Rictor looked at the man in his office. One survivor out of eight men. He wanted to blame Crispin, but knew the events had been mostly chance. And if anyone else had survived the grenade, Rictor doubted they would have recovered the craft.
"Congratulations, Sergeant Crispin," he said, finally. "Job well done." He glanced at the mission report on his desk. "I would have made the same mistake as Hunter. They made me General so I couldn't go into the field; looks like they were right." Crispin looked sober, despite the offhand promotion.
"Our training methods are criticized for squashing individuality. I don't remember taking weapons from corpses being in the training manual." Crispin winced. "I want you to promote this kind of thinking in our new trips. You're in charge of Skyranger-1 until I get an OCS up and running."
"Yes, sir," Crispin said, some measure of pride seeping into his voice.