust up and forward. The gasp became a long moan as he filled her fully.

And, for a while, she didn't think of much of anything.

"Do you really have to go so soon?" she asked Carrera, later as they lay in bed. "You only come home about five or sometimes six weeks a year. Are you so anxious to leave me."

Carrera sighed, then answered, "I take more leave than the troops get."

"Yes," she conceded, "but they only spend one year away for ever three years they spend here."

"That's only now," he countered. "Most of the leaders have been gone half the time since the war began."

"And you've been gone eighty percent of it."

To that Carrera had no really good answer. He went silent, thinking,
They don't carry the curse I do, the obligation to destroy those who murdered Linda and the children.

After a short time he offered, "You were with me there until you came up pregnant with the second child. Besides, the war won't last forever."

"It will last too long; long enough for me to become a dried up old prune."

"Never happen," he answered, adding, "You're one of those women who will keep her looks into old age. I can tell."

Lourdes shook her head, doubtfully. "I'll age, the same as anyone. And you'll grow tired of me."

"Never happen," he repeated, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her head onto his shoulder. "For one thing, you're a lot younger than I am. By the time you're a wrinkled up old lady, I'll be using a walker, too old to get tired of anything except pissing myself."

She giggled at the image. "Now
that
," she said, "will never happen."

"Yes it will."
Unless I'm lucky enough to be killed before it does.

"Speaking of the future, what's on for tomorrow?" Lourdes asked.

"Mass review of the Corps of Cadets at Puerto Lindo, then rechristening of the old HAMS
Venganza
. Want to come watch? The boys are bussing in from all over."

"No . . . no. I'm not comfortable with turning fourteen-year-old boys into soldiers."

"I love you for that, too," Carrera whispered, "for that among many other reasons."

Lourdes never asked if her husband loved her more than he had his first wife, Linda. She was much, much too afraid of the answer.

The first thing Martin Hoyer the Third noticed about the envelope was that it was pink and flowered on the outside.
How like the government to send bad news in such bright packaging,
Hoyer thought.
Perhaps if grandfather had not been such an
untalentierte teilzeit schmierfink
we would have had enough money of our own not to have to rely on the state's largess to see us through our old age. Instead he wasted his life writing books no one would read . . . even in German.

Not that Martin or his wife, or their one—unemployed —child, were particularly old. He and she were only fifty-seven and had been drawing on the state's pension scheme for a scant two years. The boy, Martin Hoyer the Fourth, received unemployment compensation, despite never having worked a day in his life. But even in two years they had seen the system go from penny-pinching to outright miserly.

At least we haven't been reduced to eating dog food. Yet.

He opened the envelope and began to read:

Dear Sir or Madam:

In accordance with the European Union Directive 2076/015 for the preservation of the public fisc and extra-planetary colonization, you and you spouse have been identified for reduction of benefits or transportation, with assets, to the planet of New Earth.

Hoyer took a quick glance at what "reduction of benefits" meant in concrete, Euro, terms and thought,
Dog food.

You and your spouse have thirty (30) days from the date of this letter to decide. Thereafter, should you decline transportation, on each anniversary of this letter you will have another thirty (30) days to change your minds, transportation schedule permitting.

Hoyer read the missive through, sighing frequently. He put it down and called for his wife. As he waited, he went through the rest of the mail.

Interesting that there's a letter too for our lazy-as-dirt son
, he thought.

The Helen (H): that amount of beauty required to launch one thousand Achaean ships of approximately eight tons empty displacement each, or approximately eight-thousand tons of shipping, and to destroy one city.
The milliHelen (mH): a more convenient measure than the Helen, that amount of beauty required to launch one ship and burn down a single house.
The Linda (L): a more up to date measure; that amount of beauty required to launch eight-thousand tons of shipping in a single ship and destroy a city.
Dos Lindas
: (ex-
Venganza)
an antique aircraft carrier of sixteen-thousand tons unladen displacement, restored and recommissioned to take part in the war waged against Salafi terrorists and their supporters by the
Legion del Cid
(qv)
.
Destroyed cities: TBA.

From
Baen's Encyclopedia of New and Old Earth
,
Terra Novan Edition of 475 AC