The Service of the Sword

ideas.'

'Her training file suggested that could be an ongoing problem area,' Abbott said with a shrug. 'It seemed like a good idea to get her back up on the horse with someone outside her Academy classes, and the Lieutenant is pretty sensitive and flexible . . . for a Marine.'

'Well, Sir, I think he's gotten her out of whatever her shell was,' the petty officer agreed with another chuckle. Then he grimaced slightly. 'But now that we're more or less on top of that one, have you had any more thoughts about our Mr. Grigovakis?'

It was Abbott's turn to grimace. A good OCTO aboard any warship was half teacher, half taskmaster, half mentor, and half disciplinarian for the midshipmen committed to his care. Which came to quite a few halves. He doubted that any midshipman ever really appreciated the fact that an officer candidate training officer who did his job properly wound up running almost as hard and as fast as his snotties did. Which was one reason a smart OCTO depended heavily on his senior noncommissioned assistant when it came to managing his charges.

'I wish I knew,' the lieutenant commander admitted after a moment.

'If I had my druthers,' Posner said a bit sourly, 'I'd arrange for him to spar with Ms. Hearns, Sir. I realize he's a pain in the ass to everyone, but he seems to have a special problem with Graysons. And nasty as he's been to her when he thinks no one's looking, she might just take the opportunity to trim him down to size. Painfully.'

'Don't tempt me, Senior Chief!' Abbott chuckled. 'It would be sort of fun, though, wouldn't it?' he went on wistfully after a moment. 'I'll bet we could sell tickets.'

'Sir, I don't believe you could get anyone to bet against you on that one.'

'Probably not,' Abbott conceded. 'But we do have to figure out some way to show him the error of his ways.'

'Could always call him in for a counseling session, Sir,' Posner pointed out.

'I could. And I guess if it keeps up, I may have to. But I'd really rather find a way for him to figure it out for himself. I can always hammer him for it, but if he only acts like a human being because someone orders him to, it's not going to stick.' Abbott shook his head.

'Sir, I agree that it's better to show a snotty the error of his ways than to just lecture him about it. But with all due respect, Mr. Grigovakis has the makings of a genuine pain in the ass as an ensign if someone doesn't straighten him out pretty quick.'

'I know. I know.' Abbott sighed. 'But at least it looks like he's the only problem child we still have. And however . . . unpleasant a personality he may have, at least he's got the makings of a competent pain-in-the-ass ensign.'

'If you say so, Sir,' Posner said, with that edge of respectful doubt which was the privilege of the Navy's senior noncoms.

Abbott gazed at him out of the corner of one eye and wondered what the senior chief's opinion of Gauntlet's commanding officer might be. It was a question the lieutenant commander could never ask, of course, much as he might like to. And to be fair, which Abbott sometimes found it difficult to be in Captain Oversteegen's case, the CO didn't seem to take malicious enjoyment in deliberately planting barbed comments under the skins of others the way Grigovakis did. And he never used his rank to snipe at someone junior who couldn't respond in kind, either, the way Grigovakis did with the ratings of Gauntlet's crew when he thought no one was looking. Oversteegen could be equally infuriating, in Abbott's opinion, but he didn't appear to do it on purpose. In fact, if it just hadn't been for that incredibly irritating accent of his—and the way family patronage had obviously enhanced his career—even Abbott wouldn't have had any real problems with the captain.

Probably.

'Well, keep thinking about it,' he told Posner after a moment. 'If you can come up with something, let me know. In the meantime, we've got some non-snotty business to take care of.'

He turned back to his desk terminal and punched up a document.

'Commander Blumenthal says the Captain wants a live-fire exercise for the broadside energy mounts this afternoon,' he continued. Posner's eyes brightened, and the ATO smiled. 'In fact, the commander says the Captain has signed off on expending a few decoy drones as live targets.'

'Well, hot damn,' Posner said. 'Full-power shots, Sir?'

'Eventually,' Abbott told him. 'We want to get as much use out of them as we can before we expend them, though. So we'll go with the mount laser designators for the first couple of passes. We'll score hits regularly for evaluation on the lasers. But then,' he continued with a grin, 'we'll toss out the decoys on an evasion pattern and give each mount a single full-power shot under local control. Sort of a pass-fail exam, you might say.'

He looked up from the outline of the exercise plan, and he and Posner smiled broadly at one another.

The graser mount compartment was crowded. It always was at action stations, even without the need to pack an extra body into the available space.

At least the designers had made some provision for the necessity, however, which meant that Abigail had a place to sit. It wasn't much of one, squeezed in between the mount captain's station and the tracking rating's. In fact, she just barely fitted into it, and she suspected that it had been designed specifically as a convenient niche for midshipwomen, since she doubted anyone much larger than that could have been crammed into the available space.

The good news was that Chief Vassari, Graser Thirty-Eight's mount captain, was a good sort. He didn't have that air of exaggerated patience some long-service noncoms seemed to assume naturally around any mere snotty. About the only positive thing Abigail could say about that particular attitude was that at least it beat the deliberate testing some enlisted and noncommissioned personnel indulged in. She was willing to admit that testing had its place—after all, she thought with a small, secret smile, she was a Grayson—but that didn't mean it was an enjoyable experience.

Chief Vassari fell into neither category. He was simply an all-around competent person who appeared to assume that someone could do her job until she proved differently. Which naturally made it even more important than usual to prove that she could.

Some of Abigail's classmates had always hated weapons drill, at least on the energy mounts. She understood intellectually that some people had an emotional objection to being sealed into a tiny, armored compartment while its atmosphere—and the atmosphere of its surrounding spaces—was evacuated. On an emotional level, though, she'd always thought that was a silly attitude. After all, a starship was nothing but a hollow space filled with air surrounded by an effective infinity of nothingness. If you were going to have trouble with spending time suited up in vacuum, then you should have made another career choice. On the other hand, she supposed it could be a simple case of claustrophobia. There really wasn't very much space in here, and it wasn't unusual for a weapons crew to spend hours at a time strapped into place, living on their suit umbilicals. All so that there would be a live, human presence on the mount if combat damage should suddenly cut it off from Tactical's central computers.

Of course, today's exercise assumed that every single energy mount in the starboard broadside had been thrown back into local control. Abigail couldn't imagine what sort of damage could have cut all of the broadside's weapons off from central control without destroying the ship outright, but that was hardly the point. The object was to train each individual crew for the unlikely day on which it might be the single lucky mount that was cut off.

Unfortunately, Graser Thirty-Eight was the last energy weapon in the starboard broadside, which meant that Abigail, Chief Vassari, and their people had been sitting here for what seemed like forever with nothing to do but watch other people miss the target.

'Stand by, Thirty-Six,' Commander Blumenthal said over the com.

'Thirty-Six standing by,' a cultured voice responded, and Abigail grimaced. Commander Blumenthal and Lieutenant Commander Abbott had decided to add an additional wrinkle to this afternoon's exercise and announced that each of Gauntlet's four middies would be acting as the captain of the energy mount to which he or she was assigned. The announcement had not been greeted with universal joy by the crews of the