Elizabeth Moon - Rules of Engagement

“Maybe I will,” Brun said, and after a moment sighed and went out. Esmay put Brun’s worries out of her mind and tackled her assignments.

When the field exercise team assignments came out the next day, she found Vericour was right. Brun was on her team, and she had the smallest team of all—because her security would have to come along. How would that work? Would they really let her be roughed up? Or would they interfere in the exercise? And what would that do to the scoring?

Meanwhile, Brun maintained an indecent level of energy and enthusiasm. She learned content as fast as anyone Esmay had ever known—Esmay wondered if her intellectual capacity had ever been pushed near its limit. She did not, however, seem able to learn the attitudes that were by now second nature to those young officers for whom they were not first nature. Reprimands slid off her impenetrable confidence; suggestion and example alike had no effect.

“She’s a dilettante,” Vericour said, in another of those mealtime discussions. “Though what else could we expect from someone of her background? But she takes nothing seriously, least of all Fleet culture.”

Anton Livadhi, a cousin of the Livadhi with whom Esmay had served on Despite , shook his head. “She takes us seriously enough . . . but she’s not one of us, and she knows it. She wants us to be serious, while she has fun.” He had his own team for the field exercise, and they were well up the chart on the evaluations for the preliminary exercises. Esmay’s team performance was only middling; Brun fluctuated between brilliant and maddening, and her security could not commit emotionally as team members were supposed to do, and still be guards. They had taken almost twice as long as the fastest team in several exercises.

Esmay began to dread the field exercise itself, four days of intense and dangerous work in the badlands west of the base. She was reasonably sure that Brun’s guards wouldn’t let her be killed, but that left her and Jig Medars to do the work of an entire team. Two days before the exercise, she left a lecture on ship systems maintenance and found a message on her personal comunit: Lieutenant Commander Uhlis wanted to see her at her earliest convenience. Since she had an hour between classes, that meant right now.

She could hear the angry voices from ten meters down the corridor; Uhlis’s door was ajar.

“You have to see that it’s impossible.” Uhlis sounded annoyed.

“Why?” Brun sounded more than annoyed; Esmay paused, wishing the door had shut firmly.

“Because you’re already the target of assassins. The field exercise is by nature dangerous, and it’s also impossible to secure. All it would take is one person—just one, with the right skills—to pick you off.”

“You mean to tell me that on a base covered with Fleet personnel, you can’t even let me do a simple field exercise?” Scorn in that, as if Brun expected to shame Uhlis into changing his mind. That wouldn’t work.

“I mean we will not approve it. Nor will your father; I have already forwarded our decision, and our reasons for it, to him. He agreed.”

“That’s—that’s—the stupidest thing I ever heard!” Brun’s voice had gone up another notch. “If I’m a target for terrorists, then it’s perfectly clear that escape and evasion is exactly what I need to know. What am I supposed to do if I get kidnapped and need to escape?”

“The escape segment will be available—at least the urban end . . .”

“Fine. So I’ve broken out of some provincial jail somewhere and have to cover a hundred kilometers to a safe haven, and I have no training?”

“According to your father, you have had ample training in the basics of survival and navigation in the field, both on Sirialis and on Castle Rock. Your field skills are, in his opinion and those of our instructors who reviewed the recordings, equivalent to those of most graduates. So the escape segments should fill out your skills very well.”

Silence for a moment. Esmay wondered if she could just walk past the door now, but even as she moved, Brun stormed out, silent but obviously in a rage. She broke stride when she saw Esmay.

“You will not believe—!” she began.

“Excuse me,” Esmay said, not wanting to hear it all again. “I overheard a little, and I have an appointment.” Brun’s eyes widened, but she moved aside. Esmay edged past Brun and into the office, where a grim-faced Commander Uhlis looked ready to melt bulkheads with his glare. “Sir, Lieutenant Suiza reporting—”

“Close the door,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” Esmay shut the door firmly, aware of Brun hovering outside.

Uhlis took a deep breath, then another, and then looked at her with less intensity. “I wanted to talk to you about your team assignment,” he said. “If you overheard much of that”—he nodded at the door—“then you know we have concerns about security. Up until last night, we still had orders to accommodate Meager and include her in all the courses, including the field exercise. However, since we now have permission from the highest levels to exclude her and her bodyguards, we need to rearrange team assignments. We’re going to split the exercise, and you’ll be assigned to a new team, acting commander.” He gave her a dangerous smile. “I understand you do very well at motivating strangers, Lieutenant.”

So the camaraderie she’d built up with her team over the past week would be no use to her—and the team she went to might well resent losing its familiar commander. But at least she wouldn’t have Brun to worry about.

“Thank you, sir,” she said.

“Thank me afterwards,” he said. “If you can. Remember, your score depends on not only your own successful evasion, but how many of your team make it.”

Her new team waited for her in the afternoon skills exercise. They had a bored, wary look . . . they were, she realized, the team that Anton Livadhi had led. And Anton had remarked, just too audibly, that he had his doubts about the source of Suiza’s success. “Serrano pet” was a phrase she’d been meant to overhear; she had ignored it, but these people hadn’t. Two other women, four men; she ran the names over quickly in her mind. All but one had been in her class in the Academy, but she hadn’t seen any of them for years, and she hadn’t been close to them even then.

That afternoon’s exercise was deceptively simple. From a scatter of raw materials, improvise a way to cross a series of “natural” barriers. Each obstacle required not only teamwork but also innovative thinking . . . none of the poles were long enough, none of the ropes strong enough, none of the assorted other objects were obviously meant for the tasks at hand. Esmay tried being forthright and cheerful, as recommended in the leadership manual, but only some of her new team responded. Lieutenant Taras was inclined to be pettish if her ideas were not accepted the first time; Lieutenant Paradh and Jig Bearlin could always think of ways for things not to work. By the time the period was over, they had completed only four of the five obstacles. Esmay was aware of the frowning instructor, ticking off points on his chart. This team had been ranked first or second in every exercise; now they wouldn’t be.

It was possible to request overtime, though it was rarely done because it imposed a twenty percent penalty on the entire score. Esmay raised her hand; Taras made a sound that might have been a groan. Esmay rounded on her. “We are going to finish this, Lieutenant, if we have to stay here all night—”

“We can’t win ,” Bearlin said. “We might as well take the eighty percent we’ve got—”

“And when you need that other twenty percent of experience, where are you planning to get it?” Esmay asked. “We’re completing this exercise, and we’re doing it now.”