"Really?" Terekhov leaned back and crossed his legs.
"Really. O'Reilly was careful to keep it from coming to my ears, of course, but I've discovered that you were right when you told me how useful a captain's steward was for tapping into the grapevine. Of course, Clorinda hasn't been with me as long as Chief Agnelli's been with you, but it's remarkable how little goes on aboard ship that fails to come to her ears. And, of course, from her ears to my ears. So I knew when O'Reilly began voicing her opinion that Abigail might be less than totally qualified for her new position."
"From that gleam in your eye, I assume neither you nor Commander Tallman found it necessary to take a hand?"
"You assume correctly. As a matter of fact, it was pretty informative to see which of the other members of the wardroom stepped on her. My engineer was surprisingly effective, as a matter of fact. But what really did the trick was Abigail herself. Well, her and her people in Tactical."
"How?"
"She did it by being Abigail," Kaplan said simply. "Our last set of simulations, Tactical scored four hundred and ninety-eight out of a possible five hundred. That was the highest score in the entire ship, although she only beat out Engineering by two points. Communications, on the other hand, came in at barely three ninety-seven. I believe Alvin called Lieutenant O'Reilly in for a private conference in which he pointed out to her that her performance had been the weakest of any department and that it might behoove her to spend a bit more time drilling her personnel. And if she wanted any advice on how to do that, there were several of her fellow lieutenants who—judging by their own departments' performance—might be able to help her out. Like, oh, Lieutenant Hearns, let's say."
"Well, I bet that endeared Abigail to this O'Reilly," Terekhov observed dryly.
"Frankly, I don't think anything could 'endear' Abigail to O'Reilly," Kaplan said tartly. She looked at Terekhov steadily, and he knew she would never have voiced such a personal criticism of one of her officers to anyone else. But he wasn't "anyone else," and she continued. "She reminds me a lot of Freda MacIntyre, actually."
Terekhov managed not to grimace, but Kaplan's choice of examples conjured up a very precise image in his mind, given the rather scathing efficiency report he'd endorsed, on young Lieutenant (Junior Grade) MacIntyre of HMS Hexapuma's Engineering Department. The actual report had been written by Ginger Lewis, who hadn't pulled any punches in her assessment of MacIntyre's capabilities, and he rather doubted it had done MacIntyre's career one bit of good, even in the manpower-starved RMN.
Which is too damned bad . . . and still better than someone who treats her people like dirt deserves, he thought grimly.
But choosing MacIntyre as her example had done more than give him a feel for O'Reilly's personality without ever meeting her. It also explained why Kaplan was almost certainly right about the inevitable antipathy between her and Abigail Hearns. Abigail was constitutionally incapable of giving less than a hundred and ten percent effort, and the officers Terekhov privately thought of as "sixty percenters" could never forgive people like her for the commitment they brought to any task.
And every single one of them thinks the people they resent are getting unfair preference, he reflected. I suppose that's human nature. No one wants to admit he's being "overlooked" because he's an incompetent, lazy-assed timeserver. And now that I think about it, I'd reallyhate to be an officer like that aboard Naomi Kaplan's ship!
That last thought gave him a certain glow of pleasure, and he shook his head mentally.
Damn it, I am playing favorites, he admitted cheerfully to himself. Of course, unlike some people I've known, I try to make sure that the favorites I play deserve it. And, by God, if anyone deserves it, Abigail does! If she just manages to avoid getting herself killed in the next few years, that young lady's going to be one of the admirals who go into the history books. And when that happens, I'll be able to kick back, sniff my brandy, and say "Why, I knew her when she was only a JG, and let me tell you . . . !"
That thought gave him even more pleasure, and he reached for his wine glass once more.
"Well, Captain Kaplan," he said, "I'm sure you have the situation well in hand."
"I feel pretty sure the commodore's offering something better than this to Commander Kaplan," Helen Zilwicki said wryly as she handed Abigail Hearns a chilled bottle of beer.
"More expensive, anyway," Abigail agreed. She took the beer, ignored the stein sitting on the table between them, and drank directly from the bottle.
"Oh, if your family could only see you now!" Helen shook her head, grinning hugely.
"My family might surprise you," Abigail replied, lowering the bottle with a satisfied sigh. "Formal occasions are one thing, but Daddy's always preferred beer to wine. In fact, I sometimes think it was Lady Harrington's introduction of Old Tilman to Grayson that really got him on the side of the reformers."
"Really?" Helen laughed. "Somehow that doesn't quite fit the image most Manticorans have about steadholders."
"I know." Abigail grimaced. "It's amazing to me how many people think all Graysons have to be dour, repressed, and just plain gloomy all the time." She snorted. "I guess I'd have to go along with 'repressed' in at least some ways, I suppose. But the rest of it—!"
"I think part of it is the way your armsmen spend so much time guarding your image, not just your skins," Helen suggested.
"You're probably right."
Abigail tipped back the chair in Helen's tiny cabin. It was so small that her senior mother Helen would have described it as having "too little room to swing a cat," but given the fact that it belonged to a mere ensign, it was downright palatial for any warship.
"You're probably right," she said again, thinking about her own personal armsman, Matteo Gutierrez. Gutierrez wasn't even a Grayson by birth, yet he'd somehow soaked up through his pores that guard dog protectiveness that seemed to infuse all personal armsmen. Fortunately, his background as a Royal Manticoran Marine also gave him a reasonable perspective on just how much "protecting" a mere lieutenant serving aboard one of Her Majesty's starships could survive. Which, now that she thought about it, a Grayson-born armsman might very well have lacked.
You know, maybe Daddy put even more thought into picking Matteo as my keeper then I realized, she reflected.
"I'm glad you were able to tag along with the commander," Helen said now, and Abigail's mental antenna pricked. There was something about Helen's voice, an almost hesitant note Abigail was unaccustomed to hearing from brash Ensign Zilwicki.
"Well, I didn't have the duty tonight," she pointed out. "I don't know whether I could have gotten pinnace time on my own, but since the skipper was headed over this way anyhow . . ."
She shrugged, and Helen nodded.
"That's kind of how I figured it would work when I invited you," she acknowledged, tipping back her own chair and propping her heels on her neatly made bunk.
"Why did you invite me?" Asked the wrong way, that question could have carried all sorts of sharp edges. The way Abigail actually did ask it, it came out oddly . . . sympathetic.
"I guess I'm just feeling a little . . . lonely," Helen said, looking away for a moment. Then she looked back at Abigail. "Don't get me wrong. Most of Jimmy Boy's officers are just fine, and nobody seems to resent the fact that I'm only a lowly little ensign. But it's kind of hard, Abigail. I'm not really all that senior to Captain Carlson's snotties, but the commodore's flag lieutenant can hardly hobnob with them. In fact, there's not a single soul in this entire ship who's not astronomically senior to me that I could actually sit down and discuss what I do for the commodore with. I hadn't thought about that part of it."