“Maxie, you’re a cretin,” Smith said sourly.

“ ’Course I am!” Maxwell agreed cheerfully, then frowned in sudden suspicion. “What’s a cretin?” he demanded.

“Ten-hut!”

Captain Alice Truman watched the remote view on her briefing room display as the knife-edged command cut through the confused hum which had filled the gallery of HMS Minotaur’s Boat Bay Three. The newest draft of enlisted and noncommissioned personnel for Project Anzio snapped to attention along the lines painted on the deck with spinal reflex suddenness, their speculations about their new assignments slashed off by the familiar command. The woman who had given it had three chevrons and three rockers on the sleeve of her immaculate uniform. The golden anchor of a boatswain’s mate floated between them, instead of the star most branches used, and the uppermost rocker carried the embroidered crown which marked her as a senior master chief, the highest noncommissioned rank the RMN offered. Now she looked the block of silent men and women over with an utterly expressionless face, then folded her hands behind her and paced slowly down the length of the block’s front row. She reached the end, paused rocking on her heels, then stalked back to the center of the row and smiled thinly.

“Welcome aboard your new ship,” she told them in a pronounced Gryphon accent. “My name is McBride. Bosun McBride.” Her audience was silent, digesting the fact that she had just announced that she was the senior noncommissioned member of their new ship’s company and, as such, the direct designated representative of God, and she smiled once more. “For those of you who have not already figured this out, you are not aboard a repair ship. Nor will you be aboard a repair ship. No doubt this is deeply disturbing to you, and I know all you poor little lost lambs are confused and curious about what you’re doing here. Well, I’m sure the Skipper feels nothing in the universe could possibly be more important than explaining it all to you. Unfortunately, she has a ship to run, and she’s just a little busy at the moment, so I’m afraid you’re going to have to make do with me, instead. Does anyone have a problem with that?”

A falling pin would have sounded like an anvil in the silence that answered her, and her smile became something like a grin.

“I didn’t think anyone would.” She raised her right hand and snapped her fingers, and half a dozen petty officers stepped forward with memo boards under their arms. “When you hear your name called, answer to it and fall in behind whoever called it,” she went on more briskly. “They’ll get you logged into quarters and give you your slots on the watch bill. Don’t drag ass about getting yourselves squared away, either, people! There will be an orientation briefing for all new personnel at twenty-one-hundred, and I will be checking attendance.”

McBride gazed out over the newcomers for another ten seconds, then nodded, and a brawny senior chief stepped up beside her and keyed his board alive.