she knew about, something had actually worked, but her would-be brothers were all miscarried or stillborn. Some medicines, and fertility spas, and even technical surrogacy worked for those with the funds, but those sorts of benefits did not come with a farm technician's pay on Burdette Steading.
They came standard, Aunt Jezzy was quick to point out, with the Grayson Space Navy's pay and benefit package. One didn't even need to be in the elite Protector's Own. Everyone got it. The Bedlams spent some time poring over the details and admiring the wonder of it all. Even Noah had been drawn in by the excitement.
Claire had heard indirectly that her family had tried to push Noah to enlist in the GSN at eighteen, since he hadn't achieved a nomination for a Saganami Island appointment. He had balked. Claire didn't blame him, much. The GSN was work. Noah was nice enough in person, but he didn't care for doing more than he had to. And besides, Noah liked having his toes on the floor, as he put it, without all that vast nothingness between him and good solid earth. Claire was just as pleased to have gotten some space between herself and the heavy metal poisons of nature.
* * *
On the Manasseh, the plaque on Claire's assigned stateroom had her name already engraved and thoroughly shellacked in a shiny clear coating. Relief at finally seeing it lifted her shoulders. Then she read the next line down: Ensign Cecelie Rustin.
Claire flushed. She'd heard about that girl in the class that followed hers at Saganami Island. There were a ton of Grayson students, sure, but darn few of them were female. The boys seemed to think that every midshipwoman was somehow the same girl, responsible for every female's actions in ways no guy would hold himself accountable for another midshipman's behavior. Claire tried to remember which of the outlandish things she had been accused of condoning were perpetrated by Rustin. Cecelie Rustin had been a year behind her, Claire was at least sure of that.
She choked back bitter bile as she realized that Rustin would had to have proved herself fast to already be an ensign instead of a midshipwoman.
Claire calculated furiously. Even if Rustin had been one of those to figure out her first posting early and spend Saganami Island school breaks out with the ship, learning her systems, she couldn't possibly have been here even half as long as it had taken Claire to make ensign. Fury mixed with shame, and Claire pushed through the door into her new stateroom nearly catching the bag porter in the doorway as it wobbled trying to follow her abrupt action.
Had Rustin been the one on the triathlon team that won all those awards that usually went to heavy planeters? Or was she that study-mad one taking all the extra courses and forever asking professors questions that had nothing to do with the material on the exams?
The smug little Rustin was sitting hunched over a terminal with her back to the door when Claire barged in. It was definitely the studious one. Claire visually swept the space, looking for things to detach from their safety housings to make room for her luggage while she moved in.
With a broad smile that Claire immediately distrusted, the Rustin girl looked up and broke into an outright grin. Chattering a welcome, she fairly bounced up from her chair in a way that must have been entirely normal for her, because while Claire was wincing waiting for the back of the overturned chair to hit the bare metal deck, Rustin's free hand flew back behind herself, caught the edge of the chair mid-fall and set it back upright without even turning around to look at it.
Claire matched the smile with habitual wariness and made noncommittal noises as Rustin flurried around verbally for several minutes about how delighted she was to have a new friend onboard, not that the guys weren't friends of course, but women have a special bond—or at least that was what Commander Greentree said.
Claire felt her face tighten at the reference to their too-handsome CO, and Rustin paused. She looked a little disconcerted, as if she wasn't feeling that “special bond” just at the moment. But when Claire smoothed the edges of her mouth into a friendlier shape, Rustin relaxed and bounded verbally onward after on the briefest of pauses.
Claire decided that actual verbal responses were not apparently necessary and busied herself with figuring out which of the