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"You're welcome, Ma'am." The sentry came briefly back to attention, and Abigail nodded to him and launched herself into the tube's zero-gee.
After the hustle and bustle of Hephaestus' crowded galleries, Gauntlet's boat bay seemed almost quiet. Not quite, of course. There was always something going on in every boat bay aboard every warship in space, and Gauntlet's was no exception. Abigail could see at least two work parties engaged on routine maintenance tasks, and a Marine sergeant's voice sounded with less than dulcet patience as she put a squad through the formal evolutions of an honor guard. Still, there was something soothing about the sudden drop in energy levels and the press of bodies as Abigail landed neatly just outside the painted deck line which indicated where Gauntlet officially began and Hephaestus officially ended. She'd always wondered why the RMN bothered with that line. The Grayson Navy didn't. In the GSN, the shipboard end of a boarding tube belonged to the ship, and the outboard end of the tube belonged to the space station, which had always struck her as a far more sensible arrangement. But the Star Kingdom's navy had its own traditions, and this was one of them.
A junior-grade lieutenant with the identifying brassard of the boat bay officer of the deck looked at her, and Abigail saluted sharply.
"Permission to come aboard to join the ship's company, Sir!"
The lieutenant returned her salute, then held out a hand, and Abigail surrendered her orders again. The lieutenant spent a few more seconds glancing through them than Private Roth had. Then he popped the chip back out of his board and returned it.
"Permission granted, Ms. Hearns," he told her, and Abigail felt an odd little flutter deep inside as she officially became a part of Gauntlet's crew.
"Thank you, Sir," she said as she slipped the chip back into its folio and put both of them back into her tunic pocket. "The tube sentry informed me that I'm supposed to report to the Executive Officer, Sir," she continued respectfully.
"Yes, you are," the BBOD agreed. He keyed his com and spoke into it. "Chief Posner, our final snotty—" he smiled slightly at Abigail as he used the traditional slang for a midshipman "—has just come aboard. I understand that you've been awaiting her with bated breath?" He listened to something only he could hear over his unobtrusive ear bug and chuckled. "Well, I thought that was what you said. At any rate, she's here. I think you'd better come collect her." He listened again, then nodded. "Good," he said, and returned his full attention to Abigail.
"Chief Posner is Lieutenant Commander Abbott's senior noncom, Ms. Hearns," he informed her. "And since Commander Abbott is assistant tac officer, which makes him our OCTO, that means the chief is more or less in charge of our snotties. He'll see to it that you get where you need to be."
"Thank you, Sir," she repeated, and her spirits rose. She'd been even more braced against disaster than she'd realized in the wake of High Admiral Matthews' warnings, but so far things seemed to be going well.
"Wait over there by Lift Three," the lieutenant told her, and flipped a casual wave at the indicated lift shaft. "Chief Posner will be here to collect you shortly."
"Yes, Sir," Abigail said obediently and towed her locker across to the lifts.
"Welcome aboard, Ms. Hearns."
Commander Linda Watson was a short, solidly built woman with dark hair but startlingly light-colored blue eyes. Abigail guessed that the commander had to be in her late forties or early fifties, although it was sometimes hard for Abigail to estimate the ages of prolong recipients. Graysons hadn't had much practice at that yet.
Watson had a brisk, no-nonsense ma
"Thank you, Commander," she replied. She seemed to be thanking a lot of people today, she reflected.
"Don't let it go to your head," Watson advised her dryly. "We always welcome every snotty aboard. That's never stopped us from ru
She paused, but Abigail didn't know her well enough to risk responding to her possible humor.
"All snotties are equal in the eyes of God, Ms. Hearns," Watson went on after a moment. "The reason I invited you to drop by my office before you report to Snotty Row, however, is that not all snotties really are equal, however hard we try to make them that way. And, to be perfectly honest, you present some special problems. Of course," she smiled a bit wryly, "I suppose every middy presents some special problem in his or her own way."
She folded her arms and leaned a hip back against her desk, cocking her head to one side as she contemplated Abigail.
"To be perfectly honest, I was strongly tempted to just toss you into the deep end. That's always been my rule of thumb in the past, but I've never had a foreign princess as a midshipwoman before."
She paused again, this time obviously inviting a response, and Abigail cleared her throat.
"I'm not precisely a 'foreign princess,' Ma'am," she said.
"Oh, yes, you are, Ms. Hearns," Watson disagreed. "I checked the official position of both the Foreign Office and the Navy. Your father is a head of state in his own right, despite his subordination to the Protector's overriding authority. That makes him a king, or at least a prince, and that makes you a princess."
"I suppose, technically, it does," Abigail admitted. "But that's on Grayson, Ma'am. Not in the Star Kingdom."
"That's a refreshing attitude." Watson's tone added the unspoken rider "if that's the way you really feel about it," but she continued briskly. "Unfortunately, not everyone is going to share it. So I thought I'd just take this opportunity to make certain that you didn't, in fact, expect any special treatment because of your birth. And to point out to you that you may find yourself laboring under some additional burdens if other members of the ship's company decide that getting on your good side could be a . . . career enhancing maneuver."
The exec was carefully not, Abigail noticed, suggesting that those "other members" might be found among her fellow middies. Nor, she realized a moment later, had Watson suggested that some of Gauntlet's more senior officers might share the same attitude, and she wondered if that was because the commander thought that some of them would.
"As long as you don't expect special treatment, and as long as we don't have anyone else trying to extend it to you anyway," Watson continued, "then I don't expect us to have any problems. Which would be a very good thing, Ms. Hearns. I realize you're actually in the Grayson Navy, not the Queen's Navy, but that makes your midshipwoman's cruise no less important to your career. I trust you fully understand that, as well?"
"Yes, Ma'am. I do."
"Good!" Watson smiled briefly, then unfolded her arms and straightened. "In that case, Chief Posner will see to it that you and your gear get safely stowed away in Snotty Row and you can report to Commander Abbott."
" . . . so we told the Chief that no one had told us Engineering was off-limits." Karl Aitschuler gri