Hendren started to open his mouth, and Brandy raised one hand, index finger extended.

  “I advise you to let go of this until and unless there’s some evidence—beyond your obvious personal dislike for what you think you know about Senior Chief Harkness—that he has, in fact, allowed his own feelings to affect the performance of his duty. At this moment, there isn’t any. You are, of course, free to take your concerns up the chain to the XO or Captain McKeon, if you wish. I think it would be . . . unwise of you to do anything of the sort, particularly in the Captain’s case, unless you have substantially more evidence of misconduct than you have so far shared with me.”

  The captain clamped his jaw again. Then, finally, he nodded curtly.

  “You’re probably right,” he said. “And you’re certainly right that the operations of your department are your affair—and responsibility—not mine. So I’ll leave this with you.” At least for now, his tone added. “Please inform me of when I can have my pinnaces back as soon as you have that information.”

  “Of course, Major.”

  “Hendren, clear,” the Marine said, and her display blanked.

  * * *

  “That’s not exactly what I told him, Ma’am,” Horace Harkness said.

  “Well, it’s obviously what he heard. So what did you say to him?”

  Brandy raised her eyebrows and SCPO Harkness scratched his chin thoughtfully.

  “I did tell him his birds would have to wait for their place in the queue,” he said. “He didn’t seem real happy to hear that. In fact, he told me it was ‘not acceptable.’ So I told him I was sorry if it made problems for his people, but that my people had way too much on their plates for me to make any promises about adjusting priorities without clearing it with Mr. Tremaine, at least. And probably with Lieutenant O’Brien or you. That’s when he screened Mr. Tremaine, I think.”

  “So you never told him it was ‘too bad’ he wanted them back?”

  “No, Ma’am.” Harkness shook his head, then grimaced. “Not too sure that wasn’t the way he took it, though. I wasn’t trying to pick any fights, but I kinda had the feeling he expected me to.”

  “No, really?” Brandy widened her eyes at him. “How do you suppose he could possibly have leapt to a conclusion like that?”

  “Ma’am, for whatever it’s worth, you know I’ve never taken shortcuts or rearranged schedules just to spite the jarheads. May have been tempted a time or two, but I’d never do that. If nothing else, it’d give them too big a club to beat me with.” Something that was almost but not quite a smile flickered in his eyes. “Besides, I don’t pick fights with officers. Not even Marine officers.”

  And that, Brandy reflected, was true. In fact, Horace Harkness never actually picked fights at all. Instead, he’d perfected what her father called the art of “interpersonal judo” designed to suck even veteran Marines into taking the first swing, and he’d used it well over the course of his career. After the last twenty-odd T-years, his role as the innocent victim of Marine combativeness might have worn a tad thin, but even granting that, he’d never, so far as Brandy knew, lipped off to a Marine officer or even offered one of them what the Service still called “silent insubordination.”

  “It would appear Major Hendren is unaware of your sterling self-restraint in that regard,” she said.

  “Yes, Ma’am. I sorta noticed.” Harkness grimaced again. “I really tried to avoid stepping on his toes, but I think he takes his people’s readiness states seriously. I don’t blame him for that, and he’s right, Ma’am. Till we get these birds back up, they can’t do their jobs, either. Gunny Babcock and I have already had that discussion.”

  Brandy snorted. She had no doubt at all that Babcock had “discussed” the state of the Marines’ pinnaces with Harkness.

  Loudly.

  “All right, let’s leave that for the moment,” she said now. “He told me both pinnaces show green boards.”

  “Far as the birds’ flight engineers’ boards go, they do.” Harkness nodded. “But I’m looking at the boat bay diagnostics and service flags, and they’re edging into amber on four of Marine One’s nodes and two on Marine Two.”

  “Only ‘edging,’ though?” Brandy asked thoughtfully.

  The flight engineer’s station aboard the pinnaces monitored current hardware states and functionality. Each time the pinnace recovered to the boat bay, however, Prince Adrian’s computers used the umbilical connections to generate a significantly more sophisticated analysis than its onboard systems allowed. Those same monitoring shipboard computers maintained a detailed, continuously updated history of every system aboard the pinnace, plotting trendlines over time and checking all of them against the “Book”-specified parameters for mandatory service.

  Of course, the Book parameters incorporated a hefty safety margin. A point, she suspected, of which Major Hendren was aware.

  “Yes, Ma’am. Edging. Right this minute, the computer’s showing us a range between ten and forty-three percent into the Book’s Service Immediately margin on the nodes I’m worried about. And, yes, the Major asked the same question. Wanted to know why I was pulling the birds off flight status when they hadn’t actually reached the mandatory service point.”

  “And you told him—?”

  “I told him we’re taking maintenance histories and warning lights real seriously right now, on account of how overdue at the yard we are. For that matter, I told him we’re having issues with spares. Ma’am, I’m showing warnings on six of his nodes, and we’re down to eleven certified replacement nodes. That’s it, for all our birds, not just the pinnaces, and we don’t know when—or if—we’re getting more of ’em. Some things we can print ourselves; all-up node modules, we can’t.” He shrugged. “To be honest, I think the Major’s probably right that the ones I’m worried about wouldn’t blow tomorrow, and none of them look like they’d produce the kind of catastrophic failure that could take down one of the birds completely. But if one of ’em does blow, you know we’ll have at least some collateral damage, plus we’re gonna have to write that node completely off and slap in one of our eleven replacements.”

  “So what you really want to do is a teardown inspection and service-as-needed? Not a complete replacement?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Harkness looked a bit surprised. “Why would we do a replacement before we even looked?”

  “The Major said you told him his people ‘broke the birds.’ That suggests something a little more serious than ‘edging into amber’ on the diagnostics.”

  “Ma’am, what I said was the flight crew might’ve broken the birds. I specifically said ‘might’ve,’ and I never said the jarheads had broken anything.”

  Brandy frowned. Prince Adrian’s naval personnel provided the pilots and flight crew for all of her small craft. That included the pinnaces, although the Marines regarded those pinnaces as their personal property. Not without reason, from an operational viewpoint. What the pinnaces actually did, how they operated and—specifically—how hard they maneuvered while they did it, was determined by the Marines, and Marines had a reputation for being hard on their toys because of their aggressive training. As a consequence, there was a certain traditional tension between the Marines and their Navy “chauffeurs.” Had Hendren thought Harkness was trying to blame the maintenance down-check on systems abuse resulting from the Marines’—which, since he was the senior Marine, would mean his—unreasonable demands on the Navy flight crews?

  “What’s the bottom line here on downtime?” she asked.

  “My people still have two node replacements on the Number Three shuttle, and we’ve got that inertial compensator problem on the Number Two bird.”

  “I know.” Brandy grimaced.

  As Harkness had just pointed out, the spare parts issue had forced Prince Adrian’s engineering staff to begin rebuilding and refurbishing components that would normally have been returned to depot for repair or reclamation (whichever seemed the simplest) and replaced with depot-certified components from her onboard stores. That tied up not only personnel and workspace, but also printer capacity in the cruiser’s machine shops, which further slowed both repairs and replacements. And, as Harkness had also just pointed out, Brandy’s department was responsible for keeping all of Prince Adrian’s small craft up and running, not just the pinnaces, and with Shuttle Two and Three down, the cruiser had only a single shuttle currently available.

  “We can probably put the Three bird back online by the end of the next watch,” he said. “Two’ll take longer. Problem’s not all that bad, but we can’t just fix it in place. We’ll have to open her up to get at the compensator, and we don’t have the working space to do that until we get Three out of the way.”

  “And if we pull people off either of those to concentrate on the pinnaces, both shuttles stay down longer than that.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “Much as I hate it, I think we’ll have to do that, anyway. Or some of it, at least.” Brandy didn’t much like that thought. Especially if Hendren was going to take it as some sort of capitulation on her part. But they really did need at least one of the pinnaces back as soon as they could get it.

  “Some of it, Ma’am?” From his expression, Harkness wasn’t especially eager to hear what he suspected was coming.

  “I agree we can’t take avoidable chances on losing any more nodes than we have to, but the Major’s right that his people need their birds back. So, what we’ll have to do, I think, is put Marine Two back on limited flight status. They can have her in the event of an emergency, but we’ll restrict her power levels to minimize stress on those iffy nodes. Then we’ll prioritize getting Shuttle Three back up, but move the inspection of Marine One up in the queue, before the compensator teardown on Shuttle Two. As soon as we can clear Marine One’s return to full flight status, we pull Two off and keep her there until we’ve had time to get Shuttle Two back up.”

  “We can do that, Ma’am. Switching teams back and forth is gonna slow us down, though.”

  “I know. It’ll take longer for each bird, but not a lot, and this way the Marines at least get half their capability back. I doubt Major Hendren—or the Captain, for that matter—will be happy about having only half their pinnaces available, but the best we can do is the best we can do. I’ll screen Lieutenant O’Brien and Lieutenant Tremaine to make it official, but you can go ahead and give your people a heads-up now.”

  HMS Prince Adrian

  Madras System

  April 19, 1907 PD

  “excuse me, lieutenant. Do you have a minute?”

  Brandy Bolgeo didn’t reply, but she did pause, then turned to look up at Major Hendren with an arched eyebrow. The Marine had quickened his pace to make it into the intra-ship lift car before the door closed, and his expression was . . . odd.

  It was the first time they’d physically crossed paths since Hendren’s complaint about Harkness and Tremaine, and she’d been just as happy about that, thank you very much. Unfortunately, they were both on Captain McKeon’s guest list for tonight’s dinner. This would be the first time Brandy and Hendren had been invited at the same time.

  She hadn’t been looking forward to it.

  Now the far taller Marine looked back down at her as the lift car began to move, and she thought she saw his lips tighten a bit at her nonresponse to his conversational gambit.

  That was nice.

  “Look,” he said, after a moment, “mostly I just want to apologize for having been a dick.”

  Brandy’s eyes widened slightly, and her lips twitched.

  “I . . . ah, don’t think I would have applied exactly that term,” she said.

  “I actually cleaned it up a bit. Filed off a few Marine-style adjectives and adverbs.” Hendren shrugged. “I was pissed off, I was worried about readiness states, and I’m very much the new kid on the block in Prince Adrian. None of which is an excuse. An explanation, maybe, but not an excuse. I hadn’t realized just how behind the ship is on her maintenance schedule, or how overworked your department was. Again, an explanation and not an excuse.”

  “Not to mention the fact that you were predisposed to think the worst about Senior Chief Harkness, too,” Brandy suggested, and he grimaced.

  “Yeah, I was,” he admitted. “I admit I shouldn’t have been, without personal firsthand experience, but you have to admit he has a . . . checkered record, to say the least, where Marines are concerned.”

  “That’s probably fair,” she acknowledged. “Most of that’s because he just likes to fight and figures it’s better to pick fights with somebody from outside his own ship. But despite his rep as a discipline problem, he hasn’t shown much evidence of that aboard his last few ships. And there’s never been a more qualified or professionally disciplined spacer in the entire Navy.”

  “You may be interested to know that someone else told me basically the same thing about him.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “Gunny Babcock.” Hendren rolled his eyes slightly. “Sort of pinned my ears back with that infinite ‘You really are dumb as a rock, aren’t you, Sir’ courtesy only senior NCOs have truly mastered.”

  Brandy surprised herself with a snort of laughter. Partly because she understood exactly what Hendren was talking about, but also because she could just picture Babcock doing exactly that. Partly because she and Harkness had learned to work smoothly together, but even more because she knew how much the cruiser’s senior Marine did not want to get on the wrong side of the ship’s company. And, despite what Hendren had correctly described as a “checkered” career, in more ways than one, Horace Harkness was immensely popular with his crewmates.

  Well, maybe not so much with the ship’s Marine detachment, but he couldn’t have everything.

  “Anyway,” Hendren continued, “I did want to apologize, and I also wanted to thank you for working with us to keep at least one pinnace available.”

  “And did you read Senior Chief Harkness’ post-inspection report on Pinnace One’s impeller nodes?” Brandy pushed with gentle malice.

  “Yes,” Hendren sighed. “And he was right. It’s not really my area, but the Gunny pointed out to me that we’d have lost two of those nodes, almost for sure, if we’d had to go to max acceleration for any sustained period.”

  “Well”—Brandy’s tone relented a bit—“I have to say I’m glad we didn’t. We managed a rebuild on both of them, too, which was huge from our spares perspective.” She shook her head. “We’re babying so many systems that really need overhaul right now that it’s not even funny.”

  “I know . . . now.” Hendren nodded soberly. “I had no idea how bad things were getting out here before they rotated me out from Manticore, though.”

  “I understand why we’re still pushing,” Brandy said, watching the display as the lift car slowed to a halt. “I’m not in favor of giving the Peeps any more time to recover than we can help, either, and I know that means running maintenance margins thinner than the Book requires. For that matter, at least some of that’s probably inevitable under wartime conditions, even without the ops tempo we’re maintaining. But it really is getting out of hand.”

  “Well,” Hendren said, nodding her through the opening lift doors before he followed, “I do have a better feel for the situation now. And, in the interest of non-dick-like behavior, I promise I’ll do my best not to make it any worse next time around.”

  “That strikes me as a very good idea,” Brandy told him with a small smile.

  HMS Prince Adrian

  Madras System

  May 15, 1907 PD

  brandy’s uni-link pinged.

  She glanced down and frowned at the caller ID, then looked at Oliver O’Brien and Felicia O’Toole. The three of them stood in Impeller Room 12’s plasma conduit monitoring station, where the midshipwoman had been somewhat nervously displaying her proficiency.

  The better Brandy got to know O’Toole, the more she approved of the tiny midshipwoman. She was smart, competent, and not one bit afraid of getting her hands dirty. For that matter, she gave a very good impersonation of a sponge around the ships’ senior NCOs. Her ability to soak up the benefit of their experience was outstanding, and she had the gift, the knack for taking advice and accepting instruction without ever forgetting who was senior to whom in the chain of command.

  If she had a fault—and it was a minor one—it was the anxiety she apparently felt when one of her own superiors, and especially Brandy, evaluated her proficiency. It never adversely affected her performance, so far as Brandy could tell, and it wasn’t as if she were breaking out in any cold sweats. In fact, it didn’t even seem to stem from any qualms about her own capabilities. It was more as if she didn’t want to let her superiors down. Didn’t want to give them less than the very best performance possible.

  Truth be told, Brandy could think of very few “problems” she would rather have with one of her middies. And she had to admit she’d been very much like that on her own snotty cruise. Maybe that explained why she wished O’Toole would ease up on herself just a bit?

  She brushed that thought aside and grimaced at her companions.

  “I’m afraid I have to take this one,” she said. “Felicia, what I’ve seen so far today absolutely rates a four-oh evaluation. I’ll let you and Lieutenant O’Brien continue this, but drop by my office when you’ve finished. I think we should expand your duties a bit. I’m thinking maybe we slot you in as Reactor Officer for first watch.”

  O’Toole’s eyes widened slightly, and Brandy saw O’Brien smiling at her across the middy’s head. First watch was Brandy’s watch, which meant she’d be available to backstop O’Toole if anything happened. And CPO Evans was the senior noncom of the watch. The burly chief was the next best thing to thirty centimeters taller than O’Toole, probably weighed twice as much, and was half again her age, all of which made him a reassuringly solid presence. More importantly, after Horace Harkness, he was probably the best power tech in the ship. Although Brandy hadn’t realized it the day she reported aboard, he was also a fellow native of Gryphon. Not that she’d been all that surprised when she found out, given the number of career noncoms Gryphon provided to both the Navy and the Marines. He’d keep an eagle eye on the midshipwoman, so unobtrusively she probably wouldn’t even notice, and he was exactly the sort of noncom O’Toole clearly knew to listen to.