Asimov's SF, October-November 2011 by Dell Magazine Authors

thinking—"
    "Of yourself, of promotion, of the fact that if you succeeded, you would own stealth tech, you would be the one who everyone came to because you knew how it worked, isn't that right?"
    "Sort of, ma'am. I thought I saw an anomaly in the data from the first experiment, and I came in to double-check it—"
    "Alone,” she said. “You came in alone."
    "Yes, ma'am."
    "Against direct orders. No one was to work alone."
    His face was red. “Everyone does it, ma'am."
    Anger surged through her. She wanted to hit something—hell, she wanted to hit him. Everyone did it? And she wasn't aware of it? If this were a minor infraction, she would check right now. But it wasn't minor, it was major, and she needed to deal with the crisis first, not with the group of idiots who broke the rules and might just have cost dozens of lives.
    "So you ran the experiment again,” she said.
    "First I read the data, and really, ma'am, there was something wrong. When you shut down the cloak, the coin reappeared, but it wasn't the same coin."
    "Of course it was the same coin.” She had checked it herself.
    He shook his head. “It was an older coin. I can show you the scans—"
    "I don't want to see the damn scans,” she said. “I want to know what you did."
    He closed his eyes, knowing he was admitting to something that might be the death of his career at best, might get him court-martialed at worst.
    "I brought in one of my own coins,” he said, his entire face trembling. His eyes popped open. They were red and round and filled with fear. “I knew every marking, I recorded everything I knew about that coin, I even wrapped it in a strand of my hair, so that I would know it was mine."
    She stayed very still because if she didn't stay still she would lay this asshole flat, and then pummel him, maybe to death.
    "I put it in there,” he said, his voice breaking again, “and I set it in the same position as the other coin had been in during the first experiment, and I came out, and I ran the experiment again, only this time, the cloak didn't work, it sent out this pulse of energy and it was big and it demolished the back half of the room, and I tried to shut it down, and it won't shut down, it's still growing I think and I tried to reverse it, and when that didn't work, I called you."
    "So you fucking tampered with the tech before contacting me?"
    "I was trying to fix it,” he said.
    "You are eighteen different kinds of idiot,” she said. “You need to call in the rest of the team, right now."
    "But ma'am, I think the field is growing and if it pulses again, we'd lose anyone who showed up here."
    She whirled on him. “So you figured I was the expendable one?"
    "No, ma'am, no. I figured we had to solve this with the fewest people and you were the only chance of doing that. You're the one who knows this stuff backward and forward—"
    "And I'm the one who put in the safeguards that you didn't follow to prevent precisely this kind of thing from happening,” she said, turning back to the controls, shaking now because she was only just beginning to understand how catastrophic this all was, all because some kid wanted to further his career and figured he'd be forgiven when he discovered the secret to everything.
    "Yes, ma'am, I'm sorry, ma'am, I didn't intend it, ma'am."
    "You didn't intend it,” she repeated with deep sarcasm. “Of course you didn't intend it, you idiot. You intended to be complimented and told how damn brilliant you are. Well, that'll never happen now. It just depends on how many people have died as to what kind of stupid they'll consider you."
    He took a step backward, as if her words had the force of blows.
    "Have you contacted anyone else like I just asked?” she said, knowing he hadn't. “Have you?"
    "N-n-no, ma'am."
    "Then get on it.” She was shaking with fury, and the anger wouldn't do her any good. But dammit, she had done everything she could to prevent something like this, and it had happened anyway, and if