Elizabeth Moon - Rules of Engagement

“Yes, back when no one imagined a girl like that would work her passage on an ag ship. Now they know—and you can bet she won’t do that again.” He turned back to Esmay. “Do you follow the newsflashes, Esmay?”

“No,” Esmay said. She had never paid much attention to the gossipy newsflashes, with their emphasis on fashion and celebrity.

“Well . . . if you had, you’d have seen Brun Meager in everything from formal gowns to skinsuits, posing elegantly on a horse or lounging by a picturesque beach. Flatpics of her are probably in more lockers than anyone but actual storycube stars.”

Great. Someone else who thought she was astoundingly beautiful. Esmay could picture every flaw in that face and body—not that there were many.

“But except for the daring rescue of the most noble Lady Cecelia”—that sounded like a quote from someone’s purple prose—“nothing I’ve read suggests she had any real sense. So now we’re stuck with her . . .”

“If the teams are the same,” Marden said. “Maybe they aren’t.”

“Maybe they aren’t, but I’ll bet Esmay ends up on the same team. They’ll want to put another woman on her team, and who else would they put? Taras? Don’t make me laugh. Taras wouldn’t have a chance with Brun Meager. No, they’ll put the best they have, and that’s you, m’dear.” Vericour bowed, grinning. Esmay felt embarrassed. How could she deal with this? It did not help that Brun chose that moment to appear at their table.

“Won’t do you any good to flirt with Suiza,” she said to Vericour, apparently apropos of the bow. “But you could always flirt with me.”

Vericour spread his hands, rolled his eyes, and then mimed a swoon; everyone laughed but Esmay. It was funny, but she was too conscious of the vivid intensity next to her to enjoy it.

“Could I talk to you a bit?” Brun said, turning to her with a more serious expression than usual. Under the eyes of the others, Esmay had to say yes.

“I know I did something wrong, but not what . . . how could I arrange air cover when we didn’t have any resources? And why should I have worried about it, when the information we were given didn’t mention any such threat?”

A technical problem she could answer; Esmay quickly outlined the logic behind their low score. Brun nodded, apparently paying attention, and Esmay warmed to her again.

“So . . . even if there’s no evidence to indicate a certain kind of threat, you still have to counter it?”

“You have to assume your intelligence is incomplete,” Marden put in. “It always is.”

“But if you’re too cautious, you can’t get anything done,” Brun said. “You have to act, even before you know everything—”

“Yes, but with an awareness of what you don’t know, and its implications,” Esmay said.

“And it’s not so much what you don’t know, as what you think you do know—that’s wrong—that will get you killed,” Vericour said. “It’s the assumptions—that no mention of an aerial threat means no aerial threat, or no mention of piracy in a sector means there are no pirates.”

“I see,” Brun said. “I’ll try to do better next time, but I have to say I’m better at reacting quickly than seeing invisible possibilities.”

When Esmay got up to leave, Brun trailed along instead of heading for the ball courts with the others, and Esmay sighed internally. She was tired already, and had at least four hours of studying to do; if Brun insisted on talking to her, she would be up late again, and her energy was running out.

“I know you’re busy,” Brun said, as they got to Esmay’s quarters. “But this shouldn’t take long, and I really don’t know where else to go.”

This appeal cut through Esmay’s worry about her classes. “Come on in,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s something wrong with Master Chief Vecchi,” Brun said.

“Wrong? What kind of wrong?” Esmay, her mind on their previous conversation, had been expecting a question about Fleet manners.

“Well . . . right in the middle of the lecture today, he suddenly didn’t make sense. He was telling us how to secure a line on a derelict in zero gravity, and he got it backwards.”

“How would you know?”

Brun had the grace to blush. “I read the book,” she said. “His book, actually. Safety Techniques in Space Rescue .”

“It slipped his mind,” Esmay said. “Everyone makes mistakes sometimes.”

“But he didn’t know it. I mean, he went right on, explaining things wrong. When one of the jigs asked if he was sure, Vecchi blew up . . . then got very red, walked out, and when he came back, he said he had a headache.”

“Maybe—”

“It’s not the first time,” Brun said. “A week ago, he actually inserted a Briggs pin upside down.”

“Testing you?”

“No—it was his own line, and he was about to move on it when one of the junior instructors—Kim something. Tough little woman, about half my size but can haul me up one-handed. She did. Anyway, she noticed Vecchi’s mistake and fixed it.”

“Um.” Esmay couldn’t think why this was her problem, except that anything that bothered Brun was her problem.

“It bothered her, I could tell. She watched everything else he did, checked it all. Not the usual cross-checks, but as if he were a student.”

“How old is Vecchi?”

“What, are you thinking he’s just gotten old? He’s rejuved, I know that. One of the first enlisted rejuvs.”

“When?”

Brun looked disgusted. “I don’t have his medical records—how would I know?”

“I just wondered . . . maybe it’s wearing off.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Brun said. Esmay raised her eyebrows and waited. “My father,” Brun went on. “He’s rejuved, so is Mother. Their friends . . . so I naturally know how it works.”

“And?” Esmay prompted.

“Well, the usual reason for repeating a rejuv is physical. The people I know who’ve had more than one certainly didn’t have any mental problems. Their personalities don’t change, and they’re just as alert.”

“But wasn’t that earlier kind of rejuvenation associated with mental degeneration?”

“Only if you tried to repeat it.” Brun made a face. “Mother’s second cousin or something did that, and it was horrible. Mother tried to keep me away from her, but you know little kids . . . I thought there must be something special in that suite if they wanted me out of it, so I sneaked in.”

“So . . . is Vecchi anything like your mother’s cousin?”

“Not . . . exactly. Not as severe, anyway. You don’t suppose they made a mistake and gave him the wrong kind of rejuv procedure, do you?”

“I don’t know. It would help if we knew more about rejuvenation, and also about the procedure used on Vecchi.”

“I thought you could do something, since you’re in Fleet.”

Esmay snorted. “Not dig into his personnel and medical records—I have no reason to see them, and it’s against regulations to snoop.”

“Not even . . . unofficially?”

“No.” She would stop this right here. “I’m not going to ruin my career to satisfy your curiosity. If Vecchi is impaired, someone in his chain of command will notice. If I observe something myself, I can report it. But I cannot—and will not—attempt to snoop in his records. You can report it, to—oh—whoever’s commanding over there. Who’s the senior instructor?”

“A Commander Priallo, but she’s on leave somewhere.”

“Well, find someone else—whoever is her junior—”

“I’d think you’d care,” Brun said.

“I care—” If anything at all was wrong, but this was only Brun’s word. “But I have no right to intervene; this needs to go to his commander. I suppose you could tell the Commandant.”