Most annoying of all, the man he’d hand-picked as CO of Omega Company had evidently turned tail and run away just as the new race was arriving to make its overtures to the Legion company. There was very little the general could do to make his choice of Major Botchup look like anything but a blunder.
He didn’t understand how so many things could have gone wrong at once. Still, if there was a way to make himself into the hero of the day, he intended to find it.
General Blitzkrieg gripped the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. There was the beginning of a headache lurking just behind his sinuses. He wanted nothing more than to go lie down, but he had to appear before the Alliance Senate in half an hour, and he didn’t dare go in there without some kind of coherent story-not unless he wanted to be even more a laughingstock than he already was.
“All right, tell me again how we’re going to explain this,” he said. “Not only did Major Botchup and his aide desert from Omega Company in the face of what they thought was an enemy incursion; they ran away to Lorelei. Lorelei! Why the hell did they have to pick the plushest resort station in the sector to escape to?”
Major Sparrowhawk looked on at her superior, tightlipped. She’d hitched her career to Blitzkrieg’s, and she’d always been careful to tell him what he wanted to hear. But it was beginning to look as if her best bet for survival was to start telling him what he needed to hear. And there was no better time to start than right now. She drew a star on her notepad and said, “Sir, Lorelei was the closest Alliance outpost. You need to keep emphasizing that fact, General.”