West of Honor by Jerry Pournelle

reputation for going into battle in newly formed outfits with strange officers. Even so, I doubted if any expedition had ever had so little going for it: a newlie commander, men who'd never served together, and a captain who'd plan the mission but wouldn't go on it. I told myself the time to object had been back in the briefing. It was a bit late now.

    I looked at my watch. Another hour of flying time. "Sergeant Ardwain."

    "Sir?"

    "Get them out of those work clothes and into combat leathers and armor. Weapons check after everyone's dressed." Dressed to kill, I thought, but I didn't say it. It was an old joke, never funny to begin with. I wondered who thought of it first. Possibly some trooper outside the walls of Troy.

    Hartz already had my leathers out of my pack. He helped me squirm out of my undress blues and into the synthi-leather tunic and trousers. The platform rocked as men tried to pull on their pants without standing up. It was hard to dress because we were sprawled out on our packs and other equipment. There was a lot of cursing as troopers moved around to find their own packs and rifles.

    "Get your goddam foot out of my eye!"

    "Shut up, Traeger."

    Finally everyone had his armor on and his fatigues packed away. The troopers sat quietly now. Even the old hands weren't joking. There's something about combat armor that makes everything seem real.

    They looked dangerous in their bulky leathers and armor, and they were. The armor alone gave us a big edge on anything we'd meet here. It also gives a feeling of safety, and that can be dangerous. Nemourlon will stop most fragments and even pistol bullets, but it won't stop a high-velocity rifle slug.

    "How you doing down there?" Louis's voice in my phones startled me for a moment.

    "We're all armored up," I told him. "You still think you know where you're going?"

    "Nope. But the computer does. Got a radar check five minutes ago. Forking stream that shows on the map. We're right on the button."

    "What's our ETA?" I asked.

    "About twenty minutes. Wind's nice and steady, not too strong. Piece of cake."

    "Fuel supply?" I asked.

    "We're hip-deep in spare cans. Not exactly a surplus, but there's enough. Quit worrying."

    "Yeah."

    "You know," Louis said, "I never flew a chopper with one of those things hanging off it."

    "Now you tell me."

    "Nothing to it," Louis said. "Handles a bit funny, but I got used to it."

    "You'd better have."

    "Just leave the driving to us. Out."

    The next twenty minutes seemed like a week. I guarantee one way to stretch time is to sit on an open platform at thirty-three hundred meters and watch the night sky while you wait to command your first combat mission. I tried to think of something cheerful to say, but I couldn't, and I thought it was better just to be quiet. The more I talked, the more chance I'd show some kind of strain in my voice.

    "Your job is to look confident," Falkenberg had told me. I hoped I was doing that.
    * * *

    "Okay, you can get your first look now," Louis said.

    "Rojj." I got my night glasses from Hartz. They were better than issue equipment, a pair of ten-cm Leica light-amplifying glasses I bought myself when I left the Academy. A lot of officers do, because Leica makes a special offer for graduating cadets. I clipped them onto my helmet and scanned the hillside. The landing zone was the top of a peak which was the highest point on a ridge leading from the river. I turned the glasses to full power and examined the area carefully.

    It looked deserted. There was some kind of scrubby chaparral growing all over it, and it didn't look as if anybody had ever been to the peak.

    "Looks good to me," I told Louis. "What do you have?"

    "Nothing on IR, nothing on low-light TV," he said. "Nothing barring a few small animals and some birds roosting in the trees. I like that. If there're animals and birds, there's probably no people."

    "Yeah—"

    "Okay, that's passive sensors. Should I take a sweep with K-band?"

    I