We spent two months setting records for test scores, inspection results, and team morale. And then we had a guest professor who thought he was an expert.

He had studied data on the Mulgoi ship, and he was supposed to be a Naval Architect. Which was kind of bogus up front, because the good ship designers all worked for Howell Industries. I met some of them during the After Action Interviews, and they were some sharp men and women. They even asked me if I wanted a job, but it was just them being nice. I can turn a wrench on a fitting, but I can't design it.

The guest professor also had half a dozen PhD's to his name; far as I could tell, he'd never left school. All the Academy teachers seemed to listen to his every word, and the Navy pukes were fawning on him like an ugly fella chases a beauty queen. He ate it up, and we suffered through it. All his images and vids were distance shots, they showed the entire ship. It didn't look so big, up there on the screen. Of course, the professor talked about how he would have done this different, and that different too.

It was all I could do to not bust out laughing. He claimed that the ship did not have the ability to reach the SCN spy station, it would have veered off because of the asteroids between the ship and the station. I had to shake my head at that, if he had close-ups of the hull, then he'd see the dents and hits from previous asteroids and other space junk.

Captain had ordered the SCN station to shutdown all of its broad band comms and sensors. When he took On Scene Command, he could do that. Didn't matter what the SCN Station Chief wanted, or not. It was a Battle Zone, and Captain had Command of every body and every thing in that Zone. Good thing was the Station Chief's daughter was sweet on the First Officer's Brother, and the Station Chief wasn't about to argue with the First Officer. No one does, really. Least not more than once.

Captain said the AI had a lock on where the SCN station was, and any deviation would lose track of the target. The AI didn't care about meteors, since it really didn't care if the hull was beat up or not. The AI didn't need to breath atmo.

So, the guest professor was wrong, and had no clue about it. He kept talking, I just looked at the images. It looked a lot different that I remembered it.

Raul's sat up straight. His knuckles were white, from gripping the desktop, and he looked like he was about to say something foolish. It took me a moment to tune back into the professor, who was saying that the AI did not control the weapons. He said the Mulgoi must have been shooting at everything, on a path of wanton destruction.

What an idiot.

That's when the issue hit me. Raul had probably read every publicly available report on the destruction of the ship. Most of the details were classified, I hadn't even had a chance to read them, even though a lot of what was in them came from me. But Raul was no dummy, he could put the pieces together. Reports said a computer expert established that the AI controlled the weapons, and that the destruction of the ship was required. His sister, who happened to be a computer expert sent on a classified mission at that exact same time, and who then came back with a medal, a promotion, six month's leave, and a choice of assignment, spent some time encouraging her kid brother to work hard to get into the Academy. Even though his scores weren't the best, he had been picked. Maybe his Academy spot was her trade for choice of assignment? The military does that.

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So, the idiot professor was wrong again, and insulting someone's hero sister. Right as Raul stood up, I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down.

"Sit!" I don't give a lot of orders like that, but he needed it.

"Chief, he..." Raul sputtered. He couldn't tell me, because it was classified.

I nodded. "He is using civilian images, none of his vids are up close. The way I heard it, the guns were all off by the time the civvies got there, so he has no proof. I don't know why folks think he's so special, but I ain't impressed one bit."

Raul clenched his jaw, and then looked back at the screen. He saw it, then. The guns were too small to see in that image, and the bottom of the ship was shredded. That meant they were all dead, he couldn't have seen them operating in unison, all across the entire ship. Raul relaxed, just a little, and nodded to me.

Lunch was mostly laughter and a little bit of food. Conrad was mimicking the the professor, and saying things like "As I wrote in volume twenty-seven, this ship could not exist in space. It is merely a plastic bath tub toy. Ignore all of the other reports, and news vids, and books. Just buy my book, I need hernia surgery."

Raul was laughing with everyone, and Conrad nailed the impression. Truth be told, his jokes weren't any wilder than what the professor was saying.

After lunch, things blew up.

We'd all gotten settled in, and the professor spent ten minutes winking at the Navy girls, and shaking hands with the Navy cadets. They all got puffed up and polished buttons when he talked to them.

When he got up to the lectern, he looked at us and said, "Reports of the ship's destruction are completely fabricated. The internal weapon had to have failed after repeated use, since the claim that Merchant Marines were issues Mark 19 nuclear mines is obviously a lie."

"What?" Someone yelled. Turns out is was me, and I was halfway to the professor with my first balled up. A bunch of gray suiters were pulling me back, otherwise I would have already gone all First Officer on the idiot.

He had enough sense to take several steps back, and Patricia got in front of me and started shoving me away.

"You've full of blagy waste! You haven't said one thing right this entire class." I screamed. He can bad mouth me all he wants, but nobody calls Captain a liar. Least not this idiot.

"Have you read the report, cadet?" The idiot raised an eyebrow at me. He was still keeping his distance.

"Of course not, you idiot! It's classified. It is public knowledge that the Mark 19s were issued, and used. Can't you read? Can you even tell which end the exhaust comes out of a missile?"

Right about then, the crowd of gray suiters must have tripped Patricia up, 'cause she fell, making a couple of others fall, and that was all I needed. In a heartbeat I was up at the desk, picking up one of them big textbooks, and tossing at at the idiot.

"How much did they pay you to write this junk? They ought to get their money back, you're so full of crap a blagy pen looks rosy compared to you. Why, I ought to-"

That's when the professor broke and ran. He left all his stuff on the desk, and was at the far door before I could finish my sentence.

The Navy pukes tried to form a blockade by the door the professor fled through, but the whole lot of them looked scared of me. That's okay, I wasn't mad at them. They was all spit and polish, and he had played up to that. Let them listen to his nonsense, Merchant Marines would keep space working and profitable.

The gray suiters were all looking at me, scared like, too. I couldn't tell them why I was so angry, and that just made me angrier. We stood there for a full minute, and then Conrad put a hand on Raul's shoulder. He gave a real good impression of my accent, and said loudly, "Now, cadet, you gotta be calm and collected, just like me. Always keep your cool, and don't throw them expensive books at anyone."

Everyone laughed at that, and I had to laugh too. I'd probably get in trouble for throwing a book at a professor, but he bad mouthed Captain. He deserved it.