Free Mercenary by Piers Anthony Page A

not?”
    “Rigorous training is proud work,” he said. “You have too much pride, Hubris. Your very name smacks of it; I daresay it runs in your family. In civilian life it can be an honorable quality, but here it amounts to arrogance. You assume that your personal standards are superior, even when you are in plain violation of reasonable regulations. We must expunge that arrogance, or you will never be a true soldier. And that would be unfortunate, because you have the makings of a fine one. So I have given you a task that deprives you of pride, because it has no meaning. Chicken shit is very good for abolishing hubris, the arrogance of pride.”
    He was making some sense. I realized, now that I understood him better, that I could trust Sergeant Smith. He was not the blind disciplinarian I had taken him for. He was a sighted disciplinarian. It was a significant distinction.
    “Will you keep a secret?” I asked.
    “No. I serve the Jupiter Navy, nothing else.”
    Did my quest for Spirit really have to be secret? It seemed to me now that Smith would understand, and perhaps it was best that I tell him. I could have told him before, and spared myself all this, had it not been for that very hubris he charged me with. Surely my surname was no coincidence; some distant ancestor had been so proud of his arrogance he had adopted its name for his own. This was, it seemed, a lesson I had needed. “Will you give me a fair hearing, even if it takes some time?”
    “Yes.” No fudging here.
    “Then I will tell you what you want to know, and I will promise not to break any more military regulations.”
    “Come with me.” He turned and walked away.
    I set down my toothbrush and followed him to his room. There I told him about the manner I had separated from my sister, Spirit, and how I had received news of her survival.
    “Then it was not pride so much, but need,” Sergeant Smith said. “You have to try to save your sister from the pirates.”
    “Yes.”
    “You should have gone through channels. The Navy is not indifferent to the welfare of the families of soldiers. You should have come to me at the outset.”
    “I guess I should have. I didn't realize—”
    “Lot you have to learn about the Navy, Hubris. That's why you're a recruit. It's my job to teach you, but you have to give me half a chance.”
    He was right. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I—”
    “Apology accepted.” He looked at his watch. “Chow time.” He touched his intercom. “Corporal, bring me dinner for two from the mess.”
    “Check, Sergeant,” the intercom replied.
    Startled, I looked at him, the question in my face.
    “I have obtained some of your private history, Hubris,” he said. “Now I'll give you some of mine. We'll eat here; what we have to discuss is nobody's business but ours.”
    I nodded, still uncertain what he had in mind.
    And while we ate, Sergeant Smith told me his military background. It was amazing. He had been a master sergeant in a regiment, in charge of the specialized training the troops needed for a hazardous mission. The plan had been to make a covert raid to a planetoid in the Asteroid Belt where certain Jupiter officials were being held hostage. Smith had urged against the attempt, believing that the risk of precipitating the murder of the hostages was too great. He believed that negotiation was called for. The captain in charge had overruled him unceremoniously and ordered the preparations to be made. Smith had then gotten the job of training the men in the necessary maneuvers. He had tackled it honestly but pointed out that he needed at least two months to get the men in proper shape so that there would be no foul-ups. The captain, eager to get the job done, cut the time to one month. Again Smith warned against using this inadequately prepared force; again he was overruled.
    The mission was launched—and it failed. The hostages were killed, a number of the raiding personnel were lost, and Jupiter's interplanetary