There wasn't a man on board who hadn't heard of Hartnett, of course. A gambler in combat, he had always managed to come out ahead of the game. His record was the record of practically every major achievement of the Force. Most of it could be read from the four rows of ribbons under his Command Pilot's sunburst.
There was the pale blue of the Terran Honor Medal that he'd won by ramming a Martian dreadnaught of the Diemos class with his crippled corvette off Io in the first Cat war. There was the red bar of the DSM received for leading the first deep-space expedition to reach Ariel and Oberon in the Uranian system ... that, before Blake had been born. And the rainbow colored ribbon of the old UN patrol, the First Martian Victory Medal, the Venerian Exploratory Medal, the Spatial Cross; four rows of them ending up with the General Service and Martian Occupation Ribbon.
To say, that it impressed the Darkside's green personnel would be an understatement. The decorations showed Hartnett to be the gambler ... the lucky gambler ... that he was said to be.
All the way out to Luna Base from Hamilton Spaceport, the crew of the flagship had been muttering about the "damned brass-hat" who was going to disrupt the pleasant life of their beloved ship with his unwanted, high-ranking, stinking, presence, but the iron-hard reality of the man and the aura of confidence that emanated from him as he stood on the steel deck of the Control, spiked their guns too quickly. From the moments Hartnett stepped aboard, reflected Commander Scott bitterly, the ship tightened up. From here on in it was Hartnett's ship and there wasn't a damn thing anyone could do about it.
Introductions were short and to the point. Most of the ship's officers had met Hartnett's staff at the Base Officer's Club after the Captain's Council, where the commanders of the four ships that made up Flotilla Blue Three had met their Commodore for the first time. Scott sighed as he thought of the evident relief on Lieutenant Morrow's face when he had found that the flagship was to be the Darkside and not his own ship, the Lysander.
"That Hartnett will take over your ship, Scott," Morrow had told him. "He can't help it. From the moment he steps aboard, it'll be his baby." And Hartnett was a gambler....
Scott presented his officers to the Commodore almost jealously, starting with the Executive, Lieutenant Commander Chavez and Lieutenant Horowitz, the Tactical Physicist; and ending up with Ensign Blake, the Junior Gunnery Officer, who was startled from his nervous fidgeting by the sound of his name.
"A reservist," was Hartnett's only comment, and though it was said in a friendly tone, Blake flushed furiously and wondered if it stuck like straw out of his ears.
"Mr. Blake is the Charles Blake who won the New York to Ley City amateur skeeter-boat race last year, Sir," explained Scott.