"I'm looking for a piss-ant named Barbour!" roared the stocky man who slammed open the double doors of the officers' canteen. "Lieutenant Robert Barbour? He thinks he's lifting out of here today!"
The man's gray hair was shaved into a skullcap. He wore his rank tabs field-fashion—on the underside of his collar, where they wouldn't target him for a sniper. His aura of command obviated the need of formal indicia anyway.
Barbour set down the chip projector he was reading and got to his feet. The projector was loaded with an off-planet news feed, nothing Barbour cared about one way or the other. It was just a means of killing time while waiting for the boarding signal of the ship that would return him to Nieuw Friesland. Killing time and taking his mind off other things.
"I'm Barbour," he said. His voice squeaked.
The dozen or so other officers in the canteen stared at Barbour when he stood up, then quickly looked in any direction except that of the two principals to the encounter. Conversations stopped, and the four poker players at a corner table huddled their cards between their cupped palms. The lights twinkling in enticement from the auto-bar looked loud.
"Do you know who I am, Lieutenant Barbour?" the stocky man demanded. When the canteen doors flapped, Barbour saw two nervous-looking aides waiting in the starport concourse. Unlike their principal, the aides wore scarlet command-staff fourragerès.
Via! Barbour did know the fellow. Know of him, at any rate. Tedeschi didn't spend a lot of time in the headquarters in Al Jain, where Barbour had worked until six days previous.
"Yes sir," Barbour said. He restrained himself from saluting. Field regulations again. In order to encourage his command into a war zone mentality, General Tedeschi, commanding the FDF contingent on Mahgreb, had forbidden salutes. "You're General Tedeschi. Sir."
"You're bloody well told I am!" Tedeschi snapped.
He looked around the canteen. From his expression, he'd just as soon have swept it with a machine gun. "You lot," he said. "Take a walk. Now!"
The trio nearest the doors were out before the order had been fully articulated. The card-players left their stakes on the table, and there was hand luggage beside several of the previously occupied chairs.
Hellfire Hank Tedeschi had no manners and no patience. He successfully completed campaigns in minimal time and with minimal casualties among his own troops, because there was absolutely nothing else in the universe that mattered to him. He would cashier an officer in a heartbeat, and he was rumored to have knocked down underlings who didn't jump fast enough to suit him.
Tedeschi believed in leading from the front. He'd killed people with his pistol, his knife, and his bare hands.
"What's this about you deserting your post, Barbour?" Tedeschi demanded. "The job here's not done, you know."
The anger previously in the general's voice had been replaced by menace. Barbour knew this was an act Tedeschi had practiced, but it wasn't merely an act. Tedeschi was a clever man as well as a violent one. As a means of intimidation, he let people see the raw emotions bubbling from his psyche.
"I'm not deserting, sir," Robert Barbour said. "I've requested a transfer to another branch of the service."
He didn't add, "As is my right." That would be pouring gasoline on hot coals.
"Like hell you are," Tedeschi said. He gestured Barbour back into the chair from which the lieutenant had risen. "Sit."
Barbour obeyed. Instead of sitting down across from Barbour, Tedeschi put one of his boots on the circular table and leaned his forearms against the back of his knee. "The job here needs you, Barbour," the general said. "I need you. Are you hearing me?"
"Sir . . ." said Barbour. He didn't know how to continue.
Tedeschi wouldn't have given him the opportunity to go on anyway. "Look, what's the problem?" he demanded. "Is it me? Do you have a problem with the way I run things here?"
"Lord, no sir," Barbour blurted. Tedeschi could have been back at Camp Able for all the effect he'd had on Barbour up till this moment. Lieutenants in the headquarters bureaucracy didn't expect to have anything to do with commanding generals.
"Then your section CO, Wayney," Tedeschi pressed. "Trouble with her? Tell me, boy, tell me now."
"Sir," Barbour said. Tedeschi was leaning forward, compressing his cocked leg and bringing his brutal, swarthy features threateningly closer to Barbour's face. "Captain Wayney's—she's no problem, sir. She's fine."
Captain Wayney wasn't a brilliant intelligence technician. To tell the truth, she wasn't even a good one. But she was far too good an administrator to get in the way of an underling who was brilliant. Wayney not only handed Barbour the tough ones, she let him run with his whims. The result had been a series of striking triumphs for the section which Wayney headed.
"Look, I'll make you a proposition," Tedeschi said, leaning back a few centimeters. "You get an appointment on my personal staff. You report to nobody else, and I leave you the fuck alone. And you jump two pay grades to major. When this operation's over, which I expect to take another six to nine months standard, you have the choice of accompanying me to my next posting—as a light colonel. Fair, Barbour?"
Barbour stared up at Tedeschi. He didn't know how to respond. The whole thing was beyond belief.
Instead of reacting directly to the proposition, Barbour said, "Sir? Why are you doing this? There's eighteen people in Technical Intelligence. You don't need me."
Half of Tedeschi's face smiled. "Right, eighteen," he said flatly. "All of them can do thirty percent of what you do. Two of them can do about seventy percent. That a fair assessment, Lieutenant?"
Barbour swallowed. If he'd thought about the question—which he hadn't—he'd have figured that Hellfire Hank knew nothing about the operations of Tech Int. He was too busy running around in a combat car and biting the heads off Kairene guerrillas.
Dead wrong.
"Yes sir," Barbour said. "Wellborn's maybe better than that, but okay, that's about right."
"And not a cursed one of them can do the rest of what you do, the magic part," Tedeschi said, his voice like a cat's tongue, rough but caressing nonetheless. "I said six to nine months standard to finish the job."
He slammed the heel of his right fist into his left hand, a sudden stroke and whop! that made Barbour flinch back. "I don't need shooters, Lieutenant," the general continued. "I got shooters up the ass, I got shooters better than me, and that's plenty fucking good! The difference between six and nine is knowing where the bastards are to shoot. Do you see?"
"Sir," said Barbour miserably. "I can't do that any more. Target people to be shot. I can't."
"Do you want people to die, is that it?" Tedeschi shouted, his face ramming closer to Barbour's again. "If the operation goes the long way, it'll boost our casualties by fifty percent. You know that, don't you?"
Barbour nodded. Again, there was nothing wrong with the general's analysis. There was a pretty direct correlation between losses and the length of time people were running around, firing live ammunition.
"Also about double the number of local wogs get greased," Tedeschi added, "not that I give a flying fuck about that, but maybe you do?"
"I don't . . . ." Barbour said. "Sir, if I don't do it, it's not my responsibility. Sir."
"That last operation," the general said, "blitzing the headquarters of the Seventy-Three Bee regiment—that was fucking brilliant. That's the sort of thing I need to get this operation over, quick and clean. Right?"
Barbour's face formed itself into something between a smile and a rictus. He was afraid to speak.
"Come on, Barbour," Tedeschi said. He took the junior man's chin between a thumb and finger that could crush nutshells. He tilted Barbour's face to meet his hard blue eyes. "Tell me that you're going to stay with me till the job's done. Not for the promotion. For the job."
Barbour stood up carefully, lifting his chin out of the general's grip. "Sir," he said, staring at the wall beyond Tedeschi's left shoulder, "I'm sorry, but I can't do that job any more."
Tedeschi slammed his boot back onto the floor. He wasn't quite as tall as Barbour, but he had the physical presence of a tank.
"I'd spit on you, Lieutenant," the general said, "but you'd foul my saliva. Go to fucking Cantilucca, fuck around on a survey team. You're not fit to associate with the people doing real work."
Tedeschi slammed out of the canteen.
A few moments later, other officers returned to their drinks and belongings. They looked curiously at Lieutenant Robert Barbour, who remained where the general left him.
Barbour was crying.