Once a Hero

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As usual, many people helped with the details. Tim Bashor, Major U.S. Marine Corps, retired, and presently an exemplary bookstore owner, offered innumerable good suggestions on how to cause trouble aboard a large ship. If you think that part of the book makes sense, it’s thanks largely to him. Richard Moon, Malcolm McLean, and Michael Byrd also helped out on specific details. Judy Glaister kept me from making a worse hash of the role of nurses in therapy. Any mistakes are my own (I don’t need help to make mistakes . . . ). R.S.M. provided the medical texts; the Tuesday Lunch & Ice Skating Club approved the ship design (approved may not be the right word for “collapsed in helpless giggles”). Consultants for various bits who would prefer not to be named include the ubiquitous M.M. and E.M. and T.B.

Esmay Suiza had done her best to clean up before reporting as ordered to the admiral aboard her flagship, but the mutiny and the following battle had left her little time. She had showered, and run her uniform through the cycler, but it wasn’t her dress uniform—the fight aboard Despite had put holes through interior bulkheads and started innumerable small fires, including one in the junior officers’ storage compartment. She herself, though clean, had not slept well in . . . however many days it had been. She knew her eyes were bloodshot and sticky with fatigue; her hands trembled. She had the stomach-clenching feeling that her best wasn’t good enough.

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