Free Not For Glory by Joel Rosenberg

would be. "Do you see payess here?"
    Levine's face darkened; he was brought up religious. I was just as happy Ari didn't go on quoting: Levine would have come back with some Mishnah or Gemarah argument about how, in the context of Purim and the identification of Haman as an Amalekite—not to mention Deuteronomy 24:16—being Amalek was a matter of choice, not of ancestry. But that would have moved Ari as little as it would have Shimon, or me—for different reasons, in all three cases.
    "I learned from Shimon, on Nueva," Ari said. "It wasn't just business there, not ever. It wasn't Metzada versus Freiheim—it was the Children of Israel versus Amalek. Tetsuo?"
    Again, I nodded. I was there, and it was so. "You can talk about Shimon's Children's Crusade as an exception, but it really wasn't. Ask Dov. Unless Shimon's softening in his old age—which I don't believe for a moment—we can go ahead, explore it, but we'll find that there's no way that we can use anything Shimon Bar-El ever does for the benefit of Freiheim, or any other German colony."
    Alon sighed. "Amazing that he was so effective, then."
    Levine shook his head. "Not really. Most good fighting generals have their peccadilloes. I'd be tempted to say 'all,' but there's an exception or two."
    You can dispute, if you want, whether or not Shimon should hold a grudge against modern humans of German ancestry, most of them as innocent as any other randomly-selected set of humans—which isn't much, really—all of them people whose grandparents' grandparents weren't even born until well after the First Holocaust . . .
    . . . but argue it with him.
    He did hold a grudge.
    Shimon had always figured that Operation Theda Bara and the events surrounding David's Gift had closed the books on the Second Holocaust and the Sunny Musselmen—they took Eretz Yisrael away from us, for now; David Bar-El took their Ka'aba and their religion away from them forever —but the First Holocaust never had been appropriately balanced.
    Alon shrugged. It was evident who wasn't going to be sent to Nueva Terra if Metzada decided to hire on with the Freiheim side in the coming bloodletting.
    Rivka caught my eye, looked at Ari, then looked at the door. Levine nodded.
    It was an order. I'm not bad at obeying orders.
    "Ari," I said, "you've got two wives and a bunch of children sitting around their apartment, wondering why their husband and father would rather spend time with others than with them. I'll see you at dinner."
    He made no motion to rise. "If there's going to be an expedition to get Shimon out, I want in on it," he said.
    "Request denied," Rivka Effron snapped. There was steel in her voice. "It will be a small team going to Thellonee, under cover of the negotiators. You're not qualified to lead, and I'm not going to let you play private. The closest you have to small-unit background is running company-sized assault teams."
    Ari clenched his jaw.
    "Ari." Alon held up a placating hand. "I'll be talking to DCSPERS tonight about your next assignment. And I'll see you at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow to talk about how we handle this FFL thing. That's got to be a high priority, all things considered."
    "General—"
    "Go home, Ari."
    Generals, before they're ever generals, learn to settle for winning what battles they can: wordless, Ari rose and left.
    When the door shut behind him, Zev snickered. "Pretty majestic, isn't he? Just what we need on an easy little snatch-and-run, a fucking hero."
    "Shut up," Levine said flatly. "Tetsuo, our latest intelligence on Shimon is sketchy; we don't have any operatives in New Portsmouth. All I can tell you for sure is that he's living near the port, in a fairly rundown section of New Portsmouth. He may be doing a bit of consulting on the side, but there are rumors that he's somehow involved in local criminal activity."
    Rivka raised an eyebrow. "You don't seem surprised."
    "True. And I'm not bothered, either." I wasn't surprised, and even if I was, I know better