Both 'cats ignored the humans, concentrating on one another, and Honor heard the deep, almost subsonic sound of their purring. The soft rumbles reached out to one another and merged, sweeping together in an oddly intricate harmony, and Tschu shot a startled, almost apologetic glance at Honor, who shrugged helplessly. In their native environment, young treecats often established temporary relationships, but mature 'cats were monogamous and mated for life. Those who adopted humans, however, seldom took permanent mates, and she'd often wondered if that was because their adoption bonds took them away from others of their kind or if they adopted humans in the first place because they were somehow different from their fellows. But she'd witnessed 'cat courtships, and this one looked moderately serious, which could have... interesting consequences. Unmated 'cats were relatively infertile, but mated pairs were a very different matter.
There was no point discussing it, though. What happened between Samantha and Nimitz was up to them, a point the majority of humans, who persisted in thinking of 'cats as pets, failed to grasp. That misconception probably stemmed from the fact that humans were almost always the alpha partners in their bondings, but that was because treecats who'd adopted had chosen to live in humanity's society and recognized the need to abide by human rules, some of which baffled them. They relied on their people for guidance, and not just socially; they knew they didn't fully understand humanity's technological marvels, and that those marvels could kill. But anyone who'd ever been adopted knew a treecat was a person, with the same rights and occasional need for space as any human. It was always the 'cat who initiated a bond, and there had been cases in which that bond was repudiated when a human tried to turn it into some sort of ownership. It happened rarely, 'cat's seldom made the mistake of choosing someone who could do that, but it did happen.
Cardones watched the two 'cats for another moment, smiling and unaware of the full implications of what he was seeing and hearing, then cleared his throat and looked back at Honor. His smile faded, and he laid one hand on his memo board.
"Harry and I have a problem, Ma'am."
"Which is?" Honor asked calmly.
"Crew efficiency, Ma'am," Tschu said. "Specifically, Engineering efficiency. We're still not cutting the mustard down there."
"I see." Honor cocked her chair back and played with a stylus. Their "convoy" was just over a month out of New Berlin and due to reach Sachsen in another week, and the lengthy cruise had given her enough time to get a feel for her crew. She really didn't need Tschu to tell her that his department's efficiency remained marginal. Of course, his wasn't the only one which still had problems, just the one with the biggest gap between target levels and reality. She was relieved that he'd brought it up, however. She'd been willing to let Cardones give Tschu time to try to straighten out the kinks on his own, but she'd also been curious to see how the engineer would respond to the lack of official pressure from above. Some officers would have tried to pretend there wasn't a problem until his exec or CO called him on the carpet, and it was good to know Tschu didn't work that way.
"Do you know why you aren't?" she asked after a moment, and Tschu rubbed a hand over his close-cropped hair.
"I think so, Ma'am. The problem is what I do about it."
"Explain to me, Commander," Honor invited, and he frowned.
"Basically, it's a matter of who's got the seniority," he began, then paused and drew a deep breath. "Before I go on, Ma'am, please understand that I'm not making excuses. If you have any advice or suggestions, I'll be delighted to hear them, but I know whose responsibility Engineering is." He met Honors eyes levelly until she nodded, then went on.
"Having said that, I think I do need some advice. This is the first time I've actually run a department, and there are a couple of changes I want to try, but I don't feel comfortable about making them without running them by you first. And if I do make them, I'm afraid it'll mean stepping quite a ways outside normal procedures."
Honor nodded again. Nimitz was too preoccupied with Samantha for Honor to sample the engineer's emotions, but she didn't need her link to the 'cat to recognize his frankness. Like many of her officers, he was young for his rank, and, as he'd said, this was the first time he'd held full responsibility for running his own department. He clearly felt his inexperience, and she suspected that what he really wanted was for her to tell him that whatever he had in mind was an acceptable answer, not for her to reach out and solve his problems for him herself.
"All right," he said in a more normal tone. "Like all our departments, I've got a lot of newbies, and the ship's sheer size exacerbates the problem. With Fusion One tucked away at the center of the hull and Fusion Two still in its original position, it takes me almost fifteen minutes just to get from one power plant to the other, and both of them are an awful long way from Main Hyper, the impeller rooms, and Damage Control Central. For the first few weeks, I was spending way too much time trying to shuttle back and forth between widely dispersed work sections, and my assistants were taking their cue from me. I'm pretty sure a big part of that was the fact that I know how new most of my people are, and I wanted to be available to them if a problem came up. Unfortunately, all I was really accomplishing was to try to be in too many places at once. I was a moving target, and when trouble did crop up, I was almost always in the wrong place."
He shrugged and rubbed one eyebrow with a wry smile.
"That part of it's being taken care of. I've had extra com links run to Fusion One, and we've built complete repeaters of the master control panels from Fusion Two and Hyper in One, as well. That should let me monitor them directly and give me face-to-face capability with every station simultaneously, if I need it."
Honor nodded once more. She'd known Tschu was making modifications, but she hadn't realized they were as extensive as he seemed to be suggesting. She approved, however, and she made another mental check mark by the engineer's name. People who dug right in to solve problems instead of standing around wringing their hands were unfortunately rare.
"My biggest current problem is that I'm not seeing the increased efficiency I anticipated from the new arrangements. Part of it's to be expected, with so many newbies still learning their jobs, I suppose, and it's taking longer to get all the classroom crap out of their brains because we're so thin on experienced people to serve as mentors. But part of it's the nature of those 'experienced' people, too. Frankly, I've got some really bad apples down there, Ma'am."
Honor let her chair swing upright once more and folded her hands on the table. So far, thanks, no doubt, to Sally MacBride, Wayfarer had experienced few of the discipline problems Honor had half-expected. The Bosun wasn't the sort to put up with any nonsense, and Honor was reasonably confident she'd settled a few personnel problems with direct intervention of the sort Regs didn't envision. As Wayfarers captain, Honor could live with that, but it sounded as if Tschu had problems of his own. And, she thought guiltily, she was the one who'd deliberately handed Wayfarer's officers more than their fair share of potential troublemakers.
"I've got about a dozen genuine hard cases," Tschu said. "Two of them are particular problems. They've got the training and experience for their jobs, but they're troublemakers, pure and simple. They sit around on their butts if someone doesn't stay on top of them every moment, and they pressure the newbies to do the same. I can't bust them, because there's no place to bust them to, they're already at the bottom of the heap."