At All Costs

No, he corrected himself. Not 'match them;' I never did manage that. But it's getting harder just to stay in shouting distance.

"I know she does," Hawke replied to his last remark, and cocked his head. "But this isn't just about her navy job."

"No, it isn't," Mattingly agreed. "There are some... personal issues involved, as well."

Hawke's eyes turned instantly opaque, and his expression blanked. It was a professional armsman's reaction which Mattingly found a bit amusing, under the circumstances. He couldn't really fault the younger man for probing for information-armsmen all too often found that their primaries had neglected to mention some vitally important bit of information because it hadn't seemed important to them. Or because they didn't want to share it. Or even sometimes, as happened much too frequently for Mattingly's peace of mind in the Steadholder's case, because they'd simply decided to subordinate security requirements to... other considerations.

But it was a mark of Hawke's relative youthfulness that he should go into immediate "the-Steadholder's-private-life-is-none-of-my-business" mode the instant he began to suspect where his probing might lead him.

"She's not going to tell you about them, you know," Mattingly said conversationally, his tone almost teasing, as the Steadholder finished her katas.

He watched her alertly, even here, wondering if she was going to head straight for the showers, but instead, she crossed to the indoor shooting range at the far end of the gymnasium. He'd already checked the range before the Steadholder ever entered the gym, and there were no other entrances to it, so he didn't try to intercept her at the range door. Instead, he jerked his head at Hawke, and the two of them walked over to flank the door, watching through the soundproof armorplast with one eye while they kept most of their attention focused on the only access routes.

"There's no reason she ought to tell me about them," Hawke said, just a bit stiffly. "She's my Steadholder. If she wants me to know something, she'll tell me."

"Oh, nonsense!" Mattingly snorted. He felt a small flicker of surprise when the Steadholder didn't put on her ear protectors, but his incipient twinge of concern vanished when he realized she didn't have her.45 at the shooting line. Unlike that thunderous, anachronistic, propellant-spewing monster, pulsers were relatively quiet.

Satisfied that his charge wasn't going to hammer her unprotected eardrums with gunfire, he looked back at Hawke. Who was regarding him with a moderately outraged expression.

"Spencer," he said, "Colonel LaFollet didn't handpick you for the Steadholder's personal detail because you're an idiot. You know-or you damned well ought to know, by now-that no primary ever tells his armsmen everything they need to know. And, frankly, the Steadholder's worse than most in that regard. She's better than she was, but, Tester-the things she used to do without even mentioning them to us ahead of time!"

He shook his head.

"The thing you have to understand, Spencer, is that there's the Job, and then there's everything else. The Job is to see to it that that lady in there stays alive, period. No ifs, no ands, and no buts. We do whatever it takes-whatever it takes-to see to it that she does. And it's our privilege to do that, because there are steadholders, and there are steadholders, and I tell you frankly that one like her comes along maybe once or twice in a generation. If we're lucky. And, yes, although I'm not going to tell her, I'd do the Job anyway, because I love her.

"But every so often, and more often in her case than in most, the Job and who the person we're protecting is run into one another head on. The Steadholder takes risks. Some of them are manageable, or at least reasonably so, like her hang-gliding and her sailboats. But she's also a naval officer, and a steadholder in the old sense-the kind who used to lead his personal troops from the front rank-so there are always going to be risks we can't protect her from, however hard we try. And as you may recall, those same risks have killed quite a few of her armsmen along the way.

"And there's another factor involved, where she's concerned. She wasn't born a steadholder. In a lot of ways, I think that's the secret of her strength as a steadholder; she doesn't think like someone who knew from the time he learned to walk that he was going to be one. That's probably a very good thing, over all, but it also means she didn't grow up with the mindset. It simply doesn't occur to her-or, sometimes it does occur to her and she simply chooses to ignore the fact-that she has to keep us informed if we're going to do the Job. And since she doesn't, every one of us-like every armsman who ever was-spends an awful lot of time trying to figure out what it is she isn't telling us about this time."

He grimaced wryly.

"And, of course, we spend most of the rest of our time keeping our big mouths shut about the things we have figured out. Especially the ones she didn't tell us about. You know, the things she knows that we know that she knows that we know but none of us ever discuss with her."

"Oh." Hawke frowned. "So you're saying I'm supposed to pry into her personal life?"

"We are her personal life," Mattingly said flatly. "We're as much her family as her mother and father, as Faith and James. Except that we're the expendable part of her family... and everyone knows and accepts that. Except her."

His own frown mingled affection, respect, and exasperation as he looked through the armorplast at his Steadholder. Hawke looked as well, and Mattingly felt the younger man twitch in something very like shock as the Steadholder calmly removed the very tip of her left index finger.

"Haven't seen this one before?" Mattingly asked.

"I've seen it before," Hawke replied. "Just not very often. And it... bothers me. You know, I keep forgetting her arm's artificial."

"Yeah, and her father's a seriously paranoid individual, Tester bless him!" Mattingly said. "Although," they watched with half their attention as the Steadholder flexed her left hand and the truncated index finger locked into a rigidly extended position, "that particular hideout weapon of hers is something of a case in point for what I was saying earlier. She didn't even tell me or the Colonel about it until after we were sent to Marsh."

"I know." Hawke chuckled. "I was there when we all found out, remember?"

On the other side of the armorplast, the Steadholder pointed her finger down-range, and a hyper-velocity pulser dart shrieked dead center through the ten-ring of a combat target. She hadn't even raised her hand, and as they watched, she actually turned her head away, not even looking at the targets as they popped out of their holographic concealment... and the pulser darts continue to rip their chests apart.

"How does she do that?" Hawke demanded. "Look at that! She's got her eyes closed!"

"Yes, she does," Mattingly agreed with a smile. "The Colonel finally broke down and asked her. It's fairly simple, really. There's a concealed camera in the cuticle of the finger, and when she activates the pulser, the camera feed links directly to her artificial eye. It projects a window with a crosshair, and since the camera is exactly aligned with the bore of the pulser, the dart will automatically hit anything she sees in the window." He shook his head, still smiling. "She's always been a really good 'point-and-shoot' shooter, but it got even worse when her father had her arm designed."

"You can say that again," Hawke said with feeling.

"And a damned good thing, too." Mattingly turned away from the armorplast. "They say the Tester is especially demanding when He Tests those He loves best. Which tells me that He loves the Steadholder a lot."

Hawke nodded, turning away from the armorplast himself and frowning as he considered everything Mattingly had said to him. After several moments, he looked back across at the older armsman.