The question of what to do with a large collection of young, physically fit and active, living-in-the-moment young men is one that has constantly bedeviled armies whenever they are not actually fighting. One can only drill so much. As the Gallian military discovered, this problem did not go away when they allowed women into the force…Yet another issue faced by the Gallian militia was how to handle the regular/militia divide…

Excerpted with permission from A Social History of the Second Europan War, Amalie Rigolet; Varrot Books, 1973

It was Friday, and Heinrich Lannes was not looking forward to the weekend. At all.

Well, okay, he was looking forward to not going out in the woods again. But the fact was that he didn't really know most of the other lieutenants—Jo Falder, who commanded Squad Six, being the one exception—and going out and drinking with the enlisted men was frowned upon.

Besides, he really didn't want to impose on either Traherne or Yancey.

He had just about resigned himself to spending the evening at the Officer's Club, with its overpriced drinks, bad food, and worse service, and then spending the rest of the weekend holed up in his room refreshing himself on some of the things he was a little fuzzy on and some of the theories that had come out after his time at the university. He was particularly intrigued by some of the notions regarding "mechanized infantry" and its potential employment as part of a pursuing force. But, still, it looked to be a rather dull few days.

There was a knock at the door.

"Come in," he said, looking quickly down at his desk to make sure that all the paperwork he needed to fill out before the weekend had been completed. It was, and he breathed a sigh of relief as the door opened a crack and Falder poked her head in.

"Heinrich?"

"Yes?"

"Do you have plans for this evening?"

"No. Why?"

"Well, a bunch of us decided to go to one of the local taverns tonight, and we wanted to know if you were doing anything."

Heinrich shook his head. "Just planning on going to the officer's club for dinner and then going to bed. I'd like to come along if you don't mind."

Falder smiled cheerfully. "Good. I'll tell the others. We're meeting in fifteen minutes in front of regimental HQ."

She shut the door, and Heinrich smiled a little. He was probably still going to spend the rest of the weekend studying, but at least this Friday evening would involve something besides tactics, form-filling, and training.

He spent a few minutes checking and double-checking the forms he needed to turn in before he stopped work for the weekend. Immunization forms, medical check-ups, supply inventories—this was something he understood very well. It was taking a little bit of time to get used to soldiering again, but the bureaucracy was helping with the transition.

No matter, it was time to go. He put all the paperwork in its proper place in the file folder and tucked it under his arm, left his office and locked it after turning out the light, then strode down the hall to the filing clerk's desk.

"Here you are, Corporal," he said to the clerk, a legless veteran of EWI whose name was Milos Hofstra. "Do you have duty tonight?"

"That I do sir," the man said, remarkably cheerfully, as he took the folder. "Good chance to get some reading in once the filing's done. 'Sides, I don't mind covering."

"Have a good night, Corporal."

"You as well, sir," the man said as Heinrich went back down the hall and out the door. It was a crisp, clear March evening, and he was glad his shocktrooper's uniform was well-insulated. He took a moment to take in the stars before a voice broke into his ear.

"Heinrich!"

He looked over and, broken out of his brief reverie, took a moment to place who'd called to him in the group of junior officers standing outside the headquarters building. It was Lieutenant Claremont Nowicky, who was standing with Jo Falder, Hideki Kanawa, Louis Berthelmy, Stientje Wilders, and Marius Enjolras.

"Claremont," he replied, walking over. "Good to see you. Good to see all of you."

"Good to see you too, Heinrich," Berthelmy said with a laugh, and Heinrich staggered a little as the big man from the south slapped him on the back. "Come to join us?"

"So I am." Heinrich looked around. There were two missing. "Where are Faldio and Welkin?"

"Squads 1 and 7 have duty this weekend," Nowicky said cheerfully.

"Which means we don't have to deal with Welkin making weird bug analogies or Faldio crabbing about the senior leadership," Enjolras sniped.

Kanawa demurred. "Lieutenant Gunther's analogies, while strange, are often insightful, and while Lieutenant Landzaat does tend to be gloomy, his willingness to look beyond what is front of him is a valuable quality in a leader."

Enjolras gave Kanawa peculiar look. "I forgot, you're almost as strange as they are," he muttered.

Wilders shook her head. "Gentlemen, please. We haven't even started drinking yet. Plenty of time for gossip later." Both men glared at her for a moment, then relaxed as they acknowledged that she was right.

Falder piped up. "Well, since we're all here, we should probably get to the tavern before the 4th's officers drink it all themselves."

"A good idea," Berthelmy boomed. "Ladies and gentlemen, the night awaits!"

The Randgrizian Arms, Heinrich thought, was entirely undeserving of being compared to anything about the royal house of Gallia. Well, except possibly in terms of attempting to seek some kind of advantage from the war, he amended after looking at the price of the drinks.

Falder smiled at him when she saw the expression on his face. "Don't worry," she yelled cheerfully in order to be heard over the din. "It's half-price if you're in uniform!"

Which meant that he was still paying more than he would have back in Ghirlandaio town before the war, but they were here. Might as well.

He ordered a dark lager, thanked the rather attractive bartender when she gave it to him, and turned to really look at the place. It was crowded with men and women in Gallian officer's uniforms and not quite formal evening wear, and, he thought to himself, was a bit less shabby than it looked at first glance. The slight dinginess was almost—artful.

That contrasted with both the band and, much as he hated to admit it, most of the clientele. The former could keep a decent rhythm, but he'd heard better at his usual tavern in Ghirlandaio. That had been a good place. The staff was friendly but not intrusive, the prices were decent, and being right next to the Imperial border meant there was some actual variety in the beer. Which, when one went to a place most days after work with coworkers, was important. That, however, was woolgathering, and he took a more careful look at the patrons as he drank his beer.

Most of them, like him, couldn't dance, or at least not well, especially the male officers, although his perception that the women were better might not be entirely objective. And, as he looked more carefully, he began to get the notion that a few of the locals, men and women, were here for…mercenary purposes. Which made sense, but annoyed him for some reason.

Probably it was because the only time he'd lived in a big city had been his time at the university in Randgriz, and while he hadn't been a complete shut-in by any means, he and his friends had preferred quieter taverns than this. The kind of places where you'd be more likely to get into an argument over the validity of the economic entity assumption than a fight over a woman, as, Heinrich realized as a very drunk officer whose rank tabs indicated that he was a regular laid a hand on Enjolras' shoulder, was very likely to happen now.

Nuts, he thought as he quickly finished the rest of his pint—wouldn't want it to go to waste—and moved forward to deal with the situation before it escalated. Enjolras was not in a good mood, and this drunken idiot had initiated physical contact from the start. He'd seen more than a few arguments turn ugly in the debriefing room after a training exercise gone wrong back at the university, and this looked like one of them, especially as it looked like the regular was launching in on a tirade and Enjolras looked like he was about to wind up for a punch.

Then Falder, one step ahead of him, moved into his peripheral vision just as he got close enough to hear the tail end of the regular's angry rant. "—and go back to your brats where you belong and leave the fighting and women to the professionals, you part-time pretender!"

That did it. Enjolras had swept the woman behind him with his right arm, which meant that he went for the punch with his left, which meant Falder was able to catch his arm before he struck a fellow officer and give Lannes enough time to get between the two men.

He looked dead into the regular's face. His breath stank of rotgut alcohol, and his eyes said this wasn't the first night he'd drunk far too much. This was going to be tricky.

"Now look," Heinrich said, "We've all had a bit to drink, and there's going to be things said we don't mean. So, why don't we all back off, calm down, and go have a drink at the bar, okay?"

"Don't think so," the regular growled. "Just going to go after you instead," he continued, and pulled his right arm back for a roundhouse punch…only to have it caught by an officer wearing the same unit tabs, who started to drag him back. This was initially unsuccessful, but then another joined him, and soon they were dragging him back across the floor.

Heinrich turned briefly to make sure Enjolras wasn't following him, and noted that Falder seemed to have calmed him down. He then looked back to see another regular standing in front of him, who stuck out his hand.

He took it, and as they shook hands the other man introduced himself in a voice perfectly pitched to keep the conversation between them. "Lieutenant Norwalk, 11th Regiment."

"Lieutenant Lannes, 3rd Milita," Heinrich replied, attempting to imitate Norwalk's pitch.

"My apologies for Lieutenant Gerstein. He's had a rough few weeks. He was on the border when the Imps rolled in, lost half his squad. Common story, really," he said as his eyes started staring past him. "When he starts blaming himself he hits the bottle, and he tries to take his frustration out on the militia."

"I understand," Heinrich said flatly, "but you might want to keep a closer eye on your friend. There could have been real trouble tonight."

A cold light flashed in Norwalk's eyes. "What do you understand about it?"

"I was in the Ghirlandaio Town Watch, lieutenant. We met the Imps with three squads. By the time reinforcements showed up, we were down to two teams."

Norwalk's face softened. "So you do know something about it." He paused. "Were you an officer, then?"

"I was a corporal."

"You've got most of it, then. But there's one thing you still don't understand. When you're in charge, and your soldiers die, and you lose anyway. Best pray to whatever gods you believe in that you never do, because that's what Gerstein's going through right now." And with that, Norwalk turned on his heel and walked out after his friends as Heinrich stared after him.

"What was that all about?" Falder asked from behind him, startling him a little.

"Nothing!" he said, slightly too quickly. "How're Enjolras and the woman he was dancing with?"

"They're fine. Took themselves…elsewhere. What about you?"

"I'll be fine," he replied, still looking at the area where the regulars had gone. "Just started thinking, is all."

"Well, we can't have that," Falder chuckled as she clapped him on the back. "We stopped a fight, that calls for a beer."

"Yeah," he said as they went back to the bar, "yeah, I guess it does."

A/N:

VVR8-thanks for the concrit, I appreciate it. Hopefully I'll have gotten better about keeping the chaos of battle in mind as the story continues. As to killing off the characters-there's not going to be a lot of that, unfortunately, largely because of Ragnaid. Part of the problem with the Valkyria Chronicles 'verse is coming up with a way to kill people off that doesn't make their fellows look like utter morons. There will be some people dying who you'll actually like, however, so don't worry on that score.