Tattoo sounded as I entered the fort. The trumpets and drums sounded through the night, martial and complex and the notes were sweet. Sentries saluted as I passed. Life here was orderly and there was no need to think.
Hartz had left a full bottle of brandy where I could find it. It was his theory that the reason I wasn’t healing fast was that I didn’t drink enough. The surgeons didn’t share his opinion. They were chopping away at me, then using the regeneration stimulators to make me grow better parts. It was a painful process, and they didn’t think liquor helped it much.
To hell with them, I thought, and poured a double. I hadn’t finished it when Kathryn came in.
“Irina said—Hal, you shouldn’t be drinking.”
“I doubt that Irina said that.”
“You know—what’s the matter with you, Hal?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
“I was going to. Later. But there never was a right time.”
“And it’s all true? Your friends are driving the families of everyone who cooperated with the Association out into the hills? And they’ve shot all the prisoners?”
“It’s—yes. It’s true.”
“Why didn’t you stop them?”
“Should I have wanted to?” She looked at the scars on her hands. “Should I?”
There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” I said.
It was Falkenberg. “Thought you were alone,” he said.
“Come in. I’m confused.”
“I expect you are. Got any more of that brandy?”
“Sure. What did you mean by that?”
“I understand you’ve just learned what’s happening out in the Allan Valley.”
“Crapdoodle! Has Irina been talking to everyone in Garrison? I don’t need a convention of people to cheer me up.”
“You don’t eh?” He made no move to leave. “Spit it out, Mister.”
“You don’t call Captains ‘Mister.'”
He grinned. “No. Sorry. What’s the problem, Hal? Finding out that things aren’t as simple as you’d like them to be?”
“John, what the hell were we fighting for out there? What good do we do?”
He stretched a long arm toward the brandy bottle and poured for both of us. “We threw a gang of criminals out. Do you doubt that’s what they were? Do you insist that the people we helped be saints?”
“But the women. And children. What will happen to them? And the Governor’s right—something’s got to be done for the convicts. Poor bastards are sent here, and we can’t just drown them.”
“There’s land to the west,” Kathryn said. “They can have that. My grandfather had to start from the beginning. Why can’t the new arrivals?”
“The Governor’s right about a lot of things,” Falkenberg said. “Industry’s got to come to Arrarat someday. Should it come just to make the Bronson family rich? At the expense of a bunch of farmers who bought their land with one hell of a lot of hard work and blood? Hal, if you’re having second thoughts about the action here on Arrarat, what’ll you do when the Fleet’s ordered to do something completely raw?”
“I don’t know. That’s what bothers me.”
“You asked what good we do,” Falkenberg said. “We buy time. Back on Earth they’re ready to start a war that won’t end until billions are dead. The Fleet’s the only thing preventing that. The only thing, Hal. Be as cynical about the CoDominium as you like. Be contemptuous of Grand Senator Bronson and his friends—yes, and most of his enemies, too, damn it. But remember that the Fleet keeps the peace, and as long as we do, Earth still lives. If the price of that is getting our hands dirty out here on the frontiers, then it’s a price we have to pay. And while we’re paying it, just once in a while we do something right. I think we did that here. For all that they’ve been vicious enough now that the battle’s over, Wan Loo and his people aren’t evil. I’d rather trust the future to them than to people who’d do . . . that.” He took Kathryn’s hand and turned it over in his. “We can’t make things perfect, Hal. But we can damned sure end some of the worst things people do to each other. If that’s not enough, we have our own honor, even if our masters have none. The Fleet is our country, Hal, and it’s an honorable fatherland.” Then he laughed and drained his glass. “Talking’s dry work. Pipe Major’s learned three new tunes. Come and hear them. You deserve a night in the club, and the drinks are on the battalion. You’ve friends here, and you’ve not seen much of them.”
He stood, the half smile still on his lips. “Good evening, Hal. Kathryn.”
“You’re going with him, aren’t you?” Kathryn said when he’d closed the door.
“You know I don’t care all that much for bagpipes—”
“Don’t be flippant with me. He’s offered you a place with his new regiment, and you’re going to take it.”
“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it—”
“I know. I didn’t before, but I do now. I watched you while he was talking. You’re going.”
“I guess I am. Will you come with me?”
“If you’ll have me, yes. I can’t go back to the ranch. I’ll have to sell it. I couldn’t ever live there now. I’m not the same girl I was when this started.”
“I’ll always have doubts,” I said. “I’ll need—” I couldn’t finish the thought, but I didn’t have to. She came to me, and she wasn’t trembling at all, not the way she’d been before, anyway. I held her for a long time.
“We should go now,” she said finally. “They’ll be expecting you.”
“But—”
“We’ve plenty of time, Hal. A long time.”
As we left the room, Last Post sounded across the fort.
Command is the comprehensive responsibility of a soldier assigned a military mission by the sovereign authority and given the human and material means he needs to accomplish it. It is also the sole instrument of his authority to use and expend at his own discretion any or all elements of the means at his disposal
Command must wield authority to an absolute degree within the scope of its charge. It brings into being a complex of forces emanating from a focal point that keeps a number of complexes of force integrated and the manifold power of the whole directed to the desired end. It is both the binding and the driving force of every military endeavor. It has no substitute. It is not divisible in parts. No possible arrangement of organized effort that lacks it can be called military nor be of any martial value.
Every soul in his earliest stages of untutored awareness feels that the center of the universe resides within himself. To learn that we exist and move for the most part in orbits, rather than preside at the focal point of even a minor cosmic system is a painful and difficult process for most of us . . .
Joseph Maxwell Cameron
The Anatomy of Military Merit
“Shuttle landing in twenty-six minutes, sir.” Centurion Calvin’s tone was flat and unemotional, but he couldn’t keep a questioning edge from his voice. “Pilot says a Rear Admiral is aboard.”
Acting Colonel John Christian Falkenberg nodded. “Turn out a guard to render proper honors. I’ll meet him myself.”
“Sir.” It was clear that Calvin wanted to know more, and that he might have asked if there hadn’t been others in the Colonel’s office. Instead he stiffened to attention and saluted, got a return, and turned on his heel to stride from the office.
“A Rear Admiral,” Captain Harlan Slater said. “You didn’t seem surprised, sir.”
“It’s Lermontov and I’ve been expecting him, Hal,” Falkenberg said.
“The devil you have.” Captain Jeremy Savage was incredulous. Despite years in the Line Marines he still spoke with the crisp accents of his native Churchill. “How long has he been in this sector?” Savage looked thoughtful, and said aloud but mostly to himself, “Long enough.” He gave Falkenberg a knowing look. “I take it he’s sector commander, then?”
Falkenberg nodded. “As you surmise.”
Slater looked puzzled. “All right, I give up, what’s the big secret here?”
Jeremy Savage smiled thinly. “A newly commissioned major arrives on Kennicott. A bit more than a year later, after a spectacularly successful campaign in which the regimental colonel is killed, that major is now acting colonel of the regiment. Not major in command waiting for a new colonel, Hal, but Acting Colonel, entitled to the rank and pay unless it’s rescinded. That kind of appointment can only come from the sector commander, and since that kind of patronage isn’t accidental, I have already asked myself who might bestow such an appointment to John Christian Falkenberg.” He shrugged. “Now a name comes to mind, and I hear that he’s on his way down to this planet . . .”
Falkenberg cut the conversation short by standing. “And he’ll be here shortly. We don’t want to be late meeting him. Gentlemen?”