Elizabeth Moon: Rules of Engagement

“Of course,” she said, and rose from the table.

The older man and the young woman watched her approach with, Esmay thought, the wrong sort of interest. The older man had the sort of face which might have been pleasant, but presently had locked into a tight mask of concern. The young woman looked both annoyed and afraid.

“Commander Smith,” Esmay said, “I’m Lieutenant Suiza.”

“Have a seat,” the man said. Although his uniform fitted his tall, lanky body perfectly, she was sure it did not fit his spirit . . . it would have needed stars on the shoulders, and plenty of them.

“This is an unexpected honor,” the man went on. “I had heard about you, of course, from Admiral Serrano, after Xavier—and now this recent business—”

This, for instance, was not the way a real lieutenant commander would have brought it up. Esmay wondered whether to relieve him of the need for faking a military identity, and had her mouth open when the young woman spoke.

“Dad! Stop it!”

“Brun, I’m merely—”

Now almost whispering, but still angrily, the young woman continued. “You’re not really a lieutenant commander and it’s not fair.” She turned to Esmay. “I’m Brun Meager, Lord Thornbuckle’s daughter, and this is my father.”

“I’m pleased to meet Commander Smith,” Esmay said, “under the circumstances.”

His face relaxed a bit, and his mouth quirked. “Well, one of you young ladies has a bit of discretion.”

“I’m not being indiscreet,” Brun said. “She could see you weren’t really a Fleet officer, and I could see the wheels going around in her head as she tried to figure out how to handle it.”

“One allows prominent people to introduce themselves as they choose,” Esmay said. “One’s private curiosity never intrudes.”

Brun blinked. “Where are you from?”

“Altiplano,” Esmay said. “Where, on occasion, senior officials may choose to appear in borrowed identities.”

“And where good manners seem to have penetrated more than in some other places,” Lord Thornbuckle said pointedly. Brun flushed again.

“I don’t like deception.”

“Oh, really? That’s why you so carefully avoided using your own name when you were coming back to Rockhouse—”

“That was different,” Brun said. “There was a good reason—”

“There’s a good reason now , Brun, and if you can’t see that I’ll go back to calling you Bubbles with reason.” For all his low, even voice and quiet face, Lord Thornbuckle was seriously angry. Esmay wished she were on the other side of the planet. Father-daughter conflict raised ghosts she wanted laid to rest. Brun subsided, but Esmay had the feeling she was not really subdued.

“Perhaps we could continue this in another location,” Lord Thornbuckle said. Esmay could think of no polite way to refuse, and she wasn’t sure where her duty lay, as an R.S.S. officer. But she would have to report to class at 0800 local time the next morning, and she had a lot to do in the meantime. Still . . . he was who he was, and even who he wasn’t outranked her.

“Of course, sir,” Esmay said.

Thornbuckle nodded to the men at the other table, who stood up. “I’m afraid we will have an escort.”

That didn’t bother Esmay; what bothered her was landing in the middle of whatever mess this was. She noticed that the escort split up, two going ahead and one trailing behind. Were they Fleet? She couldn’t tell. She felt she should be able to tell; the civilians aboard Kos had been obvious enough. These didn’t look like civilians, but they didn’t quite fit Fleet, either. Private guards?

The conference room they finally entered was small, centered with a table large enough for only eight or so to surround. It had a display console at one end, but Lord Thornbuckle ignored that. He waited until his escort nodded, then sat at one end of the table. Habit, Esmay supposed.

“Sit down, and I’ll make this as brief as possible. You haven’t been here long, have you?”

“Just got off the shuttle, sir,” Esmay said. “I’m here for the command courses I missed earlier, and then the standard junior officers’ course.” The one that would qualify her to command a ship in combat, according to the Board of Inquiry which had recommended it. Of course, not being qualified hadn’t stopped her yet—but she put that out of mind and prepared to focus on whatever Lord Thornbuckle had to say.

“My daughter wanted to take some training with Fleet experts,” Thornbuckle said. “I agreed, in part because she’d gotten herself in so much trouble without training . . . it seemed the risk-taking genes had all come together in her.”

“And the lucky genes,” Brun said. “I know they’re not enough, but they’re also not negligible. That’s what Captain—Commander—Serrano said. And her aunt admiral.”

The thought of anyone calling Vida Serrano “aunt admiral”—even a niece—shocked Esmay. For this girl—for Brun was clearly younger than she was—to do so would have been unthinkable except that Brun had just done it.

“But there’ve been incidents,” Thornbuckle went on, ignoring what Brun had just said. “I thought she’d be safer here, on a Fleet training facility—”

“I am safer,” Brun said.

“Brun, face the facts: someone shot at you. Tried to kill you.”

Esmay managed not to say what she was thinking, that a Fleet training facility was not, in the nature of things, the safest place in the universe. Live fire exercises, for instance. Was this what the girl had gotten into?

“It wasn’t anywhere near a live fire exercise,” Thornbuckle went on. “That was my first thought, of course. Military training is dangerous; it has to be. But we—and by ‘we’ I mean not only myself, but others who’ve seen Brun in action—thought it would be less dangerous than turning her loose on the universe untrained.” He spread his hands. “No—this has been different. I suppose we were just careless. We knew there were traitors in Fleet; that mess with Xavier proved it. But it didn’t dawn on me that there might be traitors here, in a training base, until Admiral Serrano pointed it out. We knew that Brun might be at special risk, but we didn’t react fast enough.”

“I’m alive,” Brun said.

“You survived with your usual flair,” her father said. “But you also had to spend a day in the regen tank, which is not what I call coming out unscathed. Too close for comfort is my analysis. You have to have more protection, or you have to leave.”

Brun’s shoulders twitched. “I’ll be careful,” she said.

“Not good enough. You have to sleep sometime.”

“Have you identified the nature of the threat?” Esmay asked, to forestall another round of useless argument.

“No. Not . . . precisely. And the worst of it is that I can see a variety of threats. The Benignity’s not happy with their loss at Xavier, and we are sure they have other agents in Fleet. Some have been identified, others haven’t. They consider assassination a political tool. The Bloodhorde . . . well, you can imagine how they would like to have my daughter in their control. Then there are my personal enemies among the Familias. A few years ago, I would not have believed any of the Families would make war on personal relations, but now—things have changed.”

“And you—or your advisors—think your daughter should leave this facility?”

“It would be easier to protect her at home, or even on Castle Rock.”

“I would go crazy,” Brun muttered. “I’m not a child, and I can’t just sit around doing nothing.”

“Do you want to join Fleet?” Esmay asked. She couldn’t really imagine this obvious rebel wanting to join anything with discipline, but if she hadn’t understood . . .