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  "It's a fair question," Shimon Bar-El said. "Repeat it."

  Ari looked to Benyamin. "Which Meir?"

  Benyamin shrugged. "Probably Meir Ben David, Nablus Twenty himself."

  "Tel Aviv Ten. Yes, sir. Nablus Twenty wants to know what good it's going to do to put a sapper platoon—"

  "Accurately, please," Bar-El said, gently correcting.

  "—what fucking good it's going to do to put a fucking sapper platoon and a fucking heavy mortars platoon fucking operational until they've fucking gotten their fucking groceries and fucking tubes. I think I missed a 'fucking' in there."

  "From what I hear, that'd be the first time, Mordecai. And it's a fair question," Shimon Bar-El said. "Two answers. First, you're operational because I want you off the buses first when we get there—your equipment should be already at Camp Ramorino, and I want your I&I before we turn in for the night. Secondly, you're operational because the way it works is that I'm the general and I get to decide how we do things."

  A laugh echoed in the crowded bay.

  "But relax, people. This is the easy part."

  The last moments took forever. Automatically, Ari had tapped his right thumbnail against his left when Peled announced the time to touchdown—it was no warrior's reflex, but it was a trained one. His primary noncombatant assignment was as assistant to the RHQ company clerk, and one thing they taught clerks early and well is that timing is everything.

  So he knew it was three minutes, but it was a long three minutes until the pilot pulled the nose up and set the craft down gently, like it was a passenger skipshuttle or something. Ari decided that a hard landing would have been as tough on the pilot as on the cargo.

  The skipshuttle's wheels screamed. "We're down," Galil said.

  "Like we can't hear," Benyamin said. He really didn't like Galil.

  "Phones on," Shimon said.

  Ari took his helmet off, set it down on his lap, on top of his rifle, and pulled his phone out from his chestpack, slipping the cup over his right ear, tightening the headband with one quick pull, spinning the sound louvers fully open with his right hand as he brought the mike down in front of his lips with his left hand. He gave five quick puffs into the mike to bring it into test mode; it gave a friendly quintuple chirp in his right ear. He slipped his helmet back on, snapped the faceplate down to make sure that it locked into place, then unlocked it and pushed it back up and into the crown of the helmet.

  "Bar-El on All Hands One," Shimon said. "Test mode, all hands." He wasn't the only Bar-El in the Thirtieth Regiment—most of the Thirtieth was of the clan, and maybe five percent was of the family—but his idea of comm discipline, for himself, didn't require him to identify himself properly. It's called a double standard; Shimon Bar-El was a lot like that.

  Ari puffed; his phone chirped.

  They all started repeating "Testing, testing," a babel of voices in his ears.

  "Tel Aviv Ten to all hands." Peled's call sign cut through the sound. "Sound off."

  Ari quickly puffed for the fireteam freak.

  "Everybody on?" Benyamin asked.

  "Kelev One One Two Five," Ari said, blushing when Orde Lavinsky, the team medic, came on with an informal, "Orde here."

  "Natan," Lavon said.

  "Laskov," David Laskov said.

  "Okay; everybody on to Platoon."

  Ari puffed for the platoon freak. The first fireteam, Lipschitz's, was sounding off. Ari waited until he heard "Kelev One One One One; team freak nominal."

  "Kelev One One Two Five," Ari said. Number five in the second team of the first platoon of the RHQ company, call sign Kelev. The others were supposed to use that, even in private conversation on the team freak.

  "Kelev One One Two Four," Orde said, and the call was passed down the line.

  Ari took his time puffing back to the company freak in time to hear the TTD commanders sound off.

  "Deir Yasin Twenty; we're nominal," said Asher Greenberg, the commander of the heavy mortar training detachment.

  "Nablus Twenty," Meir Ben David grunted, for the sappers. "I've got two fucking sets out. I'll have the fucking spares up in five minutes. Otherwise it's fucking nominal."

  "I don't understand him." Benyamin bent his head close to Ari's, their helmets almost touching. "The man can set charges to cut a tree—any tree, any world—off at the base, flip it up into the air and set it down across a road, neat as you please, but he can't keep on the air to save his life."

  "Kelev One Twenty and Kelev Twenty," Galil said, reporting both as First Platoon's leader, Kelev One Twenty, and as Kelev Twenty, the company commander. For administrative purposes while traveling, the two training detachments were considered part of the security element and configured as grossly oversized platoons under RHQ company. It wouldn't be the way Shimon Bar-El would take them into combat, but it was a handy means of organizing them while they loaded people on and off buses. "Nablus has two sets down," Galil said, reporting. "Otherwise, communications nominal. ET five minutes to nominal."

  "Kelev Eleven Thirty-One," a dry voice said. "Hey, Kelev Twenty, that was real interesting and all, but maybe you should try that on a channel where the general is likely to hear it? You just reported that the company's okay on the Company freak. We kind of already knew that, sort of."

  "Shit. And blush," Galil said. "I screwed up; I had both freaks open. Sorry, people."

  "No problem, Yitzhak."

  "That's easy for you to say, David," Galil said. There was a click.

  By the time they were done testing, the skipshuttle had rolled to a stop. Distant machinery kachunked against the skin. With a whirr and a hiss and a clank, the forward hatch eased open.

  Ari's ears popped. Forward and above his head, sunlight splashed into the dark of the crowded cabin.

  "Tel Aviv Ten to all hands," Peled said. "Let's move it, people. By the numbers, we will unload, and smartly. You will use full grips and lanyards; pass the wrenches to the sides."

  Unloading a full troop skipshuttle was supposed to take a solid hour—the men were packed in tightly, and after the top tier unloaded themselves it generally took the port loaders too long to unbolt and remove the top tier.

  Administrative or operational, Shimon never liked having his people locked in, waiting on the pleasure or in the sights of others. Wrenches, tied to short lanyards, were ritualistically passed down to those of them up against the hull. Benyamin smacked one into the palm of Ari's hand.

  Eager to get out, Ari let discipline slip for a moment; he started to rise, but Benyamin shook his head. "No. Tie it down."

  He clipped the lanyard to a free ring on the front of his shirt, and waited while the upper tiers cleared themselves out.

  "Eighth row, second tier, prepare to unbolt."

  The soldiers two rows in front of them started moving. Ari released himself from his seat, passed his rifle over to Benyamin—dropping the wrench in the process; it was just as well it was tied to him or it might have dropped through the mesh and hit somebody on the bottom tier—and tightened the strap of his buttpack as he rose.

  He unbolted the rack. Eager hands above grabbed it and stacked it; he traded the wrench for his rifle.

  "Eighth row, go." They scrambled up to the narrow walkway and filed out of the dark.

  And then the light hit him.

  It hit him hard, like a physical shock. Which was understandable, he decided. He grew up in Metzada's underground corridors, under the glows of home. But Metzada is a dull world, of grays and browns, and the glows are a harsh, actinic light.

  The regiment had just come off training exercises on DelAqua's Continent on Rand, but the northern part of DelAqua is a horrible joke on the watery name: it's a desert, and not the gentle rolling sand dunes in the southern part of Eretz Israel, but dry, cracked ground, broken only by squat, jagged mountains. All dark reds and browns and grays, sometimes eerily pretty at dawn or sunset, but mainly ugly under the dirty brown sky.

  He had seen the holos in school, o
f course, but when you're really there, it's different. He knew that an analytical illumeter would say that the hue of the holos isn't an angstrom off that of reality, that the saturation is accurate to a thousandth of a percent, that the luminance doesn't vary by a decilambert, but he didn't care what an instrument said: it looks different when you're there.

  Portocielo Grossi was a gray island rising out of a sea of color. Off to the north, the rolling hills were covered with an intricate blanket of luxurious blue-green, interwoven with red and yellow threads and slashed by weaving roads. To the west, a field of golden grain rippled gently, lovingly, in the wind. To the south, a shining lake of an impossibly deep blue beckoned invitingly.

  The west wind brought smells of something delicate and floral, mixed with the warm brown smells of grasses baking in the sun, and a hint of a distant, acrid odor that would have been overpowering if it were any stronger.

  It was all so beautiful he almost could have cried.

  Benyamin touched his arm. "Down the stairs," he said, gruffly. "Something, isn't it?" he added, his voice soft.

  "Move it, people, move it," Peled shouted, not bothering to use a mike when his bullhorn voice could serve. "We have ground transportation due here in just one minute. We will not keep them waiting."

  They assembled on the concrete below; at a gesture from Galil, RHQ company shuffled off to one side.

  "What I want to know," Lavon said, "is how we all can be locked up in the same shuttle for the same time, in the same size seats, and I come out looking and feeling like I've been hung in a meat locker and Galil looks like he just stepped out of a training holo."

  Lavinsky chuckled. "You got a point. Complete to the rifle stuck up his ass."

  Ari looked over at the captain. Yitzhak Galil stood too stiffly on the tarmac, his face and khakis unwrinkled. His short hair was slicked down and neatly parted, his beard and mustache closely trimmed. The only note out of harmony were his sleeves, rolled up to reveal arms thickly covered with black hair. Even so, the sleeves were rolled up neatly.

  "What do you bet he combs his forearms?" Benyamin asked.

  "All Kelev units," Galil called out, "check your weapons." He was unslinging his own assault rifle as he spoke.

  Benyamin gathered his squad around him. "Lock and load," he said, unfolding his Barak's metal stock.

  It was mechanical, something Ari had done a hundred thousand times: flick the selector all the way forward to full automatic with the right thumb, then pull it back through five-shot, three-shot, single-shot to safe; check to see that the rear sight was obscured by the brown shutter that indicated the weapon was on safe; then brace the butt of the weapon against his belly, under his chestpack, while he reached up and took a magazine from his pack—the ammo on his web belt was to be used last, not first; the chestpack could be disposed of when empty—and slammed it into the receiver with a satisfying, rippling click.

  His hand fell to the charging bolt, but he caught himself and let the rifle hang from its patrol sling.

  "Hey, Orde?" Benyamin raised an eyebrow. "You special?"

  Lavinsky, the medic, hadn't unfolded the stock or used his patrol sling; he had loaded his rifle, then hung it on the right side of his H-belt, balancing the load of his medical kit on the left. "It's easier this way," he said.

  "Tell you what," Benyamin said. "I'll get you a nice medic's brassard—Christian cross and all—and we can make you a real good target."

  Lavinsky laughed as he tugged at his scraggly black beard. "Okay, adoni, okay." He took his Barak from his belt, unfolded the stock and rigged the rifle patrol style, the strap running over one shoulder, across the back of his neck, leaving the rifle hanging in front, just above his waist. "Not to worry, eh?" He bounced experimentally on the balls of his feet. "Feels good to be back, eh?"

  Benyamin shrugged. "My first time here. I was in the 101st RCT when the Fifth was on Nueva. The 101st was broken up five years ago, not six."

  "Not in '26?"

  "Honest. It was in '27. I was there. Trust me."

  It was Lavinsky's turn to shrug. "Shit. All blurs together after a while. 'See strange new worlds, experience exciting cultures and meet strange and interesting creatures—' "

  "—and kill them,' " Benyamin finished. "That joke was old when I was young."

  "Hey, to an old man like me, you're still young." The medic was the oldest member of the squad, well into his forties. Probably getting ready for retirement, Ari decided. For a private soldier—even one with a medic's warrant—it would be either retirement at forty-five or back to school to get a medician's caduceus, or both. Medicians could make a decent living on Metzada, although not as good as combat pay or even cadre pay allowed. But Orde Lavinsky only had one wife, and both of their children were grown; he might not mind moving to a smaller flat.

  Ari took a moment to look around the landing field. Civilian, not military: Thousand Worlds Commerce Department type. Facilities above ground, tall buildings of concrete, glass and steel poking hundreds of meters into the sky, protected by evenly spaced skywatches at the perimeter. Laser launcher near the south wall, the twin mushrooms of its power plant sending white puffs of steam into the afternoon air.

  A gleaming tractor, looking more like an oversized child's toy than anything else, clanked toward the skipshuttle, dragging a long, thick power cable across the hot tarmac.

  "HQ, spread out," Peled said, gesturing them all away. "We're operational, remember?"

  "Nah," Shimon Bar-El said. "Bunch up and save them the trouble."

  They spread out.

  Shimon Bar-El wasn't much to look at, as he stood on the hot tarmac, considering the horizon between puffs on his tabstick. He was a decidedly average-looking man in his late forties, a bit less stocky and broad-shouldered than was usual for somebody raised under Metzada's one point two standard gees, his close-cropped hair more a faded blond than gray, his nicotine-stained stubby fingers always wrapped around a stylo or near the keys of a typer, when they weren't playing with a lit tabstick.

  He smiled very rarely and very little.

  His rumpled khakis were usually caked white with salt under the sweat-stained armpits, although he wore no field pack, carried no heavy gear at all—just a durlyn briefcase, which he handed to Avram Stein as he turned to confer with Galil.

  A holster hung from the web belt pulled tightly around his gut, but it always carried tabsticks, not a pistol. He was famous for being a terrible shot—he was even worse than Ari, and that was pretty bad. Bar-El didn't carry any sidearm except a knife—a line infantryman's utility knife, not a skirmisher's Fairbairn dagger.

  Shimon Bar-El dipped two fingers into his holster and pulled out a tabstick, puffing it to life as his eyes took in the field.

  His eyes were special. Not just because he had the epicanthic folds that some Metzadans had inherited from the few Nipponese who had been exiled along with the children of Israel. That wasn't uncommon.

  The eyes were special because they could see anything.

  That's what they all said. Shimon Bar-El's eyes came to rest on Ari's for a moment. Ari was sure that the general could see that he was a coward, that he was going to disgrace his family, his clan, his world, his people.

  But then the eyes turned away to two men standing next to him, Avram Stein and Dov Ginsberg, and Shimon's expression softened faintly.

  Dov was a head taller than Shimon and almost twice as broad across the shoulders. Dov's hairline came to within a centimeter of his heavy brows as he stood squinting in the bright sunlight. He was an ugly man, but not pleasantly so, like Benyamin; the proportions were all wrong. His arms were too long, as was his torso. His legs would have looked normal on a shorter man, but they looked almost comical on him, although nobody laughed at Dov.

  Avram was skinny, too skinny for a Metzadan. And he wasn't Metzadan, not by birth. Neither was Dov; they were both survivors of the Bienfaisant affair, of Shimon's Children's Crusade, halfway around this planet and a quarter of a
century ago.

  Ari had heard about it, but he wasn't sure he would have believed that it was possible even for Shimon Bar-El to have carved his way through enemy lines with nothing more than a couple hundred child-soldiers . . . except that there were six survivors—seven, if you included Shimon—who had lived to tell the tale. Not that they talked about it much.

  Peled's rifle barrel must have come a degree too close to pointing at Shimon; Dov batted it away with the butt of his shotgun. Peled started to complain, then grimaced and shrugged apologetically.

  "Dov, be still," Avram said.

  Dov ignored him. He wasn't open to reason about people pointing guns at Shimon.

  Dov lightly, reverently, like a rabbi lifting the silver pointer to read a spread Torah scroll, tapped Shimon on the shoulder, then pointed when Shimon looked up.

  "Thanks, Dov. Transportation's almost here," Shimon said, raising his voice. "I was wondering if we were going to have to stand in the hot sun until the other groups were down." That would be several hours away, at least; there were two other full shuttles still skyside, in the TW troop transport, and they needed the same window that the first skipshuttle had used to bring down HQ, the Support/Transport/Medical Company, and the Sapper and Heavy Weapons troop training detachments.

  Four buses hissed over the tarmac, the blast from their plenum chambers sending sand and grit whipping into the air, then one by one settled down onto their rubberized skirts. They were wide, squat vehicles, windowed all the way along their length, windows covered with a drab green mesh.

  A slim man—a Casa light colonel if Ari was correctly reading the broken golden stripes on the collar of his tailored fatigues—got out of the nearest bus and was guided over to Shimon. At Shimon's nod, Avram pointed a microphone at him. When in doubt, fill the troopies in.

  Ari puffed for All Hands Two, the selectable all hands channel.

  "Tenente Colonello Sergio Chiabrera, senior aide-de-camp to Generale DiCorpo d'Armata Massimo Colletta," the Casa said, drawing himself to attention, and saluting crisply.

  Lavon snorted. "He does that real nice."

  "Shut up," Benyamin said, without heat.