Duty Roster Quotes

The one project-staff member on the duty roster not yet accounted for is the head of security, Michael Mace.

Imager isn’t set up yet,” Prof said. “So we’ll do this the old-fashioned way. Mizzy, you’re low man on the team roster. You get scribe duties.” She hopped up from her chair and actually seemed excited by the prospect. She took a marker and wrote Reckoner Super Plan for Killing Regalia at the top of the sheet. Each i was dotted with a heart.

By some quirk of fate, I had been chosen—along with five others—as a candidate to be the next equerry to the Princess of Wales. I knew little about what an equerry actually did, but I did not greatly care. I already knew I wanted to do the job. Two years on loan to the royal household would surely be good for promotion, and even if it was not, it had to be better than slaving in the Ministry of Defense, which was the most likely alternative. I wondered what it would be like to work in a palace. Through friends and relatives I had an idea it was not all red carpets and footmen. Running the royal family must involve a lot of hard work for somebody, I realized, but not, surely, for the type of tiny cog that was all I expected to be. In the wardroom of the frigate, alongside in Loch Ewe, news of the signal summoning me to London for an interview had been greeted with predictable ribaldry and a swift expectation that I therefore owed everybody several free drinks. Doug, our quiet American on loan from the U.S. Navy, spoke for many. He observed me in skeptical silence for several minutes. Then he took a long pull at his beer, blew out his mustache, and said, “Let me get this straight. You are going to work for Princess Di?” I had to admit it sounded improbable. Anyway, I had not even been selected yet. I did not honestly think I would be. “Might work for her, Doug. Only might. There’re probably several smooth Army buggers ahead of me in the line. I’m just there to make it look democratic.” The First Lieutenant, thinking of duty rosters, was more practical. “Whatever about that, you’ve wangled a week ashore. Lucky bastard!” Everyone agreed with him, so I bought more drinks. While these were being poured, my eye fell on the portraits hanging on the bulkhead. There were the regulation official photographs of the Queen and Prince Philip, and there, surprisingly, was a distinctly nonregulation picture of the Princess of Wales, cut from an old magazine and lovingly framed by an officer long since appointed elsewhere. The picture had been hung so that it lay between the formality of the official portraits and the misty eroticism of some art prints we had never quite got around to throwing away. The symbolic link did not require the services of one of the notoriously sex-obsessed naval psychologists for interpretation. As she looked down at us in our off-duty moments the Princess represented youth, femininity, and a glamour beyond our gray steel world. She embodied the innocent vulnerability we were in extremis employed to defend. Also, being royal, she commanded the tribal loyalty our profession had valued above all else for more than a thousand years, since the days of King Alfred. In addition, as a matter of simple fact, this tasty-looking bird was our future Queen. Later, when that day in Loch Ewe felt like a relic from another lifetime, I often marveled at the Princess’s effect on military people. That unabashed loyalty symbolized by Arethusa’s portrait was typical of reactions in messhalls and barracks worldwide. Sometimes the men gave the impression that they would have died for her not because it was their duty, but because they wanted to. She really seemed worth it.

One of the weird things about being in a resistance movement was that it wasn’t like you could hire janitors, so when it came to cleaning, there was a duty roster.

But aren’t you afraid you’ll get jealous?” “What, of some other man with Beartongue? I’d throw my arms around him and call him my savior. Perhaps we could arrange a duty roster. A woman in her forties with a lot of aggressions to work out is a terrifying glory.

A day before the scheduled departure, Captains Kobzar and Zhuravin received another jolt. It was an even more drastic deviation from operational protocol than being rushed back into service ahead of schedule. The submarine’s crew roster had already been filled with replacements, and they had been introduced to the section officers they would serve. Since these replacements were from other submarines stationed at the base, they were quickly integrated into the regular crew. The new men were assigned to their duty sections, shifts, and bunk schedules. With the replacements, all work assignments were covered for the upcoming mission. Then, without explanation, eleven strangers, all in the uniforms of Soviet sailors, showed up at the pier where K-129 was berthed. They carried written orders to join the crew. The latecomers, including nine in the uniform of common seamen and one wearing the insignia of a seaman first class, were led by a chief petty officer. The chief produced orders assigning this squad to duty aboard Kobzar’s submarine as temporary replacements for his furloughed key senior enlisted men. These last-minute assignments were especially unusual, because their numbers raised the crew total to ninety-eight, fifteen over the normal complement of eighty-three men.