"It's your fault, Admiral, in the sense that you're ultimately responsible for the actions of all personnel under your command. That doesn't excuse their actions—or inaction. However, judging by the overall level of performance, I'd have to relieve three-quarters of the officers aboard this station if I were going to hammer everyone who'd screwed up. So we're not going to do that."
Faraday paused, letting the silence stretch out, until Trammell took pity on his colleague and broke it.
"We're not, Sir?" he asked.
"No, Admiral," Faraday said. "Instead, we're going to fix the problem. I'm afraid it's probably symptomatic of other problems we're going to find, and—to be fair, Admiral Yeager—I can actually understand why a lot of the R&D people think the rest of us are playing silly games that only get in the way of the people—them—doing serious work. From a lot of perspectives, they've got a point, really, when you come right down to it."
Yaeger was actually a bit surprised to hear Faraday admit that. Claudio Faraday was about as far removed from Rear Admiral Thomas Colombo as it was possible for a human being to be. He had effectively zero background on the research side. In fact, he was what Admiral Hemphill had taken to calling a "shooter," not a researcher, and Yaeger felt positive he would rather have been commanding a battle squadron than babysitting the Navy's "brain trust."
But that, she was beginning to suspect, might actually be the very reason he'd been chosen for his new assignment. It was more than possible Colombo had been recalled to BuWeaps not simply because his talents were needed there, but because certain recent events had convinced someone at the Admiralty house that HMSS Weyland needed the talents of someone like Claudio Faraday equally badly.
"I fully realize I've been aboard for less than one T-week," Faraday continued. "And I realize my credentials on the R&D side are substantially weaker even than Admiral Trammell's. But there's a reason we have an emergency evacuation plan. In fact, there's an even better reason for us to have one than for Hephaestus or Vulcan to have one. The same reason, in a lot of ways, that we back all of our data up down on the planetary surface every twelve hours. There is one tiny difference between our data backups and the evac plan, however." He smiled again, a bit less thinly than before. "It would be just a bit more difficult to reconstitute the researchers than their research if both of them got blown to bits."
The silence was much more intense this time. Four months ago, Yaeger might have been inclined to dismiss Faraday's concerns. But that had been before the Battle of Manticore.
"We all know the new system-defense pods have been deployed to protectWeyland ," the vice admiral went on after a moment. "For that matter, we all know the Peeps got hammered so hard it's not really likely they're going to be poking their noses back into Manticoran space anytime soon. But nobody thought it was very likely they'd do it in the first place, either. So however much it may inconvenience our personnel, I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist we get this little procedural bump smoothed out. I'd appreciate it if you'd make your people aware that I'm not exactly satisfied with their performance in this little simulation. I assure you, I'll be making that point to them myself, as well."
He smiled again. Neither Yaeger nor Trammell would ever have mistaken the expression for a sign of pleasure.
"What you are not going to tell them, however, is that I have something just a little more drastic in mind for them. Simulations are all well and good, and I'm perfectly prepared to use them as training tools. After all, that's what they're intended for. But as I'm sure you're both aware, it's always been the Navy's policy to conduct live-fire exercises, as well as simulations. Which is what we're going to do, too."
Yaeger managed to keep her dismay from showing, although she was fairly certain Faraday knew exactly what she was feeling. Still, she couldn't help a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach as she thought about the gaping holes the chaos of an actual physical evacuation of the station was going to tear in her R&D schedules.
"I fully realize," Faraday continued as if he'd been a Sphinxian treecat reading her mind, "that an actual evacuation will have significant repercussions on the station's operations. Because I am, this isn't something I'm approaching lightly. It's not something I want to do—it's only something we have to do. And because we not only need to test our actual performance but convince some of your 'focused' people this is something to take seriously, not just something designed to interrupt their work schedules, we're not going to tell them it's coming. We'll go ahead and run the additional simulations. I'm sure they'll expect nothing less out of their new, pissed-off, pain-in-the-ass CO, and they'll bitch and moan about it with all the creativity of really smart people. I don't care about that, as long as they keep it to themselves and don't force me to take note of it. But, hopefully, when we hit them with the actual emergency order—when it's not a simple simulation—they'll at least have improved enough for us to get everyone off the station without someone getting killed because he forgot to secure his damned helmet."
* * *
Captain Ansten FitzGerald tipped back in his chair as Commander Amal Nagchaudhuri stepped into the briefing room with an electronic tablet tucked under his arm.
"Have a seat," the captain invited, pointing at a chair across the table from his own, and Nagchaudhuri settled into it with a grateful sigh. FitzGerald smiled and shook his own head.
"Are you anywhere near a point where you can actually sit down for a couple of hours with a beer?" he asked, and Nagchaudhuri chuckled sourly.
It had never occurred to the tall, almost albino-pale commander that he might find himself the executive officer of one of the Royal Manticoran Navy's most powerful heavy cruisers. He was a communications specialist, and posts like that usually went to officers who'd come up through the tactical track, although that tradition had been rather eroded over the past couple of decades by the Navy's insatiable appetite for experienced personnel. On the other hand, very few XOs had inherited their positions under circumstances quite like his, which had quite a bit to do with his current weariness.
"By my calculations, it won't be more than another T-year before I can take a break long enough for that, Sir," he replied. "Ginger was one hell of an engineer, but we're still finding things that managed to get broken somehow." He shrugged. "Most of what we're finding now is little crap, of course. None of it's remotely vital. I imagine that's one reason Ginger hadn't already found it and dealt with it before they transferred her out. But I'm still annotating her survey for the yard dogs. And the fact that BuPers is pilfering so enthusiastically isn't helping one damned bit."
FitzGerald nodded in understanding and sympathy. He'd held Nagchaudhuri's position until Hexapuma 's return from the Talbott Quadrant. He was intimately familiar with the problems the commander was experiencing and discovering, and the XO's frustration came as no surprise—not least because they'd all anticipated getting the ship into the yard dogs' hands so quickly.
FitzGerald's eyes darkened at that thought. Of course they'd expected that! After all, none of them were psychic, so none of them had realized the Battle of Manticore was going to come roaring out of nowhere only five days after their return. Hexapuma 's damages had kept her on the sidelines, a helpless observer, and as incredibly frustrating as that had been at the time, it was probably also the only reason Fitzgerald, Nagchaudhuri, and the cruiser's entire complement were still alive. That cataclysmic encounter had wreaked havoc on a scale no one had ever truly envisioned. It had also twisted the Navy's neat, methodical schedules into pretzels . . . and the horrendous personnel losses had quite a bit to do with how Nagchaudhuri had ended up confirmed as Hexapuma 's executive officer, too.