As usual, this book reflects more than my own limited expertise; friends, family, and acquaintances all had useful suggestions and vital information. Some preferred not to be named here.

Thanks are due to David, Richard, Susan, Julia, Selina, Joshua, Laura, Ellen, and Sean, all of whom made innumerable helpful comments. Also the economist I met on a flight toTulsa, and whose name I never knew…

David R. Watson deserves particular thanks for his expertise with archery and his willingness to help choreograph fight scenes.

Anne McCaffrey, with a lift of the eyebrows, solved a problem I was having when I talked to her about it. Her words were wise, but the lift of the eyebrows had already done the trick.

The regulars on the news group, with their encouragement, helped me over the rough spots. So did the SFWA Musketeers and Musketeer Auxiliary.

TheFlorenceHigh Schoolfaculty and staff (especially the special education folks) had a part in this toward the end, by doing such a great job of easing our son into high school.

Mistakes and omissions are all mine.

Kylara Vatta came to attention in front of the Commandant’s desk. One sheet of flatcopy lay in front of him, the print too small for her to read upside down. She had a bad feeling about this. On previous trips to the Commandant’s office, she had been summoned by an icon popping up on her deskcomp. Those had all been benign visits, the result of exams passed in the top 5 percent, or prizes won, and the Commandant had greeted her with the most thawed of his several frosty expressions.

Today it had been “Cadet Vatta to the Commandant’s office, on the double,” blaring out over the speaker right in the middle of her first class period, Veshpasir’s lecture on the history of the first century PD. Veshpasir, no friend to shipping dynasties, had given her a nasty smirk before saying, “Dismissed, Cadet Vatta.”

She had no idea what this was about. Or rather, she hoped she didn’t. Surely she had been careful enough…

“Cadet Vatta,” the Commandant said. No thawing at all, and his left eyelid drooped ominously.

“Sir,” she said.

“I won’t even ask what you thought you were doing,” he said. “I don’t want to know. I don’t care.”

“Sir?” She hated the squeak in her voice.

“Don’t play the innocent with me, Cadet.” Rumor had it that if his left eyelid actually closed, cadets died. She wasn’t sure she believed that, but she hoped she wasn’t about to find out. “You are a disgrace to the Service.”

Ky almost shook her head in confusion. What could he be talking about?

“Going outside the chain of command like this”—he thumped the sheet of paper—“embarrassing the Service.”

“Sir—” She gulped, caught between the etiquette that required silence until she was given leave to speak, and a desperate need to find out what had the Commandant’s eyelid hovering ever nearer to its mate.

“You have something to say, Cadet?” the Commandant asked. His voice, like his face, might have been carved out of a glacier. “Do go ahead…” It was not a generous offer.

“Sir, with the greatest respect, this cadet does not know to what the Commandant is referring…”

His lips disappeared altogether. “Oh, you can play the innocent all you want, Cadet, and maintain that formal folderol, but you don’t fool me.” He paused. Ky searched her memory, and came up empty. “Well, since you insist, let’s try this: do you recall the name Mandy Rocher?”

“Yes, sir,” Ky said promptly. “Second year, third squad.”

“And you can think of no reason why I might connect that name and yours?”

“Sir, I helped Cadet Rocher locate a Miznarii chaplain last weekend, when Chaplain Oser was away…” A dim glimmer of what might be the problem came to her but she couldn’t believe there would be that much fuss about a simple little…

“And just how did you locate a Miznarii chaplain, Cadet?”

“I… er… called my mother, sir.”

“You called your mother.” He made it sound obscene, as if only the lowest criminal would call a mother. “And told your mother to do what, Cadet?”

“I asked her if her friend Jucha could refer me to a Miznarii chaplain near the Academy.”

“For what reason?”

“I told her that one of the underclassmen was overdue for confession and the Academy chaplain was out of town.”

“You didn’t tell her what he wanted to confess?”

Ky felt her own eyebrows going up. “Sir, I don’t know what he had to confess. I only know that he was in distress, and needed a chaplain, and I thought… I thought it would save trouble if I just got him one.”

“You’re not Miznarii yourself…?”

“No, sir. We’re Modulans.” Actually, they were Saphiric Cyclans, but that was such a small sect that nobody recognized it, and Modulans were respectable and undemanding. You could be a Modulan without doing anything much at all, a source of some humor to more energetic sects. Ky found Modulan chapel restful and had gone often enough to acquire a reputation for moderate piety—the level most approved by Modulans.

“Hmmph.” The Commandant’s eyelid twitched upward a millimeter; Ky hoped this was a good sign. “You had no idea that what he wanted to confess concerned the honor of the Service?”

Her jaw dropped; she forced it back up. “No, sir!”

“That he made a formal complaint to this Miznarii, in addition to his confession, which the chaplain took immediately to the Bureau of War, where it fell into the hands of a particularly noxious bureaucrat whose sister just happens to be on the staff of Wide Exposure, so that I found myself on the horn very early this morning with Grand-Admiral Tasliki, who is not amused at all…?” It was not really a question; it was rant and explanation and condemnation all in one. “The bureaucrat spoke on Wide Exposure’s ‘Night Affairs’ program at 0115—clever timing, that—and this morning all the media channels had something on it. That’s only the beginning.”

Ky felt hot, then cold, then hot again. “S-sir…” she managed.

“So even if you did not know, Cadet Vatta, what Cadet Rocher wanted to confess, you may be able to grasp that by going outside the chain of command you have created a very very large public relations problem, embarrassing the entire general staff, the Bureau of War, and—last but not least—me personally.”

“Yes, sir.” She could understand that. She could not, she thought, have anticipated it, and now she was consumed by curiosity: what, exactly, had Mandy Rocher said? They weren’t allowed access to things like Wide Exposure except on weekends.

“You are an embarrassment, Cadet Vatta,” the Commandant said. “Many, many people want your hide tacked on the wall and your head on a pike. The only reason I don’t—” His eyelid was up another millimeter. “The only reason I don’t, is that I have observed your progress through the Academy and you have so far been, within the limits of your ability, an exemplary cadet. When I thought you’d done it on purpose I was going to throw you to the wolves. Now—since I suspect that you simply fell for a sob story and your entire barracks knows you have a soft spot for underdogs and lost lambs—I’m simply going to take the hide off your back in strips and see your resignation on my desk by 1500 hours this afternoon.”

“S-sir?” Resignation… did that mean what it sounded like? Was he kicking her out? Just because she’d tried to help Mandy?

Now the eyelid came all the way back up. “Cadet Vatta, you have—unwittingly, perhaps—created a major mess with implications that could damage the Service for years. Your ass is grass, one way or the other. You could be charged, for instance, with that string of articles beginning with 312.5—I see by your expression that you have, belatedly, remembered them…”