Jacquelyn Harmon knew exactly what the officers before her were thinking, and she hid an internal smile. Lieutenant Commander Ashford was going to be moderately livid when he and his people finally did track down the problem, she thought. Assuming that they recognized how it had happened when they found it. And, after all, finding it was another part of their exercise mission, even if they hadnt known that when they started looking, and it would be interesting to see if they went the step further to figuring out the "how" and the "why" as well as the "what." Although, she reminded herself, Ernest was too sneaky to make figuring out what had happened easy. She glanced at the bland-faced ensign, shook her head mentally, and then looked away.
So young and innocent looking for such a depraved soul, she thought cheerfully. And the fact that he and PO Smith served together in Leutzen didnt hurt, now did it? But I do want to see Ashfords reaction if he ever realizes I had his own section chief slip a deliberately rigged modification into his original mission download.
Not that recognizing that it had been deliberate was going to be easy. The file corruption which had transposed Ashfords perfectly correct heading change when he punched it in, while freakish, looked exactly like something that could have happened accidentally. Bruce McGyver had bet her five bucks Ashfords crew would never realize theyd been snookered, but one reason Harmon liked Ashford (though she wasnt about to tell him so) was that he was not only smart but as thorough as they came. If anybody was likely to realize hed been had, Ashford was the one... and if he did, he was going to inherit one of the empty squadron commander slots as a reward. But playing with his head to evaluate him for promotion had been only a secondary objective of the exercise, she reminded herself, and cleared her throat.
"Whatever the cause of the problem, however," she went on, "lets look at the consequences, shall we?" She nodded to McGyver again, and someone groaned aloud as the sudden chink in the LACs attack plan opened the door to a cascade of steadily accelerating miscues by other squadron and section COs... none of whom had the excuse that Harmon and Takahashi had jiggered their software.
And that had been the real point of her devious machinations, Harmon thought, watching the carefully orchestrated strike disintegrate into chaos, because one thing was damned sure. The first law of war was still Murphys, and units as fragile as LACs had better learn to show it even more respect than anyone else.
"Well it certainly looked like they got the point, Skipper," Lieutenant Gearman remarked with a grin as the last of the squadron and section commanders departed. "Think any of them have figured out you slipped Commander Ashford a ringer?"
"Now when did I ever say Id done anything of the sort, Mike?" Harmon asked her personal engineer innocently.
"You didnt have to say a word, Skipper. Not when Ernest was grinning like the proverbial Cheshire Cat!"
"Theres nothing feline in my ancestry, Sir," Takahashi objected.
"Of course not," Commander McGyver agreed. McGyver was from Sphinx, a startlingly handsome man with platinum blond hair and a powerful physique who walked with a pronounced limp courtesy of a skiing injury which had stubbornly persisted in refusing to mend properly despite all quick heal could do. Now he smiled, even white teeth flashing in a his tanned HD-star face. "Personally, Ive always thought of you as having a bit more weasel than feline, Ernest," he announced. "Or possibly a little snake. You know" he raised an arm and swayed it sinuously back and forth in mid-air "the sneaky, squirm-through-the-grass-and-bite-you-on-the-butt-when-youre-not-looking variety."
"I wouldnt know about snakes, Sir," Takahashi replied. "We dont have them on Manticore, you know."
"They do on Sphinx," Stackowitz informed him. "Of course, theyve got legs on Sphinx, and I dont think Old Earth snakes do. Then again, Sphinx always has been noted for the... um, peculiarities of its flora and fauna."
"And people?" McGyver suggested genially, eyes glinting at the ops officer.
"Oh, heavens, Sir! Who would ever suggest such a thing as that?" Like Takahashi, Stackowitz was from Manticore, and her expression could scarcely have been more innocent.
"Personally," Harmon observed, dropping untidily back into her chair and sprawling out comfortably, "Ive always figured Carroll must have met a treecat in an opium dream or something when he invented the Cheshire Cat."
"And the lot of you are changing the subject," Gearman pointed out. "You did have Ernest cook his software, didnt you?"
"Maybe," Harmon allowed with a lazy smile. Which, Gearman knew, was as close as she would ever come to admitting it.
He shook his head and leaned back in his own chair. Captain Harmon wasnt quite like any other four-striper hed ever met. She was at least as cocky and confident as any one of the carefully selected hotshots under her command, and she had a wicked and devious sense of humor. She also possessed a downright infectious enthusiasm for her new duties and actively encouraged informality among all her officersnot just her staffoutside "office hours."
She should have been born two thousand years ago, he often thought, in an era when deranged individuals in flying scarves strapped on so-called "aircraft" more fragile than a modern hang glider, but armed with machine guns, and went out hunting one another. Her training techniques were, to say the least, unconventional, as her latest ploy amply demonstrated, yet she got remarkable results, and she was very consciously and deliberately infusing her personnel with what the ancients had called the "fighter jock" mentality.
Stackowitz had been the first to apply the term to her. Gearman had never heard of it before. Hed been forced to look the term up to figure out what it meant, but once he had, hed had to admit it fitted Captain Harmon perfectly. And given the unconventionality of her assignment, he mused, her command style was probably entirely appropriate. Certainly none of the by-the-book types hed served under could have accomplished as much as she had in so short a period.
He leaned back and massaged his closed eyes while he reflected on just how much all of them had accomplished in the last five months. Captain Truman and Captain Harmon could probably have given lessons to the slave-drivers whod built Old Earths pyramids, but they did get the job done. And theyd managed to build a solid esprit de corps in the process.
It was a bit confusing to have two Navy captains aboard the same ship, both in command slots, even if one of them was a junior-grade and the other a senior-grade. And it could have led to dangerous confusion as to exactly whom one was speaking to or of in an emergency, which explained why Harmon was almost always referred to as the "COLAC," the brand-new acronym someone had coined for "Commanding Officer, LACs." Harmon had resisted it at first, on the grounds that it sounded too much like "colic," but it had stuck. It still sounded odd, but it was beginning to seem less so, and it certainly made it perfectly clear who you were talking about. (Ernest Takahashis innocent suggestion that if the Captain objected to "Commanding Officer, LACs," they might try "Commanding Officer, Wing" instead had been rejected with astonishing speed. Even more astonishingly, the lieutenant had survived making it.)
The new title was also only a tiny part of all the adjustments and new departures Minotaur and her company had been forced to deal with. For the first time in modern naval historythe first time in almost two thousand years, in factthe "main battery" of a unit which had to be considered a capital ship did not operate directly from that ship in action... and the ships captain didnt control it. Gearman couldnt imagine a better choice for Minotaurs CO than Alice Truman. She had the flexibility and the confidence, not to mention the experience, to grasp the changes in the RMNs traditional command arrangements which the introduction of the LAC-carrier implied, and he wasnt sure how many other captains could have said the same thing. But the fact was that once Minotaurs LACs were launched, Jackie Harmona mere captain (JG)had under her command twice as many energy weapons and six and a half times as many missile tubes as the skipper of a Reliantclass battlecruiser. Not only that, but Minotaurs only real function after launching her brood was to get the hell out of the way while Harmon and her squadron COs got on with business.