"Of course." Lunzie was as glad to take a break from their intense conversation. She followed Sassinak out into the passage that led nearly the length of Main Deck.
"It's so different," Lunzie said, as Sass led her down the aft ladder to Troop Deck. She wondered why the walls - bulkheads, she reminded herself - were green here, and gray above.
"Different?"
"I hadn't had time to mention it, but when we were rescued from Ambrosia that time, the Fleet cruiser that came was this one. The Zaid-Dayan. I never saw the captain, but it was a woman. That's why I used the name in the cover I gave Varian and the others back on Ireta. It was a deja-vu situation, you and this ship…"
Sassinak grunted. "Couldn't have been this ship. Wasn't the Ambrosia rescue before Ireta and your cold-sleep? Forty years or so back? That must have been the '43 version… that ship was lost in combat the year I graduated from the Academy." She nodded to the squad of marines that had flattened themselves along the bulkhead to let her by, and waited for Lunzie to catch up.
Lunzie felt cold all over. Another reminder that she had not grown naturally older, when she would know things, but had simply skipped decades. "Are you sure? When I heard this was the Zaid-Dayan, with a woman captain, I thought maybe…"
Sassinak shook her head. "I'm not that much older than you. No - the Ambrosia rescue - we were taught that battle, in TacSim II. That was Graciela Vinish-Martinez, her first command and a new ship. She caught hell from a Board of Inquiry at first, bringing it back needing repairs like that, but someone on Ambrosia, some scout captain or something…"
"Zebara," said Lunzie, hardly breathing.
"Whoever it was wrote a report that got the Board off her neck. I thought of that when I had to go before a Board. I saw her." Sassinak's expression was strange, almost bemused. She punched a button on the bulkhead, and a hatch slid open: a lift. They entered, and Sassinak pushed another button inside before she said more. Lunzie waited. "She gave us - the female cadets - a lecture on command presence for women officers. We all thought that was a stupid topic. We were muttering about it, going in; the room was empty except for this little old lady in the corner, looked like the kind of retirement-age warrant officers that swarmed all around the Academy, doing various jobs no one ever explained. I hardly glanced at her. She had an old-fashioned clipboard and a marker. We sat down, wondering how late Admiral Vinish-Martinez was going to be. We knew better than to chatter, but I have to admit there was a lot of quiet murmuring going on, and some of it was mine." Sassinak grinned reminiscently. "Then this little old lady gets up. Nobody saw that; we figured she was taking roll. Walks around to the front, and we thought maybe she was going to tell us the Admiral was late or not coming. And then - I swear, Lunzie, not one of us saw her stars until she wanted us to, when she changed right there in front of us without moving a muscle. Didn't say a word. Didn't have to. We were out of our seats and saluting before we realized what had happened."
"And then?" Lunzie couldn't help asking; she was fascinated.
"And then she gave us a big bright smile, and said 'That, ladies, was a demonstration of command presence.' And then she walked out, while we were still breathless."
"Mullah!"
"Right. The whole lecture in one demonstration. We never forgot that one, I can tell you, and we spent hours trying it on each other to see if we'd learned anything yet. She said it alclass="underline" it's not your size or your looks or your strength or how loud you can yell - it's something else, inside, and if you don't have that, no amount of size, strength, beauty, or bellowing will do instead." The lift opened onto a tiny space surrounded by differently colored pipes that gurgled and hissed. A Sign said "ENVIRONMENTAL LEVEL ONE."
"Adept Discipline?" asked Lunzie, curious to know what Sass thought.
"Maybe. For some. You know we have basic classes in it in Fleet. But there has to be a certain potential or something has to happen later. Certainly the element of focus is the same…" Sassinak's voice trailed away; her brow furrowed.
"You have it," said Lunzie. She had seen the crew's response to Sassinak, and felt her own - an almost automatic respect and desire to please her.
"Oh… well, yes. Some, at least; I can put the fear of reality into wild young ensigns. But not like that." She laughed, putting the memory aside. "For years I wanted to do that… to be that…"
"Was she your childhood idol, then? Were you dreaming about Fleet even before you were captured?" Was that what had kept her sane?
"Oh, no. I wanted to be Carin Coldae." Lunzie must have looked as blank as she felt, for Sassinak said, "I'm sorry - I didn't realize. Forty-three years - she must not have been a vid star when you were last - I mean…"
"Don't worry." Another example of what she'd missed. She hadn't been one to follow the popularity of vid stars at any time, but the way Sassinak had said the name, Coldae must have been a household word.
"Just an adventure star," Sassinak was explaining. "Had fan clubs, posters, all that. My best friend and I dreamed of having adventures all over the galaxy, men at our feet…"
"Well, you seem to have made it," said Lunzie dryly. "Or so your crew let me know."
Sassinak actually blushed; the effect was startling. "It's not much like the daydreams, though. Carin never got a scratch on her, only a few artistically placed streaks of soot. Sometimes that soot was all she had on, but mostly it was silver or gold snugsuits, open halfway down her perfect front. She could toss twenty pirates over her head with one hand, gun down another ten villains with the other, and belt out her themesong without missing a beat. When I was a child, it never dawned on me that someone supposedly being starved and beaten in a thorium mine shouldn't have all those luscious curves. Or that climbing naked up a volcanic cliff does bad things to long scarlet fingernails."
"Mmm. Is she still popular?"
"Not so much. Re-runs will go on forever, at least the classics like Dark of the Moon and The Iron Chain. She's doing straight dramas now, and politics." Sassinak grimaced, remembering Dupaynil's revelations about her former idol. "I've been told she's behind some subversive groups, has been for years." Then she sighed, and said, "And I dragged you through Troop Deck without showing you much… well. This is Environmental, that keeps us alive."
"I saw the sign," said Lunzie. She could hear the distant rhythmic throbbing of pumps. Sassinak patted a plump beige pipe with surprising affection.
"This was my first assignment out of the Academy. Installing a new environmental system on a cruiser."
"I thought you'd have specialists -"
"We do. But officers in the command track have to be generalists. In theory, a captain should know every pipe and wire, every chip in every computer, every bit of equipment and scrap of supplies.,. where it is, how it works, who should be taking care of it. So we all start in one of the main ships' specialties and rotate through them in our first two tours."
"Do you know?" She couldn't, Lunzie was sure, but did she know she didn't know, or did she think she did?
"Not all of them, not quite. But more than I did. This one," and she patted it again, "this one carries carbon dioxide to the buffer tanks; the oxygen pipes, like all the flammables, are red. And no, you won't see them in this compartment, because some idiot coming off the lift could have a flame, or the lift could spark. Since you're a doctor, I thought you'd like to see some of this…"