She paused, her eyes circling the table once more, and silence stretched out in the briefing room. She let it linger for several seconds, then smiled again, suddenly.
"And now that I've hopefully scared you all to death," she said in a much more cheerful tone, "I suppose I should also point out that it won't all be doom and gloom. You may find yourself feeling utterly exhausted from time to time, and you may even feel your superiors are taking a certain unholy glee in contributing to your exhaustion. You may even be right about that. But that doesn't mean you won't find the odd opportunity to enjoy yourselves. And while we expect a professional demeanor and deportment, you won't be on duty all the time. I expect you'll even discover that those same superior officers may be surprisingly approachable if you find yourself in need of advice. Remember, People, you're here to learn, as much as to be tested, and while it's part of our job to identify any potential weak links, it's also our job to help temper and polish the strong ones.
"And now," she pressed a button on the arm of her chair, and the briefing room hatch slid silently open. A brown-haired senior chief petty officer stepped through it. He was of little more than medium height, with a slender build, but impressively muscular, and his uniform was perfectly turned out as he came to attention.
"This, Ladies and Gentlemen," Commander Lewis informed them, "is Senior Chief Petty Officer Wanderman. Senior Chief Wanderman is going to take you on a little tour. Before you set out, however, I believe you might find it advisable to return to your quarters long enough to change out of those nice uniforms into something you can get a little grease on. The Senior Chief believes in, ah, a hands-on approach. Don't you, Senior Chief?"
She smiled at the tough-looking, impassive petty officer, and there might have been the tiniest flicker of shared amusement in his brown eyes, though one would have had to look very close to find it.
"As the Commander says, Ma'am," he said. Then he looked at the midshipmen. "It's now thirteen-twenty-five hours, Sirs and Ma'ams," he told them. "If it would be convenient for you, I thought we might begin the tour at thirteen-forty-five."
It was really quite remarkable, Helen reflected. Until that moment, she hadn't realized a noncommissioned officer's polite "request" could also be a direct decree from God.
Chapter Four
Commander Ansten FitzGerald stepped through the briefing room hatch with his memo board tucked under his arm.
"Sorry I'm late, Sir," he said to the tall, blond man in the white beret sitting at the head of the briefing room table. "I had to... straighten out Commander Bennington."
"Ah. The yard dogs are still arguing about the Engineering spares?" Captain Aivars Aleksovitch Terekhov leaned back in his chair, arctic blue eyes faintly amused.
"Yes, Sir." FitzGerald shrugged. "According to Bennington, we're twenty percent over establishment in almost every category."
"Shocking," Terekhov murmured. He quirked an eyebrow at his Chief Engineer. "Do you have any idea how this sad state of affairs could have come about, Commander Lewis?"
"Why, no, Sir," Ginger Lewis said. She shook her head, guileless green eyes wide.
"Lieutenant Duncan?" Terekhov looked at the short, attractive officer at the foot of the table. Lieutenant Andrea Duncan was the most junior officer present, and she looked more than a bit uneasy. Although she was Hexapuma's logistics officer, she wasn't a natural scrounger. She took her responsibilities seriously, but unlike Lewis, she appeared to be... uncomfortable whenever it came to going outside officially approved channels. And the fact that Terekhov had been aboard as Hexapuma's CO for less than three weeks didn't exactly make her feel any more at ease with him.
It didn't make FitzGerald feel a lot more at ease, for that matter. Not that a good executive officer was about to let that show.
"Uh, no, Sir," Duncan said after a moment, glancing at Lewis' serene expression. "None at all."
"I thought not," Terekhov said, and pointed at FitzGerald's waiting chair. The executive officer settled into it, and the bearded captain let his own chair come back forward. "And how did your conversation with Commander Bennington go, XO? Is the Station Patrol likely to turn up to place us under arrest?"
"No, Sir," FitzGerald replied. "I pointed out that whatever the exact numbers of spares we might have on board, all of our materials requests had been properly submitted and approved. I informed him that if he wishes to submit the required paperwork to have our original requests disallowed, all of our onboard spares off-loaded, new requests drawn up, considered, and approved, and the new spares loaded, that's certainly his privilege. I also pointed out that I estimated it would take him a minimum of three weeks, and that we're under orders to depart Hephaestus in less than two."
The executive officer shrugged, and one or two of the officers seated around the table chuckled. Given the current situation at the front, no yard dog was going to risk Their Lordships' displeasure by delaying the departure of one of Her Majesty's starships.
"I take it the Commander didn't indicate he intended to accept your generous invitation."
"No, Sir." FitzGerald smiled slightly. "As a matter of fact, Sir, Bennington isn't all that bad a sort. Oh, he's a bean-counter, but I think that when it comes right down to it, he'd prefer for us to have the spares we may need in an emergency, whether we're excess to establishment or not. He just thinks we were a little too successful in our midnight requisitions. All I really needed was to give him an excuse he can use if any of his superiors fault him for what we got away with."
"I can live with that, as long as we don't really end up with our departure delayed," Terekhov said, then moved his right hand in a little throwing away gesture. FitzGerald hadn't known Terekhov long, but he'd already learned to recognize the mannerism. That hand-flick was the captain's way of shifting from one mental focus to another, and the XO wondered if he'd always had it, or if it was one he'd developed since the hand was regenerated.
"How does our schedule look from your end, Commander Lewis?" Terekhov asked. "Is the yard going to be done with us on time?"
"It'll be close, Sir," Lewis replied, meeting his eyes squarely. "To be honest, I don't think the yard dogs have time to get everything done, so I've had them concentrating on Beta Thirty. That much, they should have done with at least a couple of days to spare. Most of the rest of our problems are relatively minor, actually. My people can take care of them underway out of our onboard resources. That was one reason I, ah, acquired so many spares." She shrugged. "Bottom line, Sir, this is a new ship. We passed our trials, and aside from that one beta node, everything on our list is really nothing more than squeaky hinges and parts that need wearing in."
Terekhov gazed at her for a moment, and she looked back steadily. More than one engineer would have sounded far less confident than Lewis. They would have insisted it was Hephaestus' job to repair every problem their own departments' surveys had identified instead of cheerfully accepting responsibility for them themselves. Especially given the way their commanding officers were liable to react if it turned out they couldn't deal with them themselves, after all.
FitzGerald waited to see how Terekhov would respond. Captain Sarcula had been assigned to command Hexapuma while she was still only a gleam in BuShips' eye. He'd supervised her construction from the keel plate out, and begun the assembly of a handpicked command team, starting with one Ansten FitzGerald and Commander Lewis. But Sarcula's assignment had been overtaken by events. His orders to assume command of the battlecruiser Braveheart, following her skipper's death in action, had been totally unexpected, and Terekhov's abrupt assignment to Hexapuma , for all intents and purposes straight out of Bassingford Medical Center, must have come as just as much of a surprise to him as Sarcula's sudden transfer had come to FitzGerald.
That sudden reshuffling of command assignments had, unfortunately, become less uncommon than it ought to have been. BuShips and BuPers were still fighting to regain their balance after the shocking losses inflicted by the Havenites' opening offensives. But even so, it couldn't have been easy for Terekhov. He'd missed Hexapuma's builders' and acceptance trials and inherited another man's command team, composed of officers he'd never even met before. They didn't know him, and he hadn't been given very long to form an opinion of their competence, either. Which meant he had precious little upon which to base any evaluation of Ginger Lewis' judgment.
If that worried him at the moment, however, it didn't show.