5

Lieutenant Guthrie Chin sat back, arms crossed, and frowned at the chessboard. Staff Sergeant Yolanda Willis grinned cheerfully at him as he contemplated the unappetizing situation into which she had backed him.

"Your position does not look promising, Guthrie," a pleasant baritone remarked over the compartment's bulkhead speaker.

"And don't you dare give him any hints, Mickey!" Willis said sternly.

"How can you believe I would think of such a thing?" the speaker inquired in innocent tones.

"Possibly because I know you?" Willis shot back. The speaker chuckled, and she grinned. "If, on the other hand, you should happen to succumb to that ignoble temptation, just remember who's in charge of making sure your wiring keeps on doing what it's supposed to do."

"Such crude threats are unbecoming to a noncommissioned officer of the Brigade," Chin said severely. "Besides, I—as an officer and a gentleman, by act of the Concordiat Assembly—am fully capable of resolving your petty threat to my queen entirely on my own."

Willis made a most disrespectful sound, and he gave her a dignified look.

"I'm sure," he continued, "that the aforesaid resolution will come to me ... presently."