Jerry Pournelle - Go Tell the Spartans

"Proposition?" he said, looking protective.

"Well, the other one was of marriage," she said. "Captain . . . ah, an officer of the Legion."

Blaine nodded, looking away slightly.

What romantics men are, she thought. It made them easy to manipulate, if you knew. Women had to; some men learned. Colonel John Christian Falkenberg III was as expert as she; military romanticism was as powerful a way to lead men by the nose as the sexual variety.

"Spare the pity, please, Governor," she said a little sharply. "It wasn't all bad here, and I'm not scarred for life, I assure you." Though there were some memories that still woke her shivering in the night; that couple from California . . . She pushed the memory aside.

"Actually, the worst thing about being a . . ." She considered; prostitute was not exactly accurate. For one thing, she had never seen any of the money, except for tips and gifts. For another, she had been carefully trained to offer a number of services besides the sexual. ". . . a geisha was that you had to be so damned agreeable and nice all the time. In the Legion, nobody gives a tinker's curse if I have the personality of a Weems Beast, as long as I get my job done and stand by my comrades."

"Well-"

"Look, sir, I appreciate your concern-and the gentleman who asked me to marry him-but I don't need any more rescuing. Right now, I'm getting a fresh start away from Tanith. I know you'll make Tanith a better place to live, but not for me. And I've got a movable home and family going with me, the Legion. It's a tough place, but you earn what you get, you don't wheedle somebody to give it to you." She shrugged. "And if I get a husband someday, it won't be someone who wants to protect me because I'm young and pretty and look vulnerable. Hell, maybe I'll rescue him."

Blaine laughed. "I understand," he said. "I hope you like Sparta, too. Bit drier and cooler than you're used to, I hear."

Ursula laughed back at him, still feeling a slight stab of satisfaction that she could laugh because she wanted to. "I'm looking forward to it, to getting out of this sauna."

Major Peter Owensford sipped at his drink; it was the perpetual gin-and-bitters of Tanith. There was the rum-based liqueur made with Tanith Passion Fruit, but that was too sweet for lunchtime, and anyway it was rumored to be a mild aphrodisiac. That's the last thing I need right now, he thought dismally, looking over at Ursula where she stood talking and laughing with Blaine . . . Cornet Gordon, he reminded himself. Who had politely but firmly put him in his place; a favored uncle's place . . . God damn it all.

"Feeling sorry for yourself?" Ace Barton said.

"Not really, Anselm." Captain Anselm Barton, he reminded himself. It was going to be difficult, with Ace along. He had been senior too long; with the Legion, and then an independent merc commander for nearly a decade. And my commanding officer on Thurstone, a lifetime ago.

"Now I know you're pissed, you never call me that unless something's got your goat."

Owensford relaxed. "Oh, all right, Ace; yes."

"Smart and gorgeous, but too young for you. The problem is," he went on, resting a hand on the younger man's shoulder, "you're getting those settling-down feelings. Endemic, once you turn thirty."

"You don't have them?" Owensford replied.

"Oh, yes, but I lie down until they go away." A wink. "Works fine, provided you lie down with the right woman."

Owensford snorted laughter. "Frankly, Ace, I'm nervous about this command as well. The rest of the Legion's going to be a long way away." Then he winced inwardly; he had never had a detached command before, and the older man had.

Barton shrugged. "What's to worry about? We go set up schools. Which works fine, because we've got the older troopers. Maybe they can't march fifty klicks and fight when they get there, but they can sure train others to do it."

Besides the raw Tanith recruits, Falkenberg had taken the opportunity to move a lot of men near retirement into the Fifth. Tanith was a good place to recruit, you had to be tough to survive here, and there were plenty of broken and desperate men. The Legion as a whole was over-strength, particularly the rifle companies. His unit would include the standard six hundred or so, but twice or three times the proportion of men over thirty-five. Many of them monitors or sergeants or centurions nearing retirement, rock-steady men but tired. There would be near a thousand women and children and pensioners as well.

"Fine for training," Owensford agreed. "On that score, just got the word. Hal Slater's going to Sparta. To set up their staff college. Which means we'll be taking George as well as Iona."

Barton raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything.

"OK, so we got the old ones," Peter said.

"The old, the halt, and the lame," Barton agreed. "But not the stupid. Given my druthers I'll take what we got. Hell, Pete, it's just a training war anyway."

"Training war?" Lysander Collins said from behind them.

They turned to greet the heir to the Collins throne of Sparta. Prince Lysander was a tall young man, 180 centimeters in his sandals; about twenty, a broad-shouldered youth with cropped brown hair and hazel eyes that looked somehow firmer than they had when he came to Tanith a few months ago.

"We were just discussing the sort of recruits we'll be getting on Sparta, for your new army. We're not used to Taxpayer enlisted men. Sorry," Owensford corrected himself. "Recruits from the Citizen class, I meant." He would have to remember that on Earth, Citizen meant a member of the underclass, the welfare-dependent or casual-laboring lumpen-proletariat. Better than half the population of the U.S., and more elsewhere. On Sparta a Citizen was a voter, a member of the political ruling class. Not necessarily socially upper-class, but solidly respectable at least.

"Well, not all the recruits will be Citizens or from Citizen families," Prince Lysander said. "It's a big planet and not many people and there's a lot to do, if you've got some sort of education. A lot of the deportees BuReloc sends us are illiterate and have never held a job; there's plenty of unskilled laboring positions open, but I think some of them will join up for the Field Force as well."

He frowned slightly; a serious young man for the most part, thoughtful. "I'd have thought our Citizens would be easier to train," he added. "The schools on Sparta are pretty good, and there's a lot of paramilitary training through the Brotherhoods' youth-wings."

"True enough," Owensford said. "The Legion's training schedule is pretty much the same as the CoDo Marines, though. With the sort of street-toughs and gang warriors we get, you break the recruit to build the soldier; everything they've learned all their lives is wrong, except for pack loyalty and aggressiveness."

Which was why nine-tenths of Marine recruits had records; the sort who just sat in front of the Tri-V screens and stirred only to get more booze and borloi were little use.

"The new recruit is silly,

'e thinks o'suicide

'e's lost 'is gutter-devil

'e hasn't got 'is pride-"

Lysander quoted softly. "It makes better sense, now. He knew his stuff, didn't he?"

"Certainly did," Owensford replied. He had discovered Kipling on his own. The man had long since been purged from what passed for an educational system in North America, but Lysander had mentioned he was by way of a national poet. Sparta promised to be full of surprises like that.

They all lifted their glasses for a moment to Kipling's memory.

"We'll manage," Ace Barton said. "Soldiers do."

"Not only soldiers," the Prince said quietly; his eyes flicked toward Ursula Gordon and then away.

Owensford felt a brief stab of irritation mixed with pity. Sparta seemed to be a pretty straight-laced sort of place, at least at the upper levels, and Ursula had hit the young man like a ton of cement. First love and first adventure, that daredevil stunt with the Bronson's shuttle and a beautiful damsel in genuine distress, heady stuff. Doubly bitter when he realized that he could have neither; back to the strait confines of duty, and a marriage arranged by his elders.