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Anglians to control the coasts. I would…”
    Marguerite held up a hand, palm forward. “At least you know what you would do, General. That’s more than most can say. It’s also more than I need to know, in any detail. I’ll get you the political support. You use it to good effect.”
    Again, as if one cue and even though no cue was needed, the entire headquarters building shook as a couple of Balboan fighters skimmed low over the roof.
    “And I’m going to fuck with them mercilessly,” the Gaul finished.
    Marguerite reached into a pocket, pulling out a thin communications device. “We’ll need to talk from time to time. Use this.”

    Cerro Mina road, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova

    Esmeralda was a country girl, basically. The nearest she’d ever seen of a city was the Razona Market on Old Earth where, caged, she’d been put on display as goods to be sold. The twisting road carved into the side of the hill in the course of quarrying for stone for the Florida Locks was mostly framed by jungle. But every now and again the soil had been too thin to support much in the way of plant life and a vista opened up of the sprawling cosmopolitan city below the hill. She wasn’t at all sure she liked the city; it was just too different from what she’d known.
    The people she’d seen along the streets, though, between the gate under Building 59 at Fort Muddville and the MP shack at the base of this winding road were not different from what she’d grown up with: generally brown, stocky, and calm of countenance. She felt an immediate affinity for them, as if she could step out of Janier’s staff limousine and just blend in among them.
    Except for one thing, thought the girl, my “Spanish” is so contaminated by English, the language of Old Earth, and limited by the experience of the last five hundred years while theirs, supposedly, is pretty pure. I don’t know if we could even talk.
    Janier and the high admiral rode in back, with the glass barrier rolled up between them and the peasantry. What they talked about Esmeralda didn’t know, though she was sure the high admiral would tell her anything she needed to know. She did know, though, that Janier had said he’d had a set of quarters set aside on this sleepy post for the use of the high admiral.
    He intends to bed her, Esmeralda was certain. Which is good. Then I won’t have to feel guilty for not crawling into her bed on my own, after all she’s done for me.

Chapter Three

    Disciplined in the school of hard campaigning,
    Let the young Roman study how to bear
    Rigorous difficulties without complaining,
    And camp with danger in the open air.
    Odes, III, 2
    —Horace

    Estado Mayor , Balboa City, Balboa, Terra Nova

    A weasel-faced man, wheelchair-bound, eased his powered chair out from behind his desk and around to face his commander, seated in one of the overstuffed chairs in one corner of the office.
    “She’s here right now, Patricio,” said Omar Fernandez, “the high admiral of the United Earth Peace Fleet, herself. I’d have known a lot sooner except that Yamatan Imperial Intelligence didn’t rush the information from their special source to me, and it took a while to track down the aerial routes through my own sources in the Federated States, once I knew to start looking.
    “I don’t know if there’s anything you want to do about that or even anything you can do about it. Still, I thought you should know as soon as I could tell you without compromising anything.”
    Carrera ran a dozen possible responses through his mind, very, very quickly, dismissing each as either impractical or undesirable.
    “And,” Fernandez continued, “although it isn’t proof, I consider it evidence that none of my people actually in the enemy headquarters saw anything beyond a flock of Tauran Union bureaucrats, while one did see that their super secure conference room was used, but with none of the visiting bureaucrats in it. And then she and a young