David Weber - Ranks of Bronze

"Oh," said the figure on the couch. Then, "Ah, tribune… would you like the lights higher?"

"Quartilla?" Vibulenus said hesitantly. "You remember me?"

"You're Gaius Vibulenus Caper," the female said. "The ship told me after the other time you were here."

She paused. The lights had not gone up-Vibulenus did not know whether or not he wanted them to-but his eyes had adapted enough to see that her lips wore a smile of sort.

"I remember everyone, tribune," Quartilla concluded. "Not always their names, is all."

She was sitting on her feet with her back straight and her knees flexed together to her right side as before. Vibulenus seated himself so that his left thigh was almost but not quite in contact with those plump knees and said, with a bitterness that shocked him as the words came out, "Everyone? I find that hard to believe."

Quartilla winced, but she replied without any sharpness of her own, "Everyone is different, Gaius Caper. Every soldier, every centurion, every tribune-every crewman. I can understand how the situation would bother you. It's-part of my job to understand the things that bother men."

"Look, this is-" the tribune said. He bit his lips and, steeling himself, laid his hand on the female's knee.

"I didn't come to fight," he went on, momentarily so focused in his own mind that he was oblivious to the texture of the skin he was touching. It was warm, perhaps marginally too warm; soft as only a woman's could be; and as smooth as thick cream. His expression changed and the words he had intended did not follow through his open mouth.

Quartilla smiled without the sadness, an impish expression that transfigured her by accenting her rather small mouth when the muscles of her cheeks curved up. She did not speak an order, but the walls glowed an ofF-white just bright enough to fade the red dot into a tint in its comer.

Not only was the female's skin smooth, it was a white in which only a painter could have detected a touch of green.

"I asked for further changes," Quartilla said with quiet pride. She cupped her full right breast and lifted it as if she were a farm wife displaying a prize melon. A tracery of blue veins marked the surface that was otherwise as pure as polished marble. "So that I could better perform my duties. I hoped you would come back."

Nothing better concentrates the mind than lust. It was in that knowledge that Vibulenus had driven himself to this attempt, certain that darkness and his tunic would shield his mind from certainty and that lust would overcome memories of revulsion.

There were no longer any physical cues to wrongness; and for the rest, Quartilla had been a person already.

The Roman threw off his tunic with a violence that was willing to shred it if the garment tried to resist his convulsive efforts. By Styx on whom the gods swear, she was a woman!

On her and in her, Vibulenus was able to forget the other men and the hint of crewmen who were not men.

And he was able to forget even Helvius and his two companions for a brief time, perhaps as long as it had taken the trio to die.

"This operation," said the Commander, a squat figure who could have passed for Clodius Afer a distance if they exchanged garb, "is beneath me in its simplicity. I protested, but my superiors informed me that I have been tasked for the operation because of their desire for haste. I-I and yourselves-were best positioned of the units at a proper level of technology. Further, the job of ground preparation has been botched-"

"Oh-oh," Vibulenus muttered, resting his hand on the mail-clad shoulder of Clodius Afer. The pilus prior's angry sneer showed that Clodius knew as well as the tribune who was going to pay for the fuck-up. Not the folks in colored skin-suits who were responsible, oh no.

"-and though the personnel responsible have received reprimands," the Commander continued, audible throughout the Main Gallery despite the clash of weapons and equipment still being donned by many of the legionaries, "it was deemed necessary to task a unit disciplined enough to accomplish the task unaided. Thus I was assigned."

"Fine with me," Clodius Afer whispered, "if the smug bastard decides to handle the whole thing himself. Pollux! He's the worst we've been handed yet."

"Young, I'd guess," said Vibulenus, who still looked eighteen years old-unless you met his eyes, which were as old as the eyes of the Sphinx. "And 'worst'… worst covers a lot of things besides this."

He always mustered with the Tenth Cohort, standing in the front rank to the left of Clodius Afer-and by extension, to the left of the entire legion. The right was the place of honor, the sword flank; the place where the first centurion and the eagle standard marched.

But a soldier didn't fight long without a good shield, and the Tenth had been the legion's shield through every battle it fought. They'd struck some shrewd blows of their own, besides.

It was not mere chance that the Tenth Cohort was down to two hundred and ninety-seven effectives, well below the average of the nine others.

"Individual members of the hostile force," continued the Commander, "are of intermediate size and strength."

"What're we?" grumbled Clodius, rubbing his face under the hinged left cheek protector. There was no visible scar there, but tissue beneath the skin was knotted from the time an axe had glanced off his shield rim.

When had that been? Battles merged with one another and with the fantasies the tribune played in the Recreation Room. He wondered if Quartilla could still remember every man she had known. He had no idea of how many times he had killed…

"Their armor is rudimentary," said the voice in the Romans' ears, "and their weapons, though iron, are so crude that their main effect is to permit my guild to deploy you against them rather than tasking a unit at a lower level."

Vibulenus caressed his left forearm where he, too, had knobs of hidden keloid that the Medic had never been able to remove. "Wonder how he'd like a stone point rammed up his bum?" he muttered, angry despite himself to be lectured by someone who knew only at second-hand about matters that were bloody memories to most of those who listened.

"The terrain is rolling," said the Commander, "and the soil coarse with no vegetation of military significance."

He paused for thought, then added, "the average temperature is lower than that of the planet where you were purchased, but the conditions for the immediate future are well within the region which you find comfortable."

"What the…?" said the pilus prior. Vibulenus squeezed the armored shoulder again, for the benefit of one or both of them.

"Do your duty to my guild," concluded the Commander, "and we will treat you well. You are dismissed."

The doors in the rear of the Main Gallery never opened when the legion mustered for battle. Instead, the entire wall slid downward. The broad corridor by which the men had entered was gone, and the Main Gallery gaped through a hole in the vessel's outer bulkhead.

"Cohort-" roared Clodius Afer as he turned with a squeal of hobnails on flooring that was harder than iron.

"Century-" echoed the remaining centurions in the cohort, while their fellows in the rest of the legion did the same. In mustering for battle, the First Cohort formed up in the rear of the gallery so that it could lead the way out.

The breath of air sucked into the Main Gallery when the walls slid open was cool and dry, a good temperature in which to march in armor. You were always too hot during actual combat, but in cold weather a man could die of the shock to his system when victory or a wound let him cool off suddenly.

"About face! shouted the sixty centurions in a unison gained through long practice.