When Diplomacy Fails . . . by Michael Z. Williamson

boulder field in our LZ, planted the charges, backed off and shot. Nothing happened.”
    “Ah, that always sucks.”
    “It does. We gave it the ten minutes as required, and started back to reset charges. Someone decided to test a cap. Nothing. So we secured another lot number and started out.
    “Then something did happen. One of them blew. We got showered in rock frag. Six minutes later a second one detonated. At that point, no one wanted anything to do with it, except we needed the field clear, because we did have a ship de-orbiting.”
    “That’s a pretty lifelike exercise, not to clear first, then land.”
    “Right. Don’t take this the wrong way, but we do more of that than the Army. Most exercises are pretty real in the functional details.”
    It used to be a sore point, but Aramis had to agree anymore. “Yeah, my Army went to hell when it became part of the UN, rather than being distinctly American. I am a bit jealous of the other branches, and some other nations.”
    “Right. The U.S. wanted to keep Marines for distinction, needed its own Aerospace, though even that is coalescing with the others now, and of course, the colonial units have to be independent. You did get shafted. But anyway, we had two craft to land, the first already in descent, and we had to clear the rubble fast, and it was pretty clear the charges or the caps were unreliable. We told the landers to abort, then we screamed for help.”
    “Elke?”
    “Yes, she showed up, alone, all sixty kilos of her—she’s put a bit more muscle on—went to one of the live ones, poked an illuminator and camera down, while we sat there shivering. She asked to see the box, ran some numbers, and told us there’d been a packing error. We had random delay charges used for area denial.”
    “Oh, shit.”
    “Yes, very much. The LT was ready to abandon that section of the exercise, have the craft land at a proper port, and ferry everyone out.
    “Elke told him to wait, walked back out, and started hand-rolling directional charges. She cut them off from Dynalene sticks, bored the ends with a knife, capped, planted and wired. A third one blew while she was doing this, and she just kept walking, stuffing, setting.
    “We had about five minutes of our two hour exercise window left when she walked back, asked the commander to clear the range, let him get off his three calls, then called fire in the hole and the entire field lit up. It turns out she’d put shattering charges over them, too. All these car-sized boulders turned into hundred millimeter gravel in a couple of seconds. She hung around a couple of days. We met in the chow hall once. It was a heck of a surprise when I joined the company and we wound up on assignment together.”
    “Was she always a flake?” That wasn’t the best way to phrase it, but . . . well, yes it was.
    “Yes. Very much. She’s asocial, dislikes people because they’re not logical or predictable, is far more educated than anyone realizes. She has a doctorate in physics.”
    Aramis replayed that and said, “Huh?”
    “Yeah, I didn’t find out until a few weeks ago. She can crunch the numbers in her head as she goes.”
    Aramis said, “I figured she had the usual reference charts in her visor and lots of hands-on practice.”
    “She has that, too, but she really does do the math as she goes. Did her basics in electronics, worked in the lab for the Czech Regional Police, moved into Munitions, and did school while working.”
    “So when whatsisname on Govannon . . . Eggett . . . said he’d read her papers . . .”
    “Yes, he was head of explosive mining for Caron’s family, and he meant professional journal papers, not just industry notes.”
    “Damn. I feel very undereducated, with only cartography and navigation theory to my bio.”
    “Well, education isn’t wisdom or intelligence. Look at any politician for proof of that.”
    “I’d rather be compared to someone worthy, thanks,” Aramis replied.
    There was noise at