"Yes, Ma'am. I guess I do," he acknowledged, his expression sobering, and reached for his own coffee cup. He sipped for a moment, then lowered the cup and shrugged.

"I never had any doubts about her capability, Ma'am," he said. "Obviously, I don't know her as well as you do, but just looking through her personnel jacket, it was pretty clear she's not the kind of person who panics and runs around in circles when the shit hits the fan. And I have to agree with you, however junior she may be, she's got as much or more experience with the Mark 16 than any other officer around. But if I'm going to be honest, I did cherish a few doubts about her age. She's so damned young I expect to hear her uniform squeaking when she walks by. And, let's face it, 'good when the shit hits the fan' doesn't automatically equate to someone who's a good officer all around. I guess a part of me just questioned whether or not anyone her age could possibly have enough experience on the administrative and training side to run an entire tactical department."

"And does that question still bother you?" Kaplan asked.

"No, Ma'am. Not really." Tallman shook his head. "I'll admit, I've been keeping a closer eye on her administrative and personnel management skills than those of anyone else on board. So far, she hasn't dropped a single stitch anywhere on the paperwork side. And my spies tell me she already knows every member of her department by name, along with the world he comes from, his hometown, whether or not he's married—or romantically involved with anyone—and apparently even who his favorite sports teams are."

"So you'd give her passing marks on that side?"

"Without turning a hair," Tallman agreed.

"And when it does come to training and exercising her department?"

"To be honest, I'm more impressed with her there than I am with her ability to manage paperwork. Oh, don't give me wrong. We've got so many damned rough edges—not just in Tactical, but in every department!—that I don't even know where to start counting them. Putting together a ship's company this quickly isn't what the recruiter promised me when I let him talk me into going to Saganami Island lo those many eons ago, Ma'am! But overall, I think we've got a good bunch, and Abigail is really tearing into her own problem areas. And this idea of hers to stage a competition between the ships is going to do nothing but help out every other tac officer in the squadron, as well."

"So you don't have any serious qualms about her?"

"Ma'am, if I'd had serious qualms about her, you'd already have heard about them," he said levelly.

"Good."

Kaplan's relief was evident, and Tallman quirked one eyebrow.

"Having you in her corner takes a certain load off my mind," she explained. "Because the fact is that even though every single thing I told her about her qualifications for the job is absolutely true, it's also true that if I were inclined to play favorites, I'd be playing the game hard on her behalf. In a way, actually, I am playing that game, and I know it."

"Yes, you are," Tallman agreed. "On the other hand, you're not alone about doing that in her case. Let me see . . . there's Commodore Terekhov, Duchess Harrington, Admiral Cortez . . ."

"And don't forget High Admiral Matthews," Kaplan reminded him with a quirky smile. "While we're thinking about her patrons, I mean."

"Oh, believe me, I won't, Ma'am."

"Good. But," she leaned back in her chair, "correct me if I'm wrong, but do I detect the merest hint of resentment on the part of some of her fellow officers?"

"Not on any sort of general scale," Tallman told her. "There are some people who feel their noses have been put out of joint, but to be honest, none of them would have been in the running for the tactical officer's slot even if Abigail had never come along at all. I wouldn't worry about it too much, Ma'am. We've got some cooler heads out there helping to sit on the ones with the problem, and she's turning out to be pretty damned good at doing that sort of thing herself. I think it probably has to do with growing up as a steadholder's daughter. She had to learn the basic people-managing skills early on. And if all else fails, you can always reach for your patented five-dollar special executive officer hammer. Not that I think you're going to need it any time especially soon."

"We can hope, anyway," Kaplan said. Then she gave herself a little shake.

"Well, since you've put my mind to rest on that little problem, let's look at the next one on the list," she suggested. "I've been thinking over what Fonzarelli was saying about the forward impeller rooms, and I think he's got a point. Given how cramped the access way is thanks to the chase armament and the launchers, getting everyone to battle stations is going to be a lot bigger pain in the ass than BuShips allowed for. We need to be looking at some revised flow patterns there, I think, if we want to avoid a major bottleneck when we can least afford it. I've been pushing some numbers around on the ship's schematic, and I think if we move the route for Point Defense Two's and Four's crews up one deck, and the crews for PD One and Three down a deck, we ought—"

Chapter Thirty-Three

Albrecht Detweiler looked out across the ranked seating of the palatial auditorium as he strode towards the lectern, and his expression was sober. The auditorium wasn't really all that large, despite its luxurious furnishings and absolutely state-of-the-art communications and briefing equipment. It was also buried under the next best thing to two hundred meters of solid earth and ceramacrete, making it impervious to any known snooping system, which was not a minor consideration on a day like this. And although its maximum seating capacity was under a thousand, there were no more than eight hundred people in its comfortable seats this afternoon. It was more than big enough for that, and he felt a sense of anticipation humming through his blood as he looked out at those eight hundred.

They represented the core leadership of the entire Mesan Alignment. A handful of people were missing, among them his sons Franklin and Gervais. He missed Franklin and Gervais more than most of the others, but their absence wasn't truly critical. Franklin was in charge of the Alignment's political penetration strategies, which meant most of his attention was focused on the Solarian League, and the Sollies were really at most a secondary concern today. Gervais, on the other hand, was effectively the Alignment's foreign secretary, the Alignment's primary contact with its out-system allies, which made his absence of greater significance than Franklin's this afternoon. Still, all of those allies already understood their parts in the overall plan, even if they didn't understand precisely how all of those parts fitted together or to what true end, and everyone had known for decades that when the time finally came to pull the trigger, there might well not be time to brief all of them first.

Although I doubt any of them expected it to come at them with quite this little forewarning, he thought wryly.

He watched the rustle of surprise running through the audience as he crossed the stage, for in a very real sense, today was the first time he'd ever really stepped out of the shadows. His own and his genotype's existence had been too important a secret for him to go gallavanting around openly, which, he had to admit, had always irked him more than a little. Oh, he'd been able to spend time in public, but always anonymously, without any activity or clue which might have led the Alignment's enemies to realize he existed, and even then only after the most stringent (if unobtrusive) security arrangements had been put into place ahead of time. That was why the majority of the people sitting out there had never actually met him . . . although he'd met several of them under the cover of carefully constructed false personae, especially when a firsthand evaluation had seemed necessary. Indeed, for many of these people, his very existence—and that of his sons—had been little more than a half-believed rumor until they received the emergency summons to this meeting, and even those among them who had received messages or com calls from him had never seen his natural face or heard his undisguised voice. But they recognized him now, and an electric shock seemed to fill the air as voices murmured in astonishment.