The bottom line was he'd lost an entire tank battalion. Of fifty-four tanks, just six were repairable; ten at most. The day before, he'd been confident that despite the Battle of the First Days, he'd retained clear superiority in armor. Getting so much of my armor underground before the human bombards attacked was the smartest thing I've done. No, the only smart thing I've done. I've been trading armor, aircraft and warriors for knowledge, and I've come out sadly short on the exchange.

(Scribble scribble!)

When the bombards had left, he'd sent out his aircraft to challenge the enemy aerospace attack craft. Which unfortunately had proven more heavily armed and armored, and very well crewed. Now the question was: why haven't the humans used them since? What are they saving them for? Or is there a rivalry between the humans' space commander and their ground commander? Perhaps even between the services themselves?

He shook off the question. There was no way to know. He only knew he was overdue for some good luck.

(Scribble scribble! Jot jot!)

His latest rude surprise was that the humans had battle robots! Robots with responses more intelligent and nuanced than anyone could have imagined. They'd been reported on the Battle of the First Days-radioed reports from the confusion of close combat. But there'd been no verification, and no one had taken it seriously. The assumption had been that some of the humans, perhaps their master gender, wore full body armor. But the descriptions they now had seemed to repudiate that.

(His stylus had nearly stopped moving.)

So. Battle robots. That meant that humans had much more advanced artificial intelligence technology. But they couldn't have many robots. If they did, they'd have used them more extensively. Perhaps these were prototypes, or test models.

Don't talk yourself into any assumptions, he chided. Go about your business. Plan. Execute. Adjust. Exterminate. In the imperial dialect, the initials had long since become an acronym meaning victory.

Meanwhile he'd reduced one area of uncertainty. Seventeen two-man recon teams had penetrated the blind area at various points, and radioed when they'd done it. Eleven radioed additional observations from inside, and five had returned and been debriefed. None of what they'd seen had seemed noteworthy, but even that was worth knowing, and he knew now that the concealment field was not also a force shield. That had been predicted, but having it verified was vitally important.

(His stylus had speeded up. Now it moved furiously, in a sort of automatic writing.)

Especially in conjunction with something even more important: from the penetration points, Intelligence had mapped a decent approximation of the overall perimeter. It was circular! Which suggested a single, centrally located field generator. Laying heavy artillery fire on the center might very well knock it out, depriving the humans of their concealment. It might also cut off the head of their command structure.

But before I do that, I'll plan the ground attack to overrun them. With their concealment broken, I can commit aircraft for effective reconnaissance, and air support for the ground forces.

He looked at his jotting glass, where his stylus had been so busy while he cogitated. In the middle he'd scrawled undisciplined spirals and swirls, with scattered small ritual sunbursts. Taken together they formed a circular mass. And into the heart of it were arrows, as if into the center of a target.

A shiver rucked his fur from scalp to sacrum. It seemed to him this was going to work. He began to decipher the tightly scrawled notes he'd written.

On the second day after the raid, Arjan Hawkins Singh walked into a patients' dayroom-a squad tent, with board floors on timber foundations. Courtesy of the Burger engineering regiment and its small but efficient sawmill. Only Esau and Jael were there; few of the wounded were well enough to use a dayroom. They sat watching a documentary on defense industries of the Core Worlds. It was a year out of date, of course, but interesting. Enlightening. Gave an outworlder a notion of how things were done on the Core Worlds, and how all this stuff-ships, weapons, equipment-came to be.

Jael clicked off the player as Hawkins sat down beside them. "Hello, Sergeant… " she began, then stopped. What caught her attention was the dark place on each sleeve, where chevrons had been removed. Then she saw his collar tabs. "You're wearing an ensign's bar!" she said. "You've gotten promoted! Congratulations!"

There's an interesting change, Hawkins thought. When I first knew them, she wouldn't have spoken first like that. Not with Esau present. She'd have waited for him to talk.

"Does that mean Ensign Berg is dead?" Esau asked.

"I'm afraid so. Killed in the first minutes."

Jael blushed. She'd overlooked how promotions came about in battle. Suddenly congratulations didn't seem proper.

"And you're replacing him," Esau said. "I figured he might be dead when I heard you giving orders he'd usually give." He paused. "Does this mean B Company's not getting shut down? Even after all the casualties?"

"Yep. We're still in business. We've been reorganized, of course. We're down to three platoons of three squads each, with most of the squads down to eight men for now. But we'll get first call on replacements, as the wounded recover and do rehab."

That'll be awhile, Esau thought. From what he'd seen and heard, most wounds were a lot worse than his and Jael's.

"I could fight right now if I had to," Jael said. "I don't hurt much, and I didn't lose that much blood. Esau's hampered a lot worse with his hands than I am with my shoulder."

Esau held up his bandaged hands and looked at them wryly. Only fingertips projected. "At least Jael doesn't have to tell me not to pick my nose now," he said.

Hawkins laughed. He'd never heard Esau say anything remotely humorous before. "There you are!" he answered. "Every cloud has a silver lining."

"Captain Fong tells me I'll be back on duty in a week."

"That's what I heard, too. Good thing. I need you." He held out a pair of sleeve patches. "Ensign Zenawi is Lieutenant Zenawi now, our new company commander. He told me to give you these; you're 2nd Platoon's new sergeant. If you're nice, maybe you can get Corporal Wesley to sew them on for you."

Jael laughed. "Might be she would." She took the patches from the ensign. They were a staff sergeant's stripes: three chevrons and a rocker. There ought to be two rockers, she told herself. The other platoon sergeants have two. Probably, she decided, the army didn't like to jump someone two grades.

"And while you're sewing on chevrons," Hawkins added, "these are yours." He handed her a pair of buck sergeant's chevrons. "You're in charge of 3rd Squad now. There isn't any 4th Squad yet. Maybe later."

She took them without hesitating. "Thank you, Ensign Hawkins," she answered. "I'll do the best I can."

Hawkins went on to tell them that 2nd Platoon's fit-for-action were on R amp;R, with Jonas Timmins as acting platoon sergeant. They'd ridden AG sleds to the upper reaches of their old friend the Mickle's, for a day's fishing. General Pak had foreseen the desirability of such days, and requisitioned abundant fishing equipment before they'd left Terra. Nothing fancy-gear you could use without instruction.

Esau had gone grim. "How's Lieutenant Bremer?" he asked.

"He's under-medical treatment. Had you heard something?"

"On the beach he said he was going to shoot me for a coward if I didn't go back and get my blaster."

Jael took command then, telling what had happened, and how Zenawi had stepped in. The story took Hawkins by surprise. He turned to Esau. "How did you feel when he said those things?"