Line Captain Karla Wender (Human)

Wender went out to the post herself, nine hours by relay and most of a day by hull, because a pairing that begins over a link begins as paperwork and she had read enough paperwork.

The post was what the order said it was: a stretch of monitored approach, a station the size of a modest ship, a crew of twenty who had had their new Starwarden for six weeks and had, Wender judged from the corridor, already decided. Crews decide early. They are usually right, and when they are wrong it is in the direction of generosity, which is the only direction a crew can afford to be wrong in. These had decided in Shepherd's favour and were not being generous about it. Wender noted that and did not write it down; an assessment records, and this was not an assessment.

Shepherd met her at the lock in uniform, Starwarden's ring-tab at the collar, and said, "Line Captain," and Wender said, "Starwarden," and that was the whole of the ceremony, because there was nothing in the policy about ceremony and both of them had read the policy.

They sat in the post's one office, which had been the previous Starwarden's and still looked it. Wender let the silence run for about as long as a corridor takes to clear, which was the length she had learned on, and watched Shepherd not fill it, and thought: yes.

"The policy gives you me," Wender said. "It does not say what for, and it is right not to, because the one thing I am for cannot be written down, or the Academy would have written it. I am going to tell you the only part of it I can say, once, and then I am going to stop telling you things, and you are going to find that the stopping is most of the job."

Shepherd waited. She did not nod. Wender had never seen her nod at a thing before she had heard the end of it.

"An order is sound if it is correct given what is currently known," Wender said. "Not if the officer giving it has disclosed everything she privately knows. Those are two different standards, and the second one is a trap, and every commander who falls into it does so for the same reason, which is that her own uncertainty is uncomfortable and a subordinate's trust is a cheap way to relieve it. What aren't you telling me is not a question that improves anything. It is a superior spending a junior's confidence on herself. Demand disclosure as the price of trust and you will teach good officers to stop bringing you the truths that matter and start bringing you the ones that are easy to explain, and you will never once notice it happening, because the easy ones will keep arriving."

She stopped. That was the whole of it, and she had said it in more words than she liked, and did not take any of them back.

Shepherd was quiet for a while. Then she said, carefully, in the voice Wender had heard once in a review chamber by report and never in person: "There are things I am carrying. They are in no file. I should tell you —"

"Are they in the file?"

"No."

"Do they change any order you have given, or will give?"

A longer pause. Wender watched her check, which took as long as it took, because Shepherd did not answer a thing she had not checked.

"No."

"Then they are yours," said Wender, "and I have not asked, and I will not. If that ever changes, put it in writing and I will read it. If it does not, do not."