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veedee?”
    “Not this time. He—uh—bet one of the girls he could outlast her.”
    Khadaji shook his head. “Even full of Android to the eyes he couldn’t manage that. Who’d he bet?”
    “Uh… I’m not supposed to… ah, hell, it was Sister Clamp.”
    Khadaji laughed and shook his head again. “Not really?”
    “Yessir. Really.”
    “I would have liked to see that—after an hour or two. What’s he being treated for, blisters? Or exhaustion?”
    “Sister says it’s something called flea-bite-us.”
    “Phlebitis?”
    “Yessir. She says it’s irritated blood vessels, an inflammation of the veins. In his—ah—dick.”
    “Is Sister a medic?”
    “She says she used to be a doctor, but even if she wasn’t, she’d seen enough cases of this to know what it was.” Khadaji laughed again. “I’ll bet she has. Poor Sleel.”
    “Maybe he learned something.”
    “I don’t think so, Boss. He’s talking about a rematch.” “Let me know if it happens, Bork. I’ll bet my money on Sister.”
    The big man grinned. “Yessir, me too.”
    The octagon was about three-quarters full, early morning being the slackest period, but there were still almost two hundred men and women perched on the stools, smoking or drinking or wrapped in the grip of some other rec-chem. It could be noon or midnight, from the artificial lighting; it always looked the same in the octagon.
    Khadaji looked at the scene with some fondness. As pubs went, this was one of the better ones he’d worked in—and he’d been in no small number. It would not be too hard to see himself growing old here, serving the troopers, being well thought of by the military and locals, playing this simple game. He shook his head. No. It was a nice fantasy, but that’s all it was and he knew it. It was temporary, and he was better off keeping short-timer’s attitude about it. There were some good people here, a lot of them, and he would miss them, but this wasn’t his karmic destiny.
    Lojtnant Subru entered the octagon from the front and strode across the room toward the dispensing window. He was a man in a hurry.
    Khadaji walked toward the window, so that by the time Subru had bought and collected his flickstick, the owner of the Jade Flower was standing next to him.
    “Something, Lojt?”
    Subru scratched the end of the flickstick along the seam of his creased uniform pants. The tip flared, then faded to a glowing dot. He stuck the flickstick to his lips and drew in a deep breath of the fragrant smoke. He held the blast for a second, then began to speak. Dark purple smoke emerged from his mouth with the words. “A major attack, Emile. The Scum hit a T-plex last night. My T-plex. They got the guards and then hit the C.O. herself.” He took another hit from the stick. “I could have been there. If they’d come a day earlier, I would have been sitting on the O.O.D. desk my-fucking-self.”
    “They get any of the rebels?”
    “Not alive. I hear there were twenty-five or thirty of the Scum involved in the attack. Armed with stolen .177s and spetsdods.”
    “The troops ought to be wearing class two or three armor, Subbie.”
    The Lojt glanced at Khadaji’s face through the smoke. He seemed more relaxed, now. “There’s not enough to go around. You were in the Quartermasters, you know how Supply works. In a ten-kay, you only get so many suits and additional reqs take months. Besides, class two won’t stop a .177 and you can’t move in class three except to waddle.”
    “Way I heard it, most of the casualties are from dart poison, so class two should—”
    “Where did you hear that?” Even through the drug, he sounded suspicious. Careful, Khadaji told himself.
    “I run a pub, Subbie. I hear a lot of things. Men get drunk or stoned, they say things they don’t think about.”
    Subru shook his head. “Damn! Listen, Emile, I know this won’t get past you, but upranks is shitting bricks over this thing. A lot of the troops the Scum have hit are