«Hmm,» the professor murmured, nodding his head. «Do you think that the Tir would have been more or less favorably disposed to the United States for more grav-guns if the President had shaken his hand, walked at his side to dinner and fed him beef?»

Kari's eyes widened. «Oh.»

The old man's face creased in an engaging smile. Kari thought that when he did that it took thirty years off him. He still had the greenest eyes she had ever seen. She wondered for a moment what he was like as a young man. She knew he had come late to his current profession. And he had flaming red hair before it turned white. He was probably a pistol as a kid, she thought.

«So,» he asked, «still planning on taking that position with Fleet?»

«No,» she said, shaking her head. «Your logic, as usual, is perfect.» She smiled back. «What about you?»

It was his turn to look rueful. «Well. The Ministry did not feel it necessary to reactivate a former subaltern, whatever his later accomplishments.»

She shook her head. «What idiots. They could use you in Fleet Intelligence. You seem to understand more about the Galactics and the Posleen than anyone I've ever met in the military.»

His face displayed none of the terror that little admission fired in him. He had thought his understanding of both their Galactic «allies» and their putative enemies was carefully hidden. Apparently he had been insufficiently circumspect.

«Well, it seems to me that knowledge of humanity and its many foibles gives more than enough background to understand our allies and enemies. We are, after all, not so terribly different.»

She nodded and yawned. «Oh!» she exclaimed with a hand over her mouth. «Sorry!»

«No problem, dear,» he said with a twinkle in his eye. «I think you need some rest.»

«Mmm,» she agreed, getting up and heading to the door as he stood in anachronistic gentility. She paused at the open door. «I'm going to be busy for a while, so I may not be able to see you. Take care, Monsignor.»

«And you, my dear,» he said as she walked out. «And you. Most definitely take care.»

He sat down and went back to parsing out the Sanskrit tablet on the screen as his mind worked on many different tracks. He began to mutter a tune that had nearly fallen out of favor except as a corrupted nursery rhyme.

«Yankee Doodle went to town a-ridin' on a pony . . .»

Ft. Indiantown Gap, PA, United States of America, Sol III

1023 EDT June 6th, 2004 ad

«Does he ever lighten up?» asked Lieutenant Nightingale as she stepped onto the covered porch of the company headquarters. Tall and greyhound thin, the blonde XO had just been the victim of an O'Neal smoking. She now took a moment in the shade out of sight of the troops to regain her composure.

«I don't think so,» said Lieutenant Arnold, her fellow sufferer. The tall, balding thirty-two-year-old weapons platoon leader shook his head.

Until the arrival of the second draft, he had been the executive officer of Bravo Company. He knew exactly how stringent their commander's standards were. He had come to grips with them. Teri, on the other hand, was having problems.

In the captain's eyes, the faults of the two lieutenants were too numerous to list.

The job of an executive officer was usually to ensure that the unit was functioning smoothly first and learn to be a company commander second. O'Neal, however, had put «tuning» the company in the lap of their extremely competent first sergeant and insisted that Nightingale become as competent as he was at maneuvering the company in combat. She had thus far failed miserably.

She was having a hard time adjusting her command style to combat troops. The gentle cajoling that worked well with the techs who had been in her previous intelligence company was perceived as weakness by grunts. She also seemed to have no tactical sense at all. The fact that she was for all practical purposes a neophyte was beside the point. From Captain O'Neal's uncluttered point of view she was one heartbeat away from having his company in her hands and either she could cut the mustard or she could not.

In Arnold's case, the new weaponry and employment techniques were the problem. He was having to adjust to ranges of fire and maneuver he had previously never considered. At the same time he was overseeing the training of troops in a variety of weapons beyond their dreams.

The military had learned some lessons on Diess and Barwhon, and the ACS weapons platoons now packed so much firepower they were jokingly referred to as the Grim Reapers. They had initially been deployed with 75mm automortars and terawatt lasers. Diess had proven that the standard suit grenade systems were superior to the automortars at short ranges while the lasers were too bulky and awkward for the sort of rapid movement ACS had adopted. The mortars and lasers were effectively retired, but in their wake came a diversity of suit-mounted special weapons. From this diversity the platoon leader was supposed to choose which would be appropriate for the probable mission. Since no mission ever went as planned, there were far more wrong choices than right.

If the probable mission was indirect fire-support, the platoon packed individual multimortars. These were enhanced grenade launchers and each weapon-suit packed four: one on each shoulder and one on each arm. They threw 60mm rounds up to five miles with pinpoint accuracy and had fourteen separate munition types from which to choose.

The basic munition was a standard high-explosive (HE) round that could be set for airburst, surface detonation or delay. The weapons graded up from there through «enhanced conventional munitions,» i.e., cluster bombs, to antimatter rounds with a «soft kill» radius larger than the range of the mortar. Thus any unarmored humans, or Posleen, in the immediate area of the mortar platoon would be fried if these were used. Unfortunately, for everyone involved, these heavy weapons suits could run through the available onboard rounds in twenty seconds. The «Reapers» joked that they all needed one platoon of grunts apiece, just to carry ammunition.

If the probable mission was close support there were three separate weapons systems to chose from, depending on how close and how personal. The simplest was a set of super shotguns with multiple types of rounds from which to choose. From there it got complicated.

Unfortunately each suit could only mount one type of weapon and choosing the right weapons mix could make or break an engagement. The Old Man was actually beginning to perfect some beautiful sucker moves for the playbook that involved the heavy weapons platoon. But they required that the platoon leader be able to read his mind. As the playbook got firmed up it might be a little easier but in the meantime there were far more wrong mixes than right.

«Well, I don't care what anybody says,» continued Nightingale, angrily, «there's such a thing as– What the hell is that?» she broke off.

«Those are Indowy, I think,» said Arnold seriously.

Outside the headquarters the Pennsylvania summer sun stirred up the yard of the company area in playful dust devils. Emerging from the swirling dust was a group of squat green humanoids. Looking superficially like fat children, their coloring derived from a chlorophyllic symbiont that wavered across their lightly clad skin like green fur. Their faces were nightmarishly batlike but their eyes were large and round, giving them an ingenuous expression that actually went well with their personalities. In their midst they towed a large crate on an anti-grav dolly.

«No, that. It looks like a coffin,» said Nightingale.

«Little coffin,» commented Arnold. Neither of them had ever seen the traveling carton for an armored combat suit.