The place was all fixed up. Private Hartz was there grinning at me. His right arm was in an enormous cast, bound to his chest with what seemed like a mile of gauze.
“How did you get out before I did?” I asked him.
“No infection, zur. I poured brandy on the wounds.” He winced. “It was a waste, but there was more than enough for the few of us left.”
There was another surprise. Irina Swale came out of my bedroom.
“Miss Swale has been kind enough to help with the work here, zur,” Hartz said. He seemed embarrassed. “She insisted, zur. If the lieutenant will excuse me, I have laundry to pick up, zur.”
I grinned at him and he left. Now what? I wondered. “Thanks.”
“It’s the least I could do for Arrarat’s biggest hero,” Irina said.
“Hero? Nonsense—”
“I suppose it’s nonsense that my father is giving you the military medal, and that Colonel Harrington has put in for something else; I forget what, but it can’t be approved here—it has to come from Sector Headquarters.”
“News to me,” I said. “And I still don’t think—”
“You don’t have to. Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down? Would you like something to drink? We have everything here. Private Hartz is terribly efficient.”
“So are you. I’m not doing well, am I? Please have a seat. I’d get you a drink, but I don’t know where anything is.”
“And you couldn’t handle the bottles, anyway. I’ll get it.” She went into the other room and came out with two glasses. Brandy for me and that Jericho wine she liked. Hartz at work, I thought. I’ll be drinking that damned brandy the rest of my life.
“It was pretty bad, wasn’t it?” she said. She sat on the couch that had appeared while I was gone.
“Bad enough.” Out of my original ninety, there were only twelve who hadn’t been wounded. Twenty-eight dead, and another dozen who wouldn’t be back on duty for a long time. “But we held.” I shook my head. “Not bragging, Irina. Amazed, mostly. We held.”
“I’ve been wondering about something,” she said. “I asked Louis Bonneyman, and he wouldn’t answer me. Why did you have to hold the fort? It was much the hardest part of the campaign, wasn’t it? Why didn’t Captain Falkenberg do it?”
“Had other things to do, I suppose. They haven’t let me off drugs long enough to learn anything over in sick bay. What’s happening out there?”
“It went splendidly,” she said. “The Harmony militia are in control of the whole river. The boats are running again, grain prices have fallen here in the city—”
“You don’t sound too happy.”
“Is it that obvious?” She sat quietly for a moment. She seemed to be trying to control her face. Her lips were trembling. “My father says you’ve accomplished your mission. He won’t let Colonel Harrington send you out to help the other farmers. And the River Pack weren’t the worst of the convict governments! In a lot of ways they weren’t even so bad. I thought . . . I’d hoped you could go south, to the farmlands, where things are really bad, but Hugo has negotiated a steady supply of grain and he says it’s none of our business.”
“You’re certainly anxious to get us killed.”
She looked at me furiously. Then she saw my grin. “By the way,” she said, “you’re expected at the palace for dinner tonight. I’ve already cleared it with the surgeon. And this time I expect you to come! All those plans for my big party, and it was nothing but a trick your Captain Falkenberg had planned! You will come, won’t you? Please?”
* * *
We ate alone. Governor Swale was out in the newly taken territory trying to set up a government that would last. Irina’s mother had left him years before, and her only brother was a Navy officer somewhere in Pleiades Sector.
After dinner I did what she probably expected me to. I kissed her, then held her close to me and hoped to go to something a bit more intimate. She pushed me away. “Hal, please.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I like you, Hal. It’s just that—”
“Deane Knowles,” I said.
She gave me a puzzled look. “No, of course not. But . . . I do like your friend Louis. Can’t we be friends, Hal? Do we have to—”
“Of course we can be friends.”
I saw a lot of her in the next three weeks. Friends. I found myself thinking about her when I wasn’t with her, and I didn’t like that. The whole thing’s silly, I told myself. Junior officers have no business getting involved with Governors’ daughters. Nothing can come of it, and you don’t want anything to come of it to begin with. Your life’s complicated enough as it is.
I kept telling myself that right up to the day the surgeon told me I could rejoin my outfit. I was glad to go.
* * *
It was still my company. I hadn’t been with most of them at all, and I’d been with the team at the fort only a few days, but A Company was mine. Every man in the outfit thought so. I wondered what I’d done right. It didn’t seem to me that I’d made any good decisions, or really any at all.
“Luck,” Deane told me. “They think you’re lucky.”
That explained it. Line Marines are probably the most superstitious soldiers in history. And we’d certainly had plenty of luck.
I spent the next six weeks honing the troops into shape. By that time Ardwain was back, with Centurion’s badges. He was posted for light duty only, but that didn’t stop him from working the troops until they were ready to drop. We had more recruits, recently arrived convicts, probably men who’d been part of the River Pack at one time. It didn’t matter. The Marine Machine takes over, and if it doesn’t break you, you come out a Marine.
Falkenberg had a simple solution to the problem of deserters. He offered a reward, no questions asked, to anyone who brought in a deserter—and a larger reward for anyone bringing in the deserter’s head. It wasn’t an original idea, but it was effective.
Or had been effective. As more weeks went by with nothing to do but make patrols along the river, drill and train, stand formal retreat and parades and inspections, men began to think of running.
They also went berserk. They’d get drunk and shoot a comrade. Steal. We couldn’t drill them forever, and when we gave them any time off, they’d get the bug.
The day the main body had reached Fort Beersheba, the 501st had been combat-weary, with a quarter of its men on the casualty list. It was an exhausted battalion, but it had high spirits. Now, a few months later, it was up to strength, trained to perfection, well-organized and well-fed—and unhappy.
I found a trooper painting I.H.T.F.P. on the orderly room wall. He dropped the paint bucket and stood to attention as I came up.
“And what does that mean, Hora?”
He stood straight as a ramrod. “Sir, it means ‘I Have Truly Found Paradise.'”
“And what’s going to happen to you if Sergeant Major truly finds Private Hora painting on the orderly room wall?”
“Cells, Lieutenant.”
“If you’re lucky. More likely you’ll get to dig a hole and live in it a week. Hora, I’m going to the club for a drink. I don’t expect to see any paint on that wall when I come back.”
Deane laughed when I told him about it. “So they’re doing that already. ‘I hate this fucking place.’ He means it, too.”
“Give us another six weeks and I’ll be painting walls,” I said. “Only I’ll put mine on the Governor’s palace.”
“You’ll have to wait your turn,” Deane said.
“Goddamn it, Deane, what can we do? The NCOs have gotten so rough I think I’ll have to start noticing it, but if we relax discipline at all, things will really come apart.”
“Yeah. Have you spoken to Falkenberg about it?”
“Sure I have,” I told him. “But what can he do? What we need is some combat, Deane. I never thought I’d say that. I thought that was all garbage that they gave us at the Academy, that business about le cafard and losing more men to it than to an enemy, but I believe it now.”
“Cheer up,” Deane said. “Louis is officer of the day, and I just heard the word from him. We’ve got a break in the routine. Tomorrow Governor Hugo Swale, Hisself, is coming to pay a visit to the gallant troops of the 501st. He’s bringing your medal, I make no doubt.”
“How truly good,” I said. “I’d rather he brought us a good war.”
“Give him time,” Deane said. “The way those damned merchants from Harmony are squeezing the farmers, they’re all ready to revolt.”