Elizabeth Moon: Rules of Engagement

“I did at one time,” Brun said, eyeing her father. “Now—I’m not sure.”

“She doesn’t want to get stuck doing boring things,” Thornbuckle said. Brun flushed.

“It’s not that—!”

“Isn’t it? When Captain Serrano pointed out how much of her time was spent on boring routine, you said you didn’t much like that prospect.”

“I don’t, but that’s part of any life. I do understand that, just as I understand that the exciting bits are dangerous. You seem to think—”

Esmay jumped in again, as much for her own comfort as for the hope of getting useful information. “Perhaps you could tell me what you think I might do to help?”

“She needs a”—Thornbuckle paused, and Esmay was sure he was thinking of the word keeper —“Mentor,” he said instead. “If she’s going to stay here, I need to know that someone of her—” Another pause, during which Esmay could almost hear the unspoken, discarded choices: social standing, rank, type, ability . . . “Someone she might respect and listen to, anyway, will be near her. She’s been chattering about you and your exploits—”

“I do not chatter,” Brun said, through her teeth.

“So I thought maybe you—”

“She has her own responsibilities,” Brun said. “And there are the . . . guards.” In that gap was some epithet Esmay was glad the guards had not heard.

“Are you telling me now that you will accept the security procedures we talked about?”

“Rather than bother Lieutenant Suiza, yes.” Brun gave Esmay a challenging look. “She will be busy with her own courses here; they don’t exactly give officers time off to play nursemaid to rich girls.”

Esmay interpreted this as having more to do with Brun’s determination not to have a nursemaid than any consideration of her own convenience.

Thornbuckle looked from one to the other of them. “I have seen more cooperative senior ministers of state,” he said. “Whatever gene sculpting we did on you, Brun, is not going to be repeated again.”

“I didn’t ask for it,” Brun said. Again Esmay sensed old arguments lurking below the surface.

“No—but life gives you a lot you didn’t ask for. Now—if you promise me that you will cooperate with the new security procedures—”

“All right,” Brun said, not quite sulkily. “I’ll cooperate.”

“Then, Lieutenant Suiza, I’m very sorry to have wasted your time. And I must thank you for your recent actions; you well deserve your recent award.” He nodded at the new ribbon on her uniform.

“Thank you,” Esmay said, wondering if she was just supposed to leave and forget the conversation had ever happened. She turned to Brun and supressed an almost wistful expression on her face. “If we end up in the same class, I’ll be glad to share notes with you. I’m glad to have met you.”

Brun nodded; Esmay got up when Thornbuckle did, and he walked her to the door. “I’m officially still Smith,” he said quietly.

“I understand, sir.” She understood more than she wanted to, or than he expected. She was glad to get back to her own quarters, where she could deal with her memories of her father in privacy. There, she found a stack of study cubes in the delivery bin, and racked them into the cube reader’s storage. Some looked much more promising than others; Leadership for Junior Officers made sense, but why did she have to study Administrative Procedures for Junior Staff ? She didn’t want anything to do with administration.

Brun curled up on her bunk under her very non-regulation afghan and pretended to nap until her security detail had finished whatever it was doing and gone to stand outside. As if she were a prisoner. As if she were a naughty child. As if being shot at were her fault.

Her father had done it again. She would have been fine, if he had only been somewhere else, if only she had had time to get well before he showed up. But no. He had to come here, still unsure she should be doing things like this, and embarrass her in front of a roomful of professionals . . .

In front of Esmay Suiza.

She rolled over, and picked up her remote, then flicked on her cube reader, cycling through the selections until she found the one she wanted.

Back on Xavier, while she herself was drunk and incapable (as her father had mentioned more than once), Esmay Suiza had survived the treachery of her captain, the mutiny that followed, and then saved everyone—including Brun—by blowing up the enemy flagship. Brun had followed the court-martial of Despite ’s crew in the news; she had wondered over and over how that calm young woman with the flyaway hair managed to do it. She didn’t look that special—but something in the expression, in the eyes that never wavered, caught at her.

And then the same young woman had been a hero again, in an adventure that seemed like something out of a storycube series . . . she had been outside a ship during FTL flight and survived; she had defeated another enemy. Once more her image filled the news viewers, and once more Brun had imagined meeting her . . . talking to her . . . becoming—she was sure they could become—friends.

When she’d learned that Esmay Suiza was coming here, to Copper Mountain—that she might even be in the same classes—she had been so certain that her luck was running true. Here at last was the woman who could help her be like that, help her combine her uncooperative past experiences into the self she wanted to be.

And now her father had ruined it. He had treated Suiza as a professional, worthy of respect; he had made it clear he thought Brun was a headstrong child. What would Esmay Suiza think now—what could she think, when the Speaker of the Grand Council, her own father, had presented her that way? It was impossible that Suiza could see her as a competent adult.

She would not let it be impossible. She would not let this chance go by. There had to be some way to convince Suiza that she was more than a silly fluffhead. Fluffhead made her think of Suiza’s hair, which could certainly use some attention . . . maybe Suiza would be approachable on a girl-to-girl level first, and then she could prove what else she could do. . . .

At the next main meal, a few hours later, Esmay returned to the mess, and sat with a tableful of jigs and lieutenants who had arrived the day before. She remembered a few of them from the Academy, but had not served with any of them. They knew of her recent exploits and were eager to discuss them.

“What’s it like to fly a Bloodhorde raider?” asked Vericour, another lieutenant. In the six years since their graduation, he had gained several kilos and now sported a crisp red mustache.

“Fun,” said Esmay, knowing the expected response. “Goes like a bat, even if you don’t redline it.”

“Shielding?”

“None to speak of. And the weapons systems are amazing for its size. The interior’s mostly weapons, very little crew space.”

“They must have lousy shooting, if they missed you—”

“They didn’t shoot at us first,” Esmay said. “After all, I was in their ship. They let us get close, and—poof.”

“Yeah . . . that’s the way. What’re you here for?”

“A whole string of things,” Esmay said. “I’m changing to command track—”

“You mean you weren’t ?”

“No.” How to explain this one?

Vericour shrugged. “That’s Fleet Personnel for you. Take someone with a flair like yours and shove her into technical, just because they need more techs. They ought to recruit techs, if they want more.”

Esmay opened her mouth to explain it hadn’t been Fleet’s fault, considered the difficulty of the subsequent explanations, and nodded instead. “Yup. So now they’ve let me into command track, and I have to play catch-up. All the stuff I missed—”