"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.

"Permission to go break the news to Sue and discuss possible ways of telling the subordinates and linking up with the fleets, sir?"

"Go ahead."

She goes back to her-and-Sue's room.

"What's up?" says Sue.

"You might wanna sit down," Aegis says.

"...What's up?" he repeats, not sitting down.

"Okay, let's start with the smaller revelations and work our way up and see if you wanna sit down. Nasty old fart is Mazer Rackham. They accelerated him and spun him around and brought him back specifically to teach you or whoever wound up with your job about the buggers."

"Great fucking job he's doing there," Sue snorts.

"I know, right? We're shut of him, I'm going to get Ahmed to talk to him about buggers in case he knows anything actually useful. Second revelation: faster-than-light communication exists."

"Faster than light communication exists and there's devices capable of it connecting our sims and our actual real-life fucking invasion fleet with human beings in it," she says flatly.

"I know, right? The psychologists screamed at the security people and eventually the psychologists won and the bureaucrat told me so I could tell you in some non-horrible way." She shakes her head. "But this adds a wrinkle. It's not impossible that you can link up the fleet officers on top of us. Then we can do better - we can lose fewer people. We can't even just aim at not losing entire ships. Anything more than cosmetic damage could kill people, or destroy stuff they need to get home after they're through."

"...I don't know if I have the range," says Sue.