David Weber - Worlds of Honor

Novaya Tyumen wasn't like that, unfortunately. His attitudes might seem almost perfunctory to the casual observer, especially covered by the drawling pretense of boredom which he projected so well, but the truth was very different. He, too, watched everyone about him, but he was more spider than cat. Rather than challenge people to meet the standards he demanded of himself , he watched and waited until someone failed to meet the standards he demanded of them and then turned himself into the worst nightmare that person had ever had. That languid, aristocratic accent could cut like a razor, and he used it with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel. It wasn't so much the words he chose as it was the ineffable contempt with which he infused them, his obvious belief that only an imbecile could possibly have misunderstood any instructions that he gave, and that any failure in executing them could only be the consequence of abject stupidity or willful negligence. Worse, he obviously relished the opportunity to slice and dice anyone unfortunate enough to give him the chance. He enjoyed slamming people who couldn't slam back, and he would never have dreamed of risking the ire of one of his own superiors to defend or protect one of his juniors the way Harrington had deflected him from Hedges.

That clearly apparent contempt for anyone he considered his inferior was the worse of the only two real failings Ensign Haverty had so far detected in him. ( Professional failings, that was; the list of things she detested in him on a personal level grew longer with each passing day.) The other was a tendency to ignore the unlikely in his planning and depend on his natural intelligence and ability—both of which were considerable, she admitted—to wiggle out of trouble if it persisted in happening anyway. He wouldn't tolerate that sort of approach in anyone else, and Haverty was a recent enough product of the Academy to feel outraged by his willingness to adopt it for himself, but she had to admit that so far it seemed to have always worked for him.

And however much she might dislike that trait, it was far less disruptive and demoralizing than the contemptuous (and public) verbal flayings he was in the habit of handing out. Like the way he'd started in on Lieutenant Hedges. It wasn't that Novaya Tyumen wasn't good at his job, for in many ways he performed at a high level of competence. Indeed, Haverty had already realized that there were very few officers who could have taught her more about the inner workings of their joint BuShips specialization than he could. It was just that he could be so . . . so nasty about the lessons he chose to impart and how he taught them.

The ensign grimaced wryly at the weather front, then frowned. It was already a rough night down there, and from the look of things, it was going to get rougher. She really ought to bring it to Novaya Tyumen's attention, but she hated the very thought of that. He was undoubtedly sound asleep at the moment, which meant he would start out by tearing a strip off of her for disturbing him. And it would be even worse if he thought the fact that the weather was, indeed, headed for the wrong side of "iffy" might make him seem less than on top of things after the morning's discussion. He would undoubtedly take that out on her, as well, and after that, he'd make everyone else on his field test staff totally miserable by dragging them all in and demanding that they produce the contingency plans (which, Haverty knew, didn't actually exist, whatever he might have implied) for canceling or modifying the drop. And they'd have to put them all together within the next five or six hours so that he could casually (and triumphantly) produce them for people like Harrington and Hedges.

She checked the readouts again. Still within parameters so far, she noted, comparing them to the notes Novaya Tyumen had jotted down for her. Of course, it's going to come an awful lot closer to exceeding them before the night is over, but I don't think it's actually going to bust the outside limit he set. Even if it does, he specifically told me not to bother him until conditions did just that. He'll probably say something really ugly if I bug him early and then they don't exceed the mission parameters after all, and if they do . . .

She frowned again. Maybe if her boss had been Harrington instead of Novaya Tyumen she would have gone ahead and made the call now. But she didn't work for Harrington. She worked for Novaya Tyumen, and she was covered by his logged instructions not to wake him until the storm did reach unacceptable levels. And if executing his own orders makes him look bad, well, that's hardly my fault, now is it? the ensign thought. She hesitated for one more moment, then smiled a remarkably nasty smile for someone of her tender years and meticulously logged the wind velocities and snowfall, noted that both were still within acceptable bounds as stipulated in her orders, and went on about her other duties.

HMS Broadsword swung in her orbit around Gryphon, tranquil and still in the peaceful vacuum of space, while far, far below her, the late-season blizzard howled up the Olympus Valley and hurled itself upon the Athinai Resort with seventy-five-kilometer winds.

"Ohhh, look at it!" Susan Hibson exulted as she and Ranjit joined the flow of people towards the grav lifts that served the slopes. "Isn't it gorgeous? "

Ranjit laughed out loud, and she looked up at him with dancing eyes. Susan rarely gushed, but she'd found the storm which had moaned and howled about the resort last night exciting. Well, Ranjit had, too, he supposed. A belter habitat didn't offer its inhabitants any genuine weather at all, much less a shrieking blizzard, and he'd felt the wild power of the wind singing in his own blood.

He'd tried not to let it show, but Susan hadn't shared his own determination to avoid looking like some bumpkin kid from the back of beyond. She'd roamed around the main lodge, staring out the double-paned windows at the wind-tortured snow in wide-eyed delight and chattering to anyone unwary enough to pause within her range. Some of that still simmered within her, and made her even more appreciative of a winterscape unlike anything she had ever seen on warmer, sunnier Manticore, far less Unicorn Eleven. The tracks and paths which had marred the snow around the resort's buildings had disappeared magically, swept away by over a meter of fresh white. Huge drifts of even deeper white had been piled wherever an obstruction broke the wind, and the resort staff had told them that the slopes had been given an average of better than eighty centimeters of fresh powder. Although Ranjit fully intended to spend the next day or so with Susan on the beginners' slopes, he was looking forward to what all that fresh snow meant for the more difficult runs, as well. Yet right this moment, all of that was secondary to the sheer beauty of the crystal-clear morning and the almost painful perfection of the white mantle which covered everything in sight.

"Well it is gorgeous!" Susan told him firmly as he chuckled, and he nodded.

"Yes, it is," he agreed, and draped his left arm around her while he balanced two sets of skis on his right shoulder. "This should be fun," he added, and she nodded eagerly.

High above the Olympus Valley's floor, uncountable tons of fresh snow lay smooth and white under the brilliant sun, and the only sound was the faint sigh of the wind that swept swirling snow devils across the pristine peaks. The snow pack was always deep in the Atticas, but it was deeper than usual this year, although the sun had been unseasonably warm for the last few weeks. The overburden of fresh snow lay on a base which had been weakened and softened ever so slightly by that warmth, and no one knew it at all.