Pathways - Jeri Taylor [59]
“An assumption shared by most of your peers,” observed Nimembeh dryly. Harry looked around and saw a room full of dispirited cadets—the other team leaders, he presumed. Only one group, off in a corner, seemed to be somewhat animated.
“You mean . . . everyone else lost their team, too?” asked Harry, somewhat mollified to know that this humiliation was not his alone.
“One team took the appropriate evasive tactics and survived intact.”
Rancor rose in Harry. He faced Nimembeh, cheeks flushed, all the desperateness and frustration of the past five days making him uncharacteristically confrontational. “Sir, the parameters of the situation should have been made clear. We couldn’t be expected to operate properly if we didn’t know exactly what was going on. This simply wasn’t a fair test.”
Before Harry had gotten the last word out, Nimembeh’s hand had struck, clasping Harry’s arm around the wrist, holding it firmly. The commander was a small, lean man with not a millimeter of excess fat on him, but he was surprisingly powerful, a tensile strength that came from within; his grip felt more solid than titanium. Startled, Harry stared at him. Nimembeh’s dark eyes burned through him, and his voice was like a phaser beam in its intensity.
“Not a fair test? I’m sorry you were put at a disadvantage, Cadet. But consider this: If ever you find yourself in enemy territory, I won’t be there to make it clear to you what you should and shouldn’t do. You’re going to have to learn to think for yourself, to anticipate the situation, to expect the worst and prepare for it. There won’t be any convenient transports back to base camp, no hyposprays to protect you from malnutrition. You may find yourself completely on your own, in hostile territory, and there won’t be any room for excuses in a situation like that. You won’t be able to say to the person who has phasered you to death that the situation just wasn’t fair. Do I make myself clear?”
Harry could only nod, chastened under the withering harangue. But Nimembeh wasn’t done. “I am responsible for turning out cadets that know how to survive in any situation. Any time any one of my people dies in the field, a part of me dies with them. I won’t have my people making mistakes that can be fatal. My people will have all the training, all the mental focus, all the tenacity to help them make it out of the worst of situations.”
Again, Harry nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said humbly, but Nimembeh didn’t release him from his brutal grip. “Now, Cadet, tell me what you did wrong.”
“Sir, we should have taken cover immediately and assessed the situation. We should have traveled mainly at night, and not lit fires. We should have avoided the ridges of hills where we could be silhouetted and spotted. We failed to employ a leading scout. We followed none of the procedures for evasive maneuvers.” Harry eyed Nimembeh with as much dignity as he could summon, hoping this recitation would satisfy the commander and make him release his crushing grip. But Nimembeh held on as firmly as ever, and Harry began to feel tingling in his fingers from lack of circulation.
“What else?”
What else? There was more? Fatigue and bewilderment combined to tongue-tie him. He tried to make his mind grasp what other infraction he might have committed, but he couldn’t find it. He stared at Nimembeh helplessly. “I . . . I . . .”
“Do you know what else you did wrong or not, Cadet?”
“I don’t, sir.”
“You foolishly refused to eat food that was available to you. You let your personal aversions dictate what you would ingest. Because of that, you became weak and disoriented from malnutrition. You must eat everything, no matter how repulsive it may seem to you, because even one lost meal can cost you weeks of lost strength. If you are going to survive, you must eat—no matter what it is.”
Harry could only nod and stammer, “Yes, sir.” Even though he was taller than Nimembeh, he felt like a small boy, looking up into his father’s eyes. Except that his father had never castigated him like this, had never reprimanded him, had never made him feel demeaned