"I'll have to you before the meeting in the wardroom, sir."
"It was due yesterday."
Paul nodded, even though he felt like snarling back at Garcia. "Yes, sir." An excuse wouldn't do any good. In fact, it'd be certain to just make Garcia madder. Not trying to make excuses was one thing the Naval Academy had taught him that had proven important in the fleet.
Garcia wasn't calmed by Paul's reply. "The XO already asked me where it was this morning."
"Yes, sir."
"Is anything else going to be late, Mr. Sinclair?"
"No, sir."
"It better not be. Get to work. I won't tolerate any excuses for not having every important piece of equipment on this ship ready to go before we get underway next week." Garcia spun on one foot, moving away with his habitually angry stomp.
After Garcia had cleared Combat, Paul glanced over at Taylor. "Akesha, is there any piece of equipment on this ship that isn't important?"
Taylor pretended to consider Paul's question. "Can't think of any. But I'm sure as hell going to talk to the snipes in engineering about making sure that little dingus that heats up the coffee containers in the wardroom is working. As far as I'm concerned, that's the most important thing on this ship. See you kids later."
Denaldo stared after Taylor's retreating back. "God help the supply department if this ship ever runs out of coffee."
Paul shook his head, laughing. "No worry. Commander Sykes wouldn't survive without coffee, either, so no way he's going to let us get underway without enough caffeine to float a cruiser back on Earth."
"Yeah."
"You okay, Kris?"
"I'm pissed off. It's Monday. I'm working for an ass. How are you?"
"The same. And I had the mid-watch last night."
"You win."
Five minutes later Paul stood before the enlisted sailors in his division, Chief Imari taking notes from Paul's words just as he'd earlier taken notes from Garcia's. Not very efficient, I guess. But redundancy beats efficiency when lives depend on it. Might as well get the worst over with first. "Ladies and gentlemen, we'll be getting underway in one week." He paused to let it sink in. "Our orders are to get all necessary maintenance carried out before then."
A chorus of groans erupted. "There goes the whole damn weekend," someone in the back said.
Chief Imari sighed. "Okay, sir."
The voice in the back came again. "It ain't all gonna get done!"
Imari turned slightly. "Fastow, see me after morning quarters." The grumbling from the other sailors faded away. She faced Paul again. "What else, sir?"
Paul cleared his throat, grateful that the Chief had backed him up. "We haven't been told what we'll be doing when we get underway, but that it's something high priority."
"We going to war?" another voice asked, this time in a tone that was hushed instead of angry.
"I don't know." Paul looked at the faces before him. All of them looked back with varying expressions, some worried, some curious, some eager as if they were heading for a softball game. "I've got a meeting at ten hundred. I'll let the chief know if I find out anything I can tell you." He caught a brief flash of disapproval on Imari's face.
A few minutes later Paul wrapped up his instructions for the day. "That's it. Chief, can I see you for a minute?"
"Sure, sir." Imari gave the sailors a hard look. "You all be waiting here when I get back."
Paul led the way out into the passageway. "Chief, I noticed you seemed a little unhappy in there at one point."
Imari screwed up her face. "Yes, sir. Uh, telling the division about that meeting of yours at ten hundred. I wouldn't have done that, Mr. Sinclair. Now the guys are gonna be expecting to hear something this morning. They're gonna be pestering me about it, and they're gonna be thinking and talking about what you might tell them instead of concentrating on their work, and we've got a lot of work to do and not much time to do it in. If you do hear something and can't tell them, they're gonna be even more wound up."
Well, hell. Paul felt himself getting angry at the chief and forced himself to backtrack. And she's right about all of it. Dammit. "Sorry, Chief. That didn't occur to me."
"You don't have to apologize to me, Mr. Sinclair. But you asked and I told you."
"And I appreciate that, Chief."
Chief Imari hesitated. "Sir, you do know all that work ain't gonna get done."
"We need to try, Chief."
"Yes, sir. But it's either do it all half-assed or do a bit more than half of it right."
Paul closed his eyes while he thought. Let's see. If I report to Garcia that maybe half of the planned maintenance hasn't been done, he's going to go into screamer mode on me. I don't want that. But if I say I got it all done and some of the 'fixed' stuff doesn't work when we need it while we're on these high-priority ops, then Garcia, the XO and the captain will all be after my hide. Maybe nothing'd break, though. Then I'd be in the clear and my sailors would have time to fix everything right. Yeah, right. When would I be sure they could do that? And if something doesn't work that I said had been fixed… people remember stuff like that.
Oh, great. I'm thinking of this all in terms of covering my butt. Hey, LTJG Sinclair, you jerk, maybe it oughta be about getting the job done? So what should I… hell, I ought to do what Taylor said she'd do. He opened his eyes. "Chief, put together a priority list for me. What we intend doing in what order given that we know we're getting underway in a week." Do I send a copy of the list to Garcia? He'll be sure to raise hell and rearrange the list just for the sake of asserting authority. But if he signs off on that list, he'll have to admit it to the captain. I think. At least I'll have proof I told Garcia about it all.
Imari nodded. "Okay, sir. I'll have it to you as soon as I can."
"Thanks, Chief." Paul spent the next two hours sweating over the operational events summary. He knew from painful experience that every officer superior to him in the chain of command was certain to remember any event he might neglect to include, but he also was required to only include "significant" events in the summary. No matter what I put in, Garcia or the XO is going to say I didn't put in something significant or did put in something insignificant. Okay. Fine. Paul punched the command to send the report to his department head. If I'm going to lose no matter what, why waste any more time on it? It's as good as I can make it.
Paul glanced at the time. Enough remained before ten hundred for him to get into the wardroom and suck down some coffee to help stay awake through the meeting. Hopefully the subject would be interesting, but even interesting subjects could be sleep inducing when presented in a dull way in small, warm compartments.
"Commander Sykes." Paul greeted the supply officer, who was seated in his usual place, drinking coffee.
"Good morning, young Sinclair. Bright and early this morning, I see."
Paul shook his head. "Just early, Suppo. It's already been a long day."
"Ah." Sykes leaned back a little more and took a slow drink. "The travails of line officers. I feel for you. Truly."
"Yeah." Paul grinned as he got his own coffee. He'd learned from experience that Sykes only pretended to be lazing about the wardroom, and only pretended to revel in his status as a limited duty officer without the command and combat responsibilities of line officers like Paul. At least, I think he's only pretending to revel in it. "Any idea what the meeting's about, Suppo?"
"How would I be aware of the meeting's subject?"
Paul sat down. "Because you know everything important that goes on so you never get caught unable to meet the ship's supply needs."
Sykes looked horrified. "You've discovered my secret. Now, of course, you must die. Sorry about that."
"How are you going to do it? Are you going to serve some more of that Syrian beef stew for dinner?"