"Yes, you are," the BBOD agreed. He keyed his com and spoke into it. "Chief Posner, our final snotty—" he smiled slightly at Abigail as he used the traditional slang for a midshipman "—has just come aboard. I understand that you've been awaiting her with bated breath?" He listened to something only he could hear over his unobtrusive ear bug and chuckled. "Well, I thought that was what you said. At any rate, she's here. I think you'd better come collect her." He listened again, then nodded. "Good," he said, and returned his full attention to Abigail.
"Chief Posner is Lieutenant Commander Abbott's senior noncom, Ms. Hearns," he informed her. "And since Commander Abbott is assistant tac officer, which makes him our OCTO, that means the chief is more or less in charge of our snotties. He'll see to it that you get where you need to be."
"Thank you, Sir," she repeated, and her spirits rose. She'd been even more braced against disaster than she'd realized in the wake of High Admiral Matthews' warnings, but so far things seemed to be going well.
"Wait over there by Lift Three," the lieutenant told her, and flipped a casual wave at the indicated lift shaft. "Chief Posner will be here to collect you shortly."
"Yes, Sir," Abigail said obediently and towed her locker across to the lifts.
"Welcome aboard, Ms. Hearns."
Commander Linda Watson was a short, solidly built woman with dark hair but startlingly light-colored blue eyes. Abigail guessed that the commander had to be in her late forties or early fifties, although it was sometimes hard for Abigail to estimate the ages of prolong recipients. Graysons hadn't had much practice at that yet.
Watson had a brisk, no-nonsense manner which went well with her solid, well-muscled physique, and her voice was surprisingly deep for a woman. But she also had a pronounced Sphinxian accent, and Abigail felt herself warming to the exec almost instinctively as its crispness flowed over her like an echo of Lady Harrington's accent.
"Thank you, Commander," she replied. She seemed to be thanking a lot of people today, she reflected.
"Don't let it go to your head," Watson advised her dryly. "We always welcome every snotty aboard. That's never stopped us from running them until they drop. And since there are only four of you aboard for this deployment, we'll have a lot more time to keep each of you running."
She paused, but Abigail didn't know her well enough to risk responding to her possible humor.
"All snotties are equal in the eyes of God, Ms. Hearns," Watson went on after a moment. "The reason I invited you to drop by my office before you report to Snotty Row, however, is that not all snotties really are equal, however hard we try to make them that way. And, to be perfectly honest, you present some special problems. Of course," she smiled a bit wryly, "I suppose every middy presents some special problem in his or her own way."
She folded her arms and leaned a hip back against her desk, cocking her head to one side as she contemplated Abigail.
"To be perfectly honest, I was strongly tempted to just toss you into the deep end. That's always been my rule of thumb in the past, but I've never had a foreign princess as a midshipwoman before."
She paused again, this time obviously inviting a response, and Abigail cleared her throat.
"I'm not precisely a 'foreign princess,' Ma'am," she said.
"Oh, yes, you are, Ms. Hearns," Watson disagreed. "I checked the official position of both the Foreign Office and the Navy. Your father is a head of state in his own right, despite his subordination to the Protector's overriding authority. That makes him a king, or at least a prince, and that makes you a princess."
"I suppose, technically, it does," Abigail admitted. "But that's on Grayson, Ma'am. Not in the Star Kingdom."
"That's a refreshing attitude." Watson's tone added the unspoken rider "if that's the way you really feel about it," but she continued briskly. "Unfortunately, not everyone is going to share it. So I thought I'd just take this opportunity to make certain that you didn't, in fact, expect any special treatment because of your birth. And to point out to you that you may find yourself laboring under some additional burdens if other members of the ship's company decide that getting on your good side could be a... career enhancing maneuver."
The exec was carefully not, Abigail noticed, suggesting that those "other members" might be found among her fellow middies. Nor, she realized a moment later, had Watson suggested that some of Gauntlet's more senior officers might share the same attitude, and she wondered if that was because the commander thought that some of them would.
"As long as you don't expect special treatment, and as long as we don't have anyone else trying to extend it to you anyway," Watson continued, "then I don't expect us to have any problems. Which would be a very good thing, Ms. Hearns. I realize you're actually in the Grayson Navy, not the Queen's Navy, but that makes your midshipwoman's cruise no less important to your career. I trust you fully understand that, as well?"
"Yes, Ma'am. I do."
"Good!" Watson smiled briefly, then unfolded her arms and straightened. "In that case, Chief Posner will see to it that you and your gear get safely stowed away in Snotty Row and you can report to Commander Abbott."
"... so we told the Chief that no one had told us Engineering was off-limits." Karl Aitschuler grinned and shrugged his shoulders. He sat at the table in the center of "Snotty Row's" commons area, looking, Abigail thought, remarkably like her younger brother had looked at age twelve after putting something over on one of his nannies.
"And he actually believed that?" Shobhana Korrami shook her head in disbelief.
Shobhana was the other midshipwoman assigned to Gauntlet for this deployment, and Abigail had been delighted to see her. Although she never would have admitted it to anyone, Abigail had been more than a little nervous about the RMN's normal shipboard accommodations, especially for "snotties." Each midshipman or midshipwoman had his or her own private, screened-off sleeping area, but they shared all of their other facilities.
The degree to which male and female students had been thrown together at the Academy had come as a distinct shock to a Grayson girl, especially one of noble birth. Intellectually, though, at least Abigail had known it was coming, which had helped some. Still, she very much doubted she would ever possess the easy acceptance of such proximity which seemed to be part of the cultural baggage of her Manticoran and Erewhonese classmates. And even at its most... coeducational, the Academy had offered at least a little more privacy than was going to be possible here. Having at least one other female middy along would have been an enormous relief under any circumstances, but the fact that it was Shobhana made it even more of one. Abigail and the slightly taller, blond-haired, green-eyed Korrami had become close friends during the many extra hours they'd spent together under the tutelage of Senior Chief Madison, the senior Saganami Island unarmed combat instructor.
"Of course he believed it," Karl said virtuously. "After all, who has a more honest and trustworthy face than me?"
"Oh, I don't know," Shobhana replied in thoughtful tones. "Oscar Saint-Just?" she suggested after a moment with artful innocence.
Abigail giggled, then colored as Shobhana looked up at her with a triumphant grin. Shobhana knew how much it embarrassed Abigail whenever she giggled. It wasn't something a steadholder's daughter was supposed to do. Besides, she thought it made her sound like a twelve-year-old herself.
"I'll have you know," the fourth person in the compartment said, "that Oscar Saint-Just looked much more honest and trustworthy than our Aitschuler ever did."