She lifted her chin. "And no matter what you, Captain Harrington, or anyone else aboard Fearless ever do with your careers, you will never accomplish anything that could possibly pay that kind of dividend for the Star Kingdom. Understood?"
"Yes, Ma'am," Cardones said.
"Good." Hemphill nodded toward the door. "You're hereby detached from your temporary ONI duty. You will return to duty aboard Fearless when she returns to Manticore in approximately one month; until then, you're on R and R leave. The yeoman will give you a copy of your orders."
"Thank you, Ma'am," Cardones said.
"And remember that everything you heard, saw, or did while with Tech Team Four is classified," Hemphill added. "Dismissed."
Cardones saluted, and with a crisp about-face he strode from the office.
With a grimace, Hemphill lowered her eyes to the report again. Yes, the kid had disobeyed orders, and she had needed to come down hard on him to make sure he didn't get casual about such things.
But in all honesty, it was hard to fault him for his actions. Even Sandler's own report had conceded it would have taken a miracle for Manticore to have kept up the deception long enough for Haven to commit any serious resources to the Crippler project. Balanced against that was the fact that the team had solved the problem, ended that particular threat to Manticoran shipping, and given the Peeps a sore nose along with it.
And even in the grand scheme of things, saving Her Majesty's Navy a heavy cruiser and its crew was nothing to be sneered at.
Especially when that ship had been instrumental in delivering a captured Andermani light cruiser back to its rightful owners, eliminating a potential source of tension before it really got started.
The Andies placated, and the Peeps humiliated. Two birds taken out with a single stone; and Hemphill was certainly realistic enough to appreciate the economy of such things.
And maybe there was a third bird waiting to be winged by this particular stone. That trick Harrington had used, flickering her impellers to signal the Neue Bayern lurking out beyond the hyper limit, had some definite possibilities. Not as a standard interception tactic per se; the Andies had had to do some very precise maneuvering in order to circle through hyper-space and plant themselves squarely in the escaping raider's path that way. Most Manticoran astrogators weren't competent enough to pull off a trick like that, at least not on a regular basis.
But the maneuver itself was almost beside the point. The point was that Harrington had found a way to use gravitational waves to send a signal to the Andies.
And since gravity pulses effectively moved faster than light and were detectable from much farther away...
Especially if they could combine this idea with the new high-yield fusion bottles and superconductors being designed for the next-generation electronic warfare drones, and maybe throw in something from the compact LAC beta nodes already undergoing testing over at BuWeaps...
A third bird, indeed. Maybe.
Pulling Sandler's report from her memo pad, she slipped in Harrington's and began to carefully reread it.
Bracing himself, feeling a little like the new kid in school, Cardones stepped onto Fearless's bridge.
It looked just the same as when he'd left. Looked, felt, and smelled; and for a moment he just stood inside the hatch, taking it all in. It seemed like forever since he'd left this place. Since he'd left these people.
"There you are," a familiar voice said. "Welcome back, Rafe."
He turned, the new-kid feeling fading away like a light morning mist. Captain Harrington was standing with Andy Venizelos by the com station, consulting together over a memo pad. "Thank you, Ma'am," Cardones said. "How was the tour?"
"Interesting," the captain said. Her voice was casual, but Cardones thought he saw a flicker of something in the exec's face. "Yours?"
"About the same," Cardones said, matching her tone. "Permission to resume my station?"
"Permission granted," she said, and smiled. "Enough lazing around, Mr. Cardones. Get back to work."
"Yes, Ma'am," Cardones said, smiling back. Taking another deep breath, he crossed to his station.
It was good to be home.
A SHIP NAMED FRANCIS
by John Ringo & Victor Mitchell
CHAPTER ONE
SIBERIA IS A CONCEPT
Sean Tyler tapped on the open door to the sickbay and entered at a grunt from within.
Tyler was just pushing twenty-three T-years and was on the beginning of his second hitch with the Manticoran Navy. He was dark complected and stood a bit under normal height for a Manticoran, both of which would help him blend with his new Grayson crewmates. On the other hand, he seemed nearly as broad as he was tall, a situation of being "big boned" rather than massive. He had been assigned to the superdreadnought Victory until his sudden, unexpected and late in the "day" departure for his new assignment.
A chief warrant officer in his thirties, short and dark as most Graysons were, with a lean, gray face, was sitting at a desk staring at a pad as if the message on it might leap out of the screen and bite.
"Sick Berth Attendant Third Class Sean Tyler reporting for duty!" Sean said, snapping to attention and throwing a parade ground salute. He was mildly surprised to find the warrant still on duty; it was nearly 2400 hours, ship time.
The warrant tossed the pad on his desk and made a gesture towards his forehead that might graciously have been considered a salute and waved at a chair.
"Welcome, my friend, welcome to the Francis Mueller," the officer replied. "Grab a seat. I'll be with you in a minute."
Sean sat down and looked around at what was his new home, for however long he was going to be stuck here. His first impression was that the sickbay was small, less than a quarter of the size of the main sickbay on the Victory-class superdreadnought that had been his first assignment. It was even smaller than the three secondary sickbays scattered throughout that massive ship. On the other hand, the complement of the heavy cruiser Francis Mueller was less than a tenth the complement on the SD.
Not only was the Francis smaller than the SD, it was far older; indeed the class was among the oldest designs in the Alliance fleet. Although it was already obsolete, the ship had been sent to Grayson early in the current war against the Peeps. At the time it was one of the most powerful ships in that planet's fleet. Now, though, between the large number of converted Peep SDs, captured at First and Second Yeltsin, and the new Grayson SDs and cruisers that were starting to flow out of the yards, it was again in the position of being an outmoded and under-armed relic.
Furthermore, it looked it. No matter how many times a ship was sent into the yards for overhaul, no matter how thoroughly that overhaul was done, the ship always showed its age. It was apparent in the little patches of mold that crept out from bulkhead corners, in the worn spots on corners, even in the design of bunks, tables and other fittings, which had changed subtly over the years of war.
So there was a reason Tyler had a sour expression when the warrant finally tossed the pad on his desk.
"You don't look happy, SBA," the warrant said, pulling open a bottom drawer on his desk and extracting a half-filled, flaccid bladder of unidentified liquid. He squirted a generous measure into a mug of tea on the desk then waved it at Tyler. "Medicinal belt?"