Elizabeth Moon - Rules of Engagement

She expected more resistance, but despite some sidelong grumpy looks, they tackled the final obstacle with more energy than they had any of the others. Five minutes later, they had solved the problem—and although Esmay halfway expected them to dump her in the mud, they got her over the pit with the same care they expended on each other.

“Good choice,” the instructor told them afterwards. “You wouldn’t have got eighty percent before—you were about as effective as a jug of eelworms—but you’ve got it now.”

By the time they got back to the mess hall, Esmay felt she had a chance with this group—a slim chance, but a real one. If only she’d had a few more days before the field exercise.

The next day’s prelims went better; her new team seemed willing to work together again, and they were back up to third in the daily ratings. Esmay went to her quarters to pack her gear for the field exercise, and try to snatch a few hours of sleep before time to leave.

She had everything laid out on her bunk when her doorchime rang. Stifling a curse, she went to open it. Barin might have stopped by, though she’d hardly seen him for days, except with Brun. She hoped it was Barin. But instead it was Brun, and a very angry Brun at that.

“I suppose you’re proud of yourself!” Brun said first.

“Excuse me?” What was the girl talking about?

“You never did want me on your team; you haven’t liked me from the beginning.”

“I—”

“And now you’ve made sure I can’t do the field exercise, so you can take over a top team . . .”

“I did not,” Esmay said, beginning a slow burn. “They just assigned me—”

“Oh, don’t be stupid,” Brun said, flopping onto the bunk and making a mess of Esmay’s careful arrangement. “You’re the heroic Lieutenant Suiza—they want you to shine, and they’ve arranged it. Never mind what it does to other people’s plans . . .”

“Like yours?” Esmay said. She could feel her pulse speeding up.

“Like mine. Like Anton’s. Like Barin’s.”

“Barin’s!”

“You know, he’s really quite fond of you,” Brun said, idly prodding a stack of concentrate bars until they collapsed. Two slid off onto the floor. Esmay gritted her teeth and picked them up without comment. She did not want this. “I was trying to find out why you’re such a cold fish, and I thought he might know—and I’ll bet you didn’t even know the poor boy’s half in love with you.”

Didn’t she . . . ? Esmay contemplated for a moment the probable result of pulling out Brun’s tousled gold curls by the roots.

“Of course, such an upright professional as yourself would never stoop to dally with mere ensigns,” Brun went on, in a tone that could have removed several layers of paint from a bulkhead. “He, like the rest of us, is far beneath your notice—unless someone gets in your way.” This time she picked up a water bottle and opened and shut the spout.

“That is not fair,” Esmay said. “I didn’t have anything to do with your being taken out of the field exercise—”

“I suppose you want me to believe you support me?”

“No, but that’s not the same thing. It wasn’t my decision to make.”

“But if it had been—” Brun gave her a challenging glare.

“It wasn’t. What might have been doesn’t matter.”

“So true. You might have been a friend; you might have been Barin’s lover; instead—”

“What do you mean ‘might have been’ someone’s lover?” Even as angry as she was, she could not say Barin’s name in that context. Not to this woman.

“You don’t expect him to hang around worshipping your footsteps forever, do you? Just in case you might come down from your pinnacle and notice him? Even a bad case of hero worship yields at last to time.”

This was her worst fear, right here and now. Had it been only hero worship? Was it . . . over?

“And you, of course, were right there to help him over this unwarranted fixation . . . ?”

“I did my part,” Brun said, flipping out the gold curls with a gesture that left no doubt what she meant. Esmay had an instant vision of them strewn about the room, little gold tufts of hair like fleece on the shed floor after shearing. “He’s intelligent, witty, fun, not to mention incredibly handsome—I’d have thought you’d notice—”

A light of unnatural clarity seemed to illuminate the room; Esmay felt weightless with pure rage. This . . . this to be pursuing Barin. This to displace her, to ruin her relationship with Barin. A young woman who boasted openly of her sexual conquests, who refused to abide by any rules, who claimed to be unafraid of rape because “it’s just mechanics; and aside from that, no one can make me pregnant.” She was like Casea Ferradi, without Ferradi’s excuse of a colonial background.

Hardly conscious of what she was doing, she reached out and lifted Brun off the bunk, and set her against the wall, as easily as she could have picked up a small child.

“You . . .” She could not say the words she was really thinking; she struggled to find something hurtful enough. “You playgirl,” she said finally. “You come bouncing in here, all full of your genetically engineered brains and beauty, showing it all off, playing with us— playing with the people who are risking their lives to keep you and your wonderful family alive and safe.”

Brun opened her mouth, but Esmay gave her no chance; the words she had longed to say came pouring out.

“You wanted to be friends, you said—what did you ever do but get in my way, take up my time, and go lusting after anyone who caught your fancy? It never occurred to you that some of us have a job to do here—that people’s lives, not just ours, will depend on how we do it. No. You want to go play in Q-town, someone should go with you . . . it doesn’t matter to you if that means learning less. After all, what does it matter if you pass a course or flunk it? It’s not your life on the line. You don’t care whether you ruin Barin’s career or not—” Not the way she herself cared; not the way she agonized over it. “You think your money and your family make it right for you to have anyone you want.”

Brun was white to the lips. Esmay didn’t care. Her anxiety about the next day, her exhaustion from weeks of extra work—all had vanished, in righteous rage. “You have the morality of a mare in heat; you have no more spiritual depth than a water drop on a window. And someday you will need that, and I promise you—I promise you, Miss Rich and Famous—you will wish you had it, and you will know I’m right. Now get out, and stay out. I have work to do.”

With that, Esmay yanked the door open; she was ready to shove Brun out, but Brun stalked past her, under the eyes of her waiting security, who carefully looked at neither of them. The doors were not made to slam, or Esmay would have slammed hers. As it was, she restacked her gear with shaking hands, packed it, set it aside, then lay unsleeping on her bunk to wait for the alarm.

Brun stalked along the streets of Q-town trying to push her anger back down her throat. That sanctimonious little prig . . . that prissy backcountry chit . . . her family probably slopped hogs in their bare feet. Just because she herself had grown up rich, just because she could talk about sex without squinching her face up—!

In one corner of her mind, she knew this was unfair. Esmay was not an ignorant girl, but an accomplished older woman. Not much older, but an Academy graduate, a Fleet officer, a combat veteran—Brun would have been glad to have Esmay’s experience. She wanted Esmay’s respect.

But not enough to turn into a frumpy, tight-buttoned, sexless, joyless . . .