“Seven,” Warnocki interjected.
“Seven seamen, and eleven Thirds, including me; I counted. Maybe twenty-five or thirty Seconds…”
“Twenty-eight, to be exact.”
“Right. Twenty-eight Seconds, two of them medics. Three Chiefs, two Senior Chiefs, and a Master Chief.” Todd shrugged. “That’s forty-one; the other hundred and fifty-nine are all First Class of one rate or another.”
“Yeah.” Warnocki made a face. “You think you’re having trouble? Try bossing that crew. Everybody agrees the place needs cleaning, but they’re down to comparing dates of rank to see who gets to pilot a swab and who gets to watch.”
Peters snorted. “I can imagine.”
“Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. It isn’t your problem. You know what your problem is?”
“Yeah,” said Peters with a growl. “If all them First Class is tryin’ to sort out the peckin’ order to figger out who’s boss, they can’t afford to give an inch to a piddly Second.”
“Almost right,” the chief agreed. “There’s a few who seem to be adjusting all right.” He snorted. “Of course, they’re the ones with the most hash marks and the most horsepower. Like Mannix.”
“Yeah. I owe Mannix a beer,” said Peters. “Maybe a lot of beers. I don’t think I’d've got through the mornin’ if he hadn’t put a oar in.”
“I think you’re right,” the chief smiled. “There’s ways of handling that sort of situation, you know.”
“Don’t none of ‘em involve punchin’ out assholes, I bet,” said Peters with another snort.
“Heh. No, most of them don’t.” Warnocki chuckled. “You have to keep that in reserve, sort of put away for a rainy day.”
“Pah.” Peters chuckled in spite of himself, then smiled wanly. “I reckon that means I done shot my wad, don’t it?”
“Well, no, not quite, but it’d be good if you could avoid repetitions. It took me and the Master Chief nearly two hours to figure out how to log that little incident so as to not excite the folks back home unduly.” Warnocki paused, looked at Peters. “At least you picked the right man to punch out. Tollison still hasn’t admitted to either me or Chief Joshua that you actually hit him, and he’s been, ah, real forceful with some of the others. Between him and Mannix, I don’t think you’ll have much trouble for the next couple of days.”
“That’s good, I reckon.”
“Damn right.” Chief Warnocki laid his hands on the table, looked from one sailor to the other. “Like I said, there’s ways to handle that sort of situation, but we don’t have time to teach them to you two. Tell me, do the people on this ship have any kind of rank insignia? I haven’t seen anything I’d call a crow or officer’s bars.”
“Not the ones we’re dealin’ with most of the time,” Peters told him. “They ain’t got much in the way of rank structure, or any other structure for that matter.”
“They’re set up kind of like merchant seamen,” Todd explained. “You know, seaman and AB? That’s about it, until you get to the real crew.”
“Real crew?” Warnocki was suddenly attentive. “What do you mean? Aren’t the people we’ve been seeing the crew?”
“They are and they ain’t,” said Peters. “They all live and work on the ship, so far’s that’s concerned they’re crew. But there’s some of ‘em, the ones that tend the engines and stand watch on the bridge, they’re the ones Todd means when he says the ‘real crew.’”
“I see,” said Warnocki in a tone of revelation. He focussed on Todd: “Blue and white on their suits? Like that woman you had going around with you posting OFF LIMITS signs?”
“That’s right, Chief,” said Todd warily.
“I’m going to want to hear why those areas are off limits, but this isn’t the time.” Warnocki frowned. “Could you two wear blue and white suits? Would anybody object?”
“Probably,” said Peters. “Look, the situation ain’t exactly what it seems. We all, all of us human bein’s, we work for what Dreelig called the Alien Relations division when he was chewin’ out Chief Joshua…”
“He told me about it.” Warnocki grinned. “I’d've liked to’ve been a fly on the wall for that.”
Peters snorted. “You coulda had my place, I was wishin’ I was at Diego Garcia. Anyways, I reckon a better translation’d be ‘Sales and Marketin’ Department’. They’re all what we’d call civilians, and the blue-and-whites don’t think much of ‘em. If we tried to wear their uniform, I’d expect to get in all kinds of trouble.”
“I see. So we’re all salesmen?”
“Pretty much, except it’s more like Amway than runnin’ a store,” said Peters. “Showin’ off the product to the prospects.”
“Interesting. I don’t think I’m going to tell Leon about that just yet.” Warnocki leaned forward, his face becoming serious. “All right, here’s what we’re gonna do. First thing tomorrow, you shag ass down to the suit place and get your crows wiped off, you understand? You think of something else, not Navy blue, you hear me?”
“Aye, Chief,” said Peters. Todd nodded.
Chief Warnocki nodded back. “OK, when that’s done, you come see me. I’ll get you started back on suit teaching. If anybody asks what’s going on, you tell ‘em I said you’re Spaceman Chief, and anybody wants to argue can come see me about it.”
“Aye, Chief,” they chorused, and Peters added, “Thanks, Chief. I been wonderin’ if somethin’ like that’d work, but I didn’t have the horsepower to implement it, even if it would.”
Warnocki nodded. “Yeah. Well, now you got all the horsepower you need. You just have to learn how to drive.” He snorted. “And try not to have any more men overboard, hey? It took me an hour, this afternoon, to talk Nolan into not hopping the next boat back to Puget Sound, and he’s the closest thing to an IC we’ve got, been running the entertainment system on a can.”
“That brings up another question,” said Todd. “Have you issued earbugs yet, Chief? It’d be a lot easier to teach people the suits if we could talk to one another.”
“No.” Warnocki looked at him sharply. “That’s right, I forgot. The suits don’t have radios.”
“Nope. That’s one of the things the Grallt think they can sell,” Todd told him.
“Shit. All right, I’ll get with Chief Gross and see what we can do. And I’ve got to tell the Master Chief about all this.” It was clearly not an explanation he was looking forward to. “You boys go get some sleep. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”
“They’re all long days, Chief.” Peters looked at Todd, then back at Warnocki. “Chief, you got anythin’ pressin’ for the next hour or so?”
“Ten thousand things,” said the Chief. “What did you have in mind?”
“We have a bennie we can pass out,” Todd said with a smile. “If you’ll get your kathir suit on, and come with us, you can be the first recipient.”
“Yeah,” said Peters with a smile of his own. “That’s assumin’ you like to have a beer now and again, that is.”
“Son, if you can buy me a beer, I’ll let you say you’re Spaceman Senior Chief.”
“Then suit up,” Peters told him. “We’re buckin’ for promotion. First round’s on me.” He grinned. “But keep it quiet. We want to be able to surprise people with it.”
“Good idea.” Warnocki produced a grin of his own. “Just don’t put off letting the Master Chief in on it too long,” he suggested. “He might not take it too kindly.”
“So who do we ask?” Todd wanted to know over breakfast the next “morning.”
“I got a idea,” Peters told him. “I seen the bridge yesterday, and I talked to the XO. I reckon if they can’t give us an answer, they can point us towards the folks who can.”