Midshipman's Hope
Chapter One
"Stand to!" I roared, but I was too late; even as Alexi and
Sandy snapped to attention, Hibernia's two senior lieutenants
strolled around the corridor bend.
We froze in stunned tableau: I, the senior midshipman, red
with rage; a portly passenger, Mrs. Donhauser, jaw agape at
the blob of shaving cream on her tunic; my two middies
stiffened against the bulkhead, eyes locked front, towels and
canisters still clutched in their hands; Lieutenants Cousins
and Dagalow, dumbfounded that middies could be caught
cavorting in the corridors of a U.N.N.S. starship, even one
still moored at Ganymede Orbiting Station.
If only I'd come down from the bridge a few seconds sooner
I'd have been in time, but I'd been helping Ms. Dagalow enter
the last of our new stores into the puter's manifests.
Lieutenant Cousins was curt. "You too, Mr. Seafort.
Against the bulkhead."
"Aye aye, sir." I stiffened to attention, eyes front, furious
at my betrayal by a friend whose sense I'd thought I could
trust.
Alexi Tamarov, the seating middy at my side, was sixteen
and third in seniority. When I'd first reported aboard, he'd
considered challenging me but hadn't, and we'd since become
comrades. Now his an ... read full excerpt from: Midshipman's Hope ebook
