Read Rich Man's War for Free Online Page B

at himself. “ Meeting with you still isn’t something I would expect to happen on a random Tuesday.”
    “No, but you interact with plenty of other VIPs and dignitaries here on a daily basis. You are not so tongue-tied with them. I’ve seen you be perfectly friendly and laugh in such company. Some people come to that sort of grace naturally. Others have to learn it. I think you’re more of the latter, but you’re quick. I only adapted gradually as I climbed through the ranks. What’s your secret?”
    “I’ve learned not to put people up on pedestals.”
    Yeoh gave the slightest of nods. “Andrea?” She waited for an answer, but heard none and couldn’t blame him. “This is the point at which a lowly crewman can tell the head of the military that something is none of her damn business, Tanner. But I suspect you don’t have many people you feel comfortable talking to about it. For what it’s worth, I’m not judging.”
    “Yeah, that’d make you about the only person in this town. Ma’am,” he added gratefully.
    “Politics makes for a rough game. Andrea is very good at it, but even she takes hits. You might consider that she thought you’re worth taking a few.”
    “It’s not just about politics,” Tanner replied, shaking his head. “At least, not that kind. I appreciate your offer, but I’m not sure this is a good time and place to get into it. But thank you.”
    “Then back to my question: you must have given thought to choosing a rating. You’re twenty-two months in. By now you could be in a rating school… but you aren’t.”
    “I wanted to do a tour here at Ascension Hall, ma’am.”
    “And after what you went through and what you accomplished, you had your choice of billets,” Yeoh nodded. “You could have named your duty station. You chose to stay here and open doors for people coming to meet the president.”
    “People work pretty hard to get this post, ma’am,” Tanner pointed out.
    “Most of them aren’t trying to hide in plain sight,” she countered gently.
    Tanner blinked. The heavy, unsettling sensation he’d felt in his stomach from the moment Admiral Yeoh asked if he wanted to grab a coffee break with her intensified. “Ma’am?”
    “I don’t actually know what ratings might appeal to you, but if I made some educated guesses, they would all require a full year of time in a starship billet. You have nine months.” She paused, watching his reactions. “That sort of detail wouldn’t slip by you. At first, I thought you requested this duty to be close to Andrea. But after I gave it some serious thought—the kind of thought you would give it—I believe you knew the odds of that relationship going the distance. From the start, I’d imagine. And yet you still requested duty with the capital honor guard.
    “As I said, any duty in the service would’ve been open. No one was going to break any rules for you. It wouldn’t have looked good. But if you’d needed to fulfill some prerequisite or qualification, plenty of people would’ve made that happen. I think you knew that when you requested this assignment over all the other options.
    “You’re hiding out, Tanner. You’re hoping to go unnoticed.”
    “I like this assignment, ma’am.”
    “Oh? Tell me why.”
    The answers came to him with agonizing sluggishness. “I’ve got a regular schedule here, ma’am. The capital’s a great city. I can take—I have taken classes here. I get weekends off. I get along with my roommates in th e barracks. And I’ve learned a lot just by being here, about how the government actually works, about things most people only read about in news articles, and...”
    His voice faltered under her skeptical gaze. She ran her finger across her holocom to activate its display, projected a small file and turned it toward him. Tanner saw a record of his military passcard use. Every visit to a military or affiliated facility spread out before him. “Two visits a week to the tactical