“Aye, PO.” The tech who’d caught the warped drive shaft waved it in acknowledgment. “Should take us about another fifty minutes, I guess.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Smith agreed, arching his shoulders and massaging his aching back again. Getting the damaged component out had been a major pain, but putting the replacement back in should be relatively straightforward. “I’ll be around on Thirty-Six if you need me,” he went on. “Caermon has something she wants to discuss about the main radar array.”

“Gotcha,” Sandford agreed, and Smith nodded and headed off. He did have one other little stop to make, but it was on the way to Bay Thirty-Six where Caermon waited for him, and he grinned as he tapped the data chip in his pocket. He liked Lieutenant Commander Ashford a lot, he really did, but there was something undeniably delicious about receiving not simply official sanction but actual orders to put one over on an officer.

Helps keep them humble, it does, he reflected cheerfully. And humble officers are more likely to remember just who really runs the Queen’s Navy. On the other hand, protection from on high or not, I hope to hell he never figures out I was the one who did it to him!

He grinned again and paused as he reached the access tube to Ashford’s bird. The LAC sat there all alone, awaiting the service crews who would minister to it in time for the afternoon’s exercises, and he nodded to himself. He wouldn’t get a better chance, he thought, and sauntered down the tube with a guileless expression.

“And just what the hell did you think you were doing here, Ashford?” Captain Harmon inquired genially as she used an old-fashioned, nonilluminated pointer to gesture at the frozen holo display above the ready room tac table. Tiny LACs, no larger than the nail of her little finger, swarmed in it, color-coded by squadron, as they “attacked” a holo of Minotaur half again the length of her arm. Most of the thirty-six LACs had altered course in the second or so before she had frozen the display, turning so that their bows were pointed directly at Minotaur, but one section of six hadn’t, and the dark-haired, dark-eyed captain turned to look at the lieutenant commander who commanded the errant vessels.

“Ah, well, actually, Ma’am—” Ashford began, then exhaled. “Actually,” he admitted in an almost but not quite resigned voice, “I was screwing up by the numbers.”

“A concise if not particularly helpful analysis,” Harmon agreed, but without the biting edge the lieutenant commander had dreaded. His honesty had bought him that much—it was the ones who tried to weasel or excuse their mistakes (or, worse, shuffle responsibility off on someone else) who quickly learned to fear the sharpness of her tongue. Nor did she stop there. Two squadron commanders had already been sent packing, one of them with an efficiency report so scathing it would require a special act of God for her ever to hold a command again.