"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."

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.