“So, son. You finally all settled in as a Santa Cruzan now?”

Lorenco Esteban grinned as he leaned forward to pour more melon brandy into Merrit’s snifter. They sat on the wide veranda of Esteban’s hacienda, gazing out through the weather screen over endless fields of wine-melons and Terran wheat, rye and corn under two of Santa Cruz’s three small moons. The light glow of Ciudad Bolivar was a distant flush on the western horizon, the running lights of farming mechs gleamed as they went about their automated tasks, and the weather screen was set low enough to let the breeze through. The occasional bright flash as the screen zapped one of what passed for moths here lit the porch with small, private flares of lightning, but the night was hushed and calm. The only real sounds were the soft, whirring songs of insects and the companionable clink of glass and gurgle of pouring brandy, and Merrit sighed and stretched his legs comfortably out before him.

“I guess I just about am, Lorenco,” he agreed in a lazy voice. “I still wish it weren’t so damned hot and humid-I guess at heart I’m still a mountain boy from Helicon-but it does grow on you, doesn’t it?”

“Wouldn’t rightly know,” Esteban replied. He set the bottle on the floor beside his chair and settled back to nurse his own glass. “Only place I ever been’s right here. Can’t really imagine bein’ anywhere else, but I reckon I’d miss it iffen I had t’pull up stakes.”

“Then it’s a good thing you’ll never have to, isn’t it?” Merrit sipped at his glass and savored the cool, liquid fire of the brandy as it trickled down his throat. He’d made a point of spending at least one evening a week visiting with Esteban or his cronies since his arrival. Nike’s presence was no longer a military secret, after all, and he recognized the dangers of settling into hermitlike isolation, even with Nike to keep him company. Besides, he liked the old man. He even liked the way Esteban kept referring to him as “son” and “boy.” There were times he got tired of being Captain Paul Merrit, slightly tarnished warrior, and the old farmer’s casual, fatherly ways were like a soothing memory of his boyhood.

“Heard from Enrique day before yesterday,” Esteban said, breaking a long companionable silence. “Says he got top credit fer that last melon shipment to Central. He and Ludmilla’ll be bringin’ the kids home next week.” He snorted. “Wonder how they liked th’ bright lights?”

“They’re coming home?” Merrit repeated, and Esteban nodded. “Good.”

Enrique was Esteban’s youngest son, a sturdy, quietly competent farmer about Merrit’s own age, and Merrit liked him. He could actually beat Enrique occasionally at chess, unlike Nike. Or, for that matter, Lorenco. More than that, Enrique and his wife lived with the old man, and Merrit knew how much Lorenco had missed them-and especially his grandchildren.

“Bet you’ve missed ‘Milla’s cooking,” he added and grinned at Esteban’s snort of amusement. Ludmilla Esteban was the hacienda’s cybernetics expert. Her formal training was limited, but Merrit had seen her work, and she would have made a top notch Bolo tech any day. She spent most of the time she wasn’t chasing down her lively brood keeping the farm mechs up and running, which suited Esteban just fine. He’d done his share of equipment maintenance over the years, and ‘Milla’s expertise freed him to pursue his true avocation in the kitchen.

“Son,” Esteban said, “there’s only one thing ‘Milla can do I can’t-’sides havin’ kids, that is, an’ she an’ Enrique do a right good job of that, too, now I think of it. But the only other thing I can’t do is keep that danged cultivator in th’ river section up an’ running. Hanged if I know how she does it, either, ‘less it’s pure, ornery stubbornness. That thing shoulda been scrapped ‘bout the time she stopped wettin’ her own diaper.”

“She’s got the touch, all right,” Merrit agreed.

“Sure does. Better’n I ever was, an’ I was a pretty fair ‘tronicist in my youth m’self, y’know.” Esteban sipped more brandy, then chuckled. “Speakin’ of ‘tronicists, the field’s been crawlin’ with ‘em fer the last three days.” Merrit cocked his head, and Esteban shrugged. “Militia’s due for its reg’lar trainin’ exercise with the Wolverines this week, an’ they’ve been overhaulin’ and systems checkin’ ‘em.”

“Is that this week?” Merrit quirked an eyebrow, and the beginnings of a thought flickered lazily in the depths of his mind.

“Yep. Consuela moved it up ten days on account’a the midseason harvest looks like comin’ in early this year. Hard to get them boys and girls’a hers together when it’s melon-pickin’ time ‘less it’s fer somethin’ downright dire.”

“I imagine so.” Merrit pressed his glass to his forehead-even this late at night, it was perspiration-warm on Santa Cruz-and closed his eyes. He’d met most of the Santa Cruz Militia since his arrival. Like Esteban himself, they were a casual, slow-speaking lot, but they were also a far more professional-and tougher-bunch than he’d expected. Which was his own fault, not theirs. He’d grown up on a frontier planet himself, and seen enough of them in flames since joining the Dinochrome Brigade. Frontier people seldom forgot they were the Concordiat’s fringe, the first stop for any trouble that came calling on humanity-or for the human dregs who preyed upon their own kind. The SCM’s personnel might be short on spit and polish, and their Wolverines might be ancient, but they knew their stuff, and Merrit knew he wouldn’t have cared to be the raiders who took them on.

And now that he thought of it…

“Tell me, Esteban, how do you think Colonel Gonzalez would like some help with her training exercises?”

“Help? What kinda help you got in mind, son?”

“Well…” Merrit opened his eyes, sat up, and swung his chair to face the older man. “You know I’m trying to compile a performance log on Zero-Zero-Seven-Five, right?” He was always careful never to call Nike by name. No one on Santa Cruz was likely to know Bolo commanders normally referred to their commands by name, not number, and he worked very hard to avoid sloppy speech habits that might suggest Nike’s true capabilities to anyone.

“You’ve mentioned it a time or two,” Esteban allowed with a slow smile.

“Well, it’s a fairly important consideration, given Seven-Five’s age. Central’s not exactly current on the Mark XXIII’s operational parameters, after all. Given the lack of ops data on file, I need to generate as much experience of my own as I can.”

” ‘Sides, you kinda like playin’ with it, don’t you?” Esteban said so slyly Merrit blushed. The old man laughed. “Shoot, son! You think I wouldn’t get a kick outa drivin’ ‘round the jungle in somethin’ like that? Been lookin’ over the weather sat imagery, an’ looks like you been leavin’ great big footprints all over them poor old trees ‘round your depot.”

“All right, you got me,” Merrit conceded with a laugh of his own. “I do get a kick out of it, but I’ve been careful to stay on the Naval Reserve. The last thing I want to do is chew up one of the nature preserves or someone’s private property.”

“Planet’s a big place,” Esteban said placidly. “Reckon you c’n drive around out in the sticks all y’want ‘thout hurtin’ anything.”

“You’re probably right. But the thing I had in mind is that if Colonel Gonzalez is planning to exercise the Wolverines, maybe Seven-Five and I could give her an independent aggressor force to exercise against.”

“Go up against a Bolo in Wolverines? That’d be a real quick form’a suicide iffen y’tried it for real, son!”

“Sure it would, but the experience would do her crews good, and it’d give me a lot more data for my performance log. I’ve been running Seven-Five through sims, but I can’t set up a proper field exercise of my own because I don’t have another Bolo to match it against.”

“Maybe.” Esteban sounded thoughtful as he scratched his chin. “ ‘Course turning fourteen Wolverines an’ a Bolo loose really is gonna mess up a lotta jungle.”