The outer office gradually emptied, as offices do when they begin to wind down for the day. The yard liaison had gone at seventeen hundred; two of Grant’s people had come and gone twice with the same question, phrased differently, and around eighteen hundred the corridor beyond the main doors finally stopped producing anybody at all.
Florrick had his jacket collar open by one clasp, which was as close to off duty as he had allowed himself to get, and was working steadily down that list with the particular grimness of an aide who had discovered that a successful meeting generates considerably more work than an unsuccessful one.
Corin, at the other desk, had not opened her collar and did not look tired at all. “Fourteen commanding officers,” she said, to nobody in particular.
“Ma’am?”
“This morning. Fourteen commanding officers and fourteen first officers, and I sat at the end of that table and built a chart.” She did not look up from her terminal. “Not of the ships. Of the people. Who has served with whom, and where, and for how long.”
Florrick waited.
“It is not a short chart, Scott. That is my observation.” Corin folded her hands.
“Captain Niro served with the Admiral and Fleet Captain Keating aboard the Audacious, which I knew. Captain Niro and Fleet Captain Corbin then served with the Admiral aboard the Trinity, which I also knew. Fleet Captains Keating and Cambil taught competing cadet squads at the Academy. Captain Mercer is married to Fleet Captain Keating. The Odyssey’s chief engineer is Captain Niro’s sister.” She paused. “That is before I reach the Astraeus.”
“The cadet unit.”
“The cadet unit.” Corin turned in her chair to face him properly. “Which contains the Admiral’s son. And the son of the captain and first officer of the Whirlwind, who is engaged to the Admiral’s son. And it also holds the niece and a nephew of the officer commanding the Astraeus herself, whose sister, as I have just mentioned, runs the flagship’s engine room.” She let that sit. “Ten cadets, Mister Florrick. Seven of them belong to somebody in this flotilla’s command structure.”
“That’s not unusual in a long-serving formation, ma’am.”
“It is not unusual, no. It is also not nothing.” She said it without any particular heat. “Every one of those relationships is an asset until the morning it isn’t. People who have served together trust one another faster, which is exactly what the Admiral wants and exactly why he spent ages collecting them. And on the day something goes wrong out there, the chain of command on this flotilla is also going to be a family tree, and somebody is going to have to be standing far enough outside it to notice.”
“And that’s you?”
“That is me, yes. Along with Captain Mercer, who said as much in that office yesterday and was entirely right to.” Corin returned to her terminal. “It also, in a small way, involves you.”
Florrick thought about that and had got about halfway through when she spoke again, in precisely the same tone.
“Which brings me to a matter I should like to raise once and then never raise again.”
Something in the back of his neck went cold. “I’m sorry, chief?”
“I have spent a good deal of the last few days reading.” Corin’s eyes stayed on her screen. “Service records. Duty logs. Transfer requests and the reasons given for them, which are often more interesting than the requests themselves. One builds a picture.”
“Chief Corin.”
“Cadet Jordan Duncan-Court,” said Corin.
Florrick said nothing at all. Instead, he tried to block out the memories of him and Jordan. The happy memories. The sad ones. The heartbreaking ones.
“While he and Cadet Alfie McCallister-Reyas were separated. Briefly, by all accounts, and privately, by rather more accounts than you would probably like, something happened between you two.” She finally looked up. “I am not going to ask you about it, and I am not going to repeat it to anybody, including the Admiral, who I should think has worked it out for himself and had the good manners to say nothing.”
“He knows,” said Florrick. His voice had gone somewhere small. “He told me he knew, weeks ago. He said something about an awkward history and then moved on.”
“Yes, that sounds like him.” Corin nodded slowly. “Then I shall be equally brief about it. You were a cadet and on a ship a long way from home, and so was he, and I have four lifetimes’ worth of opinions about what people do in those circumstances and not one of them is harsh.”
Florrick let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.
“However.”
“Ma’am.”
“Cadet Hart.” Corin turned fully in her chair, and whatever had been dry in her face was gone. “You have chosen extremely well, Mister Florrick, and I say that as somebody who has known that boy since he was eleven years old and spent half his childhood sitting in my office because his father’s was not a pleasant place to be.”
“I know. He talks a lot about you since we met you on Grazer.”
“He talks about me a great deal less than he ought to, but that is his father’s doing and not his.” She let that go. “You have chosen well. He is kind, which is not a common thing in that family, and he is a good deal tougher than he looks, which is. And if you are ever careless with him, Ensign, I would like you to understand that you will not be dealing with his father, or with the Admiral, or with anybody else who outranks you.”
“Ma’am?”
“You will be dealing with me,” said Corin.
The lamps hummed quietly.
“I won’t be careless with him,” Florrick said. “I promise you that.” To his surprise, he found himself wanting to say the rest. “What I’ve got with Parker isn’t what I had before with Jordan. It isn’t the same kind of thing at all. It’s more serious than that, and I’d like it to go on being more serious than that for a very long time.”
“I’m extremely glad to hear it,” said Corin.
“What happened between me and Jordan was a fling, a really stupid fling and one I have promised not to repeat. I’m good friends with Alfie and Jordan now, and I want to keep it that way. They mean the world to me, and I know Parker feels the same.”
“I hope so, Ensign,” said Captain Reyas from the doorway. “Because I’m fairly sure Alfie would prefer to marry only Jordan, unless the four of you are planning something rather more adventurous for the ceremony.”
Florrick went crimson from the collar up the moment he heard the captain’s voice. “Captain, I- that’s not, ma’am, I promise you that isn’t…”
“Oh, forgive me. That was unkind, and I enjoyed it far too much.” Reyas came in properly, out of her uniform jacket, hair down, carrying nothing at all, which, for her, meant the working day was over, whatever anyone else thought. She stopped at the corner of his desk. “I am teasing you, Scott, and I shouldn’t be. For what it’s worth, I’m very pleased you’re here. James talks about you in a way he does not talk about many ensigns, and he is not an easy man to be useful to.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“And nobody on this staff will be making any further observations about your private life. You’re more than that, Ensign Florrick, and nobody has the right to make you feel or think otherwise,” She said it to Florrick, and then, without changing her expression in the slightest, she looked across at Corin for perhaps a second and a half. “Nobody at all.”
“No, Captain,” said Corin, with the serene agreement of a woman who had received a message, understood it precisely, and intended to comply with it from this moment forward rather than retroactively.
“Good.” Reyas straightened. “Chief. Is he in?”
“He is, Captain.”
“Still working?”
“Still standing at the window, which in my limited experience is the same thing.”
“It is exactly the same thing,” confirmed Reyas, and went through.
The door closed behind her.
Florrick waited until it had, and then said, “May I ask you something?”
“You may ask me anything until roughly twenty-one hundred, after which I become significantly less helpful.”
“Captain Reyas walked straight in.” He turned his chair. “This morning you turned away a fleet captain. You turned away two. Fleet Captain Corbin asked for ten minutes, and you gave him a slot at eleven hundred tomorrow; he left quite happy, and I still don’t understand how you did that. And then the Captain of this ship arrives past nineteen hundred, and you simply nod her through.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Corin considered the question long enough to know she was giving him a real answer, not a quick one.
“Because every yeoman learns this in the first month, and the ones who don’t learn it do not last,” she said. “You can filter an admiral from his captains. You can filter them from Starfleet Command, from their own staff, from the yardmaster, and from absolutely anybody with a grievance and a PADD. Those are all part of the job, and most of them will thank you for it eventually.”
“But not the spouse.”
“Never the spouse.” She said it flatly. “Love complicates Starfleet service. It always has. People serve farther from home and longer than is reasonable, and the ones who manage it are usually the ones managing it for someone. If you put yourself between the officer and the person they married, you are not protecting their time, Scott. You are removing the one thing holding him together, and you will be doing it for the sake of a schedule.”
“So the door stays open.”
“The door stays open. For her, and for his children, and for nobody else without an appointment.” She gave a very small pause. “There is also the entirely practical matter that Captain Reyas commands this ship and could have us both reassigned to a weather station, but I prefer the first reason.”
Florrick laughed. “Noted, ma’am.”
“Mm.” Corin studied him for a moment across the two desks. “One more thing, and then we shall get on.”
“Ma’am.”
“As Captain Reyas said, you are not defined by what you did when you were a cadet, and you are certainly not defined by who you did it with.” Her voice did not soften, which somehow made it land harder. “There will be people on this flotilla who know, because there always are, and one or two of them will think it is worth mentioning at the wrong moment. Let them and ignore them. Then go on being the best admiral’s aide this fleet has seen in twenty years, which is what you are plainly intending to be, and in six months nobody will remember that there was ever anything else to say about you.”
Florrick was quiet for a moment as he considered her words carefully. It was solid advice, and he knew he would follow it. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Also,” said Corin, turning back to her terminal, “you do know that you technically outrank me.”
“I know.”
“You might occasionally remember it, especially when you keep calling me, ma’am.”
“I’d rather not, ma’am.” He said it simply. “You’ve been doing this since before I was born. I’ve been doing it for a few weeks now, and I’ve already made four mistakes I know about and probably a dozen I don’t. If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to treat you as my unofficial mentor and carry on calling you ma’am, and we can both pretend the pips have nothing to do with it.”
Corin smiled. It wasn’t a large smile, and it didn’t last long, but it was unmistakably there. “That is acceptable,” she said. “Right. The teaching programme.”
“Fleet Captain Keating’s three evenings.”
“Fleet Captain Keating’s three evenings, which she proposed in a single sentence yesterday afternoon and which have so far cost me a day and a half.” Corin brought the schedule up on her terminal. “Fourteen ships, Mister Florrick. Four different watch rotations between them, because the Leto keeps Andorian hours and the Hypatia keeps whatever Captain Rovak has concluded is rational. If I book this conference room for nineteen hundred, I shall receive officers from nine crews who have been on duty since dawn, officers from two who were asleep an hour ago, and Commander Knelzi, who will attend regardless and will have read everything twice.”
“Run it twice?”
“Run it twice, which doubles the burden on the people teaching it, every one of whom has a ship to command.” She made a note as she said it. “So yes. Twice, with the pairs staggered, and Fleet Captain Corbin attending both, because he volunteered in front of a flag officer and has not yet worked out what that costs a man.”
“He’ll work it out by the second week.”
“He will work it out on Thursday, and he will come anyway, which is rather the point of him.” Corin moved down the list. “Next. Captain Thran has now asked twice which squadron the Leto sits in. I cannot tell him, because nobody has decided.”
“The Admiral’s working on final flotilla formations tomorrow morning with Fleet Captains Cambil and Keating.”
“The Admiral has been working on it for several days. I mention that without criticism.” She said it entirely without criticism. “Fourteen hulls into three squadrons is a question about people and not about tonnage, and he knows it, which is why he keeps picking it up and setting it down again. But Captain Thran has a first officer who builds contingencies for a living, and every day that question goes unanswered is a day Commander Teran spends preparing for three different futures.”
“I’ll flag it for the morning.”
“Flag it for the morning. And Commander Teran’s note on leave rotation arrived at twenty-two hundred the night he promised it, runs to nine pages, and is better than the policy it replaces, which I have told nobody except you.”
“Does the Admiral know?”
“The Admiral knows. The Admiral has read it twice and said something to me about the man that I shall not repeat in case it gets back to him and goes to his head.” Corin paused. “Which leaves the transcripts.”
Florrick had been waiting for that one.
“They won’t work, ma’am.”
Corin looked up.
“Go on.”
“Everyone above lieutenant gets a seat in the room. Everyone below gets a transcript circulated afterwards.” He had thought about this on and off since yesterday, and found that it came out whole. “I was an ensign out there, ma’am, on the Orion. And the thing nobody tells you is that a transcript gives you the answers and takes away the questions. You read seven pages of two captains disagreeing about Kazon posturing, and you come away knowing what they concluded. You don’t come away knowing that they were frightened, or what of, and that’s the part that would actually have helped me.”
“And what would have helped you?”
“Being in the room when they said it.” He shrugged slightly. “I’d hold back seats. Not many. Six a session, rotating across all fourteen ships, below lieutenant only, and the ships put forward whoever they think needs it rather than whoever’s senior. It costs us six chairs, and it means that in five years’ time there are a number of officers in this flotilla who heard it first-hand instead of reading it.”
Corin considered him for a moment across the two desks. “Write that down,” she said. “Exactly as you have just said it, including the part about the questions. Then give it to Fleet Captain Keating yourself, tomorrow, in person, and do not route it through me.”
“Ma’am?”
“It is a good idea, and it is yours, Scott, and if it arrives on her desk by way of mine, she will assume it is mine.” Corin turned back to her terminal. “I have a great many things to be getting on with, and I do not need the credit for your work as well.”
Florrick sat for a second longer than he needed to. Then he opened a new file and started writing it down.
The office lights had gone down to evening settings, which meant the room was mostly window.
James stood where he had been standing for the better part of twenty minutes, hands behind his back, looking out at the yards. Avalon never properly slept; the work lights ran in long chains away into the dark, and the tenders crawled between the slips on their own slow schedules, and down below and to the left a crew was still working along the Odyssey’s dorsal spine with their suit lamps throwing small moving circles against the hull.
Beyond it all, in the furthest slip, the Noble-class he had seen a few days ago remained sat on her scaffold, her frame still open to vacuum, and someone down there was laying her keel plates one at a time in the cold.
He heard the door and didn’t turn around.
“Are you coming home for dinner?” said Karyn.
“I am.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Few more things first.”
“Mm. You said that at seventeen hundred.”
“I did, and I meant it then as well.” He turned back to the window as she crossed the room. “It went well this morning. All of them in one room.”
“It went extremely well. I watched Rovak look almost satisfied, which I understand from Knelzi is as good as a standing ovation.” Karyn came up behind him and put her arms around his waist, and rested her forehead between his shoulder blades. “You did a good thing, James. Those are fourteen very different ships, and this morning they sounded like one formation.”
“They sounded like fourteen ships being polite to each other.”
“Yes. That’s how it starts.”
They stood there for a while, the pair of them, watching the yards work.
“Alfie sent me a message earlier,” Karyn said eventually, and he could hear that she was smiling. “This evening, while you were being important with the yardmaster. They’ve settled in aboard the Astraeus. All the cadets, bags unpacked, first watch rotation posted.”
“And?”
“And he cannot get over the fact that somehow he is sharing quarters with Jordan.” Her laugh came out as she leaned against his back. “He said it twice. Talking about how comfortable their new king-size bed was and how much privacy they have compared to what they had on the Astra. Then he spent four minutes explaining that Jordan doesn’t understand how storage lockers work and that a jacket, which was always on the floor by Jordan’s bunk on the Astra, has mysteriously appeared on the floor. Our son went on to say that he has decided not to say anything about it because he is being mature and needs to accept he can’t change everything about his fiancé.”
“He’s being mature?”
“That is what he said. Then he said it again, slightly louder.”
James shook his head slowly. “He asked that lad to marry him in December. It has taken until now for him to find out what he actually asked for.”
“That’s unkind.”
“It’s completely accurate.”
“It’s unkind and completely accurate,” Karyn said, “which is why you’ve always liked Jordan and why he is good for our son.”
The chime sounded from the door on the right, which almost nobody used.
“Come in,” James replied.
Keating came through from her office, a PADD in one hand and her jacket already over her arm. “Good evening, Karyn, good evening, sir.”
“Good evening, Lex,” said Karyn, not letting go of James.
“I’m not stopping. This is yours.” Keating crossed his arms and held out the PADD, and James had to pull one hand from his wife’s to take it. “Notes for the meeting with the senior yardmaster in the morning. Mostly his own figures from the last three weeks arranged in the order he gave them to us, along with my own thoughts and notes on the side.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It is somewhat ominous, yes.”
“I’ll read it after dinner.” He turned the PADD over once. “Anything else?”
“No, sir.”
“Then I’ll see you at breakfast. You, me and Bexa, oh seven hundred.”
Karyn made a sound of profound and theatrical injury.
“Oh-seven hundred. With your deputy commander and your chief of staff.” She let go of him and stepped back with one hand pressed to her chest. “Seventeen years, James. Seventeen years, and I’m finally thrown over for them two?”
“You’re having breakfast with your own senior staff at oh six thirty.”
Karyn stopped and smirked. “Who told you that?”
“Nobody told me. It’s on the ship’s schedule, which I can read, because I am an admiral and they gave me a terminal.” He allowed himself the smile. “You sent an invite to them all, and I got a copy for some reason.”
“Damn.” She looked genuinely put out for about a second and a half. “I shan’t be able to keep anything from you at all now, shall I?”
“No,” Keating said from the doorway, entirely comfortable. “Not now you’ve got all of us around.”
Karyn laughed properly at that.
“Goodnight, Lex.”
“Goodnight, Karyn. J-P.” Keating inclined her head to them both. “Thank you. It’s been a good day. I’d get him out of here before he finds something else to stand in front of a window about.”
“That was precisely my intention.”
The door closed. James looked at the PADD in his hand, then at the desk, then at the window, and got as far as opening his mouth.
“No,” said Karyn.
“I was only going to say…”
“I know what you were only going to say.” She took the PADD from his hand, set it face down on the corner of the desk where it would wait for him at oh six hundred, and took hold of his wrist. “Home. Now. You can be an admiral again in eleven hours.”
He went, and was not especially difficult about it.
Behind them, the lights came down the rest of the way, and out beyond the windows the yards kept working, as they always did, through the night and into the morning, putting fourteen ships back together one plate at a time.
