“Do you really think so, sir?” said Armstrong, surprised. “I know you think I’m a bit inflexible sometimes, but with a new CO on board, this hardly seems the time to slack off-“
“No time better, Lieutenant,” said Phule. “Here we are jawing at each other, when you could be out winning yourself a fortune. And I need to get that shower.”
“A fortune?” Armstrong frowned. “Well, perhaps I haven’t paid as much attention to my investments…not that this seems quite the proper time for that…Besides, we need to get you ready to meet the new CO as soon as possible.”
But even as he spoke, Phule clapped him on the back and winked at him. Then the captain turned and headed back toward the center of the camp, leaving Armstrong to puzzle over what he’d meant. Since Armstrong had been trying, without notable success, to figure out his captain ever since Phule had first arrived at Omega Company, Phule’s words set off no alarm bells in his head.
The fact that they didn’t goes a long way to explain why, after three years in the Legion, Armstrong had risen to no higher rank than Lieutenant.
“We’ve got some kind of signal,” said Sushi. His gaze was fixed on the primitive instrument sitting atop the makeshift desk in the room he shared with Do-Wop.
“Y’know, that’s about the tenth time you’ve said that,” said Do-Wop, looking up from the handheld action game he was playing. “Last about nine times, what you got when it was all over was nothin’. Flat-out, I mean, nothin’. And that’s just with this gizmo-what is it, the third different one you’ve built?”