"Great, what am I supposed to do about it?"

"Beats me, Bart. I retired as an E-6, remember?" Relieve the son of a bitch, Jones thought, though he knew better. You could only relieve for cause.

"I'll talk to him," Mancuso promised.

"You know, I heard about skippers like that. Never did believe the stories. Guess I got spoiled working for you," Dr Jones observed as they approached the terminal. "You haven't changed a bit, you know that? You still listen when somebody talks to you."

"You have to listen, Ron. You can't know it all yourself."

"I got news: not everyone knows that. I got one more suggestion."

"Don't let him go hunting?"

"If I were in your position, I wouldn't." Jones opened the door. "I don't want to rain on the parade, skipper. That's my professional observation. He isn't up to the game. Ricks is nothing near the captain you used to be."

Used to be. A singularly poor choice of words, Mancuso thought, but it was true. It was a hell of a lot easier to run a boat than to run a squadron, and a hell of a lot more fun, too.

"Better hustle if you want to catch that flight." Mancuso held out his hand.

"Skipper, always a pleasure."

Mancuso watched him walk into the terminal. Jones had never once given him bad advice, and if anything he'd gotten smarter. A pity he hadn't stayed in and gone for a commission. That wasn't true, the Commodore thought next. Ron would have made one hell of a CO, but he would never have had a chance. The system didn't allow it, and that was that.

The driver headed back without being told, leaving Mancuso in his rear seat with his thoughts. The system hadn't changed enough. He'd come up the old way, power school, an engineer tour before he got command. There was too much engineering in the Navy, not enough leadership. He'd made the transition, as did most of the skippers - but not all. Too many people made it through who thought that other people were just numbers, machines to be fixed, things to order, who measured people by numbers that were more easily understood than real results. Jim Rosselli wasn't like that. Neither was Bart Mancuso, but Harry Ricks was.

So. Now what the hell do I do?

First and foremost, he had no basis for relieving Ricks. Had the story come from anyone except Jones, he would have dismissed it as personality clashes. Jones was too reliable an observer for that. Mancuso considered what he'd been told and matched it with the higher-than-usual rate of transfer requests, the rather equivocal words he'd heard from Dutch Claggett. The XO was in a very touchy spot. Already selected for command one bad word from Ricks and he'd lose that; against that possibility he had his loyalty to the Navy. His job demanded loyalty to his CO even while the Navy demanded truth. It was an impossible position for Claggett, and he'd done all that he could.