But some things could not be done simply by throwing money at them, and this turned out to be particularly true of the military aspect of our assignments. Like it or not, a decent system for the distant detection and identification of incoming spacecraft-something most real planets take for granted-was sadly lacking on Zenobia. And, to my employer’s chagrin, neither the Legion commanders nor the Zenobian military seemed to think a single Legion company really needed one.
This was to have consequences.
“The major wants me?” Lieutenant Snipe looked up from the bed where he’d been hiding for several hours, covers over his head, until Major Botchup had sent a legionnaire to find out where his aide-de-camp had disappeared to. It was probably mere chance that the major hadn’t sent one of the legionnaires who’d remade their faces “in the image of the King,” as his followers called it. But it was definitely the right choice. If Snipe had looked up and seen that face again…
“Yes, sir,” said the legionnaire, Koko, one of the crop of recruits who’d joined the company on Lorelei, a gawky but very polite farm boy from an agrarian community on the planet Roosha. “He says it’s very important.”
“Everything the major wants is important to him,” said Snipe. The lieutenant’s attitude toward his commanding officer was somewhat less adulatory than it had been at the beginning of the day. “Let me just wash up and straighten my uniform, and I’ll be right there.”
Despite his sour mood, Snipe took less than five minutes to freshen up, and shortly thereafter he followed Koko into Major Botchup’s office and saluted. “Lieutenant Snipe reporting, sir!”