The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight

“Not exactly friends. Mutual respect is probably the best term, I think. And I’m not crazy enough to want to get involved with a dirt eater even if he weren’t giving off vibes of already being involved with someone else.”

“Really?”

“It’s just an impression. You know how some people seem to be wearing a ring even when they’re not. Colonel Rogero felt like that to me.”

Wearing a ring? With an Alliance officer involved? “Did he make a play for you?”

That brought a laugh from the Kommodor. “No. I’m sure if he intended that, he knew he’d be wasting his time.”

“You’re committed to someone?” Iceni asked. It never hurt to know little details about people that might be useful in the future.

This time Marphissa smiled, but sadly. “There’s only been two men that I might have committed to. One died at Atalia before that happened, fighting the Alliance. The other told me after my brother was arrested by the snakes that associating with me any longer might harm his career.”

“How nice,” Iceni commented.

“I’m sure once he got out of the hospital, he went on to some other fool woman.” Marphissa looked around the bridge again, clearly wanting to change the topic. “Where are we going to get enough people to crew this battleship?”

“We’ll have to recruit. Maybe in other star systems, like Taroa. A lot of people there are probably eager to leave right now.” Iceni gave Marphissa a half smile. “This battleship is going to need a commander. Any suggestions?”

“I . . . will have to go through personnel files for the other field-grade mobile forces commanders available to us—”

“Kommodor Marphissa, this is where you’re supposed to say something like ‘I would be honored if you would consider me for such an assignment.’”

Marphissa stared at her. “Two months ago, I hadn’t even commanded a heavy cruiser.”

“And two months ago, I was a CEO, not a president. The individual in command of this battleship has to be someone I trust, someone who can handle the responsibility, and someone who can serve as my senior mobile forces commander.” And someone who isn’t too ambitious. If you had immediately volunteered yourself, you might not have been offered the assignment. “If you want it, the job’s yours.”

“I am honored by your trust and confidence in me, Madam President. Yes. I would be pleased to accept such an assignment.” She looked around again, this time with a growing sense of ownership visible in her eyes. “B-78. Somehow it seems it should have more of a name than that.”

“Oh? Like the Alliance does? The Inexplicable or the Undesirable or the Insufferable?”

Marphissa grinned. “The crews already give the mobile units nicknames.”

“I know. When I was a subexecutive, I was on heavy cruiser C-333. The line workers called it the Cripple Three when they thought no officer could hear them.”

“The crew on C-448 call the cruiser the Double Eight. If our warships are going to have names, don’t they deserve better names than that?”

“Like what?” Iceni waved around the bridge. “What should B-78 be called?”

Kommodor Marphissa looked slowly about her, then back at Iceni. “B-78 will be the flagship of the Midway Star System?”

“Of course.”

“We could call it the Midway. Battleship Midway. I’m certain she would proudly represent that name.”

“Hmmm.” She? Give a ship a name, and people immediately started talking about it as if it were a living thing. But, then, the line workers, the crews, had always done that, too. About every ten years or so in the past someone higher up would propose formally naming mobile units, citing intangibles like morale and unit cohesion, but the proposals had always died in the bureaucracy, which cited cost, the lack of proven concrete benefits, and the redundancy of giving a name to something that already had a perfectly good unit number. One of the few cases where bureaucrats have repeatedly objected to redundancy. And they killed some of my proposals, too, on equally arbitrary grounds. It would be nice to make this happen knowing how unhappy it would make the bean counters. “I’ll consider it.”

“Kommodor!”

Marphissa clenched her jaw. “There’s never any rest, is there?” she commented, then accepted the call. “Here. I’m on the bridge of the battleship.”

“There’s something happening on the mobile forces facility.”

“Something?”

“Internal and external explosions, Kommodor.”

Iceni tapped her own comm unit. “Colonel Rogero, get someone up here fast to watch the bridge. I need to get back over to the C-448.”

* * *