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escape pods or a possibly delusional NCO.
    Two more days of briefings finished off the staff officers and NCOs, and she spent the day before she began at the Recruit Training Center going over her notes and making some of the changes Major Alie had suggested. She no longer ate alone; every meal in the SRM became a sort of mini-briefing. Since going out would only expose her to questions from officers and speculation by other ranks, she stayed in.
    She was rapidly reaching the point where being shot at by the Silsviss would be preferable to having to talk about them. It didn’t help that most of the private questions—and many of the briefing room questions for that matter—involved second-guessing the decisions that had been made in the field.
    “Contamination levels were rising slowly; why didn’t you stay with the VTA?”
    “Why didn’t you empty the armory? Why wasn’t every Marine carrying two or three weapons?”
    “Why didn’t you put your ammo for the emmy under cover so it couldn’t be hit?”
    As that second-guessing was coming from Marines who’d spent most of their tour on their asses behind a desk, Torin figured it was inevitable that she’d end up in the gym late one night, pounding the snot out of some pompous desk jockey. When it finally happened, it started with a Krai technical sergeant demanding to know why she hadn’t killed Cri Srah when she had him in the choke hold. Then it moved into the declaration that, if it had been his people sent into ambush, he’d have made the Silsviss pay. Finally, it ended with him pinned to the floor, Torin’s knee on his throat.
    She had a bite taken out of her padding—Krai invariably bit, but the padding slowed them down a little—and a few bruises.
    The incident would have broken the monotony except that it had been so appallingly predictable.
    She spoke to the one fifty recruits first. On their last tenday, they were almost done with Basic and, having returned from Crucible, were considered Marines—nothing left but finishing up the appalling amount of documentation the military required before posting. There were no recruits in one thirty or one forty; they were on Crucible and probably wishing, if Torin’s memory of those twenty days was anything to go by, that they were anywhere else.
    It took a few years of actual combat to put Crucible in perspective.
    The one twenty recruits included Staff Sergeant Beyhn’s Platoon 71 as well as Platoon 72 under the command of DI Staff Sergeant Connie Dhupam.
    “You haven’t stopped by for that drink, Gunny.”
    “Only time I’ve had free, you were with your platoon, Staff.”
    “They’re keeping you busy.” He snickered, but not unsympathetically, at Torin’s expression. “This isn’t your job. You should be out there keeping the kids I’m sending you alive. Why the hell aren’t they putting your second lieutenant through this crap?”
    “Lieutenant Jarret was unconscious for the final battle and in Med-op for the aftermath.”
    “And you’re General Morris’ golden Gunny.”
    Torin snorted. “For my sins.”
    By day one hundred and twenty, recruits had survived long hours of training both physical and mental and were showing the arrogance that was a natural result of that survival. Two tendays on Crucible would temper that arrogance, but nothing would ever completely remove it. As Major Alie instructed the two platoons in the discretion expected of a Marine given sensitive information, every single recruit leaned slightly forward to show they were listening.
    It was the
appearance
of rapt attention, at least.
    Most of them looked intrigued, a few looked amused, all di’Taykan hair was in movement, and the half dozen Krai were showing teeth. One or two of the recruits were showing no expression at all, and Torin decided they were in Staff Sergeant Beyhn’s platoon only because that was where she’d begun.
    They hadn’t read the diplomatic reports, but they’d studied every word written by