too much more. Those were Aunt Jezzy's secrets to tell anyway, not hers. She'd just been taught from it, was all.
Lieutenant Loyd shook his head. “Ensign Lecroix, we really need to work on your tactics.”
Claire planted her elbows on the table in front of her and folded her hands. “No.”
Lieutenant Loyd snorted and arched his eyebrows at her. “I wouldn't let you pull that shit normally. You should know that, but I'd like to think that this hasn't been a normal day for you. Would you say that was true?”
Claire swallowed unsure of what to do since he hadn't blown up at her defiance. The master chief feigned total absorption in his screen again. Turning back to Lieutenant Loyd, Claire said, “I apologize for what I said in the passageway.”
Lieutenant Loyd just raised his eyebrows and waited.
Claire just looked at him in confusion and then flushing added, “Sir.”
“Apology accepted,” he answered immediately. “And I still want you to work on tactics.”
Claire shook her head, “LT, I guess you mean well, but what's the point?”
“Oh, I don't know: the continuation of politics by other means, fighting and winning our star nation's wars, or maybe just because it happens to be your job and doing your job to the best of your ability is the right thing to do?”
Claire hunched again, swallowed, and closed her eyes. “When Lockhart reports me to Commander Greentree, and he's gonna, I'll be out. Maybe just off the ship, or maybe out of the whole GSN.”
She shivered. “There's no reason to do this tactics stuff, and look, Sir, there never was. The best I could do was last long enough to get some solid engineering experience to transfer to civie jobs. Tactics doesn't do that.”
“Wow, Saganami Island really failed you.” Lieutenant Loyd breathed.
He straightened and went on. “Now here's some free officer continuing education for you. There're two kinds of counseling right?”
Claire jerked a nod, stiffening to attention in her chair, “Yes, Sir.”
“So right now we've got informal counseling right here while I try to find a way to get through your thick steader skull that I like you and want you to be a good officer, and even if I didn't, it wouldn't matter because the captain has decided that you are going to be turned into a good officer. You may have noticed, he's a Greentree. There's a fair number of them in the service. They're generally pretty hardcore, and he's hardcore even for a Greentree.
“Maybe you noticed the maroon trousers? Yep. He got himself into the Protector's Own because he wanted to study warfare under the likes of Alfredo Yu, Harriet Benson-Dessouix, and oh yeah Honor Alexander-Harrington. And they took him. Which says even more, because the Protector's Own only takes the very best.
“Anyway, onward to the next kind: formal counseling. That's what you use for the hard cases that you need to build a record for in case you need to kick them entirely out of the service. Its generally bad practice to discuss the flaws of senior officers with subordinates, but I'm junior to him too. So we'll call this part a bitch session of the JOPA, okay?”
Claire glanced over at Master Chief Wallens. He was still pretending to do routine paperwork, or maybe he was really doing paperwork and got called in to play chaperone for sketchy informal counseling sessions all the time. “Um, that's the Junior Officer Protection Association, Sir?”
“Exactly. Generally a load of bunk that gets claimed when somebody did something idiotic and wants to use peer pressure to keep from having his ass properly handed to him. But from time to time, captains get crazy. It has its uses. Like now.
“So let's just say that I happen to know that there's already a file on Mr. Lockhart and that the XO has been looking for a final nail for that coffin. I just gave it to him. Or rather you did, and I reported it. I used to feel sorry for him since his marriage on Manticore fell apart, and he seemed to think that Grayson girls would be nearly a different species from the Mantie women he tried dating. I thought he was grieving, not hunting. If we're entirely unlucky, he'll be on-board for another couple weeks. But it's more likely we'll pull into the next available station and dump him.”
Claire felt a wave of relief . . . mingled with shock that she wasn't being punished for standing up for herself.