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"I was the one who proposed that we get rid of the standings, stop caring who wins. How would it look if we do that and I win every time?"
"It would look like you really did care about the standings," said It£ [Itu].
"That's not what bothers me," said another toon leader. "Are you telling me you set us up to *lose*?"
"No, I'm telling you I had a different priority. What do we learn from beating each other? Nothing. We're never going to have to fight human children. We're going to have to fight Buggers. So what do we need to learn? How to coordinate our attacks. How to respond to each other. How to feel the course of the battle, and take responsibility for the whole thing even if you don't have command. *That's* what I was working on with you guys. And if we *won*, if we went in and mopped up the walls with them, using *my* strategy, what does that teach *you*? You already worked with a good commander. What you needed to do was work with each other. So I put you in tough situations and by the end you were finding ways to bail each other out. To make it work."
"We never made it work well enough to win."
"That's not how I measured it. You made it work. When the Buggers come again, they're going to make things go wrong. Besides the normal friction of war, they're going to be doing stuff we couldn't think of because they're not human, they don't think like us. So plans of attack, what good are they then? We try, we do what we can, but what really counts is what you do when command breaks down. When it's just you with your squadron, and you with your transport, and you with your beat-up strike force that's got only five weapons among eight ships. How do you help each other? How do you make do? That's what I was working on. And then I went back to the officers' mess and told them what I learned. What you guys showed me. I learned stuff from them, too. I told you all the stuff I learned from them, right?"
"Well, you could have told us what you were teaming from us," said It£ [Itu]. They were all still a bit resentful.
"I didn't have to *tell* you. You learned it."
"At least you could have told us it was OK not to win."
"But you were supposed to *try* to win. I didn't tell you because it only works if you think it counts. Like when the Buggers come. It'll count then, for real. That's when you get really smart, when losing means that you and everybody you ever cared about, the whole human race, will die. Look, I didn't think we'd have long together. So I made the best use of the time, for you and for me. You guys are all ready to take command of armies."
"What about you, Bean?" asked Ambul. He was smiling, but there was an edge to it. "You ready to command a fleet?"