Ranks of Bronze

A tunic with a narrow red border flopped from the ceiling, making both parties jump and then relaxing the atmosphere.

"Naw, I'm the Pilot," said the blue figure, bending to pick up the tunic and toss it to Vibulenus. It was not an act of friendship, exactly, but at least a form of accommodation. "He gets the walk-ins, I drive the meatwagon and fetch home the ones like you."

He looked at the tribune and sucked in his lips to express wonderment. "Don't believe I ever brought in anybody like you exactly, though. Just look at yourself."

"You guide the blue turtle that chooses the dead?" Vibulenus asked. All his muscles were drawn tight as he pretended to concentrate on dressing. At least the linen garment would cover some of the terrible stain on his new flesh.

"Sure," said the Pilot. "The recovery vehicle, the meatwagon. This your first time back in it, fella?"

"I suppose so," Vibulenus said. That was as close as he could come at this moment to acknowledging what had just happened to him.

He shook himself and straightened, back proud and jaw thrust out. He was Gaius Vibulenus Caper, notwithstanding anything that might have happened to him in the immediate past. "These others, then," he said with an imperious sweep toward the convexities in the wall. The opening through which he had stepped was now a sideways dome, though there had been no sound or motion behind him. "They're more of us- soldiers-being, that is… cured?"

"Would be if you hadn't been the last," the Pilot agreed. "Depends some on just what we're talkin' about, you know-clean cut or a smash, how many wounds and how long before pickup. With you-" he paused and sucked in his lips again. "Well, you know, fella, you were pretty near the bottom of the prognosis list on all counts. Took damn near a day to dig you out after the wagon located you. Bloody lucky, you are."

"Yes, I see," said Vibulenus' mouth alone, because his mind was busy filing data without looking at it. Now just now.

"All right, fella," said the Pilot. "We're go

A section of floor rotated a quarter turn and opened onto a helical ramp downward. The ramp's slope looked too steep for a walking man, but Vibulenus had learned long since that angles and dimensions on the vessel were not always what they seemed.

"You must be very skillful," said the tribune as his foot poised above the ramp.

The Pilot met his eyes for a moment. Then they slipped away. Without any further attempt to retrieve the facade of superiority, the blue figure said, "Skill? Are you kidding? I can juggle five balls in the air, d'ye know? That takes a lot more skill than watching a console to see that the hardware's doing its job."

"Which," he concluded bitterly, "it always is."

"But…" Vibulenus said. The questions in his mind were too confused to articulate, but by drawing his right index finger the length of his left arm-hairless and colored Pompeian red-he communicated everything he needed to get out.

"Look, fella," the Pilot said with a sneer intended more generally than for the Roman who was its immediate target, "you couldn't whack off somebody's head with your bare hand, but you use a sword and it's no sweat, right?"

Vibulenus lifted an eyebrow in agreement, though his arm ached with the remembered effort of swinging his sword. Heads didn't just fall off, and an armored enemy was no mere log to be hacked at until he fell. "Go on," he said, waiting for understanding to come.

"Well," the Pilot continued, "live cargo like you could never handle it, but just about anybody from a Class One planet-anybody who could feed himself-can run the medical repair station, or the ship. Blazes, me'n the Medic 'r crosstrained so if I croak in the middle of a Transit, that don't matter shit't' the guild except they don't worry about a pension. We don't get longevity treatments like you valuable cargo do."

"I see," said Vibulenus, who was begi

He had been correct about the ramp. It felt like a level surface as he walked down it, though he slitted his eyes to avoid disorientation from the room he was leaving.

When Gaius Vibulenus stepped out of wall into the corridor beside the baths, there were over twenty soldiers nearby. He knew most of them at least by sight, now, and Decimus Pacuvius Semo-another tribune- almost walked into him.

"Gaius-"Semo began as both men threw their hands up a fraction of a second after they had stopped short of one another.

Semo's tunic bore the broad stripe of a senatorial family. He had been the legion's ranking tribune in Parthia, and in a way he still was-though here it only meant that he and Falco were the Romans usually in the Commander's entourage rather than roving among the line troops.

For all his heredity, Semo remained a plump, pleasant fellow who looked and acted more like a well-bred freedman than a mover and shaker of the Empire. The two men had always gotten along well together; it was without hesitation that Vibulenus said, "Decimus, do you chance to know where the centurion I was, you know, in the gallery with-"

"I have to…"the other tribune blurted. Returned on his heel and strode away from Vibulenus with his legs moving more crisply than they had ever managed during training.

Vibulenus blinked, looking at the man almost ru

Everyone knew he was dead; they could not look at him and doubt it. Men were shying from him with the wordless distaste with which they would have stepped around a pile of feces in the roadway.

Vibulenus swayed for a moment. Physically, he was as weak as if he were between bouts of relapsing fever. The mental control that kept him upright lapsed. If he looked around him, he saw the faces of those who refused to see him; if he closed his eyes, he would fall as he might fall in any event.

On the corridor ceiling ambled beads of light, cool and pure and non-judgmental as they guided Romans. "Direct me to the centurion Gnaeus Clodius Afer," the tribune demanded so loudly that several men glanced at him in surprise.

"He is in the Recreation Room," said the ship in the Commander's voice-or perhaps the Commander spoke only through the vessel. "Please follow the-" a pause "-yellow dot," which popped into existence so sharply demarcated that the tribune's ears supplied an accompanying chime which did not really occur.

Head high, back straight, Gaius Vibulenus strode off to find the man he hoped was still his friend.

The chance that brought Clodius out the portal of the Recreation Room was so unexpected that he recognized Vibulenus instead of the other way around. Of course, the tribune had been walking in open-eyed blankness in order not to take any details of expression on the faces of those with whom he shared the corridors.

The centurion was in animated conversation with two of the legionaries who had been in the assault force, Pompilius Niger and a file-closer named Helvius. He raised both his hands in a gesture, looked past them, and said, "W-Gaius! By Castor, you did fuckin' make it!"

The cry shocked Vibulenus and the two other legionaries. Helvius looked up and muttered a curse, while Niger only froze.

"I was…" said Vibulenus.

Clodius caught his companions, one in either hand, and rasped in an undertone through his broad grin, "He saved your butts, boys." He stepped toward the tribune. When Helvius tried to resist the pull, his biceps went white at the fringes of the centurion's ferocious grip on his arm.