"Okay, preflight checks." The Captain said, clutching a mug of coffee. "Comms."
"Check."
"Nav."
"Check"
"Weapons."
"Check."
"Engineering and Systems. "
"Check."
"Excellent. Helmsman, release clamps and take us out, easy orbit, if you may."
"Aye, Sir!" I replied, flicking open the little hatch that protected the docking switch and pushed the key in.
"On my go," the Captain replied, inserting his key. "Three, two, one, go."
I turned the key and we felt the clamps loosen with a loud chunk. I felt vibration in the stick and grinned as the autopilot took us away from Cairo and towards the slow orbital path I'd programmed into the computer.
"She's mine, Sir. Purring like a tabby. Engines green, shift minimal. We're off."
"Excellent work, Van Graff. Keep her steady and rendezvous with Curran and Fujikawa at point five from Luna."
"With pleasure, Sir."
I felt like he smiled at my disposition, at least, that's what I hoped. We could all do with some cheerfulness as we began our maneuvers.
"Lt. Commander Kohli has the con, Kohli, if you would send for Gunnery Chief Savatier? I'll be in my office."
So it was time for the games to begin, then. To the Captain's credit, he wasted no time in dragging Valette to his office. The secondary bridge crew was quiet as Kohli led them and myself out towards Curran and the rest of the squadron. We heard nothing until the door hissed and Valette left the room, striding into the room with a big grin on her face.
"Everything alright, V?" I asked as she came close.
She opened her mouth to speak but only Kohli's voice emerged. "Cadet, are you on duty?"
She checked her watch, "not for another two and a half hours, why?"
"Then get off the bridge. No off-duty officers are to relax on the bridge."
Valette nodded and whispered to me, "you'll like him."
She left, letting the quiet murmur of the bridge take over. On a patrolling pattern, that murmur melted into the sounds of the creaking metals and engine thrum of a warship. It was heaven. I was lulled into a blissful trance, checking the ships engines, adjusting thrust, and cleaning my station. There was a catharsis in repetition when you were passionate about that which might be considered repetitive. Truthfully, I could live emy whole life in this moment, if I were condemned to it. I don't think I'd find it all that awful at all.
The Captain's door hissed. "All right, that's one down." He said, a new cup of coffee boiled in his grip. "Cadet Liang will be through in a few moments. Any news?"
Kohli shrugged, "just an update on fleet movements in Sol. I'm expecting confirmation of the mission in about ten minutes, though."
"Good, good. Should be pretty routine. I expect Admiral Harper will want us running supplies around Meridian so he can keep an eye on us."
At the mention of the Admiral, my bliss was ruined and I found myself picking at a nail as I listened.
"Sir?"
"Yes, Kohli?"
"Why the personal interest in us?" The Captain smiled. I turned to look because they were standing two feet from me, whatever game Captain Harper was playing, it clearly involved me knowing this. When he paused, the Commander continued, "I just find it odd that a man so committed to the laws and regulations of the UNSC would bend so many for a crew of delinquents."
"Honestly, I'm not sure. I'm trying to get to the bottom of things myself. He's been far more secretive in the last few years that he was back in the day."
"Maybe it's just the war" I shrugged, chiming in, "old bastards gotta be gettin tired of all this by now." I swallowed, "er, no offense, Sir."
"None taken, Cadet. There's probably some truth to it I suppose." He scratched his chin. The bridge opened, announcing Mei's arrival and she stood imperious in the blue light of the various screens on the bridge. Slowly she entered, her eyes glaring at me like two giant boring holes. I shuddered as she followed the Captain and sighed as the door slid shut behind them.
About seven minutes later, you could almost make visual contact with the rest of the fleet. Curran's destroyer, the UNSC Screaming Eagle. The Destroyer might be more important, the best ships we have, in fact, but Frigates will win us this war, Mark my words. At least, they would with me at the helm.
Derry, the reserve comms specialist, frowned, drawing my attention away from Curran's beautiful ship. He looked puzzled, "message from FLEETCOM, Ma'am. Order's are in."
"Send it through." She replied, relaxing in her chair. Kohli looked the part of a Captain herself when she sprang upright a moment later, her brows almost crossing into a hash on the top of her forehead.
"Everything okay, Ma'am?" I asked, risking her ire.
"Doesn't look like it." She replied, forwarding the package to the Captain next door. Within less than a minute Liang walked out of the office and off the bridge looking very pleased with herself. The Captain followed moments later without coffee this time.
"Something isn't right." He said flatly.
"Agreed."
"Helmsman, rally with the fleet. We have our orders." Then, he leaned towards the console on his chair and clicked a button, his voice ringing out across the ship. "Primary bridge crew to the bridge, timetable has moved forward. All hands prep for immediate departure from Sol."
I grinned excitedly as the ship seemed to come alive, bristling with the anticipation I felt in my own fingers. It glided towards our squadron with the grace and poise of an angel and, with the UNSC Pontifex and UNSC Horn of Africa within visual range of our bridge, we assembled, over the course of an hour, into position. Eventually, I'd placed us alongside the two other frigates and began the departure procedure with Kohli, Brit and Mei.
"Coordinates received, are the crew iced?" I said, having received them from Mei, who worked quietly at her station.
"Yeah, 2296 Popsicles in the freezer, systems green for launch." Brit chirped, playing with a loose strand of her hair.
Mei Liang rolled her eyes.
"Cleared for departure. Send us in three… two… one… now." Kohli said, standing firm as I kicked on the slipdrive and felt the familiar nausea of slip space travel wrack my gut. The colour of the portal bathed the room in a bright and royal glow as the torsion and rolling sickness of slipspace pulled at us.
"Course is true," I said, as the vibrations settled a little, the rear of the ship passed through the portal as it closed shut. Leaving a blackness in its wake, slipspace sprawled out beyond us in a vast and unfathomable plain.
"We should get under ice before Mei reports us for breaching regulation'' I said, absentmindedly.
"Excuse me?" She recoiled, ready to lash out with a sharp tongue.
"Enough. The pair of you." Kohli growled, "this spat was tiresome enough when lives weren't on the line."
"Permission to speak freely, then, Ma'am?" I said, glaring at her.
She glared back, and then nodded as though she'd been forced.
"Ya'll were more than happy to see me ostracised from my cadets before. Cadet Liang's problem is your problem too. It started because of you." Now, pissing off your CO and raising the issue like that was not a good idea. Even in the moment I knew it were a rash decision. Still, tip-toeing around the issue was beginning to grind on my psyche. There's no good to come from letting conflict like that weigh on your mind. Eats you alive, that. In school, it was always best to throw a punch than suffer the glares. It was cathartic, back then.
"I didn't want a known criminal in the ranks." She glared, her nostrils flaring like a sun spot.
"And I didn't want to be pulled out of a cell and pressed into the service of a hypocrite but here we are."
Liang blinked, her eyes scooting between myself and the Commander.
"Watch your tone, Cadet." She spoke so quietly that I thought I might have missed it but Kohli simply sucked air between her teeth and half-snarled as she ordered us back to our cryo pods. She turned abruptly and stormed off down the hall to her pod.
"Hypocrite?" Liang asked, as the door slid shut behind the Commander.
I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger. "Get lost, Mei."
She bit her lip, scowling as I made off towards the exit. Undeterred, she followed, trying to keep pace with my long legs. It was pretty funny, watching her waddle beside me like a penguin.
"Hey, where are you going?"
"Under ice. For some goddamned peace."
"What did you mean the Commander is a hypocrite?"
"I don't owe you anything, Liang. Now get lost and leave me alone."
I walked along the hallway towards the aft, where the bridge crews lined the walls in their sealed pods and looked at my friends, then at Mei as she resigned herself to ignorance and clambered into the chamber with that perpetually snooty look she seemed to have. I tapped the commands into the console and watched as the lid hissed open, revealing the cryo pods interior. I hated cryo, it was an unnatural experience but one I was forced to tolerate so that I could fly. Leaning back in the chair, I sighed as the pod sealed me beneath the glass veneer. It booted and I felt a strange tingle fraught with uncertainty, the heady concoction of airborne drugs and metabolic depressants filled my body as my vision blurred. Soon enough, the world around me receded and I fell into a deep sleep.
《》《》《》
The Song of the East thundered out of slipspace with a calamitous noise. We'd been out of cry for a few hours, ready for reentry into normal space.
"Nav, what's our position." The Captain asked, sitting back in his chair.
A week had passed in cryo and I was feeling it as I waited for the post-jump checks to be finished.
"Major drift on that jump, Sir." Mei replied, "we're four hours sublight from the Admirals fleet on the other side of Meridian." Mei hadn't asked me about the conversation we'd had before cryo but the looks she shot at me from across the deck made me acutely aware of the fact she didn't like to let things go.
The Captain sighed, his eyes closing deliberately for a moment, "Alright, and the others? Fujikawa and Curran, where are they?"
Mei leaned forward, her eyes narrowing as she looked her screen over for the friendly IFFs. "Curran isn't far, no damage by the looks of things."
"Okay, Drippier, get Curran on comms, tell him to form up and find Fujikawa. Fetch, what's our status?"
"All systems appear green, Sir. Some slight damage to the starboard observation deck from excessive amounts of torque on the transition out of slip but nothing the Song can't handle."
"Alright, Van Graff, put us on a slow burn towards Meridian, let's not make it difficult for the others to make it back to us."
"Aye, Sir." I said, pushing forward on the throttle and revelling in the response from the engines.
With that he stood. Stretched his long arms and legs a bit and yawned. "Cadet's Fetch and Brettmann, if you would finish your checks and report to my office for a meeting, that would be grand. Kohli, you have the con."
Kohli nodded and I sighed, settling in for another hour of silence, protocols, relaxing in my chair feeling the Song purr beneath our feet. It's a glorious thing, a frigate. Fast and deadly, like the point of a knife , they're the last ships standing against the Covenant. Mark my words, they'll win us this war, somehow. They'll see us through to brighter days.
I had to believe it. In the distance, around the planet of Meridian, the shattered remains of a hundred ships littered the long range scanners, glistening in the window from a hundred thousand kilometres away. It was a bright and poignant reminder of our situation and it turned my awe into ashen melancholy.
I bit my lip and sighed, loudly, trying to push all that destruction from my head, when Kohli's eyes needled the back of my head.
"Is a live combat zone not interesting enough for you, Van Graff?" She asked, talking into my erect neck hair.
"I just…" I began, almost saying the quip that had flashed it the tip of my tongue, "That's a lot of debris, is all, Ma'am."
When she didn't reply, I turned my head. I was expecting an ass whooping but Kohli was staring out towards the planet where the debris lay. I could see her swallow the lump in her throat and then, looking back at me, nod silently before uttering a single phrase.
"It certainly is."