Carcano sat with Falman at his table. When the corporal was in his own element, he seemed very similar to him: the same formal manner of speech, the same tendency to go into more detail than necessary, the same obliviousness to social interaction. Their recruiting had put them behind on getting the initial resources in place before the Calling, but between Carcano and Falman, they had caught up, and were ready to send out the first group next week.
The group consisted of Major Miles, First Lieutenant Breda, Second Lieutenant Havoc, and Corporals Lebel, Mauser, Ishapore and Carcano from the new Ishvalan Relations Office, as well as Master Sergeant Fuery on loan from Brigadier General Mustang's office at East HQ. Their goal was to identify and start clearing wells to establish a reliable water supply, and to set up a base camp that could be expanded to provide sanitation, food and housing for the Calling, and later, for incoming refugees.
Havoc and his men set up the large command tent first. They picked a site on the outskirts of Gunja City, because the road into the town itself had become completely impassable from the war damage. Then Fuery took Ishapore, who had been an assistant comm tech at one time, and set up the comm center with him. Ishapore couldn't set up or service the equipment, but he knew how to use it and maintain it.
Meanwhile, Havoc needed to plan out the location of the other tents. The command tent would double as sleeping quarters for their small group on this trip, so they weren't setting up any habitation tents this time around. He'd already set out the locations of the mess tent, which would have a fire pit for cooking outside and the shower tent. He couldn't settle on a location for the latrine tent, though, until he knew where the wells were, since they couldn't dig the trenches where they might contaminate one.
"Gunja City was supplied by a series of wells," said Carcano, and started to mark them on a map. Miles and Breda and Havoc were standing around the table, where he had overlaid a grid on a map of Gunja City.
"The closest ones to our current position are here and here. And the mass graves that I know of closest to our current position are here and here," he continued. "We should expect to find a mass grave, anywhere from ten to one hundred corpses, in every sector. We're in an area where I worked right now, so I know where all of those are in this area. We want to avoid wells too close to graves for sanitary reasons."
"So I could put the latrine over here?" asked Havoc, pointing to the map. Carcano nodded, so Havoc sent Lebel and Mauser to dig the latrine and set up the tent for that. Then he turned back to the map.
"This well is closer to where we are now," said Havoc. "Any reason we shouldn't restore that one first?"
"No, sir," answered Carcano.
"Then I'll take Ishapore and..."
"Sir?" interrupted Carcano.
"Yes, corporal?"
"I would like to set up sector markers for this area first."
"Before water?" asked Havoc. That sounded like the wrong priority.
"Carcano's right," said Miles, who was well acquainted with the problems of getting lost in unmarked territory. "We have water supplies for a few days, even without any wells. But we have to make sure we're building from a common frame of reference."
Breda looked at the map. "So how about we send Carcano out to this well location first, with whoever Havoc wants to test and clear the well? It's not the most efficient start for marking the sectors, but it gets us to the well faster."
"Corporal?" asked Miles.
Carcano appeared to be calculating something in his head. Then, "Yes, I can do that. In fact, I can go from here to the first well, mark the sector here and the grave site, then go right over to the second well site and mark the sector and the grave site there on the way. That way, if there is a problem with the first well, they can follow the markers straight to the secondary well site right away. Then I can take this route..." and he continued to talk and lay out a path on the map.
"Havoc?" asked Miles. He nodded agreement. "Go ahead," said Miles. Havoc got Ishapore and the two of them headed out with Carcano.
When they got back a couple of hours later, Havoc was surprised to see that Lebel and Mauser had not only gotten the latrine facilities set up, but also the mess tent, fire pit and shower facilities, the latter without water hooked up yet.
Jean didn't believe it at first, until he checked out the latrine. Yep, there were the trenches, nice and neat and the right dimensions. "How did you get that done so fast?" he asked, as they walked back to camp.
Lebel grinned. "Mauser's an alchemist."
"What?" said Jean.
"That's a gross exaggeration," said Mauser, looking a little embarrassed. "I only know one circle, and all I can do is move dirt around. I can't actually make or throw anything."
"Can you move rubble out of a well?" asked Jean. "Both of the wells we looked at tested fine for water quality, but they're both really blocked up. It looked like it could take days to clear even one, without bringing in another squad. We barely made a dent even after working for an hour."
"Well," said Mauser, "I can't move anything really big. I can do dirt, pebbles. Anything bigger you'd have to break up first."
When they got back to the main part of the camp, Jean was happy to see Breda checking on something that was cooking over the fire pit outside the mess tent.
"Hav, give me a hand," he said. "This is ready, but I got to get it into the mess."
Lebel and Mauser just watched in amazement. Instead of calling on them, the second lieutenant helped the first lieutenant tip the contents of the pot into a large rectangular container, and then they carried it in together and set it on a serving table in the mess tent.
"Lunch is served," said Breda. "Get the other guys."
"You get 'em," said Lebel to Mauser. "I'm gonna give the first lieutenant a hand here."
Then he shooed Havoc over to the other side of the table. "Get something to eat and sit down, sir. With Mauser around, I think you worked way harder than me."
"He's right, Hav," said Breda and put some mutton stew onto a plate.
"You too, sir," said Lebel. "The way you got this set up, it's a one-person job."
Mauser came back with Miles, Carcano and Ishapore, and they each grabbed a tray and got stew from Lebel, then grabbed what they wanted from the rest of what was on the table. There were a basket of hard rolls, a basket of apples and a bowl of peeled raw carrots, as well as jam for the rolls, a 5-gallon tank of drinking water (room temperature), and a large pot of coffee. They didn't have any facilities for refrigeration or cooling so far.
"Where's Master Sergeant Fuery?" asked Lebel, when he was serving the last person there, Ishapore, and Fuery still hadn't shown up.
"On the comm," answered Ishapore. "I'm getting his and mine both, and taking it back to the command tent."
When everyone had gone through the line, Lebel served himself, covered the container with the stew, and sat down himself.
"You know some alchemy, corporal?" Breda was asking Mauser. "Why didn't you tell us?"
"I'm used to keeping it quiet, sir," he answered. "I guess there's no reason to anymore."
"Interesting," said Breda. "Because of Ishval, right?"
"Yeah. They were pretty eager to find alchemists back then. They might have wanted to train me."
"We always had trouble finding people to recruit, back then," said Breda. "Maybe there are other people right under our noses that we don't know about."
Half of the command tent was currently living quarters for the eight men in their group. The other half had a command table, comm center, camp desk and some folding chairs. Ishapore and Carcano were in the mess tent setting up trade with some locals to supply the mess, and Havoc was with Lebel and Mauser trying to figure out how to clear out the well. So Miles, Breda and Fuery, who was on the comm, were the only people in the command tent when the Ishvalans stopped by the next morning.
Miles was starting to set up chairs around the table, when Mistress Shan just sat down on the ground outside the tent. The High Cleric and Little Brother followed suit, then, reluctantly, so did the headman. Miles stopped what he was doing then, and came out and sat down as well. Breda stooped over and said something into his ear, and then left.
"I'm sorry I don't have any better place to offer you so far," Miles was saying when Ishapore and Carcano came out of nowhere with a large rolled up rug and a broom.
"No one told me they were coming this morning," Carcano was saying. "No one put this on the schedule. This is supposed to go in the meeting area in the command tent."
A few minutes later, the meeting carpet was laid out in the correct area of the command tent, everyone was re-seated inside, and Ishapore was serving tea from the corner of the command table.
"Major, our top priority must be restoring the Prayer House in the city center," said the High Cleric. "That is where the rites to open the Calling will be conducted. The meetings themselves can take place in a tent, but the prayer house itself is on sacred ground and is itself sacred. It cannot be replaced by a tent or any other construction."
"The rest of the initial fifty military volunteers will start arriving on Thursday," said Miles. "We're running into two engineering problems so far: the wells are much more clogged than we anticipated, and the road from here into the city center is in much worse shape. We've asked for some construction alchemists to come out and help, but we don't know yet what we can get. Otherwise, it's a lot of manual labor, and we won't really be able to start with that until our men are all in and settled."
"You still have over a month. Is that enough time to clear the wells and the road, and also restore the Prayer House?" asked the high cleric.
"It's more than that," said Miles. "We weren't anticipating doing anything in the city center at all. The facilities we were going to provide – food, water, sanitation, shelter – were going to be here. You're talking about duplicating all of that in the city center now."
"Yeah," said Havoc, whom Breda had called back from the well site. He had been standing in the entrance to the command tent, listening. "And if we're going to have a lot of traffic on that road, we have to do something to protect the graves by the side of it. We don't want jeeps or carts going off road and exposing corpses. They're not buried deep enough."
"Okay," said Breda. "Let's work backwards from the Prayer House. That's going to have the most religious restrictions, I assume. So I know we can't use alchemy to restore the Prayer House. How about using Havoc and his men?"
"During the restoration, yes," answered the high cleric. "Once the Prayer House has been re-consecrated, no."
"How long does this re-consecration take?" asked Breda.
"Allow one day. Only a few hours," Bozidar answered.
"I didn't have anything set up for restoring the Prayer House," said Carcano. "We need an engineering survey and specifications. That means either civilian contractors, or we pull in officer volunteers for the engineers. And we also need Ishvalans, clerics I assume, to work with the survey on defining the non-structural details – wall and floor finishing, furniture, window treatments. So it's not just manual labor."
"One of my classmates from the Academy ended up as an engineer," said Havoc, "and he's submitted his application. He's a captain now. We were holding off on going through the officer submittals, though. Another one with blood guilt, of course, but that's okay before the re-consecration, right?"
"Who is it?" asked Carcano.
"Liege. Armando Liege."
"We need to put an engineering squad together, then," said Miles. "Breda, can you work with Carcano on that? Don't forget, I can pull in Corsair from Briggs on a temporary basis. Report back on your progress Wednesday."
"Yes, sir," Breda answered. "So, an engineering squad for the Prayer House. High Cleric, can you get us someone to work with us on the specs?"
"I have someone in mind," he answered. "I'll get back to you once I've confirmed it. Maybe by Wednesday, maybe by the end of the week."
"So besides the Prayer House," said Breda, "we have to get the road to the city center repaired, a barrier by the road, clear enough wells, and then duplicate everything else at the city center."
"Everything?" asked Havoc. "Sanitation, yes. Water, yes. But if the road is good, can't people go back and forth for food and lodging? The problem with the city center is the same as the side of the road. Graves. Plus no cleared spaces. Mauser's got a little alchemy, so setting up another latrine tent won't take long. Just finding a location that won't interfere with graves or a well will probably take longer than setting it up in the first place. So after the wells, the main problem is the road."
"No word yet on getting a construction alchemist, Master Sergeant?" asked Miles.
"No, sir," answered Fuery. "But Captain Hawkeye says the Brigadier's schedule is cleared for the next two weeks, so he can come down and help any time."
"Mustang?" asked Little Brother.
"Is that acceptable?" asked Miles. "If he doesn't have anything to do with the Prayer House?"
"The Flame Alchemist?" said the headman, frowning.
"He can do regular alchemy stuff, too," said Havoc. "Not just fire."
"Yes," said Bozidar. "I know. He once built a chamber under the sand to save some of our people."
"You know about that?" Havoc asked, surprised.
"The infant was brought to me for a naming in the slums of East City. His aunt and uncle and uncle's brother told me the story," answered the high cleric.
Author's Note:
The story of the chamber under the sand is from Team Players, chapter Buried Alive.