Commander Kwan pivoted to face the crew. "Attention on deck!"
Captain Hayes faced Gonzalez and saluted. "I relieve you, ma'am"
Captain Gonzalez returned the salute. "I stand relieved."
Instead of leaving at that point, Captain Gonzalez faced the crew again. "With Captain Hayes's kind permission, I have been allowed to issue one more order to the crew of the USS Michaelson. Early liberty shall be granted today, commencing immediately upon the completion of this ceremony." A brief murmur of excitement rose up, quickly quelled as officers and chiefs turned their heads and glowered back at the enlisted ranks.
The two captains headed for the door. As Gonzalez departed through the channel between the sideboys, the bosun piped again and the bell bonged four more times. "Captain, United States Navy, departing." A moment later, Hayes followed. "USS Michaelson, departing." The Michaelson, and her crew, had a new master.
Commander Kwan faced the crew again. "Officers and crew of the USS Michaelson, you are dismissed except for those members of the duty section present."
Paul relaxed, taking a deep breath and letting it out as a babble of voices arose around him and the neat ranks started to dissolve into their component sailors. "Chief, they're all yours."
Chief Imari saluted him with a grin. "Only for a moment, Mr. Sinclair. OI Division, duty section personnel return to the ship. Directly to the ship. All the rest of you are dismissed until expiration of liberty at 0700 tomorrow."
Paul started walking back to the ship himself. He didn't really have any place else to go for a while, and there was still plenty of work to catch up on.
But he still found himself leaving the Michaelson as soon as he could reasonably head for the Maury, docked one section over from his own ship. The Maury and the Michaelson were sister ships, part of the same class of spacecraft built from the same plans. Yet there were subtle differences to the Maury 's quarterdeck, the results of years of minor changes. A fitting that on the Michaelson shone with polished metal, on the Maury revealed nothing but a smooth coat of paint. The Maury 's bell had been set perhaps a half-meter to one side of where the Michaelson 's bell rested. Paul stood on the brow leading to the Maury 's quarterdeck, saluted aft to the national flag, then saluted the officer of the deck. "Request permission to come aboard."
The Maury 's ensign returned the salute. "Granted. What can I do for you, sir?"
Sir? Oh, yeah, I'm not an ensign anymore. "I'm here to see Lieutenant Junior Grade Shen. Personal business," Paul added, to ensure the ensign wouldn't put too much priority on getting Jen to the quarterdeck.
"Lieutenant Shen? Oh." The ensign grinned. "You're Lieutenant Sinclair?"
Paul turned to make his name tag fully visible. "Right."
"I'll let her know you're here."
Jen popped out onto the quarterdeck a few minutes later. "You're early."
"We got early liberty, just like I said we might."
"And you spent it working until you could come over here."
"Uh…" How did she know?
"Give me a couple of minutes. Want to come inside?"
Paul hesitated. Inside her ship? Why does that feel strange? "Okay."
Jen led the way through passageways whose small differences jarred with their overall familiarity before stopping at her stateroom hatch. "Why don't you wait out here for appearances sake?"
"Why'd I come in if I was going to wait outside?"
"You'll survive." She went inside.
Paul heard her talking to her roommate as he waited. Some sailors came by, giving him curious looks, then a lieutenant who frowned slightly. "Can I help you?"
"No, thanks, sir. I'm just waiting for Je — I mean, Ms. Shen."
"Oh." The lieutenant smiled. "She's taken, you know."
Jen popped out at that moment. "Hey, Gord. Have you met Paul?"
"Oh, this is The Paul," the lieutenant laughed, emphasizing the capital he gave the "The." "Nice to meet you."
"Thanks. Same."
Jen gave Paul's arm a tug. "Let's go before something else breaks and the XO tells me to stay aboard all night trying to fix it. See you tomorrow, Gord." They went back out to the quarterdeck, requested permission to go ashore, and saluted the national flag as they left. Jen glanced at Paul after a few moments of silence. "What's up?"
"Nothing. Well, it felt funny back there."
"What? What felt funny?"
"That ensign obviously knew about me, and so did the lieutenant, and I realized there was a wardroom over on your ship that knew about us, even though I'd never met most of them. If felt a little strange, that's all. I mean, on top of being on a ship that's so much like the Merry Mike but isn't the Mike, you know?"
"I know. You never quite get used to it. I stop by the Michaelson and see something different from the Maury and sometimes can't figure out which ship I'm on. Then I see officers I never met during my time on her. It's like seeing someone else on your home." Jen laughed. "I never thought I'd refer to the Merry Mike as home, even in a figure of speech."
They walked all the way, but bars tended to locate themselves near they sailors they served, so in less than half an hour, Paul was flopping down into a chair in Fogarty's, where the officers from the Michaelson normally hung out during too-rare in-port periods. Jen sat next to him, then hoisted her drink toward Carl. "To Lieutenant Carl Meadows. Farewell! May the road rise to meet you, yada, yada, yada."
Everyone laughed and drank to the toast, then Jen sighed and shook her head. "I still can't believe you're leaving the Merry Mike, Carl. She won't be the same without you."
Carl grinned. "And she hasn't been the same without you, Jen. I hope you don't begrudge my impending freedom."
"Hell, no. Where's your relief, by the way?"
"I know that." Mike Bristol waved in the general direction of the Michaelson. "He showed up about noon. With most of the crew gone on early liberty, they just checked him in and told him to come back tomorrow."
"Lucky timing," Carl observed. "The clock stops ticking on his leave, but he doesn't actually have to go to work until tomorrow. Ah, well, it doesn't matter to me. Lieutenant Silver's life will overlap only briefly with my own, then we shall part like, uh…"
"Ships in the night?"
"Yeah. Same with Captain Hayes, of course. He might be one fine captain, or he might turn out to be a screamer, but I won't have to worry about it."
"We will," Paul observed.
"Whatever. He won't be as bad as Wakeman was."
"I hope. I don't need to go through that sort of thing again."
Kris Denaldo raised her glass. "Amen. None of us need to. But if worse comes to worst, we can count on Paul to make a glorious moral stand and set everything right."
Paul winced as everyone else laughed. "I think I've had enough of that for one career."
Ensign Diego leaned closer. "That must have been something. Having your captain court-martialed."
Carl stood up and struck a dramatic pose. "I was there, young ensigns. I was there when Paul Sinclair made his famous charge into the very teeth of the military legal system. Forward, Paul Sinclair! Nobly he rode. Lawyers to the right of him, lawyers to the left of him, judges in front of him, volleyed and thundered with verbs and adjectives and really hard legal-type questions. But Paul rode on, plucking the fruits of victory from the very jaws of defeat, and came forth again unscathed, his new lady fair at his side."
Jen stuck her tongue out at Carl. "You're just jealous."
Paul assumed a puzzled expression. "'Plucking the fruits of victory from the very jaws of defeat?' What the heck does that mean?"
Carl grinned. "Who says it has to mean anything? It's poetry."
"It is not. Nothing rhymed."
"It's, uh, free verse poetry."