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HMS Prince Adrian

Madras System

May 15, 1907 PD


brandy’s uni-link pinged.

She glanced down and frowned at the caller ID, then looked at Oliver O’Brien and Felicia O’Toole. The three of them stood in Impeller Room 12’s plasma conduit monitoring station, where the midshipwoman had been somewhat nervously displaying her proficiency.

The better Brandy got to know O’Toole, the more she approved of the tiny midshipwoman. She was smart, competent, and not one bit afraid of getting her hands dirty. For that matter, she gave a very good impersonation of a sponge around the ships’ senior NCOs. Her ability to soak up the benefit of their experience was outstanding, and she had the gift, the knack for taking advice and accepting instruction without ever forgetting who was senior to whom in the chain of command.

If she had a fault—and it was a minor one—it was the anxiety she apparently felt when one of her own superiors, and especially Brandy, evaluated her proficiency. It never adversely affected her performance, so far as Brandy could tell, and it wasn’t as if she were breaking out in any cold sweats. In fact, it didn’t even seem to stem from any qualms about her own capabilities. It was more as if she didn’t want to let her superiors down. Didn’t want to give them less than the very best performance possible.

Truth be told, Brandy could think of very few “problems” she would rather have with one of her middies. And she had to admit she’d been very much like that on her own snotty cruise. Maybe that explained why she wished O’Toole would ease up on herself just a bit?

She brushed that thought aside and grimaced at her companions.

“I’m afraid I have to take this one,” she said. “Felicia, what I’ve seen so far today absolutely rates a four-oh evaluation. I’ll let you and Lieutenant O’Brien continue this, but drop by my office when you’ve finished. I think we should expand your duties a bit. I’m thinking maybe we slot you in as Reactor Officer for first watch.”

O’Toole’s eyes widened slightly, and Brandy saw O’Brien smiling at her across the middy’s head. First watch was Brandy’s watch, which meant she’d be available to backstop O’Toole if anything happened. And CPO Evans was the senior noncom of the watch. The burly chief was the next best thing to thirty centimeters taller than O’Toole, probably weighed twice as much, and was half again her age, all of which made him a reassuringly solid presence. More importantly, after Horace Harkness, he was probably the best power tech in the ship. Although Brandy hadn’t realized it the day she reported aboard, he was also a fellow native of Gryphon. Not that she’d been all that surprised when she found out, given the number of career noncoms Gryphon provided to both the Navy and the Marines. He’d keep an eagle eye on the midshipwoman, so unobtrusively she probably wouldn’t even notice, and he was exactly the sort of noncom O’Toole clearly knew to listen to.

“Yes, Ma’am,” the middy said after a moment, and Brandy smiled. Then she nodded to the other two, stepped out of the compartment, and found a quiet corner of the impeller room. It wasn’t hard; Impeller 12 was running only a skeleton watch, with Prince Adrian riding planetary orbit and no more than a trickle charge on her plasma conduits.

That was good. Brandy rather expected this was one com conversation no one needed to overhear.

She parked herself in a corner, her back to the bulkhead, and keyed the com function on her tablet.

“Major Hendren,” she told it, then waited.

Despite his effort to overcome her initial negative impression of him, she wasn’t looking forward to this. The Marine boarding exercise Baker Company had conducted that morning had gone very, very well . . . right up to the moment Marine Two’s fusion bottle shut the hell down, anyway.

There’d been no time yet for Brandy to get into the nuts and bolts, but at least the fusion plant had vented to space the way it was supposed to when a bottle failed. There’d been no casualties, but Marine Two had returned to her boat bay under tow, with no impeller wedge, and in an actual operation, that could have been fatal. So—

Clint Hendren’s face appeared on her tablet.

Somewhat to her surprise, he wasn’t actively frowning.

Yet, at least.

“Major Hendren,” she said affably. “How can I help you?”

“I’m sure you’ve heard about Marine Two’s little . . . misadventure this morning, Lieutenant?” he replied.

“I have.” Brandy nodded. “I’m afraid I haven’t had time to dig into the actual situation just yet. That was on my list for this afternoon.”

“I’m not surprised you haven’t gotten to it yet.” Hendren shrugged. “I know how busy you are, and it’s not exactly a galaxy-shattering event. Not on an exercise, anyway.”

His tone was so reasonable Brandy had to order her eyes not to narrow.

“The real reason I wanted to talk to you about it,” he continued, “is to tell you that any qualms I might have had about Senior Chief Harkness are now a thing of the past.”

“Really?” Brandy’s eyebrows arched, and he snorted.

“I’m not quite ready to adopt him into the Corps just yet,” he said dryly. “But he was absolutely on the spot the instant Marine Two reported its problem.”

“That sounds like the Senior Chief.”

“It does, now that I’ve gotten to know him better.” Hendren nodded. “I didn’t really expect him and Lieutenant Tremaine to personally come to collect us, though.”

“Excuse me?”

“You didn’t know?” Hendren chuckled. “Tremaine took Shuttle One out to tow us home, and Harkness locked aboard Marine Two to monitor the fusion plant personally. He was running diagnostics before we even got back to the ship!”

“That really does sound like the Senior Chief,” Brandy said with a smile.

“Yeah, and from what he’s saying, we should have the bird back up within forty-five hours or so. Nothing actually broke, but one of the regulators threw a fault signal and the bottle went into emergency shutdown. He says it looks more like a sensor failure than an actual fault in the bottle.”

“That’s good news.”

“I agree, but you should’ve heard Gunny Babcock.” Hendren grinned. “She beat him back aboard in Marine One, and she was waiting when the Two bird recovered to the bay. Wanted to know what a ‘drooling Navy idiot’ who couldn’t even seal his own shoes ‘was doing aboard her pinnace.’ And why he hadn’t already fixed the problem, if he was such a hotshot. And, by the way, how long did he plan to take, because she wasn’t getting any younger and she’d really like the bird back before she hit retirement age.”

“Oh, Lord!” Brandy surprised herself with a chuckle as her imagination conjured up the scene.

“Don’t worry, he gave as good as he got,” Hendren assured her with an even broader grin. “Something about Marines too stupid to read the manual—if it wasn’t written in crayon in ten-centimeter letters—who couldn’t be expected to understand how to operate equipment any more sophisticated than clubs and brass knuckles. And something else about sergeant majors who thought the best way to fix molycircs was to beat on them with a five-kilo hammer. And would she please get her unqualified ass out of the way of the Navy people who—unlike certain sergeant majors he could have named but wouldn’t—actually were capable of finding their asses with both hands and approach radar.”

“And should I assume everyone in the bay was listening to this with suitable appreciation?” Brandy asked, although it was difficult to get it out through her chuckles.

“Oh, of course they were!” Hendren rolled his eyes. “How often do both clans have the opportunity to watch their tribal elders smite one another hip and thigh without actual bloodshed?”

“Would be interesting to watch those two on the training mat actually,” Brandy said in a thoughtful tone. “Gunny Babcock’s one of the best at coup de vitesse. I’ve watched her workouts a couple of times, and I think she was actually a senior instructor at Saganami Island a few T-years back. But Harkness must out-mass her by—what? thirty percent?—and from everything I hear, he’s one heck of an old-fashioned bruiser.”

“So far, we have at least been spared any blood on the deck plates,” Hendren replied. “And, fascinating as the match would no doubt be, I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

“So would I,” Brandy agreed.

“Anyway,” Hendren shrugged, “I just wanted to screen you with the good news that it’s a minor glitch, and to tell you that Her Majesty’s Marines are suitably appreciative of your department’s services. We’ll try not to impose upon them any more than we have to.”

“I appreciate that, Major. Thank you.”

“De nada.” He shrugged again, then smiled. “Hendren, clear,” he said, and her tablet blanked.


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