soothing memory of his boyhood.
'Heard from Enrique day before yesterday,' Esteban said, breaking a long companionable silence. 'Says he got top credit fer that last melon shipment to Central. He and Ludmilla'll be bringin' the kids home next week.' He snorted. 'Wonder how they liked th' bright lights?'
'They're coming home?' Merrit repeated, and Esteban nodded. 'Good.'
Enrique was Esteban's youngest son, a sturdy, quietly competent farmer about Merrit's own age, and Merrit liked him. He could actually beat Enrique occasionally at chess, unlike Nike. Or, for that matter, Lorenco. More than that, Enrique and his wife lived with the old man, and Merrit knew how much Lorenco had missed them- and especially his grandchildren.
'Bet you've missed 'Milla's cooking,' he added and grinned at Esteban's snort of amusement. Ludmilla Esteban was the hacienda's cybernetics expert. Her formal training was limited, but Merrit had seen her work, and she would have made a top notch Bolo tech any day. She spent most of the time she wasn't chasing down her lively brood keeping the farm mechs up and running, which suited Esteban just fine. He'd done his share of equipment maintenance over the years, and 'Milla's expertise freed him to pursue his true avocation in the kitchen.
'Son,' Esteban said, 'there's only one thing 'Milla can do I can't-'sides havin' kids, that is, an' she an' Enrique do a right good job of that, too, now I think of it. But the only other thing I can't do is keep that danged cultivator in th' river section up an' running. Hanged if I know how she does it, either, 'less it's pure, ornery stubbornness. That thing shoulda been scrapped 'bout the time she stopped wettin' her own diaper.'
'She's got the touch, all right,' Merrit agreed.
'Sure does. Better'n I ever was, an' I was a pretty fair 'tronicist in my youth m'self, y'know.' Esteban sipped more brandy, then chuckled. 'Speakin' of 'tronicists, the field's been crawlin' with 'em fer the last three days.' Merrit cocked his head, and Esteban shrugged. 'Militia's due for its reg'lar trainin' exercise with the Wolverines this week, an' they've been overhaulin' and systems checkin' 'em.'
'Is that this week?' Merrit quirked an eyebrow, and the beginnings of a thought flickered lazily in the depths of his mind.
'Yep. Consuela moved it up ten days on account'a the midseason harvest looks like comin' in early this year. Hard to get them boys and girls'a hers together when it's melon-pickin' time 'less it's fer somethin' downright dire.'
'I imagine so.' Merrit pressed his glass to his forehead-even this late at night, it was perspiration-warm on Santa Cruz-and closed his eyes. He'd met most of the Santa Cruz Militia since his arrival. Like Esteban himself, they were a casual, slow-speaking lot, but they were also a far more professional-and tougher-bunch than he'd expected. Which was his own fault, not theirs. He'd grown up on a frontier planet himself, and seen enough of them in flames since joining the Dinochrome Brigade. Frontier people seldom forgot they were the Concordiat's fringe, the first stop for any trouble that came calling on humanity-or for the human dregs who preyed upon their own kind. The SCM's personnel might be short on spit and polish, and their Wolverines might be ancient, but they knew their stuff, and Merrit knew he wouldn't have cared to be the raiders who took them on.
And now that he thought of it...
'Tell me, Esteban, how do you think Colonel Gonzalez would like some help with her training exercises?'
'Help? What kinda help you got in mind, son?'
'Well...' Merrit opened his eyes, sat up, and swung his chair to face the older man. 'You know I'm trying to compile a performance log on Zero-Zero-Seven-Five, right?' He was always careful never to call Nike by name. No one on Santa Cruz was likely to know Bolo commanders normally referred to their commands by name, not number, and he worked very hard to avoid sloppy speech habits that might suggest Nike's true capabilities to anyone.
'You've mentioned it a time or two,' Esteban allowed with a slow smile.
'Well, it's a fairly important consideration, given Seven-Five's age. Central's not exactly current on the Mark XXIII's operational parameters, after all. Given the lack of ops data on file, I need to generate as much experience of my own as I can.'
' 'Sides, you kinda like playin' with it, don't you?' Esteban said so slyly Merrit blushed. The old man laughed. 'Shoot, son! You think I wouldn't get a kick outa drivin' 'round the jungle in somethin' like that? Been lookin' over the weather sat imagery, an' looks like you been leavin' great big footprints all over them poor old trees 'round your depot.'
'All right, you got me,' Merrit conceded with a laugh of his own. 'I do get a kick out of it, but I've been careful to stay on the Naval Reserve. The last thing I want to do is chew up one of the nature preserves or someone's private property.'
'Planet's a big place,' Esteban said placidly. 'Reckon you c'n drive around out in the sticks all y'want 'thout hurtin' anything.'
'You're probably right. But the thing I had in mind is that if Colonel Gonzalez is planning to exercise the Wolverines, maybe Seven-Five and I could give her an independent aggressor force to exercise against.'
'Go up against a Bolo in Wolverines? That'd be a real quick form'a suicide iffen y'tried it for real, son!'
'Sure it would, but the experience would do her crews good, and it'd give me a lot more data for my performance log. I've been running Seven-Five through sims, but I can't set up a proper field exercise of my own because I don't have another Bolo to match it against.'
'Maybe.' Esteban sounded thoughtful as he scratched his chin. ' 'Course turning fourteen Wolverines an' a Bolo loose really is gonna mess up a lotta jungle.'
'Well, everything for two hundred klicks south of the field belongs to the Navy. I guess that means it belongs to me at the moment, since, with all due respect to the Fleet Base CO, I'm the senior-and only-Concordiat officer on the planet. If the colonel's interested, we could set up an exercise between the field and depot. In fact, we might set up a couple of them: one with the Militia as an Aggressor Force 'attacking' the depot, and one with them defending the field. They'd probably actually get more good from the second one, too, now that I think about it.'
'Why?'
'Because,' Merrit grinned smugly as he offered the bait he knew Colonel Gonzalez would leap for, 'I'll bet the SCM doesn't know the depot has a complete planetary reconnaissance system.'
'You kiddin' me, son?' Esteban demanded, and frowned when Merrit shook his head. 'Well, I know you well 'nough by now t'know you're not one fer tall tales, boy, but I've been runnin' the field, the navigation an' com sats, an' the weather net fer goin' on thirty-three years now, and I've never seen nary a sign of any recon satellites.'
'They're up there, Lorenco. Promise. And I'd be surprised if you had seen them, given their stealth features. But the point is that if the colonel's interested, I could set up a direct downlink to her Wolverines for the second exercise. And I could reconfigure the depot's com systems to set up a permanent link to the SCM for future use.' He smiled again, but his eyes were serious. 'You know as well as I do how useful that could be if push ever did come to shove out here.'
'Y'got that right, Paul,' Esteban agreed. He scratched his chin a moment longer, then grinned. 'Well, Consuela always was a bloodthirsty wench. Reckon she'd be just tickled pink t'get her hands on a planetary recon net. Sounds t'me like you've got yourself a date, Captain!'
'Got everything Luftberry will need to find her way around in your absence, Cliff?'
Colonel Clifton Sanders, Dinochrome Brigade Support Command, set the fat folio of data chips on his superior's desk, and nodded with a smile.
'Right here, sir. I had a talk with Shigematsu before I left, too. He's up to speed on all my current projects. I don't think Major Luftberry will hit any problems he and she can't handle between them.'
'Good.' Brigadier Wincizki cocked his chair back to smile up at his senior Maintenance officer. 'It's about time you took a vacation, Cliff. Do you realize how much leave time you've accrued since you've been out here?'
'What can I say? I like my work, and I don't have any family. I might as well put the time into doing something worthwhile.'
'I can't say I'm sorry you feel that way, but I do feel a little guilty about it sometimes,' Wincizki said. 'Anyone needs a break from time to time, if only to keep his brain from going stale. I don't want another four years
