The Service of the Sword

the other mounts had managed to do quite that poorly. She hovered on the brink of ordering Vassari to open fire anyway, on the theory that at least something would have to get through, but she closed her lips firmly against the temptation. It either worked, or it didn't; she wasn't going to second-guess herself in mid-flight and risk losing any opportunity of success. Besides, even if she—

'Got it!' Chief Vassari barked suddenly, and the laser designator 'opened fire' before the words were fully out of his mouth.

Abigail watched the plot's sidebar, and her face blossomed in a huge smile as the rest of her crew began to cheer and whistle. The computers had identified the repetition of one of the earlier fly-bys, and Vassari's fire plan had instructed them to synchronize the mount's pulse rate with the recognized spin rate of the target. It meant that they weren't pumping out the maximum possible amount of destructive energy, but what they were pumping out was precisely timed to catch the drone at the moment that it turned the open side of its wedge towards the ship. The energy-on-target total shot up like a homesick meteor, and Abigail wanted to cheer herself as the laser designator systematically hammered the drone.

'Sixty-two percent of max!' Vassari proclaimed exultantly as the drone completed its run. 'Damn, but—!' He caught himself, and looked at Abigail with a sheepish expression. 'Sorry about that, Ma'am,' he said contritely.

'Chief,' she said around a grin, 'I'm from Grayson, not a convent. I've heard the word before.'

'Well, in that case,' he replied, 'damn, but that was fun!'

'Damned straight it was,' she agreed with a chuckle, and punched him lightly on the shoulder. 'Now, if it just repeats the same maneuver sequence from where we got it indexed on this pass, we should really kick some butt on the next one.'

'Not too shabby, Thirty-Eight,' Commander Blumenthal observed over the com in a tone of studied understatement. 'Of course, there are still two more runs to go. Stand by for second run, now.'

'Thirty-Eight, standing by,' Abigail responded, and the drone came slashing back at them again.

'I suppose we should all congratulate you,' Arpad Grigovakis said.

The four snotties stood in the rear of the briefing room in which Commander Blumenthal and Captain Oversteegen had just completed their dissection of the afternoon's exercises. Commander Watson hadn't attended, since she'd had the bridge watch, but all of the department heads had been present. By now, most of the other officers had already dispersed to other tasks, but Oversteegen, Blumenthal, and Abbott were still engaged in a quiet-voiced discussion, and the middies hadn't yet been dismissed by their OCTO. Which left them in the seen- but-not-heard-mode with which all middies were intimately familiar, and Grigovakis had kept his voice down accordingly.

Not that keeping its volume down had prevented it from sounding thoroughly sour.

'Darn right we should!' Karl Aitschuler grinned at Abigail and slapped her on the shoulder. There was nothing at all sour about his manner, and Shobhana was grinning even more broadly than Karl.

'I should think so,' she agreed. 'Seventy-nine percent of max possible overall? I'm not sure, but I think that probably ought to count as a record against a target like that!'

'No doubt it does,' Grigovakis conceded, still in that sour-grapes tone. 'On the other hand, what are the odds that that sort of targeting solution is going to come up in real life?' He snorted. 'Seventy-nine percent or seven percent—either one of them would have destroyed a target that size if it had been for real.'

'Sure, but I don't seem to remember Thirty-Six scoring seven percent overall, either,' Karl said a bit more sharply.

'Well, at least we didn't take advantage of a freak opportunity that's never going to repeat against a real target, did we?' Grigovakis shot back.

'What, you don't think missiles are ever going to use canned routines?' Aitschuler snorted with an edge of contempt.

'Besides,' Shobhana said, glaring at Grigovakis, 'one of the things an alert tac officer is supposed to do is recognize any advantage or opportunity she can generate! Which is exactly what Abigail did.'

'I never said that it wasn't,' Grigovakis replied in a slightly more defensive tone. 'All I said was that it's not a circumstance that's likely to repeat in real life, and that that leads me to question just how representative of our actual abilities the entire exercise was.'

'What you really mean,' Karl said coolly, 'is that you're pissed off because Abigail and her crew kicked everybody else's butts—including yours.'

'Well, yes.' Grigovakis chuckled. It was obviously intended to be a rueful sound, but he didn't quite pull it off. 'The truth is, I don't like coming in second best,' he said with an air of candor. 'And I like coming in seventeenth even less. So I guess maybe I didn't take it very well.' He showed Abigail his teeth in what could have been called a smile by the charitable. 'Sorry about that, Abigail. But don't think I'm not going to try to return the favor next time. And maybe next time I'll be in the Tail-End Charlie position.'

'And what does that mean?' Shobhana asked tartly.

'Only that because Abigail's crew fired last, no one else had the opportunity to match her score by using the same technique,' Grigovakis replied innocently.

'No one else had the opportunity because no one else came up with the same idea,' Karl told him in disgusted tones.

'Well, of course they didn't. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Although,' he looked thoughtful, 'to be perfectly honest, Abigail didn't, either.'

'What?' Karl managed at the last moment to hold the volume down to something their seniors might not notice, but the strength of the glare he bent upon Grigovakis more than compensated.

'I only meant that she didn't run the actual analysis herself, Karl,' Grigovakis said in the patient tones of the much put upon and misunderstood. 'Chief Vassari did that.'

Butter wouldn't have melted in his mouth, Abigail thought, but the unstated implication was clear enough. He was suggesting, without quite coming out and saying so, that the entire idea had been Vassari's and that Abigail had simply taken credit for it. Which, his tone and expression clearly emphasized, was no more than might be expected from a neobarb like her.

A wave of fury out of all keeping with the pettiness of the small-minded provocation rolled through her. Karl and Shobhana both made disgusted sounds, but Grigovakis only stood there, smiling at her with that smug sense of superiority. It didn't matter to him that neither Karl nor Shobhana agreed with him for an instant; he didn't need their agreement when he had his own. Besides, what else could have been expected from people with the lamentably poor judgment to side with someone like Abigail over someone like him?

She started to open her mouth, then clamped her jaw muscles firmly, instead, and asked the Intercessor for strength. The Church of Humanity Unchained was not exceptionally well known for turning the other cheek, but Father Church did teach that to assail a fool for being foolish was to assail the wind for being air. Neither could help what it was, and belaboring either of them was a waste of effort which might be more profitably devoted to meeting those aspects of the Test which mattered anyway.

And so, she didn't administer the salutary tongue lashing he so richly deserved. Instead, she smiled sweetly at him.

'You're quite right,' she said. 'I didn't run the analysis. Chief Vassari is much more familiar with the capabilities of the on-mount sensors and software than I am. Of course,' she smiled more sweetly than ever, 'sometimes it's not necessary to be personally familiar with the capabilities in order to identify a possibility, is it? You just have to be alert enough to recognize the opportunity when it comes along.'

Karl and Shobhana chuckled, and Grigovakis' complexion darkened as the counter shot went home. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything else, Lieutenant Commander Abbott cleared his throat behind him.

All four midshipmen turned to face him, and Grigovakis turned a shade darker, clearly wondering just how much Abbott had overheard, but the OCTO simply looked at all of them for a second or two.

'I'm sorry we kept the four of you standing around so long,' he said finally, his tone mild. 'I hadn't realized the TO and the Captain and I would be tied up quite so long. Mr. Aitschuler and Ms. Korrami, I'd like you to report