"So? Look, Shortie, let me put you straight. I got nothing against you at all. Matter of fact, you were on the bounce that day we had to pick up Dizzy; I'll hand you that. But if you want a squad, you go dig up one of your own. Don't go eying mine. Why, my boys wouldn't even peel potatoes for you."
"That's your final word?"
"That's my first, last, and only word."
I sighed. "I thought it would be. But I had to make sure. Well, that settles that. But I've got one other thing on my mind. I happened to notice that the washroom needs cleaning... and I think maybe you and I ought to attend to it. So put your book aside... as Jelly says, non-coms are always on duty."
He didn't stir at once. He said quietly, "You really think it's necessary, Shortie? As I said, I got nothing against you."
"Looks like."
"Think you can do it?"
"I can sure try."
"Okay. Let's take care of it."
We went aft to the washroom, chased out a private who was about to take a shower he didn't really need, and locked the door. Ace said, "You got any restrictions in mind, Shortie?"
"Well... I hadn't planned to kill you."
"Check. And no broken bones, nothing that would keep either one of us out of the next drop—except maybe by accident, of course. That suit you?"
"Suits," I agreed. "Uh, I think maybe I'll take my shirt off."
"Wouldn't want to get blood on your shirt." He relaxed. I started to peel it off and he let go a kick for my kneecap. No wind up. Flat-footed and not tense.
Only my kneecap wasn't there—I had learned.
A real fight ordinarily can last only a second or two, because that is all the time it takes to kill a man, or knock him out, or disable him to the point where he can't fight. But we had agreed to avoid inflicting permanent damage; this changes things. We were both young, in top condition, highly trained, and used to absorbing punishment. Ace was bigger, I was maybe a touch faster. Under such conditions the miserable business simply has to go on until one or the other is too beaten down to continue—unless a fluke settles it sooner. But neither one of us was allowing any flukes; we were professionals and wary.
So it did go on, for a long, tedious, painful time. Details would be trivial and pointless; besides, I had no time to take notes.
A long time later I was lying on my back and Ace was flipping water in my face. He looked at me, then hauled me to my feet, shoved me against a bulkhead, steadied me. "Hit me!"
"Huh?" I was dazed and seeing double.
"Johnnie... hit me."
His face was floating in the air in front of me; I zeroed in on it and slugged it with all the force in my body, hard enough to mash any mosquito in poor health. His eyes closed and he slumped to the deck and I had to grab at a stanchion to keep from following him.
He got slowly up. "Okay, Johnnie," he said, shaking his head, "I've had my lesson. You won't have any more lip out of me... nor out of anybody in the section. Okay?"
I nodded and my head hurt.
"Shake?" he asked.
We shook on it, and that hurt, too.
Almost anybody else knew more about how the war was going than we did, even though we were in it. This was the period, of course, after the Bugs had located our home planet, through the Skinnies, and had raided it, destroying Buenos Aires and turning "contact troubles" into all-out war, but before we had built up our forces and before the Skinnies had changed sides and become our co-belligerents and de facto allies. Partly effective interdiction for Terra had been set up from Luna (we didn't know it), but speaking broadly, the Terran Federation was losing the war.
We didn't know that, either. Nor did we know that strenuous efforts were being made to subvert the alliance against us and bring the Skinnies over to our side; the nearest we came to being told about that was when we got instructions, before the raid in which Flores was killed, to go easy on the Skinnies, destroy as much property as possible but to kill inhabitants only when unavoidable.
What a man doesn't know he can't spill if he is captured; neither drugs, nor torture, nor brainwash, nor endless lack of sleep can squeeze out a secret he doesn't possess. So we were told only what we had to know for tactical purposes. In the past, armies have been known to fold up and quit because the men didn't know what they were fighting for, or why, and therefore lacked the will to fight. But the M. I. does not have that weakness. Each one of us was a volunteer to begin with, each for some reason or other—some good, some bad. But now we fought because we were M. I. We were professionals, with esprit de corps. We were Rasczak's Roughnecks, the best unprintable outfit in the whole expurgated M. I.; we climbed into our capsules because Jelly told us it was time to do so and we fought when we got down there because that is what Rasczak's Roughnecks do.
We certainly didn't know that we were losing.
