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“Fun, right,” he said, throwing the bag over his shoulder.

The changing room had altered as well. There were closed stalls for changing; before it had been totally open. And there were two attendants waiting for his clothes and gear. From prior experience he knew he could trust them to not pilfer anything out of the bags so he added his money pouch after a moment’s thought. That done, he tucked a towel around his waist firmly and headed through the door marked “Showers.”

More changes. The showers were individual stalls; before they had simply lined one side of the room. There were males and females in the room and when one of the latter, a tall, lithe blonde, came out of a shower stall stark naked he actually started to feel more at home. He still put the towel back on before leaving his own stall.

Beyond the room was cross corridor with several doors. One was marked “Baths, Male” another “Baths, Female” and a third “Pools.” He pushed open the male bathing room and saw a line of large wooden tubs, much like he remembered. There were a few guys in the far tub but the room was otherwise empty. He didn’t recognize any of them so he headed for the room marked “Pools.”

He wasn’t sure what to expect but it wasn’t what he got. The room was long, apparently one large building, the walls made of paneled wood and lined with oil lamps. More oil lamps were hung throughout the room and in several spots there were round fireplaces with metal covers and chimneys to let the smoke out through the roof. The floor was tiled and the “pools” were just that, nine pools of varying sizes scattered around the room. There were benches and low tables as well and most of the people who had been coming in and out apparently gravitated here. The conversation was loud and echoed across the room.

He stepped through the door and looked around trying to decide what the standard mode of dress was but there didn’t seem to be any. Some of the people had on light bathing suits but the majority were naked and there didn’t seem to be any discrimination. A blonde in a suit so sheer she might as well have been naked was talking to a male who was. Two guys in bikini bathing suits were talking to the woman who had walked out of the shower starkers. He finally recognized one of the instructors at the Academy and had started across the room when he heard his name screamed and the next moment found his arms filled with naked female.

He was having such a hard time trying to figure out where to put his hand, and hook, that it took him a moment to recognize her.

“Shilan!” he yelled. “Damn, it’s good to see a familiar face.” Hsu Shilan had been part of his apprenticeship class, a lovely trim brunette with whom he’d had an “off-again” relationship until he joined the Blood Lords and basically lost track. Last he’d heard she was a textile designer at one of the mills. She’d put on a bit of weight since then, but since she had been skinny to the point of anorexia it looked good on her. Too good. Herzer found himself stroking her back and wished he had more clothes on.

“Well, if you’d stay in town for a while,” she said, sternly. If she noticed the stroking it was only to lean into it a bit.

“My master’s voice,” he replied, carefully removing his hands lest he get a little too enthusiastic. “I go where they tell me. This time it was Harzburg for a year and a half.”

“You haven’t met my husband, David,” she said, dragging him to one of the pools.

“Husband?” he squeaked.

One of the bathers had risen out of a nearby pool and held out his hand.

“So you’re Herzer Herrick,” the man said. Herzer noted as he took the hand that it was soft and that he out-massed Shilan’s husband by at least twice. So if it came to cases, he could probably punch David through the nearest wall. He still intended to be extremely correct and punctilious. Damnit. The mission in Harzburg meant that he was trying to uphold the reputation of the Federal forces. And although an ancient general had said “A soldier who won’t fisk, won’t fight,” the Harzians were such stuck-up pricks that he’d had to play saintly soldier boy the entire year. It had been a looong year.

“Shilan has told me an awful lot about you,” David continued.

“It’s all lies and damned lies,” Herzer said, squatting down as modestly as he could with a towel on. Shilan had slid back into the pool but her breasts, which were noticeably rounder and fuller than the last time Herzer met her, were fully exposed.

“Come on,” Shilan said, waving at the pool. “Jump in. The water’s fine.”

“Um…” One hundred twenty-eight times three is… three times eight, carry the two… By the time he was barely a quarter of the way into the equation he’d gotten to the point he wouldn’t embarrass himself and he pulled off the towel.

“See, told you he was hung like an ox,” Shilan said with a chuckle.

So much for not being embarrassed.

“Yep, the reason we never had a relationship was she saw me in the showers and fainted,” Herzer replied with a growl.

“With excitement, maybe,” David laughed. “I see some of us got ‘enhanced’ before the Fall.”

“Natural genetics,” Herzer replied, tightly. “I had the muscles built on, but that was because I had a degenerative condition. I’d worked for them, they just wouldn’t stay. When I got cured, I had a bod-mod, but it was only for the muscles. Then I maintained them. The rest is genetics. The size overall and… in places.”

“Big hands,” Shilan chuckled. “That’s what you meant.”

“Hand,” Herzer noted, holding up his prosthetic.

“Sorry,” Shilan said, suddenly contrite.

“Not a problem, it’s great for opening beers,” Herzer replied with a shrug.

“You’re Herzer Herrick?” The woman from the showers slid into the pool, looking at him with a quizzical frown. She looked to be in her twenties but her movements were so smooth and precise she had to be nearing her first century. “I was expecting someone… older.”

“At your service, Mistress…?”

“Miss,” the woman said with a smile. “Stephanie Vega.” She held out her hand, reaching across the pool to do so.

She was blond, a natural apparently or at least with either transformed genetics or very ready in her use of dye, long and slender in the hipless, bustless look that was fashionable pre-Fall. A face that was a little too perfect to be natural. Herzer wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers. Well, maybe if she was really messy about it.

“And, yes, I’m Herzer Herrick,” Herzer said, giving her his patented big-dumb-goofy grin. To most women big seemed to equal dumb and if dumb was what they wanted, he was their man.

“The Blood Lord?” she continued, her eyes widening, as if she still didn’t quite believe it. Her pupils were dilated so far it was hard to tell she had green eyes.

“You might say the Blood Lord’s Blood Lord,” Shilan said somewhat cattily. “When they recruit they ask ‘Do you think you can be as good as this?’ ”

“I wasn’t disbelieving you,” Stephanie said, smiling disarmingly as she leaned back against the wall of the pool. “But the stories that you hear…”

“We only eat babies if they’re particularly tender,” Herzer said. The woman was oozing charm, which suddenly set off alarm bells.

“Fight until you die and drop and all that,” Stephanie said. “You’ve been out of town?”

“Harzburg,” Herzer said. “Great place to visit, wouldn’t want to live there.”

“What were you doing?” Shilan asked.

“Tarson had declared for New Destiny,” Herzer shrugged. “They were raiding Harzburg. Harzburg screamed for help. They got me.”

“One war, one Blood Lord?” Stephanie asked.

“One minor little campaign,” Herzer said with a frown. “They had some issues with their ‘support.’ They got over it in time.”