A Hymn Before Battle

17 Planetary Transport Class Maruk, N-Space Transit Terra-Diess 0927 January 28th, 2002 ad

“Lieutenant Michael O’Neal, reporting as ordered, sir!” Mike held a rigid salute, eyes fixed six inches over the battalion commander’s head.

“At ease, Lieutenant.” The tall, spare officer went back to studying the hardcopy report in front of him, making annotations at irregular intervals.

Mike took the opportunity to study the room and its occupant, as “at ease” permitted, his feet shoulder width apart, hands clasped behind his back. Lieutenant Colonel Youngman was slightly balding and very lean. His wiry frame bespoke a high degree of physical fitness but he looked almost fragile compared to O’Neal. He was definitely a runner; from the starved greyhound look, probably a weekend marathoner.

The room was a barren almost Spartan ellipsoid, less, Mike suspected, as an extension of the occupant than due to cultural conflict. The blank gray plasteel walls were impervious to all normal attachment systems — glues would not stick and nails would bend — while the organic-looking tubes overhead, indicative of Indowy construction, were impossible to hang anything from. There were no mirrors, lockers or shelves, only a desk, two chairs and the floor. The light was the odd greenish blue favored by the Indowy. It gave the rooms a cold dark look, reminiscent of a horror movie.

On the floor were several boxes, undoubtedly filled with all the items this battalion commander considered de rigeur for office decorations. Mike began to list the probable contents starting with “national colors, one each.” When he reached “wife and children, picture of, five by seven, photo of mistress artfully concealed beneath” he realized that his good intentions of remaining calm were slipping. After ten minutes the colonel put down his second report and looked up.

“You look upset, Lieutenant.”

“I do, sir?” Mike asked. Despite this jerk showing his importance by having Mike cool his heels for ten minutes, Mike was sure his expression had not changed.

“You have looked pissed off since you came in the door. Actually, you look like you could bite the ass out of a lion.” The colonel’s face had assumed a disapproving pucker.

“Oh, that, sir,” said Mike, no longer surprised. The mistake was made all the time. “That expression’s a fixture. It’s from lifting weights.”

“A ‘lifter,’ hmm? I find that lifters are generally poor runners. How are your APRT scores, Lieutenant?” asked the colonel with a lifted eyebrow.

“I pass, sir.” I usually about max it, sir, he thought with a note of wry humor. And if you think “lifters” are poor runners, you ought to see a marathoner on the bench. Being able to press twice your body weight made pushups and sit-ups a cinch. The running was a pain, but he usually made the runs in nearly max time for his age group.

“Passing is not enough! I expect maximum physical performance out of my officers and, while you are not actually assigned to this unit, I expect you to be an example as well. There are absolutely no fit areas on this ship to run, but when we reach the planetary objective I expect to see you ‘leading the way’ in daily fitness. Do I make myself clear?” The colonel attempted to wither him with a glare. After years of experiencing icy Jack Horner dressing downs at the slightest mistake, the glare slid off Mike like water off diamond.

“Airborne, sir,” Mike snapped, with apparent perfect seriousness.

“Hmm. That brings us to your mission. As I understand it, you are to ‘advise’ me and my staff on the functions and uses of these combat suits. Is that correct?”

“Sir,” Mike paused and launched into his carefully prepared spiel. “As part of the GalTech Infantry Team, I have an intimate knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of armored combat suits. The team also specified the requirements for operational readiness. The pressure of circumstances have made it imperative to deploy your battalion before it met all training parameters and before anyone, the GalTech team, GF TRADOC or Fleet Strike Forces, felt it was fully ready. So I was assigned to help. Sir, you know all about light infantry tactics, probably heavy infantry too, but I know suits and suit tactics. I’ve got more time in them than anybody in the Fleet,” he concluded, not without pride. Mike paused, not sure how to go on.

“Are you saying, Lieutenant, that you don’t think we’re fully trained, fully prepared to fight?” asked the colonel, quietly.

Mike looked shocked. “No, sir, not even close. You’re no more prepared than the Marines were to invade Guadalcanal but you’re being deployed for much the same reason.”

“Well, Lieutenant,” said the colonel, smiling like a cat with a canary, “I hate to disagree, but your vaunted suits are not that hard to use. I got used to mine very quickly. They’ll be a real bonus on the Air-Land Battlefield but I don’t see how they’ll change tactics significantly. And learning how to use one is a cinch, so, as far as I can see your main purpose is to look over my shoulder.”

What “Air-Land Battlefield”? Taking to the air around Posleen is a short ride to carbondom. “Sir, part of my function is to evaluate the performance of this battalion, but, sir, with all due respect, my main function is advisory. A standard suit has two hundred thirty-eight discrete functions that can be combined in a near infinite number of permutations. For full ability, a soldier has to be able to multitask at least three in a combat environment. I mean, you can get by with just one or two, but three to five is ‘run, jump and shoot’ infantry. A command suit has four hundred eighty-two discrete functions. Its primary problems, almost faults, are information overload and function difficulty,” Mike paused and looked up, remaining at a Parade Rest position. He wished he could light up a cigar, but this officer was obviously not a smoker.

“Unless you have an AID that is really attuned to your needs you risk overload of C3I” — command, communication, control and intelligence — “flow. You either overload on information or filter out too much, either of which is dangerous. As to purely suit functions, a command suit has so many special functions designed to permit the commander to keep up with multiple highly mobile units and keep him alive, that you again risk either overload or suit drain.

“Sir, the TRADOC requirement is a minimum of two hundred hours training time for the standard suits and three hundred hours for the command suits. Records show that only E-4s and below have in excess of one hundred hours. Sir, I have three thousand hours and I feel like a novice. Among other difficulties with limited suit time, the autonomic systems grow with the user and go through periods of instability. They’ve never been tested in actual battle and their instability is marked below a hundred hours.” Mike paused, wondering if the commander understood his total horror at the nearly inexcusable lack of preparation of the battalion. He knew from the tenor of his briefing that Fleet TRADOC had the same reservations.

“Son, I understand what you mean about overload, I ran into it early on. I did what any good commander would do, I delegated and set up a communications net. As to using the suits, you’re right, they’re too complicated and that autonomic nervous system is a piece of shit. That’s in my report. You see,” he lifted one of the papers, “I make reports too. And I kind of expect that the reports of a battalion commander with over twenty years in this man’s Army will carry a little bit more weight than a damn lieutenant’s.

“Now, I don’t care what you think your mission is, or who you think you are. What I want you to do is go to your cabin and stay there for the rest of the trip. You’re not confined to quarters or anything but I decide how my battalion is run, how it trains, what its tactics are. Not any former E-5 with a shiny silver bar that thinks he’s hot shit. If I find you in the battalion area without my direct permission, in the training areas, or talking to my officers about tactics or training I will personally hang you up, shake you out and strip you of commission, rank, honor and possibly life. Do I make myself clear?” concluded the battalion commander, the words dropping into the quiet like iron ingots.

“Yes, sir,” said Mike, eyes fixed on a point six inches above the commander’s head.

“And when we get home, if you’ve been a good little boy, I’ll send along a nice neutral report instead of one that uses ‘arrogant’ and ‘insolent’ as adjectives. Clear?” The officer smiled thinly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

Lieutenant O’Neal came to the position of attention, did a precise about-face and marched out the door.

When the cabin door opened, Mike was lying on his bunk wearing battle silks and a set of issue Virtual Reality sunglasses nicknamed Milspecs. Battle silks — officially, Uniform, Utility, Ground Forces — was the uniform developed for day to day use by CES and ACS infantry. It was not designed for combat and since it was developed by a GalTech team, they had rammed through a uniform based on comfort and style. Light gray in color, it looked something like a hooded kimono. The material, cotton treated through an Indowy process to “improve” it, was smooth as silk, lightweight, and temperature reactive. With a few twists to close or open throat and cuffs it was comfortable from one hundred to zero degrees Fahrenheit. Mike was conspicuous in them because, despite the fact that they had been issued to the ACS unit, everyone besides him wore BDU camouflage.

It had been a month since his abortive meeting with the battalion commander and he occasionally reflected that he was in the best shape of his life. Since he could not perform his secondary missions, training and advisement, he spent his time in evaluating the battalion’s readiness (low), working out, and improving his own readiness. Despite the colonel’s pronouncement that there were no areas large enough for running, Mike had discovered desolate corridors stretching for miles. With difficulty he tracked down an Indowy crew member; most of the Indowy were staying far away from the unpredictable predators in their midst. After circumspect courting of the skittish boggle he gained access to gravitational controls in most of the unused sections.

The hallways were primarily maintenance corridors for cavernous holds now filled with ammunition, spare parts, tanks, rations and the myriad other things civilized man takes to war. Normally they contained machinery, tools, food, seeds, nannites and the myriad other things Indowy take to colonize, for it was an Indowy colony ship. The expansive cylinder, five kilometers long and a kilometer across, now carried the NATO contingent of the Terran expeditionary force on its four-month voyage to Diess.

For the past month the corridors had rung to the sound of plasteel on plasteel as Mike ran, jumped, dodged, shot and maneuvered units in full Virtual Reality mode under gravities ranging from none to two. When the door opened, he was refining one of the VR scenarios: “The Asheville Pass.”

America found itself in a situation unprecedented in its history. The last significant conflict in the contiguous U.S. was the Civil War and, with a few notable exceptions, neither side in that conflict had had any interest in causing civilian casualties. The Posleen had every interest in causing casualties; they saw the population as a mobile larder. There would be times, especially for ACS forces, when an un-American concept, the desperate last stand, would be required. Given that fact, it was a situation to be trained for like any other.

The Asheville scenario required an ACS unit to hold a pass against a superior Posleen force to buy time for the city to be evacuated. It tailored the Posleen force to the defending unit and its supports, but in every case they were outnumbered at least a thousand to one. In the original scenario at a certain point another unit broke and the Posleen advanced through that pass and the city driving the refugees into the rear of the defending unit with devastating results.

Originally designed as a no-win scenario, Mike was changing it so that one time in ten, if the defending unit did everything right, they would “win.” In the new scenario the other force held, permitting the evacuation to proceed until the destruction of the attacking force.

Mike was considering a memo for record that the assault force needed to be increased or statistically enhanced. Despite the fact that it was designed as a “no-win” scenario, using the standard battalion task force Mike had started to defeat the Posleen two times out of three, other force breaking or not. This should not have been possible with seven hundred troops defending against 1.5 million Posleen; a ratio of more than two thousand to one. It turned out to be a matter of artillery employment more than anything. Admittedly the battalion ended up as a short platoon and it required the battalion commander to survive and rally the troops to the end. But still.

When the door opened he was down to a reinforced company, he had “scratched his back,” called fire on his own position, three times and was getting that detached feeling just before the rope tightens in a hanging. He was, therefore, badly disoriented when his glasses automatically cleared and the visions of Posleen, violet fire, blood and shattered combat suits cleared to reveal a mild-looking medium-height captain with short cropped blond hair standing in his doorway. Behind the captain, virtually towering over him, was a skeletally thin, extremely tall staff sergeant.

Mike yanked off his shades and tried to come to attention but the VR effect caused a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea as he stumbled sideways into the bulkhead.

The captain’s eyes sharpened. “Have you been using drugs or something?”

“No, sir!” gasped Mike, dropping glasses and ceremony as he pawed for a drop sickness bag. “VRrrr sick, hnuff, hnuff, put, pah, shit! ’Scuse me, sir.” He dumped the bag in the disposer slot, kicked up the ventilation, pulled a Pepsi out of a cooler and pawed through his desk until he found two ampoules. He pressed them each in turn against the inside of his forearm, right through the clothing.

“Now I’m doing drugs, but they’re fully authorized, sir. Sudden cessation of VR training systems, such as when you’re killed or when a senior officer walks into your room, causes such severe physiological reactions that we rammed two GalTech meds through the authorization process. One is a really super analgesic that is stopping the blazing headache I would otherwise have right now and the other is an anti-nauseate I didn’t get to in time. This concludes lecture number one hundred fifty-seven: side effects of sudden VR termination, Chapter 32-5 of the Armored Combat Suit Field Manual.”

The captain began to clap as the NCO behind him shook his head. “Bravo, bravo. Really wonderful, considering you started it in the middle of a regurgitative event. Are questions now accepted?”

“Certainly.” Mike responded with a wince, the analgesic was fighting the incipient migraine but it was down to best two falls out of three. “Questions, comments, concerns?”

“Why not just lock the damn door?” asked the captain.

“You can’t, sir, it’s an Indowy ship. Hadn’t you noticed?” Mike answered.

“Mine damn well locks.”

“Then you haven’t had a personal visit from Colonel Youngman or Major Pauley.” Mike smiled solemnly. The NCO behind the captain winked.

“No, I haven’t.” There was something in that bald statement that set off an alarm in Mike’s head.

“Would you like to come in, sir?” asked Mike, stepping back into the small space. The ventilation had washed away the residual smells of ejecta, but the cramped “room” was the size of a walk-in closet. The bed Mike had been sitting on helpfully retracted into the wall then reformatted as a set of small station chairs, while a tabletop extruded from the farther wall. Even with the well-designed locations of the furniture it would be cramped for three, especially with someone of Mike’s breadth and the NCO’s height. Nonetheless, the captain immediately stepped into the room, with the sergeant following. The captain took a chair and, at that sign, Mike and the sergeant followed suit. The NCO ended up with his knees pulled nearly to his chest.

“I suppose Major Norton could open your door also, sir,” Mike said, continuing the conversation. “The Indowy are extremely hierarchical. Any higher caste Indowy can walk in unannounced. Those who are of equal rank cannot. The ship’s AI is programmed for that protocol and frankly it’s a real bitch.”

“Huh. I’ve been on this tub a month and didn’t know that,” mused the captain. “What else don’t I know?”

“Well, I would guess that your company has not been doing VR training and I know I’m the only human who has found lebensraum on this ship. Any other rhetorical questions, sir?” Mike ended bitterly.

“You know,” said the captain, with a slight smile, “you really need to learn to control that tongue of yours.”

“Yes, sir, no excuse, sir.”

“No, you have an excuse. You’ve been treated like a pariah and not allowed to do your job. Nonetheless, learn to keep a lid on.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, I’ve come here because I am on the horns of a dilemma. By the way, I’m Captain Brandon of Bravo company.”

“Yes, sir.” Mike nodded. “I recognize you.”

“I was under the impression you hadn’t been allowed to communicate with anyone in the battalion,” said the commander, cryptically.

“I haven’t, sir. I brought up the information on my AID.”

“You’re pretty good with these AIDs, aren’t you?” asked the commander.

“I would hope so, sir.”

“And you are suit expert.”

“I am a suit master, sir,” said O’Neal, with a slight smile.

“Well,” said the commander, with a smile in return, “that’s good because we need some help.”

“Sir,” said Mike, uncomfortably. “I’ve been given certain orders…”

“Lieutenant,” said the captain, sternly. “I realize the importance of orders. I’m a professional officer on my second hitch in command of a company. I truly recognize that violation of an order is not something to be taken lightly. So, I don’t think that you should violate your orders.”

“You don’t?” said Mike, startled.

“You don’t?” said the NCO, if anything more startled.

Mike smiled at the tall enlisted man. The NCO smiled back.

“I understand that you have met Sergeant Wiznowski?” said the captain. “The sergeant is head of the company scout/sniper squad.”

“Yes, sir, of course,” said Mike, stretching out his hand. “How do you do, Sergeant.”

“Oh, one below the other, Mighty Mite, like usual. How’s ’bout you?” Wiznowski’s hand wrapped around Mike’s to the extent that he was more or less holding on with his thumb.

Mike snorted.

“Actually,” said the captain, “I was given to understand that you were in prior service together.”

“Hey, Stork,” said Mike, “long time.”

“Now that we’re all friends…” said the captain, with a smile that quickly faded. He started to speak then stopped and looked around the cabin. “I was going to continue with my reason for coming here, but I have to ask a few questions. How the hell did you get this lighting?”

It took Mike a moment to realize what the commander was talking about. Then he laughed. The illumination of his quarters was not the sort of blue-green lighting found throughout the rest of the ship. It was more or less “Terran normal” but rather than looking like lighting from an incandescent bulb or fluorescents, it was the sort of pellucid light found only in the morning right after a snowfall. “Oh, well…” Mike started only to be interrupted.

“It’s not funny, Lieutenant. This lighting thing is driving people nuts. And your chairs are the right height, and your bed was the right size. Dammit, I’ve been traveling for two months on a bed built for an Indowy half my size!”

“I’ve been sleeping on the floor,” said Wiznowski, sounding less than resigned.

Mike stared at the commander with amazement. “You’re kidding, right?” he asked in horror.

“No, Lieutenant,” said the upset commander. “I am assuredly not kidding.”

Mike thought for a moment of the troops stuck in lighting from a bad sci-fi horror flick for the last month, living with accoutrements that were completely misdesigned for them, and felt physically ill.

“Jesus, sir,” he whispered, scrubbing his face with his hands. “God dammit. I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “Didn’t anybody talk to the goddamn Darhel coordinators?”

“I have no idea, Lieutenant. As far as I know there are no Darhel on the ship.”

“Michelle,” Mike queried his AID, turning away from the commander abruptly, “where are the Darhel coordinators?”

“The Darhel liaisons cross-boarded to a Flantax class courier vessel at the Dasparda emergence. They are going to rendezvous with the Expeditionary Force on Diess.”

“What!” he exclaimed. The liaisons, according to his briefing, had been explicitly directed to accompany the EF all the way to Diess. There was an advance party already on Diess to handle anything they might be needed for. The fact that a Flantax-class courier would get them there in half the time and much greater comfort should have been beside the point. He scrubbed his face again in rage and took a deep breath.

“Did the Darhel give any instructions regarding adjustment of quarters and training areas to Earth norms?”

“There is no record of such orders in my database,” stated the AID with uncharacteristic bluntness.

Mike thought for a moment then nodded. “Are there any records of such requests between humans and the Darhel?” he asked carefully. He knew there had been virtually no Human-Indowy interaction.

“That information is proprietary to the parties involved or restricted by classification.” Again the tone and response were abrupt. Mike had started to recognize that there were stock answers that were in some way “hardwired” into the AIDs and bypassed their “personalities.” He probably had the overrides to gain records of the conversations in question, a function of his position on the Board, but that would send a record of the request to the parties involved. He was not yet ready to kick that particular dragon in the snout.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Mike murmured.

“What?” asked Wiznowski, quietly. The captain started to ask something but Wiznowski respectfully held up his hand for silence. O’Neal was, meanwhile, on another plane. He shook himself and seemed about to say something then settled into silence. After nearly a minute, Wiznowski prompted him again.

“Mike?” he said, “where are you?”

O’Neal shook himself again and looked up. “This is really fucked up,” he proclaimed.

“Explain,” said the captain.

“Well,” O’Neal temporized, trying to figure out where to start. “Well,” he said again. “First thing…” He looked at the lighting and started there.

“Everything on this ship is controlled by the Indowy crew,” he said, fixing the captain’s eye. “You understand that?”

“Yes,” said the commander.

“Okay, everything, the water, the air, the food. Where have you been getting your food?” he suddenly digressed, puzzled.

“Well,” said the captain, surprised, “we brought a mess section…”

“Oh, Jesus!” snapped Mike. “Sorry, sir.”

“Well, I would prefer that you refrain from taking the name of God’s only begotten son in vain in front of me,” said the captain with a tolerant smile, “but I generally agree with the sentiment. What is wrong with using a mess section?”

“What are they using to heat the food?” asked Mike, dreading the answer.

“Field mess equipment,” answered Wiznowski. “Propane stoves, immersion heaters. We’ve been eating a lot of T-rations.”

“That has not been good for morale,” noted the captain, dryly.

“Oh, man, sir, how fucked up can this get?” Mike asked then thought about what he said. “Sorry for the French.”

The captain nodded tolerantly. “Perhaps you should tell me how this is supposed to go,” he said.

“Okay,” said Mike, focused back on track. “The Indowy control everything. The original plan — remember I was just peripheral to this so it’s as I recall — but the original plan called for the Darhel coordinators to arrange everything for the units through the Indowy. The Indowy can selectively or generally adjust lighting, gravitation, air mix, what have you.” He checked to make sure the two soldiers were comprehending his words and went on when the captain nodded his head.

“The entire human area of the ship should have been adjusted for humans long ago. Right after we boarded, as a matter of fact. The Indowy also control the primary food stores. Are you getting fresh fruits, vegetables, meat?” he asked.

“No,” said Captain Brandon, shaking his head. He suddenly realized the implication of the question. “You mean there’s fresh food on this tub?” he continued, starting to get angry.

“The mess sections should have been able to order stuff, just like they were back at Bragg. Jesus, if we’re this fucked up, I wonder what the damn Chinese are like?” Mike mused.

“Can you get this corrected?” asked the captain, patiently bringing the distracted lieutenant back on point.

“I don’t know,” said Mike, scratching his chin again. “Maybe. What I don’t understand is why Oberst Kiel isn’t already on top of this.”

“Who?” asked Wiznowski.

“Colonel Kiel, the head of the German unit of ACS,” Mike explained. “He’s a smart Kraut. I wonder why he hasn’t jumped on this? Michelle?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Has Oberst Kiel been making inquiries in regards to Indowy support for human forces?” asked Mike.

“I am not…”

“Supervisory override, voice and general sensory recognition. Whatever priority you have to assign,” he snapped.

“Yes, he has, Lieutenant,” said the AID in a now waspish voice. It had recently decided to be bitchy about overrides.

“And survey says… ?” asked Mike.

“If by that colloquialism you mean ‘what has the outcome been,’ the answer is ‘none,’ ” snapped the AID.

“Why?” asked Mike.

“Because,” answered the AID. If a black box could sulk, this one had its lip pouted.

Mike closed his eyes and counted to three. “Michelle, are we going to have to be debugged?” he said, mock sweetly.

“No,” said the AID, in a more normal voice. “Oberst Kiel has communicated with the Indowy through the AID network. However, the Indowy captain has refused to provide more than he was specifically ordered to by the Darhel before they left. Furthermore, he has refused to meet directly with Oberst Kiel. As you know…”

“The Indowy have a real thing about face-to-face,” Mike continued, nodding his head and meeting the captain’s eyes again. “Okay, now I know what the problem is.”

“Can you fix it?” asked the captain, puzzled.

“Yeah,” said Mike. “Probably, sir,” he qualified.

“I told you he was Mr. Fixit, sir,” said Wiznowski.

“Why can you?” asked the captain, “when the German colonel and, presumably, the Corp commander cannot?”

“Size partially, sir,” Mike grinned in deprecation. “And body language. To an Indowy I don’t look that over-muscled; most of them are pretty stocky. And I’m just tall, not huge. Also, they respond really well to the sort of body language you do ‘gentling’ horses. That was how we broke them on the farm,” he explained parenthetically. “So, I can get along with them where a lot of humans have problems.

“Probably the Corp commander has been communicating through Oberst Kiel, sir. I don’t know why, but the Indowy will rarely do anything without at least one physical liaison. If I can secure a meeting with the ship’s captain I can carry the message directly. So, if I meet with the captain, point out the planned process, get him to accept Oberst Kiel’s requests as valid, that should take care of it.”

“Hmm,” ruminated the commander. “And if it doesn’t?”

“Then, sir, I go around getting all the areas adjusted one by one,” answered Mike.

“Okay,” said Brandon. Then, plaintively, “There’s really fresh fruit on this ship?”

“And vegetables,” Mike confirmed, “in stasis, so they’ll keep fresh indefinitely. Would you like a salad?”

“No,” said the commander. He glanced at Wiznowski, who was looking quizzical. “No. If we can’t get it to the troops…”

“Yes, sir,” said the NCO. “See, Mike, all the fruit we’ve had since the pogie bait ran out is the dried stuff in MREs. And can peas, can corn, can green beans. It’s really getting to the troops.”

“But not you, right Stork?” Mike smiled. “Scurvy?” he asked turning back to the commander.

“No.” Brandon shook his head. “We’re okay there. Everyone is taking vitamins and the food is loaded. Not to mention some of the drinks. But there is a hell of a morale problem. There have been riots among other contingents, even American.” He shook his head again, this time in resignation.

“Well, we’ll get it licked, sir,” said the lieutenant, confidently.

The captain smiled. “Good to hear. But that brings me to the real reason I was here. Training.”

It was Mike’s turn to frown again. “I’m under orders, sir.”

“And can you divulge the nature of the orders?”

“I am not to mingle for training. I’m not to discuss training with officers. I’m not to enter the battalion area or the training areas.” Mike had brooded on those words for quite some time.

“Hmm,” said the officer and smiled. “Good, I’m glad that my source had the wording right. As I said, I don’t want you to disobey your orders…”

“Well, sir,” said O’Neal, “since the orders were invalid on the face…”

“But you must remember, Lieutenant,” said the captain, sternly, shaking his finger at the junior officer, “that the last order from a superior officer is to be obeyed.”

Brandon dropped the humorous pose. “Besides, disobeying the colonel is bad for discipline and would destroy your career.” The captain fixed him with a glance to ensure that his point was made.

“Yes, sir,” said Mike. He could tell that the commander was headed somewhere but was not sure where.

The captain looked up and thought about what he was about to say. He closed one eye and wrinkled his forehead. The eyebrow of the open eye bounced up and down.

“Let me just be sure of something. Have we discussed training with combat suits or any other galactic equipment?” he asked. “At all,” he emphasized.

“No, sir,” said Mike after a moment’s thought. Wiznowski just shook his head.

“Okay,” the captain nodded his head in agreement. “And we’re not going to discuss training. But let me ask you a hypothetical question. If the company was to have a company party, and you were ‘directing’ it, would you have to be there? In person?” asked the commander with a leading tone.

Mike frowned more deeply in puzzlement then his eyes widened. He flashed a look at the Virtual Reality glasses on the table then started to say something. He thought about it for a moment then realized why the crafty old company commander had brought an NCO to the discussion.

“Hey, Wiz, you guys got any of these?” he asked, holding up the Milspecs.

Wiznowski’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Yeah,” he whispered with a slight smile. Then he grinned. “Yeah!”

“Well, gentlemen,” said the captain, quickly standing up and placing his hands on his hips. “I’m sure you have a lot of catching up to do.” He smiled beatifically at them, the image of bonhomie. “However, although I will permit Sergeant Wiznowski to visit with you briefly, since you are old friends, I hope that you will remain circumspect about your conversations. Don’t ask, don’t tell, doncha know.” He winked, turned and whisked out of the cramped cabin.