by Jim Rudnick
Tanner nodded and hoped that the admiral didn’t get up to see Tower Number One and the horrible mistakes that had been made in the residences area nor Tower Number Three and the issues still that were arising as the quartermaster could be heard yelling about lateness all the way out to the flyer parking area. Still, we did get much done over the past ninety days, he thought and then took a rear seat as the two admirals took first row seats and Higgins nodded to the pilot. The aide sat one more row back in the flyer and looked out the window like the rest of them.
The flyer lifted off, circled first, and then picked up speed as it turned to head out for the canyons where the new Academy Towers were located. Tanner couldn’t hear the talk between the two admirals, as the interior of the flyer was noisy, and that was a good thing, he thought. No sense in listening in on that which he couldn’t change, he figured, and he settled back for the quick flight.
The pilot was good, and he came down the canyon and spun around all four towers to do a full circle and then lit down on Tower Number One perfectly too. Having two admirals as passengers made a pilot pay particular attention to his craft and that thought had just been borne out for sure.
As the three of them left the flyer, the aide tagged along too, and moments later, they were climbing the bank of stairs up to the massive double doors that lofted well above them.
“If all the towers used this kind of architecture, then any visitor will be impressed,” Admiral McQueen said. His head tilted back and swung from side to side, as he looked around. It was an entrance made to impress. It made what one could find inside currently not quite as spectacular. “At least not yet,” Tanner said to himself, and as they went through the spacious lobby area, he could see there were still issues with equipment, furniture movements, and installations.
Ahead were more than twenty or so dollies, all carrying cased goods like desks to be moved up via the elevators onto their assigned floors and residence rooms, where students, interns, and even professional installers were to put them together and install them.
Except, of course, there were issues—like the elevator clerk ahead who was checking, then checking again and then checking a third time, the cases on the next two dollies that were to go up.
Tanner picked now to try to help, and in one of his best helpful voices, he asked the clerk what the problem was, and he got a frustrated look back from the man.
“Sir, next dolly says this equipment—two desks, two cabinets, two bookcases, and two mobile chairs—is going to room T1-2812. But Sir, the next dolly has the exact same case delivery specs too. And it’s a plain double room, Sir—no way for all this to fit in one double. So someone has mislabeled the cases, Sir,” he said, and as Tanner double-checked, he saw the man was right.
“Easy one to handle. Send both up to floor twenty-eight, have one only delivered to the proper room—twenty-eight twelve, I believe? Have the other offloaded by the elevators in a stack so the specs can still be seen. Something tells me that when the twenty-eighth floor is complete, there’ll be one residence double room with nothing in same—use this cached set there. Got it?” he asked nicely.
The clerk nodded and got the dolly students to repeat that back to him as the admirals and Tanner walked on.
“If that’s the kind of issues that we’re facing and answers seem to be so easy, I can smile a bit more about the deadline opening day event,” Admiral McQueen said dryly as they went all the way across the big foyer to the reception area.
A round of salutes and at eases followed as the admiral asked questions of the staff behind the reception desk.
Most of the answers were fine. Not a single person mentioned the plumbing issues up on floor forty-one, and nobody mentioned the utility corridor issues on the top two floors either. Tower Number One was supposed to hold residences, retail floors of stores for student purchases, academy issuing of quartermaster items like uniforms, and lastly utility services like laundry and cleaning.
Most, Tanner knew, had gone well. Except for those plumbing issues. But it seemed like the admiral didn’t much want to leave the lobby, so they’d escape that one.
Nodding and then asking a couple more questions—based Tanner could tell on the reception desk’s knowledge of issues around the move in of the students themselves—Admiral McQueen seemed to have reached an end to his questions and turned to look at Admiral Higgins.
“Fine, let’s get on to Tower Number Two,” he said, as he strode away from the reception desk and toward the big open doorway.
As he walked, he dictated to his aide, and Tanner was pleased to note that the tower with the biggest issues had escaped closer scrutiny—at least so far.
It was the same for the rest of the towers too. Tower Number Two with the classrooms, study hall, professors’ lounges, offices, and lecture theaters too all had issues as well, but for the most part were in good order.
The admiral, again, never left the lobby but did make a note to his aide that he’d checked the issue that he had listed where more than fifty different professors had all complained bitterly about poor construction management. He noted with a tip of his head to Higgins that satisfying the hundreds of professors was a job that just couldn’t be done for one and all. Yet, he had her write down the job was in hand and that he was happy with the solutions that had been found.
Tanner, of course, didn’t catch the admiral’s eye over that one; it had been his own ignoring of those hundreds and hundreds of messages about wrong colored carpet and white boards that were blue and that a custom desk wouldn’t fit within an alcove. He knew he’d answer for same one day, but it appeared to not be today.
At Tower Number Three, the quartermaster was a happy camper today. Rear Admiral Higgins had okayed, just three days ago, the advancement of funds to allow the bureaucrat to spend, spend, spend, and the smile on his face boded well. Admiral McQueen noted the change in the man who’d only last week threatened to quit the RIM Navy if something wasn’t done. Now, he held up a sweatshirt in academy colors with the logo of the academy and the new four towers added too. He was proud of his swag, and the admiral mentioned that he’d love one and one for his aide too, and they were quickly passed over.
The flight over to Tower Number Four was a short one too, and in that lobby again, there were lengthy lines of fixtures and equipment being taken up to various floors. Admiral McQueen did his due diligence on this one, Tanner noted. He took the time to speak to some of the students who were manhandling those dollies to find out how they were instructed and where their supervisors were at that moment. Some, of course, were ten feet away and almost tripped over themselves to get in front of him to answer his queries.
Not that there was much to say. Dollies with loads came in off the landing levels and were moved up via elevators. Then each dolly team took same to its designated floor and room. Sometimes, they then needed to unload and assemble the items, but other times, a team of installers awaited the next round of equipment.
The admiral nodded. “Looks good here too,” he said as he looked around and then went off to the academy registrar’s offices ahead. He looked around, as Tanner watched, and he commented some things to his aide who typed them into her tablet. He went from there to the administration offices too and found, as Tanner knew he would, dozens of clerks and filing going on. Humongous bins of records and paper files were being slowly re-filed inside new cabinets in new locations and sub-offices too.
Tanner smiled. You’d think that paper files and the actual filing and storage of same would have been dead for a thousand years. Not so, he knew. Paper still ruled … as a hard copy carried so much more weight when referred to than a line on a tablet screen.
Higgins commented on something about the carpet coming a bit later as they were standing on a bare sub-floor in the administration offices, and the aide made a note of that too, Tanner saw.
And they were done, and Tanner thought that both he and Higgins breathed the same sigh of relief.
On the way
back in the flyer, McQueen asked for one full circle of the four towers, and as the pilot complied, he half-turned to face Tanner a row behind as well as Higgins who was sitting beside him.
“Report will be satisfactory, for your information. I am happy with what I saw and will report back on same to the RIM Executive Council too at our next meeting. I have meetings tomorrow with the Master Adept out at her location, and I will be back on the Tripp to go to Juno tomorrow by noon. If you’ve anything else—let me know by then. And if you can stop the flow of the hundreds of messages from administrators and professors who all claim that you’re ignoring their small requests for changes-do so and do so now. I hear that some of these messages are even getting sent to heads of state to remind them that their next batch of grads might not be up to snuff because a white board was white instead of blue. Good gosh. Stop them if you can—get them handled, I mean. Oh, and I don’t need to know about the plumbing issues in Tower Number One either, I know you’re on top of same,” he added dryly.
Figures, Tanner thought, that he’d know but not dig any deeper on site. We’ve got to get those new lines, vents and drains installed STAT. He nodded just like Admiral Higgins did.
Moments later, the circle around the last tower done, the flyer headed back to Dessau and the naval base.
#####
Seems like it’s admiral’s week, Tanner thought as he waited once again with Admiral Higgins as the flyer touched down on the Tower Number Four landing tarmac and spun to a stop. Moments later, Admiral Childs, the head of the academy, jumped down and strode over to meet them, and that stride, Tanner thought, looked a bit ominous.
Admiral Childs had been the head of the RIM Confederacy Navy for over twenty years, and he had been moved over to run the academy when Admiral McQueen had been appointed. If anyone knew the RIM Navy, it was Childs, and as he’d been the head of the academy now for over five years, he knew it well too.
It had been Childs whom Tanner had approached back a few years to help plan a pseudo-mutiny of cadets so that the Pirates could be tracked, followed, and engaged. The plan had worked, which Tanner knew was a good thing or else he’d have still been in a brig somewhere over on Halberd, the RIM Confederacy prison planet. Childs had kept their plan close to his vest too—he’d not told Admiral McQueen about it and had followed through on his own. Able navy man, Tanner thought, as he put a smile on his face.
“Wipe that smile off, Captain!” Childs drilled at him. “Do you have any idea as to the number of complaints that I have on my console about you and your inability to get things done with the tower construction issues, Captain?” he asked, but Tanner knew he didn’t want an answer.
He wiped the smile off his face as the two admirals shook hands. He snapped a salute up and held it as the admiral took his time before he saluted back.
“Sir, sorry about that—it’s just that—”
“I know perfectly well what it’s like to have dozens and dozens of requests for hundreds of changes—they used to infect my own inbox—now they go to you,” he said and smiled.
Admiral Childs nodded then and held out his hand. “Not to worry, Captain, I’m so very glad that you are the buffer tween me and my professors and the quartermaster and the registrar and the principal and the whole admin staff. So nice to have an inbox without their constant complaints about the color of this and the nap on the carpet and the missing crown moldings in the washrooms. So nice indeed,” he said, and both of the admirals chuckled.
“So, let’s go in and remember to look interested, take notes where needed on your PDAs, and yes, we’ll be going up to visit some of the major issues here in Tower Number Four. With me,” he said, and he turned to walk toward the massive wide-open double doors of the tower itself.
While Childs was a rear admiral, exactly the same rank as Rear Admiral Higgins, he took the lead and was followed by Higgins on this tour, Tanner noted. They moved off the landing tarmac lot, got the nod from a Provost guard at the gateway, and then mounted the long set of stairs up to the ground floor entrance.
Once inside, they went directly across the large foyer and past the reception desk area to the administration offices. Admiral Childs was not stopped by a soul on his way inside. They made a turn or two, missing the registrar’s offices by taking a back corridor that Tanner had never been in before to a plain door halfway down the hall. Childs slapped his hand on the ID plate at the side of the door frame, which opened it, he and walked in with Higgins and Tanner behind him.
Surprising the man seated at the large desk in this well-furnished office was one thing.
Surprising him as he had his feet up on the corner of his desk as he was talking via Ansible to someone on the screen that sat on the far wall was too much for him—he swung his feet down and hit the pause button on his console.
“Sir—Admiral Childs, Admiral Higgins … and Captain … what a surprise to have you … drop in … so to speak,” he said, and the stammer was a bit noticeable.
“Principal Boulos, so nice to see you again,” Childs said as he dragged a chair over to sit in front of the desk and nodded for the rest of them to do the same.
“Remind me, Boulos, what it is you do here—what a principal of a university does, I mean?” he asked dryly.
Ekram Boulos nodded. His longish salt and pepper hair drooped over one half of his forehead, and he swept that back with a well-manicured hand. A Caliphate alien, he was unusual looking in that he did not dress his six-foot-five-inch frame with the usual Caliphate citizen clothing. Instead, he favored the more normal business attire of humans. His dress was immaculate, Tanner thought. He wore a perfectly pressed light blue shirt with some kind of a swath of color around the neck and highly polished boots into which were tucked amber pants. On the far chair, his amber jacket had been neatly folded and placed there while he worked at his desk.
“I look after all of the things that you—the academy headmaster—does not. Which means that I look after the hiring of staff members, communicating with the RIM Confederacy members, planning our academic calendars and the like. Well, in fact, you do all of those items, yes, but it usually falls to me to look after all of the smaller details of same, Sir,” he said, and his voice was trying to please.
Childs nodded. “And in this special case where we have construction on four brand new towers with all of those issues, what were you to do to aid in same?” he asked.
Boulos sat up a bit straighter and shuffled his feet under his desk a couple of times, looking down at his console while trying to come up with an answer. It appeared he failed at that, as after a moment, he held up both hands, palms up, shrugged, and said, “Why, I didn’t have any input at all, Admiral.”
Childs nodded. “You do as of right now, Principal Boulos. I want—Captain, send off all of those personal requests for changes to our principal—all of them, mind you. I want you, Boulos, to look after every single one, personally. No aides, no assistants at all. You are to work with whomever has requested changes to get it done. I want happy, happy administrators and professors on the academy grounds when the new semester starts—got that, Principal Boulos?” he said, his voice strong and demanding.
Boulos nodded and nodded again. “Absolutely, Admiral—I’ll look after them all … how many could there be even,” he said with a half-smile.
Tanner spoke up then and said, “Since I got here, about three hundred or so.”
That wiped the smile off the Principal’s face. He squirmed a bit as the size of the new task settled on his shoulders, but he said not a single word.
“Fine. By the start of the new semester then, Principal Boulos,” Admiral Childs said, and he got up and led the way out the back door to the office and back to the foyer of Tower Number Four.
Once there, they waited for an up elevator amid the rows of equipment-laden dollies, and he looked over at Admiral Higgins.
“That man was sent to us by the Caliph himself as one of the best administrators available, but I’m having my doubts
,” he said, and he shook his head as they got on the elevator and were still able to cram in two more dollies too.
Up they went first to floor eighteen, and one dolly left there. Then up to floor twenty-seven for the last dolly where they all got out.
Admiral Higgins took the lead and led them around the floor as this one was housing offices for deans, chairmen, and coordinators. There were some utility issues still in one corridor as the floor tiles hadn’t been laid as yet, and Tanner made a note of that on his PDA. Childs nodded and walked, and he asked few questions. In a short time, they were back at the elevator and then headed down to the ground floor.
Once there, Childs again led the way directly across from the elevators to the large wall that faced it and stood there for a full minute staring at it. Once or twice, he turned his head to look to his left at the big open doors and then to his right to the reception desk area too.
“Here, I think is the spot. Been looking for a bit to see where it should go, and this is about the best spot I can think of,” he said.
“Sir? What should be here?” Admiral Higgins questioned.
“Our Academy Alumni of Valor Memorial, Admiral Higgins. Where we show the photos and name badges and ranks of all academy alumni who have died as RIM Navy officers and non-commissioned navy men. We put up their pictures and a small plaque too with a short bio and list the event that took their lives too. It will go here—Captain, arrange for it to be moved from the old academy grounds over to be here—and it must look sharp too, Captain. Blue and gold and the dagger must also show—well, you know what I mean as I remember that you were on the RN Kerry, Captain, and you’ve seen same. Done before the new semester starts too, Captain,” he finished off, and without a further word, he turned and marched out of the spacious lobby to return to his flyer.
“Went better than I’d expected,” Admiral Higgins said as he and Tanner left the tower too to go back to Dessau and their offices in the administration area of the naval base there.