Well, if you need me, I will be catching up on some sleep. He rises to his feet and winces. He brings his watch up, stares it for a moment, and then shakes his head. When that fails to produce result more to his liking, he shakes the watch. When that fails too, he accuses it Liar. He reaches into a pocket and produces a bottle of pills, two of which he takes and washes down with a swig of coffee. Leaving the drink, he takes the noteputer and the bottle back to his cabin and collapses into the bunk.

After some rest, a shower, and a change of clothes, he is ready to face the world again-but first a sandwich. After eating, he makes his way to the Viper's vehicle bay to check on his tank-the idea of others working on his ride still bothered him. He had spent long hours on that stupid garrison job tuning it so it moved as an extension of his will. The last thing he needed was some astech going and screwing all that work up-especially one of the new ones, who may not have been told to be careful with the Blaze. His Blaze.

To his pleasant surprise, however, his inspection reveals his fears are completely unfounded. Thanks, he says to the tech in charge, I couldn't have done a better job myself. Then he spends some time meticulously adding a black and a white band to the base of the laser barrel-kill markers.