Devil's Due (Destroyermen #12)(76)
She’d quickly learned a yard was virtually identical to a tail, and it took three feet to make one. Feet were . . . okay, being about the same length as two average Lemurian feet, with their toes turned up. An inch was basically a finger width. From that, smaller decimal measurements were based on tenths, hundredths, and ten hundredths. But the metric system here, with nothing ready to hand to compare it to, drove her to distraction. Particularly when her misunderstanding made her look foolish in the eyes of troops she was trying to train. That impression rarely lasted once her pupils got to know her.
Besides being breveted major by Safir Maraan, she’d been made legate of the 1st’s and Kim’s personal legions. Essentially, legate equated to a Republic colonel—which no other colonel outranked. She thought that was weird, but it helped cut the red tape when she was temporarily assigned to instruct other legions. Choon had finally convinced the kaiser that superior firepower alone couldn’t defeat the Grik or even keep them at arm’s length where they could bring it to bear. They needed her advice in retraining all their troops, even more professional legions like the 1st, to fight as their allies did: face-to-face, with the bayonet. And few Allied warriors had as much intimate experience doing that as Bekiaa-Sab-At. She wished she had more help, but she had made a difference—as had other Allied “trainers” Donaghey left behind: one of her Nancy floatplanes, with its flight and ground crew. The Nancy was serving as a pattern for Republic engineers to copy, and the flyers, though young and untested in combat, were helping train the fledgling air arm of the Republic. Despite their inexperience, they were excellent pilots and had received good instruction. In fact, their relatively recent education probably made them better teachers for beginners than more hardened veterans might’ve been. Even so, Bekiaa didn’t envy them their task.
The Republic Fliegertruppe, or Air Corps, consisted of only a handful of interesting if complicated-looking biplanes called Cantets. Named after black, skuggik-size lizardbirds Optio Meek simply called crows, they were loosely based—she was told—on recollections of something called an Albatross B-1. The first had flown nearly ten years before and numerous improvements had been made, but the utility of aircraft had never been fully appreciated by the Republic until now. As far as she knew, fewer than twenty had existed before she arrived, but the country’s burgeoning—frankly astonishing—industrial capacity, barely visible at Alex-aandra, had already doubled that number in the past few months. And after examining the Nancy, they were incorporating further improvements, modest at first, but paving the way for an entirely new model, possibly a monoplane. She hoped the planes would help, but with the go date perhaps only days away, they probably wouldn’t make a significant difference. Yet.
“Heat. Ha,” Bekiaa said dryly. “Spend time in Waa-kur’s fireroom, any fireroom, then complain to me of heat.”
Meek chuckled. “Nah. Unlike me da’, I’m content ta make me life in the legions, an’ spurn the fearful sea! Remainin’ a meager optio is good enough fer me.” He paused and grinned. “There’s one, didja’ hear? A fetchin’ verse!”
Bekiaa looked at him, knowing that, like Dennis Silva, Jack was far more than a meager optio, and his simple-soldier act didn’t fool her. He obviously worked closely with Inquisitor Choon and clearly understood there were often advantages to being underestimated.
“You aas-tonish me, Optio,” she said sardonically, eyes drifting back to his bouncing flap holster as they hurried along. Like Republic rifles, their pistols were also 11 mm, though the cartridges were only half as long. What’s wrong with calling them forty-three caal-iber? she asked herself. And why not go with an honest .45 in the first place? Or .50, like our Allin-Silvas? Now, there’s a nice, round number. An’ 75 mm guns! Why couldn’t they just call ’em three-inchers? It takes a lot of stupid, wasted time to sort that out in my head, and the Maker knows I have enough to keep track of as it is. “We’re late,” Bekiaa added, still cursing millimeters in her mind as they hurried along the wooden walkway. The main road through the city to the station was baked brick.
“Aye,” Jack replied soothingly, “through no fault o’ yers—or mine. ’Twas that sodding—beggin’ yer pardon, Legate—that . . . useless reserve colonel ’oo wouldn’t b’lieve ye, a fine, foreign lady, could possibly be a act’yal legate, till ye showed ’im Gen’ral Kim’s letter! Ha! ’Is eyes near spit outa ’is ’ead! ’Specially when ’e read you was authorized ta shoot ’is fat arse if ’e didn’t get it movin’!” Bekiaa ignored the latest jab at her choice of dress, but one of her tasks in Ostia had been to personally deliver movement orders to a reserve legion gathered outside the city. Orders had been sent by telegraph but not acted upon. To her consternation, Bekiaa had seen a lot of that: a general reluctance of local commanders to leave their comfortable headquarters, usually luxurious villas, and actually head for the front. The standing legions impressed her with their professionalism, if not overall preparedness, for what they’d face, but some of the reserve units . . . “We may not’ve been here to meet the train, but it’ll not bolt off wi’out ye,” Jack consoled. “It must change cargo ’ere, an’ take on fuel an’ water, o’ course.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about. The maan we’re to meet . . .” She sighed very deeply. “He’s brilliant, of course, but with that often comes distraaction. I expect he’s already jumped from the train and lost himself by now, if he didn’t do it somewhere along the way, for a better look of some strange beast.”