Carnifex

by Tom Kratman

  Fosa crossed himself and said a small prayer for the soul of Tadeo Kurita, along with the wish that he now be reunited with his wife and children. For, Lord, he was a good man, and a good sailor, and did his duty as he saw it . . . to the end.

  * * *

  Fosa looked ahead to where the two corvettes were being rigged to tow the Dos Lindas to port. Astern, they'd managed to get the one remaining AZIPOD working, but it was non-steerable. The corvettes would pull the bow around to steer the ship, with the AZIPOD providing the bulk of the forward drive. He guessed he'd be able to make at least ten knots that way, maybe even twelve, which put the nearest useful and trustworthy port, in Sind, a good eight or ten days' sailing away.

  "We're going to make it, Pat," Fosa told Carrera, later that night via secure radio. "We may be pumping like madmen all the way, and we're toast if were attacked at sea, or hit a really atrocious storm. But barring those, we'll make it."

  "I've alerted Christian back in Balboa to push to make good your personnel losses," Carrera answered. "A freighter will be sailing in three days with replacements for your lost Crickets and Finches. It will be a month and a half before we can replace your Yakamovs. I've given orders that a cruiser be readied to sail ASAP. That, and that another escort be sent along. But, Rod, we don't have another Patrol Torpedo until we can have some built. Will a corvette do?"

  "It will," the captain answered. "Pat, has the cruiser been rechristened yet?"

  "No, why?"

  "Because I'd like it to bear the name of Tadeo Kurita, if that works for you."

  UEPF Spirit of Peace

  In the limited confines of his quarters, Robinson paced furiously. Nothing works; he fumed, nothing fucking works! It didn't even help to take a belt to Khan's ass because she likes 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 Ciu
dad 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 1st and 2nd Legions and was clearly feeling the toll of both the long flight and the time zone change.

  "No," Jimenez admitted. "Why should I? It's your house and your Legion; you get to decide."

  It does make a certain sense, Carrera admitted to himself. I get to billet my best friends and number one and two subordinates right next door where I can harass them mercilessly. Mac gets a house to go with the wife he's getting. Artemisia—God, she's achingly good to look at, isn't she?—gets the house she probably deserves. Probably? No probably about it. She makes my sergeant major happy and she deserves whatever I can give her.

  Jimenez continued, "Besides, Pat, Mac's living in the senior centurion's bachelor quarters. That's no place to raise a family and if you want your sergeant major happy you had better make his wife happy . . . and Arti wants a family. Soon. As soon as possible."

  Jimenez smiled and then began to give off a most unmilitary giggle.

  "What's so funny?"

  With some difficulty, Xavier got control of himself and answered, "I was just thinking about how badly Arti wants to bear Mac's children. It isn't like they didn't start work on that months ago."

  So much for Lourdes giving them the use of a room for privacy, Carrera thought, drily, looking over at his wife. She, too, was laughing, even while she tried hiding her face with her hand.

  "Well, Patricio, I tried," she said.

  "What about when you get married?" Carrera asked.

  Jimenez snorted. "What sane woman would marry me? Not an issue, Patricio; it's never going to happen. Besides, I'm married to the Fourth and that's bitch enough for me—no offense, Lourdes. No . . . I'll be just fine as a sometime guest here."

  Carrera shrugged, thinking, No . . . actually you won't be a sometime guest here, since we're going to be moving the legions to the mainland over the next year. So . . . I suppose . . . why not?

  "Yeah . . . okay," he conceded. "Mac and Arti can have Number Two. Now that she's about to be married at least the young signifers and tribunes will stop trying to serenade her under her window."

  "Tell me about it," Jimenez said. "I mean, it wouldn't be so bad if they could sing."

  Quarters Number One

  Lourdes hummed the wedding march softly to herself as she crossed the hundred and twenty meters from her old home, Number Two, to Number One. Having Mac and Arti as next door neighbors was going to be great; she just knew it.

  And, better still, when they thump the bed against the wall all night, I won't be able to hear it. Besides, it reminds me of what I am missing when Patricio is away.

  Entering by the front door, Lourdes took one look at McNamara and Artemisia—coming down the stairs arm and arm, he looking guilty and she like the cat who fell into the vat of cream—and she started laughing again. She ran to the nearest room, her husband's library, to hide her discomposure. She closed the door behind her and covered her mouth again to try to stifle her laughter.

  "What's so funny, Mama?" little Hamilcar asked, looking up from one of his father's books.

  "I'll tell you when you're older," Lourdes answered. Curious, she walked over to the desk and picked up the book that her son had been reading. That he was reading was no surprise; the child had been literate for almost two years. The title, however, she found worrisome; The Battle of Kuantan by Tadeo Kurita.

  Can it be genetic, somehow? she wondered, suddenly growing utterly serious and seriously worried. Did my son inherit his father's taste for battle? God, please don't take my baby from me. He's not even five yet.

  * * *

  After his mother had left, Hamilcar returned to his reading. Kurita's dry account of the exchange between his battlecruiser and the Federated States Navy's superdreadnought, Andrew Jackson, soon had the boy quivering with excitement and a wordless longing to be there, to trade shot for shot and blow for blow. Never mind that he was, half ways, from the Federated States, nor that his other half had had little involvement in the Great Global War. It was the battle, itself, that drew him. And, he already knew, it always would.

  He knew, too, that he already understood things that were forever barred to most human beings, at any age. He understood, instinctively, without Kurita explaining it, what it meant to cross the Jackson's T and why Kurita had accepted a couple of bad hits to get his own ship in position to do that. Hamilcar understood, without anyone explaining it, the logistic and time-space factors that had dictated why the Battle of Kuantan had happened where it had and when it had.

  In short, Hamilcar Carrera-Nuñez already knew, at age four, that he had the knack.

  He closed the book, sighing, and thought, Mama and I need to have a long talk.

  4/7/468 AC, Main Parade Field, Isla Real

  "I've seen you under fire, Sergeant Major, and I've never seen you look nervous like today."

  "Sir . . . fuck you, sir," McNamara answered. "T'isn't every day a man gets married. And it's almost never a man marries a woman like Artemisia. If I'm nervous . . . "

  "You have a right to be, Mac," Carrera answered, gently. "I just like pulling your leg and needling you. Because, you know, if I didn't know you were watching me, there's a half dozen times, over the years, that I'd have been gibbering. By God, I've a right to needle you. If only for the goddamned bed thumping that's kept me up every night but the last few."

  To that McNamara had no answer, but only a sort of a question. "It worries me, sir, you know? I'm pushing sixty. She's less t'an half my age. I've got to, you know . . . get the gettin' while the gettin's good. T'e day's not long off . . . "

  "My ass."

  * * *

  A white tent sat not far from where McNamara and Carrera traded jibes and worries. In the tent Lourdes and a bevy of bridesmaids fussed and fluttered around Artemisia Jimenez, fluffing, primping, and generally polishing. She looked amazing.

  "Does my ass look fat in this, Lourdes?" Artemisia asked, worriedly.

  Lourdes looked. I should have such an ass, she thought. Then she looked again. "No, Arti, your rear end is not fat. But unless I'm much mistaken you've grown a bra cup size. How many months along are you."

  Artemisia smiled wickedly. "Six weeks. I had to, don't you see? He might have backed out."

  "Does Mac know?"

  "I was going to tell him tonight. Otherwise, he'll be so worried about me . . . hell, this is John McNamara we're talking about; he'd be so embarrassed at our being caught jumping the gun; he'd probably blow his lines. And those, he must get right."

  "And besides," Lourdes said, drily, "if he screws this up enough to delay the wedding, you'll need a new dress, won't you?"

  Artemisia dimpled. "So you see my point in not upsetting him, right?"

  * * *

  "You've upset the signifers and some of the tribunes," Carrera said, pointing with his chin at two sets of bleachers filled to overflowing with sixty or more ju
nior officers, all in dress whites and every man wearing a black armband.

  "Young punks," McNamara said, when he saw.

  "It's a compliment, Sergeant Major. Take it that way."

  "I suppose so," he admitted, with bad grace. "T'ough if t'ey t'tought about it, t'ey'd realize t'eir lives are about to get a lot more pleasant when I have somet'ing to do besides ride t'eir asses."

  "That's one way to look at it," Carrera agreed. "They really ought—" He hushed suddenly, even as the crowd did (for ringing the field there were thousands of legionaries, plus their families, who had come to watch).

  Artemisia, escorted by her uncle, Xavier, brilliant in his dress whites, had emerged from the tent. Lourdes followed, as did another eleven girls, about half and half Arti's close in-laws and the girls she had competed against for Miss Balboa. In the bleachers, sixty signifers and junior tribunes looked at the procession and suddenly had the same thought: Well . . . there are some other opportunities out there.

  "You are such a lucky bastard, Top. I believe that's the only woman I've ever seen to match my Linda."

  The band of the Legion del Cid, mercifully sans drums and bagpipes, picked up the wedding march.

  * * *

  Oh, God, I'm so nervous, thought Artemisia as she led her party forward along the carpets laid to protect her shoes and dress from the grass. What if I'm not a good wife? What if he gets tired of me? What if . . . ?

  Stop being an idiot, Arti, you and he are perfect together. It's going to be wonderful.

  But what if my tits sag after the baby comes?

  Then you get pregnant again and reinflate them.

  But what if he get tired of my cooking?

  Then you hire a cook. Lourdes already said that Patricio's gift to us is "impressive and of many parts." Besides, John's salary with the Legion, plus his retired pay from the FS Army, is huge by Balboan standards. And I can work, too. And then, too, Uncle Xavier is going to contribute.