Vanguard (Ark Royal Book 7) by Christopher Nuttall Read Free Book Online

there anything I need to handle before the end of the week?”
     
    “Yes, Commander,” Mason said.  “Two more middies are due here later this afternoon, unless there’s another delay.  I think you have to greet them, even if you have not yet assumed your post.”
     
    “Understood,” Susan said.  She rose from behind the desk.  “You can take me on tour now, Paul.”
     
    “Yes, Commander,” Mason said.

Chapter Four
     
    “Hey, George,” Midshipman Nathan Bosworth called.  “They summoned you back today too?”
     
    “Yep,” Midshipwoman George - no one ever called her Georgina, certainly not twice - Fitzwilliam said.  “How does it feel to be back at the academy?”
     
    She smiled as they walked past the guards and into the academy itself.  It had been a week since their formal graduation ceremony, a week since she’d watched her uncle give the final address before the newly-minted midshipmen were given their rank badges and a week’s leave before they were dispatched to their new assignments.  She stepped to one side as a crowd of cadets ran past, snapping off salutes as they saw George’s uniform bars.  It was truly said that the academy was one of the few places where midshipmen were saluted.
     
    “Look at those youngsters,” Nathan said.  “Doesn’t it make you feel young ?”
     
    George snorted.  She was twenty; she’d signed up for the academy as soon as she’d turned sixteen, despite her father’s half-hearted protests.  He might have expected her to become a proper lady, to be presented to the king at her coming out party and hunt for a rich or well-connected husband at a series of balls, but she was damned if she was allowing the aristocracy to turn her brains to mush.  She would sooner follow Prince Henry and renounce her title than surrender to the demands of her birth.  And her father, to his credit, had allowed her to go rather than continuing the fight.
     
    “You’re twenty-two,” she said.  Nathan’s mother had insisted that he stay in school until he turned eighteen.  “I don’t think you’re that old.”
     
    “I’m glad you feel that way,” Nathan said.  “But compared to some of the newer cadets, I feel old.”
     
    “Cling to that feeling,” George advised.  “You’ll need it when we go back to the bottom of the pecking order.”
     
    The cadets were probably a little confused, she thought.  They looked young ; they had both cut their hair close to their scalps, as the academy required.  George’s dark hair and pale skin contrasted oddly with Nathan’s blond good looks.  And yet, they were wearing midshipmen uniforms and carrying weapons.  Technically speaking, they no longer belonged in the academy.
     
    She sighed, inwardly, as they made their way along the corridor.  There were four years at the academy, imaginatively called First to Fourth Year.  The seniors, the Fourth Years, ruled the academy; they were, to all intents and purposes, senior officers.  And they could be nasty at times, bullying and harassing the younger cadets.  Her uncle, when she’d asked, had pointed out that life onboard ship could be a thousand times worse, even though midshipmen and lieutenants were expected to be more mature.  It was better to weed the ones who couldn't hack it out of the academy before they graduated and wound up on starships.  But she’d never been entirely convinced of the logic.
     
    “Maybe we’ll be promoted quickly,” Nathan said.  “You can’t be promoted for at least a year, unless you do something staggeringly awesome.”
     
    “I don’t think you can do anything that will get you promoted up a grade before the earliest legal opportunity,” George said.  She’d looked it up; only one person had ever been promoted from midshipman to lieutenant in less than a year and that person had had to step up when her superiors died in an accident.  There had been acting officers, of course, but they didn't stay in their