"I believe that personnel who remain in a Strike Force company for more than one operation are almost by definition unsuitable for other duties," I explained. "Officers higher in the organizational chain know that and make allowances for behavior that would be unacceptable in other units. The strikers avoid psychological support between missions because they believe—correctly—that they're at great risk of being redlined if they do seek help."
My aide watched me, assimilating what was only data to her. Miss Chun was highly intelligent or she would not have been accepted for Category 4, and her implant gave her access to more information than a thousand unaugmented geniuses could have absorbed; but she was twenty-five Earth years old.
There aren't enough human beings in the universe for statistical techniques suitable for, say, gas diffusion analysis to predict low-order behavior; nor was twenty-five years long enough to gain an intuitive feel for all of those behavioral patterns.
"But you're quite right, Miss Chun," I said. "Strike Force Company C41 has to be treated as having crossed the red line. The fifty-four personnel who came back from Maxus 377 in adequate physical condition are as useless to the Unity armed forces as the twenty-six who died or were permanently disabled in the operation."
Miss Chun nodded. "I'll give the order," she said, reaching for the console. "Separated from service with full pensions, I assume, rather than merely assigned to rear echelon duties?"
"No," I said.
And I told her what I proposed to do.
My aide's left eyelid quivered, her only failure of control over her body. "Sir," she said calmly. "You can't do that. You must rethink your proposition."
" `The word must is not to be used to princes,' Miss Chun," I quoted. "If ever there was a prince in the sense Queen Elizabeth meant the word, I am he. Until I retire, I have any power I choose to exercise. This is the course I choose."
"Sir," said Miss Chun, "if you believe this is the proper way to deal with the redlined military personnel, I defer to your greater experience. But I don't see how the involvement of civilians in this fashion can be consistent with our duty to the Unity."
I stood up slowly. My implant gives me great knowledge and control over my body and its processes. It also provides a harsh record of the degree to which stress and age have ground away at my health.
"Do you believe that the Unity owes its soldiers nothing but burial or a pension, Miss Chun?" I said. My voice didn't rise, but it had less give than the face of an anvil. "Do you think it is to the long-term benefit of the Unity that our citizens regard discharged soldiers as trash that litters our streets and occasionally explodes lethally? Do you?"
Miss Chun's face tightened into marble smoothness. I was angry at myself, at what I had been and still was. She misunderstood, and I could not explain in a way she could understand. She was only twenty-five.
"I regret the necessity of many things I have done for the Unity, Miss Chun," I said more softly. "I regret the cost this colony draft will pay. The cost these people, these civilian human beings who are drafted into this colonization project, will pay. Nonetheless I see it as necessary."
Miss Chun nodded; acknowledgment that she heard me, not that she agreed.
"I will give the operation a top project manager," I added.
Miss Chun stood perfectly still, her head and torso framed by the starscape. She understood: not why, but what I intended.
"Yes," she said. "We will."
A Place Out of Time
Farrell's strikers clustered about him on a bare concrete plain. He watched the shell for the whole course of its flight. The gun crew weren't Kalendru, weren't human. They were just figures, and he couldn't understand where they were or why he could see them.
"Major, you've got to get us out of here!" Nadia said. All of them were watching him, every striker who'd served in C41 since Major Arthur Farrell was appointed to command.
The shell hit and exploded. Farrell didn't hear the blast, only the screams of his dying strikers. There was no cover, nowhere to run or hide.
"They're going to kill us all, sir!" Leinsdorf said. He didn't have any legs but he was standing anyway, staring with accusing eyes at the commander who let him die.
Another shell approached. It moved as slowly as a tachometer needle rising to redline.
Nowhere to run. All around the plain stood figures watching. They were not involved in any way; just watching.
The shell hit. Another silent blast and the screams. The screams came in pulses, pausing and then vibrating again through Farrell's mind. He looked at blood and body parts and the staring faces of the betrayed.