Rhodes walked into Colonel Kraft’s office and found General Brewster already there. They stood around the table talking to four other officers Rhodes had never seen before.

One of them was a middle-aged female general named Hyde. There were also two male colonels in their thirties named Neff and LeClerc. The last man in the room was an admiral named Pulman.

Rhodes stiffened when he entered the room. He’d been hoping to talk to Colonel Kraft alone first and hopefully get him to order the doctors to readjust the battalion’s behavioral protocol back to the way it was before.

Rhodes didn’t know why all these officers were gathered in Kraft’s office, but the temperature dropped twenty degrees the minute Rhodes walked in. These people weren’t here to pay anyone a social call.

General Brewster tried to play it off with his usual affable demeanor. “Ah, Captain! Come on in! Just the man we were hoping to see.”

Rhodes decided to take the bull by the horns. Why pretend to be friendly when they obviously weren’t?

“Why did you order the doctors to alter our behavioral protocol?” Rhodes demanded. “Now every one of us is malfunctioning. Half the battalion could have lost their lives from this stunt.”

“We altered your behavioral protocol because you disobeyed orders on the battlefield, Captain,” General Hyde replied.

Rhodes spun around to stare at the woman. “You did this? Who the hell are you?”

“We are the officers in charge of the Battalion 1 project,” Colonel Neff replied.

“I thought General Brewster was in command of the Battalion 1 project,” Rhodes replied. “That’s what he told me.”

“He’s in charge of operations,” Colonel Neff replied. “We’re the governing body.”

“Then you can order the doctors to put our behavioral protocol back to the way it was,” Rhodes snapped. “You can’t expect us to fight anybody the way we are.”

“We can’t do that until we satisfy ourselves that you really will follow orders on the battlefield,” General Hyde replied. “General Kaufman ordered you to stay in position with the platoons and hold the Aevod Gap. You disobeyed that order. You risked the safety of….”

“I didn’t risk the safety of anything except the Emal,” Rhodes interrupted. “General Kaufman was operating under a misunderstanding of battlefield conditions. He refused to listen to my recommendation even when I offered to share the evidence from my SAMs that the Emal were about to breach the Gap. Three platoons would have gotten wiped out if the battalion hadn’t acted when it did. The whole beach could have gotten wiped out if the Emal overran that gap.”

“You are still part of the regular Legion, Captain,” General Brewster chimed in. “You still have to obey orders even when you don’t agree with them. General Kaufman was the one making battlefield decisions on Ohait, not you…..”

“I won’t do anything to risk my subordinates nor will I do anything that unnecessarily jeopardizes other Legion personnel. You wanted Battalion 1 to fight this war in ways the ordinary Legion can’t. What’s the point of me being hamstrung by people who don’t have access to the SAMs’ intelligence? What’s the point in me having this technology at all if I’m not going to use it?”

“The point is for you to add your strength and firepower to the regular Legion’s efforts,” General Hyde told him. “I’m sure General Kaufman had information you didn’t have….”

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“And I’m sure he didn’t have information I did have. You were the ones who gave me this technology for good or bad. I’ll use it as I see fit. If you don’t like it, you can send a real robot in my place next time.”

He walked out of the room and headed back to the barracks. He couldn’t tell if this smoldering fury in his chest came from the doctors’ adjustments or because he really did hate these people for putting him in this position.

Those bastards! Who the hell did they think they were—telling him to obey orders?

Even regular Legion soldiers had to think for themselves before they carried out an order. Every Legion soldier was responsible for making sure an order didn’t jeopardize their fellow soldiers.

Every soldier had a duty to uphold the honor of the Treaty of Aemon. That’s what being part of the regular Legion meant.

His last words rang in his ears. He said them in the heat of the moment. Now he realized with a kind of fatal certainty that they were truer than true. He wasn’t a robot.

He returned to the barracks and sat down on the edge of his capsule. The barracks didn’t feel right without Dietz and Thackery. Even Dietz had become a part of this group.

The rest of the battalion kept their voices down when they talked at all. Most of them just went to their capsules and sat down getting ready to go into their conversion cycles.

Rhodes looked forward to shutting his eyes even for a few seconds. Anything would be better than thinking about this.

He turned to pull his feet onto the mattress when Rhinehart jumped up. He’d been sitting down, too, and about to lie down.

He jerked from one direction to another. “I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch!!” Rhinehart bellowed. “I swear I’ll fucking kill you!!”

Oakes, Rhodes, and Lauer converged from all sides. “Rhinehart!” Rhodes yelled. “What’s wrong?”

“YOU SON OF A BITCH!!” Rhinehart thundered and tried to take a swing at Rhodes.

In that moment, Rhodes made eye contact with Rhinehart—or tried to. Rhinehart didn’t make eye contact. He looked straight through Rhodes.

Rhodes lunged out of the way. Lauer and Oakes took their chance to dive in and grab Rhinehart by the arms, but Rhinehart’s size and strength overpowered all three men.

Rhinehart swung his elbow, threw Oakes off, and fired his scourge gun, but he fired it into the wall. Rhinehart didn’t try to shoot any of his comrades.

“RHINEHART!!” Rhodes bellowed. “Look at me!”

“You son of a bitch!” Rhinehart made another dive—for open air. He tried to snatch something out of thin air.

“Interface with Rocky, Fisher!” Rhodes ordered.

“I can’t!” Fisher called back. “He’s blocking me! He won’t let anyone interface.”

“Something’s wrong with the SAM.”

“YOU BASTARD!!” Rhinehart roared and tried to take another swing.

Rhodes thought he understood now. Rhinehart was trying to attack Rocky for some reason, but Rhodes couldn’t see the SAM to figure out what the problem was.

Oakes and Lauer threw their weight against Rhinehart to restrain him. His struggles and theirs tipped all four men over. They landed hard on the floor trying to wrestle Rhinehart into submission.

His weapon went off again, but Lauer pinned Rhinehart’s arm down. The shot skidded across the floor and hit Dietz’s capsule instead. The shot didn’t damage anyone.

The medical team charged in. “What’s going on?!” Dr. Irvine cried.

“Shut him down!” Rhodes snapped. “His SAM is malfunctioning!”

The medical team surrounded Rhinehart. Rhodes, Lauer, and Oakes had to back off, but at that moment, another gunshot exploded across the room.

Rhodes barely had time to see where it came from before Henshaw’s scourge gun went off pointing at her head.

She dove out of the way so fast she knocked herself over backward. Her other hand shot to her right wrist. She actually fought to push the gun away from her own head.

She screamed and that sound electrified everyone in the room. Rhodes rushed her, but Coulter and Fuentes got to her first.

Rhodes seized Henshaw’s wrist. “Stop, Georgie! Don’t do this!”

“I’m not doing anything!” she shrieked. “He’s trying to kill me!”

“WHO?!!” Rhodes yelled back.

“Koen!! My SAM is trying to kill me! I can’t stop him!!”

Rhodes pounced on Henshaw’s arm trying with all his might to drag her weapon away from her head. She used her left arm as best she could to help him, but the SAM controlled her mechanical right arm. It was too strong.

Rhodes strained his joints to the breaking point. Coulter and Fuentes grabbed Henshaw to pry her arm away, too.

They bent her elbow down one millimeter at a time until, without warning, the resistance holding her arm up gave way. Her arm unfolded under all that pressure.

Rhodes and the others had been pulling her hand away from her head with such force that her arm shot out at full length and the scourge gun went off right in Rhodes’s face.

End of Chapter 34.