Phule Me Twice

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 legio

"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 legio

"Sure, Sarge," said Rev with a little grin that made it clear that he didn't think the difference was important. A couple of legio

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 legio

"You aren't go

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.

Chapter 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 a

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 i