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  "A problem." Galil kept his voice low. "Right. He froze in combat."

  Hanavi was silent for a long moment. "Are you very sure about that?"

  "Yeah. Ask Benyamin. He did good yesterday; I've put him in for his first class warrant."

  "Good for you. And I already asked him. Now I'm asking you, Yitzhak," Tetsuo Hanavi's voice was low and even, no trace of threat in it.

  "We had two troopers from Kelev freeze, both virgins—Ari and that other asshole, Slepak."

  Tetsuo blew a ring of smoke into the air, watched it pull apart and drift away. "Benyamin thinks Ari may've caught the edge of a blast. Doc Zucker will second it. It makes sense to me that we give him the benefit of the doubt."

  "We?" Galil shrugged noncommittally.

  "I want you on board on this."

  Galil shrugged again. "Leave it. Maybe we can talk about it later."

  Hanavi refused to drop it. "What does the old man have to say about it?"

  "Why don't you ask him, Tetsuo?"

  "I just might, Captain."

  "Go ahead, Captain."

  "Captain—"

  "Stop it," Dov Ginsberg said from just behind them.

  Galil turned in his chair.

  Dov Ginsberg looked like shit. Beneath the crooked bandage on his forehead, his eyes were red from lack of sleep and his face was pale, except where a shadow of beard darkened his chin and cheeks. His khakis were torn in several places, and stained in more; the damp patches under his armpits were white around the edges from caked salt.

  The only thing that didn't look worn was the bright white cast wrapping his left hand and arm almost to the elbow, leaving only thumb and part of the forefinger exposed.

  Galil was of above average height and Tetsuo Hanavi was tall, but Dov Ginsberg loomed darkly over them like a tank. Galil felt like a child being supervised by a strange adult.

  "Shimon says no arguing." Dov turned to Tetsuo. "He also says for you to leave Galil alone."

  Tetsuo Hanavi smiled thinly. "He thought it all out, did he?"

  Dov didn't smile, and he didn't answer. "He says for you to leave Galil alone."

  "I hear you. Perhaps we'll talk later, Yitzhak," Tetsuo Hanavi said, moving away.

  Dov Ginsberg watched Tetsuo Hanavi, his broad face impassive, expressionless.

  "You don't like him much, do you?" Galil asked.

  Dov thought it over for a moment, then shook his head. "He isn't loyal to Shimon, not the way I am," he said, his gaze never leaving Hanavi. "Then again, nobody is." Dov pursed his lips and hefted his shotgun. "Sir, I need some help. I can't pump this thing worth shit, not with this cast on. Shimon said you had some sort of quick rig for when your left hand was broken, on Thuringia."

  "Sure. Not with a shotgun, but with a Barak. Should work the same way."

  Ginsberg didn't take that as an agreement. "So would you fix it for me?"

  "Sure, Dov." Galil shrugged. "It's pretty simple—take about ten minutes. Meet me after the staff meeting. You just drill right through the charging handle—well, it's the pump grip here—and then you run a loop of cable or tubing through. One-centimeter siphon hose is fine, if you can get it. When you need to pump it, you just slip your hand in the loop and pump away. No need to grip, and I'll make the loop large enough that you can still hit the magazine release with your left thumb."

  Normally, Kelev used the Aggressor/Defender Company's armorer, but with the reshuffling going on, it would be better to leave poor Shimshon Nakamura alone. The tools he needed ought to be in the local Casa armory. Hmm . . . what was the easiest way to get access to it?

  Leave it to Bar Yosef, Galil decided; that's what the liaison officer is for, particularly if he's also the adjutant.

  Galil caught Bar Yosef's eye and raised a finger; Bar Yosef mouthed a quick "Later?" and returned Galil's nod of agreement.

  "I'll handle it for you," Galil said.

  "Thank you." Dov nodded, then walked away, eyeing everybody in the room levelly as he took a seat near the front of the auditorium.

  "Good morning, all." Shimon Bar-El was at the top of the stairs, briefcase tucked under one arm. His hair was slicked back against his scalp, damp from a shower. "Settle down, please. We have a lot to go over and not enough time." He bounded down the stairs, un-snapping the closures on his briefcase as he did.

  He stopped at Galil's elbow. "Doc Zucker claims he's got a therapy that can get you healed quickly, if painfully—he says he'll have you ambulatory in a few days. Want to try it?"

  "Of course." He couldn't run Kelev from a chair, not for long, and with Tetsuo sniffing after his job there wasn't a choice.

  "Good man." Shimon trotted down the rest of the steps and took the center seat at the table on the raised podium. "Listen up. Agenda is as follows. After-action critique on yesterday, followed by status reports—Liaison, Regimental S1, S2, S4, Special Staff, Medical—mmm, I'll handle Medical. No S3 for now; Natan's off with his nose in some papers." He held up a hand. "Just hang on. I'll take questions in a minute.

  "Then, battalion reports: bat commanders, bat S1, S4. We'll have to make it quick, because at ten hundred hours, we've got a briefing from Divisione"—he pronounced it with just the right accent—"Intel, and then we have a greeting from Generale DiCorpo d'Armata Massimo Colletta, followed by briefings from the rest of Divisione staff.

  "Afternoon today, and all day tomorrow, is research. Sidney, I'll need your evaluation of the Araldo Model V, and your recommendation as to whether we get more firepower out of liaison with a salted—both senses—Casa tank company, or a quick—and I do mean quick—transition of some of your people. Chiabrera's laid on an eleven-tank company for you to play with."

  "I can tell you right now."

  "Bullshit. I'm not interested in your prejudices against locals." Bar-El was visibly irritated. "I've fought with the Casas before. Some of them are real good, and most of the rest aren't as bad as you think they are. If they were, the Boche would have overrun them months ago. Manning the tanks ourselves would cost us more than forty men; if we put a liaison trooper into each platoon as loader or driver, that only costs us three men. And these are good tankers. Ezer?"

  Ezer Laskov stood, leafing through the sheaf of flimsies on the clipboard clutched in a bony hand. "I've checked out their files. They're orphans from broken-up outfits, not apparent misfits. The least-qualified Casa tank commander has something like three hundred logged hours in the Araldo V." He looked up at Shimon. "If it's close support, though, we're better off with gunners aboard, not drivers. The fire-control system is just a copy of the Stadia Z, and there is a ranging machine-gun-mounted coax."

  "Hmm. Possibly; save it for later." Bar-El turned back to Rabinowitz. "The point is, they've had hundreds of hours in their tanks, and we'd be lucky to get you fifty in the next week. So I want thought-out answers, none of this reflexive we're-better-than-they-are bullshit. And save your questions—well, what is it, Ebi?"

  Colonel Chaim Goren, commander of the First Battalion, scowled as he rose. "Meaning not more than average offense, Shimon, what is all the rush about?" He sounded every bit as irritated as he looked. "I did a walk-around today and the training division has at least another two, three weeks to go on their introductory cycle. They don't need us now, and they've got security in hand here. I don't see that we need to reconfigure for combat, not to avoid another problem like you had yesterday."

  "Well, you're right about that," Shimon Bar-El said. "There's been a change of plans. At oh-six-thirty this morning, the Commerce Department rammed a ceasefire down the throats of both sides, effective thirty days from tomorrow." He paused for a moment. "Which means that Generale Colletta has no need of a cadre to train a new division for him, and which also means, gentlemen: welcome to the Thirtieth Regiment, Operational."

  Galil didn't look hard for the thin smile on Bar-El's face; he knew it was there.

  Sidney Rabinowitz didn't like it. "We've been planning for cadre, not for strike. I've been trainin
g for cadre, not strike. We're manned for cadre, not for strike."

  "Yeah. Well, I didn't know. If I had any reason to believe that the Thousand Worlds was going to pull this, I would have mentioned it, honest." Bar-El shrugged. "We'd have made some personnel changes at home—a lot more young PFCs than we have, a lot fewer career NCOs."

  "Right." Ebi Goren's tone was just a hair short of insolence. "Dutch brevets all over the place." Goren was one of the more vocal critics of negative brevets, the practice of temporarily demoting soldiers to fit them into the table of organization.

  "French brevets, as well. Real brevets, too," Shimon said, ignoring the tone, rubbing it in. "We're going to have enough trouble putting the right man into the right job to worry about whether he already has the right number of bars or leaves on his shoulder." He lit a tabstick and puffed on it for a moment. "Look, I know you all know me, and you know how I feel about the Freiheimers," he said, pronouncing the word like a curse, "and I don't feel any better about them since yesterday. But it's just a job. We do what we're paid for and then we go home. Period. So let's get to it. Any urgent questions?"

  "I've got one, Shimon," said Lieutenant Colonel Horem Bar Yosef, the adjutant. "Hell, I've got a hundred."

  "I don't have time for a hundred. Can they wait?"

  "No, sir. Well, most of 'em can, but one can't. Chiabrera's got me, Sadok and Yossi Bernstein meeting with Divisione G4 while the rest of you are getting yourself greeted. Divisione G4 is a full colonel, and you know how these folks are about NCOs."

  Shimon shrugged. "Yossi?"

  The Supply and Logistics sergeant was already reaching into his pocket; he extracted a set of lieutenant colonel's leaves, and switched them with the senior master sergeant's stripes clipped to his collar. "Any chance I can get lieutenant colonel's pay?" he asked, dryly. "Or even a major's?"

  "No. This is just a French brevet, not a real one."

  That was proper, Galil decided. Bernstein wasn't being asked to do anything beyond his normal responsibilities; the purpose of the added rank was only to make it easier for him to deal with the locals.

  Bar-El turned back to Bar Yosef. "Will that do it?"

  "Not quite. I'd better be a full colonel."

  "Be my guest. Now, we'd better get to the after-action critique. Oh, what is it, Tetsuo?"

  Tetsuo Hanavi waited until the room quieted around him. "General, if everything we've been planning is suddenly going into the dumper, then it would seem to me that we could put off an after-action critique."

  Shimon Bar-El sighed. "No, we can't. Understood?"

  "Well, no."

  Shimon Bar-El's eyes closed, then opened. "Fine. I'll make it real clear for you, for all of you. We lost—I lost thirty-two men yesterday, and I've got one hundred ninety-three in hospital, shot up, chopped up, burned." His nostrils flared momentarily, but that was the only sign of emotion. When he spoke again, his voice was flat, almost too casual. "I will not have that be for nothing. I will not." He sighed. "Now, Yitzhak Galil, Regimental Headquarters Company, we'll begin with you. How did you fuck up yesterday?"

  Galil had been waiting for this. He sat back in his chair, and folded his hands across his lap. "I don't think I did too badly, except in preparation. If all of the RHQ Company was going to go operational—even if it was more for admin purposes than any other—I should have insisted that we wait until the tubes and sapper gear were down."

  "You did suggest that."

  "I should have convinced you."

  "Oh, get off it." Ebi Goren shook his head. "I know that a certain amount of breast-beating is supposed to be part of an after-action critique, but let's pretend we're all sober. Forgetting for a moment that putting Deir Yasin and Nablus under RHQ company is really just an administrative convenience, sappers and tubes aren't going to do you any good in an ambush—not if you're on the receiving end. If there was reason to worry about an ambush, then it's Shimon's fault for accepting unsecure transport."

  "Bullshit, Ebi." Ezer Laskov, regimental S2, spoke up. "Anybody see anything in the Intel data to suggest that? I went over the folders last night—"

  "When you should have been sleeping," Shimon Bar-El said.

  "—and Shimon, I didn't see any hint of it. Minor, maybe annoying, industrial sabotage, sure. Maybe that cavitation problem they were having with their he shells wasn't just quality control, and I'm damn sure that the premies they've been seeing with the pocket rockets are sabotage. But I've seen nothing to suggest an armed force like this. My evaluation—"

  "Save it. You were saying, Yitzhak?"

  "Other than that, I've no great criticism of me. I didn't try to overplan, or overmanage the firefight. I led from the front until I got shot, and I made the right call on the helo. I did okay."

  "Yes, you did. Now, Deputy Regimental Commander and Chief of Staff," Shimon Bar-El said, as he turned to Mordecai Peled. "Are you happy about stalling on the knockdown?"

  Peled's lined face reddened. "No, I'm not."

  "Neither am I." Bar-El eyed the audience as a whole. "When you've got a green light, you shoot. End of discussion. Ezer, back on your feet. You have the report on the status of the knockdown."

  Laskov stood. "There's not going to be any difficulty on that. The pravda is that it was done by the Freiheimers. Fleiss confessed to that."

  Somebody snickered.

  "And the Casas bought it?" Asher Greenberg asked.

  "No." Laskov shrugged. "Or I don't know. But they're pretending to. The Distacamento de la Fedeltà doesn't have any authority over us, since we're technically allied, not subordinate—but if it was determined that a helo and crew was lost because somebody didn't listen to Chiabrera's request that they stay out of it, somebody would hang. Literally."

  "Assholes." Rabinowitz shook his head. "Asinine to require hypocrisy."

  "Yeah." Bar-El smiled. "We get enough of that anyway. Ezer, did you get anything else out of Fleiss?"

  "Some data, but not much." Laskov shook his head. "He was ready to confess to the murder of Abel, and every crime since. I didn't see any point in keeping him around any more." He held his fists out in front of his chest and mimed wringing a neck.

  "Fine," Shimon Bar-El said. "And may he rot in hell. Next—Meir, how did you mess up on the grazing fire?"

  "Shit. Well, maybe I didn't do too bad, although I probably ought to be fucking shot for not having had a pistol drill for the past two thousand hours. We lost Pinhas Cohen when he tried firing over a fallen tree when there was plenty of room under it."

  "He should have remembered that from Basic. Assume we're going into action in a week—how do you want to spend your time? Small arms work?"

  "With what? You giving me a 260-man sapper team to take into the field?"

  Bar-El scowled. "Don't ask silly questions. Two ten-man squads per battalion—integral to battalion. You put them together, you train them, but you don't own them. You get a sapper section attached to Regiment. The rest of your training detachment gets to be infantrymen—and we'll have too many three-man fireteams as it is. Now, you going to spend the next week at the Known Distance Range?"

  Meir Ben David didn't pick up on it. "Fuck, no. One week, eh? Okay—twenty hours of classroom; forty or fifty of field time, half of that with the locals—"

  "—and on the seventh day they rested," Ebi Goren said dryly.

  "—and if we're going to have to depend on them for logistical support and replacement groceries, we'd sure as shit better be up on local methods and equipment. I'm real suspicious of some of the handling characteristics of that Ciottoloso plastique they like so much. I think it might—"

  "Later." Shimon cut him off with a wave of the hand. "What you're telling me is that you really don't think that you need that much pistol training."

  "You want my fucking recommendation, you've got it."

  Shimon Bar-El smiled. "So I do. Recommendation accepted." He turned to Peled. "Still got to finish the critique, but put gambling next on the agenda. Minor thin
g, but I don't want it getting away from us.

  "Now, on to the cleanup part of the operation. . ."

  It was a long morning.

  PART TWO

  RECON

  CHAPTER 8

  Night Life

  Ari was lying on his bunk when his brothers came into the barracks, each in turn snapping the rain from his slicker with a practiced flip of the wrist before hanging it up. Tetsuo didn't seem to see the poker game, while Benyamin stopped for a moment to exchange a few words with the players at the north end of the barracks.

  They were both in khakis, wearing the short, plain field jacket over their uniform shirts. Tetsuo had one of his swords stuck crosswise in the nonstandard leather pistol belt that he wore tight across his hips, but at least it was only the short stabbing sword instead of the whole daisho. Ari had always thought it was just one of his brother's affectations, although Tetsuo claimed that he only carried them because the Nagamitsu blades were a thousand years old. He had the certificates to prove it, and he was always able to get them onplanet—a thousand-year-old sword couldn't be kept out on a Proscribed Tech regulation.

  The x-shaped barracks was quiet, mostly empty. Down at the south end, salted troopers slept soundly under their blankets, oblivious to the overhead lights, while the never-ending barracks poker game was going on down at the opposite end. Ari's bunk was near the center of the x, just meters from the central arms locker; he knew that if he got up off his bed and peeked around the corner, he would see Galil and some clerks, at the far end eastern arm of the x, going over some paperwork.

  "Officers work too much," Benyamin said, fingering the checkering of the striped insignia at his collar point. He unslung his Barak, tapped on the already-positioned safety, and then dropped it on a bunk, seating himself next to it.

  "Some do," Tetsuo said. He didn't sit, and he wasn't smiling. "That why you never put in for a commission?"