Джек Макдевитт - Valkyrie

"Who the hell are you?"

"Do you really not know?" Her face had taken on the tint of the smoldering sky. "After all this time, after all the killing, do you really not know?" Her gaze swept the rooftop, and locked on the city. Savagery flickered in her eyes. "Your fathers knew me. At Troy, at Port Arthur, at the Coral Sea, they knew me. Pray that your sons do not."

I don't know how to describe that moment. I was terrified, as I had not been at any other time during that fearful evening. She stood full in the moonlight, breast heaving, voice thick with emotion. "You've come for me," I said in a hoarse whisper.

Her expression softened. "No. Not for you."

"Then why are you here?" I was drenched with sweat.

"I was careless."

And I thought: the pilot. The Cobra pilot. I must have said it aloud.

Something swirled within that dark shape. "No. Rather, the soldier who tried to challenge me a few moments ago. The young one. Within the hour, he will sacrifice his life for a comrade."

"My God," I said. "One of those bastards? You came for one of those bastards?"

"Yes," she said. "One of those bastards." The words were brittle. Flat. They hung on the night air, dull with impotent rage. "I am concerned only with courage, Anderson. Not with politics."

"What about the pilot? And his gunnei?" I demanded.

"I am not alone." Her eyes slid shut. "Tonight we fill the skies of this wretched peninsula!"

"I'm sorry," I said, not sure exactly what I meant.

"We all are." She inhaled, deeply, sadly. "It is not permitted that the valiant should perish. But who comes for the ordinary man? Who stands with him when the shells rain down? Who speaks to him in the moment of terror? We are too few.

"You are children, Anderson. Have you any idea how many will die tonight?" Her eyes raked the stars, and she raised a fist at the moon. "How many more battlefields can this pitiful world support?"

I can close my eyes now and see that rooftop and smell burning tar. And hear her final words. Her voice was warm and rich, lovely and terrible. "Anderson, we do not come for all who die in combat. But we will come for you. You will have your hour, and I will be with you."

You will have your hour,

Hell, I'm over 40 years old. I do actuarial tabulations for Northwestern Insurance. A desk job. I don't walk very well. I'm thirty pounds overweight. And I have three kids. The Army will never have any use for me.

I think sometimes about her, and I wonder if she was wrong. And I think about the kind of war that would need my services.

It's why I don't like to hear Brad Conner joke about him and me holding off invaders at Virginia Beach.