Why do you think you’re here?”

“I got a Form 210 attaching me to this battlestation. Same as you.”

“I mean why do you think you’re above this out of the way world at the ass-end of the galaxy?” I knew that was what she meant the first time but I thought I would make her work for it. “A peacekeeping mission to Faith. The only way down from here would be Solitary Sentinel duty on a corpse world.”

“We’ve both been part of StarForce long enough to know that Command works in mysterious ways.”

“We’re not talking about a standard operational SNAFU here. We’re talking about the second most highly decorated StarForce officer ever posted to the Far Frontier. And not just any stormtrooper but one of the First Fifty.”

“The first to survive Formula Nine with his sanity intact and his body still capable of motion,” I said. I am unreasonably proud of that.

“I know how you got your number,” she said. “The thirteenth experimental subject. The only one to come out of the pod still functioning and what we might laughingly call sane. You’re a war hero. You’re an historical artifact. Hell, you are the man who saved Terra from the Assimilators and yet somehow you ended up here, as far from the bright center of the universe as it is possible to get. Why do you think that happened?”

We both knew why but I wasn’t going to say it. She seemed to be doing a good enough job of that herself.

“You pissed off the wrong people,” she said at last. “You offended the brass. You offended the politicos. You offended anybody who tried to help you.”

I shrugged.

“You’re not going to work with me on this, are you?”

“Nope.”

“I want to believe there’s still something of the man the cadets all looked up to back at the Academy.” She shook her head and made a small despairing gesture with her hand. “But I don’t think I can anymore.”

“Why don’t you just say what you want to say?”

“I’ve been fielding calls from the local politicos all morning. I’ve had Beecher from the Temperance Legion. I’ve had Chernenko from the Radical Orthodox. I’ve had Steiner from the Aryan Jihad. You’re just about the only thing that can get the hardcore militias to agree on something. And that something is that they want your head. The local Reps want you court-martialled. They were hellbent on filing a petition to prosecute for war crimes. The writs were ready to be sent.”

“See, my presence is already creating unity among the factions.”

“If that were true I would throw you to the dogs and be happy about it, but we both know that the second you are replaced, and probably before, they’ll go back to blazing away at each other.”

“They never stopped. The whole ceasefire is a figment of the politicos’ imaginations. On the ground, it’s business as usual.”

She glanced over at me. “And that offends you, does it?”

“Believe it or not, I don’t enjoy blowing away citizens.” OK—that was a little white lie, at least when it came to some of Faith’s more prominent militias. “I just don’t see why we’re here.