“Well, the only one who’s survived from that close is the Old Man, sir,” Blatt pointed out. “You don’t wanna be that close; getting an arm blown off smarts.”

“Agreed,” Tommy said. “Been there done that.”

The lieutenant was new to the armored combat suits but not to battle; up until a few weeks before he had been an NCO in the Ten Thousand, the most elite unit short of the suits. The Ten Thousand was armed with captured Posleen weapons and other devices and shuttled from crisis to crisis, thus in his time in the unit Tom Sunday, Jr. had seen more than any trooper short of the ACS. And he had managed to survive and rise in rank to staff sergeant. All of which spoke for his versatility and ability to take cover when the shit hit the fan. But even the best soldier tended to run out the law of averages from time to time.

“Which one, L-T?” McEvoy asked. The officer was new to them and they hadn’t had much time to get to know him.

“Right, just above the elbow,” the lieutenant said. With his helmet on it was impossible to tell where he was looking but McEvoy was pretty sure it was directly at him.

“Ah,” the Reaper said. “Just asking.”

“You’re right,” the lieutenant said. “It smarts. So does taking a shotgun flechette in the chest. Or getting your right kidney taken out by a three millimeter that was, fortunately, going too fast to do much more damage. And getting caught in your own company’s mortar fire sucks. So does getting shot in the back by a cherry radioman who panics. All in all, I imagine it’s really unpleasant to get blown through the air by a nuclear explosion.”

“I guess so, sir,” the gunner said, swinging his heavy grav-gun from side to side to ensure it tracked smoothly. “All things considered I guess wearing armor is the way to go.”

“Ah hell,” Blatt said, changing the subject. “It looks like you were right. Here we go with ‘Veteran of the Psychic Wars.’ ”