by David Weber
She felt her pace try to slow ever so slightly as the armed Marine sentry noted her approach, but she overrode the temptation sternly. Her heart seemed to flutter in her chest, with a surge of excitement she'd told herself firmly that she wasn't going to feel. After all, it wasn't as if this were the first time she'd reported for duty aboard a starship. There'd been all of those near-space training cruises from the Academy, not to mention the endless hours spent doing things like suit drill, both in simulators and under actual field conditions aboard Hephaestus or one of the training ships. This would be no different, she'd told herself.
Unfortunately, she'd lied. Worse, she admitted to herself, she'd known at the time that she was doing it. This was nothing at all like the near-space cruises, and it wouldn't have been even without High Admiral Matthews' personal little briefing.
She drew a deep breath and walked up to the sentry.
The Marine private saluted her, and she returned the formal courtesy with all the crispness her Saganami instructors had drilled into her.
"Midshipwoman Hearns to join the ship's company," she announced, and extended the record chip with her official orders.
"Thank you, Ma'am," the Marine replied, as he accepted the chip and slotted it into his memo board. The board's screen flickered alight, and he studied it for perhaps fifteen seconds, then punched the eject button. He extracted the chip and handed it back to her.
"You've been expected, Ma'am," he informed her. "The Executive Officer left instructions that you're to come aboard and report to her."
"I see." Abigail kept her tone as expressionless as her face, but something about it must have given away her flicker of trepidation. The sentry's posture never changed, but she thought she saw the faintest hint of a twinkle in his eye.
"If you'll report to the boat bay officer, he'll have someone take care of your locker and get you directed to Commander Watson, Ma'am."
"Thank you, Private . . . Roth," Abigail said, reading his nameplate and making less effort to keep her gratitude out of her voice this time.
"You're welcome, Ma'am." The sentry came briefly back to attention, and Abigail nodded to him and launched herself into the tube's zero-gee.
After the hustle and bustle of Hephaestus' crowded galleries, Gauntlet's boat bay seemed almost quiet. Not quite, of course. There was always something going on in every boat bay aboard every warship in space, and Gauntlet's was no exception. Abigail could see at least two work parties engaged on routine maintenance tasks, and a Marine sergeant's voice sounded with less than dulcet patience as she put a squad through the formal evolutions of an honor guard. Still, there was something soothing about the sudden drop in energy levels and the press of bodies as Abigail landed neatly just outside the painted deck line which indicated where Gauntlet officially began and Hephaestus officially ended. She'd always wondered why the RMN bothered with that line. The Grayson Navy didn't. In the GSN, the shipboard end of a boarding tube belonged to the ship, and the outboard end of the tube belonged to the space station, which had always struck her as a far more sensible arrangement. But the Star Kingdom's navy had its own traditions, and this was one of them.
A junior-grade lieutenant with the identifying brassard of the boat bay officer of the deck looked at her, and Abigail saluted sharply.
"Permission to come aboard to join the ship's company, Sir!"
The lieutenant returned her salute, then held out a hand, and Abigail surrendered her orders again. The lieutenant spent a few more seconds glancing through them than Private Roth had. Then he popped the chip back out of his board and returned it.
"Permission granted, Ms. Hearns," he told her, and Abigail felt an odd little flutter deep inside as she officially became a part of Gauntlet's crew.
"Thank you, Sir," she said as she slipped the chip back into its folio and put both of them back into her tunic pocket. "The tube sentry informed me that I'm supposed to report to the Executive Officer, Sir," she continued respectfully.
"Yes, you are," the BBOD agreed. He keyed his com and spoke into it. "Chief Posner, our final snotty—" he smiled slightly at Abigail as he used the traditional slang for a midshipman "—has just come aboard. I understand that you've been awaiting her with bated breath?" He listened to something only he could hear over his unobtrusive ear bug and chuckled. "Well, I thought that was what you said. At any rate, she's here. I think you'd better come collect her." He listened again, then nodded. "Good," he said, and returned his full attention to Abigail.
"Chief Posner is Lieutenant Commander Abbott's senior noncom, Ms. Hearns," he informed her. "And since Commander Abbott is assistant tac officer, which makes him our OCTO, that means the chief is more or less in charge of our snotties. He'll see to it that you get where you need to be."
"Thank you, Sir," she repeated, and her spirits rose. She'd been even more braced against disaster than she'd realized in the wake of High Admiral Matthews' warnings, but so far things seemed to be going well.
"Wait over there by Lift Three," the lieutenant told her, and flipped a casual wave at the indicated lift shaft. "Chief Posner will be here to collect you shortly."
"Yes, Sir," Abigail said obediently and towed her locker across to the lifts.
"Welcome aboard, Ms. Hearns."
Commander Linda Watson was a short, solidly built woman with dark hair but startlingly light-colored blue eyes. Abigail guessed that the commander had to be in her late forties or early fifties, although it was sometimes hard for Abigail to estimate the ages of prolong recipients. Graysons hadn't had much practice at that yet.
Watson had a brisk, no-nonsense manner which went well with her solid, well-muscled physique, and her voice was surprisingly deep for a woman. But she also had a pronounced Sphinxian accent, and Abigail felt herself warming to the exec almost instinctively as its crispness flowed over her like an echo of Lady Harrington's accent.
"Thank you, Commander," she replied. She seemed to be thanking a lot of people today, she reflected.
"Don't let it go to your head," Watson advised her dryly. "We always welcome every snotty aboard. That's never stopped us from running them until they drop. And since there are only four of you aboard for this deployment, we'll have a lot more time to keep each of you running."
She paused, but Abigail didn't know her well enough to risk responding to her possible humor.
"All snotties are equal in the eyes of God, Ms. Hearns," Watson went on after a moment. "The reason I invited you to drop by my office before you report to Snotty Row, however, is that not all snotties really are equal, however hard we try to make them that way. And, to be perfectly honest, you present some special problems. Of course," she smiled a bit wryly, "I suppose every middy presents some special problem in his or her own way."
She folded her arms and leaned a hip back against her desk, cocking her head to one side as she contemplated Abigail.
"To be perfectly honest, I was strongly tempted to just toss you into the deep end. That's always been my rule of thumb in the past, but I've never had a foreign princess as a midshipwoman before."
She paused again, this time obviously inviting a response, and Abigail cleared her throat.
"I'm not precisely a 'foreign princess,' Ma'am," she said.
"Oh, yes, you are, Ms. Hearns," Watson disagreed. "I checked the official position of both the Foreign Office and the Navy. Your father is a head of state in his own right, despite his subordination to the Protector's overriding authority. That makes him a king, or at least a prince, and that makes you a princess."
"I suppose, technically, it does," Abigail admitted. "But that's on Grayson, Ma'am. Not in the Star Kingdom."
"That's a refreshing attitude." Watson's tone added the unspoken rider "if that's the way you really feel about it," but she continued briskly. "Unfortunately, not everyone is going to share it. So I thought I'd just take this opportunity to make certain that you didn't, in fact, expect any special treatment because of your birth. And to point out to you that you may find yours
elf laboring under some additional burdens if other members of the ship's company decide that getting on your good side could be a . . . career enhancing maneuver."
The exec was carefully not, Abigail noticed, suggesting that those "other members" might be found among her fellow middies. Nor, she realized a moment later, had Watson suggested that some of Gauntlet's more senior officers might share the same attitude, and she wondered if that was because the commander thought that some of them would.
"As long as you don't expect special treatment, and as long as we don't have anyone else trying to extend it to you anyway," Watson continued, "then I don't expect us to have any problems. Which would be a very good thing, Ms. Hearns. I realize you're actually in the Grayson Navy, not the Queen's Navy, but that makes your midshipwoman's cruise no less important to your career. I trust you fully understand that, as well?"
"Yes, Ma'am. I do."
"Good!" Watson smiled briefly, then unfolded her arms and straightened. "In that case, Chief Posner will see to it that you and your gear get safely stowed away in Snotty Row and you can report to Commander Abbott."
" . . . so we told the Chief that no one had told us Engineering was off-limits." Karl Aitschuler grinned and shrugged his shoulders. He sat at the table in the center of "Snotty Row's" commons area, looking, Abigail thought, remarkably like her younger brother had looked at age twelve after putting something over on one of his nannies.
"And he actually believed that?" Shobhana Korrami shook her head in disbelief.
Shobhana was the other midshipwoman assigned to Gauntlet for this deployment, and Abigail had been delighted to see her. Although she never would have admitted it to anyone, Abigail had been more than a little nervous about the RMN's normal shipboard accommodations, especially for "snotties." Each midshipman or midshipwoman had his or her own private, screened-off sleeping area, but they shared all of their other facilities.
The degree to which male and female students had been thrown together at the Academy had come as a distinct shock to a Grayson girl, especially one of noble birth. Intellectually, though, at least Abigail had known it was coming, which had helped some. Still, she very much doubted she would ever possess the easy acceptance of such proximity which seemed to be part of the cultural baggage of her Manticoran and Erewhonese classmates. And even at its most . . . coeducational, the Academy had offered at least a little more privacy than was going to be possible here. Having at least one other female middy along would have been an enormous relief under any circumstances, but the fact that it was Shobhana made it even more of one. Abigail and the slightly taller, blond-haired, green-eyed Korrami had become close friends during the many extra hours they'd spent together under the tutelage of Senior Chief Madison, the senior Saganami Island unarmed combat instructor.
"Of course he believed it," Karl said virtuously. "After all, who has a more honest and trustworthy face than me?"
"Oh, I don't know," Shobhana replied in thoughtful tones. "Oscar Saint-Just?" she suggested after a moment with artful innocence.
Abigail giggled, then colored as Shobhana looked up at her with a triumphant grin. Shobhana knew how much it embarrassed Abigail whenever she giggled. It wasn't something a steadholder's daughter was supposed to do. Besides, she thought it made her sound like a twelve-year-old herself.
"I'll have you know," the fourth person in the compartment said, "that Oscar Saint-Just looked much more honest and trustworthy than our Aitschuler ever did."
Abigail's temptation to giggle died abruptly. She couldn't quite put her finger on what it was about Arpad Grigovakis' tone, but what should have been another jab of friendly harassment came out with an unpleasant, cutting edge in his well modulated, upperclass Manticoran accent.
Father Church had always taught that God offered good things to offset the bad in any person's life, if she only remained open to recognizing them when they came along. Abigail was willing to take that on faith, but she'd come to suspect that the reverse was also true. And Grigovakis' presence aboard Gauntlet as a counterbalance for Shobhana's seemed further evidence that her suspicions were well founded.
Midshipman Grigovakis was tall, well built, so handsome she felt certain biosculpt had played a major part in his regularity of feature, and unreasonably wealthy even by Manticoran standards. He was also an excellent student, judging by his grades and where he'd stood in their final class standings. Which, unfortunately, did not make him a pleasant human being.
"I'm sure that if Saint-Just did look more honest than me," Karl said in a deliberately light tone, "it was purely the result of sophisticated imagery management by Public Information."
"Yeah, sure it was," Shobhana agreed, throwing her weight into the effort to keep the banter flowing.
"Do you think it was, Abigail?" Grigovakis asked, flashing improbably perfect teeth at Abigail in a smile which, as always, carried that overtone of patronization.
"I wouldn't know," she said as naturally as she could. "I'm sure PubIn could have done it, if they'd wanted to. On the other hand, I imagine looking innocent and virtuous would have been almost as much of an advantage for a secret policeman on his way up as for a middy who got caught where he wasn't supposed to be. So maybe it was all natural protective coloration he'd acquired early."
"I hadn't thought of that," Grigovakis said with a chuckle, and gave her a nod that seemed to say "My, how clever for a little neobarb girl like you!"
"I thought you probably hadn't," she responded easily, and it was her tone's turn to say "Because, of course, you weren't smart enough to." A flicker of anger showed somewhere at the backs of his brown eyes, and she smiled sweetly at him.
"Yeah, well," Karl said in the voice of someone searching diligently for a change of subject, "innocent and virtuous or not, I'm not sure I'm looking forward to dinner tonight!" He shook his head.
"At least you won't have to face the Captain alone," Shobhana pointed out. "You'll have Abigail along. Just do what you always did at Duchess Harrington's dinners."
"Like what?" Karl asked suspiciously.
"Hide behind her," Shobhana said dryly.
"I did not!" Karl swelled with theatrical indignation. "She just happened to be sitting between me and Her Grace!"
"Three different times?" Shobhana asked skeptically.
"You were invited to Harrington House three times?" Grigovakis asked, looking at Aitschuler in obvious surprise leavened by something suspiciously like respect.
"Well, yes," Karl acknowledged with insufferable modesty.
"I'm impressed," Grigovakis admitted, then shrugged. "Of course, I wasn't in any of her sections, so nobody in my Tactical classes got invited. I hear the food was always good, though."
"Oh, it was a lot better than just good," Karl assured him. "In fact, Mistress Thorne, her cook, makes a triple-fudge cake to die for!" He rolled his eyes in the epicurean bliss of memory.
"Yeah, but then she worked your ass off in the simulators," Shobhana told Grigovakis with considerably less relish. "She usually took the Op Force command herself and proceeded to systematically kick our uppity butts."
"I don't doubt it." Grigovakis shook his head with an expression of unusual sincerity. One of the very few points upon which Abigail found herself in agreement with him was his respect for "the Salamander."
"I tried to get into one of her classes when I found out she was going to be teaching at the Island," he added. "I was too late, though." He leaned back in his chair and considered his cabin mates. "So, all three of you had her for Intro to Tactics? I hadn't realized that."
"I almost didn't make it either," Shobhana said. "As a matter of fact, I didn't quite make the initial cut. I was number two on the waiting list, and I only got in because two of the people in front of me had family emergencies that made them miss a semester."
"And how many times did you get invited to dinner?" Grigovakis was working his way back to normal, unfortunately, and his tone clearly implied that he didn't expect to hear that Shobhana had
ever received an invitation.
"Only twice," Shobhana admitted calmly. "Of course, everyone got invited at least once. To get invited more often than that, you had to earn it, and, frankly, Tactics wasn't my best subject." She smiled sweetly at Grigovakis' expression. Having even a single "earned" invitation to one of Duchess Harrington's dinners on her record was a mark of high distinction for any Tactics student at the Academy.
"But you had three invitations, did you?" he said, turning back to Aitschuler, who nodded. "And Abigail did, too?" That cutting edge of astonishment was back at the mere possibility that Abigail might have achieved such a distinction.
"Oh, no," Karl said, shaking his head sadly, then paused, waiting with perfect timing for the flicker of satisfaction to show in Grigovakis' eyes. "Abigail was invited ten times . . . that I know of," he said innocently.
"What is his problem?" Shobhana muttered later that ship's evening as she and Abigail shared the shower. It was the midshipwomen's turn to have it first today; tomorrow, it would be their turn to wait while the midshipmen had first dibs.
"Whose?" Abigail worked shampoo into her almost waist length hair. There had been more times than she could count that she'd been tempted to cut it as short as Shobhana wore her own. Indeed, once or twice she'd been tempted to cut it as short as Lady Harrington's hair had been on her first visit to Grayson. Just finding the time to care for and groom it properly had seemed an impossible task more often than not, and its length was scarcely convenient in zero-gee conditions, or under vac helmets, or during phys-ed class. She supposed her inability to actually bring herself to cut it was one of her few unbreakable concessions to the standards of her birth world, where no respectable young woman would ever dream of cutting her hair short.
Now she finished working in the lather and stuck her head under the shower and rinsed vigorously.
"You know perfectly well whose," Shobhana said just a bit crossly. "That asshole Grigovakis, of course! Every once in a while you'd almost swear there was a worthwhile human being inside there somewhere. Then he reverts to normal."
