“Well, everything for two hundred klicks south of the field belongs to the Navy. I guess that means it belongs to me at the moment, since, with all due respect to the Fleet Base CO, I’m the senior-and only-Concordiat officer on the planet. If the colonel’s interested, we could set up an exercise between the field and depot. In fact, we might set up a couple of them: one with the Militia as an Aggressor Force ‘attacking’ the depot, and one with them defending the field. They’d probably actually get more good from the second one, too, now that I think about it.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Merrit grinned smugly as he offered the bait he knew Colonel Gonzalez would leap for, “I’ll bet the SCM doesn’t know the depot has a complete planetary reconnaissance system.”

“You kiddin’ me, son?” Esteban demanded, and frowned when Merrit shook his head. “Well, I know you well ‘nough by now t’know you’re not one fer tall tales, boy, but I’ve been runnin’ the field, the navigation an’ com sats, an’ the weather net fer goin’ on thirty-three years now, and I’ve never seen nary a sign of any recon satellites.”

“They’re up there, Lorenco. Promise. And I’d be surprised if you had seen them, given their stealth features. But the point is that if the colonel’s interested, I could set up a direct downlink to her Wolverines for the second exercise. And I could reconfigure the depot’s com systems to set up a permanent link to the SCM for future use.” He smiled again, but his eyes were serious. “You know as well as I do how useful that could be if push ever did come to shove out here.”

“Y’got that right, Paul,” Esteban agreed. He scratched his chin a moment longer, then grinned. “Well, Consuela always was a bloodthirsty wench. Reckon she’d be just tickled pink t’get her hands on a planetary recon net. Sounds t’me like you’ve got yourself a date, Captain!”

“Got everything Luftberry will need to find her way around in your absence, Cliff?”

Colonel Clifton Sanders, Dinochrome Brigade Support Command, set the fat folio of data chips on his superior’s desk, and nodded with a smile.

“Right here, sir. I had a talk with Shigematsu before I left, too. He’s up to speed on all my current projects. I don’t think Major Luftberry will hit any problems he and she can’t handle between them.”

“Good.” Brigadier Wincizki cocked his chair back to smile up at his senior Maintenance officer. “It’s about time you took a vacation, Cliff. Do you realize how much leave time you’ve accrued since you’ve been out here?”

“What can I say? I like my work, and I don’t have any family. I might as well put the time into doing something worthwhile.”

“I can’t say I’m sorry you feel that way, but I do feel a little guilty about it sometimes,” Wincizki said. “Anyone needs a break from time to time, if only to keep his brain from going stale. I don’t want another four years passing without your using up some of your leave time, Cliff.”

“I imagine I can live with that order, sir.” Sanders grinned. “On the other hand, I’ve got this funny feeling you may change your tune if I ask for some of that leave in, say, the middle of our next cost efficiency survey.”

“You probably would, too,” Wincizki agreed with a chuckle. “Well, go on. Get out of here! We’ll see you back in a couple of months.”

“Yes, sir.” Sanders came to attention, saluted, and walked out of the office. He nodded to the brigadier’s uniformed receptionist/secretary in passing, but deep inside, he hardly even noticed the young man’s presence, for hidden worry pulsed behind his smile.

Why now, damn it?! Ten years-ten years!-he’d put into preparation for his retirement. Another two years, three at the outside, and everything would have been ready. Now all he’d worked for was in jeopardy, and he had no choice but to run still greater risks.

He fought an urge to wipe his forehead as he rode the exterior elevator down the gleaming flank of the arrogant tower which housed Ursula Sector General Central, but he couldn’t stop the churning of his brain.

It had all seemed so simple when he first began. He wasn’t the first officer who’d worried about what he’d do when his active duty days were done, nor was he the first to do something about those worries. The big corporations, especially those-like GalCorp-who did big-ticket business with the military, were always on the lookout for retired senior officers to serve as consultants and lobbyists. Ex-Dinochrome Brigade officers were an especially sought-after commodity, given the centrality of the Bolos to the Concordiat’s strategic posture, but it was the men and women with field experience whom the corporate recruiters usually considered the true plums. They were the ones with all the glitz and glitter, the sort of people Concordiat senators listened to.

Unfortunately, Clifton Sanders wasn’t a field officer. Despite his position as Ursula Sector’s senior Maintenance officer, he wasn’t even really a technician. He was an administrator, one of those absolutely indispensable people who managed the flow of money, materials, information, and personnel so that everyone else-including those glittering field officers-could do their jobs. Without men and women like Sanders, the entire Dinochrome Brigade would come to a screeching halt, yet they were the nonentities. The invisible people no one noticed… and who seldom drew the attention that won high-level (and high-paying) civilian jobs after retirement.

Sanders had known that. It was the reason he’d been willing to make himself attractive before retirement, and for ten years he’d been one of GalCorp’s eyes and ears within the Brigade. It had even helped his military career, for the information he could pass on had grown in value as he rose in seniority, and GalCorp had discreetly shepherded his career behind the scenes, maneuvering him into positions from which both they and he could profit.

Four years ago, they’d helped slip him into his present post as the officer in charge of all of Ursula Sector’s maintenance activities. He’d been in two minds about taking the assignment-Ursula wasn’t exactly the center of creation-but the data access of a Sector Maintenance Chief was enormous. In many ways, he suspected, he was actually a better choice than someone in a similar position in one of the core sectors. He had the same access, but the less formal pace of a frontier sector gave him more freedom to maneuver-and made it less likely that an unexpected Security sweep might stumble across his… extracurricular activities.

He’d paid his dues, he told himself resentfully as the elevator reached ground level and stopped. He stepped out, hailed an air taxi, punched his trip coordinates into the computer, and sat back with a grimace. The data he’d provided GalCorp had been worth millions, at the very least. No one could reach the level he’d reached in Maintenance, Logistics, and Procurement without being able to put a price tag on the insights he’d helped provide his unknown employers. He’d earned the corporate position they’d promised him, and now they had to spring this crap on him!

He frowned out the window as the taxi rose and swept off towards Hillman Field. He should have refused, he thought anxiously. Indeed, he would have refused-except that he was in too deep for that. He’d already broken enough security regulations to guarantee that retirement would never be a problem for him if the Brigade found out. The Concordiat would provide him with lifetime accommodations-a bit cramped, perhaps, and with a door he couldn’t unlock-if it ever discovered how much classified information he’d divulged.

And that was the hook he couldn’t wiggle off, however hard he tried, because he couldn’t prove he’d handed it to GalCorp. He knew who his employer was, but he didn’t have a single shred of corroborating evidence, which meant he couldn’t even try to cut a deal with the prosecutors in return for some sort of immunity. GalCorp could drop him right in the toilet without splashing its own skirts whenever it chose to, and it would, he told himself drearily. If he didn’t do exactly what his masters told him to, they’d do exactly that.