“The ambush, Captain,” Tromp pressed stolidly. With visible effort, Stilchey regained the thread of his narrative. “Joachim drove. Hammer and I were in the back along with a noncom from Curwin – Worzer, his name was. He and Joachim threw dice for who had to drive. The road was supposed to be clear but Hammer made me put on body armor. I thought it was cop, you know – make the staffer get hot and dusty. “Via,” he swore again, but softly this time. “I was at the left-side powergun but I wasn’t paying much attention; nothing really to pay attention to. Hammer was on the radio a lot, but my helmet only had intercom so I didn’t know what he was saying. The road was stabilized earth, just a gray line through hectares of those funny blue plants you see all over here, the ones with the fat leaves.” “Bluebrights,” the older man said dryly. “ Melpomone’s only export; as you would know from the briefing cubes you were issued in transit, I should think.” “Would the Lord I’d never heard of this damned place!” Stilchey blazed back. His family controlled Karob Trading; no civil servant – not even Tromp, the Gray Eminence behind the Congress of the Republic – could cow him. But he was a soldier, too, and after a moment he continued: ‘Bluebrights in rows, waist high and ugly, and beyond that nothing but the soil blowing away as we passed.” “We were half an hour out from the firebase, maybe half the way to here. The ground was dimpled with frost heaves. A little copse was in sight ahead of us, trees ten, fifteen meters high. Hammer had the forward gun, and on the intercom he said, ”Want to double the bet, Blacky?” Then they armed their guns – I didn’t know why – and Worzer said, “I still think they’ll be in the draw two kays south, but I won’t take any more of your money.’ They were laughing and I thought they were going to just … clear the guns, you know?” The captain closed his eyes. He remembered how they had stared at him, two bulging circles and the hollow of his screaming mouth below them, reflected on the polished floorplate of the combat car. “The command car blew up just as we entered the trees. There was a flash like the sun and it ate the back half of the car, armor and all. The front flipped over and over into the trees, and the air stank with metal. Joachim laid us sideways to follow the part the mine had left, cutting in right behind when it hit a tree and stopped. The driver raised his head out of the hatch and maybe he could have got clear himself … but Hammer jumped off our deck to his and jerked him out, yanked him up in his armor as small as he is. Then they were back in our car. They were firing, everybody was firing, and we turned right, into the trees, into the guns.” “There were Mel troops in the grove, then?” Tromp asked. “Must have been,” Stilchey replied. He looked straight at the older man and said, very simply, “I was behind the bulkhead. Maybe if I’d known what to expect…The other driver was at my gun, they didn’t need me.” Stilchey swallowed once, continued: “Some shots hit on my side. They didn’t come through, but they made the whole car ring. The empties kept spattering me and the car was bounding, jumping downed trees. Everything seemed to be on fire. We cleared the grove into another field of bluebright. Shells from the firebase were already landing in the trees; the place was targeted. And Worzer pulled off his helmet and he spat and said, ‘Cold meat, Colonel, you couldn’t a called it better.’ Via!”