“Chocolate Harry right,” said Tusk-anini, and he folded his arms, adding his stare to Chocolate Harry’s. After a moment, Snipe blinked. He stood up hastily and made a rapid exit from Comm Central. Nobody watching had any doubt where he was going, but nobody bothered to stop him. The only question was whether he and the major had any way to stop them.
“Hey, Brandy, is this a drill or not?” said one of the legionnaires in the trenches looking out into the night. “I got a nice soft bunk back in the air-conditioning, if we ain’t doin’ anything in particular out here.”
“You think I’m out here trying to get a date?” said Brandy. “All I know is, if this ain’t a drill, some nasty BEM’s likely to hear you jawin’ and put a laser hole through your butt. And if the BEM don’t do it, you got a top sergeant right here that’ll kick it halfway back to Lorelei. Either way, you lose. So maybe you ought to act like it’s the real thing and keep your mouth shut.”
“Aw, gimme a break, Brandy,” said the legionnaire, but he kept his voice low and his eyes toward the desert beyond the perimeter. If anything was happening out there, it was too subtle to be visible, even with the help of night vision goggles. But Brandy wasn’t in the habit of issuing idle threats, and if she wanted the troops to treat the situation as a genuine emergency, that was what she’d get.
After an indeterminate length of time, Brandy’s wrist communicator buzzed. She sighed and reached out to touch the miniature control that would let her hear the incoming message, undoubtedly the recall signal, ending tonight’s drill. Another pointless exercise. That seemed to be Major Botchup’s stock in trade. At least Captain Jester’s exercises usually had some objective she could understand. It wasn’t until she realized that she had also heard the buzz from all the other communicators within earshot that she began to wonder whether this might be something other than an ordinary drill, after all.