"Yes, ma'am." Paul hesitated, turning the data cartridge in his hand. "Am I looking for anything in particular, XO?"
"Anything you don't understand, anything you can't pin down, anything that might need interpreting. Understand? If we're being sent out under orders crafted in legalese, I want to know what they might mean to someone who was seeing them for the first time. Thank you."
"Yes, ma'am." Sensing he'd been dismissed, Paul left the stateroom, pausing in the passageway to once again examine the data cartridge. She didn't say so, but the XO doesn't seem to trust these orders. What's in them that's got her worried? And if someone as good as the XO is worried, maybe I ought to be scared to death. Paul headed back to his stateroom, thankful he'd brought all his notes from the legal course.
"Sinclair!"
Paul stopped in his tracks at Commander Garcia's hail. "Yes, sir?"
"Where the hell is Lieutenant Tweed?"
I've got a feeling I'm going to get incredibly tired of hearing that question. "I don't know, sir."
"Find out. No, never mind. Get your division's training records and meet me in the Operations office."
"Yes, sir." Training records? Oh, man, I've hardly glanced at those. Paul glanced at the data cartridge. I could use this as an excuse. Tell Garcia the XO needs me to do this right away… but then Garcia might ask the XO. And doing that would set me down Jan Tweed's road right off the bat. I can't start out hiding. She didn't even start out that way, I bet. He stowed the cartridge in one pocket, pondering his next step.
"Make way." Kris Denaldo shot Paul a curious glance as he edged to the side of the passageway to let her past. "I've hardly seen you since you came aboard."
"It's been a busy few days, Kris."
"I bet. You're still trying to figure out which way is up, right? Jen told me to help keep an eye on you. Need anything?"
Paul nodded, thinking as he did so that Bull Ensign Sam Yarrow should have been the one telling other junior officers to help out the new guy. "Yes, but nothing you can help with. Garcia wants to see my division's training records."
"And…?"
"Well, I haven't even looked at those, yet."
"Oh. You ought to. It's a good way to learn your enlisted sailors' names and abilities."
Paul bit back a sarcastic reply. That's good advice, even though there's about a hundred things I ought to do within the next couple of days. "I will, but Garcia wants to see the records now, and I'm not even sure where they are."
"Then just ask… never mind."
"What?"
Kris Denaldo looked embarrassed. "I was going to say you should just ask your division officer, but that's Jan Tweed, so…"
"So I may not even be able to find her. What else can I do?"
Kris shrugged. "Get ahold of your chief."
"My chief?"
"Your senior enlisted. That's Chief Imari, right? I've heard she's a good chief, so she should be able to help you if anyone can."
Paul brightened. I've been thinking I'm alone in this job, but I do have people I can count on to at least show me the way. People like my chief, and people like some of my fellow junior officers. "Thanks, Kris. That's great advice."
She was already moving away from him, continuing on down the passageway. "No problem. Gotta run. See you around."
Locating Chief Imari didn't prove to be hard, as she was in the Combat Information Center working at one of the terminals.
"Divisional training records? No problem, Mr. Sinclair." Imari tapped in a couple of commands, popped out a data cartridge, then stood. "Let's go."
"Uh, Chief, Commander Garcia said he wanted to see me."
"Did he say he didn't want to see me, too?"
"No."
"Then let's go, sir."
When they reached the nearby Operations office, Commander Garcia glanced from Sinclair to Imari with a sour expression, snatched the proffered cartridge from Imari's hand, then scanned the data rapidly. "Sinclair, has Seaman Frost completed all the requirements for damage control training?"
Out of the corner of his eye, Paul saw Chief Imari incline her head in a surreptitious nod. "Yes, sir."
"Hmmm. What about Petty Officer Kaji? Is she done with her Passive Tracking qualifications?"
This time Chief Imari twitched her head ever-so-slightly to one side and back. "No, sir."
"She should have finished that training by now. Will she have it done by the time we return to the station?"
Another nod. "Yes, sir."
"Hmmm." Commander Garcia swiveled to view Chief Imari and Paul squarely. "These look okay. Keep on it, Sinclair."
"Yes, sir."
"Did you need something, Chief?"
"No, sir. As the Divisional Training assistant, I figured I should accompany Mr. Sinclair."
Garcia looked from Imari to Sinclair, then pulled out the data cartridge and pointedly returned it to Paul before pivoting back to face his terminal. "That's all."
Paul nodded to the back of Garcia's head and followed Imari out and back to CIC. "Chief, you saved my butt in there."
"No, sir. I did my job, part of which is to help young naval officers through their learning process."
Paul grinned. "Thanks. But I ought to take over maintaining these training records. I'm being paid to do it, after all."
"Mr. Sinclair, how many jobs do you have right now?"
"Ummm, five."
"Yes, sir. So if I handle part of one of them, you got to figure the Navy is still getting its money's worth, right?"
"That's true, but-"
"But, nothing, sir. I'm the Division's Training assistant. That's official. There ain't anything wrong with me keeping these records up."
"Commander Garcia told me to do it."
"Yes, sir. And good officers don't try to handle every task they're responsible for themselves, do they? They delegate them." Imari reached and took the data cartridge from Paul. "Just like you're delegating this particular job to me. With all due respect, sir, you probably don't have the time to maintain these records right."
"Chief, I can't argue with that. But I do want to go over those records with you and be familiar with them."
"That's good, sir. Want to do it now?"
"Yes, I-" Paul stopped, remember the data cartridge he'd received from Commander Herdez. "I want to, Chief, but there's something the XO told me take a look at."
"The XO?" Chief Imari looked slightly disconcerted. "She's giving you tasking directly?"
"No, chief, not like that." If the Executive Officer had been directly giving Paul orders on what to do within his division officer's job, instead of routing such instructions through Commander Garcia, it would have been a gross breach of the chain-of-command and poor leadership as well. "It's something to do with my collateral duty as ship's legal officer."
"Oh." Imari didn't try to hide her relief. "That's okay, sir. You take care of the XO's stuff and we'll get together on the training records later."
"Thanks again, Chief. Hey, is Kaji going to get those passive tracking quals done?"
"Yes, sir. We had a little conversation about that and I think she's real motivated now."
Paul kept a straight face with some effort. "Sounds good. Later, chief."
Since his ensign locker was both empty and likely to be the best place for any degree of privacy, Paul loaded the XO's data cartridge into the terminal at his desk and began carefully picking his way through the convoluted official wording. The early sections were essentially boilerplate, standard wording with slight modifications to fit the exact circumstances of the Michaelson 's upcoming patrol.
Then he reached the section on operating instructions, and began bogging down. 'USS Michaelson is to conduct a thorough patrol of the U.S. space sovereignty zone, ensuring through her actions that all violations are countered in such a fashion that US sovereignty is unchallenged.' What does that mean exactly? A challenge to sovereignty can be as subtle as somebody sticking their toe into our claimed area of space. But these orders say we have to counter every violation. If the captain lets a single incident go unchallenged, we wouldn't be carrying out our orders. But 'countered in such a fashion that US sovereignty is unchallenged' implies that we've got to really got to hammer anyone trying anything. Or does it? The lawyers who taught me this legal stuff could have taken a phrase like that and made it mean anything.