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bio bods in the front. It drove officers, especially junior officers, stark raving mad. Booly ignored it as if so serenely blessed that the world always fell into place around him.
    Roller fumed but kept a perfectly straight face. He stood at quivering attention two paces in front of his troops.
    “Sergeant Major.”
    “Sergeant.”
    “The troops are ready for inspection.”
    “Thank you.”
    Booly stepped past Roller and headed for the first legionnaire on his left. Her name was Kato. She’d been in the Legion for five years, wore a nose stud, and had a dotted line tattooed around her neck. Booly stepped in frontof her, ran an experienced eye over her gear, found it to his liking, and moved on.

    The next trooper wasn’t so lucky. His name was Imai, and it took Booly less than a second to notice that the emergency locator beacon that should’ve been attached to his belt wasn’t.
    “Sergeant.”
    Roller appeared at Booly’s right elbow. “Sergeant Major?”
    “This man’s emergency locator beacon is missing.”
    Roller treated the offender to a thunderous expression. “I’m glad you brought that to my attention, Sergeant Major. I’ll take care of it.”
    Booly said, “See that you do,” and knew that he had sentenced Imai to a week’s worth of punishment. Unpleasant, perhaps, but preferable to being lost in the wastelands with no chance of rescue.
    The rest of the bio bods, O’Brian, Wismer, and Yankolovich, passed muster, and Booly started in on the Trooper IIs. They had a more humanoid appearance than the Trooper Is plus heavier armament.
    Each was equipped with a fast-recovery laser cannon, an air-cooled .50-caliber machine gun, and dual missile launchers. They could run at speeds up to fifty miles an hour and could be adapted for a variety of environments including vacuum, Class I through Class IX gas atmospheres, underwater use, desert heat, and arctic cold.
    On the other hand, Trooper Ils had a tendency to overheat during prolonged combat, consumed ordnance at a prodigious rate, and were vulnerable to a variety of microbot-delivered computer viruses.
    Their greatest weakness, however, lay in the fact that they were only as smart and capable as the human brains that lived inside of them. Brains that had been connected to human bodies once, and then, in retribution for an act of criminal violence or as the result of some terrible misfortune, had literally died. Died, and been dragged back from the great abyss, to live in electromechanical bodies where they might very well die again.
    This common experience made the cyborgs different in ways that bio bods couldn’t understand. A bio bod might imagine what it would be like to live in a mechanical body but couldn’t really know it. Couldn’t know the feeling of isolation that came with looking like a freak, the yearning for physical contact, or the pain that a malfunction could cause, which was why a gulf existed between cyborgs and bio bods, and why the media sometimes referred to all of them as “The Legion of the Damned,” and why an aura of mystery surrounded them.
    Booly was six-two, but the Trooper IIs towered over him. Most of their equipment had been built into their bodies, so readiness was ascertained by checking tiny readouts located at different points on their armor.
    The first Trooper II in line had the name “Rossif” stenciled on his right chestplate, a 1st REC insignia on his left arm, and a heart with an arrow through it on what would have been his right biceps. By long tradition the cyborgs were entitled artwork in place of the tattoos worn by bio bods.
    Each Trooper II came equipped with no fewer than ten small inspection plates. Booly picked five in random order, thumbed them open, and examined the readouts. Power, 92%. Coolant, 98%. Ammo, 100%. Life support, 100%. Electronic countermeasures, 85%.
    Booly looked up towards the Trooper II’s massive head. “You have an ECM readiness reading of 85 percent. Explain.”
    The