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about the woman's attitudes, and so far he hadn't been able to find any
answers.
He stopped at the bar and ordered a glass of Tamayoan fire wine, then walked
over to Rachel's table. She looked up as he approached, giving him a welcoming
smile. "Hello, Colonel, slumming with the troops today? Pull up a chair, if
you don't mind being seen with one of us lowly techie types."
"Thanks, Chief," he said. He sat down across the table from her and studied
the holographic schematics for a moment. "Don't think I recognize that
design."
"One of the new Excaliburs," she said, her voice tinged with excitement.
"Isn't she a beauty? Heavy fighter with more guns and armor than a
Thunderbolt, but increased maneuverability to go with it. And I've heard a
rumor they're going to be mounted with a sensor cloak, so the little darlings
can sneak right past a Kilrathi defensive perimeter and nail the hairballs at
close range!"
"Don't they classify that stuff any more?" Blair asked with a smile.
She gave an unladylike snort. "Get real, skipper. Maybe you flyboys don't hear
anything 'til it gets declassified, but the techs have a network that reaches
damn near everywhere. We know what's coming off the line before the brass
does& and usually have all the design flaws spotted up front, too."
Blair chuckled. "Well, I hope your techs don't decide to turn on the rest of
us. I doubt we'd last long if you did. You like your job, don't you, Chief?"
She switched off the hologram. "Yeah. I always liked working with machines and
computers. An engine part either works or it doesn't. No gray areas. No
doubletalk."
"Machines don't lie," Blair said, nodding.
"Not the way people do. And even when something's wrong with a machine, you
always know just where the problem is."
Blair didn't say anything for a few minutes. Finally he looked her in the eye.
"I've got a people problem right now, Chief. I was wondering if you
could help me with it."
"It ain't what I'm paid for," she told him, "and my free advice is worth
everything you spend for it. But I'll take a shot if you want."
"Lieutenant Buckley. What can you tell me about her? The straight dope, not
the official file."
She looked down at the table. "I heard about her little blowup with
Hobbes last week. Can't say anybody was surprised, though. She's never made
any big secret out of the way she feels about the Kilrathi."
"What I want to know is why
? I've been in the Navy for better than fifteen years, Chief. I've been in all
kinds of crews, seen all kinds of shipmates and their hangups. But I never met
anybody so single-minded about the Kilrathi before. I mean, Maniac's got good
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reason to resent
Hobbes personally& but with Cobra, we're talking blind hatred. She won't even
give him a chance."
"Yeah. Look, I don't know the whole story, so don't take this as gospel."
The tech leaned closer over the table and lowered her voice. "Right after she
came on board a buddy of mine from the old
Hermes pointed her out to me. She served there a year before she transferred
here& her first assignment."
"I was curious about that in her file," Blair commented. "She seems older than
that. I'd have put her at thirty or so& "
"That's about right," Rachel told him. "She got a late start. My friend told
me that the story on Cobra was that she'd been a Kilrathi slave for ten years
before the Marines rescued her from a labor camp. She spent some more time in
re-education, then joined up. She won top honors piloting, and just cut
through everything with this single-minded determination. I
think sometimes that the only thing holding Cobra's life together is the hate
she has for the Kilrathi. And I can't really say I blame her."
Blair nodded slowly. "Maybe I can't, either," he said slowly. "I can't even
begin to imagine what it would be like to grow up a Kilrathi slave. She must
have been taken as a kid, raised to think of her own race as animals& "
"So it's no wonder she can't stomach Hobbes," the tech said bluntly.
"You and I know he's okay, but to her he just represents everything she grew
up hating and fearing." Rachel took a sip from her drink. "So cut her some
slack, Colonel. If you really want to fix the problem, that is."
"I do," he said quietly. "But there are limits, you know. I sympathize with
her, but sometimes you just can't bend things far enough in the
Service to make all the square pegs fit."
"That's why I'd rather work with machines," she told him. "Sooner or later,
people just screw up the works."
"Maybe you're being too hard on people," he said "Some of us are okay when you
get to know us."
She looked him up and down with a slow smile. "They need to pass inspection,
same as anything else." She stood up, collected the holocassette, then tucked
it into a pocket of her baggy coveralls. "I got certain hours for that kind of
quality control work, of course."
Blair returned her smile, warming to her. "You keep that schedule posted
somewhere, Chief?"
"Only for a select few, Colonel," she told him. "The ones with the best
schematics."
Ready Room, TCS Victory
Tamayo System
" hope you're not expecting anything too exciting, Blair. This is
I
probably just another milk run, from the looks of it. At least that's what
we're hoping for."
Blair studied Eisen's face, trying to locate a hint of sarcasm in his
expression. Since Gold Squadron's triumph over the Kilrathi cruiser and its
escort, enemy activity in the Orsini system had virtually disappeared, and
Victory had jumped to the Tamayo system, where they had been carrying out a
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