The ATO’s frown deepened, and Claire dropped the smile. Ever since his wives had made public their unhappiness at sharing a junior lieutenant’s pay and objections to spreading the income with a third wife, his curt interactions with the single midshipwoman in the bevy of middies nominally under his training guidance had grown decidedly strained.

  At the last wardroom officers-and-wives function, Claire had tried to make clear that she was only in the service to learn some skills to transfer to a job on Blackbird Yard just as soon as her obligation was met. A few comments from the XO’s wives about Claire’s looks not being good enough to attract an officer anyway might have helped, even if they had set her teeth on edge. If the ATO had had a touch less to drink he might not have responded that all women look the same in the dark or his whisper might have been pitched lower so the fully drunk Midshipman Harris could not have repeated it at full volume. The invitation to the next function had specified officers and wives, ensigns and above only. Exclusion was almost a relief.

  For Claire’s part, working surrounded by the men was almost restful compared to growing up on Burdette Steading with Grayson’s toxic birthrate of three girls to every live boy. Dr. Allison Harrington, the famous Admiral Alexander-Harrington’s lady mother, had found a cure, but that would be the salvation of the next generation. Nothing could bring Claire’s many stillborn brothers back to life.

  Grayson men might still expect Claire to be continually hunting for a husband, but they weren’t constantly measuring and evaluating the way women did. Well, they were, Claire amended to herself, but that was different. A midshipman, midshipwoman, whatever, was supposed to be forever polishing up military knowledge and skills, after all.

  Lucy and Mary, dancing at Birdies, were very nearly cut off from the family, yet they meticulously braided their hair and made up their faces before leaving the club in street clothes on their days off. Strangers on the street would chastise any woman who didn’t care for her appearance. At least a woman had the one time Claire had gone without makeup.

  She automatically shifted back against the bulkhead and tucked her chin down, coming to attention as the door to the XO’s office opened. The laughing crinkles normally lingering at the corners of the XO’s eyes were displaced today by a flat twitch on just the left side; both full officers straightened in response.

  She tried a bright smile. It felt like showing her teeth. She licked her lips ready to attempt an opening bit of chitchat but clamped her mouth shut at an eye bulge and miniscule headshake from AuxO.

  “What’s that, Middy?” The XO said, pointing at her bundle.

  She stumbled through a tortured explanation of the Burdette ladies sending uniforms from time to time. With the new uniform regulations for officers they had wanted to send her skirt sets, but, she admitted, they had ensign insignia.

  The XO cut her off with a curt gesture. The ATO sucked in air, ready to lay into her, but his eyes flittered back and forth between Claire and the XO waiting for his cue.

  The XO pointed at his private bathroom and said, “Go put them on.”

  The ATO deflated with a stunned series of blinks.

  Claire returned with the two remaining new skirt sets folded inside a bundled midshipwoman uniform.

  The lieutenants were hunched at the XO’s desk signing forms with matching expressions of unhappiness while the XO paced.

  A pair of bags sat just inside the cabin next to the entry hatch. The scuff of grease on the one side looked much like Claire’s own bags. Her stomach dropped. The Ephraim was supposed to be leaving the yards tomorrow. Since a cabin hadn’t been assigned to her yet, she’d brought her bags from the room on the station and put them in an empty locker in auxiliary repair bay three, and those, definitely her bags, had been brought to the XO office.

  The two officers finished their work. The XO applied a stamp form of the CO’s signature. Claire swallowed hard; something was very wrong here. The commanding officer, Captain Ayres, was just on leave, not incapacitated. The XO jabbed the send button and whatever it was transmitted without a chance of being called back for formal review by the CO.

  Turning to Claire, the XO held out his hand. “Congratulations on your promotion, Ensign.”

  That just sent transmission had to be Claire’s unearned promotion package on its way to the Office of Personnel. The ATO glared at the wall, but the AuxO gave her a tentative smile. She managed some kind of thank you that probably wasn’t quite the right military response, quivering internally. The last time someone on the ship had been promoted to ensign there had been a formal ceremony and reception in the wardroom, and Captain Ayres had given a little speech about how hard the man had worked to earn the ensign pips.

  The XO coughed and said, “You’ll be reporting to the Manasseh tomorrow.”

  He added something very quickly about the CO’s concerns about having a female officer onboard while in space. Captain Ayres had requested Claire be transferred to Blackbird Yard permanently, the XO explained. Since all such transfers required the officer be at least an ensign, the request was in now. The XO was sure it would be approved before that ship departed again, even with Commander Greentree over on the Manasseh not knowing how to relax and enjoy placing a ship in the yards from time to time.

  An expression of pure envy passed over the ATO’s face, and even the AuxO appeared faintly wistful. For a moment she wondered if they were jealous of her.

  * * *

  Ensign Claire Bedlam Lecroix left her first ship without ceremony.

  She stood alone with her bags on the Arrival’s Concourse aboard Blackbird Alpha, the central control and personnel platform of the widely dispersed Blackbird Yard. Off to her left, the regular shuttle to Blackbird Bravo filled with a cheerful mix of commercial and Navy spacers on their way to the mass of eateries and entertainment venues in the B sections. Lucy and Mary shared a large enough place above Birdies in Section B3 to give Claire a bed, but she could be drummed out of the service if anyone saw and assumed the wrong thing.

  Going back to the bachelor quarters probably wouldn’t work since she’d checked out that morning and by now the payment would have bounced. The desk clerks didn’t like the work of debiting future paychecks and could both refuse her a room and recommend the officer in charge consider placing a letter of instruction in her file for the failed payment. It was best to remain a number in their database to keep the clerks from thinking about her long enough to get angry. She lugged her bags down the corridor to the docking bay receiving shuttles from Manasseh and several others, praying that the ship would have an empty stateroom.

  Claire waited for the shuttle and pressed moist hands against the heavy fabric of her skirts with nervous sweat trickling down her back. The industrially-cut and tape-hemmed ends of the billowing split skirts tucked into her uniform boots kept sticking and ripping at her ankles whenever she fidgeted. She admonished herself silently to stop dancing about like a waitress eager for tips and project presence like a Harrington.

  She’d been an awful waitress for Aunt Jezzy’s restaurant. This officer thing wasn’t working out so well, either, but the pay was so much better. Claire repeated the mantra in her mind. Just one tour in the Navy. Do the payback for the cost of Saganami. Get out, and find some job in the space industries where they hired women. Today, all she had to do was find someplace to stay that wasn’t a room over Birdies.

  A reflection in the chrome bulkhead froze Claire’s expression in a bug-eyed grimace. It wasn’t. But yes, those were the pips of a full Captain, and that was Captain Matheson Ayres, Commanding Officer of the GNS Ephraim, standing beside and a bit behind her with his lips tilted in a bemused smile. Not for the first time, she wondered how he could be a full captain and only be commanding a destroyer.

  Claire forced every muscle on her face into blank stillness as her mind twitched wildly. “Did I forget something aboard the Ephraim, Sir?” Inwardly, she winced. She hadn’t been allowed to have anything on the Ephraim. If Captain Ayres realized she’d kept a locker in the chiefs’ mess for lunches and spare uniform bits, it could cause the chiefs no end of grief.

  Captain Ayres just laughed off the suggestion. He wasn’t one for detailed considerations and analysis of things. Why should he be? His life must be rather straightforward. It was just the graspers like Claire who would continually try to upset the natural order. It must be something of a continual shock to him that she even kept bothering, but he was here now and this was another opportunity . . . She hit him with her best disarm-unruly-customers smile.

  She tried to squelch the doubt that added a tremble to the corners of her smile. The inner voice whispered that ineptness with customers rather than skill with machinery was why Aunt Jezzy had kept the teenage Claire occupied with broken-down dishwashers instead of demanding customers.

  She gamely fixed the corners of her lips and widened her eyes, trying to convince herself of the hope in her own words, “You must have changed your mind then, Sir. I won’t be any trouble at all. I was checking the piping diagrams around medical, since AuxO told me about the cost of the women’s berthing and lavatory ship alt—”

  The captain’s face was wrinkling up like he’d just smelled something awful. Claire stumbled a bit, but she pushed on with her pitch, “You know, Sir, and how it wouldn’t be appropriate to have a junior officer use the visiting flag officer’s lavatory.”

  This wasn’t working, she realized midstream, but she couldn’t just let it die.

  Her treacherous mind insisted on replaying past errors even as she blustered on to describe how the ship could be modified in little ways to create a small, private space for one junior female officer to sleep.

  Mistakes in customs and protocol with the Ephraim’s officers and their wives intermeshed with the memories of Aunt Jezzy keeping her firmly in the back of any restaurant, street cart, or stall, fixing the machinery and managing inventory. Only on rare occasions, like the complete absence of all servers on a shift or an overflowing customer glut, was Claire sent out to interact with customers and attempt to take orders, fill glasses, or bus tables. But never mind the past failures, she had to make the attempt to convince Captain Ayres to take her back—to meet the Test and all that—she had to try in spite of the extra human-imposed traps added to what the divine Tester assigned every man and woman.

  Claire concluded finally with, “So, anyway, Sir, I’ve got the diagrams in my old files in Aux Three, and I figured out a way to make a lav in the supply closet behind medical and fit in a bedrack and locker. And it won’t cost many austins at all. In fact, the savings from using that other distributor for our galley supplies that I showed you a couple of months ago would more than cover it.” Claire renewed her flagging smile. Finish strong. That was important; Aunt Jezzy said so. “So, shall I take my things back onboard Ephraim? I wouldn’t want to delay undocking.”

  Captain Ayres just rolled his eyes.

  Looking over Claire’s head, he said. “Hey Phin, I just wanted to come out here and apologize to you personally.”

  She looked quickly over her shoulder and felt heat pour from her face. A normal-looking master chief with somewhat scraggly hair and a slightly crooked nose stood a few steps away, but Captain Ayres hadn’t been addressing him. Ephraim’s CO was talking to the commander—tall and well enough muscled for a recruiting poster—wearing the maroon and gold uniform of the Protector’s Own. He held a bag with the GNS Manasseh ship’s crest embroidered on it, three gold rings encircled his sleeves, giving lie to the fresh face and silky gloss of close-trimmed black hair, and the name plate on his chest read: “Greentree, Phineas.”

  Claire gulped. The simply gorgeous officer in the Mayhew colors of Protector Benjamin IX had to be Manasseh’s CO.

  Captain Ayres accepted Greentree’s salute.

  “I hope you’ll extend my apology to Elsabeta and Annette Marie. I know my Jennie was horrified when Personnel sent a—” At this, Ayres waved at Claire but mercifully left out whatever epithet he meant to affix to her. “I told the Station Commander here on Blackbird to keep her chaperoned and away from my boys. Willard did it for a while, but I hear that some of those foreign-headed men in the Protector’s Own got to him. No offense, Phin, I know you aren’t like those foreigners. They just happen to be wearing your uniform.”

  The master chief stilled in not quite parade rest and held the fixed gaze of a long-time military man who clearly intended to ignore a conversation between officers that, from the slight flare his eyelids, did not fit his view of military courtesy and customs.

  Captain Ayres barely even paused for breath, “Pleased as punch to be a straightforward GSN officer myself these days.”

  Claire mentally ran through the lists of GSN and Protector’s Own ships memorized while she was at Saganami Island. The Manasseh, like Ephraim, was definitely a normal Grayson Space Navy ship and not one of the elite squadron directly under Protector Benjamin Mayhew. That made Phineas Greentree one of those exceptional officers requested by the GSN from the Protector’s Own to fill command slots.

  Commander Greentree listened with a calm, controlled smile as Captain Ayres continued to apologize for Claire’s transfer, or possibly for her existence. There had been a Grayson Midshipman Greentree at the Saganami Island Naval Academy a couple years behind her, and Claire gritted her teeth at being sent to yet another ship commanded by an officer with a family interest in preserving tradition.

  The Bedlam family had been beaten with the stick of tradition too many times to have developed the reverence for it that imbued so many naval families. Egalitarianism in the service was a beautiful Saganami fantasy, but Aunt Jezzy had taught her better than to believe in fairytales.

  Captain Ayres said often enough that women were not meant to serve in uniform. His family had been in service with Captain Hugh Yanakov himself on the founding voyage to colonize the Planet Grayson, so an Ayres could be counted on to know. Of course, every Grayson’s lineage went back to that colony ship, and it had been run mostly by automated computers, with the colonists and crew in cryostasis for the trip. Claire hadn’t argued. She’d learned not to.

  Captain Ayres finally wound down with, “And don’t take her blather just now too seriously. I had her watched closely. She never once coupled up with any of my boys, though a number of them did offer for her. Not the officers, of course, which might be what she’s been holding out for, though some of them would have had some fun if she’d been willing. The girl’s naive is all. You heard her describing building a love nest behind the infirmary on my ship just now, innocent as the dawn, thinking that anyone would want to allow a midshipwoman some out-of-the-way cubby for a sleep space where no one could keep a proper eye on her activities.”

  “Midshipwoman?” Commander Greentree glanced from Ayres to Claire with a tight-lipped question, “Are you out of uniform, Ensign, or is it Midshipwoman?”

  Claire was certain that she was scarlet by now. “I—uh—” She looked to Captain Ayres. He had the grace to flush.

  Captain Ayres shrugged in a decidedly unmilitary way, waving his hands at Claire. “She kept asking, Phin. I wasn’t going to allow her onboard or anything like that, but it was about the time that most of the middies get bumped up to ensign. That and the Office of Personnel was asking, too. They wanted a Letter of Instruction to file in her record as to why she wasn’t made an ensign after the first T-year.

  “I gotta tell you that I put together a draft of the letter. I figured that if all of us in the fleet just stood strong and didn’t promote the poor girls that got pushed into this mess—Well, their families would have to take them back to do right by them. My XO had this idea, though, you see, if she were just to stay on Blackbird she could be laterally transferred to the yardbirds, but they don’t take transfers for middies. Only officers.

  “So—” Ayres shrugged. “I’m sorry again, Phin, I don’t know what to tell you. You could strip the rank, I suppose.”

  “Your XO. Right.” Commander Greentree’s lips had thinned even more. “Sir.”

  Claire felt like throwing up. Manasseh’s CO looked almost as angry as the ATO had been.

  “Did you at least do a board?” In one small mercy, Commander Greentree stopped looking quite so much like a vid star when he was furious, but Claire flinched at his lack of honorific for Captain Ayres. Then she remembered that the Ephraim CO’s second wife was Jennie Greentree Ayres, so they were family, surely that meant it was all right.

  Captain Ayres appeared not to notice the slight at all.

  “A board? Of course not, it was just a paper promotion! I had no idea that she’d refuse to sign the transfer paperwork and push to get put on a ship.”

  Claire blinked trying to remember refusing to sign anything. She hadn’t even made her initials on anything in the Ephraim XO’s office that morning. What had the XO told him?

  “Any sane woman,” Captain Ayres continued, “would realize that we just can’t allow our own women to run wild like the Manties do. But sometimes they get ideas, you know. Fun, when they’re in your bed. Not so much when you try to command one.”

  Commander Greentree finally got Captain Ayres to wind down. Ayres repeated sheepish apologies for passing on his problems to a brother-in-law when he had intended to pass them off to Willard, the stuffed shirt running the Blackbird maintenance division, who properly deserved Claire since he was an advocate for the Protector’s outlandish social engineering.

  Ayres dipped his head in a final apology and walked off.

  Commander Greentree turned to Claire. His quick up-down look focused a bit too much. She force-relaxed her jaw to keep from gritting her teeth or letting a change of facial expression escape. So maybe she was plain to the point of near-ugliness, and maybe the slight mottledness of the skin spoke of skin cancers caught late and treated without much concern for the aesthetic impact on the patient. She looked well enough for a not-so-wealthy steader from Burdette who had never had enough marital prospects to make it worth her family’s while to mortgage their lives for beauty treatments.