“Prepare for the worst, Chief,” Roslyn told her. “I want both Lieutenants and all three of you Chiefs fully trained on the top-tier interface alongside me. People die, Chief Westcott. This ship needs to fight even if that happens.”
Westcott nodded, her face unreadable.
“I see your point, sir,” she conceded. “But…we aren’t at war anymore. Pirates can’t hurt Huntress.”
“We lost an average of two-point-three destroyers a year to hostile action prior to the war, Chief,” Roslyn reminded her subordinate. “We now know some of that was Legatus backstabbing us, but we also know that there are rogue Legatan warships turned pirate out there still, too.
“We might not be expecting to go into battle on a dreadnought’s flanks this week, but we need to be prepared to engage peer or superior combatants. You’ve heard the speech, Slavka. Do I need to echo Captain Daalman on this?”
“No,” the Chief said. “Not arguing, sir. Just…pointing out. The galaxy’s changed a lot in two years. We’re the only ones out here again.”
Roslyn concealed the shadow that passed over her at the Chief’s words. Almost every former Republic system had voted to rejoin the Protectorate. Having spent time with some of the Republic’s former leadership—as a prisoner they were trying to convert, to be fair—she had to wonder how much of that had been fear of what Mars would do.
Once, they had been the UnArcana Worlds, where the practice of magic was banned. Then they had been the Republic of Faith and Reason and had waged active war against Mars and the Protectorate.
Now, officially, those worlds were just…ordinary worlds of the Protectorate. There were no laws against magic there now—though the new Constitution of the Protectorate had removed some of the special status of Mages that the UnArcana Worlds had opposed.
“That’s what we say, at least,” she murmured. “Orders will be coming, Chief. Once Mage-Lieutenant Jordan returns, we’ll sit down and go through the entire software suite as a group and see if we can improve MarShips’s tutorials.
“Then we can test those tutorials on Mage-Lieutenant Samuels,” she concluded with a grin. “After three days laid up for soft-tissue regen, she’ll be desperate for a challenge, I think.”
Roslyn was in her office late that evening, digging through the inevitable paperwork from having been on leave for two weeks—with both of her juniors joining her for the second of those weeks.
The knock on her door was a surprise, if for no other reason than that the door had an admittance chime and people generally didn’t knock.
“Come in,” she ordered.
The door slid open to reveal the lanky form of Mage-Captain Laura Daalman grinning down at her.
“Welcome back aboard, Commander Chambers,” Daalman said, leaning against the frame of the door. “Do you plan on working all night or are you going to eat at some point?”
“Still catching up, skipper,” Roslyn replied. “Lots of work.”
“There always is. We’re in orbit of the capital of our Protectorate, under the protective envelope of an entire squadron of capital ships and more defensive fortresses than I can count,” the Mage-Captain said drily. “If there’s ever a day or a place to not worry too much about the work, this would be one.”
“I suppose so, sir,” Roslyn conceded.
“I mean, to be fair, I only just shut things down myself,” Daalman told her. “Officers’ dinner in the Captain’s mess in five minutes, Chambers. Walk with me?”
“Yes, sir,” she agreed. She took one final quick glance over the file she was reviewing—a request from Chief Atkins to swap fifty of their oldest missiles with freshly serviced weapons from Mars’s magazines—and decided it would wait for morning.
She closed down the work station, flashing the remaining files to her wrist-comp, and rose to join Daalman as the Captain chuckled at her.
“Conscientious as always, I see,” the older woman said. “Still convinced you only got the promotion from nepotism?”
“Favoritism, sir,” Roslyn conceded as she fell into step beside Daalman. “Nepotism would imply I was somehow related to Mage-Admiral Alexander.”
“A fair correction, I suppose,” Daalman replied. “I suggest you consider the math, though.”
“The math, sir?” she asked.
“You were promoted to Lieutenant at the age of nineteen, skipping direct from Cadet and missing two and a half years of your Academy training,” the Mage-Captain reminded her. “You were promoted to Lieutenant Commander after eighteen months, which is not, actually, particularly unusual.
“Adding that missing two and a half years to your age would make you, what, twenty-six?”
“Roughly, sir,” Roslyn said slowly.
“Twenty-six, Commander Chambers, is the exact median age of our Mage-Lieutenant Commanders. You see? You are hardly underage or underqualified for your position, even ignoring the Ruby Medal of Valor.”
Roslyn shook her head.
“I’m not sure most of our comrades see it that way, sir,” she admitted.
“That is because our comrades look at you and see an adorable blonde thing,” Daalman said bluntly. “With the exception of the ones who get stuck on your boobs. Thankfully, the RMN is mostly better than that.”
Daalman had a good twenty centimeters on Roslyn, giving her the main impression of lankiness, but she was built such that she’d almost certainly also encountered that problem of Roslyn’s.
“It’s easy for others to forget that you have almost three years’ more experience than your age suggests,” the Mage-Captain told her. “I try not to. You definitely shouldn’t. Understand, Lieutenant Commander?”
“I think so, sir,” Roslyn admitted. “Hopefully, it will be…less so as I get older?”
“Almost certainly,” Daalman agreed. “It helps that a lot of people got accelerated promotions when the RMN expanded for the war—and I haven’t seen anything from on high suggesting we’re going to be drawing down fleet strength anytime soon, either.”
“Any idea why, sir?” Roslyn asked. “I have to admit, I’ve wondered. As one of my Chiefs said today…we’re the only ones out here.”
They’d arrived at the door to the Captain’s mess and Daalman chuckled.
“If you have any clues from your friends on the Mountain, let me know,” the Captain instructed. “For
