"I'm unconvinced of the usefulness of communicating with them and not looking forward to arranging it if you somehow convince me," he says. "The simulator system is very well designed, and it's not designed for the kind of communication you're thinking about."

"But when we do issue verbal orders, human beings hear them, it's not a sophisticated natural language processor," she says. "Okay. That's useful."

"Yes," he says. "Sure."

"I'd like it in writing that I solicited permission to talk to the fleet officers, sir, and that you denied it, in case something comes up that could have been mitigated with such communication channels," Aegis says, suddenly bright.

"I'd like you to go away," he says dryly.

"Sir," says Aegis cheerfully, "it's an IF bylaw that you must reproduce any orders that are not urgent on a scale of minutes in writing on request."

"Kid," he says, "if we do something wrong here, the material consequence will be the buggers killing us all. That's enough to keep me up at night already. I'm not interested in your power plays."

"I'm not making a power play, sir. I've stopped arguing with you entirely about the object level. If you're wrong, but not so wrong for the situation to be irrecoverable, and you get fired, I want whoever replaces you to have a paper trail that shows that I have historically not been an idiot and should be listened to in any future matters that may come up, so that we can not die."

"I'm not going to get fired."

"I'm sure you think so, sir. I'd like the refusal in writing anyway, and I am entitled to it anyway."

"And you're not getting it," he says. "Anything else?"

"Sir, it is now abundantly clear to me that you and others who are in miscellaneous positions as my superior officers are willing to break international and military law in order to get me and Sue to do what you want. Why should I believe that fleets of soldiers who have been en route for however many years of subjective time will not decide to do the same thing, if ordered into a position that's not immediately, visibly valuable by someone whose voice clearly signifies that we're half their age?"

"Because you are their superior officer," he suggests. "And the entire premise of the IF school system is that being half their age doesn't make you any worse of a commander."

"There have got to be hundreds of people in some of these fleets, any of whom could throw an operation off if they so chose, and all of them belong to a species that produced, for example, Sue. I am not convinced, sir, that the laws governing following lawful orders will hold up any better than the laws governing requisition of written copies, if we find that we have to order some fraction of a fleet into a suicide mission, or if one of us makes a mistake and is heard to say something inopportune by the survivors, or if someone has, as I suggested earlier, a baby on board - those little birth control chips are very effective, but statistically stranger things have happened. If I am not a worse commander because I am fifteen years old, sir - if I and Sue, and not you, are the correct choice for commanding our actual invasion fleet - then I want every resource I can think of to requisition, before I need it so it's there if and when I do, and if you get in my way, sir, then I want you to take responsibility for that choice, obey the law, and write it the fuck down just so you're clear on what you are doing. I have not been just some fifteen-year-old student who should be denied things by default since I was sat down in front of instruments that controlled real ships against live, unfriendly fire."

"You can't have it in writing because it's not an order," he says tiredly. "I don't need to order you not to establish contact with the fleets outside the simulator, because the only means you have of doing that is your friend Sue, who clearly doesn't give a rat's ass what he's been ordered to do. If I wanted to facilitate that contact through something resembling an official channel, then I'd have to start giving orders. And then you could experience the tedium of ansible communications with a ship in relativistic transit for yourself."

"There is precedent for applying the bylaw to requisition denials, sir."

"You are trying to requisition something that is not available to you," he says. "Your buddy has been known to requisition Mazer Rackham's balls on a plate, and I'm not legally obliged to give that denial in writing, either, although I'm sometimes tempted to."

"...Mazer Rackham? The old guy is Mazer fucking Rackham? What'd you do, put him in a ship and speed him up and turn him around just so he could abuse a new generation of students? He shot the right target one time and this makes him worth dilating into the future for his shit teaching skills?"

"He does understand the buggers better than anyone else alive."

"And instead of having him write his insights down or teach a formal class on the subject you have him pick physical altercations with would-be commanders and interrupt their sleep because that will somehow help."

"He's very attached to this 'learn from your enemy' plan," he sighs. "But it doesn't seem to be working out as expected."

"No shit. Can we be rid of him, sir? I'm sorry he's had to do all this time-travel crap only to be worse than useless, but that doesn't make him not worse than useless to us now."

He waves a hand dismissively. "Fine. He does have useful insights about the buggers, though. I suggest you try to pry them out of him."

"I'd like to assign Ahmed to talk to him about that; I think he'll do a better job than either I or Sue at maximizing useful insights to pointless antagonistic crap, given that Rackham has now positioned himself to personally star in my and Sue's nightmares both."

"Fine," he repeats.