“Indeed?” Layson couldn’t quite keep the surprise out of his tone.

“Yes, Sir.” Her voice was both respectful and thoughtful, but it was also very serious. “I believe war with Haven is inevitable, Sir. Not immediately, but in time.”

“And you want to be along for the glory and the adventure, do you?”

“No, Sir.” Her expression didn’t alter, despite the bite in his question. “I want to help defend the Star Kingdom. And I don’t want to live under the Peeps.”

“I see,” he said, and studied her for several more seconds. That was a viewpoint he was more accustomed to hearing from far more senior—and older—officers, not from twenty-year-old midshipwomen. It was also the reason the Royal Manticoran Navy was currently involved in the biggest buildup in its history, and the main reason Harrington’s graduating class was ten percent larger than the one before it. But as Harrington had just pointed out, the looming war still lurked in the uncertain future.

And her answer still didn’t give him a clue as to why Captain Bachfisch wanted her aboard War Maiden.

“Well, Ms. Harrington,” he said at last, “if you want to help defend the Star Kingdom, you’ve certainly come to the right place. And you may have an opportunity to start doing it a bit sooner than you anticipated, as well, because we’ve been ordered to Silesia for antipiracy duties.” The young woman sat even straighter in her chair at that, and the ’cat’s tail stopped twitching and froze in the curl of a question mark. “But if you truly don’t harbor dreams of glory, make it a point not to start harboring them anytime soon. As you’re no doubt tired of hearing, this cruise is your true final exam.”

He paused, regarding her steadily, and she nodded soberly. A midshipwoman was neither fish nor fowl in many respects. Officially, she remained an officer candidate, holding a midshipwoman’s warrant but not yet an officer’s commission. Her warrant gave her a temporary place in the chain of command aboard War Maiden; it did not guarantee that she would ever hold any authority anywhere after this cruise, however. Her actual graduation from the Academy was assured, given her grades and academic performance, but a muffed midshipman’s cruise could very well cost her any chance at one of the career tracks which led to eventual command. The Navy always needed non-line staff officers whose duties kept them safely out of the chain of command, after all, and someone who blew his or her first opportunity to shoulder responsibility outside a classroom wasn’t the person one wanted commanding a King’s ship. And if she screwed up too massively on this cruise, she might receive both an Academy diploma and formal notice that the Crown did not after all require her services in any capacity.

“You’re here to learn, and the Captain and I will evaluate your performance very carefully. If you have any hope of achieving command in your own right someday, I advise you to see to it that our evaluations are positive ones. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Sir!”

“Good.” He gave her a long, steady look, then produced a small smile. “It’s a tradition in the Fleet that by the time a middy has survived Saganami Island, he’s like a ’cat. Fling him into the Service any way you like, and he’ll land on his feet. That, at least, is the type of midshipman the Academy tries to turn out, and it’s what will be expected of you as a member of War Maiden’s company. In your own case, however, there is a rather special complicating factor. One, I’m certain, of which you must be fully aware. Specifically,” he pointed with his chin to the treecat stretched across the top of her chair’s back, “your… companion.”

He paused, waiting to see if she would respond. But she simply met his eyes steadily, and he made a mental note that this one had composure by the bucketful.

“No doubt you’re more intimately familiar with the Regs where ’cats aboard ship are concerned than I am,” he went on after a moment in a tone which said she’d damned well better be familiar with them. “I expect you to observe them to the letter. The fact that the two of you managed to survive Saganami Island gives me some reason to hope you’ll also manage to survive War Maiden. But I expect you to be aware that this is a much smaller environment than the Academy, and the right to be together aboard ship carries with it the responsibility to avoid any situation which might have a negative impact on the smooth and efficient functioning of this ship’s company. I trust that, also, is clearly understood. By you both.”

“Yes, Sir,” she said once more, and he nodded.

“I am delighted to hear it. In that case, Senior Chief Shelton will see you to your quarters, such as they are. Good luck, Ms. Harrington.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Dismissed,” he said, and turned back to his data terminal as the middy braced to attention once more and then followed SCPO Shelton from the compartment.

Honor finished making up her bunk (with regulation “Saganami Island” corners on the sheets and a blanket taut enough to bounce a five-dollar coin), then detached the special piggyback unit from her locker and lifted the locker itself into the waiting bulkhead brackets. She grinned, remembering one of her classmates—from a dirt-grubber Gryphon family with no Navy connections at all—who had revealed his abysmal ignorance the day their first lockers were issued by wondering aloud why every one of them had to have exactly the same dimensions. That particular question had been answered on their first training cruise, and now Honor settled hers in place, opened the door, flipped off the counter-grav, and toggled the locking magnets once its weight had fully settled.

She gave it a precautionary shake, despite the glowing telltales which purported to show a solid seal. Others had trusted the same telltales when they shouldn’t have, but this time they held, and she closed the door and attached the piggyback to the frame of her bunk. She took rather more care with it than she had with the locker, and Nimitz watched alertly from atop her pillow as she did so. Unlike the locker, which was standard Navy issue, she—or rather, her father, who had provided it as a graduation gift—had paid the better part of seventeen thousand Manticoran dollars for that unit. Which was money well spent in her opinion, since it was the life support module which would keep Nimitz alive if the compartment lost pressure. She made very certain that it was securely anchored, then hit the self-test key and nodded in satisfaction as the control panel blinked alive and the diagnostic program confirmed full functionality. Nimitz returned her nod with a satisfied bleek of his own, and she turned away to survey the rest of the berthing compartment known rather unromantically as “Snotty Row” while she awaited Senior Chief Shelton’s return.

It was a largish compartment for a ship as small—and as old—as War Maiden. In fact, it was about twice the size of her Saganami Island dorm room. Of course, that dorm room had held only two people, her and her friend Michelle Henke, while this compartment was designed to house six. At the moment, only four of the bunks had sheets and blankets on them, though, so it looked as if War Maiden was sailing light in the middy department.

That could be good or bad, she reflected, settling into one of the spartan, unpowered chairs at the berthing compartment’s well worn table. The good news was that it meant she and her three fellows would have a bit more space, but it would also mean there were only four of them to carry the load. Everyone knew that a lot of what any midshipwoman did on her snotty cruise always constituted little more than makework, duties concocted by the ship’s officer candidate training officer and assigned only as learning exercises rather than out of any critical need on her ship’s part. But a lot more of those duties were anything but makework. Middies were King’s officers—the lowest of the low, perhaps, and only temporarily and by virtue of warrant, but still officers—and they were expected to pull their weight aboard ship.