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decide what the question really was.
    Moden decided to take a chance. He rose slowly to his full enormous height. “Sir,” he said as he gripped the arm of the heavy chair with his right hand, “my injuries were extensive. What remains of me, however—”
    Moden’s biceps muscles flexed, threatening the weave of his uniform jacket. He pulled with the inexorable strength of a chain hoist.
    “—is more than you’ll find filling most of the slots in the FDF!”
    The chair jerked upward with the sound of ripping metal. Only then did Moden realize that he’d been tugging against the conduits serving hard-wired sensors rather than merely gravity.
    “Sorry, sir,” he said ruefully, looking at the wreckage of a piece of very expensive equipment in his hand. He’d made the point he was trying to make. If he’d blown his psych profile off the map, then he may as well hung for a sheep as a lamb. “But strong and stupid has a place in an army too.”
    “Bloody hell, man,” Colonel Dascenzo murmured. “Look, put that thing down before you drop it on your foot and do yourself some real damage.”
    His expression softened as Moden obeyed him. The chair balanced awkwardly on the ends of tubes which had stretched and twisted before they broke. “You really do want to stay in the service, don’t you?” Dascenzo said softly.
    “Yes sir,” Moden said, standing formally at ease. “I really do.”
    “There’s a team being formed to survey a planet called Cantilucca,” Dascenzo said. “They’ll need an officer with a logistics background. Do you want the slot?”
    “Yes sir,” Moden said. “I’d like that very much.” He heard his voice tremble with the relief he felt.
    “You’ve got it,” Dascenzo said matter-of-factly. He touched the keyboard of his console. “Assignment orders will be waiting for you in your quarters.”
    The colonel threw another switch, then looked up at Moden again. “Captain,” he said, “you don’t have to believe me, but I just turned off all the recording devices. Would you answer me a question, just for my personal interest?”
    “Yes sir,” Moden said. He flexed his right hand behind his back. Now that it was over, he too was surprised at the amount of force his body had been able to deliver to the task he had set it.
    “Why do you want to stay in uniform so badly?” Dascenzo asked.
    Moden smiled, amused at himself. “Because I screwed up,” he said. “I therefore owe a debt. For a while I thought I should kill myself—I suppose you know that?”
    Dascenzo nodded, tapping the data-gorged console without taking his eyes off Moden’s.
    Moden nodded also. “I decided that wouldn’t pay anybody back,” he continued. “I don’t know who I owe, you see, but that wouldn’t help anybody. I—I believe that if I’m given duties to perform, then someday I’ll be able to . . . balance the account.” He barked a humorless laugh. “Does that make me crazy, Colonel?” he asked.
    “Captain Moden,” Dascenzo said, “‘crazy’ isn’t a term I like to use when discussing professional soldiers. What I do know, however, is that if all you want is a chance to do your duty—I’d be a traitor to Nieuw Friesland if I took you out of her service. You’re dismissed, Captain.”
    Dascenzo rose and extended his right hand across the desk to shake Moden’s hand. The psychiatrist was smiling sadly.
----

Earlier: Trinity

    The sound dived into the night of his mind, twisting deeper like a toothed whale hunting squid in the darkness a thousand fathoms down. It found him, gripped him, and tore him back to surface consciousness from the black gage coma in which he slept.
    He didn’t know his name. He didn’t know where he was. But the whine of the base unit to which he’d plugged his commo helmet was the call of duty, and not even the half-dozen stim cones of the past evening could deny his duty.
    He stabbed the speaker button, cueing the unit to continuous operation. “Go