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remember things?"
    Whit shook her head, turned her eyes away, and looked around the cube. Then she looked back, right into my eyes. "They were Legion troopers, Beta Three. The ones in armor were the CrimCon—from ConFree. And it—it was with the Legion, too. It's a soldier of the Legion, Beta Three, sworn to the Legion. It took an oath to protect and defend the people of ConFree from all enemies, foreign and domestic."
    ***
    "None of what it says makes any sense," I objected, after the initial shock wore off. The Legion, I thought—those were the guys that had been roasting that baby, in that great proprop shot we had pasted over the staff lunch table. My head was swimming. I didn't believe everything the System told us, but I knew the Legion were barbarians. They routinely tortured women and children to death, just for kicks, and gang rape was their national sport. Surely I could not have been with those scum!
    "If we were with the Legion," I asked, "why were CrimCon troopers firing at us? Why would they fire on their own people?"
    "That's why it's here, Beta Three," Whit replied sadly. "That's the source of all its troubles. And that's what caused the Lost Command to split off from ConFree. Does it doubt us? Feel its left arm."
    "It's artificial. We know that."
    "It's a Legion arm, Beta Three. Biogenned. It lost the original on Mongera, fighting the V and the System, for the Legion. Does it doubt it's a Legion trooper? Who else would go to so much trouble? Would the System? Those scars on its knuckles, on its arm. Legion tattoos, Beta Three. Dead troopers—its comrades. Lasered off by the System, or maybe by the CrimCon, to hide its identity. Does it notice it never gets sick? Stick around another hundred years, it will notice it doesn't age either. It's a Legion immortal, Beta Three—a soldier of the Legion."
    "A soldier of the Legion." I considered it. I guess it did make some sense. I was in tremendous shape, even after all that time in the Oz. There was no spare fat on me, and it was not just because of the starvation rations they had fed us on Nimbos. My muscles were whipcord tight, and hard as iron. That mugger in the elevator—I had demolished him with my hands and fists. I had reacted as savagely as a jungle animal, and I had felt no remorse for his death. And it was true, I never did get sick. And the arm…immortal? Immortal! System proprop claimed it was because Legion troopers were doomed to fight forever, until they were killed, even if it took hundreds of years.
    "The CrimCon captured it, Beta Three, when we were running together from that aircar on Andrion Two. They almost got us as well, but the Legion troopers that were with us hustled us out of the area."
    "It's nonsense," I objected. "Why was the CrimCon fighting the Legion?"
    "We don't know the full story, Beta Three. We know only what Cinta has chosen to tell us. But we can tell it that it is one extremely important unit. Cinta told us that elements in the CrimCon allied themselves with the System, to oppose the Legion and to capture both Cinta and it. They didn't get Cinta but they got it. They psyched it, and gave it to the System—we don't know why. It wasn't easy, tracking it down. But we did it. And now we've got it back!" Her eyes were glowing, and a fierce grin arose. "Cinta will be ecstatic."
    "Why did they want us? What did we have that was so important?"
    "We don't know, Beta Three. Cinta never told us. But we do know it had something to do with a little trip that it took with Cinta—we can't even tell it about that. Whatever it was, it precipitated the breakup of ConFree—the CrimCon—and the foundation of the Lost Command. What does it know about the Lost Command?"
    "Insane, genocidal war criminals—a gang of ruthless, merciless, marauding bandits, armed with antimats and hungry for blood—something like that."
    "Yes, yes…right. Something like that. It consists of several Legions that have broken away from ConFree and formed