Entry 21
Though he only recently began his new command assignment, Parck has authorized father to recall Chak for a new tasking. Having spent his military years in the cockpit, Chak is to undergo a basic training routine of ground officership in the next six weeks, with father's hope that he can use Chak and his unit as eyes for the Hand during the strange mission to recover Outbound Flight. An experienced and capable team from the 501st has already been selected, that they might help guide the young officer smoothly through his accelerated training.
Part of me is… strangely disappointed. Even as I contemplate it, the idea is as ridiculous as it is beyond any remote measure of possibility, but… that small part of me wanted to think that, just maybe, this was to be my task. A secretive mission with those who know almost nothing about us anyway… what would there be to lose?
It is an absurd notion, but the idea that the past year's work and study might have borne such intriguing results is a difficult one to shake.
Cherith has taken diligently and devotedly to her new work. Every evening, she sits with her datapad and fiddles with mockups of system security protocols, learning routines for different emergency scenarios. Last week, she shared as much news of her new duties as she is able in a message to Jagged, a response to his most recent account of life on Rhigar.
A dry humor always underlies Jagged's messages, but I think it is a little forced. Cherith delights in his tales of the stuffy chiss personalities he deals with, but tends to overlook the smaller details- that he is singled out and wears a different uniform from his chiss peers; that rarely is his rank, more important to a military chiss than his own name, conferred upon him outside of the most formal of settings.
Cherith does not seem to grasp that he is a bemusing distraction to those who, unlike the chiss with whom she serves here, have never dealt with a human before. On Nirauan, the Fels are given the benefit of the doubt, given father's position and the fact that Parck, who is ultimately in charge of it all, is human. Outside of this base, and especially among the Phalanx forces, it is a constant fight for Jagged- as it surely was for Davin before him- to prove even the slightest worth, let alone his equality or, as Davin demonstrated, superiority.
Nevertheless, Cherith seems to already be drifting slowly away from the restless and adventurous persona that claimed her only weeks ago as we chatted aboard the Starflare. I cannot fault her for possessing the same basic nature as all of the rest of them, but part of me is a little wistful, contemplating what trouble we might have wreaked if she were to succumb to her flights of fancy.
In the end, it is little matter. Just a foolish dream, Cherith's last flirtation with the childhood she is leaving behind day-by-day. Persistence of foolish dreams aside, I am not wholly sure when I left that childhood behind.
Really, I'm not sure I ever had it in the first place.