I had the feeling that she was not very pleased with me.

“Sit,” she said, in a tone that would have intimidated a rabid Rottweiler.

I sat.

She stared at me with that what-am-I-going-to-do-about-you look that I’ve grown familiar with over the years. She looked at the paperweight on her desk, a globe that showed the Earth from space, then looked out the window of her office which showed Faith below us. They were not dissimilar. The types that colonized the Far Frontier wanted places that reminded them of home. If they could not find those, they terraformed worlds until they got what they wanted. If I remembered the briefing correctly Faith had not needed terraforming.

She drummed her fingers on the desk, and pointedly studied her slate. “I have here a psych test that says you are borderline psychotic. What do you say to that, Captain?”

“I’ll need to try harder. I thought I aced that test.”

“Go on,” she said. “Make a joke of it. How long do you think you are going to get away with this?”

“Permission to speak freely.”

She let out a long sigh. “Permission granted.”

“Until my contract with Fed Gov expires. Which is to say forever since it has a post-mortality clause.” Carla’s words were still on my mind, and I wondered whether this was as she intended.

The Colonel steepled her fingers and stared at me. “What happened to you? You used to be a hero. There was a time when we all looked up to you.”

So that was going to be the line, was it? I had some sympathy with the Colonel. She was in a strange position when it came to my career. I had been her superior once and it was possible I might be so again. Not likely, but not impossible.

“Nothing happened to me. I’m the same as I always was. The universe changed.”

She swiveled her chair to look at Faith, and continued as if I had not said a word. “You’re one of the First. All the rest are brass, blitzed, or permadead. How come you are still around here bugging me?”

“Just lucky I guess.”

She swiveled the chair back. Her face flushed. “You’ve no idea what you’ve done, have you?”

“Kept my sorry ass in one piece,” I said.

“You couldn’t have just run away, could you?”

“A Federal Stormtrooper never retreats,” I said. “Although occasionally we perform a retrograde advance.”

“Did you have to kill those militiamen?”

“It seemed preferable to letting them kill me. And let’s not lose sight of the dozen or so local Enforcers they had no qualms about butchering. We might want to remember them too.”

“It’s election year,” she said. “Right across the core. And what’s the first rule of Federal politics?”

“Lie with a straight face?”

“We don’t shoot the voters.