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a large enough force to besiege that city and take this line from behind. But I don’t think they know that.”
    Jan was skeptical. “Why not?” she asked.
    “Because Carrera’s not a Marine nor, so far as we’ve ever been able to determine, has he ever done any major Logistics Over The Shore work.”
    “Oh.” Though she was loathe to admit it, Jan had never done any LOTS work either.
    “Wouldn’t have to be just LOTS,” said a nearby, tall and beefy, ruddy-faced Sachsen in a pause for breath between lifting shovelfuls of dirt to a sandbag. “There’s a good port at Puerto Lindo , and one almost as good at Nicuesa to the west. Can’t really use that last one, though.”
    “Why not,” Hendryksen asked.
    “Add fifty miles to the supply line and need three divisions to guard the route,” said the Sachsen. “I doubt the port could support more than two, with the increased need for trucking, so it would be a net loser. Even if the Tauran Union could muster the extra divisions, which it probably cannot. Worse, the road from Cristobal to Nicuesa is dirt, which is to say mud, most of the year. It may not be even theoretically possible to supply much of anyone from there without putting in an entirely new road.
    “On the other hand, two brigades could probably secure the place to use as a supply dump, from which we could support a fair force further east by small boat and hovercraft.”
    “And you are?” asked Hendryksen. He already knew the Sachsen wasn’t from his and Campbell’s group. Since the Sachsen was also shirtless, he had no clue as to rank.
    “Kapitänleutnant von Bernhard, at your service,” said the Sachsen, dropping the sandbags and reaching out one hand to shake. “My friends call me ‘Richard’ or ‘Rich.’ My ship, the Z186, was in for a lengthy refit, so I was available and got volunteered by my service to work logistics for the TUSF-B. I hadn’t been here six weeks before the war started, then I got caught up in the fall of the Transitway. I was almost halfway to the coast where I might have been able to steal a small boat when they caught me.”
    “Farther than we got,” admitted Campbell. “They snagged us in a drainage ditch by the northern end of Brookings Field.”
    “And we were lucky, at that,” said the Cimbrian, “that the group that caught us wasn’t feeling bloody-minded.”

    The foot of Second Cohort, Second Tercio, struggled up the central cordillera laden like pack mules, bent over like old, old men. Apropriately, they sang an old song as they climbed:

    . . . Si mi cuerpo se quedara roto,
    Formaría en la legión de honor,
    Montaría la guardia en los luceros,
    Formaría junto al mejor . . .

    Taking up the rear of his cohort’s column, as it struggled over the ridge to the south, Sergeant Major Ricardo Cruz, Second Cohort, Second Tercio, wasn’t at first sure he should believe his eyes. But there weren’t too many blondes in his country, and none with quite a proportions of the woman he saw standing with a couple of other Taurans. One of whom was—
    “Well, hell,” Cruz said to Hendryksen, clapping the latter on the shoulder. “I am very pleased you made it.” He turned then to Jan Campbell, remembered to salute, and said, warmly, “And you, too, ma’am.”
    “It was close,” said the Cimbrian POW, a sentiment echoed by the Anglian woman.
    “Were you on Cerro Mina ?” Cruz asked in whisper. When they nodded, he said, “It was closer than you know.”
    “It’s true then?” asked Campbell. “Your people killed everything living?”
    Cruz shook his head. “No, ma’am, not quite everything. I was able to save a couple. And some of the others kept their heads. Still . . . still . . . it was pretty bad.”
    “But why?” Hendryksen asked. “Your people are death on the law of war.”
    “It was what happened to the women, the Amazons, who went in before us. You think you know a group of men . . . but you don’t, not until you see them after