Nimisha's Ship

"How does a body-heir become a Fleet officer?" she asked.

"When that body-heir's sire is also a Fleet officer!' he replied.

As they rounded the little spacecraft, the guard came to immediate attention. He wore the gray and silver of Nirnisha's Yard livery. Now he gave a smart salute to the freshly promoted Lt. commander, as if he somehow knew Rustin was no longer a mere lieutenant.

"Worrick, this is Lieutenant Commander Caleb Rustin, who has recently been appointed naval attache to our Yard. He is to be treated with all due courtesies, naval and yard. Secure the hatch for takeoff. We'll just go forward and inform Control of our imminent departure. Thank you."

/s she gave the new attache the promised guided tour of the Rondymense facility, she also put him through some general paces, including a short EVA. There did happen to be a suit that could have been measured for him, since the EVA ready room was equipped with quite a range of sizes in spaceworthy gear.

"Put your name on that one when we come back in," she said when they had returned from the inspection of the Fiver. At the moment the ship was a skeleton of petralloy rings, tapering to the bow and blunt at the stern: her latest attempt to design the perfect long-distance spacecraft. He seemed totally at ease, automatically clipping on to safety rings with his suit harness and unclipping as they pushed about the skeleton.

His chuckle came over the helmet com. "This fits me better than my navy issue ever did."

"You should investigate the other perquisites that come with an attache's position while you're at it."

"Ah, now I wouldn't have thought of that."

"Speak sharply to Admin," she said. "You'll require specialty pay and an extra uniform allowance."

"Should I ask how you know what perks are available to an attache?"

"I looked them up." She hadn't anticipated a sly sense of humour from him, but it did him no harm. "But you have to sign the authorisation."

"True."

She activated the airlock controls, and as the lock rolled back, they reentered the Yard proper. That was the beginning of their stimulating and inclusive association.

Caleb lent his knowledge and naval expertise to Nimisha's often intuitive ideas. He came to appreciate Jeska's precision and practicality. Indeed, he encouraged them to include some of the more radical changes, revelling in their grasp of efficient spaceship design. It was a change for him to work with minds that were not hedged in by bureaucratic shibboleths and antiquated thinking, not to mention Fleet budgetary restrictions. Nimisha had the resources to build a squadron of her versatile long-distance yachts if it so pleased her, and Jeska kept her to what was possible, effortlessly taking over most of the less spectacular management duties.

It was inevitable that Nimisha and Caleb enjoyed some intimacies, the result of long hours of intense, cerebral work that had ended in rather special, to him, interludes. He knew she hadn't taken these incidents seriously: No doubt she dismissed them as the needs of the moment, enjoyed them for that moment, and then forgot them in the face of more pressing concerns as she returned to her overriding desire to perfect an intergalactic spaceship. He had schooled himself to do so as well, fascinated more by her personality and her dedication to design improvement than by her beauty-not that he ever became accustomed to having such a beauty as a companion. With selective breeding and gene control now four centuries in use, no one in her stratum of society could ever be considered ugly; some were simply more beautiful than others. Indeed, beauty was hardly limited to her class, since antenatal gene repair and intelligent nutrition produced handsome folk in every walk of life. Lately, elements of bizarre styles of "beauty" had been introduced, not in the major Families, of course, who were more conservative, but in those lesser Families who delighted to shock. Some of the variants had been spectacular-but artificial in ways that did not quite come off as something the owner would be likely to bequeath to his or her successor.

Lady Rezalla actually approved of Lt. Commander Rustin, despite his rather modest body-heir tattoo, especially after she discovered from Admiral Gollanch that he was due for further promotions in his position as attache. She could consider a possible admiral appropriate for any long-term association her daughter might make. When not even a "friendly contract" ensued after several weeklong absences with Rustin, Rezalla was almost disappointed. Nimisha did, indeed, know what was due her Family. And to her daughter.

Obviously, Nimisha's passion for naval design far outweighed the need for any legal companionship. The best of all possible worlds, Lady Rezalla thought, for she had long practiced the art of "to have and have not" as far as males were concerned. At least, if Nimisha insisted on such an unusual career, she had chosen one of the most prestigious.