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“Permission to come aboard to join the ship’s company, Ma’am!” she said, and the sandy-haired ensign gave her a cool, considering look, then acknowledged the salute. She brought her hand down from her beret’s brim and extended it wordlessly, and Honor produced the chip of her orders once more. The BOD performed the same ritual as the Marine sentry, then nodded, popped the chip from her board, and handed it back.
“Permission granted, Ms. Harrington,” she said, much less crisply than Honor but with a certain world-weary maturity. She was, after all, at least a T-year older than Honor, with her own middy cruise safely behind her. The ensign glanced at Shelton, and Honor noticed the way the other young woman’s shoulders came back ever so slightly and the way her voice crisped up as she nodded to the SCPO. “Carry on, Senior Chief,” she said.
“Aye, aye, Ma’am,” Shelton replied, and beckoned respectfully for Honor to follow him once more as he led her towards the lifts.
Lieutenant Commander Abner Layson sat in the chair behind his desk and made an obviously careful study of his newest potential headache’s orders. Midshipwoman Harrington sat very upright in her own chair, hands folded in her lap, feet positioned at precisely the right angle, and watched the bulkhead fifteen centimeters above his head with apparent composure. She’d seemed on the edge of flustered when he’d directed her to sit rather than remain at stand-easy while he perused her paperwork, but there was little sign of that in her present demeanor. Unless, of course, the steady flicking of the very tip of her treecat’s tail indicated more uneasiness in the ’cat’s adopted person than she cared to admit. Interesting that she could conceal the outward signs so readily, though, if that were the case.
He let his eyes return to his reader’s display, sca
A bit young, he thought. Although her third-gen prolong made her look even younger than her calendar age, she was only twenty. The Academy was flexible about admission ages, but most midshipmen entered at around eighteen or nineteen T-years of age; Harrington had been barely seventeen when she was admitted. Which was all the more surprising given what seemed to be a total lack of aristocratic co
He accessed the relevant portion of her record, and something suspiciously like a snort escaped before he could throttle it. He turned it into a reasonably convincing coughing fit, but his mouth quivered as he sca
He sighed and tipped back his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose, and glanced at her under cover of his hand. The treecat worried him. He knew it wasn’t supposed to, for regulations were uncompromising on that particular subject and had been ever since the reign of Queen Adrie
Small jealousies and envies could get out of hand on a long deployment, and she would be the only person on board authorized to take a pet with her. Oh, Layson knew the ’cats weren’t really pets. It wasn’t a subject he’d ever taken much personal interest in, but the creatures’ sentience was well-established, as was the fact that once they empathically bonded to a human, they literally could not be separated without serious consequences for both partners. But they looked like pets, and most of the Star Kingdom’s citizens knew even less about them than Layson did, which offered fertile ground for misunderstandings and resentment. And the fact that the Bureau of Perso
Yet even the presence of the ’cat was secondary to Layson’s true concern. There had to be some reason the Captain had requested Harrington, and try though he might, the exec simply couldn’t figure out what that reason might be. Such requests usually represented tokens in the patronage game the Navy’s senior officers played so assiduously. They were either a way to gain the support of some well-placed potential patron by standing sponsor to a son or daughter or younger relative, or else a way to pay back a similar favor. But Harrington was a yeoman’s daughter, whose only apparent aristocratic association was the highly tenuous one of having roomed with the Earl of Gold Peak’s younger offspring for a bit over two T-years. That was a fairly lofty co
“Everything seems to be in order, Ms. Harrington,” he told her after a moment, lowering his hand and letting his chair come back upright. “Lieutenant Santino is our assistant tac officer, which makes him your OCT officer, as well. I’ll have Senior Chief Shelton deliver you to Snotty Row when we’re done here, and you can report to him once you’ve stowed your gear. In the meantime, however, I make it a policy to spend a few minutes with new middies when they first come aboard. It gives me a chance to get to know them and to get a feel for how they’ll fit in here in War Maiden.”
He paused, and she nodded respectfully.
“Perhaps you can start off then by telling me—briefly, of course—just why you joined the Service,” he invited.
“For several reasons, Sir,” she said after only the briefest of pauses. “My father was a Navy doctor before he retired and went into private practice, so I was a ‘Navy brat’ until I was about eleven. And I’ve always been interested in naval history, clear back to pre-Diaspora Earth. But I suppose the most important reason was the People’s Republic, Sir.”