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Lieutenants

A Fan Fiction Novel set in the Worlds of Miles Vorkosigan

By Scott Washburn

Author’s Note: This story is a sequel to my fan fiction novel: “Tales from the Academy”. If you have not read “Tales”, I suggest you do so before reading “Lieutenants”.

This story includes characters and settings created by Lois McMaster Bujold and are used without her permission or knowledge.

Prologue

“She’s left already?” asked Countess Cordelia Vorkosigan. “Drat, I was hoping to talk to her again. Aral and I are off to Sergyar tomorrow and there won’t be another chance. If I’d known, I would have skipped the lunch with Alys.” She took a seat in the Yellow Parlor of Vorkosigan House and accepted a cup of tea from Ekaterin, her daughter-in-law.

“She seemed rather eager to be off with Jer,” said Ekaterin, smiling.

“Yes, I can understand that,” replied Cordelia, smiling in turn and sipping the tea.

“I hope things can work out for them.”

“They seem a good match, but who knows? They’re so young. At that age if anyone had told me I’d end up here, I would have thought them insane.”

Ekaterin laughed. “At that age I would have thought the same! Strange the paths life leads us down. It’s a shame she didn’t take up the Emperor’s offer, though. Helen is very upset.”

“She’ll get over that. But Anny made the right decision, I think. She loves the soldiering life and being the Empress’ bodyguard really isn’t soldiering.”

“I suppose not. But you are right, she does love it. And she seems very good at it. And it’s wonderful how devoted her friends are to her. From what Miles tells me of her recent adventures she’s won the respect of the men under her command, too. That’s pretty amazing considered how hard they fought to keep her out of the military to begin with.”

“Joan of Arc Syndrome,” said Cordelia, shaking her head.

“I beg your pardon?”

“A legendary heroine of Old Earth,” explained Cordelia. “She said that God had told her to lead the armies of France to victory so the prince could be crowned king. I could never quite understand why God would care who was king of France, but more to the point, Joan became a military leader in a society even more male dominated than Barrayar’s. Many opposed her, of course, but those who believed in her really believed, to the point of worship. I think it’s like that here for Anny—not her personally, of course, but the men around her. Barrayaran men still can’t really accept women as equals—at least not in something so traditionally male as the military.”

“But she’s certainly proved she can do the job!” protested Ekaterin.

“Yes, exactly. There’s no denying what she’s done—so they try to deny what she is. Since she can’t be a woman and their equal then she has to be something more. Not an equal, but a superior. Joan claimed to be God’s chosen tool and the men of France could accept that. They wouldn’t follow an ordinary woman, but a woman chosen by God, well, that was a different matter! They don’t go in for such things here on Barrayar, but the whole Vor system is based on some people being better than others even when they are clearly not. So they accept Anny as being something special, someone they can give their loyalty to without embarrassment because she is special.”

“Oh. Well, I guess that’s a good thing.”

“In some ways perhaps. But it’s a two-edged sword, Ekaterin. While she will attract a group of fiercely loyal people around her, she’ll also collect just as many enemies and detractors. People who oppose her because she’s a woman and those who are jealous of her success and resentful of the loyalty she inspires in others. In fact, it’s a sword with two edges and a point. Because she’s in a position where she dare not make a mistake. If she makes a major screw-up, she risks losing her band of supporters when they realize that she isn’t really super-human after all. She may end up having to fall on that sword.”

“Oh dear… but not Jer. Surely he’ll stand by her!”

“One would hope. Not being Barrayaran, he’s outside the normal rules. But Anny’s walking a tightrope and there are still plenty of people hoping she falls.”

“But they can’t be thinking to stop women joining the military now! I understand there are nearly a hundred more entering the Academy this year. And Miles says they are even looking at letting women into some of the enlisted roles.”

“No, they’ve lost that fight, but that won’t stop the ones who are acting on prejudice—or anger. Anny’s made some enemies, you know, and Barrayarans know how to hold a grudge. While I’m hoping that Anny is happy with her new regiment, now that I think on it, part of me wishes she’d taken the job with the Empress. She’d be a lot safer there.”

The look on Ekaterin’s face became one of surprise and concern. “Safer? Do you think there are people who would actually try to physically harm her?”

“I hope not, but who knows? There are the four officers who were court-martialed because they tried to rape her. They’d certainly have a motive. They and their families and their friends. You know how Miles suffered his pre-natal injuries: a duel, a man condemned for it, a vengeful brother, and a soltoxin grenade in the night. You, yourself survived an assassination attempt.” Ekaterin stiffened and her hand went up to brush her neck.

“It’s not Anny’s fault those louts tried to rape her!”

“And it wasn’t Aral’s or my or Miles’ fault that young fool fought a duel and yet here we all are.”

“Oh dear…”

“I hope my fears are groundless,” said Cordelia. “But I also hope that Anny is careful. Very careful.” She finished her tea and set the cup on a table beside her chair. She didn’t mention to Ekaterin that Joan had ended up burned at the stake…

* * *

Brigadier General Thayer Sylvanus stood and watched the Regiment of Cadets pass in review.

For him.

For the last time.

His tenure as commandant of the Imperial Service Academy had come to an end. The new commandant, Colonel Vorcourt, stood to his side and slightly behind him. The Change of Command ceremony had been completed and now the cadets were paying their final respects to him. It was an old, old tradition—like almost everything that happened at the Academy.

His emotions were kept as rigidly in check as his posture. As each company came abreast and saluted him, he returned their salute and blinked back tears. He’d known this was going to be hard, but he hadn’t realized how hard.

He told himself he should be jubilant. He was wearing general’s tabs on his collar and he had a new and important assignment ahead of him. Those were Academy traditions, too. A departing commandant was always promoted and given a good assignment. A reward for all those years riding herd on a bunch of snot-nosed kaydets.

But instead he was filled with a profound sadness. He tried to tell himself that he was just tired. But he knew that wasn’t true. The truth was that he was going to miss this place. Miss those snot-nosed kaydets.

The 1^st and 2^nd Battalions had already gone by and the tail end of the 3^rd Battalion was nearing him. They were looking quite good, Sylvanus thought. But now there was a stir among the assembled staff officers near him. The 4^th Battalion was approaching and they… didn’t look quite so good. Of course it would be unfair to expect them to look very good. They’d only been here a few days and had had no chance to do any serious drilling. He supposed he should have timed his departure differently, but it had just worked out this way.

Each of the ten companies of the battalion was still at full strength, a hundred strong. The inevitable weeding out process had pared the other battalions’ companies down to sixty or seventy, but the plebes were still all here. They were led by the veteran sergeants who were acting as their company commanders until such time as they rated their own. A few of the other Academy NCOs had been added on as file closers to herd the young cadets through the review.

And they were wearing black fatigue uniforms rather than dress grays and they were marching without any weapons. But they were doing their best not to disgrace themselves and Sylvanus had certainly seen companies of raw recruits which had looked a lot worse than these boys.

Boys and girls.

There were six women in the 2^nd Battalion and nineteen more in the 3^rd, but they were swallowed up by the mass of young men and you had to look hard to spot them. Not so with 4^th Battalion. The trickle of women applying to the Academy had grown to a stream. Over a hundred of them were with the incoming class. Still only a tenth of the total, but you couldn’t miss them anymore. He glanced back at Vorcourt, trying to gauge his reaction to the women.

The last company marched past and shortly the whole regiment was back in line facing him and presenting arms. One final salute, which he returned and it was over. He sighed and his shoulders fell slightly, but a moment later he was surrounded by faculty and staff, shaking hands, saying good-bye. His personal aide, Paolo Scoggins, would be coming with him, but everyone else was staying behind. He’d miss them, too. They were good people for the most part. He hoped he could put together as good a team with his new command.

“Well, General,” said Colonel Vorcourt when most of the other officers had dispersed, “let me congratulate you again on your promotion. I know you are probably anxious to be on your way, but I was wondering if you’d come back to headquarters and let me pick your brain for a bit before you go. Have a drink, perhaps?”

Sylvanus hesitated. He did want to get out of there, but he couldn’t really refuse Vorcourt’s request. So, he found himself walking across the enormous parade ground toward the building where he had spent so many hours. Vorcourt had already replaced all the furniture in what was now his office, so it seemed quite different. In a few moments they were both seated with drinks at hand.

“I must say the job seems a bit daunting from this perspective, General,” said Vorcourt. “But I imagine you felt the same way when you took over.”

“Yes,” chuckled Sylvanus, “but we were still scrambling with all the changes required by the switch to the four-year curriculum. My predecessor did a good job when they dumped it in his lap, but changes like that can’t be accomplished overnight—or even in a year. It took quite a while to get it all running smoothly. I’m hoping that we got it pretty well taken care of during my tenure and you won’t have too much trouble carrying on.”

Vorcourt nodded. “From what I’ve been able to see, I think you are right. I can’t say that I fully agree with the changes, but that’s not something either of us has any say over, eh?” Sylvanus just shrugged. “On the other hand, they managed to dump an entirely new mess in your lap, General, and I daresay that is something I’ve inherited from you just as you inherited the previous mess!”

Sylvanus’ eyebrows rose. He had been wondering what Vorcourt’s feeling were about the female cadets—since that was obviously what he was referring to—now he knew. “It was quite a challenge dealing with them at first, Colonel, but I think we’ve gotten past the worst of it. The new women’s barracks is working out well and the rules and procedures have, too. I think if you just continue as we’ve started you should make out all right.”

Vorcourt snorted and shook his head. “I can see the view of those who support the new curriculum, but this! This is just a pack of nonsense they’ve done to win points with the Empress! Politics! It’s been the bane of the service right along and this is just the latest example.”

“Perhaps so, but I’m afraid that we—you—are stuck with it. They’re here and I think they are here to stay.”

“At least for the moment, I’m afraid you’re right. But I’m praying that someone will come to their senses before irreparable harm is done. I mean I can even see there being some provisions for women in non-combat roles, but to expect women to lead men in combat—or for the men to follow them—that’s just crazy.”

“Not entirely crazy,” said Sylvanus. “I assume you’re aware of Lieutenant Payne’s actions on her apprentice cruise last year. Quite an accomplishment for anyone, let alone a woman.”

Vorcourt just snorted again. “More politics! If she’d been a man she would have been court martialed instead of given a medal! That kind of favoritism is going to demoralize the men!”

Sylvanus sighed. He thought back to the kind of ‘favoritism’ Anny Payne had experienced during her four years at the Academy. Harassment, verbal and physical abuse—he remembered her standing in this very office with two black eyes and her nose broken—and every dirty trick the people who opposed her could think of. The few bits of actual ‘favoritism’ that had come her way hadn’t even been able to level the playing field—maybe just tilt it a little back the other direction. She had stuck it out and pushed forward through sheer grit. And then, faced with a difficult combat situation she’d taken charge and led her men into battle—and they’d followed her. In doing so she’d convinced a lot of people—including Sylvanus—but not everyone. Some would just never see and he was afraid that Vorcourt was one of them. And arguing with him would do no good at all… He got to his feet.

“Well, I do have to be going, Colonel. I’m sure you’ll manage to cope with the situation the same as I did. Good luck.” He held out his hand and Vorcourt shook it.

“Thank you, General, the best of luck to you, too.”

The colonel escorted him out of the building where he met up with Scoggins, who was keeping his wife company. Darla had come for the farewell review and now he took her arm and they walked to where an aircar was waiting for them.

“So, are we off at last?” she asked.

“At last. Happy to be going?”

“Part of me is. I will miss the place, though. And I know you will, too.”

Sylvanus grunted noncommittally.

“Yes, you will, don’t try to deny it.” He grunted again. “But such a long face! Are you worried about something?”

“Vorcourt seems very much against the idea of the girls being here. He could make things very difficult for them if he tried.”

To his surprise Darla laughed and tugged at his arm. “Let him try! While you were off getting ready for the parade this morning, I was having a nice little chat with the colonel’s wife. Charming woman. She is absolutely thrilled having the girls here! And when I told her about your tradition of having a batch of cadets over to the house for Sunday dinner, she said she would continue it—and she plans to invite a lot of the girls, too! Let’s just see him try to give them a hard time!”

Sylvanus chuckled. “Amazing.”

“What?”

“That we men continue to deceive ourselves into thinking we run this empire.”

* * *

“Lord Auditor Vorkosigan, Sire.”

Gregor Vorbarra, Emperor of Barrayar, Sergyar, and Komarr looked up from his breakfast to see the diminutive form of Miles Vorkosigan brush past the servant with a casual wave of his hand.

“Morning, Gregor.”

“Good morning, Miles. Have a seat. Coffee?”

“Thanks,” said Miles, helping himself to a cup and then sitting down opposite him. “What’s up?”

“Well, nothing, really…” Gregor paused at the look of disappointment on Miles’ face. “What? Are you getting bored, Miles?”

“It has been a while since anything interesting came along.”

“Your definition of interesting almost always means a headache for me. Are you wishing me more headaches, Miles?”

“Of course not,” replied Miles in a tone of voice that was not entirely convincing. “So what did you call me here for, Sire?” The expression on Miles’ face grew somber. “I guess I ought to remind you that I was planning to leave for Escobar the day after tomorrow. I don’t think I’ll be gone that long. I’m at your disposal, of course, but if whatever you need could wait…”

“No need to change your plans,” said Gregor very softly. “And Miles…? I’m very sorry to hear about Sergeant Taura.” Miles nodded and looked away. “If there’s anything I can do…”

“Thanks, Gregor, but I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do. But I do want to be there for her. It’s… it’s important.”

Gregor cleared his throat and nodded. “This won’t take long. I just want to get your opinion on something before you leave. Are you aware of the situation on Nova Paveo?”

Miles frowned. “Paveo? Is that the place where… no, that was Novo Hatana…”

Gregor smiled at his rare stumping of Miles. “It’s a colony of the Nuevo Brasilians…”

“Oh right! I read something about that the other week. Some sort of uprising by the colonials?”

“Yes,” replied Gregor, his smile fading completely. “And the latest word is that the NBs aren’t going to take it lying down. It looks like it could get ugly. Very ugly.”

“The NBs do have that reputation,” said Miles, nodding. “But what does that have to do with us? I mean it must be a hundred jumps away, at least.”

“A hundred and twenty-nine, actually, and through eighteen other inhabited systems.”

“Right, so what does…?” Gregor raised his hand and cut off Miles’ question.

“This came the other day,” he said, picking up a flimsy from the table and handing it to Miles. “It’s from the Polian ambassador.” Miles took it and quickly scanned down it. His eyebrows jumped up and he looked at Gregor.

“Good Lord. Are you seriously considering doing this?”

“I haven’t ruled it out. And it does open some interesting… possibilities.”

“Yes, I suppose it would,” said Miles with a calculating look on his face. “But have you considered the costs?”

“I have. The cost in treasure could be managed. The cost in blood…” he paused and looked sharply at his foster brother.

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

BOOK ONE

Chapter 1

“I miss Patric,” said Lieutenant Andreanne Payne, looking around the interior of the half-filled shuttle. The large farm boy from South Continent, who had been an almost constant companion during her four years at the Academy, was missing and it felt so strange.

“Yeah,” muttered Alby Vorsworth from the seat opposite her. “Not the same without the big lunk.”

“Well, it was a hard choice for him, but he did what he had to do,” said Jer Naddel from beside her. “Sometimes family has to come first.”

“I thought we were family,” said Alby grumpily.

“Come on, that’s not fair,” said Jer.

“I sure hope you didn’t say that to Patric!” said Anny. “He’s got enough to worry about!”

“I’m not that stupid,” said Alby defensively. “I just… well, I miss him, too.”

Anny smiled and reached over and patted Alby’s knee. “Yeah.” Their friend, Patric Mederov, was supposed to have been going with them to join their new regiment, but a serious family emergency had forced him to go home instead. He’d managed to wangle a ‘temporary’ assignment with another regiment stationed near his home. They all hoped it was just temporary, but you could never tell with the military…

Anny looked out the small window beside her. The land beneath them was growing more rugged and tall pine trees covered nearly every bit of ground that wasn’t too rough for them to cling to. A few patches of the red-brown native Barrayaran plant life showed through here and there, but Terrestrial vegetation was winning out as it usually did. They were headed to Fort Vorolson, which was in the foothills of the Parnassii Mountains, a towering range in Vortugalov District in the far northeast of North Continent. It was only about a thousand kilometers from Vorbarr Sultana but it was on the edge of the settled territories and beyond the mountains was the desolate north coast of the continent where few people lived. Only a thousand klicks farther north was the legendary Kyril Island. Just the place to put a military base.

The fort was home to several regiments and a number of smaller formations. Their regiment, the 61^st Imperial Infantry (Assault), the ‘Vorlinton Guards’, was supposed to be a pretty good outfit. Anny was sorry that they hadn’t been able to join the 42^nd Infantry, which they’d been with for their apprentice cruise, but they were the victims of their own success. The 42^nd might have been able to absorb four new ensigns all at once, but with Anny, Jer and Alby all commissioned as lieutenants due to their decorations, well, the 42^nd didn’t rate three lieutenants right now. The assault regiments, with their very high standards, were perpetually short of officers and priorities were set on the basis of need. The 61^st was at the top of the list at the moment and even with the influence of Alby’s father behind them, if they wanted to stay together it was the 61^st or nothing. It had been an easy decision. The four of them had been inseparable at the Academy and while it was inevitable that in time they would be forced to go their separate ways, they wanted to postpone that as long as they could.

What if Jer and I have to go our separate ways?

She glanced at the young man sitting next to her. He was from the planet Komarr and he had been the first one at the Academy to befriend her during her improbable journey as Barrayar’s first female officer-cadet. They had become friends and then—as soon as they graduated and the regulations allowed it—lovers. She wanted to stay with him always. Would they be allowed to?

“Whoops,” said Alby, “I think that must be the place.” He gestured toward the window. Anny looked again and saw that the forest had abruptly ended. A wide valley filled the space between two mountain ridges and Fort Vorolson filled the valley. Or nearly so; dozens of structures were scattered here and there. Large open areas, parade grounds or landing fields were also evident and paved roads crisscrossed the installation. Toward the southern end of the valley, adjacent to the fort, sat a medium-sized town, Malverton. Hundreds of people and many vehicles could be seen busily moving about as their shuttle passed low over the base.

The shuttle’s turbines took on a higher pitch as the vehicle slowed, hovered, and finally set down on a concrete pad near what was clearly a hangar. A dozen other shuttles were parked nearby, many of them with their maintenance panels open and crewmen working on them.

“All right, we’re here,” said Anny unbuckling her safety harness and standing up. “Grab your gear and let’s report in. The 61^st Infantry is waiting for us!” She spoke lightly and smiled, but inside she was tense and worried. This was no temporary assignment, this was going to be her regiment. For years, possibly for her entire career. What would it be like? Would she be accepted? What if they didn’t accept her? She remembered the wonderful sense of comradeship that had existed in the 42^nd when they were there. It was the thing her innermost soul craved, what she’d been dreaming of when she began her crazy attempt to join up. But it was a thing that could only be given freely. There was no way to take it by force no matter how determined she was. If the Regiment wouldn’t take her in, there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. She glanced at Jer and Alby shouldering their duffles. At least I’ve got them. No one can take that away. But she knew that wasn’t really true either… she’d already had Patric taken away….

The shuttle’s hatch swung open and Anny headed for it. She was the senior officer aboard and tradition demanded that she exit first. Jer and Alby followed and the half-dozen enlisted personnel who had shared the ride with them held back to let the officers go first. Unlike when they arrived to join the 42^nd when they’d been dumped out alone two kilometers from the headquarters building as a prank, there was a sergeant waiting for them with three privates and two utility vehicles parked next to the landing pad. The sergeant saluted her smartly. “Sir? Welcome to Fort Vorolson. The boys will take your gear to your quarters, I’ll take you to headquarters.”

Anny returned the salute. “Thank you, sergeant.” She turned her duffle over to one of the privates and exchanged grins with Alby and Jer. Quite a change!

“Well, this is more like it,” said Alby, handing off his own load. They got into the vehicle, Anny sitting next to the sergeant and Jer and Alby in the back. The vehicle started forward and the sergeant steered it onto a road that led away from the shuttle pads and toward a distant group of buildings set against the forest-covered ridge.

“The lads with your gear are just from the duty company, Lieutenant,” said the sergeant. “We’ll have to get you a proper set of dog-robbers once you’re assigned to companies.”

“A set of what?” demanded Jer.

“Batmen, sir. Personal orderlies.”

“I know what a batman is. Never heard the other term.”

“Just a bit of slang we have up here, sir.”

“Beautiful day,” commented Alby. “Nice and cool. It’s sweltering back in Vorbarr Sultana. Does it stay like this all summer?”

“Mostly. We do get some serious thunderstorms at times. But wait until Winterfair, sir. Three meters of snow on the ground. You’ll miss the heat.”

“So what’s the 61^st like?” asked Jer. “A happy regiment, I hope?”

“Mostly, sir. A good group of lads. We do have a few… well, not my place to say, sir. But I’m sure you’ll do fine.” He cast a glance at Anny as if he was reevaluating his last statement. Suddenly he tromped on the brakes and the vehicle slowed sharply. Anny had to put her hand on the dash to keep from being thrown forward. “Bloody hell,” growled the sergeant. “Sorry sir.” Anny looked ahead and saw that an enormous vehicle was crossing the road in front of them. “Those maniacs know they’re not supposed t’do that!”

“Someone from the 283^rd, I presume?” said Anny.

“Could hardly be anyone else!” exclaimed Alby. “Look at the size of that thing!”

“A Mark XXI heavy tank,” whistled Jer. “Never seen one close up before.” Anny stared at the behemoth. It looked to be about half the size of Vorkosigan House. One of the other units at Fort Vorolson was the 283^rd Independent Tank Battalion. They had ten of the Mark XXIs. Each vehicle was so big and so powerful it rated as a platoon all by itself.

“Wow,” said Alby. “I read that they’ve got the weapons and shielding of a light cruiser. How’d ya like to command one of those babies?”

“No thanks,” said Jer. “Just a big target begging for something even bigger to make it a big hole in the ground. I’ll stick with my battle armor, thank you very much.”

“Right you are, sir,” said the sergeant. “And they’re not supposed to drive the damn things on the roads!”

“Well, technically, I don’t think it’s actually on the road, sergeant,” said Alby, pointing. Anny looked and sure enough the tank’s mammoth caterpillar treads were not touching the ground. They floated a dozen centimeters above it. The tank was running on its anti-grav units. Indeed, a moment later the whole thing took to the air, turned north in a lazy arc and headed off, gathering speed every second.

“Show offs,” muttered the sergeant, setting their own vehicle into motion again.

“It’s getting so you can’t tell the tanks from the space craft,” said Jer.

“Pretty darn impressive, all the same,” said Alby, his eyes still following the tank which was dwindling to a speck above the ridge. “Wouldn’t mind seeing the whole battalion on the move all at once.”

“Not likely to get the chance, sir,” said the sergeant. “The great ruddy things cost so much to run and maintain all but three of ‘em have been put into storage. Can’t say I mind: a lot safer on the roads.”

“Huh,” said Alby sadly. Next to fireworks and other things that went boom, there were few things Barrayarans liked better than huge, clanking war machines.

Their own vehicle was now passing a large parade ground where several hundred men were engaged in calisthenics. Just beyond the parade grounds were the barracks and other buildings belonging to the 61^st Infantry. Or so a large sign next to the road announced. The regimental crest was blazoned on the sign: a pair of crossed bayonets surrounded by fancy scrollwork. Written on a narrow banner below was the regimental motto: ‘Give them the cold steel!’ Anny glanced at the sergeant and saw that on his collar he had a brass ‘61’ on one side and ‘VG’ on the other. The 42^nd Infantry had worn similar insignia, but they were very particular about who was allowed to wear them. She wondered what she’d have to do to earn hers here.

“Wow, quite a change from Fort Vormeyer!” exclaimed Alby, pointing at the buildings. Anny looked and agreed. The fort on South Continent where the 42^nd was stationed had all been squat, flat roofed concrete blocks. The buildings here were mostly made of the local timber. Wood plank siding or sometimes actual logs formed the walls. The roofs were steeply pitched and covered with shingles. In some ways it reminded her of her home village in the Dendarii Mountains, except none of the buildings in Red Rocks were nearly as large as the buildings here—and few were as well kept up. Everything looked freshly painted, indeed, she spotted a work crew on ladders by one of the buildings; lawns were closely mowed, shrubbery pruned, and neat paved walkway, lined with tall pines ran between the buildings.

Their vehicle turned into a circular driveway in front of one of the larger structures. A sign proclaimed it to be regimental headquarters. The other vehicle with their gear continued on its way, presumably to their quarters—wherever they might be.

“Here you are, gentlemen,” said the sergeant, bringing the vehicle to a halt. “Just go right through the main doors. There’s an information desk just inside. They’ll get you to the OOD. Report to him.”

“Thank you, sergeant,” said Anny, climbing out. Jer and Alby joined her and they headed up the steps. A pair of sentries were flanking the doors and they came to attention as the trio passed inside. As promised, there was a desk inside the doors and an enlisted man gave them direction to the duty office. The interior of the building had lots of wood paneling and wood floors set off by brass hardware on the doors and stair railings. Paintings of famous battles and past colonels hung on the walls.

The Officer of the Day, a lieutenant, was on the comconsole when they entered the duty office so they waited patiently until he was done. “Yes?” he said when he finished.

Anny, as the senior, saluted and said: “Lieutenants Payne, Naddel and Vorsworth reporting for duty, sir.”

The lieutenant casually returned her salute. “Your orders?” Anny and the others had them ready and handed over the documents which the OOD tossed into a basket on his desk. “Okay, pretty much everyone’s out in the field at present and no one left any orders for you. So, you may as well head over to the BOQ and get yourselves settled. I’m sure the Adjutant is going to want to talk to you before you get your duty assignments. But in the meantime, welcome to the 61^st. I’m Nate Gilchrist.” He offered his hand and Anny took it and then the others did so as well.

“Glad to be here,” said Anny.

Gilchrist snorted. “You won’t be. The place is a madhouse.”

Anny raised her eyebrows, but only replied: “Well, we better get over to the BOQ. I’ve downloaded a map of the base so we shouldn’t have any trouble finding it.”

“I can get a car for you if you want,” offered Gilchrist.

“No thank you, sir. It’s a beautiful day and we’d like a look at the base. Besides, we’ve been on a shuttle for two hours. Nice to stretch our legs.”

“Suit yourself,” said Gilchrist and turned back to his comconsole.

“Madhouse, eh?” said Alby as they went down the steps from the building. “Not sure I like the sound of that.”

“Don’t pay it any mind,” replied Anny. “Commodore Koudelka once told me that every regiment and every ship claims to be the worst madhouse in the service. It’s a point of pride.”

“Gilchrist didn’t seem surprised—or upset—to see you, Anny. I’m hoping that’s a good sign,” said Jer.

“We can hope,” she said. “Or maybe the Colonel just issued the same sort of bloodthirsty orders as Admiral Vorkoff did on our apprentice cruise.” During their cruise as cadets the officer commanding the task force had been so worried that Anny’s presence as the only woman was going to reduce his command to chaos that he’d exiled her to an isolated ship and ordered his men to not even look at her. Things had worked out okay in the end, but she hoped she wasn’t going to face the same treatment in the 61^st. She wanted to become a part of the regiment and she couldn’t do that if no one but Alby and Jer would have anything to do with her. Well, she would just have to see how things came out. They walked down to the main road and turned right.

The layout of Fort Vorolson had all of the big support structures: hangars, garages, warehouses, maintenance sheds, armories, power and water stations and so forth, on the west side of the valley. The open areas, the parade grounds and exercise fields were to the south which provided a buffer between the base and the town of Malverton. The east side, where they were now, held the barracks and offices of the troops stationed at the fort. In addition to the 61^st and the 283^rd there was the 139^th Infantry, the 32^nd Artillery Battalion and a half-dozen smaller units of engineers, transport troops, medical troops and the like. All put together they formed the 25^th Brigade under the command of General Vorsilva.

The main road they were following bisected this part of the base. The 61^st’s structures were along one side and the 139^th’s on the other. While there was a bustle of activity on the 61^st’s side, the other side looked nearly deserted. “The 139^th must be out on exercises or something,” remarked Alby.

“No, I don’t think so,” said Jer. “They’re a reserve regiment, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right. Still, they’ll probably all come flooding in sometime this summer, I’d think.”

Anny looked at the empty barracks across the road. The Barrayaran military boasted over two hundred regiments plus a horde of additional units. It was one of the biggest militaries in the wormhole nexus, probably second only to the Cetagandans. But it hadn’t had a serious war to fight in a generation. Keeping a force like that fully mobilized all the time was more expensive than could be justified. So only about a third of the regiments were kept at full strength. The rest were either ‘first line reserve’ or ‘second line reserve’; they would maintain a cadre of officers and NCOs who would keep things organized and train new recruits, but the rest of the men were reservists who would only show up for refresher training a few times a year. In an emergency the reservists could be quickly recalled to the colors, but emergencies were rare and the ones that occurred could usually be handled by the active regiments—like the 61^st.

“There’s the main mess hall,” said Jer. “That smaller building must be the officers’ club.”

“Then that other building, just beyond, must be the BOQ,” said Anny. Sure enough, the small sign next to the walkway leading up to the structure identified it as the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters. It was a two-story wood building that didn’t quite look like a barracks. They trooped in through the front door.

“How do we know which rooms we’re in?’ asked Alby.

“I don’t suppose they’ve…” began Jer, looking at a directory board hanging from one wall. “I’ll be darned, there we are. Efficient.” He pointed and, indeed, their three names were there among the other occupants. “Anny, you’re in 219, Alby, 212 and they’ve put me in 104.”

“Jer, if you want to switch with me, I don’t mind,” said Alby with a grin. When they’d been visiting Alby’s home after graduation he’d put them in adjoining rooms and they hadn’t really made any secret of the fact that they were sharing a bed.

“I…” began Jer, blushing slightly.

“Let’s just stay where they put us for now,” said Anny. She looked at Jer and he nodded. They’d discussed their situation at length and they hoped to work out something where they could share quarters once they got settled. But for right now, they wanted to keep their relationship as invisible as they could manage. What they were doing wasn’t illegal, but it was by its very nature unprecedented. They weren’t sure how others would react.

“Okay, let’s get unpacked then. Meet you back here in an hour or so?” They agreed to that and then Anny and Alby went upstairs. Her room was all the way at the end of the hall and her gear had been placed inside. She breathed a silent sigh of relief when she saw the room had its own attached bathroom. While she had forced herself to use communal facilities when necessary, it was still so much simpler if she didn’t have to. From the size of the room she guessed that she had been put in a room meant for an officer of considerably higher rank than she held. Most senior officers were married and had their own quarters, or had the means to rent a house or apartment off the base, but occasionally mid-ranking officers came on temporary assignments and needed places to stay. She guessed that these quarters were meant for a major or even higher. Somehow it didn’t surprise her a bit that they’d put her here. The same thing had happened on her apprentice cruise. Hell, the same thing had sort of happened during her first two years at the Academy—although in that case her quarters were a wreck for the first year. Apparently the powers-that-be still couldn’t quite figure out how to treat her. She was really hoping that she and Jer could find an apartment in town that they could afford and avoid the whole issue.

But the quarters were quite nice. Bed, desk, chest of drawers, closet, carpets on the floor, curtains on the windows, paint on the walls, it was neat and comfortable. A number of thick, fluffy blankets in the closet lent credence to what their driver had told them about the winters up here. She unpacked her stuff and spent a while deciding the most logical places to put it. The thought struck her that when she got her batman—her dog-robber—that he’d probably decide to rearrange everything. She’d heard stories about those men: long service career soldiers who not only acted as servants but also ‘took care’ of the young officers they were assigned to. She wondered how the man assigned to her would feel when he discovered he was working for a woman? She grinned as she put her underwear in a drawer, was her man going to be able to deal with doing her laundry? Her grin faded when she remembered that she’d have to pay the man a stipend out of her already meager salary. If she and Jer managed to figure out a way to share quarters would they end up with two dog-robbers or just one? So many things I still don’t know…

She finished up and sat on the bed. She reached into a pocket and pulled out a credit chit. It was the one that Lord Mark had given to her as a reward for her actions on the apprentice cruise. It held an absurdly large sum of money—more than her and Jer’s combined salary for the next ten years would be worth. It would make their lives a whole lot easier—but she couldn’t keep it. She’d checked and it was very definitely against regulations for an officer to accept money from a civilian. The rule went back over a century to when the emperor was trying to solidify his authority over the district counts. You couldn’t have nobles rewarding army officers. No, she’d have to get rid of this. She’d give it to Lord Vorkosigan. She was quite certain he’d be able to make it vanish with no questions asked.

She was just checking the time when someone rapped on the frame of the door, which she’d left open. She assumed it would be Jer or Alby, but she was surprised to see that it was someone else. A dark-haired man of medium height with a pleasant smile and lieutenant’s tabs on his collar leaned in and said: “Hello. You’d be Lieutenant Payne, I’m guessing—but you could hardly be anyone else, could you? Sven, Sven Estaban, B Company. Welcome to Fort Vorolson.” He stepped inside and offered his hand. Anny took it and they shook firmly.

“Nice to meet you, Sven. And thanks for the welcome. You knew we were coming, I take it?”

“Oh yes, the rumor-mill was working at full power! It’s always an event when we get a batch of new officers, but when we heard that you were coming—well!” He shrugged.

“It did seem like no one was particularly surprised to see me,” said Anny. “Rather pleasant, actually.”

“I bet you’ve gotten your share of double-takes.”

“More than my share. I’m hoping that given time I’ll be accepted as an officer and people will forget that I’m a woman.”

“That might be asking a bit much!” chuckled Estaban. “Still, I think you’ll find that the 61^st is willing to give you a chance. The stories about what you pulled off with the 42^nd are damned impressive…”

“And probably totally exaggerated,” interrupted Anny.

“Even allowing for that, you’ve got more real combat experience than most of the officers here, Anny. You don’t mind if I call you Anny, do you?”

“Since you outrank me you can call me anything you like, sir,” Anny smiled to let him know she was kidding. She was assuming that Estaban had seniority over her—unless he’d been promoted to lieutenant in the last two weeks.

He laughed. “First names between officers of equal rank when off duty is the rule here. Or for officers junior to you, of course. The regiment is pretty relaxed about stuff like that you’ll find.”

“Good to know. Thanks.”

“So have you had a chance to look around?”

“Just the drive between the landing field and HQ and the walk from there to here.”

“Can I give you a tour?”

“I’d appreciate that. Let’s find the others.”

Estaban’s pleasant expression faded a bit. “Others? Oh, right, you didn’t come alone.”

“Nope, there are three of us. Come on, Alby’s down the hall.” She led Estaban out of the room and then shut the door and after a moment’s hesitation locked it with the key she’d found on the chest of drawers. Alby popped out of his room when he heard them coming and introductions were made. Anny took a look into his room and confirmed her suspicions: it was significantly smaller than hers, although still comfortable. Then they headed down the stairs and collected Jer. Estaban seemed a little taken back at the growing size of the group he was now giving a tour, but he remained cordial enough.

“You can eat at the mess hall if you want,” he said as they walked past the building. “and a lot of the junior officer will do that for breakfast and lunch to save money. Food’s not bad and they have a separate line and seating section for officers. The officers’ mess is a lot nicer, though, and most everyone eats dinner there. There’s a membership fee, of course and a couple of different meal plans. They’ll let new arrivals eat there free for a week or so until they get settled in, so don’t worry about today. It’s a nice place, really. They have some good parties and on holidays the wives decorate. Sometimes girls from the town will be invited.” He gave Anny an odd glance.

“So what’s the regiment like?” asked Jer. “How’s the Colonel?”

“Vortaglia? Well, to be honest, we hardly ever see him. He’s almost eighty and he spends most of his time at his home down on the south coast. Lieutenant Colonel Fetherbay runs things day to day. He’s not bad but you can sort of tell he’s not happy with the situation.” Estaban stopped talking and glanced at each of them, especially Alby, perhaps wondering if he’d said too much.

“The military needs some sort of mandatory retirement policy,” said Alby. “My own da stayed on way past his prime. I read that Vortaglia inherited command when the previous colonel got vaporized at Escobar. That was forty years ago! You’d think if he was any good he would have made general a long time ago.”

An awkward silence followed. It was a touchy subject: too many superannuated officers occupying too many important positions. Whether for the prestige, the salary, or just love of the military, many officers stayed on active duty until they keeled over dead or were medically retired when it became impossible for them to do their job. A lot of younger, lower-ranking officers were annoyed that they couldn’t advance because the upper slots were filled with such antiques.

“Does the regiment get a lot of shipboard assignments?” asked Anny to change the subject. It was something close to her heart. She really wanted to get out there among the stars--again.

“About average, I guess,” replied Estaban. “3rd Battalion’s with the fleet right now. They’re due back in about three months. If the standard rotation holds then it’s our turn next. 1st Battalion, I mean. Probably next year some time. Looking forward to that! Have you guys got your assignments yet?”

“No, the OOD said that all the other headquarters officers were out somewhere.”

Estaban nodded. “2nd Battalion’s doing an exercise with the 283^rd today. I guess the HQ people are observing. They ought to back before dinner, though.”

The tour continued through the pleasant afternoon weather and Estaban pointed out all of the areas of interest on the east side of the base. There was one building under construction, however, that he was unable to provide any information on. “They’ve been very hush-hush about it for some reason,” he said as they walked past. A while later he checked the time. “We better head back. Overall, things are fairly relaxed here, but they do insist on observing all the forms. Dress parade is at 1700 for the regiment.”

“Undress greens okay?” asked Anny.

“Nope, dress greens,” replied Estaban. “Sword, medals, the works. Of course since you haven’t been assigned, I suppose you could skip it…”

“We’re still part of the regiment. We’ll attend and stand with the staff.”

“Suit yourselves. But it is always a good show. We’ve got a hell of a band.”

They reached the BOQ at 1630 and went to their rooms to get ready. Fortunately, the only real differences between dress and undress greens were the stiff visor-caps instead of the soft fatigue caps, the medals instead of ribbons, white gloves, and their swords. Anny had a second tunic with the medals already on it and she quickly changed into that and then buckled on the sword belt and attached her sword to it. The dress cap with its gold imperial eagle on the front was in its box. She buffed a tiny smudge off the visor and set it on her head and then pulled on the gloves. This was the first time she’d actually had a reason to wear dress greens and she paused for a moment to admire herself in the mirror on the back of her door. She had to admit that she did like uniforms and the Barrayarans had some of the snazziest around.

Estaban had already gone to join his company so Anny collected Jer and Alby and headed out to the parade ground. With 2^nd and 3^rd battalions away, there were just the four companies of 1^st battalion assembling on the edge of the parade ground. Anny was interested to see a sizable crowd of civilian spectators lining the edge of the field. Families of the men, she supposed or just interested folks from the town. She spotted the battalion adjutant with the colors talking to the principal musician by the band and headed over to him. He looked at them in surprise as they came up and saluted. “Sir? We just reported to the regiment today and we haven’t been assigned anywhere,” said Anny. “Permission to stand with the staff?”

The man looked sharply at her but then shrugged. “Sure, welcome aboard. The staff’s lining up over there. We’re starting in about three minutes.” Anny thanked him and headed over to where several officers and senior NCOs were waiting. They stared with curiosity at the newcomers, but there wasn’t even time for introductions before a bugle called them to attention and everyone had to take their places.

The four companies were lined up in march columns on the edge of the parade ground. About a hundred meters in front of them, the adjutant had established the color line. He, carrying the battalion’s flag, had posted himself in the exact center. On either side of him, a few paces away, were the two general guides, sergeants carrying small flags called guidons. A hundred meters to one side was the band, posted on the right of the line (although from Anny’s perspective it was to her left). When the battalion commander arrived, he would take his position exactly opposite where the adjutant was standing and about thirty meters away. Anny and Jer and Alby and the other staff were to the right and slightly to the rear of that spot, the staff officers closest to the commander’s spot, then Anny, Jer and Alby and then the NCOs. She drew her sword and rested her hand on her right hip, the blade of the sword lightly touching her shoulder. It was all prescribed in the regulations.

Everyone was in position and after about a minute a utility vehicle drove up to the edge of the parade ground and two men got out, an officer and an NCO. Anny nodded her head slightly in satisfaction. She’d heard stories about commanders who would keep their men waiting in ranks for a half hour or more before arriving. It was an insult to the men who were here to pay honor to their commander.

For that was what dress parade was all about: the command paying tribute to their commander. It was a ceremonial formation that went back hundreds of years in Barrayaran history and, from what Anny learned in her history classes at the Academy, had been imported almost without change from Old Earth where it had originated over a thousand years ago. That the commander had arrived so promptly spoke well of the 61^st.

As the officer got closer Anny was surprised to see that he was only a captain. But then she remembered what Sven Estaban had told them: Colonel Vortaglia was rarely here and the lieutenant colonel, who would normally command the 1^st Battalion, was in command of the whole regiment. Which meant that someone else had to command 1^st Battalion, probably the senior captain.

The captain was walking to his post when he noticed the extra officers in the staff row. He frowned and made a detour to speak to the adjutant. Anny couldn’t hear what was said, but she imagined the captain was wanting to know who the strangers were. After a moment he nodded and walked to his spot. The NCO who had been with him was the battalion sergeant major and he went to his own place, down near the left end of where the battalion line would form.

Everything was ready. The adjutant looked toward the band and nodded his head. A moment later a bugle rang out playing To the Colors. This was one of Anny’s favorite bugle calls and it sent a chill down her spine and set her close-cropped brown hair on end, her scalp tingling. Immediately the second company began to move, followed a few moments later by the others. They converged on the adjutant and went from column into line and then halted. The color sergeant stepped forward and took the flag from the adjutant and the companies’ captains had the men dress their ranks on the colors.

The band, which had struck up a lively march while the troops were moving, finished up and silence ensued. The adjutant looked to his right and then to his left, seeing that all was in order. Then he stepped back and commanded: “Battalion, Shoulder-Arms! Guides—Post!” The men brought their rifles down to their right sides and all the officers, sergeants, and guides went to their spots, the two general guides taking positions on the extreme ends of the line. The captain commanding the battalion had not moved a muscle, for this was the oddity in dress parade: the commander was just a spectator, the adjutant ran the show.

The adjutant turned to his left and marched down to the right end of the line and faced about, looking back along the line. He put the battalion at parade rest. All the officers rested the points of their swords on the top of their left boots and folded their hands across the hilts.

Then the adjutant took a breath and ordered: “Music! Beat-off!” The principal musician raised his baton and there was a roll of the drums and a trill of the fifes as they did the ‘three cheers’. Then they broke into another tune and marched forward and wheeled to their left and moved across the front of the battalion. Estaban was right: they were very good and Anny’s hair was soon standing up again. Damn, she loved this! She knew that all this ceremonial stuff served no real purpose and the close-order drill was totally obsolete on a modern battlefield, but she still loved it. She never felt more like a soldier than during these moments. Just a few weeks ago she’d turned down a very tempting offer by ImpSec to serve on the Emperor’s—the Emperor’s!—security detail. There had been a lot of reasons for her decision, but this was an important one: in ImpSec she wouldn’t get to do things like this anymore.

The band reached the far end of the line and countermarched and came back the way it had come, playing another tune. They came opposite their original position, wheeled back into line, countermarched again, and finished up with another ‘three cheers’. Anny let out her breath.

The adjutant had the battalion open ranks and then marched across the front of the battalion until he was exactly opposite the commander and then turned and came to a spot about ten paces from him. He turned around to face the battalion and commanded: “Battalion! Present-Arms!” With a slap and a crack, hundreds of rifles were brought forward in front of the men. All the officers raised their swords so the hilts were opposite their right eyes and then they were slowly lowered so that the points were near the ground, pointing slightly to the right. The adjutant spun around again and saluted the commander. “Sir, the parade is formed.”

The captain drew his own sword and commanded: “Battalion! Shoulder-arms!” He then quickly ran them through the manual of arms, shifting the rifles from one position to another, ending up with the men back at order arms with the rifle butts on the ground. He then returned his sword to its scabbard and became a statue again.

This was the adjutant’s cue. He faced the battalion and ordered: “First sergeants, to the front and center-march!” The four top sergeants stepped out from the ranks, marched to the center and reported the status of their companies. After sending the sergeants back to their posts the adjutant turned and saluted the commander. “All present or accounted for, sir.”

“Very good,” said the captain returning the salute. “No additional orders at this time, lieutenant.”

“Yes sir.” The adjutant turned to face the battalion. “Attention to orders! The parade is dis-missed!”

All the officers returned their swords to their scabbards. The adjutant marched forward until he was in line with all the company officers and then turned to face the commander. All the other officers faced in toward the adjutant and marched forward to close on him. The staff officers, Anny, and all the rest went and attached themselves to the end of the line. When all were there the adjutant commanded: “Officers-front! Forward-march!” Everyone turned to face the commander and then marched forward in a line. When they neared the commander, the adjutant halted them and commanded: “Officers, hand-salute!” Everyone saluted and the captain returned it. He then relaxed and smiled.

“Nicely done everyone. Excellent job. As you might have noticed, we have a few newbies with us today,” he nodded in Anny’s direction and heads turned. “But we’ll save introductions until dinner. You can dismiss the men and I’ll see you shortly in the mess.” They all saluted again and then relaxed. The four company commanders gave small waves of their hands to their first sergeants who immediately marched the companies back to the barracks. The staff NCOs quickly disappeared, but the officers became a rather unmilitary gaggle strolling in the direction of the officer’s mess. A few of the civilian women, wives or girlfriends Anny supposed, intercepted some of them and strolled along. Sven Estaban came over and joined Anny and her friends. A number of other officers gathered around them as well.

“So,” said Estaban, “what did you think? Are we up to Academy standards?”

“It was wonderful,” said Anny and she meant it.

“Very sharp,” said Jer.

“As good as I’ve seen,” added Alby.

“Uh…” said Anny, lowering her voice, “who’s the captain in command?” She’d memorized the names and faces of the senior officers, but hadn’t gotten down to the captains.

“Oh,” laughed Estaban. “That’s Captain Vorglanov. Fetherbay has brevetted him a major, but it’s strictly unofficial, no rank, no pay, not even the tabs. Doesn’t seem to bother him. He’s all right.”

“So, Sven, you appear to know our guests already?” asked one of the other officers.

“Met them at the BOQ this afternoon. Just a lucky encounter.”

“Care to tell us their names or is that a secret?” said another.

Estaban seemed to enjoy being the center of attention and he smiled. “Well, Vorglanov did say introductions could wait, but I guess there’s no real harm. These are Lieutenants Payne, Vorsworth and Naddel, just joined the regiment today.” A chorus of welcomes and names flowed back at them, far too many names to remember, but Anny smiled and nodded her head anyway.

As they walked, the conversation died away when a low rumble caught their attention. Every head turned toward the ridge to the east and a few moments later the rumble grew to a roar as a swarm of dark specks appeared. The specks grew quickly and Anny could see that there were several dozen assault shuttles headed their way. The noise penetrated to her bones as they screamed overhead.

“Second battalion, back from their exercise!” shouted Estaban in her ear.

The noise faded as the shuttles came in to land across the valley from them. “Guess the Old Man will be at dinner after all,” commented one of the officers. The conversation started up again as the group strolled down the road toward the Officers’ Mess. Various questions were tossed Anny’s way, but they were all in the nature of small talk and she was able to field them and toss them back with no problem. As they neared the main mess hall, they saw that the troops had already shed their dress uniforms and were streaming into the building wearing fatigues. A bugle sounded ‘dinner call’. Anny raised an eyebrow: a lot of units had done away with most of the old bugle calls for the day’s activities, only retaining a few. It seemed like the 61^st was clinging to the old ways and Anny found that she approved.

They reached the Regimental Officers’ Mess building and went up a short flight of steps and through the doors. A smile came to Anny’s face. When they’d been with the 42^nd, the regimental officers had created a facsimile of a traditional mess inside a modern steel and concrete building. Here, the 61^st had the real thing. From the outside the building had looked like many of the others: timber construction and perhaps three stories high. Inside, it was just one floor with high walls and a towering ceiling which was really the underside of the steeply pitched roof, supported by exposed beams and curving trusses. Tall windows lined two of the walls, some of them with stained glass decorations. And everywhere there was wood. Rich, dark, polished wood. Parquet floors, paneling on the walls and elaborate trim everywhere. Brass chandeliers hung down from the ceiling on long chains and wall sconces held more lights. Just as with the 42^nd, old flags and banners hung in rows. Beautiful. Her heart seemed to swell.

There were shelves and rows of wood pegs near the door. Hats and gloves went on the shelves and swords and sword belts were hung on the pegs. White-tunicked stewards were bustling about, setting tables and offering to bring drinks from the bar. Unlike the farewell dinner she’d attended with the 42^nd, tonight was just an ordinary night and the officers found tables or stood around as they pleased. Anny got a beer from the bar, as did Jer and Alby. She was getting hungry, but she decided to mingle for a bit longer. She truly wanted to become friends and comrades with these people. She would be here, working with them, for years to come. First impressions were important. She chatted with anyone who came near and most seemed friendly enough. A few scowled and kept their distance and she got some very odd looks from some of the women, but overall it went well.

Captain Vorglanov came by and they talked for a bit. “Fetherbay and the lot from 2^nd Battalion will be here shortly, so we’ll save the formal introductions for then,” he said. “Have you got your assignments yet?”

“Not yet, sir. We’re all a bit curious.”

“No doubt! No doubt! But no one’s told me anything, either. I’ve got an open slot or two in 1^st battalion, but we’ll just have to wait and see where they put you, eh?” There was a commotion near the door and some raised voices and heads turned. “Ah, there they are. Come on, I’ll introduce you to Fetherbay. Don’t worry, he growls, but rarely bites.” He led the trio over toward the door where a tall man wearing black fatigues with lieutenant-colonel’s tabs was slowly making his way through a small crowd of people. He had a thin face with prominent cheekbones and a long boney nose. His brown hair was close-cropped with a touch of silver at the temples and a small mustache. His eyes were brown, too, and they were twinkling in amusement as he laughed at some joke that had been made.

“Welcome back, Colonel,” said Vorglanov when he got close. “Everything went well, I hope?”

“Well enough,” replied Fetherbay. “We need to work with the 283^rd more often, the coordination still isn’t what it ought to be. But who have you got there?” He looked past Vorglanov toward Anny. “Our new lambs?”

“Yes sir, arrived this afternoon. They haven’t been formally introduced to the regiment yet. Thought we’d wait until you and the others got back.”

“Vorsworth, Naddel and Payne,” Fetherbay said nodding toward them. “I was informed you’d be coming. Not much doubt about who’s who!” He proceeded to shake hands with all of them. “Vorsworth, I served under your father about a dozen years ago. How is he these days?”

“Well enough, sir, although he’s having trouble adjusting to retirement,” replied Alby. Anny looked at her friend’s face. The truth was that Alby’s father, after sixty years in the military, was wasting away. He’d looked ghastly when Anny had seen him at Vorsworth House. She doubted he’d last the year.

But Fetherbay, who hadn’t seen him, chuckled. “Yes, retirement doesn’t agree with a lot of people!” This produced a number of laughs from the surrounding officers. Had that been some oblique reference to Colonel Vortaglia? “But let’s get these introductions over so we can eat,” continued Fetherbay. He looked to his adjutant, a captain, who stepped up on to a chair and said in a loud voice:

“Gentlemen! Ladies! If I can have you attention!” He got it immediately and he gestured to Fetherbay.

“Evening everyone,” said Fetherbay. “As most of you know by now we’ve got three new officers joining the regiment today. And apparently the 61^st must have done something good because this year they’ve sent us lieutenants rather than ensigns! Actual proof that it is still possible to be promoted, gentlemen!” This produced a laugh from the officers. Anny and Jer and Alby stood there, feeling a bit awkward. Academy cadets were normally commissioned as ensigns when they graduated. But the three of them had all managed to earn medals while at the Academy and an old rule mandated that they be commissioned lieutenants instead. It didn’t happen often and Anny wasn’t certain how others might feel about that. She caught sight of at least a half-dozen ensigns in the crowd; they would all have been with the regiment for a year or more and yet she outranked them. Would they resent it?

“So, let me present our new comrades,” continued Fetherbay. “Lieutenant Payne, Lieutenant Naddel and Lieutenant Vorsworth. Welcome to the 61^st!” Applause and a few restrained cheers erupted from the assembly that went on for half a minute and then petered out. Anny wasn’t sure if they were supposed to respond in any way, but as the applause died people began to turn away. Apparently not. Good.

“Gentlemen,” said Fetherbay. He was clearly addressing the three of them. “I’m sure you are all eager to know what your assignments will be. Why don’t we discuss it over dinner?” He gestured toward one of the larger tables.

Anny blinked in surprise. “Certainly, sir,” she managed to blurt out.

Fetherbay collected his adjutant, a captain named Vorjannis, along with Captain Vorglanov and the commander of 2^nd Battalion, Major Waski and they all sat down at a round table. Stewards converged on them from all directions and shortly they had drinks and placed orders for their food.

“So, that was quite a little fracas you folks had with the 42^nd,” said Fetherbay once they were all settled. “It’s the most exciting thing that’s happened since the 26^th put down that triple hijacking out near Botman’s Planet, what? Three years ago?”

“Four, sir,” said Vorjannis.

“Yes, that’s right. But the last time the 61^st heard shots fired in anger was twelve years ago and there aren’t but a handful of men still with the colors who were there. You three are going to be celebrities for a while, I’m afraid.” He swept his gaze over the three of them, but they were spared having to think up some reply by the stewards arriving with their food. Anny had ordered a steak and it was thick and juicy.

“But, as for your assignments,” said Fetherbay after a few minutes of uninterrupted chewing. “Lieutenant Vorsworth, I saw in your files that you have a sub-specialty in computers and electronic warfare, correct?”

“Yes sir,” said Alby. “It’s always been sort of a hobby of mine.”

“Well, as it happens, we have need of your talents. We’re building a new facility up at the north end of the base.” Anny exchanged glances with Jer and Alby; clearly this was the mysterious building Estaban had showed them earlier. “It seems that the bean-counters in Vorbarr Sultana think we’re spending too much money keeping the regiment trained. Their solution is to install a simulator facility like they use at the Academy.”

Captain Vorjannis snorted loudly. “I’ve seen what those facilities cost! It’ll take fifty years for this one to pay for itself. Typical bureaucratic stupidity!”

“No doubt,” said Fetherbay. “I’ve never had the opportunity to try one of the simulators, myself, but as a veteran of both simulations and real combat, how would you rate them, Lieutenant?”

“Uh, well, they are pretty much indistinguishable from the real thing, sir,” said Alby.

“Really?” Fetherbay looked skeptical.

“Yes, sir. When the man next to you gets sliced in two by a plasma arc, the blood and entrails look and smell the same in the simulator as they do in real life.”

Everyone at the table was staring at Alby. Including Anny and Jer. Alby had told and re-told the story of his part of the battle on the planet Dounby during their training cruise a dozen times, but he’d never said anything about that! Fetherbay looked taken back. “Uh… well, it’s good to know we’ll be getting something useful! But in any case, they have a whole crew of technical boffins up there installing these things, but as far I know not a one of them has any combat experience. I’m going to want you to get involved with setting up the facility and getting it operational. If I’m going to be forced to rely on simulations, I want to be sure they are doing the job and not filling the men’s heads with computer-generated nonsense! Think you can do that for me, Vorsworth?”

“Yes, sir. It would be my pleasure,” said Alby with a smile. Anny was certain the smile was genuine. This would be right up Alby’s alley. He loved that sort of stuff and there was no denying he was good with simulator programming! She suppressed a smile of her own at the thought of the prank he had played on a rival company during their second year at the Academy.

“Good! You’ll be attached to my headquarters company during the assignment. Later on we can find something else for you to do. Lieutenant Naddel.” He looked at Jer.

“Sir?”

“You’ve had extra training in heavy weapons, correct?”

“Yes sir.”

“Then I believe there’s a post for you in 2^nd Battalion, right, Anthony?” He looked at Major Waski.

“Yes sir,” replied Waski. “I can find a place for him in H Company; we’ve been short an officer for the anti-tank platoon since you ‘borrowed’ Janowittz and never gave him back.”

“Stop bitching, Anthony,” said Fetherbay with a smile. “Everyone’s short-handed and here I’ve given you a bright, shiny, new lieutenant. Don’t break him, God knows when we’ll get any more.”

“Yes sir. And thanks. Naddel, report to Captain Adronov in the morning.”

“Yes sir,” said Jer. He glanced at Anny and smiled, but she didn’t return it when she saw that Fetherbay was looking at her now.

“So, Lieutenant Payne, what should I do with you?”

“Sir?” Anny was suddenly tense. “I… I was hoping for an assignment with an infantry company.”

“Were you now? I see that you specialized in infantry tactics during your last year at the Academy. You like commanding infantry?”

“Yes sir. I commanded my cadet company for three years and, well, you know what I did with the 42^nd.”

“Indeed. Your record is very impressive, but that creates certain… problems.”

“Sir?” Anny didn’t like where this seemed to be going—wherever that was.

“Well, completely leaving aside the fact that you’re the only woman in the entire Imperial forces, you also have more combat experience and hold a higher decoration than any officer in the entire regiment, except for our beloved Colonel, of course. And yet at the same time, despite all of that, you are also a wet-behind-the-ears shavetail, fresh out of the Academy. Plunking you down in the midst of a veteran infantry company might cause… friction.”

“Sir, I’m sure that I can fit in anywhere you…”

“It has been suggested,” said Fetherbay, putting strange emphasis on the last word, “that I find some spot for you on the regimental staff. Operations or Planning, Training, perhaps. Does any of that appeal to you, Lieutenant?”

Anny swallowed nervously. Damn , she hadn’t expected a grilling like this! She’d just expected to be assigned somewhere. What she said now might affect her entire future career! She glanced around at the others at the table and every eye was on her. “Sir… I’d be honored to serve the regiment in any capacity you think fit.” She forced the words out of her mouth, but they weren’t really true. She’d already let herself be talked out of applying for the naval track back at the Academy. She didn’t want a staff job, dammit! But it wasn’t up to her…

“I read in your file that after you were wounded on Dounby, you spent the rest of your cruise working on the battalion staff. Did you enjoy that?”

After Dounby she’d been under virtual house arrest on the flagship. Did Fetherbay know that? “It… it was interesting work, sir. But I would have preferred to return to my troops.”

“But they didn’t let you.”

“No sir.”

“Bastards.” The side of Fetherbay’s mouth quirked up in a half-smile. Anny was so startled she couldn’t think of any reply. Fetherbay took a sip from his wine and put the glass back on the table. “I could find a spot for you on the staff, but… Vorglanov here has been wheedling me for one of you folks from the moment we learned you were coming. Honestly, Alex, you’ve been like a kid asking to open his Winter Fair gifts early!” He smiled at the 1^st Battalion commander.

“Sorry, sir,” said Vorglanov, not smiling in return. “But Sergeant Milroy has been commanding 3rd platoon of C Company ever since you brevetted me to take the battalion and Vorstang had to take the company—almost two years, sir. He deserves to go to OCS—you know that, sir—and I just didn’t have anyone else to replace him—until now.”

“So you’d like to have Lieutenant Payne in your battalion?”

“Yes sir. Well, her or either of the other two, sir, I’m not particular.”

“The hell you’re not,” snorted Fetherbay. “But in any case… very well, she’s all yours, Alex. God help you.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Vorglanov. He turned his gaze on Anny. “Report to Lieutenant Vorstang, C Company, in the morning.”

“Yes sir!” said Anny, her face breaking into a smile. Her company back at the Academy had been C Company! A good omen?

The stewards cleared the table of the dinner dishes and set out coffee for everyone. The wine glasses were still there, of course, and they were never allowed to become empty. Fetherbay took another drink from his. Then he leaned back in his chair and smiled. “So, gentlemen, are you all satisfied? Happy with your assignments? Glad you’re part of the 61^st?”

“Yes sir,” said Anny, Jer and Alby in unison.

“Good, good. But now it’s time for you to repay our hospitality.”

“Sir?” said Anny.

“Well, you see that here, up in the far north, we’re pretty isolated. The same ugly faces day after day, year after year. It gets pretty boring. And even when a new face arrives they usually can’t provide much entertainment. But you! Well! I’m sure you can provide quite a bit of entertainment!”

A chill went through Anny. What did he mean? Was he talking to all three of them or just her? Surely not just her! Not here in the regimental officers’ mess! She glanced at Jer and Alby, but they both seemed as confused—and as apprehensive—as her.

“I… I’m not sure I understand, sir.”

Fetherbay smiled. “It’s simple enough, Lieutenant: I want a story! I want an eyewitness account of the Battle of Dounby!”

* * *

The last light of the long summer day had vanished by the time they wove their way back to the BOQ and the stars were shining brightly through the trees. Anny had drunk far more than she should have, although not enough to get completely blasted. Jer and Alby staggered along next to her and somehow they had picked up Sven Estaban again.

“I think I like the 61^st!” exclaimed Alby. It was about the tenth time he’d said that since they left the mess, but she had to agree with him. It had been a very pleasant evening. She and Alby had managed to give a reasonably coherent—and she hoped entertaining—account of the ‘battle’ that had been fought on the planet Dounby during their training cruise. She’d been able to skip over her insubordination, the real reason behind the whole mess, and the bloodier moments during the fighting without ruining the story. She’d made sure that Zac Karal’s sacrifice to save her got its full due. Colonel Fetherbay and the others had seemed very appreciative.

“It’s a good outfit,” said Estaban.

They stumbled into the building. Alby started up the steps, but Anny hung back with Jer. Estaban took a step up and then looked back at her with a confused and disappointed expression on his face. Alby stopped, looked back and grinned. He came back down and took Estaban by the arm. “Come on, Sven, give them some room.”

“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” said Estaban, frowning.

“Yeah, it’s like that. Now come on.”

“Damn. Knew I couldn’t be that lucky. Oh well…” He turned and followed Alby up the steps.

“So much for keeping it secret,” said Anny, smiling at Jer.

“Probably just as well,” said Jer, gently pulling her against him. “If everyone thought you were unattached, you’d have ‘em lined up outside your door!”

“So instead I’m lined up outside your door.”

“Wanna come in for a while?”

She’d really like that, but she shook her head. “Long day. Big day tomorrow. And I’m ready to pass out. And if I did, then—heavens!—you might take advantage of me!” They both laughed and then she leaned closer and kissed him. “See you in th’ mornin’, Luv.”

He pulled her even closer and kissed her back. “Right. Love you.”

They parted and she made her way up to her room. Alby still had his door open and she was amused that he stuck his head out until she went into her own room and shut the door behind her. After a moment she locked it.

She made sure her alarm was set and then peeled off her clothes except for her underwear, turned off the lights and crawled into the bed.

Yeah, I think I like the 61^st!

Chapter 2

Jer Naddel groaned as the alarm woke him. The hours of sleep had been far too meager and the wine list at dinner the previous evening far too generous. A nasty spike of pain stabbed through his head as he pushed himself upright. He groaned again as he switched on the light and rummaged through his footlocker to find some headache pills. The first faint light of dawn was creeping in the window. Barrayar’s axial tilt made for short nights this far north during the summer months. Too damn short, even allowing for Barrayar’s much longer day than Konarr’s.

He found the pills, swallowed one, and then staggered into the bathroom. He shared a bathroom with whoever was in the room next door, but he didn’t know who that was. The other door was closed. He wondered if he could convince the other occupant to switch rooms with Anny. Now that would be convenient! He used the toilet, smeared depilatory cream on his face, and entered the shower. As he washed, he mused on how efficient it would be for the two of them to shower together…

He still could hardly believe they were lovers. He’d fallen in love with Anny back in their second year at the Academy. Well, maybe earlier than that… But while they’d been close friends and clearly felt some affection for each other, she—and he—had never allowed more than that to show. It was against the regulations to fall in love and Anny was under such a microscope as the first woman to ever attend the Barrayaran Imperial Service Academy that she didn’t dare even appear to be breaking the rules. But they had broken the rules and they had fallen in love and they had admitted it to each other in their senior year. They hadn’t actually done anything except for a few brief hugs and kisses until the night of graduation. Since then… well, since then things had been amazing. Anny was so utterly by-the-book when she was on duty, so completely under control that it had come as a surprise at just how out of control she became in bed. Some sort of emotional safety valve perhaps? Whatever. It didn’t matter. Anny was the strongest, the bravest person Jer had ever met. The things she’d had to overcome to make it through the Academy would have crushed most people—they would have crushed him! If he could provide the emotional support she needed, he was more than willing to do that. Willing and ready. Maybe tonight…

“I say, old man, are you going to hog the shower all morning?”

Jer jumped at the sudden voice at his elbow, just on the other side of the shower curtain. He hastily shut off the water and stuck his head around the curtain. A man was standing there wearing nothing but striped pajama bottoms. “Naddel, is it?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah…”

“Vorquinz, here, A Company. Pleasure to make your acquaintance. Saw you at dinner last night, of course, but didn’t get a chance to say hello. By the by, as senior I get first crack at the shower in the morning. 0530 on the dot. Try to remember, will you?” He turned away and went over to the sink. Jer grabbed a towel and began drying himself.

“Sorry about that, I didn’t know.”

“I’ll let it pass this time.”

Jer wasn’t sure if the man was joking, decided he wasn’t. “Actually I normally shower before I go to bed anyway,” he said.

“That would work if you don’t leave the place a mess.”

“I’ll try not to.”

“Good man.” Vorquinz finished putting on his depilatory cream—except on his large mustache—dropped his pajamas and stepped into the shower. “I don’t suppose you have a man of your own yet. Hendly, there has coffee if you want a cup.” The water turned on and the conversation ended. Jer looked through the door into Vorquinz’s room and saw an enlisted man in there puttering around. A pot of coffee sat on a tray. His stomach was still a little queasy from the previous night and Jer decided he could wait until breakfast.

Jer finished drying himself and (neatly) hung up his towel. He went back into his own room and dressed quickly in a set of black fatigues. The officers he’d seen during the tour yesterday had been wearing blacks and he hoped that would be the proper uniform when he joined his company. The thought of that sent a jolt of excitement and anxiety through him. What would H Company be like? As a weapons company it would be more technically oriented than a standard ‘rifle’ company. The commander wasn’t Vor. What was he like? Too many unknowns…

He had just finished dressing when reveille sounded on the base. He’d deliberately gotten up early to avoid having to rush. He clicked his computer pad into the holder on his belt, grabbed his cap and stepped out into the hallway. Anny, Alby—and Estaban—were just coming down the steps.

“Morning!” said all four, more or less simultaneously. They went out the doors and saw swarms of troopers spilling out of their barracks and falling into formation for morning roll call. The sun was just peeping over the eastern ridge. Jer was glad that the NCOs handled roll calls. He remembered when it was his task as the first sergeant for C Company.

“What do you do when there’s three meters of snow on the ground in the winter?” asked Alby, his question directed at Estaban.

“Well, as you can imagine, we’ve got some first rate snow removal equipment here—plus a few thousand pairs of arms with strong backs attached to them. But if the conditions are really severe they just do it in the barracks.”

“That’s the C Company barracks over there, isn’t it?” asked Anny, pointing at one of the buildings.

“Yup. Right next to B Company. We’ll be neighbors.” He smiled at Anny. She didn’t reply and they headed for the main mess hall. Despite the separate entrance for officers they wanted to beat the mad rush that would doubtlessly ensue once the men were dismissed from roll call.

A few other officers had arrived ahead of them, but they were still among the first. It was a standard mess hall arrangement and they grabbed trays and loaded them with food and coffee and then found a table. “So, your first day with the regiment,” said Estaban. “Excited?”

“Yeah,” said Alby. Jer and Anny nodded. “Hard to believe that this is the real thing after four years preparing for it.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” said Estaban. “I felt the same way when I got here, God, it’s four years now. But it’s a good group of people. I’m sure you’ll do fine.” They ate in silence for a bit and then Estaban looked at Anny and then at Jer. “So… uh… how did the two of you … manage at the Academy. Must have been a tad awkward, wasn’t it?”

“More than awkward,” said Jer. “Damn near impossible.”

“And against regulation, Mister Estaban,” said Anny frostily. “Therefore, in answer to your question: we didn’t manage.”

Estaban frowned and then his eyebrows shot up and he smiled. “Ah! So this is something recent, is it? Perhaps there’s hope for me yet!”

“You don’t give up, do you?” said Alby, laughing. “But you might as well, Sven! You’d have better luck getting a date with the Empress than trying to pry these two apart!”

“Really.” He didn’t look convinced.

“Yeah, really,” said Jer.

“Really, really,” added Anny.

“Pity. Well, you can’t blame me for trying.”

“No,” said Anny with a small smile. “But only up to a point. And I think that point has been reached. Okay?”

“Fine! Fine! No offense intended.”

“And none taken. Let’s keep it that way.”

“Message received, ma’am!” said Estaban a bit testily and waving his hand as if saluting. “You’re a lucky man, Naddel.”

“That I am, that I am,” said Jer smugly and smiling at Anny. She smiled back and the warmth matched the ray of sunshine that was now falling on his back through the window.

“And Sven?” said Anny.

“Yeah?”

“If any of your friends happen to ask, could you let them know the score? Might save us some… awkwardness.”

“Oh. Sure, sure. It’d be my pleasure.” The look on his face indicated that he might, in fact, take some pleasure in dashing the hopes of fellow officers.

“Thanks, we appreciate it.”

They finished eating and Jer nearly picked up his tray to return it to the kitchen until he noticed that everyone else was just leaving theirs on the table. Apparently they would be retrieved by the enlistedmen working here. They went outside and Jer checked the time. “Five minutes until assembly.” He took a deep breath. “Well, I guess I better go meet my boss.”

“Yeah, me, too,” said Anny. She gently punched his shoulder. “Good luck. You, too, Alby. If I don’t see you at lunch, I’ll see you at dress parade tonight.”

“Right-O. Good luck to you, too.” Jer winked at her and then headed for the H Company barracks.

* * *

Anny watched Jer walk off and then she turned and headed toward the building where C Company was housed. Alby said good-bye and trotted off to regimental headquarters. Estaban stayed with her and initially she was a bit annoyed, but since B Company was right next to C Company she could hardly protest since they both had to go the same way. Estaban peeled off at his company’s barracks, giving her a friendly wave, and Anny walked another hundred meters and found herself standing outside a three-story building labeled ‘C Company’ with a large sign over the door.

Well, this is it.

The barracks were all built with the offices and common space on the ground floor while the bunks of the enlistedmen were upstairs. She took a deep breath and went through the door. As she’d expected, the main company office was the first room she came to. She went inside and saw several officers standing there and a couple of corporals sitting at desks working at comconsoles. One of the officers, though wearing lieutenant’s tabs, had the small gold pips on his collar that denoted a company commander. Vorstang, she assumed. She stepped up next to him and when he turned in her direction, she saluted. “Lieutenant Payne reporting for duty, sir.”

Vorstang was a bit taller than her, stocky, although certainly not fat, maybe ten years older and he had blond hair and sharp blue eyes. Those eyes were suddenly boring holes right through her. He slowly returned her salute. “Ah yes, Payne. I was informed last night that you’d be joining us.” She smiled, waiting for some word of welcome, or perhaps a handshake, but neither was forthcoming. A moment later she heard a bugler sounding assembly outside. This was followed by a rush of pounding feet that actually made the building tremble slightly. “Well, we better get out there, eh?” Vorstang walked past her and out the door and she scrambled to catch up.

Each of the company barracks buildings had a clear space in front of it for the company to form up. The men were quickly assembling in their ranks. Anny noticed they were in their PT—physical training—gear. She assumed that some order had been issued for that. The officers and senior NCOs were all in black fatigues, so they’d guessed right about that anyway.

Each platoon was in its own location with the NCOs and commanding officer out in front. Last night the battalion commander had said something about her taking over for the sergeant who had been commanding 3^rd Platoon, but she had no idea if Vorstang would actually want her to command that platoon or if he was planning to shuffle things around. In any case she could see the sergeant out in front of 3^rd Platoon and she certainly wasn’t going to try and push him aside! She went over to Vorstang. “Where would you like me, sir?”

“What? Oh, just stay right here for the moment.”

“Yes sir.”

The last few men found their spots and the company was called to attention. After a few moments the first sergeant, a man named Nikolaidis if the roster she’d studied just before breakfast was accurate, came up and saluted Vorstang and reported that the company was formed.

“Very good, Sergeant,” said Vorstang. He stepped forward and looked over his company. “Morning everyone,” he said.

“Good morning, sir!”

Vorstang hadn’t spoken loudly, but the whole company shouted back in reply.

“We’ve got a routine day ahead of us. PT this morning, a full unarmored kit inspection at 1400 and, of course dress parade at 1700. However, I do have two pieces of news to pass along. The first is bittersweet. Some time in the coming days we’ll be saying good-bye to Sergeant Milroy. You all know what a fine job he’s done leading 3^rd Platoon and as incredible as it might seem, the higher-ups have actually noticed!” This brought a small chuckle from the men. “Milroy will be heading off to OCS where they will attempt to make a gentleman out of him. He probably considers this a fate worse than death, but we all live to serve the Imperium and he will go and he will do us proud, I’m sure. We can hope that he will return to us, but one never knows. In any event, we all wish him godspeed.” This brought a murmur of assent and then someone called for three cheers for Sergeant Milroy and this was given with enthusiasm. Anny could see the sergeant in front of his platoon, blushing in the morning sun.

“The other bit of news,” continued Vorstang, “is the reason why Sergeant Milroy is going to be able to leave us. We have a new officer joining the company today.” He gestured toward Anny. “This is Lieutenant Payne. She will be taking over for Milroy when he leaves. I’m sure you’ll give her the same respect and cooperation as you did the Sergeant.”

The men just stared at her, not making a sound. Some of their eyes appeared quite wide. Anny stared back at them. Okay, so I’ll have 3^rd Platoon. Taking over for a popular predecessor. This could be a challenge. She’d already noticed that the commanders of 2^nd Platoon and the weapons platoon were ensigns who she outranked. There might be some resentment there, too. She was going to have her work cut out for her.

“All right, I think that’s all for now,” said Vorstang. “Dahlberg, Vorgard, Zolek, Milroy, if you’ll meet me inside, Payne, you have the company.”

“Sir?” said Anny in surprise.

“Carry on, Lieutenant.” Vorstang turned away and walked back toward the barracks. The four platoon commanders moved to join him.

Okay…

The officers disappeared inside and the whole company was staring at her. ‘Always at least appear to know what you’re doing.’ Commodore Koudelka had taught her that before she ever set foot at Academy. The advice had served her well there and there was no reason it wouldn’t work here.

“First Sergeant Nikolaidis.”

“Uh… sir?” The First Sergeant looked at her in surprise. Perhaps he hadn’t expected her to know his name. Preparation! Preparation! She’d only survived at the Academy by being prepared. She wasn’t about to change now.

“Move them out, First Sergeant.”

“Yes sir.” He nodded at her and turned to face the men. “Company! Right-face! Forward, double quick—march!” The men started off at a brisk trot and Anny trotted along with them. She suspected they were headed for one of the big fields where she’d seen men doing PT yesterday, but she wasn’t sure if C Company had a specific spot assigned to it. If you aren’t sure of the answer, try to delegate the job to someone who does. Another lesson from the Commodore.

They left the barracks area and moved down the road. All the other companies seemed to be headed the same way. They reached a big, open field—not the same one where they’d done dress parade yesterday—and each company found a spot. Anny watched as Nikolaidis had the company open ranks and intervals to give the men room for the calisthenics and then put them to work, supervised by the platoon sergeants. Anny stood close to Nikolaidis and they both watched.

“First Sergeant?” she said after a while.

“Sir?”

“I’m guessing that Sergeant Milroy is quite popular with his men. True?”

“Yes sir. He’s a good man. Way too smart to stay a sergeant. He’ll make a fine officer. But the boys are gonna to miss him.”

“Do you think they are going to have a problem with me taking over for him? I could understand some of them being… resentful.”

She could feel him staring at her, but she kept her eyes fixed on the exercising men. He took a while to answer. “There might be a few, sir. But if any of them give you a problem…”

“If any of them do I’m sure I can handle them, First Sergeant. I’ve been handling hardheads for four years.”

“If you say so, sir.”

Now she did look at him and there was a slightly skeptical look on his face. She stared at him until he looked away. “What’s the usual schedule for this?”

“An hour of the exercises and then a road march, sir. We just take the perimeter road and circle the base a couple of times. One circuit is about nine klicks so we’ll do two or three times around.”

“Is it two or three times around?”

“Uh, depends on the officer in command, the weather, and what else the boys are gonna be doing that day.”

“Well, it’s a beautiful day and a full kit inspection isn’t very grueling. So I guess it’s up to me, isn’t it, First Sergeant?”

“It would be up to you in any case, sir.”

“Indeed it would. Three then, I think.”

“Yes sir.”

For the next hour Anny quizzed him about the way things were run in C Company. Every outfit had its own little idiosyncrasies and Anny wanted to know about as many of them as possible before she made some silly mistake. Nikolaidis seemed surprise at the grilling, but Anny learned a lot just in that short time. Finally, after the men were allowed to rest for ten minutes, they were called back into formation. Nikolaidis moved to give the command to begin the march, but Anny stepped up instead.

“Attention-Company! Right-face! Forward, double quick-march!” she bellowed. At the Academy she’d developed her ‘command voice’. Her voice was higher-pitched than most men’s, but it carried nicely and a few men looked at her in surprise that she could produce a noise like that.

And they were off. Twenty-seven kilometers in about four hours was not an especially grueling pace for men in good condition and these men were in good condition and not burdened with any gear. Once on the perimeter road Anny noticed that there were several places where drinking water was available and she made sure that the five-minute break they got each hour was at one of those spots. The day was turning warm and she felt that depriving the men of water was a needless cruelty for an ordinary exercise like this. Also she needed the water herself. She was discovering, to her dismay, that the last three months without any serious exercise had left her a bit out of shape. She had been in superb shape when she’d left on the training cruise, but between spending two months on the convoy flagship and the last month back at the Academy getting ready for graduation, she’d let her regular exercise regimen lapse. Still, she could handle this. She’d have to ask if there was an exercise room for the officers. There must be…

Many of the men were gawking at her and during the breaks she often heard laughs when her back was turned that suddenly cut off when she looked. But that was normal and didn’t bother her.

One time around, two times around. They had nearly completed the third circuit and it was about 1115. She halted the company and let the men rest. Plenty of time to get them back to the barracks, shower, and get their noon chow. The full-kit inspection wasn’t until 1400 so they’d have time to get ready for that. Good. She knew that some officers deliberately cut the timing of activities close to make life as difficult as possible for their troops under the theory that it would make them tougher. Commodore Koudelka had told her that the troops referred to that sort of thing as ‘chickenshit’ and all it did was make them resent the officer. So no chickenshit here.

The men were called back into ranks and she ordered the company’s second sergeant to get them moving. As they trotted past her she turned to ask Nikolaidis a question about the coming inspection. “First Sergeant, when we form up for the inspection, do you usually…” EEEP! She froze.

“Sir?” said Nikolaidis in confusion.

One of the passing soldiers had just pinched her on the ass.

A dozen thoughts flashed through her mind in an instant.

Did I imagine that? No I didn’t! Oh Shit! Do I ignore it? Make a scene? Shit! Shit! Son of a…

“Company-HALT!”

Her order was so loud and so sudden that some of the men actually bumped into each other as the company came to a ragged stop. Many heads turned in her direction.

“Sir?” asked Nikolaidis again, his eyes very wide. Clearly he hadn’t seen what had happened.

She didn’t answer. Instead, she turned and looked up the column toward the head of the company. How many seconds passed before I halted them? Four, five at the most. A hundred and twenty paces to the minute, eighty centimeter steps, that would put the culprit right about… there! Someone in 3^rd Platoon. Oh yeah, that would figure. But she couldn’t be exactly sure which man. It could be that one, or the man just ahead of him. Which one?

It doesn’t matter.

She slowly walked up to the man she suspected. “Company-front!” Everyone turned to face her. She stared at them, they stared at her. The man in front of her was looking a bit pale. Strange for a man who’d been out running in the sun for three hours. The man behind him appeared to be stifling a laugh. Bingo.

“Well!” she said loudly while stepping back so everyone could see her. “We haven’t really had a chance to get to know each other. I can see that you are all in fine shape. But all the time I was training to become an assault trooper I kept getting told about how good they were at close combat. During the time I spent with the 42^nd I discovered that they took their close combat drill very seriously. I’m wondering if the 61^st feels the same way.” She took a deep breath. She was taking a real risk here. “But there’s really only one way to find that out isn’t there? We’ve got a few spare minutes and I was wondering if one of you boys might go a few throws with me? A short, unscheduled close-combat drill. Any takers?” Before anyone could answer, she moved back in front of the pale trooper. She looked at the name stenciled on his t-shirt. “How about you, Private… ah… Kerbeck? You look like a man who knows how to use his hands.” Several snorts of laughter came from the rear rank. “Come on, you’re not afraid are you?” The man’s face began to redden.

“Lieutenant Payne,” said First Sergeant Nikolaidis uncertainly. “What are you…?”

“I just want to see what your men are made of. So how about it, Kerbeck? Can you show me what you’re made of?”

The man was looking annoyed now and he stepped out of the ranks. “I reckon I can… sir.”

“Good! Right over here should do. Come on.” She moved back a dozen paces, tossed her cap on the ground behind her and went into a crouch. Kerbeck looked nervously between her and Nikolaidis. The First Sergeant just shrugged in confusion.

Anny launched herself forward.

Kerbeck wasn’t even remotely ready and in an instant he was flying through the air to land flat on his back. A loud oof! came out of him. He rolled over and stared at her in astonishment. “Sorry,” said Anny casually. “Guess I caught you by surprise, huh? Wanna try that again?”

The man scrambled to his feet and tried to get into a defensive stance, but Anny was on him in a heartbeat and he went flying again. “Well!” exclaimed Anny, scratching her head. “Maybe I heard wrong.” She half-turned to face Nikolaidis. “It looks like we’ve got some work to do here…” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Kerbeck on his feet and charging her. She dodged aside and slammed a kick into his ribs—just hard enough to send him sprawling again, but not hard enough to break anything.

“At least they seem to have spirit, First Sergeant, hopefully with some training they can…” Kerbeck came at her again and again he landed heavily on the ground. In passing he had managed to punch Anny solidly in the side and she forced herself not to wince. “Okay, that was a bit better! There may be hope for you yet, Private Kerbeck.”

The man staggered to his feet and came at her again. But he was stunned and his fury was in control of him. Anny had never liked close-combat training, but she’d forced herself to learn it and she was really quite good. Drou Koudelka and Sergeant Major Szytko had seen to that. Kerbeck probably wasn’t all that bad, but he was no match for her—at least not in his present condition. Anny pummeled him for a good five minutes until he was battered and bloody and gasping for air on the ground.

“Lieutenant Payne!” said Nikolaidis loudly.

“Yes?” She turned and stared him in the eyes and didn’t blink.

“You… uh… we … we’re gonna be late for chow.”

“Heavens! You’re right! And that won’t do! We’re all hungry. If a few of you men will help Private Kerbeck back into ranks we can get going.” Two men came forward and helped their buddy up. They had very strange expressions on their faces. Anny retrieved her cap and the company got moving again and she had Nikolaidis take them straight back to the barracks and dismissed them. They moved at the normal quick-time pace instead of double-quick and Anny took advantage of that to catch her breath and stop her trembling. She hadn’t enjoyed that at all. She really hoped she’d done the right thing.

After the company was dismissed she checked in at the company office, but Vorstang wasn’t there and the duty sergeant didn’t have any additional orders for her so she headed back to her quarters to get showered before lunch. As she peeled off her sweat-soaked fatigues, she groaned. Despite her easy win over Kerbeck he had managed to land a few blows and she was going to be black and blue in the morning. She took a pain pill and showered and then put on her undress greens. The First Sergeant had told her that the officers typically wore their greens for an inspection.

In the mess hall she ran into Jer and Estaban. There was no sign of Alby. “So, how’d it go?” asked Sven as they found a table.

“Okay,” said Jer. “Just PT this morning—as you know. We’ll really get down to things this afternoon: we’re having an inspection at the armory. Gonna haul out all the heavy equipment and give it a going over. How about you, Anny?”

“Oh, pretty much the same,” she replied. “Full kit inspection this afternoon.” She had no intention of mentioning the other incident with Estaban listening. She wasn’t entirely sure how much trouble she or Private Kerbeck could get into over it.

They chatted over their food for a bit and Estaban mentioned that he’d heard that the following month would see all the reservists from the 139^th pouring in and that there would be a full-scale exercise involving the whole brigade. “Sounds like fun,” he said.

“Where will they be holding it?” asked Anny.

“That I didn’t hear. But I imagine it will either be up in the mountains or on the coastal plain on the other side of them. Desolate area up there, hardly any people at all. Less property damage that way.” He grinned.

Just as they were getting up, Lieutenant Vorstang came by. He had an odd expression on his face. “Everything go all right this morning, Payne?” he asked.

“Yes sir. The men look to be in fine condition. Actually, I was wondering if there’s a gymnasium for the officers, sir? I need to keep myself in shape.”

“What? Oh, right. Yes, we have a facility attached to the regimental mess building.” He paused and looked at her closely. “So you have nothing else to report from this morning?”

“Sir? No sir, it seemed completely routine.”

“I… see. Very well, carry on.”

“Yes sir.” Vorstang moved off but looked back over his shoulder at her.

“What was that all about?” asked Jer.

“Tell you about it later,” she said quietly.

The full unarmored kit inspection was also completely routine. Vorstang had Anny accompany Sergeant Milroy as he inspected 3^rd Platoon. They shook hands, but Milroy was eying her suspiciously. Was he afraid that she was going to try and steal his platoon? He’d be leaving soon anyway. Was he angry that she’d beat up one of his men? She needed to talk to him, but this wasn’t the place.

The men were drawn up in the same area as they used to assemble in the morning. Each man was carrying a full set of field gear, weapons, equipment and supplies. The 61^st was an assault regiment which meant that they normally went into combat wearing the impressive and deadly suits of powered battle armor, but they also had to be able to operate like normal infantry if the situation demanded it. A full kit weighed about 50 kilos and included an incredible amount of stuff. The company took intervals and then each man laid out all his gear on the ground in front of him, every item having an exact spot per the regulations.

She and Milroy and the platoon sergeant, a man named Kay, then proceeded from man to man, checking his gear, making comments or suggestions or corrections as necessary. Kay held a computer pad for noting any infractions. Anny had already started memorizing the names and faces of the men in what would soon be her platoon, but now she took the opportunity to look them over in the flesh. The photos in their records often looked different than the real thing. When they got to Private Kerbeck, she saw that he had a few spectacular bruises on his face. She didn’t think she’d hit him that hard in the face… He dropped his eyes when he saw her looking at him. But Milroy inspected his gear without comment and passed on to the next man.

As they proceeded, she noticed that while Milroy only closely checked some of the gear, seemingly at random, he opened each and every first aid kit and checked the contents thoroughly. After a bit he spoke to Anny quietly. “We’ve got standing orders from the Colonel to check the first aid kits. About a year ago we discovered that there was a group of troopers—in the 139th—that were stealing or buying the drugs out of the kits and selling them to a black market ring in the town. It was quite a scandal. So now we have to check. And check closely: they were putting fake ampoules back into the kits so they wouldn’t be missed.”

“Until they needed them in combat,” said Anny, not trying to hide her distaste.

“Yeah. Too damn few combat vets left in the regiment to pass that lesson along. Still, there hasn’t been an incident in a long time so maybe the message is getting through.”

Aside from Anny, Milroy and Kay, there were forty other men in the platoon so it took nearly two hours to complete the inspection. Anny was pleased to note that it had been done properly, no shortcuts. Milroy was a good commander and she hoped she’d have a chance to sit down with him and really discuss the platoon in detail—and hopefully settle whatever issue lay between them. The fact that he wasn’t an officer made that a little more difficult. He couldn’t meet her in the regimental mess or in the BOQ. She’d have to arrange some place in the barracks offices, she supposed.

They finished up about 1600 so they had an hour until dress parade. Milroy disappeared into the barracks with the troops before she could suggest a meeting, so Anny headed back to her quarters to get ready for the parade. She checked at Jer’s door, but it was locked. So he wasn’t back yet. Neither was Alby. As she walked down the hall toward her own room, she saw that the door was standing open. What…?

Remembering an unpleasant incident in her first year at the Academy, she cautiously approached and peered in. There was a man inside and he appeared to be polishing her boots. Ah! My dogrobber! No one had mentioned he’d be coming today. She stepped into the room and cleared her throat. The man looked up, saw her, and sprang to his feet.

“Ah, Lieutenant Payne? I’m Lance Corporal Jacowitz. I’ve been assigned t’you.”

Lance Corporal? That wasn’t a standard rank in the Barrayaran military. But Anny recalled that some of the long-established regiments clung to some of the old traditions. When she was with the 42^nd their color sergeant was referred to as the bannerman. She supposed that lance corporal was a rank shoehorned in between private and corporal. A sort of senior-private position. And Jacowitz certainly qualified as senior. He looked to be in his fifties and a glance at the hashmarks on his sleeve told Anny that he’d been in the service for thirty-six years. He was a good ten centimeters shorter than her and slightly stooped. Gray-haired, where he had any hair—he was pretty much bald on top. He had prominent cheekbones and a bulbous nose that looked rather pink compared to the rest of his face which was wrinkled and weather-beaten.

“I’m pleased to meet you, Lance Corporal,” said Anny, coming forward and offering her hand. “I take it that you’re going to be working for me?”

He took her hand and shook it. “Yes, ma’am, if you’ll have me.”

Anny hesitated. Did she really want a personal servant? She’d never had anything like that before—well, when she’d stayed at Vorkosigan House she’d had more servants than she could shake a stick at, but that didn’t really count. But to have someone serving her personally felt just sort of… awkward. On the other hand, did she really want to have to waste valuable time doing laundry, shining boots and making her bed? That was the whole reason officers were allowed to have servants: they had better things to do with their time than all the routine stuff that they’d learned so well at the Academy. “Glad to have you, Lance Corporal,” she said. “Uh, I’m new at this, so forgive my ignorance. How does this all work? You have regular duties, too, don’t you? And I’m expected to pay you, right?”

“Yes, ma’am, I do various jobs at battalion HQ, so I can only spare you a coupla hours a day. As for th’pay, that just comes right outta your pay. You hafta sign a form at HQ and then it’s automatic.”

“I see.” He hadn’t mentioned how much…

“But…” Jacowitz hesitated and his face reddened. “Seein’ as how you’re a woman I’m thinking that we’re gonna hafta work out a system so you keep your privacy, if you get my meaning.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Normally, it don’t matter if I barge in on one of the young gentlemen when he’s in the altogether, but I wouldn’t wanna do that with you, ma’am. Shouldn’t really be alone with you neither—that’s why I left the door open.”

Anny forced herself not to laugh. “Maybe I should get one of those little ‘do not disturb’ signs like they have at hotels and hang it on the doorknob.”

“That could work,” said Jacowitz brightly. “I’ll see about having one made, ma’am.” Anny choked. She’d been joking.

“Uh, I don’t think we really need to do that.” She could just imagine the jokes that would create among the other officers! “We’ll just have to work out a schedule so we don’t have any… problems.”

“All right, if you say so, ma’am.” Jacowitz looked disappointed. “Just don’t want to do anything improper. M’wife’s gonna be upset enough as it is when she hears who I’m workin’ for.”

“You’re married?”

“Oh yes, ma’am! Polly an’ I have been married twenty-five years last month. Fine woman, but a tad jealous if you take my meanin’, ma’am.”

“I see. Well we won’t do anything to arouse her suspicions then will we?” She grinned and he smiled back. “Oh, and the proper form of address for me is ‘sir’, Lance Corporal.”

“Really, ma—uh, sir?”

“Yes. Saves confusion.”

“If you say so… sir.” The man didn’t look convinced. “An’ you can just call me ‘Jac’, everyone else does. Uh, I’ve laid out your things for the dress parade.” He gestured to her bed where her dress greens were, indeed, all laid out for her. She glanced at them and then stopped and looked closer. “You were missin’ a few things, sir. The Colonel is a real stickler for everyone bein’ properly dressed. I got your record and saw you were entitled to a few more things than you had so I went down to the PX and got ‘em.”

On her collar, on top of the red lieutenant’s tabs, were a brass ‘61’ on one side and ‘VG’ on the other side. The 42^nd wore similar items, but they didn’t hand them out routinely. Apparently the 61^st did things differently. And on the chest of the tunic, on the opposite side from her medals two new items had been added. There was an Infantry Combat Badge and an Assault Landing Badge with a single tiny star indicating a combat drop under fire. She realized that under the regulations she was entitled to wear them, but she’d never even thought about it before. Along with her other medals it made quite a display for a wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant.

“Thank you, Jac, that was very thoughtful. But you say the ‘Colonel’ is a stickler. Is that Colonel Vortaglia, or Lieutenant Colonel Fetherbay?”

“Uh, well, both of ‘em, sir. But it was Fetherbay who told me t’see to it.”

“Really?”

“Yes, sir. A place for everything and everything in its place, that’s the way he feels about things.”

“And is that how you feel about things, Jac?”

“Pretty much, sir. Makes things easier.”

“So how do you feel about me being here? A lot of people have told me that I’m something that’s definitely out of place. Do you have a problem with it?”

Jacowitz looked startled. “Uh… well, sir, I’ll admit that it does take some gettin’ used to. But then,” he gestured to the medals on her tunic, “unless they’ve started handing those things out with the ration packs, it’s kinda hard saying that you’re outta place here. Sir.”

They looked each other in the eye for a long moment and then Anny nodded. “Well all right then. I guess I better get changed for dress parade.”

“Yes sir,” said Jacowitz. “Will you be needing me for anything more today?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow, sir. Oh, what time do you normally get up, sir? I can be here with coffee ready if you like.”

“Oh, no need for that, Jac. I don’t usually take my first cup until breakfast. But thanks anyway.”

“Very good, sir. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Jacowitz bowed himself out and shut the door behind him. Anny let out a long sigh.

Well, that could have gone a lot worse. I guess this can work. She went about changing into her dress greens, but she couldn’t get Jacowitz’s statement about Fetherbay telling him to get all her decorations in place. Why would the acting regimental commander worry about something like that? Was he sending some message? And if so, to who?

As she was setting her cap in place she noticed a small flimsy lying on top of her dresser. She took it and saw that it was a receipt from the PX for the two new badges and the collar brass on her tunic. Jacowitz had put her name down and the price would be charged to her. It wasn’t a huge amount, but if Jac was going to be spending her money on things she needed to know about it. She supposed she better go and see the payroll officer tomorrow and find out how much she was paying him, too. A lieutenant’s salary wouldn’t stretch very far.

She bumped into Alby and Jer as she headed out of the building and they compared notes during the short walk to the barracks area. She noted that both had the collar brass and that Alby had the same two extra badges she was wearing. “So, got your own dogrobbers, eh?” she quipped.

“Yeah,” said Alby. “An antique just like we have at Vorsworth House. I feel right at home.” They all laughed. The servants at Alby’s home were all in their sixties or seventies.

They didn’t have time to say any more as they reached the barracks area. A bugler was sounding assembly and the troops were erupting from the buildings. “See you guys at dinner,” she said and they parted. Anny went over to where C Company was forming up. Her post would be in the rear of 3^rd Platoon with the file closers. There was an awkward moment when she met Sergeant Milroy there. She outranked him, but he was the platoon commander. She settled the matter by taking a spot a few paces to the left of where the platoon commander should stand. Milroy nodded to her and took his position.

“I need to talk to you after the parade, Lieutenant,” he said quietly.

“That would be good,” she replied.

Dress parade was a bit different from the previous evening. Anny’s viewpoint was different, of course, with her at first behind the line of troops and then later out in front with all the other company officers. With two battalions present and Colonel Fetherbay there, it was larger and had an extra step thrown in where the company first sergeants reported to the battalion adjutants who then reported to the regimental adjutant who then reported to Fetherbay. But it all went off splendidly. Fetherbay didn’t have any special orders nor any comments to the officers as they wrapped up. The parade was dismissed and the troops began to disperse.

Except for the 3^rd platoon of C Company.

“Lieutenant Payne?” said Milroy. “Could you come over here?” He gestured to where the platoon was waiting.

“Certainly, Sergeant,” said Anny trying to sound a lot more confident than she felt. What was this about? She followed him over to the men.

“Lieutenant? Private Kerbeck has something to say to you.”

Anny’s eyebrows shot up as the man she’d beaten up that morning came forward, looking embarrassed and glancing back at his mates. He came up to her and saluted. “Lieutenant Payne? I want to… I wanted to apologize for what I did. I’m really sorry and it won’t happen again.” He glanced at Milroy with an ‘okay-I-did-it-can-I-go-now?’ expression on his face. Milroy, however said nothing and his face was frozen.

Anny stared at Kerbeck until he was really sweating. “Well,” she said finally, “thank you Private, I accept your apology and I’m willing to consider the matter closed.” Kerbeck looked relieved.

“Thank you, sir. It was really stupid of me and…”

“Lieutenant Payne would be quite justified in pressing charges against you, Kerbeck,” said Milroy with a note of menace in his voice. “You could have disgraced the whole platoon.” Kerbeck looked pale again.

“I could have pressed charges,” said Anny, “but I hoped that the… uh… measures I took would get the message across better. It would appear that I was right. And I checked Private Kerbeck’s record later, Sergeant, and I see that he’s a good man. Just a tad too exuberant at times.” This produced a laugh from the rest of the platoon.

“Thank you, sir,” said Kerbeck. “And the message was received loud and clear, sir! You really mopped the floor with me!” The man grinned sheepishly.

“She let you off lightly, Kerbeck,” said Milroy. “I did some record checking, too. Do you see what the Lieutenant is wearing on her tunic? The gold one?”

“Uh, yes sir.”

“What is it?”

“The… the Medal for Conspicuous Gallantry, sir.”

“Do you know what she did to earn it?”

“Uh, that fight out in the Merganthal Reaches…”

“She earned it for, among other things, killing three enemy soldiers, in battle armor, in hand-to-hand combat, Private. Hand-to-hand!”

“Holy shit…” There was a stir in the whole platoon and some whispered comments. Anny found herself blushing. The memory of that blood-soaked and terrifying encounter was not one she relished.

“Now all of you listen up!” said Milroy loudly. “Starting next week Lieutenant Payne will be in command of this platoon. I will be leaving for OCS. But I still have my contacts here! And if I hear that any one of you apes has treated the Lieutenant with anything less than the utmost respect, I promise you that I will go AWOL, come back here, and kick the asses of every one of you across the East Ridge! You hear me?”

“Yes sir!” The whole platoon roared in reply.

“Any questions?”

“Uh, yeah, what’s ‘utmost’ mean?” The voice came from the rear rank and everyone laughed.

“It means I kick your ass twice, Soblinski!” snapped Milroy. “Now shut up!”

“Yes sir!”

Milroy turned to face her. “I think that about wraps things up, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, I think so. And Sergeant?”

“Sir?”

“Thank you.”

“Sir!” Milroy saluted crisply and Anny returned it. Milroy called the platoon to attention, but Private Kerbeck held back for a moment.

“Lieutenant?”

“Yes, Private?”

Kerbeck’s voice fell to a whisper. “Howdja know it was me, sir?”

“Lucky guess.” Kerbeck looked surprised and then a bit scandalized. “But I figured that even if I guessed wrong, my message would find its way to the right man sooner or later,” continued Anny. “Don’t you think, Private?”

A smile appeared on his face. “Yes, sir! It sure would have!”

“Kerbeck! Back in ranks!” snapped Milroy.

“Yes sir!” Kerbeck scampered to his spot. Anny watched the platoon march off, a smile slowly growing on her face and an elation growing in her heart. She turned and walked off quickly, hoping to catch up with Jer and Alby. She wasn’t surprised to find them—and Sven Estaban—lingering by the edge of the parade ground waiting for her.

What was that all about?” asked Alby.

“Oh, just a few administrative things we needed to work out,” she replied. She moved next to Jer and they headed toward the regimental mess.

“How was your day?” asked Jer.

“Good. Really good.”

Chapter 3

Alby Vorsworth came out of the shower and found that Quinton was already there with the coffee. “Good morning, sir,” he said.

“Morning,” replied Alby. “What are you doing here? It’s the weekend.”

“The base works seven days a week, sir.”

“The base, but not all the people. I don’t have any duty today, nor tomorrow. You should take the day off.”

“I don’t mind sir. Keeps me busy. You know what they say about idle hands, sir.”

“Well, frankly, I fully intend to keep my own hands entirely idle today, Quinton! I’ll take my chances with the Devil.”

The elderly enlistedman chuckled. “Hard week, sir?”

“A bit hectic, yes.” Alby was tempted to say more, but then thought better of it. Officers shouldn’t complain in front of enlistedmen. But he did feel like complaining to someone. When Colonel Fetherbay had assigned him to the simulator project it had seemed like a dream come true. He loved computers and wasn’t nearly so enamored to all the marching around and saluting stuff that seemed to be so dear to Anny and Jer. He thought it was going to be perfect.

Until he found out what a mess the project was.

Nobody seemed to be in charge. Or rather, there were too many people who thought they were in charge. There was a civilian from the company who made the simulators, another civilian in charge of the construction crew building the building the simulators would go in, and then there was a lieutenant from brigade headquarters, a guy named Pflugfelter, who had been told to run the whole circus. Unfortunately, Pflugfelter’s experience with computers was limited to maintaining the comconsoles used on the base and not much more. Theoretically he could boss around the guy from the simulator company, but he didn’t know enough to do so. And Alby quickly deduced that the higher ranking officers had little interest and no faith in the damn simulators anyway. They didn’t care if the project was ever completed. There would be no help from that quarter.

No help, but probably plenty of blame.

Obviously someone higher up in the military or the government thought that the simulators were a good idea and no doubt sooner or later one of them was going to ask why the simulator facility at Fort Vorolson wasn’t up and running? At that point heads would start rolling. Alby didn’t have any particular concern for his own head, but he still didn’t want to be caught in the middle of it.

Maybe I can talk to… oh, stop that! You’ve worried enough about it for one week. Take the day off!

The idea that he could take the day off was novel. At the Academy down-time had come in tiny droplets. An hour here, an afternoon there, but for the most part the cadets’ schedules were unrelenting. After four years it had become so ingrained that rediscovering the concept of the weekend made Alby feel like he’d found some grand new world.

He put on his undress greens as he drank coffee and chatted with Quinton. The man actually did remind him a good bit of some of the male servants at Vorsworth House, but that wasn’t all that surprising: they were all ex-military, too. Unlike officers, the enlistedmen were forced to retire after forty years in the service. Many of these ‘twice twenty year men’ found jobs as servants for upper-class Vor. From the look of the hashmarks on his sleeves, Quinton was going to find himself in that situation in just another year.

He finished the coffee, sealed up his tunic, grabbed his hat and went out the door with a wave to his dog-robber. He glanced down the hall toward Anny’s room, but the door was closed. He went down the steps and found Anny and Jer just coming out of Jer’s room. Had they spent the night together or…? None of my business. None of anyone’s business!

There had been a time when he’d felt a bit jealous of Jer. He’d sort of been in love with Anny himself. But then any of the cadets who weren’t outright enemies had sort of been in love with Anny. Alby had gotten over that, primarily by falling in love with someone else. Abigail Vorburn, one of the girls in the next batch allowed into the Academy, the ‘Second Six’ as they’d come to call themselves, had become his friend. There were times when it seemed like they were in love and times when it didn’t. Abbie was just as determined to make it through the Academy as Anny had been and she wasn’t going let something like an infatuated Alby Vorsworth derail her goal. Abbie had just started her third year, so it was going to be a while before they could be anything more than just friends. Alby wrote to her frequently and she wrote back as often as her busy schedule allowed.

“Howdy folks,” said Alby cheerfully. “Ready to explore the town?”

His friends both smiled and agreed enthusiastically. They headed out the door and Alby turned toward where the shuttle bus to the town would pick them up. “What? No breakfast first?” asked Jer, looking toward the mess hall.

“There must be places in the town to eat,” said Alby. “I’d like to try something different.”

“Yeah, but here it’s free.”

“No problem, my treat.”

“Alby, we can’t keep mooching off you,” said Anny. “You’re always treating us to meals.”

“Always? I’ve had the opportunity to buy you meals, what? About a dozen times in the four years we’ve known each other?”

“More than that.”

“Not much!” denied Alby. “But if you are so determined to refuse my hospitality, well, then, let’s go to the mess hall…” he turned in that direction with an exaggerated look of sorrow on his face.

He hadn’t gone five steps before Jer grabbed him by one arm and Anny by the other, physically hoisted him into the air, and turned him back toward the shuttle stop. “Help! Help! I’m being forced to buy breakfast!” he cried, but not very loudly. They all laughed. The bus arrived only moments later and they piled aboard. Alby looked fondly at Anny and Jer. They, along with Abbie and Patric Mederov, were his best friends in the world. Growing up he’d never had any real friends except for a few of the servants who were all sixty years his senior.

Alby’s childhood had been anything but typical. The Vorsworth family had a long and distinguished history of service to the Empire. All the males had always served in the military. He had two older brothers who were both killed serving the Empire before Alby had been born. Indeed, if they hadn’t died, Alby never would have been born. During the Time of Isolation, before Barrayar had regained galactic technology, the deaths of the two siblings would have meant an end to the Vorsworth line. His parents were both in their sixties at the time and had no other close relations—except for their disowned daughter. But with galactic technology available, specifically genetic testing and the uterine replicator, it was still possible for his parents to have another child. Alby had been the result. He would carry on the line and the family traditions.

In his younger years he hadn’t known enough to see anything odd in the situation, but as he grew older he began to realize—and resent—the fact that he’d been… created simply as a replacement for his two dead brothers. That resentment very nearly became outright rebellion on Alby’s part. He had come within a millimeter of turning his back on his parents, the Academy, everything, and just walking away. It had only been the deep friendships he’d developed at the Academy that prevented him from doing so. He felt no particular loyalty to his parents, but he would have died for his friends—just as they would have for him. And that was no empty cliché. They had very nearly died for each other on more than one occasion. The ribbons on Anny’s and Jer’s—and his own—chests had been won as much for saving each other as for service to the Imperium.

The bus made a circuit through the fort, picking up other people and then headed into the town of Malverton. Apparently the place had started out as a tiny logging camp built beside the headwaters of the Pinios River. From that it had grown into a major supplier of lumber to the Vortugalov District. There were still several sawmills in operation, but the primary business of the town was now supporting the sprawling military base just to the north.

The bus let them off in the main square of the town. It was still pretty early and there weren’t that many people on the street yet. The place had a tidy and welcoming appearance and it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. An exhilarating feeling of freedom and unlimited potential filled Alby. They strolled around the square and then he spotted what appeared to be a restaurant halfway down the block on a side street. “Let’s try there,” he said. It was a cozy little place and the prices were low enough that Anny and Jer didn’t object. The cuisine was indeed different from what was served in the mess hall. Despite its Anglo name, Malverton was primarily inhabited by the descendents of the Greek settlers who had made up about a quarter of the “Firsters” who had colonized Barrayar. But the food was good and the waitress friendly. Alby left her a nice tip. He noticed that the waitress and several of the other patrons were staring curiously at Anny, but she was so used to that she didn’t seem to notice. They spent the meal comparing the events of the previous week.

“So, you’ll be in command of your platoon starting next week,” said Jer to Anny. “Think they’ll give you any trouble?”

“I hope not, “she replied. “They seem like good men.”

“Well, after the way you beat the snot out of the one guy, I doubt the others will get out of line!” said Alby with a laugh.

“I can’t solve every problem by beating up my men, Alby.”

“No, but it can’t hurt for them to know that you can beat them up if necessary,” said Jer. “I think you probably made a good first impression on them, Anny.”

“I hope so. But what about you? Did you have to beat up anyone in H Company?”

“Nope, things went pretty smoothly. Well, the commander of 1^st platoon, Vorkerkas, seems like a bit of a snob, but he hasn’t made any trouble so far. I’ve got the anti-tank platoon and I need to get up to speed with the ordnance. It’s a bit older than what I trained on. Fortunately the platoon sergeant knows the stuff backwards and forwards and he seems willing to work with me. That was my big worry: he’s been more or less in charge for quite a while and I was afraid he might object to me coming in and taking over. So I don’t think I’ll need to break any heads.”

“Well, I could use someone to break some heads for me!” said Alby. “If either of you would like to help me out with that, I’d be grateful.”

“Problems?” asked Anny.

“Oh, a few.” He spent a few minutes venting his frustrations. “But enough of that! What do you guys want to do today?”

“Oh, just look around, I guess,” said Jer.

“Well, we’ve got all day—and all night to explore. With all the troops here I’ll bet they’ve got plenty of things to entertain them.”

“I can’t stay out too late,” said Anny. “I’ve got an appointment with the base armorer at 0800.”

“You’ve got duty tomorrow?” asked Alby in surprise.

“Not really, although I will next weekend, rotating duty officer, you know. But no, tomorrow I have to get my armor fitted.”

“Oh cripes! That’s right!” exclaimed Jer. “I nearly forgot about that! I get mine at 1400 tomorrow.”

“Oh yeah,” said Alby. “Guess I won’t be needing a set for myself while I’m detached like this. Although having a set would make cracking heads together a lot easier!” The others laughed. The suits of powered battle armor the assault troops used gave the wearer superhuman strength.

“I hear they’re still using the old Model IX suits here,” said Jer, looking disappointed.

“Yeah, but as each battalion ships out they’re supposed to get the new Model XI armor,” said Anny. “3^rd Battalion already has theirs, I hear.”

“Well that’s good, I loved the new model when we were on our cruise last year.”

“Yeah, they were really something,” agreed Alby. “But come on, time’s a-wasting!” They went back outside and the streets were a lot more crowded now. Many of the people were men in uniform, but there were also plenty of other men who were obviously soldiers even though they were wearing civilian clothes. Many of this latter group were accompanied by women and children—married soldiers out with their families. The west side of the town held several large housing tracts with living quarters for the married men and their dependents. They strolled over in that direction and saw that in addition to the houses, there were playgrounds and several schools. They all had a military look to them, but they were neat and tidy.

“I guess things have changed a lot in recent years,” said Anny. “My da used to talk about how most soldiers waited until they mustered out before getting married. There was almost no accommodation for married soldiers or ones with children.”

“Seems like it would be pretty hard to get men to join up under those conditions,” said Jer.

“These days, with all the new factory jobs in the cities, yeah,” said Anny. “But this isn’t Komarr, Jer. Folks out in the back country are still awful poor compared to most. A lot join up as a way to get away from that. You saw what it was like up in the mountains when we were fighting the fire.”

Jer fell silent and Alby felt a twinge of guilt. Anny had come from one of those desperately poor regions. She hadn’t joined up to get away from that, but still... Alby thought about the huge mansion he’d grown up in, all the servants…

“Say guys,” he said suddenly. Jer and Anny turned their heads toward him. “I know you’ve been checking out the price on apartments around here. What are they like?”

“Well…” said Anny uncertainly.

“The ones we could afford on our combined salaries are pretty…”

“Awful?” asked Alby.

“Well, yeah… I mean there were a few that didn’t look too bad, but they weren’t much better than the BOQ—where we can stay for free.”

“That’s what I figured,” said Alby, nodding his head. “Well, I’ve done some checking, too, and there are a couple of pretty nice houses for rent that are well within my budget and…” He held up his hand to cut off the protests he saw on his friends’ faces. “I know you won’t accept any offer of mine to stay free, so I’ll have to charge you rent. But I’m sure we can come up with a rate that you can afford.” He grinned at them.

They exchanged glances. “We’ll… we’ll have to think about it,” said Jer.

“But thank you, Alby,” added Anny.

“No problem. I’ve got a couple of the addresses. We could take a look while we’re here.”

“Why not? It’s a beautiful day,” said Jer.

So they called up a map of the town on their computers and made their way to the locations on Alby’s list. They were nice houses, set in a part of town with a lot of nice houses and tree-lined streets and paved sidewalks. And it was clear that a number of officers lived here; they saw several men they recognized from the regimental mess out working in their yards.

“What’s the monthly rent on a place like this?” asked Jer, pointing at one of the potential properties.

“None of your business,” said Alby, smiling. “Your only concern is what rent I’ll charge you.”

“Alby…” said Anny. “We can’t…”

“Why not?”

“Because we have to learn to live within our means! What if you’re suddenly transferred to Vorbarr Sultana or… or Sergyar? We can’t expect you to keep paying the rent on a place like this when you’re not even here!”

“Well, I could…”

“That’s not the point!”

“All right! All right! I’ll look around for something cheaper,” said Alby a bit grumpily.

“There have to be cheaper places,” said Jer. “Those officers we saw down the street were both majors from brigade HQ, I think. There must be places for lower ranking sods like us.”

Alby used his computer pad to find a few such places and they walked over to take a look. They weren’t nearly as nice and the section of town they were in wasn’t either. In some ways they looked worse than what they’d seen the enlisted families living in. “Well, I can’t say that I like any of these,” he snorted. “Are you sure I can’t give us a little bit of an upgrade?”

“We’ll make you a deal,” said Anny. “Why don’t you just put your own money aside and pretend you’re a poverty-stricken lieutenant like us? No, I mean it. Let’s figure out what we can afford combining our three salaries and nothing else.”

Alby was skeptical, but agreed to give it a try. “But not right now. It’s too nice a day for calculating budgets! Let’s head back toward the center of town. It’s nearly lunch time.” The other two agreed and they started off.

But while they had been standing there, they’d attracted the attention of a few children. Well, in fact, it had been Anny who had attracted their attention. Now a little girl, maybe seven or eight years old, called out to her: “Miss? Miss? Are you really a soldier?”

Anny turned and smiled and replied. “Yes, I am.”

“Really?” The girl’s eyes were very wide.

“No way!” cried an older boy. “They don’t let girls in the army!”

“They didn’t used to,” said Anny. “But they’ve changed some of the rules and now there are some girls. Over a hundred, actually.” Alby reflected that that was stretching the truth a little. There may have been over a hundred women at the Academy, but at this moment there was only one woman soldier—and that was Anny Payne.

“Aw, she’s just a med-tech or somethin’” said the boy dismissively.

“Oh no,” said Alby. “She’s a real soldier. Just a few months ago she was fighting pirates! I saw her myself. She beat the… stuffings out of a whole bunch, all by herself.”

“Wow!” cried the little girl. “Someday I’m gonna be a soldier, too!”

“In your dreams, Kara!” snorted the boy.

Anny squatted down and took the girl’s hand. “In your dreams for now, but sometimes you can make your dreams real. I did. Of course, you’ll have to wait until you’re a little older to try.” The girl blushed and then ran off, the other children following her. Anny stood up and her eyes were gleaming.

“New recruit?” asked Alby, grinning broadly.

“Who knows?”

“You opened the door for her, Anny,” said Jer.

“Let’s hope it stays open.”

“Come on,” said Alby, “let’s eat.”

* * *

Anny checked the time, hurriedly finished off her breakfast, and then left the mess hall. In spite of all her intentions, she’d stayed in town until very late yesterday. And then spent another hour or so, very much by intention, awake in Jer’s bed before getting to sleep. As a result she’d slept right through reveille and now had to rush to get to the armory on time.

Still, she was smiling. Yesterday had been fun and last night had been, too. Being able to spend time with Jer—in bed and out—was a wonderful thing. Not having to worry about the regulations was a wonderful thing, too.

Or at least she hoped she didn’t have to worry.

While there was nothing in the regulations forbidding an officer from taking a lover, the assumption was that it would be a male officer with a female civilian. The notion of a male officer with a female officer was not something the writers of the regulations had considered. Of course, the regulations also didn’t consider a male officer with another male officer and while it was quietly acknowledged that such things did occur, the unofficial policy seemed to be to just look the other way and pretend it wasn’t happening. Anny sort of hoped the same policy would be followed with her and Jer.

Unless they decided to get married.

In which case they’d want it officially recognized with all the legalities and dependent privileges and… Oh hell, why does it have to be so damn complicated? Her good mood faded somewhat and she put the issue out of her mind.

The regimental armory was a huge building set near the northwest end of the base and it was a solidly built concrete structure rather than wood like the barracks. In addition to heavy weapons and maintenance facilities, it also housed the over two thousand sets of battle armor for the regiment. Anny had to show her ID to get in and then ask directions to get to where the 1^st Battalion ordnance sergeant had his office. The interior of the building was divided into a bewildering warren of store rooms, service bays, and offices.

She walked down one long aisle with racks of the power armor on either side of her. The Model XI armor, like she’d used on Dounby, had a sleek, ultra-modern look to it, but these older Model IXs had a hulking, sinister appearance, like trolls or mutants from a fairy tale. With the lights mostly turned off in the building, it was downright creepy. They all seemed to be staring at her…

Up ahead was a more brightly lit area and the noise of activity came to her ears. Activity—and cursing. She came into one of the maintenance bays and saw a half-dozen men working on several suits of battle armor. One of the suits had been almost completely disassembled, with its parts laid out carefully over a few dozen square meters of floor. Two men were bent over it and one of them was the one doing the cursing. For some reason Anny wasn’t surprised to see the ordnance sergeant’s chevrons on the man’s sleeve.

“Dammit, Georg!” he snarled. “When I told you to strip this suit down, I didn’t mean this! What the hell were you doing, you idiot!”

“But, Sarge, you said… and I thought…” protested the other man.

“There you go! Thinking again! If I need any thinking done around here I’ve got computers for that! Now what the hell am I gonna do? This was for that new shavetail frill in C Company! She’ll be here any minute and… what are you gawking at? Screw yer eyes back in yer head, man!”

“Uh… I think she’s here, Sarge.”

The ordnance sergeant spun around and then turned an amazing shade of crimson. Anny tried to keep from smiling—but failed. “Ordnance Sergeant Gadd? I’m Lieutenant Payne.” She took a few steps forward and looked over the array of parts on the floor. “And this is for me?”

“It… uh… it was supposed to be. But this idiot went and…! Sorry, Lieutenant, I’ll try and find another one that we can…”

“No need for that, Sergeant. We can just put this one back together.”

“But… but that will take hours!”

“I’m in no hurry. And I’d really like to see how one of these Model IXs goes together. On my apprentice cruise I got a chance to assemble and prep a bunch of the new Model XIs for the ordnance sergeant there and I’d like to see the differences. Can’t ever know too much about how your armor works.”

“Well I’ll be…” The look of amazement on the man’s face was priceless. “All right, why the hell not? Georg, make yourself useful and bring that tool kit over here!”

They got to work.

Taking a brand new suit out of its shipping crate and getting it ready for use was an exacting process that took about thirty man-hours. That was mostly because each of the major components had to be tested. Fortunately, in this case they were just reassembling the suit rather than testing everything. Even so, it took all morning and they were still at it well into the afternoon. Gadd seemed as much surprised by her knowledge of the armor as he was at her willingness to get her hands dirty.

Much of the armor was very similar to what Anny had worked on before, but the big difference was the control system. “So you used that new neural interface system, Lieutenant?” asked Gadd. “I’ve been studying the tech manuals for when 1^st Battalion gets ‘em, but you can’t tell how the thing actually runs from that. What’s it like?”

Anny wiped a bit of sweat off her face with a dirty hand and smiled. “Like a dream, Sarge. It’s like you’re walking around in your street clothes. Smooth as silk.”

“No delay in the response at all?”

“None that I could see—and believe me, I gave my suit a workout.”

“Uh, yeah, I heard something about that. So I guess goin’ back to this hunk o’ junk will be sort of a let down, huh?”

“Oh, I trained on a Model IX at the Academy. Never got to tear one apart like this, though. But this will be okay. ‘Course I won’t turn down a Model XI when the battalion gets them!” She laughed and so did Gadd. After a moment the man’s face grew serious.

“Uh... Lieutenant, I’m sorry about what I said earlier… when I didn’t know you were there.”

“Well I am a shavetail,” she grinned.

“That’s not what I… That’s not what I meant.”

“I’ve heard worse. A lot worse. Believe me.” She held out her hand and after a moment he took it and shook.

They continued working and Gadd didn’t even seem too flustered when she showed him how to install the special adapter that allowed her to use the suit’s sanitary plumbing with her female anatomy.

“From the sound ‘o things I might have to make that gizmo a standard item in the parts inventory.”

“I hope so,” said Anny with a smile.

Finally the suit was back together and they had to do the adjustments to actually fit it to her body shape. The older suits were controlled by a multitude of pressure-sensitive pads lining the interior that would cause the suit to replicate her movements. They needed to fit snugly to function properly.

“Did you bring your undersuit?” asked Gadd, looking around.

“Wearing it under my fatigues, Sarge.”

“Hell! No wonder you’re sweating like that!”

“Yeah, didn’t quite plan on doing this. But it’s okay.” She started shucking off her fatigues. The undersuit was a skintight garment that could be worn under a normal space suit or in a suit of battle armor. It had a set of micro-capillaries built into it that could connect to the suit’s heating and cooling system. Unconnected, it did tend to get a bit warm.

As she set aside her tunic and trousers she noticed that Gadd’s assistant, Georg, was staring at her. Yeah, the suit was really skintight. Really. He saw her looking at him looking at her and turned away hastily. She stepped up to the rear of her armor. The back plates of the torso were open and she hoisted herself inside and let her legs slide down inside the legs of the suit. They’d made some guesses about the proper length to set the legs to and the guess seemed pretty close. “Maybe just a tad too long,” she said to Gadd. He nodded and squatted down next to the suit with a power wrench and spun a few of the adjustment bolts. “Whoa, a little too much,” said Anny. “Back a bit.”

Little by little they made the suit fit. First the legs and then the arms. The torso wasn’t as important except for comfort. She was glad to find that the plumbing connection worked. Finally they were ready to power it up and give it a test run. She hit the main power switch and the armor came to life around her. The visor closed and the inside of the helmet became a mass of displays and status read-outs which surrounded the vision slit. These flickered and then filled up with data and messages. When the start-up was complete, she closed the rear of the armor and then walked over to an empty part of the bay and went through a series of movements.

“How’s it feel?” asked Gadd when she stopped.

“Not bad. I think we need to lengthen the right forearm by about a centimeter. My fingers felt sort of jammed into the gauntlets.”

“Right.” The man opened an access panel below the right elbow and went to work with the power wrench. “How’s that?”

Anny moved the arm around. “Better. Let me try some more stuff.” Gadd stepped back and she proceeded to roll and tumble and fall flat on the floor and crawl around. There was no doubt that the Model IX suit was a tiny bit less responsive than the Model XI, but she was sure she could get used to it again.

Still, the problem with any suit of battle armor was the mass. No matter how responsive the motivators or how strong the mechanical muscles, you still had to allow for the fact that the suit massed three or four times as much as you did. If you gave into the temptation to really use the suit’s muscles to their maximum, you could find yourself careening uncontrollably into walls, trees, or your friends. Anny skidded a few times on the smooth floor but managed to avoid any disasters. She and Gadd made a few more minor adjustments to her suit and then she was satisfied.

She opened the visor on the helmet. “I think that about does it, Sarge. You want me to park it over in its rack or do you want to do any more work on it?”

“No, you can put ‘er in the rack when we’re done, but you still need to pick out your side-arm.”

“My what?”

The man grinned. “That’s right, you probably haven’t heard about that, have you? Come on over here.”

Gadd walked down an aisle between bins of spare parts and Anny followed, the feet of her suit clunking loudly on the floor despite the padded soles. The ordnance sergeant came to a large storage cabinet and swung open the doors and stood back. “Here you go, Lieutenant, take your pick.”

Anny gawked at the contents of the cabinet. She’d been expecting some sort of energy weapons modified for the large gauntlets of a suit of armor, but instead she saw what looked like a collection from some museum of pre-gunpowder weapons from the Time of Isolation. War hammers, maces, battle axes, all way too large for a man to use, hung in rows from strong brackets.

“What is this?” she demanded.

“Something Colonel Fetherbay came up with a few years ago. For close combat.”

Anny reached out and grasped the handle of one of the weapons, a mace she guessed you’d call it, and pulled it free from its bracket. “This thing must weigh fifteen kilos!” she exclaimed, hefting it.

“Closer to twenty,” said Gadd. “It’s got a depleted uranium core. Just the thing for opening a can in close quarters.”

“Yeah… yeah, I could have used one of these six months ago…” The more Anny thought about it, the more sense it made. Modern battle armor wasn’t just a powered suit of armored plates. Most suits had sophisticated shielding that could defeat nearly any man-portable energy weapons—at least for a while. The only things that could penetrate them were things like hyper-velocity rail guns and special types of needle grenades. But they were large, clumsy weapons not well-suited for close action on shipboard. In fact, the rail guns were a real menace aboard ship: a miss could send a projectile tearing its way clear through a ship, doing untold damage.

So during boarding actions it often came down literally to hand-to-hand combat with the armored behemoths battering each other to junk. Anny had done exactly that to three opponents on the planet Dounby during her apprentice cruise. But she’d been forced to improvise the weapons she used… “You say Colonel Fetherbay came up with this?”

“Well, I heard that he got the idea from something he’d read about the Cetagandans using stuff like this… or maybe it was the Nuevo Brasilians, I don’t remember. But he had the armorers start making these things. The boys seem to like them.”

She made a few practice swings with the mace and then put it back. She started to reach for one of the battle axes. “Uh, wait, Lieutenant,” said Gadd. “Should have mentioned: you need special training before you’re allowed one of those. They’ve got mono-molecular edges. Real easy to slice through stuff you don’t intend.”

“Yeah, I guess it would be.” She shifted her gaze, looking over the rows of deadly objects. She finally selected one. It was a massive hammer with one blunt end and the other with a nasty-looking spike sticking out. She stepped back and gave the thing a try. The powerful servos in her armor allowed her to move the hammer around like it was a twig, but she could sense the impact it would have if she struck something with it.

“Good choice,” said Gadd. “You can pound or you can puncture something.”

“This is going to take some practice…”

“You’ll get it, I’m sure. But if that’s the one you want, then I guess we are done here, Lieutenant.”

Meaning I’ve wasted enough of your valuable time today. Anny smiled and managed to clip her hammer to a clamp on the side of her armor without any help. But then she needed Gadd to show her where to park her suit. The racks were laid out by battalion, company and platoon and she wasn’t sure where 3^rd Platoon, C Company was located. He delegated his assistant, Georg, to show her. She scooped up her fatigues and followed the man into the storage area.

After she parked her suit and emerged from the rear of it, she saw that Georg was still there. “You impressed the hell out of the Sarge, you know,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Most of the officers—the men too, for that matter—don’t know shit about the suits and don’t care, neither. Oh, they know how to use ‘em and do field maintenance and all, but nothing like you did just now.”

Anny shrugged as she pulled on her fatigues. “Like I said: you can never know too much about the things you’re depending on to keep you alive. Maybe I should suggest to the Colonel that everyone should get some more in-depth instruction on battle armor.”

“The Sarge would probably like that,” said Georg with a grin.

“Okay, thanks for your help, see you later.” Anny took her leave and managed to find her way out of the armory without getting lost. It was mid-afternoon and her stomach was growling. She’d missed lunch. She wondered if she could wheedle a snack out of the people in the mess hall. First, though, she wanted to get back to her quarters and take off her undersuit and get a shower.

Or maybe she’d head over to the officer’s gym and work out a little first. It was amazing to have so many options.

Decisions, decisions…

Chapter 4

“All right, let’s go!” cried Jer Naddel, as the rear ramp on the assault shuttle crashed down. The men of his platoon surged forward in their battle armor. A few, the first ones out, carried only normal infantry gear; these spread out to form a perimeter. Most, however, were burdened with the heavy weapons and equipment that gave H Company its purpose.

Assault regiments were organized like ordinary infantry regiments: three battalions, each battalion with three ‘rifle’ companies and one heavy weapons company. The regiment also had some other assets like supply, medical, and sappers directly attached to it. Regular regiments had all that, too, but they would normally be attached to divisions and the divisions had all manner of heavy equipment including artillery and tanks to support the infantry.

But assault regiments usually operated independently and their ‘logistical train’ and support were much smaller. They were meant to be self-sufficient and highly mobile, able to fight on their own without the heavy support that normal regiments had. In a planetary assault they would be the first ones down, charged with securing a landing zone so that the other troops could follow.

The thing that allowed them to do this, of course, was their battle armor. A trooper in a powered suit was better protected, faster, and more heavily armed than any ordinary infantryman could hope to be. Some people had romantically likened it to an armored knight on an armored charger compared to a peasant foot soldier. It wasn’t a fair comparison since even an unarmored infantryman was a highly skilled and deadly warrior; still it got the idea across. If it weren’t for the enormous expense of the battle armor, everyone would probably wear them.

Still, even with their battle armor, the assault troopers needed some of the heavy support that the normal infantry had. This was where the weapons companies came in. They carried the most powerful weapons that could still be light and mobile enough to accompany an assault regiment.

The shuttles had dropped them off in a rugged and uninhabited mountain valley that the regiment used for firing exercises. Unlike the areas close to the fort, most of the valley had not been terraformed. Broad swaths were covered by the red and brown Barrayaran vegetation—or at least they were where they hadn’t been torn to shreds by heavy weapons fire. “First squad, over there! Second squad, in those rocks! Third squad, with me!” commanded Jer. Today’s activities would be primarily target practice, but they were supposed to act as though enemy troops were in the vicinity and act accordingly. And despite all their high-tech devices, one of the best defensive tactics was still the ancient one of finding some fat rocks to hide behind and keep your fool head down!

The first two squads carried a mix of heavy plasma arcs, man-portable rail guns and missile launchers. The third squad was equipped with even heavier weapons mounted on float-sleds. Jer led these down into a sheltered gully while the rest of his platoon deployed. A glance at the tactical display in his helmet showed him that the other two platoons of the company were also moving into position. First Platoon was equipped with rocket launchers and mortars to provide long-range indirect fire support. Second Platoon was the air defense platoon. They had automated lasers, rail guns, and missiles that were all supposed to defend the battalion from enemy aircraft, artillery, and missiles. Sometimes they did.

Jer’s platoon was labeled the “Anti-Tank Platoon” but in reality it could have been better called the ‘direct fire support platoon’. Yes, their primary function was to take out enemy armored vehicles, but from everything Jer had read, he could expect to be called upon to use his heavy weapons against any target the infantry couldn’t handle on their own.

“H Company platoons, report your status.” Captain Andronov’s voice came over the command circuit. Jer glanced around and his troopers seemed to be where he wanted them. The platoon sergeant, a man named Shusterman, gave him a ‘thumbs up’.

“Third Platoon, in position,” he said. A few moments later the other two platoon commanders, Lieutenant Vorkerkas and Ensign Vorledge, reported the same. Jer was pleased that he’d been first, but he had to admit that the missile and air defense equipment were more clumsy to move around than his own.

“Very good,” said Andronov. “Mr. Naddel, you’re up first. Simulated targets will become active in sixty seconds. Get your men ready.”

“Yes sir!” He switched to the platoon circuit, silently cursing when it took him two attempts. Damn, he really missed the neural interface! With the new suits all you had to do was think: Platoon Circuit and you got it. With the older suit he had to focus his eye on the appropriate box in the heads-up display projected on the inside of his helmet and tap a button inside the finger of his suit to make the choice. “Third Platoon, listen up! Target exercise will begin in forty-five seconds. Remember, this is not a free for all! Check what you are shooting at! First and second squads, don’t waste your fire on heavy targets, third squad don’t waste your fire on light ones. And pay attention to the IFF beacons! Sometimes they’ll throw in a friendly just to trip us up.” At least they’d done that to him a few times at the Academy…

“Attention Company,” came Andronov’s voice over the general circuit. “Weapons are free, repeat, weapons are free. Confirm one-quarter power on all weapons.”

Jer called up the master status display for his platoon, but before he could even check it out Sergeant Shusterman informed him that all weapons were set at one-quarter power. Well, that was part of his job after all. Jer confirmed the power setting to Andronov. Even at one-quarter power the weapons would still obliterate an un-armored man, but the reduced levels would save wear and tear on the equipment.

The exercise began. In many ways it was like some of the video games he’d played as a kid. Colored icons appeared on the tactical display inside his helmet and the idea was to blast them as quickly as possible. Of course the big difference here was that while the targets weren’t real, the weapons certainly were! The first blips appeared on his tactical display and Jer briefly stood on tip-toes to peer over the edge of the gully. The blips were also superimposed on his view of the valley. His sensors identified them as a half-dozen light recon vehicles, skimming along from left to right across his front.

“First squad, those are yours,” he said. “Commence firing.” The words were scarcely out of his mouth before his men opened up. Dazzling blasts from the plasma arcs—automatically dimmed down to a safe level in his visual display—and the thunderbolt crack of the rail guns assaulted his senses. Donner and Blitzen the boys called them. The missile launchers, in contrast, were relatively quiet. The target icons started to wink out and in a few moments they were all gone. Almost immediately another group appeared, this time from the right and moving left. Jer gave the command for his second squad to engage them. They’d made plans earlier to divide the target area up into two zones with each squad taking a zone and not firing at targets in the other zone unless specifically ordered to.

The second batch of targets was dispatched and then two more groups appeared at once and both squads had to engage. Jer suspected that, just like a video game, things would get faster and the targets more numerous until it would be impossible to get them all. Not terribly realistic—or fair—but it would force his troopers to respond with every bit of speed and precision that they could muster.

Things went on well enough for a few minutes. The squad sergeants assigned targets, while the gunners aimed and fired. Other men in the squads scampered back to the gully where the float sleds were waiting to grab spare power packs and take them back to the gunners. So far nothing had gotten through. A thin haze of smoke and vaporized rock drifted up from the valley in the cool morning air.

Then a new blip appeared and it was bigger than the others and it flashed red on Jer’s display. “Check fire! Check fire!’ said Jer urgently. “Heavy target! Third Squad, it’s yours!” The newcomer was reading as a medium tank, not as formidable as one of the Mark XXIs that the 283^rd boasted, but still big enough to mount a full plasma mirror and other shielding. The plasma mirrors on their battle armor were capable of deflecting a bolt from a plasma arc, but the ones on a spaceship—or a tank—could actually redirect the bolt back against the ship or person who fired it. If Jer’s heavy plasma arc men in the first and second squads fired at the tank they could well end up frying themselves—if the tank had been real.

No, this was a job for the rail guns. The heavy rail guns. He had two of them on the float sleds of third squad and now they went into action. The targeting information was fed into them while they were still out of sight in the gully and then on command the pair rose up until they were just high enough to draw a line of sight to the target. In unison they each let off a round. Even at just one-quarter power there was a concussion powerful enough to be felt even inside a suit of armor. Jer had turned down the volume on his external microphones, but the sonic boom still seemed loud. The recoil pushed both float sleds back sharply and they instantly sank down into the gully to evade any return fire—not that there would be any.

The target icon winked out. Jer doubted that just two shots would have been enough to do that against a real target, but wasn’t the point of this exercise. “Good shooting,” he complimented the gunners.

More targets appeared and they engaged them appropriately. Had this been a real battle, they’d have a ridiculously high kill total. But in a real battle, it wouldn’t be this easy. Just target practice.

But the targets kept coming in greater and greater numbers and some of the heavy targets did require multiple shots to eliminate. Jer had to start personally directing some of the fire, ordering one squad to help the others if they were threatened with being overwhelmed. A few targets did start slipping through, getting beyond their firing area intact, but so far only a few.

But then a new wave of targets appeared and there were just too many to stop. Jer was sweating and snapping out orders when Captain Andronov’s voice came over his communicator. “First Platoon, it looks like Third Platoon could use some help. You are ordered to engage.”

Only a few seconds later there was a roar off to his left and Jer saw missiles streaking into the air from a fat clump of skellytums about five hundred meters away. Explosions started to erupt in the valley. Flashes, fireballs, huge gouts of smoke leaping upward. Targets started winking out in large numbers, but not all of them. “No one said to cease fire!” snapped Jer over his platoon circuit. “Keep at ‘em!” His men opened up again, picking off the ones who survived the barrage.

They managed to beat off this wave, but more were coming. Working with the artillery Jer and his platoon fended them off, but it wasn’t easy. Jer glanced at two of the float sleds, the ones where they stored the mines. He wished they had time to plants some of those, but for this exercise they weren’t allowed to.

It went on for another fifteen minutes and then a new message arrived: “Incoming! We have incoming fire! Second platoon engage!” A swarm of fast moving blips was on Jer’s tactical display, closing rapidly on the company’s position. Jer had no time to see what the Air Defense Platoon was doing since there was no let-up in the number of ground attackers still coming on, but the new swarm of blips diminished in number rapidly so clearly they were doing something.

Another ten minutes went by and Jer felt exhausted even though he had done little but crouch in the gully and issue orders. Sergeant Shusterman was circulating between the squads, but Jer stayed put like he was supposed to.

Finally they got a break and the attacks dwindled to almost nothing. Were they done? No, not quite.

“Oh crap,” hissed Jer. Nine large blips appeared on his sensors. Heavy tanks. None of the company’s weapons were likely able to hurt them. What was he supposed to do?

“Okay, time to go people,” said Andronov suddenly. “Our shuttles are inbound and we will withdraw. Second platoon will go first, First platoon will deliver a full salvo to cover us and then they go. Mr. Naddel, you will be the last to pull out. Give a full-power volley with your guns and then scram. Everyone understand?”

“Yes sir!” Full power? Yee ha! He’d never had a chance to do that before!

New blips were appearing on his display and for once they denoted things that really existed: the assault shuttles coming to pick them up. Nine of them all told, three for each platoon. “Plasma and missile men, fall back for pick-up! Rail gunners, set your weapons for full power.” A chorus of acknowledgements came over his com. The rail gunners sounded as excited as he felt.

But First Platoon got the first crack. A salvo of missiles, much larger than any of the others streaked away from their position and a few moments later the whole valley disappeared in flame and smoke. Shuttles were landing now and Jer’s tactical display showed Second Platoon disappearing into them. First Platoon, their job done, was falling back to their shuttles, too. Sergeant Shusterman was ushering the spare float sleds back toward where Third Platoon’s shuttles were landing. Like clockwork.

“All right, stand by…” said Jer.

“Fire!”

The rail guns let loose and their thunderbolts made the prior fire seem like a handful of firecrackers. The incredibly powerful magnetic fields inside the guns accelerated the three-kilogram slugs up to a velocity of almost two hundred kilometers per second. As the rounds left the guns their outer layers instantly began to vaporize from air friction. A pair of bright red beams of light appeared, linking the guns to the cliffs at the far end of the valley. Two large explosions blasted outward from those cliffs and a small avalanche of stone came sliding down. A batch of smaller explosions accompanied the first two as the rail gunners from the other two squads joined in. Wow…

“Time to go, sir,’ said Sergeant Shusterman, who had materialized next to him.

“Right! Okay, that’s it! Fall back! Get aboard!” His men started dashing to the rear and the crews of the two heavy rail guns directed the float sleds toward the waiting shuttles. Despite his elation at all the mayhem he’d unleashed, Jer grimly reflected that if there had really been a battalion of heavy tanks in that valley, then every one of these assault shuttles would be blasted out of the sky before they could get a kilometer away. Oh well, this had been fun anyway.

Jer was the last one aboard and the shuttle lifted off even before the rear ramp was closed. He had to grab the shoulder of one of his men to keep from falling out. He staggered over to a seat and strapped himself in. “Well done, everyone,” he said. Jer was still getting to know the men of his platoon, but they seemed to be in high spirits. Nothing like blowing shit up to put a trooper in a good mood!

Fifteen minutes later they landed at the base and the next three hours were spent in checking and storing their equipment, changing into their fatigues and then, for the officers and NCOs, getting debriefed by Captain Andronov. The captain seemed moderately pleased at their performance, but naturally had criticisms and corrections for each of them. Jer had learned to never take such things personally and just filed the information away for future use.

After that, he spent the rest of the afternoon in the company office composing his own after-action report of the day’s exercise. He thought it had gone well, although he had to admit that with no one shooting back at them, its value was limited. And, of course they couldn’t do things like this very often due to the expense. He’d noticed the skepticism of some of the officers about the new simulator facility that Alby was working on, but the simulators were far more realistic than what they’d done today. And considering that they’d shot off about a hundred thousand marks worth of ordnance in the exercise, there would have to be some savings over the long run. I wonder how Alby’s making out with that?

* * *

“If you put the roof panels on now it will restrict access to the data raceways!”

“If I don’t start putting the roof panels on now your damn raceways will be full of snow instead of cables!”

“Snow? It won’t be snowing for months!”

“All right, rain then. We have to get the building weather-tight before the bad weather comes! I’d think you’d want to keep all your fancy gear dry.”

“Can’t you rig some waterproof tarps or something?”

“There’s nothing in my budget to cover that!”

“Well, there’s nothing in my budget to cover the extra hours it will take to lay the cables if the roof panels are in the way!”

Alby sighed silently and tried to resist the urge to reach across the table and crack a couple of heads together. This seemed like a daily ritual: the manager in charge of constructing the simulator building and the manager in charge of installing the simulators at loggerheads over one point or another. Alby glanced at Lieutenant Pflugfelter, the guy who was supposed to be in charge of the entire project. As usual, he was just sitting there, doing nothing to straighten things out. Of course Alby had to admit that since both of the managers were civilians, there was a limit to what Pflugfelter could do.

“Perhaps the Quartermaster could lend us some tarps and the engineers could rig them up,” suggested Alby.

“I don’t know…” said Pflugfelter, looking uncertain.

“Why not?” persisted Alby. “I see them doing it all the time to protect piles of equipment out by the landing fields. Everything in that building is government property, and if it needs protection from the elements this ought to be routine.”

“Uh, the engineers don’t have the security clearance to be on the work site.”

“Oh, so that’s why we have civilian workers doing this? Can’t trust the military?” Alby let the irony drip into his voice, but Pflugfelter seemed oblivious.

“The regulations don’t make any exceptions.”

Alby rolled his eyes. There was nothing secret about any of this technology. It was commonplace throughout the Wormhole Nexus. “Well, perhaps if the Quartermaster can supply the tarp, Mr. Hale’s boys can rig them up and give Mr. Klemperer’s people the time they need on those raceways?” He nodded toward the two contractors.

They argued and kicked it around for a half hour before finally agreeing, but in the end they did agree and the meeting wrapped up—with half a dozen other items on the agenda untouched. Pflugfelter seemed pleased. “I thought that went pretty well, don’t you think?”

“Better than a lot of our meetings, yeah,” admitted Alby.

“How are you coming on your software review?”

“I had it finished a week ago. Now we just need some hardware to install it in.”

“It’ll get here, don’t worry.” As far as Alby could see, Pflugfelter had no real desire to see the project completed. It was a cushy job and once it was done it would go down in his records as a successful project. He found the man’s attitude exasperating at times.

“Well, almost quitting time,” said Alby. “See you tomorrow.”

“Stay a minute, Vorsworth,” said Pflugfelter, raising his hand. “Been meaning to talk to you. You’re pretty tight with that Payne girl, aren’t you?”

“We’ve been friends since our plebe year,” replied Alby cautiously.

“Friends or friends?” asked Pflugfelter, not quite leering.

“What the hell do you mean by that? Sir.” Alby frowned at the man.

“Oh, nothing, nothing. Just been hearing some pretty… interesting rumors.”

“Like what?”

“Oh like that she slept her way through the Academy, if you know what I mean.”

Alby’s mouth fell open and his hands were clenched in fists. “That’s a damn lie! Sir.”

“Really? I’ve got it from a reliable source that she’s sleeping with that Komarran fellow.”

“That… that started after they graduated,” sputtered Alby. “Nothing against the regulations in that!”

“Huh, well, if you say so, Vorsworth. I suppose you’d be in a position to know.”

“She was an outstanding cadet—and a hero! And now she’s a damn fine officer! You can tell that to your ‘reliable source’!”

“Calm down, old man! Not trying to start an argument. Was just curious, that’s all. Well, see you tomorrow.” Pflugfelter sauntered off, leaving Alby fuming.

* * *

Jer was on his way back to his quarters to get ready for dress parade. He’d finished his report and sent it off to the Captain. He hadn’t seen Anny all day and she wasn’t there now, either. He knew that they’d been incredibly lucky to be assigned to the same regiment, but their luck had run out about being assigned to the same battalion. Their duties would often keep them apart and it was only going to get worse. 1^st Battalion—and Anny—were scheduled to be assigned ship duty next year and she might be gone for six or eight months. And then after she got back, his own battalion would probably ship out. They might not see each other for a year or more. He didn’t like that at all.

Well, he reminded himself as he did often, that he hadn’t joined the Imperial Forces in order to fall in love. He and Anny would just have to take what time they were given and be grateful for it.

He did see her for a few moments before dress parade but they had no time to talk. The parade was routine except that at the end, when Colonel Fetherbay was addressing the officers he said: “Oh, as I’m sure most of you have heard, the reservists of the 139^th will be arriving the week after next for their annual refresher training. As usual things will be a bit of a madhouse and we may be asked to provide assistance on short notice. I’m also informed that Brigadier Vorsilva is planning a major exercise with the whole brigade as part of the 139^th’s stay here. I don’t have any details of that yet, but I will keep you posted. All right, that’s all for now, dismissed.”

As the formation broke up, Anny had to dash off somewhere. She said she’d see him at dinner. He hadn’t seen Alby at the parade at all, so Jer joined the general clump of officers heading for the mess. They were all discussing the upcoming arrival of the reservists.

“Ah yes, the circus is coming to town, gentlemen!” said Lieutenant Haskell of F Company. “Two-headed chickens and dancing bears will be in the streets!” Jer laughed along with the others, but then he asked:

“Will it be as bad as all that?”

“Who said anything about it being bad?” quipped another officer. “It’ll be the most fun we see here all year.”

“The troops themselves aren’t all that bad,” said Captain Voring, the commander of E Company. “At least the younger ones who haven’t been away from the regulars all that long. No, what Mr. Haskell was referring to was all the camp followers who will be flocking into the town. It seems like half the troops bring their families with them for the month. Like it was some damn vacation. They set up tent cities on the outskirts.”

“And not just the families!” exclaimed someone else. “Gamblers, hucksters, and half the frills on the planet show up to ply their trade with the troops who don’t bring their families.”

“That’s probably why most of the women follow their men here,” chuckled Haskell, “to keep them away from the frills!” Everyone laughed again.

“Some of the girls aren’t bad, I hear” ventured an ensign from G Company. “At least a change from the batch that live in town.”

“Planning to give them a try?”

“Why not?” said someone else. “Considering how few prospects we poor unmarried men find here in the wilderness and with Vorbarr Sultana so far away, we quite look forward to this.”

A flurry of ribald comments followed that had them all laughing. Well, nearly all, some of the married officers whose wives had come to see the dress parade as they often did had drifted away from their raucous unmarried comrades.

They reached the Regimental Mess and went inside. Jer got a beer and stood near the bar and waited for Anny to arrive. The cost of belonging to the mess was not trivial, but at least it almost guaranteed that he and Anny would share at least one meal a day. The other officers were milling about, drinking, and still making jokes about the upcoming arrival of the reservists and their camp followers. Jer had to admit that it did sound like quit a show.

“Of course we won’t be needin’ the local frills much longer!” said one overly loud voice. “I hear they’ll be issuin’ us our own before long!” Jer looked and saw that it was Lieutenant Vorkerkas, the commander of 1^st Platoon in his own H Company. The man was looking right at him and Jer froze. “Right, Naddel?”

A few men laughed, but it died away and the general noise level in the mess dropped off to almost nothing. Jer met Vorkerkas’ eyes for a few moments longer and then turned away, hoping he’d just misunderstood, but fearing he hadn’t.

“Don’t turn your back on me, Komarran!” said Vorkerkas. “I asked you a question!” Jer turned back to face him.

“Hey, calm down, Adrien,” said another man who slapped Vorkerkas on the shoulder but the man shook him off. He’d clearly wasted no time downing a few drinks and he wasn’t drinking beer. It had been pretty obvious to Jer during the last few weeks that the man didn’t particularly like him, but he’d never given him any trouble before either. What was this?

“I asked Naddel a question and I expect an answer!”

Jer glanced around the room, but all the senior officers seemed to have disappeared. “I… I’m afraid I don’t understand the lieutenant’s question,” said Jer as evenly as he could.

“It’s simple enough: as the first man in the regiment to be issued his own frill, I just wanted to know how she is. I imagine she must be very experienced after four years at the Academy.” Vorkerkas had a leer on his face. “I hear they’re training a whole lot more. I hope they don’t forget us when they start handing them out!”

Jer was well aware that ‘frill’ was the Barrayaran equivalent of ‘whore’, but somehow the word didn’t have the same sort of power. Even so, he was furious inside. This jackass had just called Anny a whore! He supposed that by this time pretty much everyone knew that he and Anny were sleeping together, but he hadn’t expected anything like this! He slowly set his glass on the bar and clenched his fists…

“Lieutenant Vorkerkas, if your remarks are in reference to Lieutenant Andreanne Payne, then I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to step outside.”

Everyone twitched—including Jer, because the words weren’t his, although they nearly had been. Alby Vorsworth had silently entered the mess and now he was standing a few meters from Vorkerkas and he looked as furious as Jer felt. Vorkerkas spun around and goggled at Alby for a moment. Finally he said: “Beat it, Vorsworth. This is none of your business.”

“When you insult a fellow officer—and my friend—I’ll make it my business. You owe Lieutenant Naddel and Lieutenant Payne an apology.”

Vorkerkas snorted derisively. “I’ll see you in hell first.”

“That can be arranged.” Alby took a step forward, looking angrier than Jer had ever seen him. His own anger was still there, but it took back seat to his amazement at Alby’s words and actions.

“Okay, that’s enough!” said Captain Andronov, coming forward. “Simmer down, both of you!”

Alby still looked angry, but he backed off a step. Vorkerkas sniffed and said: “What’s with you, Vorsworth? You screwing her, too?”

Alby gave an angry cry and flung himself at Vorkerkas, but he was intercepted and held back by several of the other officers. “Shut up, you bastard!” This set Vorkerkas off and he lunged forward until he too was restrained.

“All right! All right! What the devil is going on here?” Jer looked and saw that Major Waski had appeared and was pushing his way through the crowd. “Well?” he demanded when he reached the front. There was an awkward silence.

“Uh, nothing, sir, nothing going on at all,” said Jer.

“Good! Keep it that way!” snapped Waski. Jer moved over and took Alby by the arm and led him away. The other officers relaxed and dispersed. Vorkerkas sent a nasty glare his way, but Jer ignored it.

“That miserable son-of-a-bitch!” hissed Alby. “How dare he talk about Anny that way!” He stared at Jer. “And how come I’m not holding you back instead of vice versa?”

“Well, you were doing such a good job I didn’t want to get in your way.” He continued to haul Alby toward the door but stopped in his tracks when he saw Anny standing in front of him. She had a look of great confusion on her face.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you later.”

* * *

“I was afraid something like this might happen.”

Jer looked at Anny, snuggled against him, and ran his hand down her bare shoulder and along her arm. Her face was very serious and that wasn’t right considering what they’d just been doing. “Well, there’s not much we can do about it now. Even if we stopped seeing each other everyone would assume we still were.”

“I don’t want to stop seeing you. And it’s no one’s business if we do!”

“No, it isn’t. Still, I can see why some of them might be upset.”

“Really? Why?”

“Well, the prospects of finding female companionship on the edge of the wilderness aren’t very good and here I am bunking with the most beautiful woman in the known universe. Might tend to make them a tad jealous.” That got a smile out of her and Jer grinned and kissed her. But then her smile faded again and she let out a long sigh.

“All those years at the Academy, acting like the Maiden of the Lake, I had just hoped that once we were graduated… hell. Guess I should have known better.”

“You’re still blazing the trail, Anny, and I guess you always will be,” said Jer, holding her a little closer. “Everything you do will always be a first. First woman at the Academy, first woman in combat, first woman decorated for gallantry… first woman officer with a lover…”

“First woman officer to get married?” Anny’s green eyes were very large and staring right into his.

“Are you proposing to me?”

“I…” she looked away. “No, not… not yet.”

“Well don’t wait too long or Alby and Abbie will beat us to it and your record will be broken!” He laughed and after a moment she did, too.

“Do you want to get married?” she asked.

“To you? Yes. Right now? I’m not sure.”

She clutched him tightly and rubbed her face against his chest for a moment and then pulled back to look at him. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“For what?”

“For not… demanding anything from me.” He didn’t say anything but he smiled and kissed her on the forehead.

“I do want to marry you, Jer, it’s just that… that…”

“Your career comes first. I understand.”

“Oh, it sounds so selfish when you put it that way, but yes, I guess there’s no getting around it.”

“Anny, you don’t have to make any apologies. Not to me. I saw what you had to go through at the Academy, saw how hard you fought and how you’d never give up no matter what all the jerks tried to do to get you to quit. Why do you think I love you so much, girl? I’m sure not going to expect you to give it up now. Not for anyone… even me. I can wait. I waited for four years and I can wait for four more. Or forty if that’s what it takes.”

“I hope it won’t be that long! But right now… I’ve looked over every word of the regulations concerning married personnel and it’s all so damn vague! Naturally they are all written with the idea of a male soldier and a female spouse, but there’s all this stuff in there about keeping wives and dependents out of combat zones. It makes sense if there are no women soldiers, but if someone was really out to get me, they could use those same regs to get me banned from any sort of combat duty if I was married. Maybe I’m just paranoid…”

“Not that you have any reason to be!” snorted Jer.

Anny responded with a snort of her own. “Yeah. But anyway, right now I just don’t know if we can risk it, Jer.”

“Like I said: I can wait if you can. And once some of the other women start getting their commissions, the regulations are going to have to get clarified eventually.”

“Yeah… do you think there will be any more trouble like you had with Vorkerkas tonight?”

“Hard to say. Alby had a run-in early today with his co-worker, but he said it wasn’t serious. Have you had any trouble at your end about this?”

“Not so far. Of course now I’m going to be looking at everything everyone says looking for hidden meanings…”

“Yeah. But you know there is one thing we could do.”

“What?”

“Get off the base. Out of the BOQ. Get a place in town even if we do have to allow Alby to subsidize it.”

Anny sighed. “Yes, that might be best. It won’t solve all the problems, but it still might be best. Let’s talk to him.”

“In the morning,” said Jer, pulling her close again.

“Yes, in the morning.”

Chapter 5

The blade flashed past Anny’s face as she twisted aside. Before she could recover, another attack came at her and she barely managed to beat it away with her own sword. Her opponent was fast and skilled and he knew he had her off balance. The attacks came faster and faster and Anny fell back, desperately fending them off, but with no chance to counterattack. She was strong and with great reflexes, but she had little experience in this sort of fighting. Her opponent’s blade was like some living thing, moving almost faster than she could see. Sweat trickled down the side of her face and she retreated step by step.

Finally the inevitable happened and the blunt tip of her opponent’s blade slid past her defenses and jabbed her solidly in the thick padding of her jacket. A buzzer sounded inside her safety helmet and she lowered her sword with a sigh of frustration. “Well done, ensign,” she said. “A good touch.”

“You didn’t do bad yourself,” said Ensign Vorgard. “For a beginner.” He pulled off his helmet and grinned at her.

“You’ve only been with the regiment a little over a year yourself. You’ve sure learned a lot in that time!”

“Oh, my da had me taking fencing lessons before I was ten, Lieutenant,” said Vorgard making an elaborate sweep of his blade. “I didn’t pick this all up here!”

“Ah, I see,” said Anny feeling a bit better. “Then I shall count myself fortunate getting lessons from you.”

“My pleasure, sir.” Vorgard made a formal salute with the sword. “Same time next week?”

“Uh, sure. See you then.” Vorgard nodded at her and headed for the locker rooms. Anny went over to one of the benches and sat down, watching the other pairs working out. Fencing! When she’d been with the 42^nd Infantry, they had been close-combat-mad and had competitions and a regimental champion and Anny had assumed that the 61^st would be the same. Wrong! Here it was fencing. Or they called it fencing, but it was not just swords; they competed with a wide variety of edged and non-edged weapons. Foils, epees, sabres, battle axes, quarterstaffs, halberds, you name it. And it wasn’t just ritualized combat like she was doing here, some of it was serious: combat training in power armor with toned-down versions of the hammers and maces the ordnance sergeant had shown her.

That meant this was all mandatory. Not just the training, but the other competitive fencing, too. Two nights each week, the officers’ gymnasium was converted to a fencing salle. Everyone was expected to participate and anyone with any real skill had to be on the teams that the regiment boasted. There were competitions and tournaments with other regiments and with teams from private clubs and schools. It had been like that at the Academy with the sports teams, too, of course. Soccer, thugby, crossball, and fencing, too, there were teams for all of them. But for some reason no one had even asked Anny to try out for those teams and for once she had been more than happy to be excluded. She had had better things to do with her time. Poor Patric Mederov had been a natural for thugby and he’d nearly flunked out due to demands it had put on his time.

But here in the 61^st it was a matter of regimental tradition. The original Vorlinton Guards, centuries earlier, had once made a legendary bayonet charge which had broken the enemy and won the battle and forever after they’d prided themselves in that. It was the whole ‘give them the cold steel!’ thing and there was no escaping it. Anny wasn’t even sure she wanted to escape it. She’d only had a few sessions so far but it did look like some of it might be fun. More fun than close-combat, anyway. And she had been looking for a way to become a part of things…

“Care to give me a touch, Lieutenant?” Anny looked to her right and saw several men in fencing gear looking back at her. The one who’d spoken looked familiar somehow.

She stood up. “Uh, sure, Mister…”

“Vorkerkas, Adrien Vorkerkas at your service.” He made a tiny bow. A chill went through Anny. This was the jerk who’d nearly started a fight with Jer and Alby a few days earlier. Somehow she couldn’t believe this was just a chance encounter. But it was too late to back out now. Vorkerkas led the way to an unoccupied piste and Anny followed. For some reason a half-dozen other men trailed along. I don’t think I like this…

They took their positions and immediately Vorkerkas attacked. She managed to fend him off for a while but eventually he scored on her with a hard thrust. Her jacket was padded, but it still hurt a bit. She’d been told that the padding was deliberately left thin enough to punish the fencer when scored upon. “Well done,” she said.

“You’d do better if you kept your elbow more in line with your body,” suggested one of the watchers with a grin.

“I think he’s right,” said Vorkerkas. “Again?”

Were they looking for her to give up and quit? “Why not?”

They went at it again and she managed to hold him off longer this time, but he still scored on her in the end. “Best of five?” asked Vorkerkas. She nodded. The next round Anny found her rhythm and did better, attacking as well as defending. This seemed to surprise Vorkerkas and he was surprised even more when she darted her foil past him to score a touch. This produced several guffaws from the audience, which had grown.

“Two to one,” said Anny.

“Yes,” said Vorkerkas. “En garde.”

This round went on quite a while with Anny and her opponent advancing and retreating up and down the piste. He was clearly much more experienced, but she had an edge in speed and reflexes, she thought. And several times he could have scored on her except that he made exaggerated lunges that delayed him just long enough for her to twist aside. But if they had landed… was he deliberately trying to hurt her? She watched for him to do it again. When he did, she was ready. She deflected his thrust and then instantly counterattacked and scored. “Two-all,” she said, trying not to grin.

“Yes,” said Vorkerkas, stepping back. “For the match, then.” He came at her again. Back and forth they went, thrusting and parrying. Then Vorkerkas lunged again. Anny partially deflected his blade but it caught her on the upper arm and a jolt of pain yanked a gasp from her as his sword bent nearly double. The speaker in her helmet gave a sharp ping instead of a buzz.

“Not a touch, Adrien,” chuckled one of the watchers. “Outside the target zone. Still Two-all.”

Vorkerkas stepped away and saluted with his weapon. “You’re quite good with the foil, Lieutenant. But I prefer the sabre, myself. Are you game?”

Anny hesitated. The sabre was a different weapon with a different set of rules. You could score with the sides of the blade, not just the point, and the whole body above the waist was a legal target. She’d only tried the sabre a few times in her earlier sessions.

“Of course, I understand if you’d rather not. The sabre really is a man’s weapon.” Vorkerkas was smirking now.

Anny rubbed her arm and frowned. She’d faced shit like this at the Academy often enough to recognize it. He was deliberately goading her. And he could probably make mincemeat out of her with a sabre. She should just claim fatigue and walk away… Damn it… “I’d be happy to give it a try, sir.”

“Good! Good!” He grinned broadly and one of the officers produced a pair of sabres almost instantly. Obviously this had been planned. But why? She glanced around at the watching officers. No one from her company, no one that she knew very well… Wait, there’s Sven Estaban… The man she’d met her first day here was looking at her with an odd expression. When he saw her looking at him, he turned and moved quickly away. “Ready?” asked Vorkerkas.

She squared off and Vorkerkas came at her. She decided to concentrate strictly on the defense for now and initially she was successful. Vorkerkas’ sword came at her from the front, sides, high, low, but she managed to deflect or dodge each strike. He deliberately left himself open to counterattacks several times, but she suspected it was a trap and didn’t take the bait. But by not attacking she was leaving Vorkerkas free to plan his attacks carefully and finally he got past her guard and whacked her upper arm painfully. “Hurts a bit, doesn’t it?” he chuckled. “Something you have to get used to, Payne.” He stopped and chuckled again. “Pain for Payne! I rather like that!” Several of the others laughed. Yeah, I bet you do! Anny held her anger in check and took the ready position.

This time she made a few attacks of her own but Vorkerkas easily blocked them. The movements with the sabre were entirely different from those with the foil and she’d barely ever practiced them. Vorkerkas clearly had. I don’t have a chance here. Maybe I should just let him have his three touches and call it quits…

Suddenly Vorkerkas struck low and slashed across her upper thigh. Ow! The sabre’s edges weren’t sharpened, but it still felt like a whiplash despite her protective trousers. The speaker in her helmet pinged. Below the waist wasn’t a legal target.

“Sorry about that,” said Vorkerkas. But he didn’t look the least bit sorry.

They continued and shortly he managed to slash her other thigh. The first hit was burning like fire and this one was just as bad. “Heavens, I’m out of practice,” smirked Vorkerkas. “I better be more careful or this match could take all night.”

And that was just what he wanted! Yes, she could see it now: he’d deliberately keep striking her in illegal spots and drag this out as long as he possibly could. Until she quit.

Or until she won.

But she quickly saw that there was no chance of that. He was just too good. Even after she was expecting the low attacks, she wasn’t able to take advantage of it and score on him. She started concentrating on defending her legs even though that meant exposing her upper body. She was hoping he’d make the scoring touches and end this one-sided contest, but he didn’t. He just wanted to hurt her. Why? What had she ever done to him? When did they ever need a reason? Her thoughts went back to her first year at the Academy…

Vorkerkas’ blade darted to one side and Anny twisted to avoid it, but then in a blur of movement he brought it around to her other side and savagely slashed it across her exposed backside.

“Oh nicely done!” cried one of the watchers.

“Well placed!” said another. The watchers all laughed.

“Oops,” said Vorkerkas, grinning.

The pain was so intense that Anny had to bite her lip and blink furiously to keep the tears from dripping down her cheeks. Damn! What the hell was she going to…?

“Lieutenant Payne? Is Lieutenant Payne here?” A raised voice attracted everyone’s attention.

“Over here,” she gasped.

An enlisted man pushed through the crowd of watchers and she was surprised to see that it was Private Kerbeck from her platoon. “Oh, there you are, Lieutenant!”

“What is it, Private?”

“Sergeant Kay needs you at the company office right away, sir. Some sort of emergency.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Don’t know. He just said to come get you ASAP.”

“All right, I’m coming.” She looked at Vorkerkas, who was frowning. She tossed him her sabre and he caught it. “Sorry, Lieutenant, duty calls. We’ll have to continue this another time.”

Vorkerkas nodded. “Yes, another time.”

Anny hobbled over to her locker and pulled off her protective gear and stuffed them inside. She was wearing her fatigues underneath. She put on her cap and followed Kerbeck out of the gym. She tried not to limp, but Kerbeck slowed his pace to match the best she could do. “You all right, sir?” he asked.

“Fine.”

“Bastards,” muttered Kerbeck.

“What was that, Private?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Didn’t think so.”

By the time they reached the C Company barracks, she was able to walk almost normally. She went up the short flight of steps and into the company HQ office. Sergeant Kay was there with a couple of the other sergeants. “What’s the emergency, Sergeant?” she asked. Kay jumped to his feet.

“Oh, sorry sir! False alarm! Sorry to call you here for no reason. I should have commed you after I sent off Kerbeck to fetch you.”

Anny stood there and stared at him for a moment, a frown growing on her face. “Why did you think you needed to send for me in the first place?”

Kay reddened. “Uh, it was nothing sir. I thought that… well you see… nothing, sir! Nothing at all!”

“Well! Almost lights out,” declared one of the other sergeants suddenly.

“Yeah. Big day tomorrow,” said another. “G’night, Lieutenant.”

“I better check on the boys, sir,” said Kay. “See you tomorrow.” He went past her out the door. Kerbeck had already vanished.

What the hell was that about? Did they deliberately try to get me away from Vorkerkas and his cronies? How could they have known…? Estaban? Had he tipped off her men? A smile slowly grew on her face.

* * *

“I’m gonna break his neck!” snarled Jer. “Look at this!”

“Can’t,” murmured Anny. “M’head doesn’t turn that far. But don’t stop.”

“Hedonist.”

“You bet. Mmmm…”

Anny was lying face-down on Jer’s bed without a stitch on. He was tending her wounds and if the welt and bruises on her ass were anything like the ones on her thighs and arm they must be spectacular indeed. But Jer was rubbing in a healing ointment and at the moment she was feeling just fine.

“Seriously! You ought to bring Vorkerkas up on charges!”

“For what? Sabre practice? I agreed to fence against him and I could have quit at any time. Not exactly enough to court martial him, Jer.”

“He knew you wouldn’t quit! He was counting on it!”

“Yup. And I walked right into it. I ought to bring myself up on charges for gross stupidity.”

“How can you not be upset?”

“With you doing what you’re doing? Right now I couldn’t be upset with anything. Mmmm…. Don’t think he hit me there, but keep going.”

Jer snorted, but did what he was told. “This is just like our first close-combat session at the Academy. Remember? That was a set-up, too.”

“Yup. Except this time I made it out with no broken bones and not under arrest. See, I’m improving.”

“Yeah, right. By the time you make general you might be able to join a new unit without mussing a hair! But it was lucky you got called away.”

“If it was luck. I’m thinking maybe it wasn’t.”

“Estaban?”

“Don’t know who else could have tipped off my men.”

“Well, he is an okay guy, I guess…” admitted Jer, grudgingly.

Anny laughed. “Don’t be jealous! I doubt he could do this half as good as you are. Mmmm, doubt anyone could…” Jer’s hands had now strayed well out of the damage area.

“But I still don’t see what Vorkerkas is after,” persisted Jer. “He tried to pick a fight with me and then he does this to you. And yes, I know he doesn’t need a reason. But we need to be on our guard, Anny. I doubt he’ll give up.”

“Well, we won’t either.” She rolled over and grabbed him. “Now shut up and kiss me. We can talk about this later!”

* * *

“The finest were Vorlinton’s Guard; The Sixty-First is just as hard; Our arms we wield from star to star Far from the hills of Barrayar. Far from the hills and skies of home, We’ll strike at planet, ship or dome; From Cetaganda to Escobar, Far from the hills of Barrayar.”

Anny listened to the men singing and felt the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. Over sixteen hundred men, slightly out of sync because of the long column, and slightly out of tune because some of them couldn’t sing worth a damn, but it was still splendid. The regimental band drowned out the worst of the sour notes as the men roared out the Regiment’s marching song.“The Colonel said: Give them your steel!

And we crushed the foes beneath our heel;

We’ll crush our foes both near and far;

For the Emperor! For Barrayar!

Far from the hills and skies of home, We’ll strike at planet, ship or dome; From Cetaganda to Escobar, Far from the hills of Barrayar.”

She had heard bits and pieces of the song from time to time, but this was the first time she’d heard it sung like this. She found herself listening closely. There had been a notation in the regimental handbook reminding people that the old version of the song was still banned. A little research had revealed the next-to-last line of each verse used to go: From Cetaganda to Komarr, but for political reasons that had been changed to the present version. Supposedly some troops would still sing the old version, but she didn’t hear anyone doing that today.

“Be at the ready, on your marks; Precise as scalpels, fierce as arcs.       For nothing must our honor mar Learned in the hills of Barrayar. Far from the hills and skies of home, We’ll strike at planet, ship or dome; From Cetaganda to Escobar, Far from the hills of Barrayar.”

The tune was taken from an old, old folk song that Anny had heard a hundred times, but it was catchy and stuck in your head. She found herself singing along with the rest.

“Send us your best to do their worst, They'll break upon the Sixty-First. And when we're done, we'll leap afar Back to the hills of Barrayar. Back to the hills and skies of home, Done with our march, no more to roam; From Cetaganda and Escobar, Back to the hills of Barrayar.”*

The song ended and the band took up another march, drums pounding and fifes trilling, as the regiment moved onto the parade ground. The column—band, regimental headquarters, and 1^st and 2^nd battalions—stretched over half a kilometer from the barracks. Everyone was in their dress greens. There were a lot of people already there waiting for them. Three of the behemoths of the 283rd were lined up at the south end of the field and the crews and support personnel arrayed around them. At the north end were the vehicles, guns and crews of the 32^nd Artillery and arrayed between the tanks and the guns, along the west side of the field were the men of the 139^th Infantry. The reservists had arrived that morning and after a day getting settled in, they were now on the field with all the other units of the 25^th Brigade.

The 61^st moved across the field and formed its line in front of the 139^th, facing a raised platform that had been erected on the field’s east side. The brigade commander, General Vorsilva, would be there with his staff. To the right of the platform were several of the smaller units attached to the brigade: engineers, medical and service personnel. All around the field was a huge crowd of civilian spectators. Apparently the rumors had been right: the 139^th had brought their families.

“Battalions… Halt!” shouted out Colonel Fetherbay in a roar that Anny envied. The band stopped playing and everyone halted. “Front!” Everyone faced to the left and there was a commendably small amount of shuffling around as the ranks were dressed. “Order… Arms! Parade… Rest!” Anny lowered her sword and rested her hands on the hilt. She was in the rank of file closers, directly behind her platoon and she looked over her men with satisfaction.

She still hadn’t been able to drag the truth out of Sergeant Kay about how he’d known to send Kerbeck to ‘rescue’ her from Vorkerkas last week, but she supposed it didn’t really matter. What was important was that they had saved her. Their lieutenant was in a bind and they’d come get her. They didn’t have to—it wasn’t a combat situation or their responsibility in any way—but they had. They were accepting her and that’s what counted. She felt a warm glow inside.

The General was supposed to give some sort of speech, but there seemed to be a delay and she could see people scurrying around on the platform. Hurry up and wait. It didn’t really bother her anymore. She looked to left in hopes of catching sight of Jer with 2^nd Battalion, but she couldn’t see him. Alby was with the regimental staff.

A distant rumble caught her attention and she glanced behind her. The weather forecast was for thunderstorms late in the day and there had been towering clouds building up beyond the western mountains all afternoon. She hoped Vorsilva’s speech didn’t run too long or everyone was going to get soaked. Or hit by lightning.

Finally things got straightened out and Vorsilva gave his speech. Anny found it uninspiring and she blanked much of it out. He was just welcoming the reservists and talking about the importance of the reserve system and how vital it was for every citizen to do their bit in defending the Imperium. She only perked her ears up when the General mentioned the large-scale exercise that would be held near the end of the 139^th’s training month. That ought to be fun.

The thunder was getting louder and she was relieved when Vorsilva finished up and the brigade could pass in review. It was pretty impressive, really, the most troops and equipment she’d seen in one place since the parade celebrating the birth of Princess Kareen back in second year at the Academy. But the storm was coming and as each unit finished passing by the reviewing stand,they headed directly back toward their barracks. No one lingered behind and the spectators were rapidly dispersing. She just had time to dismiss her men and then sprint for the Regimental Officers Mess. A strong wind had come up, swaying the tall pines, and a few fat rain drops were splattering the ground as she went up the steps.

Inside it was crowded and the shelves for their hats were piled high. Swords had to be leaned against the wall because all the hanging pegs were filled. As the home regiment, the 61^st was hosting the officers from all the other units. The doors between the mess and the attached gymnasium had been thrown open and extra tables set up in there. Dozens of stewards were bustling about trying to handle the influx. They’d had to set up an annex for the bar. More officers were pushing in behind her. It was pouring outside now.

Anny moved away from the door and through the mess into the gymnasium area which was still relatively uncrowded. Between all the officers from two infantry regiments, several battalions, and brigade headquarters, along with their wives and girlfriends, it might get very crowded indeed. She managed to find Jer and they both got beers and found a place to sit down. “How are things going?” she asked him.

“Not bad,” he replied. “No problems with Vorkerkas although we’re giving each other as wide a berth as we can. How about you?”

“Good. The platoon is in fine shape. Well mostly.”

“Problems?”

“Well, I’m worried about my platoon sergeant, Kay. He’s not really carrying the load. He tries, he’s not a deadbeat, but he just doesn’t seem to have a handle on what the job’s all about. I think it’s because his last boss was Sergeant Milroy who used to be the platoon sergeant before he was made the acting platoon commander. I suspect that Milroy couldn’t bring himself to let go and just sort of did both jobs and let Kay watch. Now I want Kay to do his job and he doesn’t know how.”

“Have you talked with him?”

Anny sighed. “Not really. I’ve hinted at it, but I don’t seem to be getting through. And… and…”

“And you don’t want to come down hard on him because you’re new. Yeah, I can see that. Maybe you should talk to the company first sergeant and see if he can get through to Kay. That is part of his job, after all.”

“Yeah, maybe I should…”

“Ah, there you are, Lieutenant, we were looking for you.” Anny looked up and then sprang to her feet. Colonel Fetherbay was there and with him were General Vorsilva and another colonel who could only be the commander of the 139^th, Colonel Downes. All three men had their wives with them.

“Sir.” she said. Jer was on his feet, too, but neither of them saluted. No salutes in the Mess.

Fetherbay smiled and then turned to Vorsilva. “General, may I present two of our new lieutenants: This is Lieutenant Payne and this is Lieutenant Naddel.”

“Well, no doubt which is which,” said Vorsilva, stepping forward to shake hands. He was a beefy middle-aged man with a bushy mustache and thinning hair. His dress greens had an impressive collection of decorations on the chest, too many to decipher at the moment. “Welcome to Fort Vorolson, gentlemen,” he said. “I hope you’re liking it here.”

“Yes, sir,” said Anny and Jer in unison.

“Glad to hear that. This is my wife, Penelope, and this is Colonel Downes and his wife, Janice.” Greeting were made all around and then Lady Penelope couldn’t contain herself anymore.

“Oh, Lieutenant Payne, I’ve just been dying to meet you! Harold didn’t even tell me you were here until last week! Can you believe it? The very first woman in the military—ever!—right here on our base! And he didn’t even tell me! And just look at you! You look just like a soldier! That’s so wonderful!” Behind Lady Penelope Anny could see Colonel Fetherbay’s wife, a nice lady named Sara, and Colonel Downes’ wife exchanging glances and rolling their eyes.

Lady Penelope kept rambling on and Anny kept smiling and nodding and the General’s frown kept getting darker and darker. Finally Fetherbay broke in: “General, I think I see our other new addition over there. Lieutenant Vorsworth is the grandson of Admiral Vorsworth who died two years back, as you remember. You really ought to meet him, too. He’s helping out with the new simulator project.” Anny saw Alby across the room and was tempted to yell at him to run, but restrained herself. Vorsilva managed to drag his wife away.

“We must have tea sometime!” she called back to her. Somewhat to Anny’s surprise—well, maybe it wasn’t so surprising after all—Colonel Fetherbay’s wife didn’t go along with the others. Anny had met her a few times in the mess, but they’d never really had a chance to talk.

“She means well,” said Mrs. Fetherbay, nodding at the General’s wife. “Don’t be put off by her manner. She misses the bright lights and social events of the capital, I think. You’re the only excitement to happen around here in quite a while.”

“If she considers me excitement, things must be really dull.”

The woman smiled. “Well, you are rather exciting, Lieutenant. At least to some people. In fact, I wanted to ask a favor of you.”

“Ma’am?”

“We’re having a little get-together of all the officers’ wives—from all the units—next week and I was wondering if you’d be willing to come and give a little talk?”

“A talk?” said Anny in surprise. “What about?”

“Why about you, of course. Why you decided to go to the Academy. How you got there. What it was like and how you made it through. There are a lot of us who would really like to know.”

“I… I…” stuttered Anny, flustered. “I have duty and…”

“My husband has already said that you can be excused duty for this, Lieutenant.”

“I’ve never done anything like that, ma’am, I don’t know if I…”

“Lieutenant… Anny, please,” said Mrs. Fetherbay. “I have a teenage daughter. A lot of the other wives have daughters. And some of them… a lot of them are talking about you and what you’ve done. They want to know—I want to know—what they’ll face if they try to do it too.”

The woman looked at her so intently that Anny found herself saying yes. “Thank you, Lieutenant. I’ll get the details to you tomorrow.” She smiled and went after her husband. Anny plopped back down on her chair.

“Shit.”

Jer laughed. “What’s the matter? It might be fun.”

“I’ve never done any public speaking!”

“You do it all the time! You commanded a company of cadets and now you command a platoon of assault troopers. That’s gotta be harder than talking to a batch of women.”

“Easy for you to say,” she muttered. A bright flash of light came through the windows followed almost immediately by a loud crack of thunder that shook the whole building. “See? Even the gods are against it.”

“You’ll do fine, Anny.”

Shaking her head, she took a swig of her now-warm beer and tried to decide if she was hungry. Due to the large number of people, dinner was buffet-style tonight. The lines looked pretty long. Maybe she’d wait…

“Holy crap!” cried Alby, who suddenly appeared through the crowd. “I never thought I’d get away from her!”

“Lady Penelope?” smirked Jer.

“Yes! How’d you manage to escape her?”

“The General spotted you and dragged her away. We owe you one.”

“You certainly do!” he grabbed an empty chair and carried it over next to theirs. “But I need to talk to you two.”

“What about?”

“Vorkerkas.”

“Oh dear,” sighed Anny. “What now?” She glanced around, but despite the crowd, they seemed to have relative privacy in their corner.

“I might—might!—have figured out why he’s taken such a shine to the two of you.”

“Really? Why?”

Alby pulled out his ubiquitous computer pad and called up a display. Anny squinted and realized that it was a genealogical family tree of some sort. He pointed to one of the boxes. “Here is our dear Lieutenant Vorkerkas.”

“Yeah? So?” asked Jer. “According to that he does have a mother and a father—who would have guessed?”

“Yup,” said Alby. “And a grandfather who had a sister who married into another family…” Alby touched the controls and the diagram shifted sideways revealing a bunch of other boxes. “And if you follow this other family tree down a few generations you’ll see that it dropped one seriously rotten apple.” Anny stared at the box Alby was indicating and her blood ran cold.

“Shit!” snarled Jer “Yosef Vorritter!”

The name seemed to burn into Anny’s brain like a hot iron. Vorritter! He’d been a lieutenant on the frigate Swifsure during a short training cruise to Komarr Anny had taken in her third year at the Academy. He’d seemed friendly and helpful, but once they’d reached Komarr… He and three friends had lured her into a tavern with plans to drug and rape her. Only the lucky arrival of Jer and Alby and Patric and Denis Fallon had saved her. Vorritter had been court-martialed, cashiered, and sent to prison. She’d tried to erase him from her memories—with no success.

“Vorkerkas is related to Vorritter?” demanded Jer.

“Second cousins, once removed,” confirmed Alby.

“Second cousins! I don’t even know any of my second cousins! And if one of them was a criminal I sure wouldn’t hold it against his victim if he got thrown in jail! I can’t believe that he…”

“The Vor take stuff like this seriously, Jer,” said Anny. “Blood ties are a big deal to them.”

“Very big,” said Alby. “I don’t know for sure there’s a connection between this and his behavior, but there might be. And if he is out for avenge his family honor, we all need to watch out! I was just as involved in that fracas as you two.”

“I suppose we do. But how’d you ever think to look this up?”

Alby shrugged. “He’d made it pretty clear that he was our enemy, so I decided to do some intelligence-gathering. Besides I was bored out of my mind with that bloody simulator job and needed something to do.”

“Did you find out anything else we should know?” asked Anny. She didn’t need this. She really didn’t need this!

“Not so far,” replied Alby, shaking his head. “There don’t seem to be any other relatives of Vorritter serving here—although there are some others elsewhere. I did hack into Vorkerkas’ personal communications and plant a bug, so I’ll see if he’s planning anything with anyone else.”

“Alby, someday you are going to get caught!” Alby was a very skilled computer hacker—as he’d proved several times at the Academy.

Alby just grinned. But then he tapped the computer pad. “Don’t expect this to warn us if he is planning anything. We all need to be on guard. And guys? I really think we need to get off the base, out of the BOQ. I know you’re worried about the cost, but it still might be best.”

“I don’t know,” said Jer. “We might be safer here.”

“If I buy or lease a house, I can have some real defenses installed,” said Alby, grinning again. “And keep in mind that it might not just be Vorkerkas. He’s got friends in the regiment. We don’t know who we can trust here.”

“I can trust my men and I think we can trust Estaban,” said Anny. “Maybe he’d like to go in on the house.”

“That’s a thought. Well, I’ll take a look again at the market and get back to you. In the meantime, let’s eat! I’m starved!” He got up and headed for the buffet.

Anny followed, but she wasn’t the least bit hungry.

            *Song by Jonathan Cresswell-Jones (with many thanks—again!)

Chapter 6

“Did you… did you have to use the same bathrooms as the boys?”

The girl’s question brought forth a gale of laughter and giggles from the other girls in the auditorium and polite chuckles from their mothers. The girl’s face blushed a bright pink and Anny sincerely hoped her face didn’t match it.

Sara Fetherbay had told her that the meeting was going to be only for the officers’ wives, but apparently the thing had just growed of its own accord. There were easily three hundred women and girls facing her and even a few men in uniform—fathers, she presumed. One of the Fort’s auditoriums had been pressed into service to accommodate them all.

Anny forced herself to smile at the girl who had asked the question. She looked about twelve. “Well, not very often,” she said. “They have a separate women’s barracks at the Academy now with its own bathrooms. They’ve put women’s locker rooms in the training facilities and I understand they are adding women’s restrooms in the academic buildings, too.” The girl smiled in relief and sat down.

But almost immediately another woman stood up. “You said ‘not very often’, Lieutenant. I assume that means that there were times when you… did have to share the facilities with the men?”

“Yes, ma’am, it does. Sometimes there aren’t going to be separate facilities. Sometimes there isn’t going to be any privacy. That’s just the way it is.” An awkward silence followed and Anny decided it was about time to wrap this up. She’d been up at the podium talking and taking questions for nearly an hour. “The thing that you all have to remember is that the main purpose of the Imperial Service Academy is to train combat officers. That is a very serious thing. A matter of life and death, quite literally. Little things like bathrooms or modesty just don’t count much when compared to having the lives of your fellow soldiers in your hands. The Imperial Service Academy is one of the finest and toughest institutions of its kind in the wormhole nexus. It’s tough on purpose. Anyone who doesn’t have what it takes will not make it through and that is a good thing. But if you do have what it takes then you will find that serving the Imperium, the Emperor, and the people will be one of the most rewarding things you will ever do.” She paused and then said “Thank you very much for letting me speak to you today.” She stepped back from the podium.

The applause that followed seemed enthusiastic and quite sincere and Anny was touched. Mrs. Fetherbay came up and spoke for a moment, thanking Anny and all who had attended and then she escorted Anny through a door at the rear of the stage. “Well!” she said. “That went as well as I could have hoped! Thank you so much for doing this, Anny.”

“I hope I didn’t scare too many of them away.”

“The ones who really want to do it won’t be scared. And those you did scare off were never serious to begin with. That’s why I asked you to give this talk. I hear from the mothers in the Regiment all the time and ever since we got the word that you’d be coming here, their daughters have all started talking about going to the Academy. We thought a dose of cold realism would be a good thing and you provided that.”

“Glad I could help out. But from what I’ve seen and heard, the Academy is doing an exceptionally thorough job of screening the female applicants these days. Any girl trying to get in will probably be getting several doses of cold realism before they ever make it through the door.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Fetherbay, “that’s what we’ve heard.” The woman frowned. “Anny, do you have time for a short one-on-one talk with me?”

Anny checked the time. “I’ve got about a half hour before I have to go and get ready for dress parade.”

“Oh good. That should be plenty of time. There’s an office over here where we can have some privacy.” She led the way to a small room and shut the door after them. “Anny, I couldn’t help but notice the one thing you didn’t talk about today.” Anny raised her eyebrows and gave a quizzical look. “Sex.”

“It’s against regulations at the Academy, ma’am.”

“A lot of things are against regulations but that doesn’t mean they never happen.”

“Well, it never happened while I was a cadet, ma’am. Not that I ever saw or heard about.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Oh,” Fetherbay looked surprised. “I… I had just heard some rumors about you and Lieutenant Naddel…”

“We fell in love at the Academy, but we waited until after graduation until we did anything about it, ma’am. All perfectly legal per the regulations.” Anny’s voice had become stiffer. This wasn’t any of Fetherbay’s business.

“I see. Well, that wasn’t really what I was concerned about, anyway,” said Fetherbay. “I’d heard some other rumors. About something that happened involving you on Komarr.”

Anny frowned. She’d been afraid that was where this was heading. She realized that the story was going to spread with time, but she hadn’t really thought about it spreading to civilians… “What do you want to know, ma’am? Was I raped? No. Did someone try to rape me? Yes. I don’t think I’m at liberty to tell you any more than that.”

“Oh dear, I’m so sorry, Anny. I had hoped that the rumors were just rumors. You see, my daughter is sixteen—you saw her there in the audience today—and she isn’t going to be scared off. She worships her father and the notion of being able to following in his footsteps has completely taken hold of her. And well, I worry about her as any parent would. Being one of just a handful of women in the service… surrounded by all those men…”

“I understand, ma’am. And I won’t lie to you that there’s no danger.” She paused and looked down at the floor for a moment before continuing. “I think… I think the worst of it is that you can prepare yourself mentally for being killed or hurt… or raped by the enemy. But to have it happen from someone who’s supposed to be your friend. That’s hard. You shouldn’t have to fight front and rear, but there it is.”

“So… so how do you? Fight front and rear, I mean?” asked Fetherbay, her eyes wide, her brow creased with worry.

“There were two things that got me through. One was preparation. I didn’t just walk into the Academy like a lamb to the slaughter. I worked and trained for a solid year beforehand. Physical training, close combat training, I was as prepared as I could make myself. Just having the confidence that comes from knowing you can take care of yourself will dissuade a lot of bullies right off. But the most important thing is not trying to go it alone. I was lucky—incredibly lucky—that I found a few friends right off the bat. Good friends, friends whom I could trust with my life—or my honor. I never would have made it without them. I wish I could give you better reassurances, ma’am, but when you become an officer, you pledge your life to the Empire. If you’re willing to die for the Empire then, well, you just have to accept all the rest.”

Fetherbay stared at her and then slowly nodded. “Thank you, Anny. For being honest. For everything. Now you better go, I wouldn’t want to make you late for dress parade.”

* * *

“So what do you think?” asked Alby Vorsworth. He looked at Anny and Jer and Sven Estaban. They, in turn, were looking at the house he hoped to buy in Malverton.

“It looks nice from the outside,” said Anny.

“Nice neighborhood and close to the bus stop,” said Estaban.

“Can we look inside?” asked Jer.

“Unfortunately, no,” said Alby. “While the reservists are here every square meter of rentable space is taken. This place has three families living here right now.” Indeed, there were a half dozen children playing on the front lawn, several of them looking curiously in their direction.

“Once they clear out, we can go in. But I have some pictures on my computer, here, have a look.” He held up his computer pad and started bringing up images. The others crowded closer to see.

Too late he realized that the pictures, supplied by the realtor, had the asking price listed next to them. Anny spotted it immediately. “Alby!” she cried. “We can’t ask you to spend that much!”

“It’s not really that much,” he protested.

“It’s a lieutenant’s whole salary for six years!”

“Anny, I can afford it. And I can always sell it again later. Hell, I’ll probably make a nice profit.”

“Well, there is that,” said Jer, who had a Komarran’s eye for business. “If we pay Alby rent, he might come out pretty well in the end.”

“Yeah! See?”

Anny frowned, but didn’t offer any further protests. “How are we going to work our dog-robbers?” she asked. “It would be silly to have four of them.”

Alby grinned. If she was asking a question like that, it meant she was going to agree! “Quinton’s getting ready to retire and he tells me that his wife is insisting that they move somewhere where it doesn’t snow. So I can probably let him go without much trouble.”

“I’ve been sharing Lt. Vorquinz’s man,” said Jer. “Probably not a problem if I moved out.”

“Well, that just leaves Anny’s man and mine,” said Estaban. “We can probably work out a schedule for the two of them.”

“And I think they both live here in town anyway,” said Anny. “It’ll be easier for them.”

“So it’s agreed?” asked Alby.

“I think so,” said Estaban. The others nodded.

“Good! I’ll contact my realtor and have him put in a bid. A month or so and we’ll be able to move in!”

“A month?” said Jer. “I think that’s a bit optimistic, Alby.”

“All right two, then. Before winter, in any case. This is going to be great!” A thought struck him. “Maybe I’ll invite Abigail up here at Winterfair.”

“Abigail?” asked Estaban.

“Alby’s sweetheart,” smirked Jer.

“Oh? From back home?”

“She’s from Sergyar,” said Anny. “But currently her residence is the Imperial Service Academy.”

“What? Oh! One of those, eh?”

“One of the Second Six,” said Jer. “A company commander, last I heard. Less than two years until she graduates, right, Alby?” He gave him a nudge.

“Yeah, and they’ll probably post her back to Sergyar,” said Alby, gloomily. “Never see her again.”

“Don’t be so pessimistic!” said Jer. “Has she said what career track she’s thinking about?”

“She hasn’t decided. At first she was looking at the naval track—like everyone does. But after the whole business with Anny, I think she’s reconsidered.”

“What ‘whole business with Anny’?” asked Estaban.

Alby glanced at Anny, unsure if he’d said too much, but she just shrugged. “Anny was going for the naval track and she had the grades to make it easy. But word came down from on-high that the navy wasn’t ready for women on their ships yet.”

“So you joined an assault regiment instead?”

Anny shrugged again. “I wanted to get out there and it seemed like a good way to outflank the admirals. Seems to be working so far.”

“Yeah, and next year you’ll get out there again when it’s 1^st battalion’s turn with the fleet,” said Alby.

“D’you think you’ll ever get assigned to one of the battalions, Alby?” asked Anny. “That simulator project can’t last forever.”

“No? The way that mess is going, I might spend my whole career working on it!”

“As bad as that?” asked Estaban.

“I am not going to talk about it on my day off! Come on, let’s get lunch.” He led them back into the center of town and to a restaurant he’d been wanting to try. Once they were seated and had given their orders, Alby looked at Jer and Anny. “Any more trouble with Vorkerkas?”

They both glanced at Estaban. “Nothing with me,” said Jer. “But we’re so busy getting ready for the big exercise, I doubt he’d have time to cook anything up.”

Anny shook her head. “Nothing with me, either. And I’ve been practicing sabre with Ensign Vorgard every chance I get. If he tries that again, he’ll be in for a surprise.”

Estaban had been taking all this in with a very interested expression on his face. “So what is the deal between you guys and dear Lieutenant Vorkerkas?” he asked. None of them answered and Estaban’s eyebrows went up. “Gentlemen, since I seem to be throwing in my lot with you, it would be courteous of you to let me know exactly what I’m getting into here.”

“Vorkerkas doesn’t like us,” said Alby.

Estaban snorted. “Clearly. But why? Like me, Vorkerkas graduated before any of you arrived at the Academy. I’m guessing he never laid eyes on any of you before you joined the 61^st. Granted that the man is a bit of an ass, but what could you possibly have done to piss him off so much in such a short time?”

“You’re not a Vor, Sven,” said Jer. “Surely you know they don’t need a reason to act like an ass.” He glanced toward Alby. “No offense.”

“None taken.”

“True,” said Estaban. “Yet somehow I sense there’s something more going on here than just a prejudice against women and Komarrans.”

Anny sighed. “Yes, there is.” She had to cut off her explanation when the waitress arrived with their food, but once she was gone, she continued. “Something happened while I was at the Academy. More serious than just the usual hazing and harassment. Four officers got court-martialed and kicked out. Vorkerkas is related to one of them. He may be out for revenge.”

“He may be,” said Alby. “We don’t know anything for sure.”

“Ah,” said Estaban. “There have been some rumors floating around… interesting.”

“If you want to pull out of the house deal, we’ll understand,” said Anny.

“No… no, I’m in. I’ve been wanting to get out of the BOQ for a while now and I’d never find a place this nice on my own. Besides, I’ve had a few run-ins with Vorkerkas myself. I’m assuming you’re getting this house as a more defensible position?” They all nodded. “Well, all right then. I’m willing to stand a watch, too.”

* * *

“We will start boarding the assault shuttles at 0400 tomorrow morning,” said Lieutenant Vorstang. “Have your men ready! There can be no delays on this, gentlemen, so we have to have our troops at the armory to suit up no later than 0100.”

They were in the C Company office. Anny and the other platoon commanders were being briefed by their commanding officer on the upcoming exercise. “Excuse me sir,” said Lieutenant Dahlberg of 1^st Platoon, “Will we be getting additional information on the operation?” He held up his computer. “This briefing seems a little… thin.” Anny had been thinking the same thing. All that it really told them was that they would be simulating the spearhead of a planetary assault. They would board shuttles which would take them into orbit, circle the planet a few times and then make a landing in the northern edges of the mountains about 300 kilometers northeast of Fort Vorolson. They had a series of objectives they were then suppose to move to. But there was no information on enemy forces or friendly forces that might follow in subsequent landing. An assault regiment was usually employed to clear out a landing area so other troops could follow. Presumably the rest of the brigade would be involved, too, but there was no mention of them in the briefing.

“Yes, it does, doesn’t it?” said Vorstang. “But this is all we’ve got. Hopefully we’ll get more information later, but for right now our job is to get the company ready to drop first thing tomorrow. Dress parade has been cancelled this evening so your men can get some sleep later on today. Get your preparations done by 1600. We’ll be waking everyone up at 2500. So let’s get to it, gentlemen.”

They all rose from their chairs and headed out to get their men ready. Anny found her platoon lounging around their barracks and sighed. Sergeant Kay should have found something for them to do while they were waiting for her. The man just didn’t seem to be willing to take the initiative when there wasn’t someone around to give him orders. It wasn’t a lack of respect, everyone jumped to their feet when they saw her, it was just a lack of… she wasn’t sure what.

“Okay, everyone,” she said. “Big day tomorrow and we’ve got a lot to do to get ready. It’s been three weeks since we’ve had our armor on and we are going to spend the afternoon giving them a thorough going over.” There were a few obligatory groans, but all the men seemed eager. “All right, let’s move out.” They spilled out of the barracks and got into ranks. She had Sergeant Kay take them to the armory at a trot while she followed along. The men were making wisecracks and were happy. That made Anny happy. She was nearly as eager about this exercise as they were—maybe more. While she had spent quite a bit of time with her platoon training and doing other day-to-day activities, this would be her first combat exercise with them. It should be challenging and fun. And best of all, no one was going to get killed. She was still haunted by the men she’d lost in that fight during her apprentice cruise. The victory had been satisfying but the cost… Well, she wouldn’t lose any men this time!

As they neared the armory complex at the north end of the base, she heard the roar of assault shuttles and looked up. A swarm of them—at least two dozen—screamed overhead. They quickly disappeared beyond the ridge. A few moments later a long column of vehicles passed them moving toward the landing field. It was the 32^nd Artillery. Some of the men riding on the vehicles waved at them and shouted things that they couldn’t hear above the noise from the vehicles. Her men shouted back even though their remarks would be inaudible as well.

“Looks like it’s gonna be a helluva show, Lieutenant!” She looked and saw Private Kerbeck grinning at her. She smiled back and nodded.

Turning a corner, there was an outcry from the head of the platoon. Anny quickened her pace and then saw what had caused the excitement. At the far end of the concrete sat ten enormous shapes, the heavy tanks of the 283^rd. All ten of them! They were turning out the whole battalion for the exercise. Just like Alby wanted! Alby had begged and wheedled Fetherbay into letting him come along with the regimental staff. He’s gonna love this! Anny was pretty excited herself, although she worried that she hadn’t had the chance to work with heavy tanks before. Well, odds were that someone else would be assigned to escort the behemoths. And they needed escorting. Despite their incredible firepower and shielding, tanks that let enemy infantry get in too close could find themselves in trouble.

They reached their own armory building and went inside to work on their suits. There were plenty of other people there already and it was going to get crowded once everyone from both battalions got to work. Anny made sure that all her men were doing what they were supposed to do and then started the check-out on her own set of armor.

She worked for about an hour and was satisfied so far. Everything seemed to be in order but she was going to be extra-thorough. She couldn’t help but be a little paranoid after the incident with Vorkerkas. Would he stoop to trying to sabotage her armor? If something were to fail at the wrong moment, something say like the anti-grav units, the results could be fatal. Even some non-fatal failure could be damn embarrassing. She was glad of her long session with the ordnance sergeant weeks earlier. She knew just what to look for.

She took a break from her own suit for a while and checked up on what her platoon as doing. She did a few random inspections and was pleased that no one was skimping on the check-out procedures. She could have done the inspection from her own suit using her command access to the master diagnostic computer, but the men appreciated it when their officer showed personal interest in what they were doing—as long as they didn’t stand there, looking over their shoulders for too long.

She was heading back to work when someone came walking up wearing a large unarmored command helmet. “Hi, Anny!” boomed an amplified voice. “Oops,” it said in a more normal volume level.

She looked closer. “Alby? That you?”

“Sure is!” he said, pulling the helmet off. “How do you like this contraption? Must weigh a ton, but it’s got all the functions of command suit of battle armor!”

“The colonel give you that?”

“Yup! He said that I needed to be able to follow the action if I was going to be good for anything other than fetching coffee.”

“A shame you didn’t get your own set of armor.”

“Yeah, no time now, but Fetherbay told me to make sure I get one fitted to me after this.”

“Well that’s good. Next time you’ll be all ready. But how are you going to be able to keep up with the HQ group without armor?”

“I’ve got a skimmer. I’ll keep up. ‘Course if we come under fire I’ll probably be marked a casualty in about two seconds, but it will be fun while it lasts.”

“Okay, but you watch yourself out there. These sorts of thing can be dangerous even if the fire is all simulated.”

“Oh yeah, I’ll be careful. Well, see you later.” He waved and walked off, lugging his helmet under one arm. Anny smiled. She liked Alby very much.

By mid-afternoon they were all done with their armor. Next came the weapons inspection. For the exercise they wouldn’t be doing any live fire, for obvious reasons. But there would be a master tactical computer evaluating everything that was going on and assign casualties based on what the participants were doing. All the weapons had to be put in safe mode with their normal power or ammo packs swapped out for training packs. Then they had to confirm the communications links between the weapons and the master computer. Theoretically when a man fired his weapon, the computer could tell exactly what it was pointed at and evaluate the damage it was doing to the enemy. There would be human judges for the exercise, too. Supposedly there was a major-general from Vorbarr Sultana here as the chief judge.

Things went fairly smoothly but two men had glitches in their weapons that required extra work and they just made the 1600 deadline Vorstang had set. But they did make it and she marched the men back to the barracks and dismissed them. She grabbed a quick dinner at the regular mess hall and then went back to her room, set her alarm for 2450 and then lay down on her bed and tried to sleep. It was hard. She was excited and more than a bit worried about the lack of an in-depth briefing. A planetary invasion was about the most complicated military operation there was. A real one would have plans and documents to fill a small library. Granted this was just a small exercise, but still… Anny’s preparation mania was being starved for information and she didn’t like it. She supposed that she must have dozed off at least for a while when the alarm woke her.

She quickly showered and put on her undersuit and then her black fatigues over them and headed for the officers’ mess, picking up Jer, Alby and Estaban on the way. A steak-and-eggs ‘breakfast’ was waiting for them. This was the traditional pre-assault drop meal. Despite her nervousness, Anny found that she was hungry enough to eat a bit. The officers all around her were in good spirits, laughing and joking. She managed to ask Lieutenant Vorstang if there had been any updates to the mission briefing. He shook his head.

“No, it looks like we’re going into this one blind. But I’ll tell you one thing: all the rest of the brigade has already moved out. I’m not sure what that means, but be on your toes.”

“Yes sir.” She went back to her friends. “Well, just about time, guys. “Don’t know if we’ll run into each other once we’re dirtside again, but good luck and keep your heads down—especially you, Alby.”

They shook hands and then headed out to their own assignments. Anny got to the C Company barracks a few minutes before assembly. She felt like there ought to something she should be doing, but she couldn’t think of anything. Then the bugle sounded and the men poured out and formed up. For this, they’d march up to the armory as a regiment. It took a few minutes to get both battalions assembled on the road but soon they were off. It was just before midnight and the stars shown brightly overhead. In the distance were the lights of the armory complex and to the left of that the landing fields where their shuttles would be waiting.

They had no music accompanying them this time since the bandsmen were assault troopers just like the rest of them, but they provided their own:

“The finest were Vorlinton’s Guard; The Sixty-First is just as hard, Our arms we wield from star to star Far from the hills of Barrayar. Far from the hills and skies of home, We’ll strike at planet, ship or dome; From Cetaganda to Escobar, Far from the hills of Barrayar.”

The men sang and Anny sang with them.

Chapter 7

A loud tone sounded in Jer’s helmet and he cursed with feeling. He was dead. So was nearly all his platoon. His communications system was cut off; he couldn’t issue any orders now that he was dead, but his tactical display was still working and he saw that a half-dozen of his men were fleeing north, trying to join up with some other fragment of the regiment, but everyone else was a casualty. And all the heavy weapons were destroyed.

“Shit.”

He noticed his platoon sergeant coming toward him and he opened up the visor of his helmet. “Well, Sergeant, looks like it’s game over for us.”

Shusterman nodded. “Yes, sir, but I’m thinkin’ that someone stacked the deck against us.”

Jer didn’t say anything, but he nodded. It certainly did seem that way. The landing itself had gone like clockwork. The shuttles had placed them in the foothills of the mountains exactly where they were supposed to and then the regiment had moved out to secure its objectives. It had looked, for all the world, like a textbook landing with the assault troopers establishing a secure perimeter for the rest of the brigade to land in.

Unfortunately, the rest of the brigade wasn’t on their side anymore.

They were now the Opposition Forces, the defenders of this hypothetical planet the 61^st had landed on. Standard doctrine for the defense against an invasion was to hit the landing zone hard and fast and try to wipe it out before further invaders could arrive.

The 25^th Brigade had hit hard and fast.

And there weren’t any further invaders coming.

The 25^th had emerged from their hiding places and smashed right through the 61^st’s perimeter. The assault troopers were spread too thinly to stop them. Oh, if it had just been the infantry of the 139^th, they probably could have held them long enough to redeploy, but it was the heavy tanks of the 283^rd and the artillery of the 32^nd that had broken the line. The huge war machines were almost impossible to stop with the light weapons carried by assault troopers. Although they had stopped four of them. Jer felt really proud about that. By massing all of their anti-tank weapons they had managed to knock out four of the heavy tanks. Somehow a fifth one had been taken out by the infantry alone.

But that had been the end of the AT platoons. As soon as they had opened up, the enemy artillery had come raining down. The air defense platoons hadn’t been able to stop all the fire and enough had gotten through to take out nearly all the heavy weapons. With them gone, the remaining tanks pushed right on through. Jer could see one of the metal beasts smashing through the trees and skellytums a half klick down the ridge. A line of enemy infantry was moving through Jer’s position now and they were laughing and waving at all the ‘dead’ assault troopers.

“Bastards,” muttered Shusterman.

Yeah, this had been a set-up for sure. An assault regiment would normally have a lot of orbital fire support to make up for its lack of really heavy weapons. Control of the space around the planet was a given, wasn’t it? How could the assault troopers have gotten here if that wasn’t the case? But there had been no fire support. And it wasn’t like they needed actual warships in orbit for this exercise, just program it into the tactical computer and there you have it.

But they didn’t have it and they were getting creamed. Jer looked at his tactical display again. Both sides were assumed to have orbital observation and orbital countermeasures so the information that came through was spotty and subject to errors, but it looked pretty clear that the 61^st was getting pushed out of the hills and into the open plains and once they were in the open they’d be annihilated. Colonel Fetherbay had already expended most of the assault shuttles in hopeless attempts to even the odds. The handful that were left wouldn’t be enough to evacuate many survivors.

Part of Jer was angry, but he supposed that they needed to train for handling defeat as well as victory. And it would certainly make the reservists feel good. Maybe that was the whole point of this: give them the confidence that they could stand up to first-line troops.

He looked back into the hills. Anny’s company was supposed to be over that way somewhere to the southeast. He wondered how she was doing…?

* * *

“I think we’re screwed, sir,” said Sergeant Kay.

Anny took a deep breath and looked at her tactical display. Unfortunately, she was afraid that her platoon sergeant was correct. The 61^st Imperial Infantry was looking at defeat in detail and there didn’t seem to be a damn thing anyone could do about it.

She couldn’t believe how quickly things had gone to hell. Her own platoon was still basically intact, she’d only lost five men, but the rest of C Company was wiped out or scattered to the four winds. Lieutenant Vorstang was down, Lieutenant Dahlberg was down and Ensigns Vorberg and Zolek, while still not listed as casualties, weren’t answering their coms. Technically that made her the senior officer in the company, but the company now consisted of the 3^rd platoon—which she commanded anyway.

The landing had gone fine. They’d debarked and C Company was sent south into the hills and spread out in a long skirmish line. Their orders were to form a perimeter protecting the landing zone. They’d made contact with some enemy recon troops on skimmers, but they’d fallen back before Anny’s troops could engage them. They’d reached their assigned locations and halted to await developments.

They hadn’t been long in coming.

Artillery fire had poured down on them and then the heavy tanks had appeared. One had slammed into C Company’s right flank. Anny’s platoon had been farthest away, so Vorstang had ordered her to take over holding the rest of the company’s line while he went after the tank with everyone else. And they’d done it, they’d taken out the tank, but at a terrible cost. And that left Anny holding a line five kilometers long with forty men. A large force of enemy infantry was following up behind the tank and while Anny had been trying to figure out how to deal with them, an order had come from Regiment telling everyone to fall back and regroup.

So they’d retreated. They’d out-distanced the pursuing infantry and broken contact, but the tactical display told her they had simply run out of luck. While they had been holding their initial line, strong enemy forces had passed by them on either flank and they were now in a three-sided box. And up ahead the cover was getting mighty thin. The north slope of the mountains was about as far as Terrestrial vegetation had spread and the native Barrayaran plants didn’t provide much concealment.

Anny and her platoon had rallied next to a small cliff. A waterfall thundered over it and gathered in a deep pool at the base of the cliff and then rolled away, downhill toward the flat land. A clump of the last tall trees soared overhead. At another time it would be a beautiful spot for a picnic. She’d have to rent a light-flyer and take Jer up here sometime…

“So what do we do, Lieutenant?” asked Kay. “We stay here, we’re dead for sure.”

Yeah, that was true. There were at least two companies of the 139^th on their tails and even though they could probably hold them, as soon as they tried the relentless artillery would blast them out. But if they kept moving, would it be any better? They couldn’t go east or west; there was more infantry there and a pair of the tanks on each side. The only way open was due north and as soon as they lost their cover, they’d be hit from three sides. She’d lose two-thirds of her people before she could ever reach the rally point. The situation was clearly hopeless, but she hated losing everyone for nothing.

Her instinct was to turn back south and try to punch right through her pursuers, get into their rear and cause as much trouble as she could before they were wiped out. But as soon as they saw her coming, they would call in that damn artillery and the remaining enemy tanks weren’t that far away and… She’d lose so many men breaking through she wouldn’t have enough left to do anything—even if she survived to lead them. And the thought of Sergeant Kay being left in command was not a pleasant one.

So it would have to be north. That’s what her orders were and it seemed the best bet, dismal as it was. Damn, if we could just drop out of sight… She looked around.

She saw it.

She stood and stared and frantically tried to find the flaw in the plan that had materialized in her head. There was a flaw—a big one, several, actually—but if it worked… Why the hell not?

“Lieutenant?”

“Third Platoon, listen up!” All in a clump like this, they were able to use tight-beam lasers to communicate without risk of giving themselves away. “The enemy thinks they’ve got us beat, but we’ve still got one trick up our sleeves. Follow me!” She headed south—right into the pool of water. It came up to her waist with a treacherous bottom. She kept going until she was standing right under the waterfall. She could feel the torrent beating on her armor. She looked back and saw her platoon hesitating. “Come on! Everyone in here with me! Close it up!” Her troopers closed up around her, nearly shoulder to shoulder.

“All right, we are going disappear for a while. We are going to hide here and let the enemy move past us and then we’re going to kick them right in the ass.”

“Lieutenant,” said Kay, “they’ll spot us even here. Our power emissions…”

“There won’t be any power emissions, Sergeant. We are going to shut down our suits.”

“What?” A dozen voices exclaimed in protest.

“You heard me. We are going to power down and hide underwater for an hour. The cold water will mask any IR emissions and they’ll never think to actually look under the water.”

“How will we breathe?” asked one of the men.

“We can keep our air scrubbers working. They can run off our batteries.”

“I don’t know how to set that up…”

“I can run you through the procedure, but we’ve got to hurry. First, everyone lie down. Make sure you are under water.” Anny lowered herself down until she was lying on her back. There was about a meter of water over her. Her men did the same. “Okay, now call up your master menus.” A command screen appeared on her heads-up display. “Hit ‘command sequence’, the little box on the lower right. Then hit ‘special instructions’…” She ran them through the sequence, step by step. She was so glad she’d studied the armor so thoroughly! “Set the timer for 60 minutes. Everyone got that?” While her troops were acknowledging, she set her own timer for 55 minutes.

“Lieutenant?” said Kay. “If this don’t work, we’re gonna be fish in a barrel. We won’t even be able to fight back!”

“But if it does work, we’ll give them the surprise of their lives, eh, Sergeant?”

“But…”

“These are my orders, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir.” Kay didn’t sound happy.

“Com’on, Sarge,” said Private Kerbeck, “It’ll be fun.”

“You just want to sleep for an hour,” said Private Soblinski.

“Cut the chatter,” commanded Anny. “All right, on my mark, hit the ‘execute’ button. It will probably get a bit cold in your suits after a while, but we’ll be fine. And don’t worry about being stuck here, if the medical monitors detect any problems, the suit will start up automatically. All right, everyone get ready. On my mark, three, two, one… execute!”

Anny did not hit the execute command in her own suit immediately. She waited to make sure all her troopers had done so. She called up her platoon status display and saw all her troopers changing from ‘active’ to ‘inactive’. A couple of them hesitated, but after thirty seconds, they were all inactive. Anny took a breath and then hit the ‘execute’ key for her own armor.

[Commencing shutdown…]

Her display went blank except for that message. After a few moments, the mechanical ‘muscles’ of her suit locked and she couldn’t move. The status lights in her helmet winked out and she was in blackness except for a tiny green message in one corner:

[Restart in: 54:47]

She suspected this was going to be the longest fifty-five minutes of her life.

* * *

Being dead wasn’t so bad, reflected Alby Vorsworth. No duty, no responsibilities, just hang around and watch the show.

But he suspected that the final act was fast approaching in this show. He looked at the big holo-display that Colonel Fetherbay’s HQ people had set up in a small cave they’d found. The 61^st was being squeezed into a pocket. If he was reading the fast-changing display correctly, then the regiment had about 500 troopers left in action. The enemy had a lot more and they were closing in. Their five remaining heavy tanks were sweeping around the flanks to close the pocket and cut off any retreat. The big machines were able to move a lot faster now that they were out of the rough terrain to the south. Of course, the things could actually fly on their anti-gravs if they wanted to, but that would expose their thin belly armor and no sane tank jockey would ever do that in a combat zone.

The enemy infantry were forming the other sides of the pocket. The lightly equipped troops of the 139^th couldn’t beat assault troopers in a stand-up fight, but any time the 61^st tried to go after them, the enemy artillery came crashing down and broke them up. With the regiment’s heavy weapons and air defense gone and no orbital fire support to blast the enemy guns, they’d been free to wreck havoc. They’d probably lost more men to the artillery than to the tanks.

The artillery had gotten Alby, too.

In the first few minutes of the enemy attack, a barrage had swept across the HQ. It hadn’t done much to the men in battle armor, but Alby was marked as a casualty almost immediately. The Colonel had given him permission to tag along and watch as long as he didn’t break the rules by doing anything useful. Alby had been perfectly happy to oblige.

“Where’s the rest of C Company?” demanded Fetherbay suddenly.

“I don’t know,” replied his chief of staff. “Most of them were lost taking out that tank…”

“But there were still at least a platoon left a few minutes ago. In sector G-19.” The Colonel pointed at the display. “They’re gone now.” Alby studied the display. The rules of the exercise made the sensor readings sporadic for both sides so the information on the display was never complete or entirely accurate.

“Maybe the artillery got them…”

“All of them? They got the order to fall back, didn’t they?”

“I think so, sir.”

“Damn…” But then another officer called to the Colonel, reporting some new emergency and he moved to deal with it. Alby continued to stare at the display. C Company, eh? The last status update Alby had seen had Anny as the senior surviving officer.

What are you up to, girl?

* * *

[Restart in: 00:03… 00:02… 00:01… Commencing Restart]

Anny sighed in relief as her battle armor came to life again. It had indeed been a very long fifty-five minutes. At first it had gotten warm in her suit as the cooling system shut down, but then it had gotten colder and colder as the water sucked away the heat. She was shivering now. And she kept telling herself that it was just her imagination that the air was getting stuffy… But the physical discomfort was nothing compared to her anxiety about the risky plan she had adopted. She had been assuming that the enemy had lost track of them in the rough hills and that they would assume their sudden disappearance from the sensor displays was due to the continual jamming and countermeasures that had been going on since the exercise started. They were reservists, it was exciting, there was so much to keep track of, they wouldn’t notice one missing platoon.

It was a big assumption.

If the enemy had a really sharp sensor officer or if someone had a solid fix on them when they powered down or if the pursuing infantry had been closer than she’d thought… Well, they were dead. Granted, this was just an exercise and they wouldn’t really be dead, but it would be humiliating and embarrassing and she really didn’t want it to end that way.

But as her armor finished its start-up there was no indication that she’d been killed. According to her status display she was still alive and fully functional. It had worked!

She slowly sat up until her helmet was just above the water and activated the suit’s external cameras. She couldn’t see much because of the waterfall so she crawled forward until she was out of the spray. She looked around.

No one.

She switched to the IR display. She didn’t dare use active sensors, but nothing showed up on the passive infra-red, either. No enemy in sight.

She activated her tactical display and waited while it downloaded the latest update that HQ was broadcasting via satellite to all the 61^st. She was dismayed to see how few friendly forces remained. A small island of blue floated in a red sea. Well, it was more of a peninsula than an island. There was still a narrow open zone leading north, but the enemy armor was moving to close the trap. The Regiment didn’t have much time left. But that sea of red was all north of her now. The enemy had gone on past and not noticed them!

As she studied the details, the rest of her platoon began their own restarts. A few minutes later they were all crouched next to her in the water. “Everyone okay?’ she asked.

“Freezing my ass… uh, okay, Lieutenant.”

“I don’t ever want to do that again! Sir.”

“Afraid of the dark, Wasinski?”

“Cut the chatter!” snapped Kay. “What now, sir?”

“Look at the situation,” she replied. Kay tied into her display. “The Regiment is trapped here. The enemy artillery is here, and we are right… here.”

“Right behind them!” exclaimed Kay.

“Yup, they’re less than a klick to the north of us.”

“Let’s take ‘em, sir!” cried Private Kerbeck.

“I intend to. But based on this deployment, where would you guess the enemy headquarters would be?”

“Uh… not sure, sir,” said Kay. “Probably close to the guns…”

“Yes, based on these sensor readings—see the high com traffic?—I would place them right about there.”

“Oh ho!” said Kerbeck. “The General is gonna shit himself!”

“Kerbeck!” snapped Kay.

“Sorry…”

“All right, attention,” said Anny. “Sergeant Kay, you will take 2^nd Squad and half the weapons squad and attack these guns here,” she marked a spot on the display. “Sergeant Rollins, you will take 3^rd Squad and the rest of weapons and hit the guns over here. Take them out! That is your objective: knock out the enemy guns! Everything else is secondary. I will take 1^st Squad and hit the enemy HQ. Once the enemy artillery is silenced, we’ll all converge on the HQ and I’ll have new orders for you then. Understand?”

“Yes sir!”

“All right. Com silence unless you’re spotted, no active sensors, and keep your fool heads down! Move into position and wait for my order to attack. Let’s move out!”

They emerged from the water like some primeval pack of dinosaurs. Carnivores. Their prey was just ahead.

They moved down the rock slopes, through the trees and underbrush quickly but carefully. Kay and Rollins veered off to the right and left and were soon lost to sight. Their battle armor had smart-paint and it automatically adjusted its color to match the surroundings. Despite their size, they were hard to see. Of course they would be showing up on sensors now—if anyone was bothering to look. They probably only had a few minutes before someone noticed those energy emissions where they shouldn’t be any, but with luck they’d only need a few minutes.

Anny and her troopers reached the bottom of a slope. There was a level spot ahead and a clearing in the trees and she carefully moved up to the edge of the brush. In the clearing were a cluster of vehicles that had to be the brigade HQ. Troops with the unmistakable look of staff officers were bustling about. There was one larger lift-van that looked like a command vehicle. It had antennas on its roof and its wide doors were standing open.

She checked the time. Kay and Rollins had farther to go. She’d give them another minute or two. While she waited, she aimed a directional microphone at the big van.

“…looks like we’ve got them, General,” said a fuzzy voice.

“Yes, Colonel, just a matter of mopping up now,” said another.

“What are the tanks going to do once they close the circle, sir?”

“I haven’t given them orders yet, but I plan to have them start pushing south toward us. We’ll squeeze the enemy tighter and tighter. After a bit I’ll let Fetherbay surrender.”

“He’s not going to be happy, sir.”

“Oh, let him stew! Do him good. These assault troopers think they’re the lords of creation. It’ll be a good lesson for everyone that they aren’t invincible.”

“Yes sir.”

Anny had heard enough. She switched to the platoon circuit. “Ready?”

“Ready,” said Rollins.

“In position,” said Kay.

“All right! Third Platoon, hit ‘em! Go! Go! Go!”

Anny surged through the underbrush and charged toward the command vehicle. Her men started blasting everything in sight. She switched on her active sensors and saw her small band of blue dots moving into a cloud of at least a hundred red ones. But her men were in armor and heavily armed and the enemy were not. There would be a platoon of infantry for security, but they wouldn’t have a chance. Red dots blinked out faster than she could count and by the time she reached the van there were only a few enemy left. She still had the microphone on and cries of alarm were coming from the vehicle.

“General! Major Cushing reports his guns are under attack by enemy infantry!”

“Sir! I’m picking up unknown forces…”

“What the hell…?”

“Look out!”

“Sir! Enemy troops are…”

She burst into the van and couldn’t resist. “Right here.”

A dozen men, including General Vorsilva, were staring at her wide-eyed. Colonel Downes of the 139^th was there, too. She stepped forward. “General, you are my prisoner,” she said, her external speaker booming out.

“Who the hell are you?” roared Vorsilva. “Joegen! Order some troops to…”

“Sorry, sir,” said Anny, raising her weapon. “Please stand down or I’ll have to shoot you.”

“Joegen! Do as I say!”

Anny sighed and activated her plasma arc and sprayed it across the general and his men. If this had been real the sun-hot beam would have fried flesh and equipment to ashes. Here, all it did was tell the master computer that the men were now casualties. The officer Vorsilva had been shouting at raised his hands helplessly from his com station.

“Sorry, sir, the com won’t respond. I’m dead.”

“God damn it!” snarled Vorsilva. He turned on her. “Who are you, soldier?”

“Excuse me just a moment, sir,” said Anny. She switched off the external speakers and called Kay and Rollins. “Report your status.”

“Blastin’ ‘em down, sir!” cried Kay.

“Weak resistance,” said Rollins. “We’ll have all the guns knocked out in another minute, sir.”

“Good work. Get it done and get back here.” She switched to the Regimental HQ circuit. “Payne to Colonel Fetherbay! Priority! Please respond!”

* * *

Alby was trying to see if a dead man could get a cup of coffee when one of the sensor officers cried out. “Sir! Colonel! The enemy artillery has stopped firing! And I’m reading friendlies near their position!”

Every eye turned to the tactical display and sure enough there were some blue dots near the enemy artillery positions.

“What the hell?” said Fetherbay. “Who are they?”

“Not sure, sir… wait! Incoming message!”

“Payne to Colonel Fetherbay! Priority! Please Respond!” A familiar voice came from a speaker and Alby found himself grinning ear to ear.

“Payne, what’s going on?” demanded Fetherbay.

“Sir! We’ve knocked out the enemy guns! And I’ve captured General Vorsilva! Well, killed him, I’m afraid, sorry about that. The enemy tanks have no orders, sir! If you hit the infantry line now…”

“I’m on it, Lieutenant! Stay where you are! We’re coming to you!” Fetherbay began snapping out orders to his remaining commanders and then ordered his staff to pack up their gear and get ready to move—south.

Fetherbay caught sight of Alby and grinned through his open helmet. “Your friend may have saved our bacon.”

“She has a knack for doing that, sir,” answered Alby.

* * *

“… Stay where you are! We’re coming to you!”

“Yes sir! We’ll secure this position and provide what covering fire we can. Payne out.”

“I asked you a question, soldier!” General Vorsilva was still talking to her.

“He looks kinda pissed,” said Private Kerbeck. Anny quickly looked to make sure that was on the secure circuit. She activated the external speaker again. “Lieutenant Payne, sir, C Company.”

“Open your damn helmet when you’re talking to me!”

Anny flipped up her visor and the General blinked in surprise. “You!”

“Uh, yes, sir, Andreanne Payne, C Company.”

“How’d you get here? What sort of trick did you pull?”

“We just took cover and let your forces pass us by, sir. Then we followed and attacked.”

“Bullshit! There’s no way we could have missed seeing you!”

“Sorry, sir, but that’s what we did.”

“I don’t believe you! This is some damn cheat by Fetherbay! But I’ll get to the bottom of it! Joegen! Call General Uhlrich! Use the emergency circuit!”

Anny started edging backwards. “I have to go, sir, I have my orders.”

“Stay right where you are, damn it!”

“Sorry, sir, as long as the exercise is running I don’t take orders from enemy officers. And anyway, you’re dead, sir.” She flipped down her visor and left the van.

She heard the general shouting after her, but she didn’t stop. “Yeah, I think he was pissed,” said Kerbeck.

Anny tried to put that out of her mind. Rollins and Kay were just approaching with their troops. “Casualties?” she asked.

“Not a one, sir!” said Kay. “They never knew what hit them!”

“Good. Now listen up. What’s left of the Regiment will be punching through the 139^th and coming right through here. We need to clean out any remaining resistance and make sure they have a clear path. Those tanks will probably be right on their tails so there can’t be any delay. I imagine the Colonel will be ordering us to disperse into the hills, but be ready for anything. All right, let’s move.”

She spread her troops out in a long line just south of where the enemy artillery had been. They took out a few scattered enemy troops but the opposition appeared confused. Once she had her line set, she could just stand there and watch the show on her tactical display.

It was beautiful.

With hardly any delay, the 61^st charged out of their perimeter and slashed through the leaderless troops of the 139^th. Their tanks were off to the north, their artillery was silent and their commanders were dead. ‘Hot knife through butter’ seemed a particularly apt expression just then. The assault troopers in their battle armor overran the unarmored infantry in a matter of minutes. A few companies, the ones trailing behind the tanks, were spared, but the rest of the 139^th was routed.

Once through the line, the 61^st bounded south as fast as their suits would carry them. The enemy tanks, after milling about in confusion for critical minutes, began their pursuit, but couldn’t catch up. Thirty minutes after Anny had so rudely interrupted General Vorsilva, Colonel Fetherbay bounced up to her, raised his visor, and shook her hand.

“Well done, Lieutenant!” he said with a smile. “I’d ask you how you did it, but we don’t have time for that now. We’ll talk later. Now, if you’ll cover our retreat—excuse me, our advance in another direction—we’ll get the hell out of here!”

“My pleasure, sir.”

* * *

Officially they had still lost.

But nobody in the 61^st cared.

Jer Naddel watched the celebrating officers of the Regiment, leaned back in his chair and smiled. The Regimental Mess had never seemed so lively as it did tonight. Jer had heard that General Vorsilva had lodged a protest against Anny’s surprise move, but that he’d been overruled. There was nothing illegal about what Anny had done and the results would stand. The official results stated that the defending forces, the 25^th Brigade, had successfully defeated the enemy landing force, overrun the landing zone, and stopped the invasion and thus won the exercise. But with the only effective combat unit left to the 25^th being the five surviving tanks of the 283^rd, you’d never convince anyone in the 61^st that they’d lost. True, they’d lost almost 70% of their troops, but they were still an organized combat force. They hadn’t been wiped out and they hadn’t been forced to surrender.

Thanks to Anny.

There she was, up by Fetherbay’s table, being toasted again. Men were crowded around her with raised glasses and jubilant faces. This had been going on for an hour or more. He’d scarcely had a chance to talk to her all evening, but he didn’t mind. This was her night. She’d earned it and he was so damn proud of her. If there had been any doubters in the Regiment, they were all gone now. Well, almost all gone. There was Vorkerkas glowering in a corner. But he was alone. Good.

“Wow! What a party!” exclaimed Alby, as he plopped into a seat next to Jer. “Looks like this could go on all night!”

“I think it’s supposed to,” replied Jer. He nearly had to shout to make himself heard. “Fetherbay has cancelled all duty for tomorrow. We’ll need a day to sober up after this!”

“Good! I think I shall get even drunker than I am!”

Jer laughed. “I may get a bit potted myself. But what was it like at Regimental HQ during the battle? I could sort of follow along by watching the tactical display after I’d been killed, but you must have had a real good look.”

“Oh yeah! It was quite a show. But I’ve got to hand it to Fetherbay, he’s one cool customer. Even after it was obvious that we’d been set up to lose, he never got angry or lost control. And oh, man, when we got the call from Anny telling us that she’d bagged the enemy guns and Vorsilva! Fetherbay didn’t waste a second. We were off and moving within a few minutes. Glad I still had my skimmer or I never would have kept up.”

“I like the Colonel.”

“Yeah, me, too. I wouldn’t mind working for him once I’m done with this bloody simulator project.”

“Regimental staff?”

“Why not? I think I’d be good there. Hell, the next time something like this happens I’ll just hack into the main tactical computer and add the home fleet and the Guards Division to our side!”

“Wouldn’t Vorsilva love that! Whoops! Speak of the devil!” Jer sat up. General Vorsilva and Colonel Downes had just entered the Mess. There was another high ranking officer with them. The noise level dropped as more and more people noticed them. “Who’s that with Vorsilva?”

“Must be General Uhlrich: he was the chief observer for the exercise.”

The crowd parted before the trio and they moved toward the head table. Jer saw Anny try to fade into the background, but Fetherbay led her forward to meet the generals. “General Uhlrich, General Vorsilva, Colonel Downes, welcome to the 61^st’s Mess,” he said.

“Good to see you again, Tony!” boomed Uhlrich, who was a tall, barrel-chested man. He looked around at the celebrating officers and grinned. “Didn’t anyone tell you you’d lost the exercise?”

“We received a communication to that effect, sir, but it was clearly a mistake,” replied Fetherbay. “I’m expecting a correction any time.”

Uhlrich laughed. “Yes, things didn’t turn out quite how we’d planned!” He swung his gaze around to take in most of the assembled officers. “As I’m sure you figured out pretty quickly, the exercise was deliberately set up to be very unbalanced. Battles rarely go according to plan, gentlemen. The intention was give the 61^st an overdose of battlefield ‘friction’ while at the same time giving the rest of your brigade an example of how to contain and wipe out a hostile landing.”

“Yes, sir,” said Fetherbay.

“Ah, and here’s the one who screwed it all up!” cried Uhlrich, catching sight of Anny.

“Yes, General, let me introduce Lieutenant Payne,” said Fetherbay.

“Good to meet you, sir,” said Anny, shaking hands.

“And I you, Lieutenant! And I you! That was damn sneaky of you! But well done! Very well done!”

“Thank you, sir. Sorry if I messed up your plans.”

“Oh, don’t be! Friction works both ways, after all! And I think some valuable lessons were learned on both sides. Don’t you, General?” Uhlrich looked to Vorsilva, who hadn’t cracked a smile the whole time.

“Of course, sir,” said Vorsilva. “But I have a question for the Lieutenant.”

“Sir?” said Anny.

“Yes, I just wanted know that if this has been real would you still have done it? Some might consider what you did extremely reckless. If it hadn’t worked—if you hadn’t been lucky—you and your whole platoon would have been killed or captured without the chance to fire a shot. Anyone can be brave and daring when there’s no real danger. But if it had been real, would you have done this?”

The noise level in the Mess fell to almost nothing. Anny’s face was dead neutral, but Jer knew her well enough to be sure that there was some anger below the surface. Vorsilva was trying to belittle her accomplishment, even make it look like a mistake rather than smart move!

“Well, Lieutenant?”

“Given an identical tactical situation, sir,” said Anny, “then yes, sir, I think I would.”

“Really?” Vorsilva sounded skeptical. “You’d throw away all the men under your command?”

“Sir, as I read the situation, my platoon was in a hopeless position anyway. We had become separated from the rest of the regiment and the only other line of withdrawal would have exposed us to so much enemy fire I doubted more than a handful of us would have survived. And we wouldn’t have done any corresponding damage to the enemy. I knew my plan was risky, but it seemed the best chance to keep my men alive—and hurt the enemy at the same time.”

“And so it turned out!” said General Uhlrich loudly. He slapped Vorsilva on the back and then Anny, too. “Fortune favors the bold, eh? But my glass seems to be empty—hell, I don’t even have a glass! Can someone correct that?” In an eyeblink, someone had supplied Uhlrich with a full glass. He held it up. “Gentlemen! To good fortune and bold, young officers!”

“Hear, hear!”

Everyone joined in the toast and the celebration started again. With the generals distracting Fetherbay, Anny managed to escape and make her way back to Jer. “Whew!” she said dramatically, wiping imaginary sweat from her brow. “Never thought I’d get away!”

“Well, relax and have a drink!” said Alby. “You’ve earned it.” He snagged a glass from a passing steward and handed it to her.

“Thanks. Wow, I hope I haven’t pissed off Vorsilva too much.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll get over it,” said Jer. “You’re part of his brigade, after all. Once he’s had a chance to think, he’ll be glad to have you.”

“I hope so.”

“Yeah, me, too,” said Alby, looking far too serious for the occasion.

“Now what?”

“Well, I looked up Vorsilva’s record. It seems that when he was at the Academy he tried to get into the assault troops—and didn’t make it. Maybe he’s got a grudge against them.”

“He did seem awfully satisfied about the exercise—just before I captured him,” said Anny.

“Well, don’t worry about it. Fetherbay—and most everyone else around here—couldn’t be happier,” said Jer. “They’re the ones you have to deal with everyday. Don’t worry about Vorsilva.”

“He’s probably right,” said Alby. “So drink up! Let’s enjoy ourselves!”

And so they did. After a while, the band started playing and an area was cleared in the gymnasium and the officers who had wives or girlfriends started dancing. Getting up his nerve, Jer asked Anny to dance. She hesitated at first, but eventually gave in. They hadn’t danced since the formal ball in their senior year at the Academy. It had been kind of awkward at first, and it felt the same way here. Pretty much everyone had stopped to stare at the two uniformed officers dancing with each other. But then Anny grinned at him and he grinned back. Hell, let them stare! After that, they relaxed and it was a lot of fun. Later, Alby asked Anny to dance and she agreed and that opened the floodgates. It seemed like everyone wanted to dance with Anny. Well, almost everyone. But she reserved enough dances for Jer that he didn’t feel neglected.

“That is one hell of a woman you’ve got there, Naddel,” said Sven Estaban, after he’d had his dance.

“You’re right about that,” he replied in satisfaction.

“One hell of a woman.”

* * *

Someone was pounding on the door and every thump seemed to be transmitted directly to Anny’s brain. Crap. What time was it? How much had she had to drink? Where the hell was she? She heard Jer groan and felt him move and then she remembered that she’d spent the night with him. Or as much of the night as was left after they’d left the Mess. The stairs up to her room had seemed far too daunting in her condition so she’d accepted Jer’s offer to stay in his room. She couldn’t even remember if they’d made love so she must have really been smashed.

“Lieutenant Payne, are you in there?” A voice came through the door.

“Wha?” she mumbled. “Yeah… Whozzat?”

“Uh, Corporal Fletcher, sir. From brigade headquarters. I’ve got orders to bring you up there. I’ve been looking all over for you, sir.”

“What the hell for?’ growled Jer.

“Damn, damn…Damn!” Anny tried to roll out of the bed, got her legs tangled in the sheets, and fell flat on her face. “Ow!”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah…” She staggered up and headed for the door, realized she wasn’t wearing anything except a t-shirt and stopped to try and sort out her clothes from Jer’s scattered on the floor. Jer tottered past her to the door, opened it a crack and looked out.

“Yeah? What is it?”

“Uh… I need to bring Lieutenant Payne to HQ, sir. They’ve been comming her and she hasn’t answered.”

“Oh, right. You got a vehicle?”

“Parked outside, sir.”

“Wait there, she’ll be out in ten minutes.”

“They want her right away.”

“Ten minutes or you’ll have to take her there naked, Corporal.”

“Oh, okay, I’ll wait.”

Jer shut the door and turned. “Use the shower here. I’ll take your key and get you a fresh set of greens.”

“Great. Thanks, love.” She wove her way into the bathroom and turned on the shower and let it splash all over her. She scrubbed herself, washed her hair, and then turned the temperature to as cold as she could stand, shocking herself awake. By the time she emerged Jer was back with her uniform and—bless the man—a cup of coffee and a painkiller.

“What do you suppose this is about?” asked Jer as she dressed.

“No clue. But I doubt that it’s good news.”

“Pessimist.”

“Always.”

She gulped down the last of the coffee, put on her cap and went out the door. “Later.”

The corporal was sitting in the utility vehicle and Anny took the seat next to him. “How long have they been looking for me?”

“About forty minutes, sir,” he replied as he pressed the accelerator.

“Sorry, I was unconscious.”

“Yes sir.”

“Who, exactly is looking for me?”

“Captain Vordranov, sir.”

Anny frowned. That was Vorsilva’s chief of staff… “Why is he looking for me?”

“No idea, sir.”

They arrived at the HQ building, which was considerably larger than the regimental HQ. Anny had only ever been here once before on an errand for Vorstang. She got out of the vehicle and went up the steps to the front door. The 61^st might have the day off, but it was business as usual at Brigade. She went inside and asked how to find Captain Vordranov’s office. She got there and then had to wait twenty minutes before he would see her. Finally she was let in. She came to attention and saluted. “Lieutenant Payne, reporting as ordered.”

“You’re late,” growled Vordranov, a harried-looking officer of middle years.

“Sorry, sir.” She knew it was no use to make excuses.

Vordranov searched through the flimsies on his desk, found one and thrust it at her. “Payne, you are being detached from the 61^st and assigned here.”

“What?” she gasped.

“You heard me. You’ll be the acting S-9 officer. Watkins!” Vordranov shouted the last bit so suddenly Anny flinched. Detached…? An enlisted man who looked even more harried than Vordranov popped into the office.

“Sir?”

“Take Payne down to the S-9 office. She’s taking over there.”

“Yes sir. Lieutenant? If you’d follow me?” In a daze, Anny followed the man into the corridor. S-9? What the hell is S-9?

S-1 was Personnel & Administration… S-2 Intelligence/Security… S-3 Operations… S-4 Logistics… As she went down the hallway she saw the labeled office doors. So she was being assigned to the brigade staff? She was losing her platoon? For how long? Why? And what was S-9?

S-7 Training… S-8 Finance/Payroll… They reached the end of the hallway and she looked at the door.

“Public Relation!?” she exclaimed.

“Yes sir,” said Watkins. “S-9, Public Relations.”