"How long?" Esau asked.

"His bones should heal fast. He should be ready for rehab in six weeks."

Six weeks! Esau left depressed. He didn't feel up to being platoon leader himself. During raids maybe, but not in the day-to-day activities between times. Or defensive fighting in foxholes, as in the first days, or in the breastworks he'd heard about that morning… He felt sure he didn't know enough to be platoon leader in those circumstances. He hadn't been platoon sergeant long enough. He'd make mistakes.

After supper, Isaiah Vernon looked him up. Isaiah was a staff sergeant now, too. When the bot cases from the Battle of the First Days finished their familiarization training, he'd been given a whole platoon of them, as their sergeant. He'd just hitched a ride north to see a couple of them, in the bot shop for repairs. An entire long company of bots had been in a firefight the evening before-been put down near a Wyzhnyny field headquarters, moved in on it, and pretty much wiped it out. Then they'd made a fighting withdrawal, and been picked up by APFs that came down on a bald ridgetop.

"And while I was up here," Isaiah said, "I decided to see who was here from 2nd Platoon."

"Did you see Jael?"

"Jael? The hospital called up the names of B Company wounded on their records, and hers wasn't one of them."

"She's in the bot shop," Esau said, wishing a bot face showed expression.

"The bot shop? So she finally decided to sign."

"She didn't. She was unconscious, and I lied to the medic, so he shot her up with Stasis One. Afterward I was afraid she'd be really mad at me, but it turned out she's not."

Isaiah chuckled. He does that pretty well, Esau thought, and his voice sounds like himself. He guessed Jael's would too, with practice. It occurred to him how much Isaiah had changed personally; more than his body had got stronger. He wondered how different Jael would be, besides having a bot body. He'd just have to wait and see. And get used to it, he told himself.

Then he realized he still hadn't signed his own bot agreement, so when Isaiah left, Esau went to the hospital and signed one. They stamped out new dog tags for him on the spot, to verify it. Now, he thought, if I get hit bad enough, we can be bots together, her and me.

The Battle of Shakti

Admiral Alvaro Soong's 1st Sol Provisional Battle Force had traveled three nonstop months in hyperspace to rendezvous with newly commissioned battle groups in the Dinebikeyah System. The result was a fleet with more than four times the number of manned ships that had fought at Paraiso. The new ships came not only from the Sol System, but from new shipyards in the Indi and Eridani Systems, with colonial crews. So it was renamed the "1st Commonwealth Fleet."

The number of maces, whose performance had been so impressive at Paraiso, was also more than quadrupled. They were quicker and easier to build than manned ships, and being drones, their destruction didn't cost trained crews.

And most of the new ships, manned or drones, had the improved shield generators.

Spanish Soong remained in command. To War House and the public, he was a hero second only to Charley Gordon. Before there was any fleet at all, he'd been judged the best qualified for command, based on temperament, gaming skills, and overall service record. And so far he'd disappointed no one.

While en route to the rendezvous, Soong, via Charley, had been updated on the new fleet units by Admiralty Chief Fedor Tischendorf himself. "And Alvaro," Tischendorf finished, "Axel Tisza is delivering the convoy from the Sol System. He's also commanding one of the new battle groups."

He paused meaningfully. "I've had him in mind as your command backup when he gets there, but I haven't told him yet. I know you two have had-a mixed relationship, so I wanted to run it by you first. What do you think of the idea?"

Think? Or feel? "Admiral, Ax is as able as anyone you could find for the job. Powerful mind. Quick. Aggressive. And basically we saw eye to eye for the most part, different though we are. As midshipmen we roomed together for four years and never came to blows. Loaned each other money on occasion, drank each other's scotch when one of us could afford it. And on pass in the Springs, we backed each other up in more than one scrap."

Yes, Tischendorf thought, and you were rivals in almost everything, from the saber team to the classroom. And over Carmen Apraxin, when she came along; that's what spoiled it. "I didn't bring this up idly," he said. "You two were the chief candidates for command of the Provos, and the difference in your grades and gaming scores was thin. But in your favor. And you had the best command temperament: more objective, and I've never known you to be abrasive."

Soong examined the words and found them true. "Not that gaming scores are so important with Charley Gordon available," he found himself saying.

"True. And there's another point in your favor. You discovered Charley's talent, and had the balls to stick your neck out and make him battle master. I doubt that Ax would have done either of them. I'm not at all sure I would have."

With the specifications in hand on the fleet additions, Charley Gordon plunged into reworking his strategies, tactics, protocols, and fleet organization. At the same time considering possible changes in Wyzhnyny strategy and tactics. Charley claimed to have a good, if imperfect, sense of what those changes would be.

Soong felt uncomfortable with some of Charley's adjustments; they seemed too daring. Nonetheless he accepted Charley's new system in toto, showing no misgivings.

He'd always been stoic-his aunts and older cousins had commented on it-and rarely did that stoicism take the form of grim resignation. But now the situation was more urgent than at Paraiso. He'd also be risking much greater resources, and he needed to do even better than before. Because the Wyzhnyny were getting closer, and time-the Commonwealth's most critical resource-was shrinking.

At the rendezvous, Charley's new battlecomp package was uploaded to the entire fleet. The battle groups remained the basic tactical units, but in the enlarged fleet, a new hierarchical level was added-the battle wing-to facilitate heavier concentrations of firepower. Instead of five battle groups, there were now four battle wings of five groups each, and part of a fifth. When Vice Admiral Carmen Apraxin-DaCosta's Liberation Task Force arrived, it would complete the fifth wing, with Apraxin in command. She'd bring two savants with her, one to be transferred to Soong on board the Altai, freeing Charley Gordon to function solely as battle master.

The maces were not organized into wings and groups. They would operate as coordinated triads, grouped into second-order triads-threes of threes. So far as Soong was aware, the concept was entirely new, and the enthusiastic Charley had big plans for them.

Large and technically upgraded though it was, Soong's fleet was still far smaller than the Wyzhnyny battle fleet, which seemed to constitute about half the armada. But if Charley's assumptions didn't backfire, it seemed realistic to Soong that he could strike, maintain contact long enough to do serious damage, and get away without critical injury.

And possibly, hopefully, slow the invader; make him wary. Buy time to build enough more ships… and come up with new, hopefully decisive weapons.

Three days after Soong's Provos had gathered with the reinforcements from the Core Worlds, Apraxin's New Jerusalem Liberation Force arrived, to begin at once the task of resupply and external maintenance. On the "evening" of the same day, immediately after supper, electronic bosuns' pipes shrilled aboard every manned vessel in the entire fleet, and shipsvoice ordered all hands to mustering stations in ten minutes. This was followed as before by the skirls of "Dilly Doo" and other Scottish martial music.