by David Weber
"As I say, I don't think anyone has any intention of of letting matters rest where they are right now. When the Emperor himself demands answers, people try very hard to come up with them, and His Majesty really, really wants those answers in this case."
He paused again, as if inviting Alicia to ask any additional questions which had occurred to her. She didn't have any, however. Or, rather, she had a great many of them, but it was obvious from what he'd already told her that no one had the hard data to answer them for her, anyway.
"At any rate," Keita said after a few moments, "that's what we know-and don't know-about what happened. It's not the only thing I wanted to discuss with you, however."
"It isn't?" Alicia asked just a bit cautiously when he paused yet again.
"I'm not planning on springing any nasty surprises on you, Alley," he told her with a smile. "The thing is, there aren't that many holders of the Banner of Terra, as I'm sure you realized, growing up with a grandfather who already had it. Did the Sergeant Major ever discuss with you why he never accepted a commission?"
"He said, Sir," Alicia replied with a small smile of her own, "that he was a 'working stiff' who preferred being in a position to get his hands dirty to getting stuck in a management position. Personally, I've always suspected that he just loves what he does right now too much to give it up."
"I'm sure you're right. But I think, perhaps, I failed to phrase my question correctly. What I meant was did your grandfather ever discuss with you how he avoided accepting commission?"
"Well, no, Sir. Not in so many words, anyway. I just always put it down to the fact that he knows everyone in the Corps-most of them by first name-and that he knew how to work the system too well for anyone to push him into a commission if he didn't want one."
"Having met your grandfather, there's probably something to that," Keita allowed with a slight chuckle. "However, trust me, it isn't easy for someone who's managed to win the Banner to avoid getting turned into an officer. In fact, a commission-or, at least, the offer of one-usually goes with it. In your case, the Cadre -" he meant himself, Alicia knew perfectly well, although he would never come right out and admit it "-had already decided you'd earned a battlefield promotion before the Emperor decided to award the Banner. But there's always a lot of pressure to get anyone who's won it commissioned, because you don't pick up the Banner if you're not exactly what we're looking for in an officer."
Alicia felt her cheeks heat very slightly, but she kept her expression only politely attentive, and Keita suppressed a grin.
"The problem is that you can't really twist the arm of someone who holds the Empire's highest award for valor. In your grandfather's case, I strongly suspect that he used the Banner as a club to beat off any threat of a commission. In your case, obviously, that's not happening-of course, you were a lot younger and more innocent when you won it than he was."
This time the grin broke free, at least partly, and Alicia smiled back at him. Then he sobered slightly.
"What I'm trying to say, Alley, is that your commission came before the Banner was ever awarded. Now that you've received it, though, the tradition is that you get to pick-within reason, of course-where you go next."
He made an inviting gesture, and Alicia frowned.
"I appreciate that, Sir," she said finally. "But I'm not sure where I want to go. Except -"
She paused, obviously hesitating, and Keita cocked his head to one side.
"Spit it out, Alley," he said. "At the moment, you've got pretty much a blank check for anything you want to ask."
"Well, in that case, Sir," she said quickly, almost as if she was pushing herself to get it out quickly, "I've heard that the Company is going to be disbanded. Is that true?"
"Where did you hear that?" Keita asked.
"I'd rather not say, Sir. But, is it true?" She stared at him appealingly.
"Why specifically do you ask?" he asked in reply.
"Because it would be wrong, Sir," she said with a fierceness which surprised even her just a bit. "The Company deserves better than that. It deserves better."
"Alley, at the moment Charlie Company consists of the exactly nine people," Keita pointed out gently. "We'd have to reconstitute it from scratch. It's not just a case of transferring in a few replacements-we'd have to literally rebuild it, as if it were a completely new company."
"We've still got the support staff at Guadalupe, Sir," Alicia said, her tone diffident, but stubborn.
"None of whom are active-duty Cadre," Keita countered.
"But -" Alicia began, then stopped herself. She looked at him, her expression more stubborn than ever, and he chuckled softly.
"Relax, Alley," he said, his tone and expression both serious. "No one's going to disband Charlie Company. Mind you, we're not going to be able to put it back into the field for a while. I meant it when I said we'd have to reconstitute from scratch, and, as you know, the Cadre is never oversupplied with qualified personnel. However, I have it directly from the Emperor's own lips that Charlie Company, and its battle honors, are not to be allowed to disappear. In fact, that's where I was headed a few minutes ago."
"Sir?" Alicia sounded puzzled, although her enormous relief that the company was not going to be written off was obvious.
"You're a brand new lieutenant," Keita pointed out. "You and I both know you've still got to get OCS out of the way, but we both also know you can handle the job. In fact, I'm confident that you'll be as successful as an officer as you were as a noncom, which is pretty high praise, I suppose.
"But, it's going to be a while before we start thinking about additional promotions on your part. Even the Banner isn't going to convince the Cadre to move you up any faster than your experience, seasoning, and confidence justifies. However," he looked at her intently, "there's the little question of where the brand new lieutenant gets assigned when she reports back for duty from OCS. That's what I wanted to discuss with you. Where would you like to go?"
"I... hadn't really thought about it, Sir," she replied, and to her own surprise, it was true. "I guess I've just been worried enough about the possibility that the Company would be disbanded that it never occurred to me to think about going anywhere else. I just wanted to go back to the Company. But I can't, can I? I mean, it isn't there, anymore. And, as you say, it won't be there again for a while."
"Neither of those last two statements is completely accurate, Alley," Keita said quietly, almost gently.
She looked at him, eyebrows rising, and he waved one hand.
"Charlie Company still exists," he told her. "It has nine personnel on its roster. You're one of those nine people. As for your second statement, I didn't say Charlie Company 'isn't there' anymore; I said we're not going to be able to put it back into the field for a while. But what I was going to suggest to you is that if you want to exercise the traditional prerogative of the Banner and request a specific assignment, the one I had in mind was command of First Platoon, Charlie Company, Third Battalion, Second Regiment, Fifth Brigade."
Alicia stared at him, and he smiled.
"If you want it, it's yours," he told her simply. "It's probably going to take us the entire time you're off at OCS to get the rest of the new table of organization filled. But I can pencil in one assignment right now, if it's the one you want."
Alicia discovered that she couldn't speak, and he laughed gently.
"Should I take that as a yes?" he asked.
Book Three: Broken Sword
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The darkness shuddered.
An icy breeze sighed through the heart of its warmth, and she shuddered. She tasted fire and slaughter, the sweet copper of blood, and the heady harshness of smoke, and almost-almost-she awoke.
It was there, her sleeping thought knew. It was coming closer. The echo she had sensed twice before was stronger than ever, sure in the strength of its self-knowledge, of its discipline... of its deadliness. And the potential of its futures narrowed, narrowed, narrowed....
>
The constellations of potentialities were disappearing, folding in on themselves, resolving. The choices became starker as they became fewer, the alternatives more wrapped in pain.
And yet still the echo knew nothing, sensed nothing, of what awaited it. With all the dauntless courage of mortal kind, it advanced into that unknown void, prepared to accept whatever was.
But would it have been so brave if it had been as she was? Able to sense the dwindling futures which lay before it?
The time will come, she thought at it from her sleep. The time will come, Little One, when you must choose. And what will your choice be then? Will you give yourself to me? Make your purpose and mine one? And how much pain will you embrace in the name of choice?
But the void returned no answer, and the icy breeze sighed away once more into stillness.
Not yet, her sleepy thought murmured. Not yet.
But soon.
"Look, I don't give a rat's ass what 'headquarters' says about it!" Major Samuel Truman, Imperial Marines, snarled. "I'm taking casualties, and the fucking Lizards are sitting still where I can get at them!"
"Sir," Lieutenant Hunter said, almost desperately, "I'm only telling you what they told me. They want us to hold here. Right here, they said."
"God damn it!"
Had Major Truman been able to do so, he would have snatched off his cap, thrown it on the ground, and stamped on it with both feet. Since he happened to be in battle armor at the moment, that wasn't very practical, which only added to his sense of frustration.
He counted to fifty very slowly-he didn't have the patience to make it all the way to a hundred-and then exhaled a deep breath.
"And did it happen, Lieutenant," he said very carefully, "that HQ gave you a reason for us to stay 'right here'?"
"Sir, they just said to hold position and that someone was on his way out here to explain things."
"Oh, I see," Truman said with exquisite irony. "Explain things."
Another cluster of Rishathan mortar rounds came whistling in from the far side of the ridge, and the Marines' automated air-defense cannon swivelled like striking snakes. Plasma bolts streaked upward, and the incoming mortar fire exploded well short of its intended targets. The steady, snarling crackle of "small arms" fire also came from the far side of the ridge, where Truman's forward units were exchanging rifle fire with the forward Rish pickets. The Marines' battle rifles would have been called auto cannon, had they been employed by unarmored infantry, and the Rishathan weapons replying to them were heavier still.
Truman listened to the thunder of battle, then shook his head.
"Why can I still be surprised by the idiocy REMFs can get up to?" he inquired rhetorically. Hunter, wisely, made no response, and the major sighed.
"All right, Vincent," he said to the lieutenant in a milder voice, "fire up your com and inform HQ that Second Battalion is holding its positions awaiting further orders."
"Yes, Sir!" Hunter managed to suppress most of the relief he felt, but Truman heard it anyway, and smiled with a trace of genuine humor. Then he turned away, studying his projected HUD once again, while he wondered what fresh lunacy was about to descend upon him.
***
The intensity of the fire being exchanged between Second Battalion and the dug-in Rish had faded into sporadic shots by the time the promised minion from headquarters reached Truman's CP. The major's initial fury at the order to halt his advance had also faded-a little, at any rate-and he was prepared to at least listen to whatever his... visitor had to say.
It had better be good, though, he told himself grimly.
Second Battalion had already taken over a hundred casualties, twenty-three of them fatal, and he'd finally been gaining a little momentum in his drive against the Rishathan lines. It was going to cost him more people to regain that momentum now that they'd stopped him in his tracks.
He growled again, jaw tightening at the thought. He hated actions like this one. The planet of Louvain wasn't even an imperial world-it was a Rogue World which had been so bent on retaining its independent status that it had rejected a defensive alliance with the Empire. Apparently, its government had believed that refusing to sign any formal agreements with either side would somehow convince both of them to leave its world alone.
Which might have worked with the Empire, but not with the Rishathan Sphere. Although, to be fair, Louvain hadn't officially been invaded by the Sphere. Technically speaking, the Rishathan troops currently ensconced on the planet represented an old-fashioned filibustering expedition. The Theryian Clan had launched the invasion purely as a private enterprise effort to extend its own clan holdings, and anyone could believe as much of that as he wanted to.
Unfortunately for Clan Theryian-or for the Sphere, depending on exactly how one wanted to interpret what was going on-Imperial Intelligence had gotten wind of the operation in time to deploy reinforcements to the neighboring Tiberian Sector. Which meant that when the Louvain Republic finally woke up, smelled the coffee, and realized it was about to be invaded, there were imperial troops available to respond to its raucous screams for help. Unfortunately, those troops hadn't been able to get there until after the Rish invasion force.
The Imperial Fleet had quickly and efficiently destroyed or dispersed the naval units which had transported and supported the Lizard assault force, but that didn't do much about the ground forces already in place. A human commander in the same predicament probably would have seriously considered surrender, or at least a negotiated withdrawal. Rish, unfortunately, didn't think that way, and Major Truman and the rest of his battalion's regiment had been dealing with the consequences of Lizard stubbornness for the better part of three standard weeks now.
Which was why he wasn't very happy about the notion of halting his advance when he'd finally found a soft spot in the Rish's final perimeter. In fact -
"Uh, Major?"
Truman looked up, his eyebrows rising in surprise at Lieutenant Hunter's tone. The younger officer stood in the CP entrance, looking-and sounding-astonished, almost tentative, and Truman frowned.
"What is it, Vincent?" he asked.
"That... representative from Headquarters is here, Sir."
Truman's frown deepened, but he only tossed his head inside his helmet-the battle-armored equivalent of a shrug.
"Well, send him on in," he said brusquely.
"Yes, Sir!" Hunter turned in the entryway, speaking to someone Truman couldn't see. "This way, Ma'am," he said.
Truman watched his com specialist stepping aside to make room for the visitor, and then the major's already elevated eyebrows did their best to disappear entirely into his hairline. The last thing he'd expected to see was someone in Cadre battle armor!
The newcomer's armor carried the rank insignia of a captain, which made its wearer effectively equal in rank to Truman himself. That was not a particularly welcome thought. Not that Samuel Truman had anything but respect for the Cadre; he wasn't an idiot, after all. But however much he might respect it, he was the fellow who'd been the officer on the ground for the last three weeks, and the thought of being ordered about buy some newcomer, who didn't know his ass from his elbow in terms of the local situation, was unpalatable, to say the very least.
The Cadre officer stepped fully into the cramped command post and saluted.
"Major Truman?" a pleasant, almost furry-sounding contralto inquired.
"I'm Truman," the major acknowledged, returning the salute and then holding out one gauntleted hand. "And you are?"
The question came out a bit more brusquely than he'd intended to, but the newcomer didn't seem to notice.
"DeVries," she said. "Captain Alicia DeVries, Imperial Cadre."
For a moment, Truman only nodded. Then he stiffened as the name registered.
"Did you say DeVries?" he said.
"Yes," she said simply, and Truman found himself shaking her armored hand rather more fervently than he'd intended to