This terrible heat,” Livy groaned, “is causing me to melt away. Is there no way, Auntie, we can convince this, this, dreadful general to put us up somewhere else on this godforsaken world? And the food! My God, Auntie, it’s inedible! I shall lose forty precious kilos on this trip!”“Auntie,” or Senator Anteus Baibu Query, leader of the Confederation Senate Armed Services Committee fact-finding mission to Arsenault, smiled and applied a damp cloth to Senator Olivia (“Livy”) Kancho Smedley-Kuso’s lower left leg. They both sat naked on the bed in the quarters assigned to Senator Query upon his arrival at Task Force Aguinaldo’s headquarters. Both did suffer in the heat since they carried more weight than was good in such a tropical environment, but General Anders Aguinaldo had made it clear to every member of the delegation that they would have to live as his troops did—and he himself did—while on their visit. “We are training for the invasion of the enemy’s home world,”
