The introduction to Claire's new boss, a harried Lieutenant Loyd, went quickly and smoothly. He'd read the Ephraim AuxO's equipment failure reports and wanted to be sure Manasseh didn't miss the same maintenance and follow her sister ship into a prolonged repair period. He asked her some technical questions. They quickly revealed that he didn't actually understand radiation deformation of metals beyond knowing that it existed and that certain schedules of preventative maintenance could sometimes extend machinery service life. He was a tactical track officer, though, so Claire forgave him. At least he knew that machinery mattered and wanted there to be someone tracking it and making sure it lasted longer than just his own tour of duty.
The interview was conducted in the wardroom, with several of his peers popping in and out and making various observations or throwing challenging questions her way. At the end of it the executive officer came in and asked a couple of tactics questions.
Claire wasn't even sure why they mattered. She turned to her boss.
Lieutenant Loyd immediately told the exec that he would work with her to brush up on her tactical proficiency and run some sims for her now that she was on a fully functional Joseph-class ship. The exec snorted pointing out that sims could be run just as easily in a yard as on a ship in space. He glared at Claire and told her that there would be no excuses for shirking her continued tactical education on this ship.
The exec slapped a comp on the table. It was scrolled all the way to the end of a formal midshipman's board for promotion to ensign and already signed by all the officers who had been dropping in and asking questions. The exec patted his pockets and then looked around with a pained expression. Claire produced a stylus from her pocket. The exec snatched it out of her hand scribbled the final signature and slapped his thumbprint down.
Loyd and the exec stood. Claire stumbled to her feet copying the others from Saganami-trained instinct.
Commander Greentree's clear tenor came from just to her left calling for the exec to hand him the ship's patch. Claire counted herself lucky that she wasn't an easy blusher. The man was too gorgeous.
According to Rustin, he had two wives. But on a commander's salary, he could certainly afford a third—if, that was, he actually wanted one and if his first two wives could tolerate her. The Burdette Ladies were sure to comment on that. Greentree for his part seemed not even to notice her jerking her face away from him to cut off her lingering inspection of his body. Letting a boss know you like him is a horrible idea, Claire reminded herself. Why couldn't he have been just a bit smelly like Captain Ayres or have dirty fingernails or something?
The wardroom filled quickly with the Manasseh's full officer complement while Claire concentrated on keeping her eyes off her CO. Rustin gave a little wave from the corner, giving two thumbs up paired with a giant grin. Not hopping up and down was probably surreptitious for the woman. Claire credited Rustin's Saganami Island training for that.
The Office of Personnel did not have a record of Claire's oath for assuming the rank of ensign back on GNS Ephraim, Commander Greentree informed Claire in a voice meant to carry to the whole wardroom. His wry smile gave away that he was fully aware of all that he wasn't saying. Blackbird Yard Public Affairs had not been able to locate a quality recording to send to Burdette Steading for the local news release. So, if she didn't object to the irregularity, he'd just as soon hold the ceremony again here on Manasseh. He had Rustin provide him with some of her midshipwoman insignia and motioned for Rustin to switch out Claire's collar and shoulder devices for the single silver collar pip of a midshipwoman.
Commander Greentree shooed Rustin back to her corner vantage point and cued up the spacer drafted to capture the proceedings to begin recording. The exec called the assembled officers to attention and read off the official orders from the Grayson Space Navy Office authorizing Midshipwoman Claire Bedlam Lecroix to wear the rank of Ensign and assume all the duties and responsibilities of a commissioned officer of the Grayson Space Navy at the recommendation of Commander Phineas Greentree, Commanding Officer GNS Manasseh.
The Ayres name was notably absent from the orders. Somehow Claire doubted that if Personnel had resent a copy of an old approval they would have gone back and changed the requesting commanding officer's name to the current reporting senior.
Claire pulled her attention back as Commander Greentree administered her oath of office. She swore loyalty once again to Grayson, Protector Benjamin Mayhew IX, and the Office of the Protector. She would do her duty to God and her star nation and ever rise to meet the Tests set before her in the faithful performance of her duty. The words were so familiar that she had to focus to avoid embarrassing herself by switching up phrases with the common prayer for the Protectorate of Grayson or the Burdette Steading pledge of allegiance.
Commander Greentree smiled rather broadly at her. It wasn't fair. A man that lovely should know what he did to women and control himself better. Claire curled her toes inside her ship boots to distract herself from the whiff of aftershave as he leaned over to pin the two silver pips of an ensign to her collar and shoulder boards.
She looked around the room trying not to think about how it would feel if a man were clasping a necklace instead of pinning on rank insignia. She should think herself lucky to be here. Really, she should.
So what if the Burdette Lady Steadholders worried that she was not going to find a man interested in even a third wife who was constantly away in the GSN? This was all a means to an end. She had a degree after all and a really quite amazing education at Saganami Island in the engineering of ship power systems and auxiliaries. Merchants used different systems. But, physics was physics. Claire resolved to continue studying for the technical school certifications in those other merchant systems.
A Grayson in-system shipper might not want to hire her, but there were others who did business in Yeltsin's Star who wouldn't mind hiring a young woman. A life could be built on Blackbird Yard that way. And who knew, she might meet someone who'd want a wife who could travel with him and knock out some of the qualifications required by Grayson Transit Control, thus saving him the cost of hiring extra hands.
It was a cold plan, but Claire thought it might work. The GSN kept providing more and more training. The ship combat simulations were completely useless for any long-term plans, but they'd been easy to avoid on the Ephraim. The Manasseh would not be much different. And even when Claire did have to waste time on them, ship combat sims still beat washing dishes by hand when the restaurant had to wait to clear enough profit to buy the parts for fixing the dishwasher.
The ceremony drew to a close with a burst of applause prompted by the exec, and at his chivvying, the officers made their way around the room to congratulate Claire one by one and welcome her to the ship. The lieutenants and higher ranked officers asked after her pastimes at Saganami, course of study, and so on. They seemed to listen to each other's questions since they repeated questions only every fifth person or so.
The midshipmen and ensigns offered a simple congrats or sometimes welcome aboard and congratulations.
Rustin gave her a hug. Claire held her awkwardly and scanned the room for disapproval. That's when she first saw the Royal Manticoran Navy exchange officer, a leering man with the broad frame that came of extreme athleticism in school followed by a few years of carb loading without the sport to burn the energy. As a Grayson his rounded face might be just old enough to belong to a midshipman, but on the Mantie lieutenant commander it just meant he'd received the prolong life extension treatment. She reexamined the Mantie and decided his expression couldn't have actually been ill intended since the rest of the wardroom hadn't reacted.
Commander Greentree poked the exec in the ribs with his elbow. Too many side conversations muffled the words, but it was clear that the CO was celebrating having a second female officer onboard and chiding his exec for doubting that she and Rustin would get along like sisters.
Claire didn't have sisters or brothers. That was relatively rare among Grayson steaders, but it was well-nigh unheard of among the wealthy steadholder families. Unless of course, there was something very shameful going on, like infidelity leading to divorce and disownment or maybe a tragic death, or several.
The next well wisher in line must have caught part of the CO's comments. He paired his congratulations with a question on how her siblings would react to the news.
“I'm an only child, Sir.” Claire felt her smile freeze as she surrendered information about herself that she had managed to keep hidden on Ephraim.
The lieutenant gawked.
An uncomfortable silence spread around the room, until Rustin who was still only a few steps away spun around and injected a cheery, “Well, she's got me now, and I'm delighted.”
The edge of battlesteel in Rustin's voice was entirely surprising. Did Rustin really think she could protect anyone else when it seemed as if Rustin herself had spread her own whole life out for these people to dissect and judge?
Claire pushed the confusion aside for now, focusing on the next potential attacker in line. There would be time in private later to try to figure out Rustin's motivations and decide whether or not her apparent friend was actually capable of sealing her own shoes.
Lieutenant Loyd was up next. The crease between his eyebrows seemed to imply that he hadn't missed the wardroom undercurrent of speculation on sordidness in Claire's family past. His slight smile could either be anticipation of skewering her with his question or an attempt to put her at ease.
Claire tensed. If it was the second, he needn't have bothered. Claire no longer believed that it was possible to be at ease in a public setting.
Lieutenant Loyd made a joke about killing the Ephraim's tactics officer twice in the next fleet exercise in retaliation for failing in Claire's tactics training, which got their corner of the room chuckling again. It seemed that the Manasseh wardroom was proud of Lieutenant Loyd's prowess in the tactical simulations, and they didn't seem to think he was boasting beyond his ability to deliver.
The last questioner turned back and suggested that the group horse up Claire so that she could be the one to represent the Manasseh and take down the Ephraim.
That suggestion was greeted with howls of approval.
Claire flinched at little at the implication that her old ship was so far behind Manasseh that they thought they could send a just-passed ensign up against lieutenants and lieutenant commanders in the sims and fully expect to win. What did they do, live in the tactics simulators on this ship? Commander Greentree was a Protector's Own officer, sure, and those were known to be hard over on training time, but could it really make that much difference? Claire was pretty sure that Captain Ayres had made certain the lieutenants and lieutenant commanders did the fleet requirement of four hours in the simulators each week.
Lieutenant Loyd finished up his impromptu monologue on how Claire was going to shine as a tactician with a claim that she'd be the best ensign to come out of Owens Steading since Abigail Hearns.
Commander Greentree lost his recruiter vid star grin to a careful blankness. The master chief had reported back apparently.
Claire realized that she'd have to share another bombshell. “Actually, I come from Burdette Steading, Sir.”
Several of the listening officers repeated the steading name for the ones in the back, and this time the entire wardroom stared at her, shocked.
The exec broke the silence from all the way across the room this time. “Wait a minute, here, Ensign Lecroix. That was entirely left that out of the officer's biography sent over from the Ephraim. You gotta tell us how you got a Saganami Island nomination out of Steadholder Burdette.”
Claire swallowed, carefully marshalling her thoughts to try to explain without saying anything that would be horribly misinterpreted, either here in this company or back on Burdette Steading. The less said the better, but this group didn't seem interested in letting this one go without a full explanation. First, brush over the dueling death of Lord William Fitzclarence. No, be honest at least in your thoughts, she reminded herself. It must have been at least an attempted murder of Admiral Alexander-Harrington. She could see in the groups eyes' that they were all thinking about how the last Steadholder Burdette had done his best to kill Admiral Harrington, the first and most impressive woman to wear a uniform in defense of Grayson.
“Um.” Great, Claire, she told herself, brilliant start. “Lord Burdette was good enough to nominate me for a position, Sir.”
She paused as some of the officers murmured to each other that this was Nathan Fitzclarence, the cousin who had inherited the steadholder position after William's duel.
Lieutenant Loyd watched Claire with his lips parted as if he were trying to find a way to ask more without taking her into another orbital minefield. She wished he'd just stop and let the subject change.
“What was he thinking?” The lieutenant finally asked, and Claire tried to shrink into the wall.
“Steadholder Owens sent Abigail Hearns the year before,” she said. “The Protector seemed to approve . . .” Claire did blush now, and fiercely. “I really don't understand all the politics, Sir, but Lord Burdette was only interested in nominating girls that year. Our elder said, ah, not very nice things, but Lord Burdette said that we were to try, and when it got too much for our, um, sensibilities he'd see what he could do to help us marry properly. But that he had to show Cr—”
The CO coughed, loudly, and Claire realized she had almost said Crazy Benjie, the barroom nickname for the protector common under the old Steadholder Burdette.
“Ah, he said he had to show Protector Benjamin that Grayson women weren't meant to be like Steadholder Harrington.”
A baffled silence followed, and even Rustin seemed completely speechless.
Lieutenant Loyd spoke first with: “I'm totally lost. You were sent to Saganami Island with directions to quit. So what happened?”
Claire just glared at him entirely forgetting the last five years of carefully developed military courtesies. “It's a good job.”
Loyd's jaw dropped again but in a wide open-mouthed smile. He turned to the Commander Greentree and the exec. He called across the room, as if everyone hadn't already heard Claire's response, “It's a good job, Captain.”
Claire contained her glare, barely, by keeping it focused on her amused lieutenant instead of her CO.
“A steader can't just quit a good job.” Her intended soft reply rasped with anger, carrying clearly back across the room, and she strangled the volume back to a whisper in an attempt to control the thoughts spilling out. “I got people to keep fed, you-” She managed to not use the disparaging term for scions of steadholder families that came to mind.
Claire pleaded with her lieutenant, “Sir, I can't go dropping a good job just 'cause someone thinks it should be too hard.”
Her bottled rage simmered as she thought: Hard? What did a steadholder's family know about hard jobs anyway?
Lieutenant Loyd just stood in front of her shaking with laughter interpreting her fury as just slightly off-color humor.
The next man had to take several minutes to finish guffawing before asking his question. Now all the questions were about Burdette. None of them noticed that she didn't find her situation funny. It didn't seem to matter what she said. They all thought it was a phenomenal joke.
Most of them now said things on the theme of “Can't keep a good steader down.” Slowly Claire realized that most of the other officers thought that they were steaders themselves and identified with her for all that they had family influence that far exceeded anything a Bedlam might expect to gather. That family influence, from Claire's perspective came from connections to steadholders, but if they all wanted to spontaneously adopt her, who was she to argue? Claire filed this all away to try to figure out later if they were all somehow mocking her in a way she just didn't understand yet.
Lieutenant Loyd planted himself next to her in the receiving line as the rest of the officers came around with their congratulations and questions. When she glanced at him from the corner of her eye, he only smiled again and announced that he needed to be the first to hear whatever other stories his new ensign had to tell, since he absolutely refused to hear them second hand from another department head.
The lieutenant also shot down questions with quick regularity if they prompted Claire to wedge herself too far back against the wardroom bulkhead. She watched for warning signs in his unasked for protection, but he didn't touch or crowd or emit any of the subtle markers of a man intending to control her. If anything, he was policing the rest of the wardroom, and Claire tried to force herself to calm down and regain a measure of composure.
The last of the officers wound through the line with the Mantie bringing up the rear. He approached with a slightly odd gait like he was trying to imitate a vid actor. He had a nice smile and hadn't seemed to follow the laughter that had infected the rest of the wardroom. He introduced himself as Lieutenant Commander Kevin Lockhart, but, “Call me Kevin,” and told Claire to meet him later if she wanted some watch signatures.
Rustin watched him leave with pursed lips.
* * *
Claire pinned another invitation from the Ephraim's Wives' Club on her blotter, half listening and half ignoring Rustin as she chattered on about the latest thing to happen with her division. Her roommate had been even happier than usual, nearly bouncing off the walls for the last couple days since her division had gotten near perfect marks on the laser shooting qualification. Commander Greentree was pleased and in a good mood about it, which naturally transferred down to the entire wardroom and crew complement. The CO was pretty good about keeping his bad days from overly affecting his ship, but a commander's actions and inactions decided so much about daily life of a ship that there was no way for his personality not to affect them. Claire had considered using this time to try to float a leave request chit to take two weeks off to attend a merchant life-support systems advanced technician's qualification cram session and certification exam. Actually, she had more than considered it; she had tried. The exec hadn't routed the chit, as far as she could tell, so she'd actually printed the thing and taken the papers herself to the CO during his office hours. He'd refused it. Request denied.
Claire stared at her screen trying not to cry . . . and failing. This was like the Ephraim all over again, except that there she actually expected it, so she hadn't relaxed and gotten gut punched like this. Rustin was composing a letter to her little sister again, so it wasn't like she would actually notice that Claire wasn't paying attention or really responding. Claire kept her face averted and let the tears spill down her face.
To have something to pretend to be doing, Claire checked her own messages. The console still wasn't set up with a bank account number to send anything, but she could get them. Aunt Jezzy was asking for some more money this month to buy a bassinet or something for the newest grandniece. Somehow Aunt Jezzy had kept from Noah that Claire had a raise with her promotion, but in return Aunt Jezzy wanted access to take the extra money from time to time. Noah had spent what Aunt Jezzy had budgeted for the new child on a hover bike, so the family needed a bit more from Claire this month.
Aunt Jezzy advised Claire to see if it were true that Harrington Steading had a bank that allowed deposits in a woman's name alone. Denying Noah access to accounts to which he was the legal owner was fraud, of course, but it didn't feel like that since the accounts only existed at all because Claire was being paid for service in the GSN. Planet-wide Grayson law laid down by Protector Benjamin did allow female property ownership, but Burdette Steading law still made a woman's debts or property the responsibility of her protector. The not quite contradicting laws combined in ways Claire was pretty sure the Protector had never intended, and Noah jointly owned her accounts. Worse, her cousin had learned that he could debit the family bank accounts directly once he found them. Apparently Noah's latest surrogate father figure, a church deacon, had had something to do with teaching him that.
Claire blew her nose. She wished she were on the Ephraim.
Someone knocked on the door, and Rustin looked up, pausing her message to her sister.
Claire looked at the door, forgetting that would show her face to Rustin. Claire scrubbed her eyes quickly and started to stand, but Rustin waved her off toward their stateroom sink and answered the door herself.
She opened it only partway, though, blocking it with her body. Claire couldn't see past her, but she knew it was Lieutenant Loyd on the other side. She could clearly hear him talking to Rustin.
Claire washed her face quickly, even though the sound of the water would give away to Loyd that she was hiding behind her roommate.
Rustin tried to claim that Claire was unavailable without telling Lieutenant Loyd that Claire had been bawling.
Lieutenant Loyd wasn't having any of it.
He just overrode Rustin. Claire hadn't really expected her to be able to stop anyone, but it was sweet of her to try. That was Rustin, perpetually sweet, but not entirely effective. Claire was surprised he didn't simply force the door open or come in. Maybe he thought she was naked.
Instead, Lieutenant Loyd just ordered through the door, “Claire, meet me in CIC in five.”
Rustin tried one more time to talk him out of it somehow, but Claire swallowed and answered herself with an “Aye, Sir.” It sounded weepy, but she couldn't really help that.
Lieutenant Loyd must have left, because Rustin slipped right back in, shut the door firmly, and then turned into a dervish of motion. She straightened Claire's uniform, brushed off lint, and finally slapped a little plastic tube of eye drops into Claire's hands. The crystal liquid miraculously cleared the redness in a moment. Without that to draw attention, the puffiness seemed hardly noticeable.
Rustin gave Claire a quick hug and shoed her out the door to meet whatever new nastiness was about to enter her day. Senior officers never sought out ensigns in their staterooms for anything pleasant. Claire thought of her last watch qualification sign off with Lieutenant Commander Lockhart and shuddered.
* * *
Claire made her way down to CIC and belatedly realized that she'd forgotten her comp pad. Patting her front pocket, she found that Rustin had stuck it in there along with a stylus. The pointy bit of plastic to make notes on a computer screen had a designer brand name, making it one of Rustin's. Claire carefully fitted the stylus back in her pocket to keep from losing it, still walking fast. She slammed into Lieutenant Commander Lockhart just outside of CIC.
The impact was cushioned by Lockhart swaying a step back with her as if he had been just standing there waiting for her to step into him. He leaned in as Claire tried to step back. Chuckling, Lockhart held Claire in a bear hug, reached around, and grabbed her bottom and pinched.
Claire slammed her fist into his solar plexus.
Lockhart stumbled back swearing at her and promised to clear all the tactics sign-offs he'd given her.
Claire bit her lip and just backed away. If he decided to tell Commander Greentree, she wasn't sure what would happen, but it wouldn't be good.
Lockhart let a smile creep back on to his face and told her to come to his stateroom when she was ready to apologize. Then he turned smartly and marched away down the passageway humming a ditty popular in strip clubs that made Claire's ears burn.
Lieutenant Loyd stood inside the open hatch to CIC, white-lipped. Claire cringed, her stomach sinking as she wondered what he had decided to see. He blew out a long breath of air. “We need to go see the captain about that.”
Claire felt nauseous. “I'm not going to do you either. No matter what you're going to tell the captain. I won't.”
The lieutenant flushed with fury just as Claire had expected him to, but he didn't make any farther threats.
Claire backed against the bulkhead nervously searching for a protective audience. Claire didn't think Lieutenant Loyd would get grabby. He hadn't done anything like that yet. She backed a few steps just to be sure and tripped over an ankle-height junction box.
Lieutenant Loyd caught a flailing arm and pulled her upright, but then dropped her arm like it was arc welder-hot. He stepped away with his hands palm up.
“Ensign, that is so f*cked up that I don't know where to start. This was supposed to be a counseling session where I told you that if you wanted this ‘good job' you needed to start doing it instead of playing GSN dress up.” He narrowed his eyes. “Obviously, I have no idea what's going on with my own officers. So, we're going to fix that.”
Claire crossed her arms and hugged herself, hunching her shoulders over. It hid her breasts a little, but not really enough. Claire tensed waiting to find out what her outburst was going to do to her this time.
The lieutenant ducked back into CIC and with a quick word sent some petty officers scurrying down the passageway.
Claire hovered half in and half out, wanting to be around more people but reluctant to leave him before learning what he intended to do to her.
Master Chief Wallens took the corner at a quick lope and then slowed to wander into CIC as if he just happening to be strolling by.
Claire followed him in, and Lieutenant Loyd directed her to take a chair.
The master chief sat down next to Claire with a bit of space between the chairs but angled towards Lieutenant Loyd and flipped out his own comp and appeared to completely absorb himself in some kind of paperwork.
Lieutenant Loyd sat, scrubbed his forehead with his hands, and still rubbing his temples, started talking. “Okay Ensign Lecroix, the sum total of this counseling session was supposed to be you standing at attention while I yelled at you about not doing the tactics sim sessions that I told you to do. And that the captain told you to do back when you got your promotion. You were supposed to leave here chastised, having promised to stop lazing around, and go spend the next four hours blowing up ships. And then you were supposed to spend half your days for the next couple weeks blowing things up, too, and by that time you'd probably manage to make the ship that gets blown up be something besides your own ship at least some of the time. But that happened.” Lieutenant Loyd flipped a hand towards the passageway and flared his fingers. “Why didn't you just kick him in the balls?”
The master chief's sudden stillness revealed he was listening after all.
Claire bit her lip.
“This is the part where you say something, Ensign.” Lieutenant Loyd chided quietly.
Claire hunched farther in her chair. She was sure her expression was mulish, but she'd never been good at controlling it when she felt like she was being attacked. “No excuse, Sir.” She attempted the standard answer.
Lieutenant Loyd's response of, “F*cking Academy,” was not what she expected. He resumed rubbing his temples and sighed.
Claire glared at him and waited for him to try to drag another answer out of her. You couldn't win when something like this happened, but you could hold onto your pride and not lose.
Lieutenant Loyd looked back, occasionally blinking or glancing around enough to keep it from being a staring contest, but he didn't break the silence.
“You can't kick them.” Claire whispered.
Lieutenant Loyd made an inquisitive noise but matched her volume.
“Look, it's—” Claire coughed and tried to return to a normal tone and keep the quaver out of her voice. “When someone does something like that,” she looked at Master Chief Wallens warily as she continued waiting for him to exclaim or interrupt or demand details or proof or something. The master chief didn't show any response at all, so Claire continued, “When, that is, if it was some stranger I suppose it might work, but you'd have to kick pretty hard and not miss, and it's not the kind of thing you can practice. But strangers don't really do that. It's people you know who you have to see day after day. A punch they might laugh off and get over without feeling the need to make it into some kind of power thing. Because, well, if it becomes a power thing that's when it really gets bad.” Claire clamped down before she spilled too much more. Those were Aunt Jezzy's secrets to tell anyway, not hers. She'd just been taught from it, was all.
Lieutenant Loyd shook his head. “Ensign Lecroix, we really need to work on your tactics.”
Claire planted her elbows on the table in front of her and folded her hands. “No.”
Lieutenant Loyd snorted and arched his eyebrows at her. “I wouldn't let you pull that shit normally. You should know that, but I'd like to think that this hasn't been a normal day for you. Would you say that was true?”
Claire swallowed unsure of what to do since he hadn't blown up at her defiance. The master chief feigned total absorption in his screen again. Turning back to Lieutenant Loyd, Claire said, “I apologize for what I said in the passageway.”
Lieutenant Loyd just raised his eyebrows and waited.
Claire just looked at him in confusion and then flushing added, “Sir.”
“Apology accepted,” he answered immediately. “And I still want you to work on tactics.”
Claire shook her head, “LT, I guess you mean well, but what's the point?”
“Oh, I don't know: the continuation of politics by other means, fighting and winning our star nation's wars, or maybe just because it happens to be your job and doing your job to the best of your ability is the right thing to do?”
Claire hunched again, swallowed, and closed her eyes. “When Lockhart reports me to Commander Greentree, and he's gonna, I'll be out. Maybe just off the ship, or maybe out of the whole GSN.”
She shivered. “There's no reason to do this tactics stuff, and look, Sir, there never was. The best I could do was last long enough to get some solid engineering experience to transfer to civie jobs. Tactics doesn't do that.”
“Wow, Saganami Island really failed you.” Lieutenant Loyd breathed.
He straightened and went on. “Now here's some free officer continuing education for you. There're two kinds of counseling right?”
Claire jerked a nod, stiffening to attention in her chair, “Yes, Sir.”
“So right now we've got informal counseling right here while I try to find a way to get through your thick steader skull that I like you and want you to be a good officer, and even if I didn't, it wouldn't matter because the captain has decided that you are going to be turned into a good officer. You may have noticed, he's a Greentree. There's a fair number of them in the service. They're generally pretty hardcore, and he's hardcore even for a Greentree.
“Maybe you noticed the maroon trousers? Yep. He got himself into the Protector's Own because he wanted to study warfare under the likes of Alfredo Yu, Harriet Benson-Dessouix, and oh yeah Honor Alexander-Harrington. And they took him. Which says even more, because the Protector's Own only takes the very best.
“Anyway, onward to the next kind: formal counseling. That's what you use for the hard cases that you need to build a record for in case you need to kick them entirely out of the service. Its generally bad practice to discuss the flaws of senior officers with subordinates, but I'm junior to him too. So we'll call this part a bitch session of the JOPA, okay?”
Claire glanced over at Master Chief Wallens. He was still pretending to do routine paperwork, or maybe he was really doing paperwork and got called in to play chaperone for sketchy informal counseling sessions all the time. “Um, that's the Junior Officer Protection Association, Sir?”
“Exactly. Generally a load of bunk that gets claimed when somebody did something idiotic and wants to use peer pressure to keep from having his ass properly handed to him. But from time to time, captains get crazy. It has its uses. Like now.
“So let's just say that I happen to know that there's already a file on Mr. Lockhart and that the XO has been looking for a final nail for that coffin. I just gave it to him. Or rather you did, and I reported it. I used to feel sorry for him since his marriage on Manticore fell apart, and he seemed to think that Grayson girls would be nearly a different species from the Mantie women he tried dating. I thought he was grieving, not hunting. If we're entirely unlucky, he'll be on-board for another couple weeks. But it's more likely we'll pull into the next available station and dump him.”
Claire felt a wave of relief . . . mingled with shock that she wasn't being punished for standing up for herself.
* * *
By Lieutenant Loyd's metric, the Manasseh was entirely lucky. The XO stopped by Claire's stateroom later that evening, after she'd spent a long session in the simulator being repeatedly killed by various adversaries. The lieutenant had replayed each session in detail pointing out why she had died.
The XO had a similar recording as evidence against Lockhart. Lieutenant Loyd had been working a tactical session of his own and recording it while waiting for her to arrive, and it included some visual through the open door and all of the audio of her encounter with the Mantie exchange officer. The XO blushed and couldn't meet Claire's eyes when the fast-forwarded display showed the Mantie grinning at her impact and caught the pinch in clear detail. The XO just needed her thumbprint and signature that she was the person shown. Then he provided the contact information for Legal Assistance if Claire wanted to press assault charges.
Rustin was in the back of the stateroom engrossed in studying the approach for docking at the station. So Claire didn't hesitate to ask, “Sir, I hit a senior officer. Why aren't I the one being charged?”
The exec just shook his head. “I didn't hear that. What did you say?”
Claire said it again, and the exec again denied hearing her.
She started to repeat herself a third time and then stopped. Finally, she said, “What else is on the tape?”
The exec pushed a button and the rest played through. Lieutenant Loyd rose quickly and blocked the view before Lieutenant Commander Lockhart's muffled grunt and then very clearly audible solicitation. The exec shrugged. “He could try to file charges under the Articles of War, but no Grayson admiral would hear them, and no one else has jurisdiction. The commanding officer could make an issue of it, but he feels that you need all the time you can get in the tactical simulators and should not be distracted by petty charges any reasonable Admiralty Review Board would throw out.”
Claire blinked. “You have a witness . . .” She trailed off realizing Lieutenant Loyd had either left that out of his report or colluded with the exec.
The exec snorted as he walked away. He called over his shoulder, “Merchant-class Advanced Technician is a hack exam that you could have passed after your first year at Saganami. I'll approve your leave chits to go waste time prepping for a civilian career when you get competent in the tactics sims and stop signing yourself up for scams.” Then she remembered the certification course she had been trying to take leave to attend. It wasn't a scam! Unless . . . she tried to remember if any of the glossy advertising had actually mentioned who gave the certification or accredited the training program. The whole thing seemed less important now.
Claire mulled over whether she could just have said something weeks earlier instead of ducking Lockhart's advances. More than the master chief on this ship seemed trustworthy.
She spent another afternoon and morning running sims while Manasseh prepared to dock at the poorly outfitted station orbiting Masada. A few days had passed since she'd had a chance to review maintenance logs or run spot checks. If being an officer meant ‘fighting the ship' as Lieutenant Loyd and the exec insisted, she had to depend on other officers to remember to schedule their maintenance smartly and ensure the crew had the time, tools, and training to keep the Manasseh from dissolving in hyper from radiation corrosions. The materials were pretty fantastic, so actual structural integrity would likely never be an issue on a modern warship, she reflected wryly.
Rustin took the bridge watch for the docking. Claire paused her sim when the ship got close to watch on the screen in CIC where Rustin's boss, Lieutenant Knutson, had duty and would be watching to keep an eye on his division officer. She was distracted from the initial calls to the station by the duty officer's selection and practice targeting of the station and the other ships in orbit. The whole ship drilled on killing things out of sheer habit. Captain Ayres would have strenuously objected to his crew running targeting solutions on allies, especially since one of the Mantie cruisers would be taking charge of Lieutenant Commander Lockhart and saving Manasseh an extra trip to Manticore, but Commander Greentree obviously felt differently.
Lieutenant Knutson paused the tracking session and turned up the speakers as Manasseh neared the station and Rustin's voice repeated the standard docking orders with no response from the station. A steady green indicator showed com channels were clear, and the duty officer's quick scroll back to the previous watch's logs showed even a voice confirmation from a few minutes before turnover to the current shift.
The duty officer's eyelids flared and he grabbed the sides of his console a moment before the ship's hull moaned with a muted grinding noise, accompanied by a long shiver. Claire hopped out of her vibrating chair and found the decks and bulkhead trembling too but not buzzing in the steady rhythm of equipment light off. The whole ship jerked with starts and stops. The duty officer flicked through screens and spoke softly to other stations through his headset. Claire spun about trying to identify what must be breaking and what watch station was utterly failing to shut down whatever machinery was in pain.
Knutson settled on a camera angle and whooped as he called several petty officers in the space to gather around a display. His targeting screen increased magnification on a streak of shiny bright metal along the station where arrays hung sideways from where the Manasseh's hull had scraped against it.
He grinned. “That's going to leave a mark.”
One of the petty officers shook his head. “I didn't hear a single response to our docking requests from the station.”
The duty officer snorted. “Oh they responded just fine before the watch turned over and Ensign Rustin took the conn for the approach. We'll hit them hard with that if they dare file a complaint. They try that silent treatment trick a lot when a woman's driving the ship and the station leaves a Masadan at their com instead of the Mantie supervisors. I hear Mantie skippers adjust their watches to have male officers do the approach here. After the last few days, though,” he shrugged, “I guess the Captain didn't feel like coddling them.”
The petty officer grinned in return and leaned over the duty officer to get a closer look at the damages to the station. “That'll teach the Masadans to listen to Momma.”
Lieutenant Knutson nodded in agreement and predicted the firing of the port officer in charge of coordinating the ship's approach using his docking arms.
A Joseph-class wasn't really built to dock without the arms. It was technically possible, the duty officer acknowledged grinning, but he hadn't heard of any other destroyer doing it outside of a sim.
Claire looked back at the damage to the station and wondered aloud about how bad the Manasseh had been hurt. No damage control alarms had sounded, so it couldn't be that bad.
With another chuckle, the duty officer called for damage reports but the gleam in his eye implied that he already knew what they'd be. The reports came in quickly; a purely cosmetic scratch ran half the length of Manasseh's hull. Low bidder station construction subcontracted with Masadan workmen was no match for Grayson battlesteel.
Back in the stateroom, Claire tried her best to explain to a mortified Cecelie Rustin that Commander Greentree had decided to make a statement. Claire hugged her roommate trying to convince her it wasn't about her at all.
Cecelie just kept muttering, “But I scratched up the ship. My first time driving and I scratched it all up.”
The Masadan station was about as dirty as one would expect from a group that felt cleaning was something that should be done for free but then mostly kept the women who might have pitched in to do it off the station. Cecelie returned to the ship just hours into her shore leave irate about food vendors refusing to sell to women. Claire shrugged it off when it happened to her, too. That happened in Burdette, from time to time. Some places just didn't want to serve women, but there were other places. Cecelie seemed to take it personally, the poor girl.
The Manasseh detached from the station without incident with Claire driving this time. Thankfully her roommate wasn't the jealous type. The docking officer was very exquisitely polite and immediately responsive. Claire wondered a bit if a less connected officer than Commander Greentree would have been able to browbeat the station commander for that incident instead of being cashiered himself for continuing to dock without appropriate communications with docking control. True the idiot who had been their docking officer for the connection had never gotten back on the com to tell the Manasseh to break off the approach, but . . . She didn't think she would have tried it, even if it was delightful to hear her orders to the arms repeated back and see them followed with precision.
The next day, the rotation gave her a glorious full day between watches, and after her sim time she used it to review the logs for the noncritical systems typically lumped together as auxiliaries.
Her scan revealed the ship's medic had missed the routine maintenance on the nanotech customizer. She flagged it reminding him to reschedule the job and get it done. Her fingers hesitated over the keyboard as she considered telling him the exact day to do the work, but sure it would irritate the generally competent spacer, she deleted the accompanying note.
Afterwards, as she hunted the logistics network for the fastest way to get the replacement parts, Claire reminded herself that equipment does not always break when it gets cleaned. It just did this time.
She tried to get an appointment with the exec through Lieutenant Loyd to apologize for the poor maintenance schedule, but her department head just rolled his eyes.
“Equipment breaks, Ensign.”
“But, Sir, that's it exactly! I should have scheduled the maintenance to plan for that so we'd be right next to a parts depot when we did it.”
“And should we avoid battles unless we are right next to depots, too?” Lieutenant Loyd rubbed a hand over his mouth hiding a smile. “It's a warship, Ensign. It's supposed to get broken from time to time. If we're running it a bit harder than a commercial liner, that's a good thing.”
He distracted her with a few suggestions on how to improve her survivable rate in the battle simulations.
Within the week, a stomach virus from station crud swept through the ship's crew.
Lieutenant Loyd called her from his bed to groaningly tell her that next time she was to micromanage the medic to within an inch of his life.
Fortunately, the parts came in quickly, and Claire fixed the nanite customizer with the medic watching nervously over her shoulder. A line of patients waited outside medical, and he hurried out to treat them as soon as the unit disgorged the first lot of medication.
The XO filled the rest of the morning with announcements for sections of the crew to report to medical for treatment.
The medic came to find her in CIC later that afternoon and Claire's stomach dropped. “Please, please tell me the customizer didn't break down again.”
“No, Ma'am. No, Ma'am.” He glanced around with a slight flush and measured the distance to the petty officers at their watch stations. Claire judged them within earshot but the medic relaxed his shoulders, perhaps deciding they were too busy to pay attention. “It's about Ensign Rustin, Ma'am.”
Claire took off her headset to listen.
“At the sick call,” he gestured towards medical, “I was asking everyone in line about the symptoms and,” he lowered his voice to a whisper drawing the attention of several nearby petty officers, “she couldn't say if they were from the crud or the woman thing.”
The tips of his ears moved from pink to red as Claire puzzled out that he meant menstruation. “Okay.” She waited for some hint of why he was telling her this.
One of the closer petty officers was in Cecelie's gunnery division, and while he remained focused on his console, Claire noticed him push one side of his headset entirely off his ear.
The medic gnawed at his lip. “But she's in pain all the time.”
“No way—a week a month, maybe a week and a half.”
“You don't understand.” He pleaded with his eyes. “She asked for me to stock menstrual nanites when she reported, and I said, ‘No.'”
Claire blinked at him. “Why would you do that?”
“Well, I didn't think they were important. My sisters never mentioned needing any special pain meds. And you didn't ask for anything when you came onboard.”
“What?” She processed the accusation, realizing that the medic was wanting her to somehow confirm or deny Rustin's medical history. “Doc, Get her the drugs.”
“Oh, um, I did, Ma'am, and I'll keep them stocked.” His ears returned to red. “Miss Lecroix, Ma'am, do you need any?”
She held back a giggle at the look of fear mingled with embarrassment in his expression. “No, I'm fine thank you.” She smiled at him.
“But why?”
Claire shook her head at him. “People are different, Doc. “
The crew took to calling Cecelie Rustin “Ensign Toughin” in response to the fast-spreading story that she regularly had all the symptoms they had just endured. The medic endured cheerful but ongoing harassment from Cecelie's division for withholding treatment from their much-liked officer, with Claire's division also joining in an unusual alliance of gunners and mechanics that left the doc promising to always maintain full stocks and to keep his maintenance perfectly on track.
Claire watched them with a suppressed smile. Her roommate was going to be fine after all; she was tougher than she looked. Claire marveled at how easily the Manasseh's spacers adapted. If only Noah were as easy to teach as the medic. The demands of shipboard life quickly distracted her from that wistful thought.
Lieutenant Loyd started teaming Claire with other officers in the sims. She by far preferred fighting from the damage control console rather than taking the hot seat on tactical control. At that engineering watch station, she filled her screens with detailed system schematics and huddled with her division, plotting out ways to keep the ship fighting. Someone else in those team drills would make the attack and defense decisions, and when their mock ship took hits, Claire would take power, air, or whatever else was needed and reroute it to keep the ship able to fight and to escape to fight again.
Her department head still insisted she study fighting the ship from tactical control, but the XO's roster gave her the damage control central slot for the next fleet exercise when they got back to Yeltsin's Star.
In the fleet reports, Ephraim was having maintenance issues again and had returned to Blackbird. Manasseh would run the war exercise with their sister ships in Blackbird simulators instead of live action, so the Ephraim could take part.
* * *
The deafening clangor of General Quarters yanked Claire up out of a deep sleep. The throbbing alarm beat on as she rolled out of her bunk and grabbed for her skinsuit. She threw herself into it, her waking brain waiting for the final notes, which would inform the crew that this was only a drill.
They didn't come.
She closed the last seal, opened the stateroom door, and ran for Engineering. Spacers crowded the passageways as everyone else who'd been off watch charged towards their duty stations in an ordered rush. She slid through the Engineer hatch, noting every face was as tense as her own, yet there was no confusion, and everyone arrived within moments. She saw a lot of concern in their eyes, but no fear—yet, at least—as she took her own station and plugged in her earbud.
“All Hands, this is the Captain.”
The voice came up quickly on all channels, and Claire felt a quick surge of relief at how normal he sounded. That relief didn't last long.
“We've just translated back into normal-space for our precision navigation drill,” Commander Greentree went on. “We're just over thirty light-minutes from Uriel, and we haven't picked up the Blackbird nav beacons. We haven't gotten any response to our FTL transmissions, either. Now, I'm probably overreacting here.” He chuckled easily. “But, the Protector would like us to take care of his ship, so we're staying at General Quarters until I know for certain what's going on. And when we find out it's all the fault of those idle layabouts at Blackbird, the first drink on-station will be on me! Carry on.”
On the command channel, Claire heard Lieutenant Loyd report the Manasseh's course set for an approach to Blackbird Alpha at full acceleration. Moments later, he announced drone launches, and her stomach clenched. Those birds were expensive; the CO would only authorize two if he wanted a look at Blackbird badly. Claire switched her display to mirror tactical control and saw her department head had countdowns for when each drone would begin reporting on Blackbird. The first sensor was set to skim past at max acceleration and even at closest approach it would stay well clear the yard complex, moons, and Uriel itself. The second would decelerate to provide detailed information but arrive nearly an hour after the first. Two of her techs switched their consoles to mirror the drone sensor operators' screens in CIC just as they had done before in drills to get early hints of where their tiger teams would be needed. Claire found and added the voice channel the two operators were using.
For just over two hours, they waited.
The operator for drone one yelped a startled curse over the com when that sensor's screen flashed red—Failure to lock onto navigational beacon: “Blackbird Alpha, Blackbird Bravo, Node 2A, Blackbird Charlie, Node 3A . . .” The screen text scrolled quickly as more beacons should have been in range, and weren't. Then that warning shifted to just the bottom quarter of the screen as a new warning appeared in yellow listing automated beacons found and recognized. The sensor operator transmitted before Claire could make sense of the gibberish from the located beacons.
“Captain, this is drone one.” The operator reported. “Blackbird orbital yards beacons have sustained major damage. Most navigational beacons not transmitting. Those still functional are reporting out of position errors. Some of them are way out of position with course momentums that make no sense. The not transmitting ones—I'm not sure there was even anything there.”
“Drone two, forty-eight minutes to sensor range.” The second operator tagged onto the end of the first spacer's initial report.
A slight pause, and then Commander Greentree answered, “Very well. Continue reporting.”
Too much darkness filled drone one's screen as the operator spent the three quarters of an hour detailing missing and misplaced pieces of the yard shown as streaking specks on his display with most of the detail coming from the automated collection.
The second drone, when it arrived, turned those pristine specks into horror. What should have been a precision clockwork of interweaving yard stations lapping the moon Blackbird roiled in a cloud of twisted alloy and fog-atomized debris tumbling in dirty orbits. Scans showed pieces escaping off towards Uriel or just away. Most was decaying, with moon impacts visible even to untrained eyes more used to repairing their own than assessing enemy combat damage.
Silence reigned for one long second. Then the operator for drone two began reporting in a flat, numb voice.
Claire let his damage descriptions flow through her right earbud and on her left flipped through the other channels. It couldn't have been an accident. The extreme destruction showed targeting of not just the shipyard facilities and military industry, but also habitat modules, navigation beacons, and the transit shuttles which might have collected survivors.
The external frequencies held a jumbled panic of emergency transponders and frantic transmissions between the civilian ships huddling around Grayson.
Manasseh's command net transformed into a mad hive of activity while Claire and her techs listened to the gory details spilling out of the speakers. This was a sneak attack with no hostiles left in the system. The yard's remains smeared the skies of Blackbird and Uriel.
With the attack more than six hours old and over before Manasseh had translated into the system, the ship had nothing to attack. If this were a battle, her engineering rating chief would send out repair teams with Claire leading the most critical ones. Manasseh didn't need that, but Blackbird Yard did.
Claire keyed in a message to Lieutenant Loyd tagged low priority. “Sir, Recommend manning shuttle one. My techs can do search and rescue.”
Her text reappeared on screen as highest priority with the lieutenant's response. “Concur. Make it happen. Take the medic.”
“Prepare the boat bay for launch.” The XO's voice hummed over the command net echoing slightly from the many speakers selected to the same channel. “Standby for immediate launch of shuttle one. Medic report to the boat bay for search and rescue.”
Claire hopped out of her chair, tearing off the earbuds. “That's us! I'm taking repair team one. Double check your oxygen, we'll be doing a lot of space walks. Bring lights and heavy-duty cutters. Chief, we need every emergency life support pack you can find. Let's go.”
* * *
Away from the Manasseh, the chaos of the disaster showed just bones of the many station segments jutting out of the misted life support gases and refrozen flowers of blasted alloys. Destruction like this would be unsurvivable on a ship. A station was no different.
The pilot shied away from screen and turned to Claire.
“There.” She jabbed a finger at the closet large piece of wreckage with an emergency beacon. “”Match rotations with that if you can. We'll use tethers from the shuttle, and see if we can find anyone. It looks big enough to have survivors.”
Her techs cycled out the airlock with life support packs flapping optimistically from their belts and clipped lines to the exterior of the shuttle. The piece of station proved to be completely depressurized. Claire directed them to cut through a wall she recognized from a station mural on the side of a popular restaurant. The diners and staff were slumped together penned by tables or against the wall that had become the floor with the acceleration the last of the nearby strikes had given this section.
The crumpled opposite side, which had once held a wide, welcoming entrance, pinched around the headwaiter's podium where the emergency transponder nestled discretely out the customers' sight. Likely installed to contact station security if the evening crowd ever got too rowdy, Claire thought as she checked the transponder. It was set to activate automatically on loss of station power to the restaurant. The manual switch had not been turned.
She keyed it on and added the brief optional text record intended to allow the business to silently notify security in the event of a robbery. “Depressurized portion of Section B2 investigated by GNS Manasseh shuttle team. No survivors found. Remains of twenty-three souls present.” That should keep them from accidentally circling back and rechecking this piece before looking at all the others.
She couldn't just turn the transponder off. The families would want the remains.
Claire motioned for the team to follow her back out to the shuttle.
The pilot saw their gray faces and didn't ask, but he told them that while they were inside B2, Manasseh's sensor techs had compiled a list of wreckage most likely to hold survivors.
The pilot laid a course to the next piece of debris.
Claire noticed it took them directly away from the part of the roiling mass that should have encapsulated Birdies in section B3. She called up a magnified view of the piece of space; it held only pulverized bits. Claire's tears blurred the carnage.
“Lecroix, This is Manasseh actual.” Commander Greentree's voice rang from the speakers. “Report status, over.”
She keyed to transmit, “Sir.” She choked once and swallowed her horror, surprised to find her voice even and clear in spite of the wetness on her cheeks. “No survivors found. En route to second search location. Request Manasseh continue to coordinate search pattern and identify possible survivor locations.”
“Well done. We'll keep sending you locations. Keep me informed. We have more shuttles and ships on their way.”
The Manasseh directed them from one chunk of wreckage to another, and they went, found the bodies, and reported back on the way to the next one. Sometimes Claire's team found recognizable corpses, but never the air that might have sustained life. She made her techs leave the dead as they lay. The shuttle didn't have room to collect them.
“We can't slow down,” Claire told the techs, clinging to the hope that there might still be someone to care how quickly they arrived. “The next one might have survivors.” She tried to banish the doubt from her voice.
It almost worked. Her team responded with a list of possibilities.
“Maybe an air pocket.”
“Somebody in a suit. Lots of EVA work happens in these yards. Got to be somebody was in his suit when it hit.”
“Yeah. Or even one of those facemask air things. Lots of people have those.”
Claire nodded at them, glad to have their support and grateful the bodies would stay in their twisted metal crypts for a while longer. All the dead had started to look like Lucy or Mary if she looked too long, even the obviously male ones.
Her team settled for making choppy recordings to mark the bodies for later retrieval, placing the masses with remains in clear orbits, and proceeding on to the next hulk. Some hours later—twelve according to the shuttle's clock—Manasseh directed them back to the ship for a relief instead of providing the next set of coordinates.
On the short return flight, Claire's senior tech on the com updated the team on the bleak news from the other search and rescue operations. Four shuttles had hailed the Manasseh as soon as the ship broke com silence. The shuttles had been traveling between sections when the attack struck and had somehow avoided being holed by hypervelocity debris in the aftermath. The shuttles also had the crew from a shipbuilding slip who had been performing their own attempted rescue operation.
In their miracle, the crew of the building slip had launched its last ship the day before and wasn't slated to start the next build for a few weeks. Those still on station had been mostly moving their things out to go to the next job. As shipbuilders, they had suits, and it was easier to wear them than carry them. Their slip took only a single hit, which breached the hull in large enough holes to prevent quick repair, but caused little real damage. None of the other slips with their half-built warships fared as well. The hyper-capable ships, from the shuttle pilots' descriptions, had been a special target of the attackers, with only the weapons production facilities receiving a higher density of fire.
That brought the survivor count to one forty-three, and gave Manasseh four more shuttles to continue the search.
The com crackled with unnecessary noise. “Hey! We got a live one out here.” That had to be the shuttle with the shipbuilders.
Claire's heart jumped and she longed to turn the shuttle around. But the builders had saved themselves once already, and the CO would send in support if they needed it.
The XO responded this time. “Understand, Mr. Cuoio. Where have you found survivors? And do you need additional support? Over.”
“Oh. Sorry. Yeah. It's on the moon. One of the bases on Blackbird's got somebody tapping out horse in the static. Uh, wait, your Navy guy says it is Morse. I don't know what it is, but somebody's alive if they are tapping and there's a whole pile of stuff getting ready to rain down on the place. Do you have any guns?”
The Navy guy, who turned out to be a senior lieutenant quickly confiscated the com to explain the situation. A large orbital wreck had obliterated an adjacent base but retained enough integrity to shield the sister base from streaming debris. A few larger bits looked to be impacting soon, and he asked for the other shuttles to be rerouted to move them into other impact paths. He did not, repeat not, believe it would be necessary for Blackbird to be fired on, again.
“Roger, Lieutenant,” the XO answered. “Shuttles on their way. Go ahead and land. We'll keep your skies clear enough to get you back off that moon.”
Claire listened to Mr. Cuoio's delight as he listed of names of the survivors as they found them. She tried to remember all the yard workers she'd known from the Ephraim to see if any might match.
A fresh crew met them in the boat bay, all wet-faced but focused. The new crew swarmed around Claire's team to check systems and take the shuttle back out with a turnaround speed that almost certainly broke regulations. Commander Greentree stood just inside the doors to the bay and said not a word to slow them.
Instead, he asked Claire if she'd like to sit down. The boat bay control room held only the chair occupied by the tech cycling shuttles in and out. Greentree's normally slight wrinkles furrowed around blank eyes. She short-circuited the death notification as much as she was able.
“I saw the debris. I know. My cousins' club was in the B3 section of the Yard. They weren't planning any vacations, not that they had the money for that. So I know Lucy and Mary have to be dead.”
Commander Greentree just closed his eyes. “I'm sorry for your loss.” He started to ask something just then just shut his mouth silently.
Claire tilted her head. “You didn't know about my cousins? Then what was . . .” Realization dawned. “The Ephraim. They were behind schedule still.”
“It was quick,” said Commander Greentree. “It had to be. The warships in dock were directly targeted.”
She nodded, tears finally beginning to come.
“Some of the crew would have to have been on leave or training,” Greentree said.
Claire just looked at him, and his mouth tightened. Most of the training facilities were in the Blackbird Yards. “Or visiting home,” he amended.
Her throat closed up on its own accord. She made her way to her stateroom where Cecelie met her with some food and murmured condolences. Only then did she realize that Jennie Ayres had probably been living on Blackbird as Captain Ayres liked her to do while the ship was in the yards. Claire fished a cream colored elegant paper invitation from the Ephraim's Wives' Club from the pile in her desk. They had rented the Blackbird Officers' Club for a special occasion ladies luncheon. Today. Claire's legs folded beneath her.
Not just Lucy and Mary were gone. Nearly every single member of the Ephraim and their wives were frozen corpses or pulverized remains waiting for a shuttle to have the time to identify the dead. Claire vomited unable to avoid thinking of the moments she had hated them. Even Lucy and Mary, had she told them she loved them? She couldn't remember and lurched over the sink again.
* * *