Mike had a sudden vision of a narrow clay street with towering skyscrapers to either side. The street was packed with yellow centaurs, the horse-sized invaders in a bayonet to boma-blade battle with a beleaguered German panzer grenadier division. The bodies of the Posleen and Germans were piled in mounds, blocking his way. Their red and yellow bloods had commingled and an orange river was flowing into the alien sea.

He tilted his head down and fiddled for a moment with his cigar as he struggled to throw off the flashback. «Damn, it went out.»

Colonel Hanson dropped into his swivel chair as Mike pulled the Zippo back out. He reached into his breast pocket and produced a pack of Marlboro Reds. It had taken him years to break the habit, but the Galactics had a pill to do that now and besides they had eliminated cancer, heart disease and emphysema for military personnel so . . . «You okay, Captain?» he asked as he tapped out a coffin nail.

«Yes, sir. I am just peachy-keen,» said Mike, meeting his eye steadily.

«I . . . we cannot afford a shell-shocked commander.»

«Sir, I'm not shell-shocked,» disagreed O'Neal, against the cacophony of internal voices. «What I am is one of the damn few people you are going to meet short of Barwhon or Diess who is prepared, mentally, for this invasion. I had gamed it for thousands of hours, before Diess. Diess was, so to speak, just the icing on the cake. When you get your AID you can cross-check me on it.» He took a pull on the cigar. Since Diess he had been hitting both tobacco and alcohol kind of hard. One of these days it was gonna catch up with him. «This war is going to be a form of hell, sir, for every single American. The shit just doesn't get any deeper than this.»

Colonel Hanson nodded thoughtfully. That made a lot of sense. «Which brings us to the here and now. Now that I have that obnoxious oaf cleared out of my headquarters, what's the situation? The G-1 didn't even know the players and he had no ideas about ACS equipment, but he did say the supply situation is as confused as could be expected. Who are the acting staff? And since this headquarters seems to be absolutely empty, where the fuck are they?» he concluded.

«Major Stidwell was acting as his own G-3, sir, since that was his slot anyway. Actually, he was doubling up on everything except the –4.»

«Maybe I should have given him the benefit of the doubt if he was that overwhelmed,» the colonel mused.

«Actually, I wouldn't go so far as to say that, sir. The only reason there is an S-4 is that we got sent a supply officer, a mustang L-T, to the assistant –4 slot. Otherwise, Major My-Lot-In-Life-Is-To-Micromanage Stidwell would undoubtedly have taken that slot as well.»

«Oh,» said the colonel with a grimace.

«We also have a full set of captains as company commanders, sir, any of whom could have taken a second hat if Stidwell was overwhelmed. We're better off than the Line and Guard units from the point of view of company-grade officers.

«However, if he made the decisions he could be absolutely sure that they were the right decisions,» the captain said with a snort. «God knows what decisions might have been made by mere captains that did not have his years of experience. They might have, oh, 'taken excessive initiative with the training schedule,' or, God forbid, 'begun ACS training before all the meetings about how to implement it were completed.' «

«If I remember my recent history, you have been there and done that as well, haven't you?» said the colonel neutrally.

«Yes, sir, I have,» said O'Neal with instant seriousness. «As a matter of fact, he was trying very hard to have me court-martialed for insubordination.»

«Were you insubordinate?» asked the new commander, wondering what sort of answer he would get. He shouldn't have wondered.

«Sir, I disobeyed not one direct order, but so many I can't begin to count,» O'Neal stated definitively.

«Why?»

«I did not think anyone would dare court-martial me, sir, and if it was disobey them or have my company die in combat it was a no-brainer.»

«Why would they have died?» asked Hanson.

«Sir, he was starting training exactly as they did with the Two Falcon on Diess. Yes, sir, I have been there and done that before and I was not going to do it again; that was an oath I swore on the souls of my dead. We had, have, a critical suit shortage, the unit has not received its issue and only a few of the troops, ones transferred from other ACS units, have them. So he wanted everyone to memorize all the parts to the suits, do Posleen flash cards, and all the rest of that. In other words, bore them to death. What I tried to explain to him was that I obtained a shit-load of Milspecs, VR glasses for training, through . . . some secondary channels.» Mike cleared his throat and took a puff of his cigar.

Colonel Hanson smiled. He had to remember that although this officer had extensive experience with suits and even suit combat, he did not have extensive experience as an officer. Needs must when devils drive. Since time immemorial, units that were not properly supplied had found ways of obtaining the equipment they needed. As long as it was kept to a minimum and under control it was not a problem.

«We could have been training in the field simulating eighty percent reality combat weeks ago,» Mike continued after determining that the colonel was not going to question him on the source of the Milspecs. Mike was prepared to back his personnel, but it had surprised him as much as the losing company when second squad showed up with a truck full of GalTech equipment. Since then, of course, he had learned all about Sergeant Stewart and «The Squad From Hell.» Now nothing surprised him.

«But that wasn't by the book—which is not my fault, I wanted to include it—so he wouldn't buy it. Then we started having problems with shit being stolen out of the barracks, rioters, vandalism, and all the other fun stuff that has been going down around here. I broke out the 'nail-guns' and got rounds for them from the ammo dump out of the training budget. Forget the rants about extremism; I thought, still do, that it made sense to at least put the weapons in the troop's hands, give them a feel for those big bastards and get in some physical training that made more sense than long slow distance runs. But he wasn't worried about the image or whatever, he was most upset that the rounds couldn't be returned to the dump and were going to be charged against his training budget before he was ready to use them for training.»

«Well, I can empathize,» said the colonel with a frown. «Live-fire training is expensive.»

«Oh, Jesus, sir, not you too!» Mike could feel the iron bite of anger on his tongue and tried to keep under control. The last two months with Stidwell had strained his already damaged patience to the limits. This colonel was an entirely different kettle of fish, though. All he had to do was keep in control and present the situation rationally. Right. And then maybe the dreams would stop?

«Captain, training budgets are just that, budgets. You have to stay in them, especially when everybody is having to make sacrifices for this goddamn war.»

«Sir, what we will actually spend for training this year can come out of my pay,» Mike answered reasonably.

«What? How much do you make?» asked Hanson, surprised.

«Well, in case you haven't noticed, Fleet makes a hell of a lot more, rank per rank, than the Army, sir, but what I meant was: What is included in a training budget?»

«Well, vehicle fuel, expended rounds, consumable expenditures, food, special field equipment, that sort of thing.»

«Yes, sir. The first thing to remember is that the Army had no idea what training budgets for an ACS unit would be, so they kept the budgets that they would have had as Airborne, Marines, whatever. What wasn't considered is that the suits are fueled off a dedicated fusion plant at company level that is rated for forty years use with on-board fuels. The cost is part of our capital budget including the fuel, just like suits. Suit food is cheap, a basic supply comes with the suit and recycles itself so the cost of the whole battalion's food for the year, if we stayed in suits, would come out of my pay, easy. No field toilet paper, no MREs, no vehicle fuel, no disposable plastics, the suits take care of it all, garbage in garbage out. For that matter, food comes out of the general battalion expenditure. And no ammunition costs.»