4

Journal #508

Having been ordered to keep confidential the details of the company’s impending reassignment, my employer was at some disadvantage in preventing rumors from spreading. While he could put a stop to specific misconceptions and errors of fact, only announcing specific details of the mission could have prevented some of the speculations and outright fabrications that began to spread among the legionnaires of Omega Company.

And, of course, certain questions were bound to pop up, no matter how much accurate information the troops had been given.

“Sergeant Brandy, may I ask a question?”

Brandy looked wearily up from her clipboard. When Omega Company had gotten its first batch of new recruits back on Lorelei, she had been assigned to run them through basic training. Despite her initial misgivings, they’d turned into a pretty good group-good enough that she’d decided to keep working with them, even after they’d reached the point where they could take regular duty assignments. It gave her a sense of day-to-day accomplishment, despite the unique frustrations that were sometimes part and parcel of working with this group.

This particular pattern of events had become almost a ritual. Sometime during the morning formation, Mahatma would ask a question, usually some innocent query that, upon closer examination, opened up a devastating reappraisal of the Legion way of life, exactly the kind of thing basic training was supposed to make recruits forget about. But there was no stopping Mahatma, and Phule had made it clear that simply stomping the impertinent questioner into the ground (as Brandy sometimes felt like doing) was incompatible with his philosophy of command. Brandy sighed. “What do you want now, Mahatma?” she asked wearily.

“I want to ask a question, Sergeant,” Mahatma said earnestly-or was there a hint of humor behind that surface? She’d never been able to prove it, but she had a strong suspicion that Mahatma enjoyed pulling her leg, although it was always so subtle that she never detected it until it was too late to call him on it. She also wondered if she’d ever get used to Mahatma’s ability to take each and every statement absolutely literally and find meanings in it nobody else had ever suspected of being there. She wondered if he did it all the time or just to sergeants.

“Yeah, you told me you had a question,” said Brandy. After an uncomfortably long silence, which anybody else would have taken as an opportunity to ask the question, she sighed inwardly and said, “Go ahead and ask it, Mahatma.”

“Thank you Sergeant,” said the smiling legionnaire. “What I wanted to know was, why are we being transferred out? Does it mean we’ve done a bad job here?”

“No, it means we’ve done a good job,” said Brandy. “Landoor is prosperous and looks like it’s going to remain peaceful, so they don’t need us anymore.”

Mahatma smiled and nodded. That meant Big Trouble, in Brandy’s experience. Sure enough, the little legionnaire followed up by asking, “Then shouldn’t they reward us by keeping us here so we can enjoy the peace and prosperity?”

“That’s not how the Legion works, Mahatma,” said Brandy. “We’re in the business of taking care of trouble, so we go where there’s trouble brewing. That’s our job, and we’re pretty damn good at it.” She hoped this answer would give the rest of the squad a feeling of pride in their job, deflecting the subversive implications she suspected-no, knew-Mahatma would somehow make out of whatever she said.

Mahatma looked up at her over his round glasses. “What happens if we do our job poorly, Sergeant Brandy?” he said beatifically.

She answered him solemnly-there was no other way to answer this kind of question-“We could get in a lot of trouble, Mahatma.”

“So if we do our job well, we are sent to a place where there is trouble, and if we do it poorly, trouble comes to us,” said Mahatma sweetly. “Please, Sarge, how does this system encourage virtuous conduct and constructive effort?”

As usual after Mahatma had asked one of his follow-up questions, Brandy could hear the other trainees muttering among themselves as they tried to puzzle out what their comrade was getting at. “Quiet!” she barked. She didn’t particularly mind their talking, but the order would distract the squad from thinking about Mahatma’s question while she came up with an answer.

She was sure she’d be able to come up with one...

“I don’t want to leave Landoor with this scandal hanging over us, but I don’t know how to refute it, either,” said Phule, pacing from one side of his office to the other. Beeker, Rev, and Rembrandt sat along the couch, their heads swiveling like spectators at a tennis match.

Beeker raised a hand and said, “Sir, if I may make a suggestion: Why don’t you simply repay the complainant the amount he was robbed plus the damages to his restaurant? If you added on a bit more to demonstrate good will, I have no doubt that he’d drop the complaint.”

“That would make him go away,” said Phule. “And I do mean to see that he doesn’t suffer financially, whatever else happens in this case. But giving him money to go away wouldn’t clear my people’s reputation. People on Landoor would always be able to say that we just bought our way out of trouble. If one of my people has robbed Mr. Takamine, I want him to own up to it and pay an appropriate penalty.”

This response was greeted with shocked silence. At one time, buying his way out would have been Phule’s natural response to trouble. Now, that didn’t seem to be enough. Rev finally spoke. “I reckon it’s pretty clear that the culprit in this case is a follower of the King, though I doubt anybody who’d do that is still a true believer. And I don’t think he’s one of my own flock, Captain. Like I said, there are lots of members of the Church of the King on Landoor. Could’a been any one of ‘em. A black jumpsuit don’t necessarily mean Legion. It ain’t that uncommon a garment among the faithful.”

“That’s true,” said Phule, standing still for a moment to look the chaplain in the eye. “But we can’t hide behind that, because Mr. Takamine believes it’s one of us. We’ve got to prove he’s wrong about that, and we’ve got to do that before we leave the planet. I’m open to ideas. Anybody have one?”

Rev spoke again. “I can get a record of the King’s followers on this planet who’ve had their faces remade. That’ll be a start, I reckon.”

“Yes, that’s a start,” said Phule, pacing again. “But how do we sort out which one it was? If we can eliminate our people, fine-but it has to be beyond question. I don’t want anybody claiming that I cooked the evidence. Better yet, we have to identify the actual culprit, whoever it is.”

“I’ve checked our duty rosters for the time involved,” said Rembrandt. “If all our people were where they were supposed to be-which isn’t necessarily so, knowing this outfit-we can eliminate six of our people right away. We’re checking to verify that they were actually on duty.”

“That’s over half,” said Phule. “That’s good, but it leaves five unaccounted for. Any way to establish their whereabouts at the time?”

“We’re working on it,” said Rembrandt. “The problem is, not everybody who saw one of the suspects can say for sure which one it was. When they all have the same face, it complicates things. Which brings us back to where we started.”

“Out of curiosity, am I in the clear or not?” asked Rev, with the slight smirk that seemed to be an unavoidable result of the face-remodeling process.

“For robbing the citizen, yes,” said Rembrandt, turning a cool stare toward the chaplain. “You aren’t the type who’d do that. Besides, the restaurant owner said you were too fat to be the one who did it. For getting us into this fix to begin with...”

“Now, it’s a little late for that, Rembrandt,” said Phule wearily. “We can’t very well make Rev change the tenets of his faith, even if they’re inconvenient for the rest of us.”

“Let me point out one more thing, Lieutenant,” said Rev. “Just because somebody’s thrown in with the King, it don’t make ‘em perfect. If one of the band goes off key, it’s as much my duty as anybody else’s to find ‘em and bring ‘em back in tune. If I find the culprit, I’m gonna turn him in-and I think I’ve got an inside track on findin’ him, too.”

“What would that be?” said Beeker. “If you have some way to identify individual members of your faith that the rest of us don’t know, perhaps it would be useful to share it in circumstances like these.”

“Oh, I don’t have nothin’ like that,” said Rev. “Just access to records, which I promise to share with y’all. And I hope some of ‘em will be more willin’ to talk to one of their own, if we can narrow the suspects down to two or three.”

“Anything of that kind you can do will be a help,” said Phule. His nervous energy at last expended, he sat on the edge of his desk and said, “I guess that’ll have to do for now. Rembrandt, Rev, if either of you learn anything, report it to me right away. And if the local police tell me something that might help, I’ll pass it along. I want to get this solved before we lift off for our next assignment-and we don’t have much time. So make it a priority, all right?”

“Yes, Captain,” said Rembrandt. Rev added his assent, and the meeting broke up.

But Beeker said, “Well, sir, I suspect you’re going to end up repaying the citizen for what he was robbed, after all.”

“I think I’m going to do that, anyway,” said Phule. “Even if we do find the guilty party he’s not likely to be able to make restitution. So why shouldn’t I? But we’ve got the company’s good name to uphold, too. That’s why I want to prove that none of our people did it-or if they did, to show that we don’t just sweep our bad eggs under the rug.”

“I agree with your sentiments if not your metaphor, sir,” said Beeker. “I just hope you’re able to live up to them.”

“So do I, Beeker,” said Phule. “So do I.” He sat musing for a moment, then looked up and said, “You know, I think we’re overlooking a resource that might help us. What do you think about this...?”

Beeker listened, skeptical at first, but after hearing Phule’s idea, he nodded. “It’s not an entirely bad idea, sir. I’ll see to it at once.”

“He’s coming.” Ernie’s voice in Lola’s earpiece was quiet, but she sensed its urgency, nonetheless. They’d already blown one attempt at snatching Phule and somehow managed to remain free to try again. They couldn’t assume that they could get away with a second failure. No matter how oblivious the captain was, he was eventually going to notice that somebody was trying to kidnap him and take steps to prevent further attempts. If the current trap didn’t catch him, they might not get another chance.

Lola took a deep breath and tried to center herself. She had to play her part to perfection, or the scheme had no chance of succeeding. She was confident that she could do what she had to. What worried her was, she could hit all her marks one-two-three, just like that, and Ernie could still fumble the game away. Or Phule could get lucky, and none of their careful preparation would make any difference. Phule seemed to get lucky a lot-more than his share, if she was any judge.

She held her breath until she heard the steady rhythm of footsteps approaching down the corridor, then let it out slowly. As the footsteps reached a position just opposite her hiding place, she burst out with a wild shriek. “Help! Oh, please-help me!” Sobbing, she fell to the ground right in front of the passerby, her eyes closed and her limbs as limp as she could make them.

“What’s the matter, miss?” said an unfamiliar voice.

Her eyes popped open. Standing over her, a look of concern on his face and a large tray balanced on his right hand, was a room service waiter.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she snapped, and began to rise to her feet, gathering her carefully ripped dress close around her.

“But, miss, you asked for help,” the waiter said, a confused look on his face.

“Oh, shut up,” she said and flounced away. The waiter stared after her for a moment, then shrugged and went about his business.

A few minutes later, Captain Jester strolled past, without incident. But a short distance away, beyond the range of his hearing, Lola was explaining to Ernie, in very graphic and detailed terms, exactly how important precise timing was to this plan and just how badly he’d missed his cue. A spectator would have had no doubt, at this point, which of the pair was most in need of rescue. Perhaps, fortunately for Ernie, there were no spectators.

Journal #511

By taking on the task of convincing the Yakuza’s leadership that he represented a superfamily, Sushi had in effect elected himself an officer. By this, I mean that he had taken on a level of decision making responsibility well above that of an ordinary legionnaire. Like the officers, he could no longer afford to “goof off” when there was no immediate task in front of him. There was always something that needed doing, something that couldn’t wait. And there was always somebody asking him to do one more thing he hadn’t planned on.

Sushi leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He’d been staring at the computer screen ever since he’d come off duty, and it felt as if the images on the screen were beginning to burn themselves into his retinas. The tension in the back of his shoulders was another sure sign that he’d been working too hard-or, more precisely, worrying too hard. He wasn’t used to this. The fact that he’d brought it on himself didn’t make it any better.

It had been at least an hour-no, nearly two hours, he realized when he checked the time display-since Do-Wop had tried to get him to go down to the bar for a round or two with the guys. He’d told his buddy he’d be right along, “As soon as I get this one detail cleaned up.” He was still nowhere near finished. It was tempting just to let things slide and go down for a drink. The only thing that kept him from doing exactly that was the realization that he was playing a life-and-death game, and that it was his own life on the line if he screwed up. That was enough to keep anybody’s nose to the grindstone. He hadn’t bargained for this. But there wasn’t any going back, either.

A rap on the door jolted into the present. He walked over and said, “Who’s there?” There’d been a time when he would just have opened it. Now he thought twice about that kind of thing.

“It is I, Beeker,” came the familiar voice from the other side. Sushi opened the door, and Phule’s butler entered.

“Have a seat,” said Sushi, indicating the hotel suite’s couch and matching easy chairs. “What’s the occasion?”

“The captain is concerned about a situation involving a member of Reverend Ayres’s sect,” said the butler. “The difficulty is that many members have had their faces altered, so as to resemble their master. This entails obvious difficulties in telling one from another.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” said Sushi, lowering himself into a chair opposite the butler. “A couple of guys I know had the operation done, and now I can’t recognize ‘em until they start talking. What do you want me to do about it?”

“The police have surveillance camera coverage of an incident in which they believe one of our people is the guilty party,” said Beeker, steepling his fingers. “The camera clearly shows a member of the Church of the King robbing and damaging a local restaurant and beating the owner. The Rev. Ayres points out that a large number of civilians also belong to his sect and suggests that one of them could be the responsible party.”

“Makes sense to me,” said Sushi. “But what do you think I can do about it?”

“The captain has asked to review the surveillance footage,” said Beeker. “It occurs to us that minute computer analysis of the voice and movements of the criminal could provide as good an identification as the face.”

“Sure, if you had similar footage of all the possible suspects to compare it to,” said Sushi. “You already mentioned the main objection: There are a lot of those King’s Men out there. Unless we have all of them on tape, there’s no way we can pinpoint which one is the robber.”

“We can do one thing fairly quickly,” said Beeker. “You’re our most accomplished computer user. The captain wishes you to compare the surveillance footage to archival footage of our company. There are several holovid disks available, including the entire company at some point or another. Eliminating the possibility that it is one of ours would be of use.”

“What if the opposite happens?” asked Sushi, frowning. “What if the robber is one of our guys?”

“That leaves us no choice,” said the butler with a long face. “You must turn him in, and the captain will see to it that he pays the appropriate penalty for his crime. There is no other course of action compatible with the honor of the Legion, as he puts the question. However, I doubt it will come to that event. More likely, the culprit’s identity will be revealed in the operation’s second phase.”

“Second phase?” Sushi leaned forward in his chair, his chin on the fingers of his right hand. “OK, I’ll bite. What’s the second phase?”

Beeker said, “You are, for all practical purposes, the head of a large quasi-criminal organization. This position gives you access to a large body of information, should you ask for it.”

“Yeah, I guess I am the head of the Yakuza,” said Sushi. “And sure, they have plenty of information. But what makes you think they have the information the captain needs? There are a lot of petty crooks on this planet, and most of them aren’t Japanese.”

“No, but the owner of the restaurant is,” said Beeker. “He is undoubtedly paying your organization for protection. In return, they should be making an effort to find the man who robbed him.”

“Japanese? What’s the name of the place?” asked Sushi.

“The restaurant is the New Osaka Grill on Hastings Street. A Mr. Takamine is the owner.”

“Yeah, I’ve eaten in there. Good food, even if it is a bit expensive,” said Sushi. “But how does this involve me? If the Yakuza can’t find the guy that robbed the place without me...”

“You are the head of that organization,” said Beeker. “It necessarily involves you, if someone under their protection is robbed without justice being done. Surveillance information from other businesses under their protection is likely to show the culprit: If he ate in one Japanese restaurant, he probably ate in more than one. You are in a position to obtain and analyze the information, and this will undoubtedly reveal the culprit.”

“It’ll take a lot of work,” said Sushi. “Just getting in all those vids, let alone setting up a program to analyze them...”

“I suggest you make it a priority,” said Beeker. “It works to your benefit on two fronts. First, to show that the superfamily you have invented can, in fact, deliver benefits to a local family. And second, you convince the captain that the time you spend on this project does, after all, benefit his company.”

“OK, I see what you mean,” said Sushi. “I guess I’d better get on it.” He sighed. So much for his hopes of joining the gang in the bar tonight-or any time soon.

“You will in time see the rewards for this hard work,” said Beeker, standing up.

“I guess I will,” said Sushi. “But a nice cold beer was looking good, too.”

Beeker raised an eyebrow. “I can assure you, young man, that the beer in the bar will be just as cold when you have finished this task as it is now, and the satisfaction of a job well done will greatly enhance its flavor.”

“Oh, I know that,” said Sushi. “I just wish I didn’t have to be so damned mature all of a sudden.”

Beeker gave just the hint of a smile. “Maturity may not be the most attractive way of life, but speaking only for myself, I am just as happy to be able to take part in it. Perhaps, upon reflection, you will feel the same. Good day, young man.”

This time it was going to work. This time it had better work, Lola told herself. All things considered, she and Ernie had been lucky to get away with two failed attempts to kidnap the captain. Their luck couldn’t hold out much longer. If it didn’t work this time, she was going to call it off and deal with the consequences. As long as her bosses didn’t decide to lock her and Ernie in the same room, she figured she could deal with anything less annoying.

“He’s coming,” said the voice in her ear.

“Are you sure?” she hissed.

“Yeah, I’m sure, babe. Ball’s in your court.” Ernie sounded calm, assured. That didn’t fool her. Ernie had been just as sure of himself the last time, when she’d prostrated herself in front of the wrong target, a room service waiter. She hoped the befuddled waiter hadn’t reported the incident-or, if he had, that it had been written off as a drunken prank by a customer. If the captain was alerted to the possibility of trouble, the odds of success dramatically dropped. And they were already low enough, as far as Lola was concerned.

After the previous debacle, she had decided that the best way to prevent any warning from reaching the captain was to set the ambush for first thing in the morning, as the captain was on his way to his office. With any luck, he would still be groggy from sleep-or so Lola hoped. There had to be some advantage to getting up at the crack of dawn.

She peered between the fronds of the potted plant as she heard the footsteps nearing. Yes, here came the captain. Lola leapt out into the corridor to sprawl in front of the (hopefully) unsuspecting Legion officer. “Captain! Help me!” she whimpered. She was starting to get good at this act, she realized. Maybe if this caper didn’t come off, she could get a job in the Casino’s entertainment division, in the chorus behind Dee Dee Watkins.

“What’s the matter, miss?” asked Captain Jester, bending over, a concerned look on his face.

Yes! thought Lola, doing her best to keep from smiling. At last, things were working on schedule. “That horrible man’s been following me again,” she said, doing her best to appear pathetic and intense at the same time.

“He has?” The captain peered around in all directions. “Where is he?”

“He ran back that way,” she said, pointing down the cross corridor. It lay on the way to the casino’s health club, a facility rarely visited by customers, although the legionnaires made good use of it. This early in the morning, the corridor would be deserted-a perfect spot for their ambush.

“Show me,” said the captain, and again she had to bite her lip to keep from breaking out into a grin.

“Yes, but please stay close to me,” she said, allowing him to help her to her feet. “I don’t want him finding me alone.”

“Don’t worry,” said the captain. “You’ll be all right. He’s probably run away by now, but we’ll catch him if he hasn’t.” He began walking quietly-almost supernaturally quietly, and very confidently-down the corridor. It occurred to Lola that he was most likely highly trained at one or more martial arts. It was a good thing their plan didn’t require them to engage the captain in unarmed combat. She allowed herself to shudder at the notion-it would add a touch of verisimilitude to her “maiden in distress” act.

The captain stopped and looked down at her. “Don’t be afraid now, ma’am,” he said, misinterpreting the shudder exactly as she’d hoped he would. “The Legion’s in charge here, and we’re not going to let anything happen to you.”

“Oh, thank you,” she said, doing her best to make it sound sincere. “I’ll just stay right behind you, if you don’t mind.”

“That’s probably best,” he said, and he turned to peer down the corridor again. Lola tensed; somewhere not far away, Ernie should be waiting, ready to play his part in their little charade. The captain edged forward, quietly; he was being careful. Would Ernie be able to bring it off?

The captain stopped and peered down a side corridor leading to an emergency exit. He nodded, took a step forward, and then...

Lola let out a piercing shriek. “Over there!” she cried, and as the captain turned to look, Ernie struck.

They’d chosen their weapon to incapacitate their victim as quickly as possible without undue risk of injury, particularly to themselves. The Zenobian stun ray wasn’t in the civilian arsenal yet, but the goo gun was a good second best. Firing a huge gob of incredibly sticky material, it enveloped its victim in a viscous mass of goo and trapped him as surely as a fly on flypaper. Police departments throughout the settled worlds used it for riot control. It wasn’t foolproof; inexperienced users sometimes got themselves stuck in the goo when they tried to secure their victim or got a sound thrashing from an incompletely immobilized victim.

But Ernie had practiced. As soon as the goo had enveloped Phule, he flipped a lever on the gun and fired a burst of a clear liquid, setting the goo so that someone attempting to grasp the victim could do so without getting caught.

“Hey, what are you doing?” said the captain-but too late. A moment later, Lola whipped out a gag and threw it over the captain’s mouth, while Ernie darted down the hall a few paces and grabbed a laundry cart just outside the gym. They tipped their victim into it, threw a layer of dirty towels over him, and quickly wheeled him into a service elevator and away.

5

Journal #514

Even the most punctual worker is sometimes late. Some are more punctual than others; but even they can sometimes be thrown off schedule by the vagaries of weather, transportation, and sheer chance. Bosses and coworkers will fidget, sigh, look out the window, and (depending on factors too various to enumerate) go about their business without the tardy person or await his arrival with some mixture of anxiety and annoyance. If the worker does not appear by some reasonable time, attempts will be made to get in touch, with greater or lesser degree of urgency.

But when a robot is late, that is in itself an occasion for urgency. When the robot is a custom-built facsimile of one’s employer, bought at an exorbitant price and put on duty for reasons of utmost security, panic is likely to ensue. It is to the credit of the staff of the Fat Chance Casino that the panic was kept to a minimum on this occasion.

“Disappeared?” Gunther Rafael Jr.’s jaw couldn’t have dropped farther if there’d been a 100G gravity field underneath it. “Why, that’s impossible.”

“I keep hearing about things being impossible, usually right after they happen,” said Doc, who had become the Fat Chance Casino’s security chief after the departure of Phule’s Company. His black Space Legion staff sergeant’s uniform was a perfect fit. Only someone with an insider’s familiarity with the Legion’s insignia and badges would have been able to tell that it was a complete fraud, as were the “Legion” guards Doc commanded. “If it’s impossible for the android to disappear, maybe you can tell me what it’s done instead of disappearing?”

“OK, Doc, you’ve made your point,” said Rex, who headed up the Casino’s entertainment division. “If you’re done with the sarcasm, maybe I can interest you in our current problem, which is that the Andromatic Phule has disappeared. The most likely explanation is, the thing’s been abducted-or maybe that should be stolen. “

“Who could’ve done it?” wailed Rafael. “How? Why?” He began to pace nervously around the table.

“Those are all good questions,” said Doc. “A better one is, what are we going to do about it?”

“You’re the damned security chief,” said Rafael, pointing an accusing finger. “Why don’t you know what to do about it?”

Doc bristled. “You know the answer to that as well as I do, Gunther: I’m about as much a security chief as you are a casino manager. I’m just an actor who got put in charge of the guard detail because everybody figured the bad boys would be so scared of us they wouldn’t start trouble. Now, with our mechanical boss missing, they’re bound to figure out we’ve been bluffing all along.”

“And when they do, they’ll swoop down on us like wolves,” said Rafael, wringing his hands.

“Wolves don’t swoop,” barked Tully Bascomb. He headed up the gambling operations, and his years of casino experience had been invaluable to Phule when he agreed to run the Fat Chance. “Pull yourselves together, both of you. We’ve got to come up with an answer to the missing captain before the bad boys do figure out how vulnerable we are. And that means everything’s got to look as if nothing’s changed. Doc, is there anybody on board you’d trust to play the role of Phule until we can get the bot back?”

“Maybe,” said Doc, rubbing his chin. “I’ve got a couple of kids who’re about the right physical type and who are quick studies. With a little makeup...”

“Makeup’s no problem,” said Rex. “With what we’ve got here, I could make Dee Dee look like the captain. What I’m worried about is whether your kids can carry off the stunt when they have to talk to customers-and whether they can be trusted keep the secret.”

“Well, there’s no reason they have to know the whole story,” said Doc. “Outside the board of directors, nobody knows that Phule’s been replaced by an android. The actor replacing the android doesn’t need to know, either. We just tell him the captain’s been called off-station on urgent business.”

“Or maybe he’s sick,” said Tully. “That’ll do for the short run, sure.”

“And as far as the lines, I bet they can do better than the android,” said Doc. “They can have a much wider range of permitted responses without getting in over their heads. And they can handle a lot more random situations than the android could.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Raphael. “I was once in a group the android came up to, and somebody started a discussion of the gravball playoffs. I swear, that droid could talk about the sports and weather better than I could! I doubt anybody could have figured out they weren’t interacting with a real person.”

“Only danger would be if somebody in the group knew the real Phule and spotted the android-or the actor-talking about something Phule didn’t know or care about,” said Doc. “But with the right direction, even that wouldn’t be a problem. Just order the actor to break off the conversation before there’s any chance of getting in over his head. We can handle it, believe me.”

“OK,” said Tully decisively. “We let Doc pick a couple of doubles, coach them to play Phule, and turn them loose as soon as they’re ready. We’re trusting you on this one, Doc.”

“I won’t let you down,” said Doc. “But this only solves half the problem, y’know.”

“Do I ever,” said Tully. “Somebody out there’s got the android, and it’s not going to be very long before they figure out what they’ve got and what it means. And then we’re going to be a target again.”

“I hope not. People could get hurt,” said Rex. “We need to notify the captain as soon as possible. I’m not anxious to put my actors in the way of that kind of danger. Besides, he’s the majority stockholder. We can’t deal with a situation of this importance without his input.”

“Second the motion, and call the question,” said Doc. “I don’t think we can afford to delay even a moment.”

“No argument here,” said Tully. “Give me a moment to place the call, and we’ll see what advice Captain Phule has to offer.” The others sat in silence as he reached for the comm unit and entered a code. The tension was as thick as a high-stakes poker showdown. None of them were sure just who they were playing against, but everyone knew that the stakes were the entire casino.

Journal #515

Preparations for the company’s move to its new assignment had begun almost as soon as the ambassador had left my employer’s office. While the ambassador had instructed the captain not to reveal the company’s exact destination, it soon became clear to all who paid attention to such matters that it was not to be another planet with a first-rate hotel designed for human occupancy. To the officers’ surprise, this discovery did not set off a round of griping about having to abandon the luxurious conditions to which the company had become accustomed. Indeed, the legionnaires seemed to look forward to the change as a sort of adventure.

The major exception was, predictably the mess sergeant.

“Captain, you got to let me know where we’re going,” said Sergeant Escrima, leaning forward over Phule’s desk. His clenched fists rested on the desktop, and his eyes gleamed. “I got to know what kind of supplies we can get there.”

“Sergeant, I sympathize entirely with your viewpoint,” said Phule, doing his best to calm down the mess sergeant. “In fact, I’m trying to find out the same thing, not just for food stocks but for the whole company. What I can tell you is, we’re going to a planet without any previous human settlement. A lot of things we’ve taken for granted won’t be available. You’ll have to make do-at least at first-with what we can bring in ourselves. Of course, there are bound to be a fair number of local items you can use...”

“Water and what else?” demanded Escrima. “Can we eat the local meat? I can’t do anything without fresh meat, or fresh vegetables, either. What about power? I can’t even cook without power.”

“Power’s not going to be a problem,” said Phule.

“Hallelujah, I can boil water.” Escrima sneered. “Lots of nice hot tea and reconstituted soups, hah?” He pantomimed spitting out something foul-tasting. “You got to do better than that, Captain.”

Phule stood up. “Escrima, I know for a fact that the natives of this world can eat some of our food, so I’m sure we can eat some of theirs, too. I think you should look on it as a stimulating challenge to find out which of their things our people can use, and ways to prepare them-“

“A challenge?” Escrima’s eyes widened. “You don’t want to challenge me, Captain. No, not unless-“

“Maybe challenge is the wrong word,” Phule cut in quickly. “A chance to prove how good you really are. We’ve all tasted what you can do when you’ve got a cordon bleu-quality kitchen to work with. I’ll guarantee you, there’s not a chef on the planet who could top you.” This was true; Phule occasionally had reason to eat a meal off-base, and he knew that Landoor’s best restaurants served as good a meal as he’d find anywhere in the Galaxy. But the food Escrima put out daily for the legionnaires of Omega Company was even better.

Escrima wasn’t in a mood to be flattered. “I make the finest food in the Legion, and now you tell me I got to rough it, cook over a campfire for all I know. How long you think it’ll be before everybody starts cracking wise about the food? Captain, you gonna drive me crazy!”

“No, no,” said Phule, raising both hands in protest. “We’ll have an up-to-date kitchen for you, don’t worry about that. As long as I’m in charge of this outfit, you’ll never have to settle for anything less than the newest, finest equipment. You have my word on that, Sergeant.”

Escrima raised his eyebrows, and for the first time since he’d entered the office, he lowered his voice to something like a civil tone. “I got to give you credit for that, Captain,” he said after a moment’s thought. “You said you were going to do just that, and did it, no fooling around. OK, then, I’ll take your word on the equipment. But that’s not the whole game. You give me rotten eggs to cook, and I don’t care what kind of stove I got.”

“No rotten eggs, Escrima. I promise,” said Phule, smiling. “Not even powdered eggs, which as far as I’m concerned are even worse.”

“At least a rotten egg used to be an egg,” agreed Escrima, wrinkling his nose. “That powdered stuff, maybe it came out of a vat in some chemical plant. About all it’s good for, is you can use it to kill bugs, if you got bugs.”

“Kill bugs?” Phule’s brow wrinkled. “How do you kill bugs with powdered eggs? I didn’t think even bugs would eat the stuff.”

“No,” said Escrima, a sly grin now on his face. “The way you kill bugs, you take a whole big box of the crap and drop it right on top of the bug. Kills him real good, you bet.”

Phule laughed. “I promise, Escrima, you get the best ingredients,” he said. “If you ever get anything that isn’t good enough for you to feed the troops, feed it to me first.”

“What?” said Escrima, mortally offended. “You want me to feed you trash?”

Phule nodded. “Yes, absolutely,” he said. “That way I know when we’re being cheated, and I’ll get mad enough to do something about it. You know I’m behind you all the way, Escrima. Look here: On this new assignment, if you want something, let me know and I’ll figure out a way to get it. If I have to put a fleet of private transports on the job, I’ll get it. But believe me, we should be able to use the local stuff, too. Just wait and see.”

Escrima nodded. “If you tell me that, I believe you. All right, then, Captain. We got a deal.”

“Good,” said Phule. “Now, I told you I’d get you the best equipment available. I’ve got a new field kitchen ordered-a prototype, designed to allow you to prepare anything you could do in a five-star restaurant under field conditions. We’re going to give it a test here on Landoor before we get out somewhere where we can’t get it replaced. It arrives day after tomorrow, if everything goes right. I want you to give it a full test and let me know anything it needs to meet your specifications. OK?”

“Yes, sir!” said Escrima. Like half the men in the legion, he loved the chance to play with new toys. Now he was going to get his hands on a brand-new one. It would keep him busy for a while, Phule knew, figuring out ways to get the most out of it. The results would be well worth the effort.

“All right, so I was wrong,” said Lola, not sounding in the least contrite. She turned off the hotel room’s built-in computer screen, which had been displaying Do-It-Yourself Turing Test, by Minsky & Hofstadter Enterprises. “We’ve gone and stolen the damned robot dupe instead of kidnapping Willard Phule. Now what?”

They’d realized something wasn’t right almost as soon as they’d dissolved the goo gun bonds they’d used to capture their prey. The captive’s response to the situation had been thoroughly inappropriate, unless one assumed that a total idiot had been running a Legion company and a major Casino Hotel-not only running them, but running them successfully. Their suspicions aroused, they’d called up the Turing test, and the robot had failed it miserably.

Ernie shook his head, miserably. “We’ve blown it, for sure,” he said. “The bosses send us here to snatch a guy and all we get’s a stupid bot. They’re gonna wale on our butts for this.”

Lola paced back and forth in short steps, thinking furiously. “I think it’s time we stopped thinking about the bosses and start looking after ourselves,” she said. “We can still make something out of this if we don’t panic.”

“Panic?” said Ernie, his voice squeaking. “You ever seen what the bosses do to guys who stiff ‘em?”

“That’s the ones they catch,” said Lola. She stopped and pointed at Ernie, and continued, “If we play our cards right, who says they’re going to catch us? Especially if we can get Phule to pay to get his robot back. These things can’t be cheap. It ought to be worth enough to him to give us enough of a nest egg to run off and hide someplace safe.”

“Yeah, I guess the boys gotta be worth somethin’ to him,” Ernie said, scratching his head. “I wonder what he’ll pay to get it back.”

“We need to know the going price for an Andromatic dupe, for starters,” said Lola. She flopped onto the bed and stared at the ceiling a moment before continuing, “I guess. he’ll pay that much just to avoid waiting for the factory to turn out a new one for him. This thing’s gotta be a custom model-nobody else would want one that looked like him.”

“Yeah, I guess we can get replacement value, whatever that is,” said Ernie. He looked once more at the replica of Phule sitting, with an expression of seeming unconcern, cross-legged in a chair by the window. It might have been waiting for a dinner date.

Or, more likely, looking for a chance to escape. But the two kidnappers weren’t betting that their captive would remain docile. The robot’s left leg was shackled to the heavy chair, and even with its superhuman strength, it wouldn’t make much progress dragging such an awkward impediment. Still, if it managed to escape the building, it was a good bet that it would find its way back to the Fat Chance, and that shortly thereafter, the two botnappers would be in the hands of unsympathetic security guards, learning firsthand about the penal system of Lorelei Station.

“One thing hasn’t changed,” said Lola. “We have to get off-station with this thing as quick as we can. The heat’s going to be turned way up. We’ve still got a chance to turn a profit. The bot’s worth something. Let’s get someplace where we can cash it in.”

Ernie looked her in the eye for a long moment, then shrugged. “OK, you’re running the game,” he said. “But first things first. What do we do to keep the Fat Chance security from beating down our door?”

She stood and moved quickly to the computer terminal she’d signed off from only a few minutes before. “Like I said, we have to get off-station-and take the bot with us-pronto. Tell you what; you go to the public ‘puters in the lobby and do some research on the going price of these robots. Meanwhile, I’ll see if I can get us a berth on something headed out-and right now, I’m not particular about destinations. Don’t take too long, OK? ‘Cause I’m grabbing the first thing I can find, even if we have to leave without our luggage to make it. Got it?”

“Got it,” said Ernie. He walked over and patted the robot on the head. “You just rest, of boy, you’re gonna be our ticket to Rich Man’s Row before it’s all over.” The robot, still gagged, said nothing.

“Be careful, it might grab you,” said Lola, wrinkling her brow.

“Nah, the Asimov circuits won’t let it,” said Ernie. “Be back in a bit.”

“Make it half a bit,” said Lola, but Ernie was already out the door. She turned to the terminal and began searching for a ship headed out-out to anywhere.

“Andromatic stands behind its product without reservation, Captain Jester,” said the customer service representative with an audible sniff. A name badge, which read Stanton, was visible on his chest. “However, if you will examine your purchase agreement, you will see that customer negligence is excluded. It appears that the android’s automatic theft alarms have been turned off by you or your agents.”

“The factory default settings on the theft alarms prevented us from using the android as intended,” said Phule. “With my initial order, I specified that the robot had to be able to mingle freely with customers in the casino. It was your factory-recommended installation consultant that suggested disabling the alarms in that environment so they wouldn’t go off every time some unfamiliar person got too close.”

“I am afraid that your consultant-who, I should point out, is an independent contractor and not one of our employees-has given you bad advice,” said Stanton. “That is not an authorized modification. If you had read the documentation-“

Phule cut him off. “I did read the documentation,” he said. “So did a couple of pretty talented engineers. We all agreed that it was nearly useless. Just for starters, the index is completely inaccurate, and the illustrations look as if they were drawn by somebody who’d never laid eyes on the product.”

“Of course,” said the customer service rep with an insulted expression, “you can’t expect the standard manual to cover all the custom features you ordered. Why, we’d have to write a new manual for every order we filled.”

“For what I paid, that doesn’t seem an outlandish service to expect,” said Phule.

“For what you paid, I’d think you could have detailed one of your soldiers to stay with it and guard it,” sneered Stanton.

“My men are legionnaires, not soldiers,” Phule corrected the Andromatic representative somewhat testily. “More to the point, my whole reason for acquiring an android double was to convince various people that I was still on Lorelei instead of several parsecs away. I’ve never found it necessary to walk around with a bodyguard, and if I suddenly appeared to change my routine, it would attract attention. That’s exactly what I didn’t want.”

Stanton shook his head slowly. “Nonetheless, I think we have a clear-cut case of customer negligence here. You must understand, Andromatic cannot take responsibility for unintended uses of our products.” He made handwashing gestures.

“I think I need to speak to the manager of customer service,” said Phule.

“I am pleased to be able to accommodate you,” said Stanton, with a mock bow. “As it happens, I am the manager of customer service.”

Phule glared at the vidscreen. “I see,” he said. “Let me see if I understand this, then. None of your stock units would do what I wanted a robot double for, so I had to custom-order one that would. But the custom modifications I paid extra for aren’t covered in the manual, and the warranty doesn’t extend to the uses for which I specifically requested the modifications. My failure to follow instructions I didn’t receive constitutes negligence or misuse of the product. Is that about right?”

“That covers most of it, yes,” said Stanton with a smirk. “Is there anything else that I can help you with today?”

“Evidently not,” said Phule. He’d fallen into very precise diction, which anyone who knew him would have recognized as a very dangerous sign. “However, you might save yourself considerable trouble if you started clearing out your desk as soon as this call is over. I’m going to make sure that Andromatic cleans house, and the first department to get swept out will be customer disservice.” He cut the connection abruptly and slumped into his chair.

“Shall I begin acquiring Andromatic shares, sir?” said Beeker, who had watched the entire conversation.

“Check the profitability first,” said Phule. “If they’re running as sloppy an operation as it looks from here, the shares might be overpriced. I suspect the company can turn a decent profit if it’s managed right, but I don’t see any reason to pay more than we need to for the privilege of turning it around.”

“Perhaps it would be advisable to start rumors to get the price down to a reasonable level,” noted Beeker.

“If we have to, sure,” said Phule. “But don’t put a lot of effort into it. We’ve got bigger fish to fry-among them, figuring out just who’s got the robot and how to get it back.”

“I should expect they’ll give us the courtesy of a ransom call before long, sir,” said Beeker. He opened the cover of his Port-a-Brain computer and began calling up his mail program.

“Possibly,” said Phule. “That depends on their reasons for the robbery in the first place. If they’re looking to make the most possible mischief for me, they can do a lot better by holding onto the thing than by selling it back to me.”

“I fear you’re right, sir,” said Beeker. He looked at the screen, then continued. “At any rate, there’s no word on the android at present. We shall have to pursue other channels.”

“Well, pursue away,” said Phule. I’m going to go see how Sushi’s coming along with his search for the man who robbed that Japanese restaurant. Give me a buzz if there’s any useful news.”

“Immediately, sir,” said Beeker. He turned back to the Port-a-Brain and began his search.

Journal #520

Crises never choose a convenient time to manifest themselves. Of course not; otherwise, they would hardly qualify as crises. So it did not in the least surprise me that the theft of the robot coincided with an impending move by the company. In comparison, the contretemps with the local citizen convinced that he had been robbed by a legionnaire was a trivial matter.

In this, at least, my employer was fortunate enough to have an eminently qualified subordinate to whom he could delegate the job of identifying the robber. Sushi’s computer skills were as good as any in the company. But it was his newly acquired status as a Yakuza overlord that gave him access to the information on which to proceed.

The perhaps not entirely inadvertent result of taking on this responsibility was the transformation of Sushi into a rather good facsimile of a valuable member of the company. While my employer saw this as a desirable alteration, that opinion was not necessarily universally shared.

“Yo, Soosh, you still workin’?” Do-Wop stood in the doorway of the hotel suite, obviously with several beers on board. Behind him were Super-Gnat and Tusk-anini. “You know what time it is, man?”

“I thought the one staying home was supposed to ask that question,” said Sushi, looking up from the computer screen. “It’s two in the morning, just in case your chronometer’s broken. And yeah, I’m still working. Did you guys shut down the bar again?”

“Hey, somebody’s gotta do it,” said Do-Wop. He sauntered into the room, fairly steady on his feet, and slouched into an easy chair. Tusk-anini and Super-Gnat followed him, taking seats on the couch. “Everybody’s worried about you, man,” he added. “You workin’ that hard, you gonna give yourself headaches or somethin’.”

“I already have headaches, Do-Wop,” said Sushi, turning his chair around to face his partner. “But this is a different kind-the kind I can get rid of by finishing up this job. And the best part is, when the job’s done, I can go back to hanging out with the guys.”

“You been saying that for weeks, now,” accused Do-Wop. “After a while, it sounds like nothin’ more than an excuse.” He sat up in the seat and pointed a finger at Sushi. “I told you this before, and I’ll tell you again. You’re startin’ to act like an officer, man.”

“Hey, cut the squabbling,” said Super-Gnat. “We didn’t come by to watch you guys fight.” She reached down into her bag and pulled out a bottle of Atlantis Amber, beads of condensation on its surface. “Here, Sushi, we thought you’d like a cool one to wet your throat after working all night.”

“She mean wet inside of throat,” explained Tusk-anini helpfully.

“I’d never have guessed,” said Sushi, smiling. He took the beer and opened it. “Thanks, Gnat,” he said, raising the bottle in a salute and taking a sip.

“No prob, Sushi,” she said with a smile. “We did miss you, y’know. We got talking about where we’re going next, and there were some pretty weird ideas going around-stuff that makes Chocolate Harry’s shtick about the renegade robots look fairly logical.”

“Well, some people are buying that line,” said Sushi, with a wry grin. “Either that, or there’s an incredible bargain on purple camouflage somewhere in town.”

“I not believing renegade robots,” said Tusk-anini. “Chocolate Harry must make a mistake.”

“If it’s a mistake, it’s a damn lucky one for the sarge’s bank balance,” said Do-Wop. “Wonder where he found all that purple stuff, anyhow?”

“Some surplus catalog, is my bet,” said Super-Gnat. “But here’s my question, Sushi. You’ve been doing this job for the captain. Do-Wop says he was here talking to you this afternoon. So, naturally, we sort of wondered-any chance he dropped any hints where we’re going?”

Sushi thought for a moment, tapping his fingers on the cool glass. “I’m not sure,” he said. “But Chocolate Harry let something slip in between his pitches for robot-proof camouflage. The captain’s bought a special modular base camp-MBC-that he’s going to have us practice setting up. What I think that means is, there aren’t any hotels where we’re going. That makes me think we’re going to a world without a large human population. Maybe even none at all.”

“No hotels?” exclaimed Do-Wop. “Does that mean no bars? That sucks, man!”

Tusk-anini sat up straight, which made him nearly as tall as Sushi would have been standing. “Maybe we go to my home world,” he said. “That would be good. Not such bright sun, good food...”

“Don’t let Escrima hear you say that,” said Super-Gnat with a chuckle. Then she added, “It’d be interesting to see your world, though. Anybody who wants to stay in hotels his whole life doesn’t have any business joining the Legion.” She shot a sharp glance in Do-Wop’s direction.

“Look who’s talking,” said Do-Wop. “You ask me, ain’t nobody here had a whole lotta business joinin’ the Legion.”

“I join Legion for business,” said Tusk-anini. “I join to learn about humans, so I can teach other Voltons about you people.”

“Have you learned anything?” asked Sushi. “I sometimes wonder whether that Leftenant Qual wasn’t right in his report on us, that we’re the most dangerous race in the Galaxy because we’re so unpredictable...” He stopped and put his hand to his chin. “Say...you don’t think we might be going to the Zenobians’ home world, do you?”

“Zenobia?” Super-Gnat whistled. “That’d be something, wouldn’t it? As far as I know, we’d be the first humans to see their world. I wonder what it’s like.”

“Hot, I guess,” said Sushi. “And swampy. They think our worlds are cold and dry.”

“Dry’s the word,” said Do-Wop glumly. “Qual never took a drink of liquor the whole time he was with the company. I knew it, a place without bars. I’m gonna purely hate this.”

“Hey, we don’t even know if it’s true yet,” said SuperGnat. “It’s just a guess, so far.”

“Besides, Chocolate Harry’ll make sure there’s something to drink,” said Sushi. “He’s not gonna miss the chance to sell the whole company its daily hooch. Say, maybe we should lay in a supply, see if we can make a little profit on our own.”

“All the other times we’ve moved, we’ve had pretty tight limits on personal supplies,” said Super-Gnat. “It’d be hard to take along enough to compete with Harry. He can bring in anything he wants, as long as he can claim it’s for the company.”

“It ain’t fair,” said Do-Wop. “The damn sergeants and officers get all the edge.”

“Now you know why I’ve been acting like an officer,” said Sushi. “Get the captain owing you a couple of favors, and you just might be able to turn them to your advantage.” He knocked back his beer and stood up to take the bottle to the recycler. Then he stopped and grinned. “If I play my cards right, it might even be worth missing a night or two in the bar.”

Do-Wop’s mouth fell wide open. He made a couple of tentative efforts to say something, but then, stunned with the enormity of Sushi’s statement, he simply shook his head in incomprehension. In his universe, there was no conceivable favor a captain could dispense that would make up for a lost night in the bar.

Sushi didn’t stop grinning. But privately, despite all his instincts and training, he found himself wondering whether, on this particular topic, Do-Wop might not be right after all.

6

Journal #523

“Set a thief to catch a thief” is, in the abstract, excellent advice. After all, who knows the tricks of the trade better than an experienced practitioner? Thus it is that the Galaxy’s most successful police forces recruit their members from the very class of society that produces the criminals they combat. But when an entire society, as on the space station Lorelei, is oriented toward quasi-criminal activity, this formula does not necessarily ensure success. In fact, it may mean only that the laziest and least intelligent members of the criminal classes end up as police.

It wasn’t the most elegant space liner, and it certainly wasn’t the fastest, but the Star*Runner was leaving Lorelei now, and that was what mattered. Lola and Ernie stood in the boarding line, doing their best not to look over their shoulders or otherwise attract the attention of anyone who might have the authority to ask what was in the large trunk Ernie had on the luggage cart beside him. If it came to that, the two kidnappers had agreed to abandon the trunk and do their best to elude capture by the station’s security forces. Lola hoped they could call in enough favors from their underworld contacts to get them smuggled off the station somehow. If not, well, they’d deal with that when they had to.

A lot depended on whether or not the Fat Chance had put out a bulletin on the missing robot. Lola was betting that the casino’s instincts would be to keep the theft secret. After all, if the local criminals knew the casino’s owner had left a robot to look after his property, there’d be nothing to deter a serious takeover attempt. As long as they’d believed the most charismatic officer in the Space Legion was there to guard the place, they’d kept their distance. But if it became general knowledge that the Fat Chance was a paper tiger...

Lola hadn’t immediately grasped the implications of that particular piece of information. Now she was beginning to see that it might, in and of itself, be worth more than the robot. The question was, how was she going to take advantage of her knowledge without sticking her own head into a noose? The obvious approach was to let the Fat Chance know that she knew, and milk it for as much as it was worth. Not just for returning the robot-although that’d be worth a fair amount-but for her silence about the robot and what it represented. And, of course, there were potential customers for the information that the Fat Chance was a hollow shell-although the window of opportunity to make capital on that was narrow.

The boarding line edged forward, and she snapped back to reality. None of those plans would much matter if they were intercepted before the liner kicked into FTL and they were out of the local authorities’ reach. Then she’d have the luxury of long-range planning. For now, she had to be ready to cut her losses and run for her life on a moment’s notice.

“Destination?”

Lola started, realizing that in spite of her determination to be alert, she’d been lost in her thoughts. The woman asking the question was short, with shoulder-length brown hair and a neat Lorelei Station Administration uniform with a name tag reading Gillman. She had her hand held out, presumably for the ticket.

“Ken’s Trio,” said Lola, handing over the coded plastic card that served as her ticket, passport, and luggage check all in one. The Ken trio was a system of three Earthlike planets in close orbits around a midsized G star, well-developed and populous. A high proportion of Lorelei Station’s customers hailed from there, since the journey was comparatively short and inexpensive, as such things go. Lola had chosen the destination for no other reason than its being the first stopover on the first ship headed out. There, she hoped, they could cover their tracks and choose a final destination more to their liking.

The woman behind the counter slid the card into a reader and glanced at the readout. “Anything to declare?” she asked in a bored voice.

“No,” said Lola. “A few gifts for my family.” The question, she knew, was routine and perfunctory. A few planets monitored the departure of indigenous artifacts, but on a station like Lorelei, where the entire economic base was gambling and tourism, the only things likely to be leaving were souvenirs. The occasional visitor might get lucky and leave with more money than he’d come with, but it didn’t happen often enough to be any threat to the station’s solvency.

“OK, you’re in stateroom twenty-three-A, on deck three,” said the woman, gesturing vaguely with her left hand. “Turn right at the head of the stairs, and there’ll be a steward there to show you the way. Need any help with the luggage?”

“We’ve got one big case we could use a hand with,” said Lola, pointing to the trunk Ernie had been wheeling along.

“Wait over there, and a spacecap will be along to help,” said the woman. “Have a nice voyage. Next?”

“What the hell are you doing?” whispered Ernie, as he took a position next to her. “This guy gets a notion we’re up to anything funny, and we’ll be up to our ass in trouble.”

“Relax,” she said. “This is the right way to do it, believe me.” She was right, she knew. Now the luggage handlers would remember them as one more pair of passengers with a heavy bag, one more tip, not as some pinchpennies who insisted on wrestling their own bag through tight passageways. A few more minutes and she could almost relax.

Brandy watched the legionnaires of Omega Company put the final pieces of the modular base camp back into its trailer. The exercise had gone remarkably well, she thought. At least, in a prepared space, with no worries about possible hostile action and no weather to complicate things, the legionnaires had been able to erect the MBC in the planned-on time. Nobody had gotten hurt, nothing was damaged, and the equipment appeared to be as advertised. She was sure there was something important they’d overlooked, but at the moment she couldn’t put her finger on it.

“Piece of cake, hey, Top?” said a deep voice to her right. She looked to see Chocolate Harry standing there, wearing a purple camouflage cap and vest over his regulation black uniform. Still promoting his “robot-proof” line of supplementary equipment.

“You bet,” she said, nodding. “If it goes anywhere near this well when we have to do it for real, I’ll be thrilled. I ought to find some wood to knock on, so I don’t jinx us.”

“One thing about the cap’n, he gets the best stuff you can buy,” said the supply sergeant appreciatively.

“Yeah, I remember when we used to have to sleep in tents when we were out in the field,” said Brandy. “Leaky, cold tents, cold ground under you, too. Had to do that again, I’d hand the captain my retirement papers.”

“You wouldn’t,” said Harry. “Neither would I-not as long as the cap’n’s running the company. If he put us in tents, we’d know it was because tents was the only way to go, and they’d be the best damn tents anybody could buy. I swear, that man’s likely to make me re-up, and I’d have told you you was crazy if you’d told me that a year ago.”

“Ah, you’d re-up just so you could cheat the troops some more,” said Brandy. “How much are you making from that purple junk you’re selling, anyway? Where’d you get the idea we’re going to fight robots?”

“It just so happens I got a deal on the robot camo,” said Harry indignantly. “I’m passin’ along the savin’s to the troops. They’d never get the stuff as cheap anywhere else.”

“Sure, and your mother’s a virgin,” said Brandy, punching him in the shoulder. “We’re about as likely to see combat against robots as we are to invade a candy factory. Nah-we’re more likely to invade a candy factory.”

“Hey, it could happen,” said Harry, looking sheepish. “The Legion way is, you gotta have the troops ready for anything.”

“Sure, but some things are a lot more likely than others,” said Brandy. “You’re trying to make the troops think you’ve got inside information, and you don’t know any more than they do. Well, since you knew this equipment was coming, you must have figured out we’re going someplace where the captain can’t just move us into a hotel. But it’s a long way from that to these renegade robots you’re kicking up such a scare about.”

“Safety first, that’s my motto,” said Harry. “Nobody’s gotta buy the stuff if they don’t want to. But believe you me, when we get to where the robots are shooting at us, you’ll be mighty sorry if you ain’t got something purple to put on.”

“Right,” said Brandy, scoffing. Then her expression turned serious, and she said, “And if we end up anywhere else, everybody wearing that stuff will stick out like a cactus in a snowbank. I don’t mind you grabbing an extra buck where you can, Harry. And the captain sure doesn’t mind it. But if any of my people get hurt because you sold them something that put them in danger they wouldn’t have been in without it, you’re gonna answer to me. You got that?”

“Sure, Brandy, sure, I got it,” said Chocolate Harry. “Don’t you worry, won’t nobody get hurt. And if we do have to fight those robots, everybody will be a lot safer.”

“Fine,” said Brandy. “Just remember. If this camouflage is bullshit, you won’t be the first one that gets hurt. But I can guarantee you’ll be the second.”

Chocolate Harry put his index finger in the middle of his chest. “Brandy,” he said, “a man that rode with the Outlaws ain’t scared of much the Legion can throw at him.”

Brandy stepped forward and grabbed the collar of his uniform and lifted. Big as he was, Harry found his heels coming off the ground. “Maybe you should be scared of what I can throw at you. Or of what I can throw you at, “ she growled. She let go of his collar, and Harry fell back onto his heels, staggering a step.

“Uh, check, Brandy,” he said. But she had already turned around and was stalking away from him. Harry reached into his hip pocket, pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat off his brow. He swiped it across his face, then took a look at it. It was camouflage purple. “Awww, shit!” he said and stuffed it back in his pocket.

Phule was working up a good sweat on the rowing machine, getting into a rhythm that was comfortable without being too easy, putting his back into the effort. He’d been neglecting his workouts for too long, and it felt good to get into the routine again. When his communicator buzzed, he muttered a single annoyed monosyllable, then put down the oars and lifted his left wrist to mouth level. “What’s up, Mother?”

“Good news, sweetie,” came the saucy voice. “Sushi says he’s identified the man who robbed that restaurant.”

“Great news, for sure,” said Phule. Then, after a pause, “Uh, it’s not one of us, is it?”

“Well, it’s not me, and I’m pretty sure it’s not you,” said Mother. “Who else did you have in mind, lover boy?”

“What I’d really love is for it to be a civilian,” said Phule. “But it looks as if I’m going to have to talk to Sushi to get a straight answer. Put me through to him, will you?”

“Why, I can’t believe you’d insult me that way,” said Mother, doing a passable imitation of wounded innocence. “I give you straight answers all the time, when you ask the right questions. It’s not my fault when you ask a wrong one. But have it your way, sugar pie.” Her voice cut off and Phule heard an electronic signal: Sushi’s communicator signal ringing.

“Hey, Captain, I’ve spotted our man,” said Sushi, after a moment.

“Good news,” said Phule. “I was beginning to worry we’d have to hand the case over to the local cops and leave the planet without solving it. Is it a civilian you’ve identified?” After Mother’s semiserious reprimand, he’d unconsciously phrased his question in a more precise form.

“Yeah,” said Sushi. “Definitely not Legion.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” said Phule. “Have you told the police yet?”

“Nope, I didn’t know whether you’d rather let them make the pinch or do it ourselves. Your call, Captain. If you just want to tell the cops, I can handle it and let you get back to work.”

Phule shook his head. Then, remembering that Sushi couldn’t see him, he said, “I told the Landoor police they couldn’t arrest one of our men without my permission. I’ll extend their civilians the same courtesy. We’ll offer any assistance they’d like and let them decide. Why don’t you zip me the data, and I’ll pass it on to Landoor authorities.”

“You got it, Captain,” said Sushi, and he broke off the connection. Phule looked down at the oars he’d let drop and thought for a moment about picking them back up and rowing some more. But he’d broken his rhythm, and he might as well finish this business. He stood up, stretched his arms, and headed for the showers.

Journal #525

The Landooran police were at first reluctant to accept at face value my employer’s information that the robber had been identified. Despite his general display of cooperativeness, they retained a degree of suspicion about the motives of the commander of an occupying force. Having intended to reveal the suspect’s identity and then gracefully bow out of the police investigation, my employer found himself instead working to show the police how to interpret the evidence and then lending them assistance for the actual arrest. While he could little afford to spare the time or personnel at this critical juncture, the alternative seemed worse to him.

Now the question became how to assist without seeming to take control of the entire operation. It began to become apparent to my employer, as perhaps it should have some time earlier, that the civil authorities on Landoor were not necessarily the most efficient in the Galaxy at their assigned roles.

“Tell me again how you know this guy’s the one,” said Patrolman Dunstable. He was a big, beefy veteran cop, and he looked at Phule and Sushi with the weary air of having heard every possible story at least twice and not having believed a word. At the moment, they were sitting in a police hovervan, disguised as an antigrav installer’s truck, outside the suspect’s apartment building, waiting for him to come home from his job. Another team waited inside the building’s lobby.

“Well, you gave us copies of the surveillance vids of the restaurant robbery,” said Sushi.

“Right,” said the cop patronizingly. “And if you looked at ‘em, you know they’re worth just about nothin.’ Those things are so out of focus and jerky that you wouldn’t recognize your own wife, half the time.”

“Right,” said Phule. “But in the Legion, we’ve got some pretty good equipment for enhancing that kind of raw material. And Sushi’s our best computer man-“

“Sure, and you think that’s gonna nail the perp,” said Dunstable, shaking his head as if Phule had told him he thought the robbery had been committed by little green elves. “I’ll tell you, the better computer enhancement gets, the less I trust it. The operator can make it look like anything he wants by the time he’s done, and ain’t nobody in the world can tell you how he got from where he started to where he ended up.”

“Give me a little more credit than that,” said Sushi. “We aren’t just clearing up the picture; all that does is show us the person’s appearance, which a good disguise or plastic surgery is going to change, anyway. With this equipment, I can pick out subtle patterns of movement and posture that are unique to the person, things even a trained actor can’t disguise.”

“There’s another point, too,” said Phule. “Sushi has certain contacts that-well, maybe I’d better not say too much about them. But they gave us a much wider sample of suspects than you’d come up with. As our chaplain told you, there are plenty of Landoorans that fit the description of the robber. But the man we’re after today doesn’t just fit the description, he has the right walk and everything else.”

“He’d better have the right fingerprints and DNA profile, too,” said the cop. “Arrestin’ a citizen for something we can’t prove can get us in a lot of trouble.”

“Gee, you didn’t seem to worry about that when you thought the robber was a legionnaire,” said Sushi.

The cop glared at Sushi, but before he could say anything, Phule hissed, “Here he comes!”

They turned to look out the windshield along the street. Sure enough, here came a black-garbed figure, whose dark pompadour and long sideburns were visible even at a distance, rounding the corner just behind a young woman pushing a baby carriage. Dunstable pressed a communicator button to alert the indoor team, then turned to Phule and said, “That looks like the perp, all right. But like you said, there’s dozens of guys look like that. How do we know this is the one who robbed Takarnine’s joint?”

“This has got to be him,” said Sushi. “He’s the only member of the Church of the King who lives in this part of town. It’d be way too much of a coincidence for another one to show up here right when he’s due home from work.”

“You been a cop as long as I have, you seen lots of coincidences,” said Dunstable.

“Yeah, and I bet you arrest ‘em anyway,” said Sushi. Then he said in a lower voice, as the suspect came closer, “Are you sure he can’t see us?”

“Not without he’s got X-ray eyes,” said the cop. “OK, he turns up the walk, we get out and cut off his escape, just in case he spots the inside team and spooks.”

The suspect came closer, strolling unconcernedly behind the baby carnage, and his features became clearer. Phule found himself thinking that, now that he had a reason to distinguish between dozens of King look-alikes, how easy it was to spot differences. This one, for example, was obviously of Asian ancestry, a fact the alteration of his features could not conceal. Phule was beginning to understand how computer image analysis could single out this one man from a crowd of faces that, to the casual eye, looked exactly the same.

Of course, once they caught him, they’d still have to convince a local jury that the evidence was as damning as Sushi claimed it was. If the suspect’s lawyer got his trial delayed until the company was off Landoor, and Sushi’s expert testimony unavailable, he might win an acquittal. Even if Sushi did take the stand, he might get an acquittal. Phule wasn’t sure he himself understood all the wrinkles in the case, and it had been his idea.

The suspect cut ahead of the stroller and turned toward the building, and Dunstable grinned wickedly. “OK, let’s get this creep,” he said and threw open the hovervan’s door, ready to close the trap behind their quarry.

Unfortunately, exactly at that moment, the young woman with the baby carriage gave out a monumental sneeze. The suspect turned around just in time to see Dunstable leap out onto the sidewalk, with Phule and Sushi behind him. A glance toward the building showed him several uniformed policemen emerging from the doors. At that, the suspect dropped his lunchbox and began to sprint across the flower beds. That was enough to convince Phule. “Stun him, Sushi,” he shouted and dropped to one knee to allow a clear shot.

But Officer Dunstable didn’t know about the stun ray, and neither did the woman with the baby carriage. Or perhaps the fleeing suspect deliberately used them as shields. In any case, both were in the direct line of fire. Sushi raised his stun gun, then shook his head. With others in the line of fire, he wasn’t going to risk it.

Meanwhile, the woman and her carriage were directly in Dunstable’s path. He came to a halt just short of running them over. The woman let out a shriek and stopped. But when Dunstable made as if to go around them to the left, the woman took a step back and pulled the carnage toward her, blocking him again. This time, he stopped so abruptly his feet tangled under him, and down he went in a heap, just managing to miss the carriage. He stumbled to his feet, but by then the suspect had disappeared around the corner.

The other cops saw the suspect running, too. A group of them cut across the garden to intercept him. But before they got more than a few steps, they found themselves at a thick hedge. A young policeman with a square jaw and muscles like an athlete’s tried to force his way through. He immediately got stuck on the inch-long thorns that had kept the others from trying. This left him squealing and leaving behind small bits of his uniform and person as his partners tried to haul him out, joining him in occasional indecorous exclamations as the thorns caught them, too. Meanwhile, the suspect could have walked away.

“The robber’s escaped,” said Phule, smacking his hand into his fist. “Now we’ll never be able to clear our people of suspicion.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Dunstable, returning. “I think you’ve got a good case, now. The guy took off the moment he saw us, and that’s proof he’s guilty of something.”

“Yes, but maybe it’s no more than unpaid parking fines,” said Phule dejectedly. “I want my company cleared of all suspicion, and as long as this fellow’s running free, someone can still say we left the planet under a shadow.”

“Hold on, Captain, my backup plan might still work,” said Sushi, looking in the direction in which the fugitive had disappeared.

“Backup plan?” Phule turned and looked accusingly at Sushi. “You didn’t mention a backup plan!”

Sushi answered with a sheepish expression, “That’s because, if we didn’t need it, nobody needed to know about it. Especially not the cops.”

Phule stiffened. “It’s not your place to decide what I need to know, Sushi. I’m your superior officer.”

“And I’m the head of an interplanetary, uh, organization,” said Sushi. “Which on behalf of our restaurant owner, Mr. Takamine, decided to call in a favor from. We’ll see if it works.”

“The Ya-“ Phule began.

“Ya, ya,” Sushi cut him off with a finger to the lips. “No need to mention names here,” he said, looking at Officer Dunstable.

“What the heck you talkin’ about?” said the policeman, but then a shout came from the cops extricating their brother officer from the thorn hedge, and he turned to look. “I’ll be damned, he’s coming back!”

Sure enough, the suspect was walking slowly back toward them, a resigned look on his face. His body language radiated utter defeat. A short distance behind him-almost as if by accident-a stout, middle-aged Japanese man walked with a small, nervous dog on a leash.

“See? I told you that business venture of mine would come in handy one of these days,” said Sushi. He turned to Dunstable. “I don’t think you’ll have any more trouble with him,” he said. Sure enough, even as he spoke, one cop took the suspect in hand, and he surrendered without the least sign of resistance. The middle-aged man walked on, speaking softly to his little dog, and nodded politely to the policemen as he passed.

Only someone who was looking for them might have noticed the elaborate tattoos that identified the man as a member of the Yakuza.

Journal #526

With the capture of the robber, the company’s last business on Landoor was effectively over. My employer now concentrated his efforts on the transfer to our new base. And the troops’ curiosity was to some degree assuaged when their captain finally received permission from State to reveal the Company’s destination.

Of course, that just started speculation in a new direction.

Tusk-anini squinted in the bright sunlight reflecting off the Landoor spaceport’s tarmac, then reached into his uniform pocket and put on his dark sunglasses. Over his warthoglike snout, the effect was comical, but the Omega Mob had gotten used to it, just as they’d gotten used to the fact that the swinish-looking Volton was one of their most intelligent comrades. “Gnat, why Zenobians ask for military advisors?” the Volton asked. “They look like good fighters to me.”

Super-Gnat shifted her duffel bag off her left shoulder onto the ground and looked up at her partner. “I’ve been wondering about that, myself,” she said. “If Flight Leftenant Qual is a fair sample of what they’ve got, I’d hate to see the kind of trouble that makes them ask for outside help.”

“Hate it or love it, we getting to see it soon,” said Tuskanini glumly. “Why else they want us go there?”

“To show them we are the best,” said Spartacus, one of the Synthian legionnaires. His duffel bag was riding behind him on his glide-board. “To show them how all races can work in harmony to defeat the enemies of the people.”

“Yeah, but who are the enemies of the people?” said Super-Gnat. “It’s gotta be somebody pretty fierce to make the Zenobians call for help.”

Tusk-anini grunted. “And whoever, why they our enemies? They no hurt Tusk-anini. Why we need to go fight them?”

“Nobody’s said we’re going to fight anybody,” said Brandy, dropping her own duffel bag with the others in the staging area. “We’re advisors, remember? We aren’t going to get in any fighting unless somebody attacks us. Besides, nobody’s said that the Zenobians are being attacked, either.”

“Whatever you say, Brandy,” said Super-Gnat, but her expression was skeptical.

“That’s right, whatever the sarge says,” agreed Rev with his usual crooked smile. “We’re all just soldiers here, followin’ orders and waitin’ for our big chance.”

“We’re legionnaires, not soldiers,” said Brandy, frowning.

“Sure, Sarge,” said Rev with a little grin that made it clear that he didn’t think the difference was important. A couple of legionnaires-ones who’d had their face reshaped in the image of the King-chuckled.

Brandy frowned again but didn’t push the issue. She still didn’t entirely appreciate the chaplain’s influence on her troops, especially not when he said things that cast him as the troops’ friend and her as something else. There were times when a top sergeant needed to motivate her troops by intimidation, and other times she needed to be a confessor and big sister to them. Rev was doing his best to co-opt the latter function. It occurred to Brandy that part of the chaplain’s job might be to make things harder for sergeants. That didn’t mean sergeants had to like it.

“I hear the lizards are trying to overthrow their emperor, and the government wants us to help ‘em beat the rebels,” said Double-X, who’d been hovering around the fringes of the group. “So it’s lizard against lizard, which is why they’re having so much trouble.”

“That’d make sense,” said Spartacus. “But we should be joining on the side of the people, not of the tyrants.”

“The Alliance wouldn’t send us to take sides in a civil war,” said Super-Gnat. “That’s asking for trouble.”

“Hey, this planet right here was in the middle of a civil war when we came in, right?” said Double-X. “If the captain hadn’t got both sides interested in something other than fighting-“

“Not the same thing,” said Brandy. “The war was over when we got here, and Landoor was already part of the Alliance. The lizards just signed on. I can’t see how the government would let us be used that way.”

“I know what it is,” said Tusk-anini. “Legion headquarters don’t like Captain Jester. They try get him in trouble all the time. Maybe they trying to send us someplace where there more trouble than we can handle.”

“That’s enough of that,” said Brandy sternly. “We’re Legion. The brass aren’t going to put us in any situation we can’t handle. Don’t go asking for trouble, Tusk.”

“I never ask trouble, Sarge,” said Tusk-anini. “I get plenty without asking.” But he didn’t say anything else.

Brandy was just as glad. They’d have enough to worry about just going onto a brand-new planet-new to the Legion, anyway. It didn’t help to have the troops thinking the brass were trying to walk them out on a limb and saw it off. Even if, as Brandy suspected privately, Tusk-anini was damn likely right.

Then, somewhere in the distance, a band struck up a lively march. Its sound came closer, and the waiting legionnaires saw flags and the glint of sunlight on polished brass and chrome. “All right, guys, let’s see you form up nice and pretty for the departure ceremony,” said Brandy.

“You aren’t gonna get this too many times, so we might as well enjoy it.”

Besides, she thought to herself, they’re always glad to see the troops leave. It’s a whole different story when we show up someplace for the first time. Not even Captain Jester had managed to change that eternal verity of Legion life.

7

Journal #528

For reasons familiar to those who have worked in any sort of bureaucracy, my employer’s success in achieving his goals was not matched by an equal rise in his esteem with his superiors. Or, to put it directly, General Blitzkrieg’s enmity was a constant.

But the company’s new assignment had been initiated by State, and the foreign power in question had specifically requested Omega Company to serve as advisors in their current crisis. So the general had little choice but to acquiesce in the decisions made by those in positions of greater power.

But while someone who has no choice about a matter is often well advised to make the best of things as they are, General Blitzkrieg was of a different school. Given lemons, he was not only reluctant to make lemonade; he made the most concerted effort I have ever seen to convert the lemons into rotten apples.

Major Sparrowhawk cast a speculative eye on the young officer standing in front of her desk. Major Botchup, his name tag said. Young was the definitive word for him; despite his having achieved the same rank she had reached after eleven hard years of Legion service, he couldn’t have been much over twenty years old, Standard. Rich parents bought him a commission, she thought sourly. It was the normal way such things happened in the money-starved Space Legion.

“General Blitzkrieg will see you in just a moment,” she said, doing her best to cover up her almost instant dislike for this pipsqueak. There was something in his face and in his bearing that would have made him annoying even if he’d been an enlisted legionnaire or a civilian.

And above all in his voice, she was reminded as he answered her, “Thank you, Major.” He managed somehow, in three superficially harmless words, to convey the strong impression that, despite their equality in rank and her status as aide-de-camp to a Legion general, he considered her his inferior. Well, as long as he could do the job the general had for him, it wasn’t her job to find fault with him. Still, she felt like letting him sit in the outer office for an hour or so, cooling his heels, instead of showing him in when the general emerged from the rest room.

She made no effort to strike up a conversation with Botchup. What would they talk about, his hair stylist? Instead, she turned back to her computer and the speech the general had given her “to proofread,” which meant rewriting it nearly from scratch to keep him from appearing even more of an ass than he was. Given the necessity of keeping most of his opinions intact (although she did what she could to disguise the most fatuous ones), this was no mean feat. For a moment, she wondered whether talking with Major Botchup might not, after all, be preferable to salvaging the speech, but then the general stuck his head out the door and said, “Welcome, Major! Come on inside,” and the moment was gone. The major swept into the inner office, the door closed, and she returned to unsplitting the general’s infinitives and unmixing his metaphors, a job comparable to unscrambling eggs.

She was trying to figure out whether Blitzkrieg meant anything in particular by “Every legionnaire must be ready to confront the vissicitous priorities that may have been left on his back burner for the time being but always remembering that the hand of fate has a way of stepping in without preamble or precedent.” She had just about decided to leave it the way it was and hope somebody in the audience asked him to explain it, when he signaled her. “Major, I thought I asked you to give me the personnel files for Omega Company,” he said over the intercom.

In fact, she had given them to him when he’d first asked for them. She suspected they were somewhere in the mess atop his desk, in which he claimed to be able to lay his hands on anything but almost invariably couldn’t. “Oh, I have them right here, sir,” she said innocently and picked up the duplicate set she’d made. “I’ll bring them right in.”

She found the general standing with his hands behind his back, looking out the office window, while Major Botchup sat in a chair in front of the desk, sending a reproachful stare at Sparrowhawk. Little do you know, sonny, she thought. “Here are the files you wanted, sir,” she said, ignoring Botchup and placing the printouts on the general’s desk. The general always wanted printouts; she suspected that was because he hadn’t learned how to open electronic files.

“Ah, at last,” said the general. He walked over and picked up the folders and said, “Now, Major, here’s everything you need to know about this outfit. I don’t mind saying that they need a good man to put the company to rights. The thing is, you’re going into a possible combat situation, and I’ll uphold whatever measures you judge necessary. We can’t have legionnaires exposed to danger because of incompetent officers. When I first sent Jester in, I thought he might be up to the job, but he proved me wrong almost at once. No point dwelling on it, of course.”

“Of course,” said Botchup smugly. “In a case like this, it’s best to clear the screen and start from scratch. Make sure they know what you expect, and then hold them to the letter of the law. I suspect I’ll have to make examples of a few of them before the rest realize the party’s over. But I can promise the results will be worth it.” After a beat, he added a very perfunctory “Sir.”

Blitzkrieg didn’t notice the perceptible pause. “Good man, Major, that’s the spirit I’m looking for. Now, I want you to hold Jester to the same standard as the rest of them. I’ll warn you, the fellow’s spent so much time currying favor with the troops that they may resent you coming in, but that shouldn’t hinder a good officer like you.”

“I have a better regard for my position than to cotton to the dregs of the Legion,” said Botchup with a slightly raised eyebrow. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, of course.”

“No, no, Major, never any harm in telling the truth,” said Blitzkrieg. His grimace was full of malice. Heaven help Phule and his men when this little snot gets hold of them, thought Sparrowhawk. Then, after a moment’s reflection, she amended the sentiment: Heaven help the Legion if this little snot actually succeeds.

It was after midnight, Galactic Standard Time, and the space liner’s passageways were empty, the lights dimmed to conserve energy. Except for a few scurrying maintenance droids, the ship was quiet; even the crew member nominally on watch had dozed off, relying on the ship’s automatic systems to warn him of anything requiring his attention. He really wasn’t needed. Odds were, any emergency the automatics couldn’t handle would kill the ship no matter what the man on watch did. The starship line didn’t tell its passengers that, but the experienced travelers had long since figured it out. It didn’t stop very many people from traveling.

So there was nobody awake to see the hatchway to Ernie and Lola’s stateroom slide open and the custom-designed Andromatic robot they’d stolen from the Fat Chance Casino step quietly into the passageway. It looked both ways, determining its location within the ship-its memory had diagrams of all standard starship models stored-and headed aft.

The robot’s incredibly realistic external appearance notwithstanding, its programming was, at core, very simple. While its appearance had to deceive not just casual observers but reasonably close acquaintances of the person it was designed to mimic, its internal list of tasks was short and basic. It could carry on a simple conversation long enough to give the impression of independent thought. It could notice who was listening so as not to repeat itself too obviously when mingling with a crowd. It could respond appropriately to a fairly wide range of questions or to situations requiring action.

As long as it made every effort to follow orders and to protect human beings, it could act to protect itself and to preserve its owner’s investment in it, a sum that even a multimillionaire might not consider small change. And so, being stolen had called its self-preservation program into operation. Its Asimov circuits had prevented it from making its escape while the humans who had stolen it were still awake-if they tried to recapture it, it would be forced to choose between saving itself and harming them. Best to avoid that conflict. But now the two humans had fallen into an exhausted sleep. It was a matter of moments to escape the primitive restraints they had attached to it and leave the cabin. Now its primary purpose was to find a way to return to its owner.

The lifeboat bay was a rarely used area of the ship. Regulations required a lifeboat drill within twenty-four hours of departure from any port where passengers had come aboard, but on most ships this was a formality, carried out with the aid of realistic holos. A passenger who was so inclined could follow the drill from the comfort of his cabin or the first-class lounge. But most passengers simply ignored it. As a result, the robot found the lifeboat bay deserted.

A human wanting to commandeer a lifeboat would have had a hard time overcoming the electronic safeguards built into the system. For an Andromatic robot, the process was simplicity itself. Overriding outdated civilian security hardware aboard the ship was child’s play for the milspec programming Phule had ordered installed in his robot double. The first thing the crewman on watch knew of the escape was when an alarm buzzer woke him. By then, the lifeboat was clear of the ship, accelerating away. The crewman stared at the blinking dot on his radar screen and cursed.

Once free, it would automatically seek out the nearest human-habitable planet and make a soft landing there. The lifeboat had only rudimentary controls on board, for dodging debris in the vicinity of a damaged mother ship. There was no way to take control of it remotely. The only way to prevent the escape would have been to send another, faster lifeboat, equipped with grappling gear-something only a military vessel would carry.

The crewman looked at his screen again. The skipper would have his hide for this; lifeboats were expensive, and he might have been able to prevent its loss if he’d been alert. He hadn’t been, and it was probably going to cost him his job. But he was already in all the trouble he could get into, and there was really nothing more he could do about it. Having come to that conclusion, he yawned. The skipper would learn what had happened in the morning, and that would be time enough to face the consequences. He yawned again and settled down to go back to sleep.

On the screen, the blinking light moved slowly away from the ship, seeking a planet to land on.

Journal #533

To call Zenobia a swamp world is, of course, a gross oversimplification. As with any world large enough to support highly evolved life forms, it presents a rich variety of habitats, from warm, tropical bays to frozen tundra, from mountain meadows to salt marshes, from rain forest to stony desert. Not to forget, of course, that as a planet that has given birth to an advanced technological civilization, it has by now become to a great extent an urban landscape. The capital city boasts as much square footage of glass, concrete, and polished metal as any city of old Earth.

But the Zenobians themselves evolved from swamp and jungle dwellers, and (not surprisingly) they retain the habits and preferences of their remote ancestors. Landscape designers work overtime to create the illusion of deep jungle on the grounds of popular resorts, and some of the most affluent suburbs of the great cities look, from the air, much like primitive swamps. Where a human civil engineer would be looking for ways to drain a swamp to get some buildable land, a Zenobian looks for ways to drown a desert.

So, despite the popular image of the Zenobians as swamp dwellers, it came as no surprise to my employer when the Zenobian government requested that he set up his base in a semiarid highland some distance from the capital city. They were no more likely to ask him to set down in swampland than a Terran government would ask offworld visitors to locate in the middle of a golf course or football stadium. The fact that it was comparatively comfortable to us had nothing to do with it.

What mattered to the locals was that it was, from their point of view, a completely worthless piece of property. And of course my employer had no intention of letting them know that it had any attraction whatsoever to him.

Of such conficting values are bargains created.

The black ship settled onto its landing skids, surrounded by a cloud of dust from the dry land underneath. After an interval, the dust settled and the rear hatch swung down. A moment later, a party of armored legionnaires were out onto the ground, taking up strategic positions. Above them, a bubble turret popped up from the lander’s roof, with energy weapons poised to fire on anything that threatened the landing.

When the advance scouts were in position, they began digging in. So far, nothing unexpected had happened. Lieutenant Armstrong, who led the initial party, spoke into his wrist comm unit. “All elements in place,” he said. “No sign of resistance, no hostiles in view. Perimeter secure, in my opinion.”

“Reading loud and clear,” came Mother’s teasing voice. “Electronics report no power equipment except ours in use within five kilometers. And there’s no sign of any large life-forms within the same radius. So it looks as if you’re all safe for now, cutie pie.”

“Good,” said Armstrong crisply. “Get the next wave out, then. The sooner we get some shelter set up, the happier I’ll be. This place is hot. “

“Aww, don’t you fret, now, Armie,” said Mother. “We’ll send somebody out with a nice cool drinkie for you. Just keep your pants on.” She broke the connection.

Almost immediately, the second echelon, led by Chocolate Harry on his “hawg,” began to roll down the shuttle’s ramp. Where the first wave had been equipped to deal with possible enemy action, this group’s mission was to get secure shelter set up in the shortest possible time. For the first time since Phule bad taken command, the company wouldn’t be quartered in a first-class hotel; the Zenobians’ buildings were scaled for their own race, far too small for comfortable use by humans.

Chocolate Harry’s team steered a large trailer carefully down the ramp and across the landing area until it was well clear of the shuttle-nobody wanted to spend time setting it up if it was going to be knocked off its moorings by the departing lander. Harry scowled at the site the remote sensors had selected for setting up the structure, pacing its length and width, looking at the ground for any sign that the electronics had been wrong. At last, satisfied that everything was up to spec, he nodded. “OK, let’s get this muvva set up,” he said. “You ready, Double-X?”

“Yeah, Sarge,” said the legionnaire from a perch high atop the MBC. “All systems nominal, ready to assemble on your signal.”

“All right, you heard him,” shouted Harry to his team. “Take your positions, and be ready to assemble.”

The legionnaires scurried to their assigned positions while Double-X went down a last-minute checklist, reading his instruments to be sure the MBC was level, the mechanicals powered up, the structure solid after being loaded on a shuttle, flown several dozen light-years, and unloaded on an unfamiliar planet.

“All settings nominal,” Double-X finally shouted, looking up from the instruments. “Ready to deploy shelter.”

“OK, look alive, people,” said Harry. “You’ve all done this before, so it should be a piece of cake. If anybody screws up, your ass is mine.” He paused and looked around at the circle of legionnaires. Satisfied that everyone really was in position and ready to do his job, he shouted, “OK, Double-X, let ‘er rip.”

“Aye aye, Sarge,” said Double-X, and he pulled the starting lever. Harry held his breath. They’d practiced this operation back on Landoor, but back there, if the MBC didn’t work right, they could just go back to the Landoor Plaza Hotel and try it again the next day. Here, if it didn’t work, they’d be living on the shuttle-or out in the open, once the shuttle left-until they got it fixed. They had no experience sleeping in the open on this world, but if the conditions now were any indication, it was likely to be uncomfortable. Chocolate Harry really didn’t want to have to explain to the captain why the shelter wasn’t ready-not when he knew how much the captain had paid for this full-featured deluxe housing module.

But there weren’t any obvious problems yet. The MBC had quietly begun to unfold along previously invisible joints in its surface, doubling, redoubling, and again redoubling the size of its footprint. Somewhere near the center, a pipe was augering its way down into the ground, anchoring the structure firmly. At the same time, it was seeking out the water that instruments had located somewhere below the surface. Combining the water with common elements from the soil and air, the MBC would synthesize many of its major structural elements within the next hour-assuming the water was where the instruments said it was.

With the structure’s main skeleton now laid down, the rest of Harry’s crew leapt into action, moving swiftly along the outflung structural members to throw switches, open valves, and check readouts. The unit sent additional anchors into the soil, and once they’d gotten a grip, began to erect uprights to support the walls and ceilings. Subunits of the main engine began to click on-line, and electrical outlets, comm connections, ventilation ducts, and plumbing fixtures began to unfold in place. Crew members marked them on their charts; later crews would verify that everything worked properly.

Reaching the center of the structure, Harry stopped and turned in a full circle, admiring the rapid progress of the job. The rest of the company had begun to come out of the shuttle, too, unloading equipment and supplies, setting up additional structures, and in general preparing the area for an extended stay on Zenobia. He smiled, but only for a moment. Then his eyes opened wide, and he shouted, “Yo, what the hell you think you’re doin’? Let go of that thing! You wanna tear down the whole wall? Let go of it!” He began to move his considerable bulk in the direction of the impending disaster, cursing under his breath. Omega Company might have brushed up its image, but deep down, it still had the capability for instant catastrophe.

It made for interesting times, even when things seemed to be going right.

At last, darkness was falling on Zenobia, and Lieutenant Rembrandt scanned the Legion encampment with a satisfied expression. There had been screwups-with this outfit, there were always screwups-but on the whole, the MBC had gone up without a hitch and with a minimum of damage to the troops erecting it. A few sprains and minor cuts, not to forget a few frayed tempers, was a small price to pay for what they’d accomplished today. The captain’s investment in the new equipment had more than repaid itself, she thought.

By dinner time, the troops had sat down together in the new mess hall to a hot meal. Of course, Sergeant Escrima ad complained vociferously about the primitive facilities he had to work with and the shortage of fresh ingredients-that last would be remedied as soon as they could find local sources of supply-but Rembrandt thought the food was every bit as tasty as what the cooks had turned out in a state-of-the-art hotel kitchen. And if anyone else ad noticed a decline in quality, she hadn’t heard them say so. That was probably just as well, given the mess sergeant’s hair-trigger temper and homicidal fury.

The other camp buildings had gone up quickly, too, and there was a second well already drilled in the center of the compound. Chocolate Harry had put up a supply depot as soon as the living quarters were done, and all the company’s motorized equipment and electronics were now safely under cover. The company had only a general idea what kind of weather this planet offered, but unless a tornado sprang up out of nowhere, the equipment could probably survive it.

Meanwhile, the troops had established a secure perimeter and systematically begun to extend their control into the countryside beyond it. Electronic surveillance equipment had been put in place, and they were ready to tap into the natives’ military intelligence satellite network as soon as the captain had gotten passwords from the government Rembrandt hoped those would come through soon; they were secure against anything local, but to do the job they had been sent for, the company needed to now what was brewing beyond their line of sight or on the planet’s other continents.

What worried Rembrandt was the natives’ silence about the exact nature of the threat they were facing. That made no sense. You didn’t take your skimmer to a mechanic and then refuse to tell him what was wrong-not if you wanted the problem solved, you didn’t. But the little lizards hadn’t said word one about who or what they’d called the Omega Mob here to advise them how to fight. If they continued to keep their mouths shut, it could mean big trouble.

With any luck, they’d have the answer before much longer. The captain had landed directly in the Zenobian capital to meet representatives of the local government for a full briefing on their mission here. He wasn’t likely to be satisfied until he’d found out exactly what mysterious mission the Zenobians had requested Omega Company for.

She hoped they wouldn’t find out the hard way, before the captain got back.

Chief Potentary Korg grinned. It was not a spectacle calculated to put Phule at his ease. The xenosemanticists who’d briefed him back in the Alliance swore up and down that the expression meant exactly the same in the Zenobians as it did in humans. That didn’t make it any more reassuring, given Korg’s full complement of razor-sharp teeth. The oversized sunglasses the Zenobian wore did nothing to improve the image.

“It is great privilege at last to meet you, Captain Clown,” said Korg. “Flight Leftenant Qual has been enthusiastic in detailing your species’ peculiar adaptations for warfare, and it is very much our pleasure to see that you have accepted our invitation to advise us on defending ourselves against the invaders.”

“I am honored to have been invited,” said Phule, who along with Beeker had attended a welcoming ceremony in the Zenobian capital while his company set up their camp out in the boonies. They were sitting in a reviewing stand of sorts, constructed of some local vegetable material that, without quite being wood, had a similar degree of rigidity and ease of assembly into useful structures. Before them was arrayed a large assembly of Zenobian military in the uniforms of various service branches. They were distinguished primarily by their berets: red for the Mudrovers, blue for the Swamplurkers, green for the Paratreetoppers, and so on. And all of them wore sunglasses.

“I can assure you that the Alliance will do everything possible to assist your people in meeting the threat you are facing,” Phule added. “But perhaps we should talk about the exact nature of this threat.”

“But undeniably!” boomed Korg’s translator. “As soon as we have done with the display of our disputatious spirit and thorough preparedness, all shall be revealed to you!”

The display was long and instructive. Having seen Flight Leftenant Qual in action, Phule already knew how agile the Zenobians could be; now he saw that Qual was merely a somewhat above average specimen of his race. Many of the troops in the review were larger, faster, stronger, and far more agile than the flight leftenant. Several of their weapons (such as the stun ray, the design of which Phule had acquired for his father’s munitions company) were more advanced than those of the Alliance races. Korg’s grin seemed to have grown wider with each contingent of troops or display of equipment that passed the reviewing stand. And Phule was quite certain that not everything was being shown to him. After all, the alliance was only a few months old and had barely been tested. Any sensible race would have a few hole cards it wouldn’t be showing a newly acquired ally. He was just as glad he had gotten off on the right foot with them.

Finally, the demonstration concluded with a convincing demonstration of unarmed combat-a somewhat paradoxical concept when applied to a race naturally equipped with a saurian predator’s teeth and claws. Korg turned to Phule and said, “Now, Captain, let us retire for refreshment and some candid conversation.”

“I look forward to both,” said Phule, and he and Beeker followed the Zenobian leader into a nearby building. To one side, a buffet was laid out, with a variety of foods. In deference to the humans’ dietary prejudices, the spread included several cooked dishes, as well as a selection of vegetables (many no doubt imported for the occasion). And whoever had been involved in the planning had thoughtfully laid in a full Terran bar. After filling their plates and glasses, Phule and Beeker joined Chief Potentary Korg and his adjutant at a table. Korg played host to perfection, making certain that both Phule and Beeker got everything they wanted.

“That was a very impressive display,” said Phule politely. If anything, it was an understatement. The Zenobians would be a formidable opponent for any race that went to war with them. Except that their request for Phule’s company as military advisors seemed to indicate that they’d encountered something they couldn’t handle. Exactly what was it they couldn’t handle? Phule wondered. And what made them think that Omega Company could handle it? It was very puzzling.

“Thank you, Captain,” said Korg, flashing his saurian grin once more. At least he’d removed the sunglasses, now that they were indoors. “It would please me, sometime, to see a similar demonstration of the Alliance’s capabilities. But in due time, all in due time. Meanwhile, as you can undoubtedly guess, we have invited your company here for a very good reason.”

Aha, here it comes, thought Phule. “I find it hard to imagine an adversary that your forces wouldn’t be able to deal with on their own,” he said.

“Nevertheless, we have encountered one,” said Korg. “They are here on the planet even as we speak. And yet I tell you in all candidacy, we have been unable to make even the slightest maneuvers against them.”

“That’s very surprising, sir,” said Phule. “What can you tell us about these invaders? The more intelligence you can give me, the better we can determine how to assist you.”

“What we have, you shall have,” said Korg. “All our intercepts of their communications shall be given to you. But to initiate you into the situation, behold! Here, in the shell of an armored land beast, is what we know.” He waved his foreclaw, and an assistant turned on a view screen.

A aerial view of the Zenobian capital appeared, recognizable despite an odd distortion. “This is an intercepted high-frequency signal from an alien surveillance device,” said Korg. “Without going into details, I will tell you that this and several other devices have been systematically monitoring our major population centers and military installations.”

“I see,” said Phule. “Have you eliminated the possibility that these signals are from some internal agency-monitoring the traffic or weather, for example?”

“This occurred to us, but it seemed very unlikely, even at first,” said Korg. “To begin with, the frequency employed is not one used by any of our normal communications equipment. In fact, the signals were first discovered quite by accident. Only when it was discovered that the source was mobile did we know they were artificially generated.”

“A mobile source,” said Phule, nodding. “Some sort of surveillance drone, then. Have you been able to intercept one of the drones?”

“No,” said Korg. He reached one of his foreclaws up to pick a small piece of meat from between two teeth. “To be absolutely veracious, other than by their signals, we have had no success whatever in detecting these drones. It is as if they are invisible.”

“Invisible!” said Beeker, leaning forward. “That would seem to defy the laws of physics, would it not, sir?”

“It would seem so,” said Phule. “Possibly it has something to do with your equipment, though. Our two races use different frequencies, and not all the Alliance races use the same frequencies for their internal communications, either. Once our base is properly set up, we’ll see whether these signals register on our own equipment. Have you been able to trace where the drones come from?”

Korg grinned again. “We have made every effort to do so, and in fact we have identified several locations from which they might originate. Unfortunately, we can identify nothing at those locations which we can recognize as of intelligent design.”

“Very interesting,” said Phule. “You’d think the beings who made these devices would have a base, even if it was camouflaged. Have you sent ground troops in to investigate the areas where they originate?”

“We have done so, and found nothing,” said Korg. “It is a puzzle, I must confess. But of one thing there is no question: We cannot allow them to usurp our territory unchallenged.”

“Why, sir, have they done you any harm?” asked Beeker.

“None directly,” admitted Korg. “Their signals have created undue noise in our communications, and we fear they can receive our messages. This is why we waited to inform you snout-to-snout of what we are facing.”

“And what is your greatest concern, in a nutshell?” asked Phule.

“It is mostly our worry as to their capabilities and intentions,” said Korg. “No wise race allows a strange beast to sit on the edge of its nest unexamined.”

“Well, we’ll see what we can do for you,” said Phule. Then he added with all the confidence he could muster, “We’ve got the most sophisticated equipment in the Alliance, and some people who can make it do tricks even the designers never thought of. We’ll get to the bottom of it, don’t you worry.”

“Flight Leftenant Qual’s reports have given me great faith in you, Captain,” said Korg, grinning again. “I am sure you will come up with a solution.”

Phule wished he was anywhere near as confident as Korg seemed to be.

8

Journal #537

The curious thing about the Zenobian Empire was that it largely overlapped Alliance territory. The Zenobians had even settled colonies on planets in several systems the Alliance thought of as its own. But the lizardlike aliens preferred an environment that most of the Alliance races found oppressively hot and therefore tended to settle planets closer to the primaries than those settled by other sophonts. Since space travel was normally conducted at light speed, and the two races used entirely different frequencies for communication, there had been no direct contact between the races until one of their ships made an emergency landing on Haskin’s Planet and was discovered by members of my employer’s company.

Now that the Zenobians had declared their intention of working with the predominantly human Alliance, the two species were amazed to learn just how many systems they had inhabited in common without at all interacting, like fish in the depths of a mountain lake and gorgeous flowers on the bank.

One of the biggest surprises was the location of the Zenobians’ home planet.

The knock on the stateroom door was expected. With a sigh, Lola stood up and went to open it. Out in the corridor stood a dark-haired man in ship’s uniform, carrying an electronic notebook. He showed an ID card and said, “Good day, ma’am. I’m investigating an incident overnight. Would you mind answering a few questions?”

“Why, of course not,” said Lola, looking at the card. “Master at arms-that sounds exciting. Was the ship attacked?”

“I could do without that kind of excitement, ma’am,” said the officer with a low chuckle. “Master at arms is just an old-fashioned title for a ship’s security officer. On a ship like this, that’s a part-time job. I earn my keep by being purser, and second engineer in a real pinch.”

“Well, I don’t know whether to be disappointed or not,” said Lola with a flippant gesture. “Space travel is so unromantic. I’ve had more excitement on a hoverbus. What kind of incident are you investigating, Mr...uh, Mr. Hernandez?”

“One of the lifeboats left the ship, and about the only way that could have happened was if there was a person on board. So we’re checking to see if anyone’s missing. I have this cabin listed as a double. You’re Miss Miller, I presume-sharing with a Mr. Reeves?”

“That’s right,” said Lola. She took a seat on the love seat to one side of the small stateroom and crossed her legs. “Ernie’s gone to the lounge for a drink. I expect he’ll be back to change for dinner, say in an hour or so. Did you need to see him now?”

“Not really, ma’am,” said Hernandez. “Right now, we’re getting a quick count of passengers so we can determine who’s missing. Then we’ll know who took the lifeboat.”

“What will you do when you learn that?” asked Lola, leaning forward and toying with a strand of hair. This officer might be an interesting person to get to know better, she thought. After all, the ship’s purser might have access to a fair amount of money.

“I expect we’ll try to attach the hijacker’s assets,” said the officer. “One of these lifeboats costs as much as a small intrasystem space yacht. If you’ve ever priced those, you know it’s no joke. Even if we recover it in one piece, it’ll cost us a fair amount to get it back into service.”

“I can imagine,” she said. “I wonder why anyone would take it. Where would this hijacker be planning to go?”

“His plans don’t matter much, ma’am,” said Hernandez. “Once the boat’s launched, it’s programmed to find the nearest planet that humans could survive on, and land there. There’s no manual override at all. After all, the designers have to assume that it’ll be carrying passengers with no astrogational skills. Trying to land other than by automatics would be sheer suicide.”

“The nearest planet,” mused Lola. “Where would that be, now?”

“When the boat deployed, we were still within the system where Lorelei station’s located, ma’am,” said the officer. “There’s one marginally habitable planet, listed on our charts as HR-63. A hot one, but breathable air and a solid surface. Our fellow will be landing there, probably in two or three weeks’ time, and the boat has sufficient supplies to keep one person alive for a couple of years. I doubt he’ll need them for long, though. We’ve recently learned that the planet is inhabited, and the indigenes have joined the Alliance. We’ll have to go through State, but maybe they can get them to take him into custody until he can be sent back to face charges.”

“Oh, that would be good,” said Lola, trying to sound enthusiastic about it. This was bad news. It meant that she and Ernie would have to take evasive measures, after all. She’d been hoping the boat and the robot would simply disappear into empty space, leaving no clues who had stolen it. On the other hand, it might take a while for the indigenes to turn over the robot, which would give her and Ernie plenty of time to disappear on their own. “What’s this new race I haven’t heard about?” she asked, fluttering her eyelids. If she was going to get this purser to pay attention to her, she had to keep him talking.

“A bunch of miniature dinosaurs,” said Hernandez with a quirky grin. “They call themselves Zenobians.”

“Invisible alien drones, huh? That’s one I ain’t heard before,” said Do-Wop.

“There’s got to be an explanation for it,” said Sushi. “Invisibility doesn’t work, except in specially rigged circumstances. It’s easy to make something hard to find from a certain angle or direction-say, for a magician working on holovision or on a stage. But even when it’s invisible from the audience, somebody watching from backstage or the wings would usually be able to see how it’s done.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” said Phule, who’d called his new base as soon as the conference with Korg was over. “The point is, you two are the champion tricksters in the company, and that means you’re the best I’m likely to get. If there’s any way to make something invisible, you’ll either know it or figure it out. So that’s your job, Figure out how these drones are staying invisible. I’ll bring you the Zenobians’ intercepts of the alien signals. Anything you need in the way of equipment, it’s yours. I want results as soon as you can get ‘em.”

“Sure, Captain, you got it,” said Do-Wop. He rubbed his hands together and said, “Me and Soosh can’t figure it out, it can’t be done.”

“We’ll get an equipment list to Chocolate Harry as soon as we’ve checked out the data,” said Sushi. “Any chance of a look at the Zenobians’ equipment? I could tell a lot more if I knew what its capabilities are.”

“I think we can manage that,” said Phule. “Korg says he’s ordered his military people to cooperate with us, although I doubt they’ll show us any really secret stuff. Anything else?”

“Sure, some dancing girls and a keg of beer, while you’re at it,” said Do-Wop. “Can’t expect us to come up with brainstorms without the necessities.”

Phule smiled. “I’ll remind you that we’re a bit off the usual supply routes for dancing girls; they may take a while to deliver. You can requisition beer through the usual channels.”

“Man, that’s just not the Omega Mob way,” griped Do-Wop. “This outfit does everything first class, don’t ya know?”

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” said Phule, laughing. “If you’ll think back a moment, you just might recall that I’m the one who invented the Omega Mob way. Or have you mercifully blanked the swamps of Haskin’s Planet out of your memory?”

Without batting an eye, Do-Wop pointed out the window to the desolate Zenobian landscape: scraggly brush, sun-baked rocks, arid streambeds, low hills in the distance. He turned back to the communicator pickup and said, “You’re telling me this joint is some kind of improvement, Cap?”

“Sure,” said Phule, deadpan. “Think about it. Back on Haskin’s, you were either up to your boot tops in swamp or sitting in a run-down camp waiting to go back to the swamp. Here, you’ve got the latest state-of-the-art field encampment, and the Zenobians probably won’t let you anywhere near the swamps.”

“It’s still way too much like bein’ in the Legion for my blood,” said Do-Wop. “But I guess I don’t have any selection as far as that.”

“Of course not,” said Phule, leaning closer to the pickup on his end. “You two draw up the list of equipment you’ll need, and get it to Harry ASAP. I want you to drop everything else for this project, understand?”

“You got it, Cap’n,” said Do-Wop, suddenly enthusiastic. He nudged Sushi, then (just to be on the safe side) asked Phule, “This means no regular duty of any kind, right?”

“Consider this your regular duty for now, and give it your full attention,” said Phule. “I’ll expect a preliminary report to be on my desk as soon as I return to camp-the day after tomorrow, if things go according to schedule. Anything else? Good, then go to work.” He cut the connection.

The two partners looked at each other. “Well, you heard the captain,” said Sushi. “Let’s get to work on this job before he decides to give it to somebody else and puts us back to doing real work.”

“Man, I was really hoping for the dancing girls,” said Do-Wop, pretending to sulk.

“Keep that up and you’ll have Sergeant Brandy doing the not-so-soft-shoe on your behind,” said Sushi. He punched his partner playfully in the shoulder and said, “Grab your comp-u-note and start listing stuff we can use.”

“OK, then, first thing we gotta have is the beer,” said Do-Wop. “Gimme enough of that, and I can think of almost anything.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Sushi with a very convincing shudder. The shudder might even have been real.

“Sarge, we got a bone to pick with you.”

Chocolate Harry looked up. He’d been sitting at his makeshift desk, reading Biker’s Dream magazine. There stood half a dozen legionnaires with grim expressions on their faces. Only a veteran could have spotted (as Harry did) the edge of worry behind their determined front.

“Sure, dudes, what’s up?” Harry shifted his bulk on the reinforced camp stool he occupied. Without making any particular deal out of it, he picked up a bayonet and began cleaning his fingernails with the finely honed point. Behind him was the prefabricated shed that was the company’s supply depot here on Zenobia.

“Well, it’s like this,” said Street, who seemed to be the leader of this delegation. “You told everybody we were goin’ to be fightin’ them renegade robots, off on some asteroid-“

“Well, bro, that was the scuttlebutt at the time,” said C. H. “You stay around the Legion long enough, you hear all kinds of stuff, and after a while you get a feel for what you can believe and what you can’t.”

Street’s face took on a puzzled expression. “Man, it was you done told us that.”

Chocolate Harry didn’t look up from his fingernail cleaning. “Was it, now? You sure ‘bout that, Street?”

Street turned to his companions for support, and when he saw them nodding their heads, he turned back to the supply sergeant and said, “Yeah, it was you, all right. You kep’ tellin’ , us ‘bout that asteroid full of renegade robots and how we was gonna need this here robot camo to keep ‘em from zappin’ us. Ain’t that right?”

“What if it is?” asked Harry casually.

“Well, looks to me like this ain’t no freakin’ asteroid,” said Street, sweeping his arm around the horizon in a grand circle. “So we done been skanked, is what I think.”

Chocolate Harry’s broad face took on an expression of profound sympathy. “Skanked? What makes you think that, Street?” He looked around at the others. “I’m surprised at you. Double-X, what’re you doin’ here? Brick, Slayer, you too? And Spartacus-you and me have always been tight.”

“Sarge, you told us we needed that robot camo, and we paid you a pretty stiff price for it,” said Double-X, trying to regain control of the encounter. Like the other legionnaires in the group, he wore several garments made of the purple-splotched fabric Chocolate Harry had represented as robot-proof. “But they sent us to this here world, not that asteroid.”

“Now, you all must have misunderstood me,” said Harry. “I never said we were gonna get sent to that asteroid, did I? I said that’s where the robots was from, that’s all. Now, here we are on a planet with an unknown enemy. Who’s to say it ain’t the renegade robots, huh? How you know it ain’t, Street?”

“Hmmm...” Street scratched his head. “Well, you got me there, Sarge.” He looked around at his companions again, fishing for support.

Chocolate Harry didn’t give the moment of silence a chance to linger. “Now, the thing about a robot is, it’s a machine,” he said. “You can’t fight a robot like you would a regular organic sophont. These Zenobian stun rays, they ain’t worth a nickel ‘gainst a bot, no way.”

“I can see that could be a problem,” said Brick, nodding. She’d experienced the stun ray firsthand and was among the company’s best long-range experts with it. Then she furrowed her brow and said, “But it’s only a problem if the robots show up here. How do we know they’re going to show up, Sarge?”

“Well, that’s where an old legionnaire like me can just feel a few things in his bones,” said Chocolate Harry, leaning back and slipping the bayonet back into its sheath. “These Zenobians, they’ve had the stun ray longer than anybody, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” said Brick. The others nodded, too. It seemed a logical conclusion.

Chocolate Harry spread the fingers of his left hand and began to count off his points as he made them. “So, they call us here. That’s gotta mean they found an enemy they can’t handle, right?”

“Yeah, that must be what it mean,” said Street, a frown of concentration on his face.

“So what kinda enemy can’t they handle with the stun ray?” said Harry, looking at the faces of his audience. “Gotta be robots!” He slapped his hand on his thigh with a loud smack.

“Sarge’s makin’ sense,” said Double-X, almost against his will.

“Damn straight I’m makin’ sense,” said Chocolate Harry, seizing his advantage. “They’ve brought us in here because they have a robot invasion. It’s as plain as the nose on Tusk-anini’s face. The stun ray’s worthless, and it’s the Legion that’s gotta pick up the pieces. And you know who that means.”

He stared around at the ring of now-worried faces, hanging on his every word. “If I was you, I’d be makin’ sure I had plenty of robot camo, and I’d be practicin’ my conventional weapons. ‘Cause when the hammer comes down, you’re the ones gotta stop it. Got it?”

“Sure do, Harry, sure do,” said Street. “Thanks for the tip-off.” He began backing slowly away, and the others followed suit.

“If you need any more camo, you know where to get it,” said Harry, managing somehow to keep a straight face. Nobody took him up on the offer. But he knew they would. All he had to do was wait for his new story to spread. He picked up the biker magazine and began searching for the article he’d been reading.

Journal #540

At the same time as my employer and I were visiting the Zenobian commanders, they had sent a delegation to our camp. Appropriately, it was headed by the Zenobian most familiar with our race and with Omega Company. It did not escape my observation that this state of affairs deprived my employer of his most likely ally in dealing with the aliens. And while my employer claimed to see nothing suspicious in this circumstance, the phrase “exchange of hostages” inevitably came to mind.

“Lieutenant Strong-Arm, it is a pleasure for me to welcome you to Zenobia!” The translator-altered voice startled Lieutenant Armstrong, but he recognized it even before he’d finished turning around to face the speaker.

“Flight Leftenant Qual!” Armstrong allowed himself a broad smile. The little Zenobian had been a military observer with Omega Company, both on Lorelei Station and on Landoor, and after an initial period of distrust, he had become a favorite with the company’s officers and enlisted legionnaires. Now, here he was, stepping out of a hovercar of what must be the local design. Two uniformed companions followed him through the doorway. “Welcome to our camp,” said Armstrong.

“This is a very fine station, Lieutenant.” Flight Leftenant Qual made a sweeping gesture, indicating the entire Omega Company encampment, nodding vigorously. “The resourcefulness of you humans impresses. I am here to provide briefing as to your mission, at the same time as Captain Clown receives it from my superiors.”

“Very good,” said Armstrong, who had already been informed of Qual’s imminent arrival. “Would you like me to show you the camp, or do you need to get to work?”

“I will instruct my subordinates to set up our shelter,” said Qual, indicating a large bundle the other two Zenobians were unloading from the Zenobian hover vehicle, which had landed just outside Omega Company’s perimeter. He turned and gave instructions to his soldiers, who replied in his own language. After a bit, Qual nodded and turned to Armstrong again. “All is preparing. We locate adjacent to our machine, so that attaching to it, we do not depend on your power supply. Now, the time is to provide briefing.”

“OK, Rembrandt’s in command while the captain’s away, so she’ll need to hear this,” said Armstrong. “She may want to bring in the sergeants, too. Let’s go to headquarters and find out.” He led the way to the MBC, with Qual waving to various legionnaires who recognized their old friend.

At headquarters, Rembrandt, Armstrong, and Brandy were waiting: Phule’s major subordinates. Sushi and Do-Wop, who’d been assigned to investigate the invaders’ invisibility, had also come to the briefing.

After a quick round of greetings, Qual came directly to his point. “What I am here for is to find what you need in the way of intelligence to carry out your mission against the Hidden Ones,” he said.

“Hidden Ones?” Sushi’s eyebrows went up a notch. “Oh, I get it-you’re talking about the invaders. The captain’s told us a little about the problem. We’re working on it, although we haven’t had time to get much beyond the basics. What I’d really like to figure out is how these aliens have avoided detection.”

“Yes, manifest accordance,” said Qual. “There is a great military secret there, I am sure, and one that both our forces would doubtless wish to have access to.”

“That’s right,” said Rembrandt. “Do you have any leads yet, Sushi?”

“It’s a stumper,” admitted Sushi. “But as far as theory goes, I can’t see any easy explanation that fits in with accepted science. You shouldn’t be able to change the molecules of a living body so that light can pass through them unaffected-not and keep the body alive.”

“Maybe the theory’s wrong,” said Armstrong, fiddling with a pencil. He was always impatient with abstractions.

“Could be,” said Sushi, shrugging. “But molecular structure’s just one problem. Invisibility flies in the face of half a dozen principles. With all those impossibilities piled on top of one another, maybe the original premise is wrong somehow.”

“Oho, Sushi, I see how you are intending,” said Qual. He opened and closed his mouth, with a very impressive display of fangs. “Nonetheless, I can tell you, we have left nothing to chance. The coordinates of the Hidden Ones’ transmissions were most carefully plotted, and the arrival of our forces was kept masked until the ultimate moment. The site was investigated with thoroughness, and nothing was learned. I can speak with certainty, for I was among the investigators.”

“Well, I’d trust you to spot anything that was there to be spotted,” said Rembrandt. “I can see what Sushi’s getting at, too, but I think we’ve got to assume the Zenobians know what they’re talking about.”

“I’ll take Qual’s word for the observations,” said Sushi. “What I question is the Zenobians’ conclusion. The Alliance uses a lot of camouflage and stealth technology. What’s to say that these invaders don’t have even more advanced stealth technology than our forces?”

“Well, that’s precisely what we’re assuming,” said Rembrandt. “But the Zenobians detected the Hidden Ones’ signals very easily once they found the frequency. That argues that their technology isn’t particularly advanced. Why, any properly stealthed signal is practically indistinguishable from normal background radiation.”

“So it is,” said Qual. “Our inability to locate these Hidden Ones is strong evidence that in one respect, at least, they are more advanced than either of us. It is not a good idea to underestimate them.”

“That’s what I’m worried about, yes,” said Armstrong.

“It’s never a good idea to underestimate somebody who might be invading you.”

“Captain Clown can tell you that we are estimating the Hidden Ones as a big difficulty,” said Qual. “It is clear from their transmissions that they are already on our planet, scouting for suitable sites to establish settlements. But they make no attempt to contact us, do not reply to our signals on their own wavelengths. We must by default conclude that their intentions are hostile.”

“Yeah, I’m afraid that’s the obvious conclusion,” said Rembrandt. “The question that raises is, what are we going to do about it?” She looked around the room, but nobody seemed to have an answer.

“Do you really intend to give that pair of scamps carte blanche to investigate this problem, sir?” Beeker’s disapproval was plain on his face.

“Sure, why not?” Phule looked puzzled. “I’m sure the Zenobians have their experts working on all the conventional ways to solve the problem. We might as well put our money on the unconventional approach. Sushi’s as good on the computer as anybody in the company, and Do-Wop’s got the equivalent of a master’s degree in low cunning. Maybe they’ll crack it-and if they don’t, this’ll keep them out of trouble for a while.”

“You assume that the aliens’ apparent invisibility is the result of some kind of trickery,” said the butler. “What if it is inherent in their very nature?”

“Natural camouflage of some sort?” Phule rubbed his chin. “I suppose it’s possible. There are plenty of species that can blend into the landscape almost undetectably. Although here, we’re talking about electronic surveillance, which is a lot harder to fool than the bare eyeball. Besides, you’d think that a species from another planet would be evolved to match the landscape of its own home world, not one they’ve invaded.”

Beeker steepled his fingertips. “That argument overlooks how similar the environments of life-bearing planets are, sir. The minerals that make up the soil are very much the same here as on the other worlds we’ve been on, although they differ in their proportions. A desert creature from Earth-or from a dozen other worlds-would blend in very well with the dry country we flew over on the way here, I think. I suspect that their swamp creatures will turn out to mimic the color of the local mud.”

“Parallel evolution,” Said Phule, nodding. “Sure, the scientists have found plenty of examples of that. But at the same time, there are always unique qualities to a planet’s style of life. Tusk-anini’s face may look like a warthog, but he’s got opposable thumbs and upright posture-“

“Which I must point out, sir, are parallel to features found in other Earth creatures,” said Beeker, unperturbed.

Phule raised his hand, forefinger in the air. “The Synthians-“

“Yes, sir,” said Beeker, cutting him off. “I am certain we could trade examples and counterexamples all day. That would not prove or disprove my point, which is simply that life adapted to one planet is not automatically out of place on another. Look how many worlds we humans have successfully colonized. My original point, sir, is that Sushi and Do-Wop ought to be reminded to look for solutions that do not depend on advanced stealth technology.

“I’ll trust Do-Wop to check out the low-tech end,” said Phule. “The lower it is, the more likely he is to think of it-“

“Undeniably,” said Beeker. His face remained placid.

After a moment, Phule frowned. “All right, Beek, I know that act,” he said, pointing a finger at his butler. “You think I’m doing something stupid, but you don’t think it’s your place to call me out on it. So you’ll let me fall all over myself doing it, and then pick me up with a smug I-told-you-so expression. Or you’ll pull strings behind my back to make me do what you think I ought to be doing, without knowing it was your idea. Am I right or wrong?”

“I would not put it in quite those terms, sir.”

“I don’t care what terms you want to put it in,” said Phule. “We’re in a different situation; this is a military operation, and more than just saving face could be at issue. If it’s something I need to know, I need to know it before we get into real trouble. So cough it up, Beek.”

Beeker drew himself up straight. “Sir, as I have told you more than once, I have no special expertise-nor special interest, either-in military affairs.”

“I don’t think that’s relevant,” said Phule sharply. “Come on, now. There’s something you’re holding back, and I want to know it.”

Beeker put his hands behind his back and said, “Very well, sir. Is there someplace we can speak in complete privacy?”

“What’s wrong with here?” said Phule, looking around at the apartment the Zenobians had given him for his use during his stay in their capital. Then a light came into his face, and he said, “Aha, I see what you’re getting at. Sure, I think we can find someplace. Let’s take a walk.”

Phule and Beeker walked out the door-ducking their heads, since it had been built for a race just over half normal human height-and headed down the hallway toward the street exit. A Zenobian in uniform-a Mudrover, to judge by its color-was on guard in the hallway. The alien rose to its feet and made a hissing sound; Phule had donned a translator for the purpose, and almost as the Zenobian spoke, he heard a mechanical voice in his ear: “Greetings, Captain! May I be of service?”

“Thank you, no,” said Phule. “My butler and I have decided to get some exercise before our meal. We will walk around on your streets for a while and return here shortly.”

“It may not be safe,” protested the Zenobian. “I must accompany you, to see that you encounter nothing perilous.”

“You are welcome to join us,” said Phule solemnly. He looked at Beeker, raising an eyebrow.

Beeker shrugged. “I suppose this simply confirms what I had suspected. However, there may be a way around the problem.”

“To begin with, I’ll turn off my translator,” said Phule, reaching down to his belt and touching the switch. “Then they’ll have to record and replay our conversation through a translator to get any idea of what we’re talking about.”

“I believe we can expect them to do exactly that,” said Beeker. “However, I think there may be a way to complicate their task.” A little smile came to the corners of his mouth, and he said, “Ow-hay ell-way o-day anslatorstray andle-hay ig-pay atin-lay?”

Journal #542

Conveying my concerns to my employer was a simple matter once we hit upon a proper method for clandestine communication, which, if I properly read the expression on the face of our Zenobian chaperon, the mechanical translator rendered as pure gibberish. The Zenobians would undoubtedly find ways to penetrate the subterfuge, but it would probably take them long enough that my employer and I had a short period, at least, during which we could communicate privately.

And, while my employer did not entirely agree with my assessment of the situation, he did agree that Sushi and Do-Wop needed to take my questions into consideration. For, the moment, unless we got strong evidence that something more than we had so far seen was taking place on Zenobia, that would have to suffice.

However, I had the strong premonition that only with our return to Omega Company would we begin to see the full scope of the problem facing Zenobia and of our role in solving it.

As it happened, I was almost right.

Mahatma had just finished tightening down a few final bolts in the MBC’s windscreen. Stopping to take a breather and glance at the surrounding territory, he noticed a bright object in the sky. From its motion, there was only one thing it could be. He set the wrench he’d been using carefully into its proper niche in the toolbox-Mahatma was very solicitous to treat his tools with proper respect, an attitude he only rarely extended to his military superiors-and hurried off to find someone to tell.

He found Chocolate Harry by the off-ramp of the landing shuttle, taking inventory of supplies. “Sergeant,” said Mahatma, “There is a ship about to land nearby.”

“A ship, huh?” Chocolate Harry looked at Mahatma, then followed the pointing finger to the bright object in the sky, now obviously lower and moving in a way that left its artificial nature unmistakable. “Yeah,” he agreed. “That’s a ship, or I’m full of it.” He pointed to the communicator on Mahatma’s wrist. “How come you didn’t just use that thing, tell Mother to pass the word along?”

“It seemed important to get a corroborative witness,” said Mahatma. “When I approach Sergeant Brandy, she takes on a skeptical expression. While it is good that she is learning to question appearances, it is perhaps better in this case for the company to act in response to the appearance and question its meaning later.”

“Sure,” said Chocolate Harry, although by his expression he was anything but. Nonetheless, he lifted his own wrist and activated the communicator. “Mother, we got a visual sighting of unknown ship approaching from the east, looks like it’s gonna land near the camp. Get word to the officers pronto. ETA, maybe five minutes. Can’t tell whether they’re on our side or not, but I think we better be ready for anything.”

“Got it, oh Large Sarge,” said Mother. There was just a hint of a crackle around the edge of her voice-some kind of local interference, no doubt. “Is there anything out there big enough for you to hide under if they start shooting?”

“You talkin’ to the man with all the guns,” said Harry, but Mother had already cut the connection, presumably to alert the officers. He squinted at the sky again, trying to make out any identifying characteristics of the approaching ship. “Can’t see squat in this light,” he grumbled.

“What should we be doing, Sarge?” said Mahatma.

“What you should be doin’ is the last thing you were told to do, until somebody tells you to do somethin’ else,” said Chocolate Harry.

“That is why I was asking you that question,” said Mahatma, “but you have only answered half of it.”

Chocolate Harry turned and frowned at him. The massive black sergeant’s frown was rumored to have the power to dent heavy armor at short range, but Mahatma stood his ground, a beatific smile in place. After a moment, Harry shrugged. “Hell, I guess the same applies to me as to you. Until somebody tells me to do somethin’ else, I got supplies to inventory. As for you-“

Whatever he was about to say was drowned out by the alarms on both their wrist communicators buzzing at once. “General alert!” came Mother’s voice. “Unidentified intruder approaching base. All personnel report to battle stations. Repeat, all personnel to battle stations. This is not a drill.”

“O-kay, you heard the lady,” said Chocolate Harry. “Let’s get it on!” He dropped his clipboard next to the pallet of battery packs he’d been checking in and headed off at a surprisingly quick pace, considering his bulk.

“That is a curious expression,” said Mahatma, but the supply sergeant was already out of earshot. Deprived of an audience, Mahatma turned and headed toward his assigned position. There would be someone-probably Brandy-there to answer his questions, he knew.

And maybe, at last, he’d find out whether all the training he’d been questioning since his first day in the Legion made some kind of sense, after all.

That was a lot faster than I’d have expected, thought Brandy, impressed in spite of herself. The months of drill seemed to have paid off, even when the company found itself in a completely new situation where the assignments and stations weren’t already second nature, the way they ought to be in a real emergency.

Brandy smiled as she checked the disposition of her troops. Oh, there’d been enough screwups-everybody knew there’d be screwups. There was always going to be somebody in the latrine or the shower or otherwise less than prepared to have the whistle blow right now. Brick and Street were going to have people making wisecracks about their simultaneous arrival at their stations, both more than half out of uniform, for weeks to come. And Super-Gnat had taken a pratfall that might have been grounds for medical evacuation if Tusk-anini hadn’t nudged her just enough for her head to miss a heavy structural beam. But everybody was in place, more or less ready for action, and now all they had to do was wait and see if there was going to be any action. Easier said than done.

The unidentified ship was definitely on course to land at their encampment; nobody doubted that now. Mother had been trying to hail it for several minutes, but the local interference was noticeably stronger. Maybe their signals had gotten through, and maybe not. Transponder signals indicated that the intruder was an Alliance transport of a standard model, although a clever enemy could fake that very easily. The best policy was to be ready for trouble. Brandy just hoped they were ready for the right kind of trouble. As to whether they could handle it-well, that was what they were paying her for, wasn’t it?

The ship swooped lower, losing speed now. Brandy knew there would be weapons trained on it, in case of hostile action on its part; but if the transponder readings were correct, this model wasn’t likely to be armed-or armored, either. That didn’t rule out jury-rigged weaponry or a faked signal. She lifted her wrist and spoke into the communicator. “Any word from that ship, Mother?”

“Nothing, Brandy,” said Comm Central. “Either there’s too much interference, or they’re up to no good.”

Another voice crackled out of the loudspeaker: Lieutenant Rembrandt, acting as CO in Captain Jester’s absence. “Brandy, are your people in position?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Brandy. “All present and accounted for. Say the word, and we can blow that ship to atoms.”

“I hope I don’t have to say that word,” said Rembrandt. Her voice was calm, but Brandy thought she detected an edge to it. There had to be some emotion at the prospect of facing combat after all their time in the Legion. Every legionnaire expected this moment, trained for it, knew it could come at any time. It was still an unsettling feeling, standing in a defensive perimeter, waiting to see if the hammer was about to fall.

“Ship’s landing,” said somebody in the defensive line ahead of Brandy. Sure enough, it had lost more speed and was descending steadily, under power but committed to a touchdown. Now was the point at which it could most easily be destroyed. Once it was down, almost anything could happen. Brandy wished it would identify itself. Failing that, all she could do was wait for word from Rembrandt-or outright hostile action by the ship. If it came to that, it might be too late to do anything useful. She clenched her jaw. The ship continued its descent.

“Still no response from the ship,” came Rembrandt’s voice from the wrist communicator. “Maybe their equipment’s just on the blink, or maybe it means something. We aren’t going to take any chances, Brandy. Anything that looks like an attack, don’t wait for word from me to defend yourselves. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am, “ said Brandy. She turned and shouted to her squad, “All right, you bleepers. Get a bead on the exits from that ship the second it touches down, and be ready to take out anything you see moving. Nobody fires until I give the word, but everybody better have a target when I do give it.”

“Sergeant?” said Mahatma’s voice, not far away. “I have a question.”

“This isn’t the time for questions,” roared Brandy. “Get in your position and pick a target. And be ready for my signal. Do it now!”

The nervous tension along the line went up perceptibly. Out in the open, less than half a kilometer away, the ship was settling down, kicking up a cloud of dust. Brandy growled. The dust would make it harder to see what was going on. She hoped there wasn’t anybody aboard that ship planning to take advantage of that momentary cover. “Hold steady,” she muttered into her communicator. The ship was definitely on the ground now.

Through the cloud of dust she could make out a hatchway beginning to open. She lifted her stereoculars to her eyes, trying to make out more detail. This hatchway could be a decoy, with the main force unloading on the far side of the ship. Was there movement inside the ship? She fiddled with the resolution, trying to cut through the dust.

Something was coming out the hatchway, down the ramp that had deployed beneath it. Something dark, and mansized. “Brick, Slayer, Mahatma, take a bead on that hatchway,” she ordered-those were the squad’s best marksmen. “The rest of you, keep an eye out for anything coming from behind the ship.”

The figure exiting the ship was now all the way on the ground and moving steadily toward the Legion camp. Another figure, also clad in black, emerged from the hatchway behind it. “Keep a steady bead, but hold your fire,” said Brandy.

Now the dust had settled enough for her to make out the figures more clearly. “What the hell?” she said. “Hold your fire, people; those are Legion uniforms.” What Legion officer-she had no doubt these were officers, to justify a special ship to bring them here-would be coming here? She waited as the two men came closer. Steadily they marched toward the camp, the smaller figure behind carrying a couple of briefcases and a computer bag. Behind them, a robot baggage handling cart was emerging from the open hatchway, piled high with luggage.

Straight ahead came the two Legion officers. At last, perhaps a dozen paces from the perimeter, the lead figure stopped and looked at the startled Omega Company defenders. “Well, it looks like a Legion base,” said a high-pitched, whining voice. After a suspenseful pause, it added, with a definite snarl, “Enough to fool a civilian, maybe,” and started forward again.

Brandy still didn’t know who she was looking at, but she stood up and said, “Halt and identify yourself.”

The lead figure didn’t even slow down. Instead, it said, “Major Botchup, Commanding Officer, Omega Company, Space Legion.” It kept on coming.

“Commanding officer?” Brandy’s jaw fell. “Sir, the CO of Omega Company is Captain Jester.”

“Was Captain Jester,” said Major Botchup. He was now close enough that Brandy could make out his sneering face. He was surprisingly young, she thought. He looked up and down the line and made a sour face. “You clowns have had your little picnic long enough. I’m your new CO, by orders of General Blitzkrieg, and things are by God about to change around here!”