Title: Hook the Captain
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Star Craft II / RPF Crossover
Summary: A day in the life of Captain Nine, more commonly known as Sean Plott, aboard his cruiser the Manfred.
Pairing: Day[9]/The World
Word Count: 1,500
Warnings: Believe it or not, just language...
Disclaimer: Blizzard owns Star Craft II and the characters therein. Day[9] owns himself, the real Manfred, and too much awesomeness for his own good. No harm or slander is intended to any living persons described in this story. The title comes from a band of the same name.
Author's Notes: This was written for the HyperX 'Pro for a Day' competition. If you read, please be courteous and leave a constructive review telling me what you liked and what could be improved upon. Thank you for reading!
Hook the Captain
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If it can be said that Terran armies march, backs straight and guns drawn and like civilized humans should, and that Zerg scum swarm, infest, corrupt, moving in seemingly endless waves of singularly minded cretins, how is it that Protoss combatants surge? There is no denying that their formations are advanced, seemingly working on levels further than our current mental comprehension; I am failing to find a word to describe this eloquence…
"Captain?"
"I'm busy, Tristan. Come back later." A sweep of the arm over the data tablet brought up a new page. This page, in addition to the cramped and vaguely outdated text, contained a video that he did not start. The stilled preview image displayed a pair of Protoss Zealots, weapons drawn. The video would go on to describe each of the known Protoss combat units. He could detail those units upside-down, backwards, and in his sleep; it was conceivably possible that he could manage to do it while dead.
A small cough; Tristan was still in the room. "Captain Nine, it's time for your meeting to start. You told me, and these are your words, not to let you miss it," he said, with a slight hesitation before continuing with, "No matter how cranky you were about it."
"How is it that you always make my orders sound ridiculous when you repeat them back to me?" Sean Plott asked. He stood and stretched away the stiffness that had seeped into his muscles; a look to the clock told him that he had been hunched over the data screen for nearly four hours.
"Here is your dossier for the meeting," Tristan said. He held out the stack of papers to Sean, who held up one finger and smirked. Reaching across the desk, he grabbed the flask of water he had been nursing throughout the day and took a lengthy drink. The advances in self-filling containers in the past few years had been remarkable; no longer was a person restrained to only endless water at their fingertips, but also tea and orange juice. Rumors had been flying about a model that could conjure the perfect, bottomless cup of coffee.
The future, truly, was then.
Having satisfied his thirst, Sean took the papers from a bemused Tristan. With a shrug, he said, "It's important to stay hydrated. Now, what's this meeting about again? Is this the one with the armory people?"
"It's just the council of your fleet. You know all of the standard procedures: give your speech, lay out a recent battle, and then address any questions. In-and-out in under an hour," Tristan said. The men walked down the hall side-by-side in silence for a moment, until Tristan added, "That's what she said."
"Good lad," Sean replied. He inattentively flicked through a few of the report pages, getting a general feel for their content. "I really do need to talk to someone down in the armory today, though. We need to do some work on getting our Battlecruisers out into the field faster. The damn behemoths are slowing up the works. Maybe try getting one on the field before we colonize another base?"
"I'm sure that that can be arranged. I'll get them on a general work order, and you can teleconference down there with specifics after the meeting with the fleet," Tristan said. He pulled a tablet from his pocket and started typing up a message as they walked towards the bridge.
Sean took one last half-hearted look at the file he held, and then gave up. He had winged presentations before, and would certainly do it again after this; he constrained himself to willing away the headache that had been building all day. He thought briefly about the doctor's advice to sleep more, but there were too many reports to read, too many battle replays to watch and simulations to run.
Too much bad-assery to oversee.
"Order's been sent. I told them that you'll meet with someone at about twenty hundred hours," Tristan said, slipping his tablet away again and pushing the control board of the door they now stood before.
The paneling of the door parted in the middle, allowing them access to the bridge of the Manfred. For years , this had been his station of command. It was not a large ship, but it felt comfortable and yet sturdy.
It was home.
"How long until the meeting?" Sean walked to his system-wide data screen, much larger than the personal one in his study, and fiddled with the controls to get everything up-and-running.
"You have maybe ten minutes before they start linking up," Tristan replied. He was stationed at his own data board, on the starboard side of the bridge. "And it looks as if you've got a link message from your brother already waiting for you."
Having successfully booted all necessary components for the meeting, Sean pulled up one of the text games from the directories. Absently he said, "Nick can wait. Tell me when everyone's connected and we'll start."
"Yes sir," Tristan said, not able to hide his smirk. Every member of his direct crew knew of the captain's love of the word games, but those who did not come in contact with him often would often become perturbed by his past time; members of his fleet would often clamor when he delayed meetings of any kind with his protests of 'just one more round'. Chances were, today would begin in a similar fashion.
Sean let his eyes scan the screen again and again for word combinations, fingers tapping on the keypad without a sound to input each answer. He would frequently use the excuse that these games kept his mind sharp for battle, but really, it just relaxed him. Even now, he could feel his headache loosening, though how long that development lived would be, he could not say.
Taking a drink from the additional water flask he kept at hand on the desk, he found the last four letter word combination to end a level. His eyes drifted up to the inky darkness of space that loomed outside of the ship, taking in the sheer vastness of it all. Back when he had been living planet-side, all he had dreamed about had been working up in a spacecraft. Every ounce of his energy had gone into his training to be a star captain.
Now that he had it, after years of struggle and hardship, he would never give it up, and would never change a part of the experience of getting there.
"I think we're ready for you, captain," Tristan said from across the bridge. Sean's eyes darted to the corner of the screen, to find that he was eight minutes past the hour. Face darkening with embarrassment, he cleared his throat and flicked the videoconference switch.
The meeting went smoothly, for the most part. The topic for discussion had been Zerg colonies abandoning their usual strategies, focusing instead on battle without the aid of their Queens; the discovery of this anomaly had stunned many present, simply because it had never been thought possible before. An entirely new attack plan had to be formed around these rogue colonies.
"But Captain Nine, in the cases of spread out Zerg swarms without the Queens, can't we - " Sean ignored the man, round faced and red, and pinched the bridge of his nose. The headache was back in full force. He took another drink of water through pursed lips and listened to someone else in the conference debate with the first man. Without a thought, he ran his tongue over his chipped tooth, a war wound of sorts; the stress of meetings brought out nervous tics he could usually suppress.
When he heard the words 'lose your base' followed by a laugh, his headache pulsed and he was done with the conversation. "Gentlemen, sometimes you just need to lose your whole fucking base." Without another word, he turned off the video link and slumped down in his chair. From across the bridge, Tristan eyed him, aware of the multitude of lights now flashing on his screen to indicate dropped communications, but Sean shook his head at him.
The meeting was finished for the night.
He supposed he would have to do the whole thing again tomorrow.
As Sean's hand reached out to call up the man down in the armory, another notification flashed in the corner of his data screen. His hand slowed, and then dropped back to his lap. A text prompt from a woman he had met at a planet-side saloon.
Battlecruisers, or a woman? Battlecruisers, or a woman?
His mind churned over the order of things, and he was not entirely surprised when he internally settled on the thought, 'disregard text from female, acquire Battlecruisers'. He was, after all, a space captain, and sometimes a space captain needed to make the hard choices in life.
"Hello, Wheat? Yeah, I'm going to need some faster cattle bruisers. Can we work on that?"
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