Still, there was a world—a universe— of difference between that once-bullied young man and Senior Chief Petty Officer Aubrey Wanderman.
And , she thought a bit enviously, neither he nor Paulo is going to have to report in to someone with the towering seniority of a flag officer. Lucky bastards .
Her woolgathering had carried her successfully down the passage to Rear Admiral Yaeger's door. Now, however, she bade a regretful farewell to its distraction and stepped through the open door.
The yeoman seated behind the desk in the outer office looked up at her, then rose respectfully.
"Yes, Ma'am?"
"Captain Lewis," Ginger replied. "I'm reporting aboard, Chief."
"Yes, Ma'am. That would be Delta Department, wouldn't it, Ma'am?"
"Yes, it would." Ginger eyed him speculatively. Any flag officer's yeoman worth her salt was going to keep up with the details of her admiral's appointments and concerns. Keeping track of the comings and goings of officers who hadn't even known themselves the day before that they were about to be assigned to Weyland was a bit more impressive than usual, however.
"I thought so, Ma'am." The yeoman's expression didn't actually change by a single millimeter, yet somehow he managed to radiate a sense of over-tried patience—or perhaps a better word would have been exasperation. Fortunately, none of it seemed to be directed towards Ginger.
"I'm afraid the Admiral 's unavailable at the moment, Ma'am," the yeoman continued. "And so is Lieutenant Weaver, her flag lieutenant. It's, ah, an unscheduled meeting with the station commander."
Ginger managed to keep her eyes from widening. An "unscheduled meeting" with Weyland 's CO, was it? No wonder she'd sensed a certain tension in the air.
"I see . . . Chief Timmons," she said after a moment, reading the yeoman's nameplate. "Would it happen we have any idea when Admiral Yeager might be free?"
"Frankly, Ma'am, I'm afraid it might be quite some time." Timmons' expression remained admirably grave. "That's why I wanted to confirm that you were the officer Delta's been expecting."
"And since I am?"
"Well, Ma'am, I thought in that case you might go down to Delta and report in to Captain Jefferson. He's Delta Division's CO. I thought perhaps he might be able to start getting you squared away, and then you could report to the Admiral when she's free again."
"Do you know, Chief, I think that sounds like a perfectly wonderful idea," Ginger agreed.
* * *
"Well, that was an interesting cluster fuck, wasn't it?"
Vice Admiral Claudio Faraday, the commanding officer of HMSS Weyland , was known for a certain pithiness. He also had a well-developed sense of humor, although, Tina Yeager noted, there was no trace of it in his voice at the moment.
"Would it happen," Faraday continued, "that tucked away somewhere in your subordinate officers' files, between their voluminous correspondence, their instruction manuals, their schedules, their research notes, their ham sandwiches, and their entertainment chips, they actually possess a copy of this station's emergency evacuation plan?"
He looked back and forth between Yaeger and Rear Admiral Warren Trammell, her counterpart on the fabrication and industrial end of Weyland 's operations. Trammell didn't look much happier than Yaeger felt, but neither was foolish enough to answer his question, and Faraday smiled thinly.
"I only ask, you understand," he continued almost affably, "because our recent exercise would seem to indicate that eitherthat they don't have a copy of the plan, or else none of them can read. And I hate to think Her Majesty's Navy is entrusting its most important and secure research programs to a bunch of illiterates."
Yaeger stirred in her chair, and Faraday's eyes swooped to her.
"Sir," she said, "first, let me say I have no excuse for my department's performance. Second, I'm fully aware my people performed much more poorly than Admiral Trammell's."
"Oh, don't take all the credit, Admiral," Faraday said with another smile. "Your people may have performed more poorly than Admiral Trammell's, but given the underwhelming level of Admiral Trammell's people's performance, I very much doubt that anyone could have performed 'much more poorly' than they did."
"Sir," Captain Marcus Howell said diffidently, and all three of the flag officers looked in his direction. Aside from Yaeger's and Trammell's flag lieutenants—whose massively junior status insulated them from the direct brunt of Admiral Faraday's monumental unhappiness—he was the junior officer in the compartment. He was also, however, Faraday's chief of staff.
"Yes, Marcus? You have something you'd care to add?"
"Well, Sir, I only wanted to observe that this was the first emergency evacuation simulation Weyland 's conducted in the last two T-years. Under the circumstances, it's probably not really all that surprising people were a little . . . rusty."
"'Rusty'," Faraday rolled the word across his tongue, then snorted harshly. "If we use the term in the sense that a hatch sealed shut by atmospheric oxidation is 'rusty,' I suppose it's appropriate." The smile he bestowed upon Howell should have lowered the temperature in his office by at least three degrees, but then he grimaced. "Still, I take your point."
He gave himself a shake, then turned his attention back to Yaeger and Trammell.
"Don't think for a moment that I'm any happier about this than I was ten seconds ago. Still, Marcus does have a point. I'm not a great believer in the theory that extenuating circumstances excuse an officer's failures where his duty is concerned, but I suppose it's a bit early to start keelhauling people, too. So perhaps we should simply begin all over again from a mutual point of agreement that everyone's performance in the simulation was . . . suboptimal."
In fact, Yaeger knew, it had been far, far worse than "suboptimal." If she were going to be honest about it—which she really would have preferred avoiding if at all possible—his initial, delightfully apt choice of noun had much to recommend it as a factual summation.
As Howell had just pointed out, emergency evacuation exercises had not been a priority of Rear Admiral Colombo, Faraday's immediate predecessor. For that matter, they hadn't been a high priority for the station commander before that, either. On the other hand, that CO had been a Janacek appointee, and nothing had been very high on his priority list. By contrast, Colombo possessed enormous energy and drive, which helped explain why Admiral Hemphill had just recalled him to the capital planet as her second-in-command at BuWeaps. But, Yaeger admitted, Colombo had been a tech weenie, like her. She didn't think he'd ever held starship command, and he'd been involved in the R&D side for over thirty T-years. He'd been conscientious about the administrative details of his assignment, but his real interest had been down in the labs or over in the fabrication units where prototype pieces of hardware were produced.
"Sir," she said now, "I'm serious about apologizing for my people's performance. Yes, Captain Howell has a point—it's not something we've exercised at. But the truth is, Sir, that an awful lot of my people suffer from what I can only call tunnel vision. They're really intensely focused on their projects. Sometimes, to be honest, I'm not sure they're even aware the rest of the universe is out there at all." She shook her head. "I know at least one of my division heads—I'd prefer not to say which—heard the evacuation alarm and just turned it off so it wouldn't disturb his train of thought while he and two of his lead researchers were discussing the current problem. I've already, ah, counseled him on that decision, but I'm afraid it was fairly typical. Which is my fault, not theirs."