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.”
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.”