"The morale and the efficiency of this unit are my responsibility," he continued. "I think having them aboard is hurting our morale, and I think it's going to get worse the closer we get to Russian airspace. The closer we get to battle."
Batman didn't answer right away. "How do you feel about it?" Tombstone prompted him.
"Oh, my morale's just fine, thank you. And I'm not aware of anyone else in the Vipers with a problem. Well, Arrenberger, maybe."
"Slider? What's with him?"
"Bad attitude, mostly. He's one of those 'the woman's place is in the home' types. And there're a few others who may like having them aboard too much, if you know what I mean."
"The question is, what's that going to do to our combat efficiency when we go one-on-one against the Russians?"
"There's not a lot we can do that we're not already doing. You make sure your people are the best trained, the best motivated there are, like always.
Shouldn't be hard. You've got good material to work with. I think you're just shook because you reacted to a situation tonight like a man instead of like a commanding officer."
"Yeah. And I can't help what I am, can I? I'm also wondering if that's going to be a problem for other men in this wing. What about these guys you say like having the women aboard too much?"
"Hey, CAG. I named no names."
"I'm not interrogating you. But is it a problem? PDAs?
Fraternization?"
"I'm pretty sure some of the guys have something going with some of the gals, yeah. You know Navy guys."
"And aviators."
"Right. But they're doing their jobs. They're professionals, Stoney.
They wouldn't be here if they weren't."
There was no way, Tombstone knew, to stop men and women from being men and women, certainly not when they were locked up together for month after month in an unrelieved confinement that could make life in a prison seem liberal by comparison. The question was whether the issue of sex aboard ship could impair Jefferson's fighting ability. There was nothing he could do but, as Batman had suggested, rely on his people's own professionalism and good sense.
He wondered, though, about Conway. As the senior female aviator aboard, she was de facto the women's CO, though she and all of the women in turn answered to him, as commander of the wing.
Was she having the same worries about her girls as Tombstone was having with his boys? Maybe it would be a good idea to talk to her about it.
CHAPTER 3
Lieutenant Commander Tricia Conway knew it was going to take her quite a while to familiarize herself with more than a tiny fraction of the Jefferson's miles of corridors, compartments, and companionways. She'd gone through numerous briefings on carrier layouts and shipboard life, of course, but after two weeks aboard she still carried the small map they'd given her the first day she'd reported aboard. By now she had the main routes memorized, the ones she needed to use every day between flight deck and hangar deck, say, as well as important spaces like VF-95's ready room, the officers' wardroom, and the collection of ship's exchange, stores, and services that was popularly called Jefferson's "main mall."
Jefferson's female personnel couldn't approach that area, of course, without risking comments about "mall dolls," but then it was difficult to find any aspect of life on a carrier that couldn't be twisted to humorous, salty, or racy double meaning by the men who served aboard her.
Aboard an aircraft carrier, the vast and cavernous, steel-walled space called the hangar deck marks a kind of dividing line in shipboard numbering conventions. The hangar deck is on the 0–1 level; decks above this level are numbered in ascending order, 0–2, 0–3, all the way to the 0–9 deck, high up within the carrier's island. Below the hangar deck, levels are numbered in descending order, first deck, second deck, third deck, and so on, plunging deeper into the bowels of the ship far beneath the waterline.
Jefferson's complement of male aviators was quartered on the 0–3 deck, which extended uninterrupted from bow to stern and lay directly underneath the carrier's "roof," or flight deck. During launch operations, the steel-on-steel clatter of chains and cat shuttles just overhead, the tooth-rattling whump of steam catapults hurling thirty-ton aircraft off the carrier's bow, made sleeping or even simple conversation a chancy proposition at best.
Jefferson's women, both enlisted personnel and officers, had been given a block of compartments one level down on the 0–2 deck just beneath the officers' wardroom. It was considerably quieter there than up on the 0–3, though during launch ops it could still get noisy enough to interrupt conversation or wake you from a sound sleep. There were other disadvantages, however, and one was the fact that the 0–2 level was divided fore and aft by the hangar deck, which was a full two decks high and took up something like two-thirds of the carrier's entire 1,092-foot length. In a classic case of you-can't-get-there-from-here, it was necessary to cut past the men's quarters up on 0–3 to reach the women's quarters from points farther aft.
At times, that could be like running the gauntlet.
She was coming from the VF-95 ready room, making her way down one of Jefferson's endless passageways on her way to her own quarters and bed. She was passing the male flight officers' area on the 0–3 level, taking each raised frame opening or "knee-knocker" with a practiced stoop-and-step, when a man's too-familiar voice called to her from behind.
"Hey, Brewski! Little trouble getting down tonight?"
She turned in the passageway. Lieutenant Commander Greg "Slider" Arrenberger caught up to her, a toothy grin showing beneath his thick black mustache.
"Nah, no big deal, Slider," she said. "Boltered once. It's a shitty night out."
"Cold too. Cold as a witch's starboard tit." He winked broadly, clucking twice. "Anything the ol' Slider can do to warm you up?"
She was too tired to banter with the man, or to think of something clever enough to verbally slap him down. In her present state of mind, Arrenberger was just one more petty annoyance. Crossing her arms, she leaned back against the bulkhead. "Fuck you, Slider," she said.
"Hey, great idea! Anytime you say, baby. Make a hole!" He squeezed past her in the passageway, taking up just a bit more space than he had to to get by, contriving to lightly brush against the tips of her breasts with his body as he passed.
Slider was a real pig, the source of the worst of the sexual harassment Conway had endured since she'd come aboard. Most of Conway's fellow flight officers treated her with complete courtesy, acceptance, and respect, but there were always a few…
Starting at Annapolis, and continuing through flight training and assignment to a RAG at Pensacola, Conway, like every woman now aboard the Jefferson, had suffered through class after class on dealing with everything from verbal harassment to forcible rape. The best way of handling that sort of thing, of course, wasn't taught in sensitivity classes or role-playing sessions.
With a small glow of inner warmth, she recalled again the first time she'd encountered that kind of harassment. She'd been a new recruit at Annapolis, twenty years old and brimming with fire, ambition, and a positively fierce determination to make good in this alien world that still, after over a decade, was run for and by men. Hurrying with an armful of books on her way to her next class, she'd squeezed past a group of five fellow cadets loitering in the passageway, all male. Just as she passed, one of them had muttered a low-voiced, "Christ, that one looks like she gives great head," speaking just loud enough that she could hear without having the comment directed to her.