Disclaimer: zen zen arimasen. (Trans: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin, it belongs to Watsuki Nobuhiro and other people, but not me.) (Too many hours of Kodacha under the belt by the time I wrote the last portion, and this)
Warnings:
Based solely on anime
*English* ____ Third and first person mix_____ thoughts
"zen zen arimasen" DOES NOT mean what I say it does.
This is my "webpage format" :P
Instead of having vocabulary at the beginning of the chapter, translations are right next to the Japanese words.

Chapter 7: Finally, Something INTERESTING Happens!

Dom-kun had been awkward throughout the whole lesson. I was learning, but let me tell you, it wasn't because of his great teaching skills, and I say this as a shihondai. He wasn't fully concentrating on what he was doing, and he avoided me while teaching me at the same time, which doesn't work. How he attempted to accomplish this is difficult to explain because it seems impossible, but he managed it.
He would talk to me, but look past me. He would show me how to press certain buttons, which required guiding my hands, but he acted like my hands were made of boiling hot poison tipped spikes. It was not flattering. I was afraid he was going to pass out when he was showing me that I needed to press certain buttons in a certain order at a certain speed, and needed to place his hand over mine.
My conclusion was that he was either in love with me, or he hated me.
In my mind both were extremely possible. I was beautiful, competent, wonderful in everyway, and strong willed; so why wouldn't he be in love with me? On the other hand I wasn't nearly as pretty as I could be, foreign, and I hit him over the head with a pot once. I was boyish, quick to anger, and I might have invaded his privacy yesterday when I had comforted him over the loss of his friend.
I didn't spend too much time thinking about these things, I was concentrating on learning what he was teaching me, or rather Yahiko, which meant I had to work harder to absorb anything. Yahiko was a boy of ten, stuck on a ship with six adults, three of which he did not get along with, and no room or resources to do anything. I had a feeling things would soon go down hill rapidly in the boredom department. Megumi was studying, but there's only so much of that that you can do without going insane or stopping, Sano and Taketsu-san spent the whole time gambling, which I frowned upon and would take no part in, Kenshin and Yahiko would watch a lot of the time, but neither cared. Kenshin didn't even seem to want to try, and Yahiko would never get the chance anyway.
So that day, for the past three hours, Yahiko and I were learning things about the ship. Yahiko enjoyed it, but didn't understand it all (even though Dom-kun mostly taught him, for whatever reason he was not directly teaching me as much as possible), and I already knew how I felt.
Dom stopped and wiped his forehead, even though it was clear. "I'm very sorry, I'm not doing a good job teaching."
Damn right you aren't, what's wrong with you?! Of course I didn't say that, I said, "No! Really! You're doing fine." Something about his smile told me I needed to take acting lessons.
I smiled blindly, and watched as he gave each of us a smile, "I've been distracted, I'm sorry."
"Well, I guess that's okay, if we need to stop." Yahiko slid off his seat and lowered his volume (he either did that, or got louder when he made a mean comment), "Busu's a better teacher than you anyway, it's too bad there isn't enough room on this ship to practice kenjutsu." He walked off to join the gaming table where Sano's butt had probably melted into the seat so that they had become one by now.
Dom-kun just looked at me apologetically said, "Maybe we can continue this tomorrow. Oh, and feel free to tinker around, I didn't teach you anything dangerous, or why don't you teach Kenshin what you know?" I swear he winked at me. Were it not for the wink I wouldn't have been sent into a double panic. Even HE knew about my feelings for Kenshin! Everyone knew! Even Kenshin knew! Wait- it is possible he could be that oblivious. I calmed down and tried to stop blushing, which doesn't work by force of will. He could have just told me that because there were only two sets of translators, and so Kenshin gave up his chance to learn with me for Yahiko (I had to learn because I was becoming an adept). So, maybe he just wanted Kenshin to have a turn.But then, the wink! That meant that he was probably in love with me. I didn't know what was worse, having him know about my feelings for Kenshin in his hate, which was embarrassing, or having him in love with me when I was in love with someone else!
By that point in my inner dialogue I had decided that I was overanalyzing everything and just forget the wink, the wink probably didn't happen.

Okay, I wouldn't forget the wink, but I would temporarily forget the wink.
So, as long as for another couple of hours the wink never existed, why not take his advice and offer to teach Kenshin what I learned? He must be secretly dying of boredom as well; even though the only time I've seen him show it is that day I left him with Aoshi.
I didn't really know how to ask him, or what to say to him, and I was afraid it would come out odd, but those were always just superficially girlish things that I automatically went through. Kenshin is someone I can usually always talk to easily, whether or not I was screaming, beating, or talking, we always communicated pretty well. So as I planned to turn around and have to find him and ask him if he wanted me to teach him anything, or to just order him to come with me and hope that worked, I was pleasantly surprised to find him right there.
What I meant was that I turned around, and he was standing not too far behind my chair, leaning against the booth where Sano was sitting, and gazing half-heartedly at the game. As soon as I had turned around his head turned and he smiled at me.
Everything seemed right in the world when he gave me that smile, and everything that I had or needed to say formed pretty solidly in my mind. I didn't need to worry about going off nervously to find him, or asking him in front of Sano or Megumi to receive grief. It was like he had read my mind, I turned around, just when I didn't expect him, and he was there for me. It was Kenshin's way. He's the kind of man that just 'appears' when you need him.
I smiled back at him and called his name with affection, and just to further deplete my nervousness from earlier, I didn't have to say anything; he just walked towards me.
"Would you like me to teach you what I learned today?"
I guess it didn't work the same way with him, because he seemed at a loss of which term for 'yes' he should use. He finally came up with, "Aa."
So we sat down and I began to teach him what I learned. First I pointed over to the booth. "There are six emergency straps that are at that booth in case the gravity generator gets knocked out. That means that if we can no longer stand upright or the ship has to maneuver that is where we all go to be securely strapped down. The straps are pulled from the bottom of the seat cushion and snapped into the catch above the backs, one for each arm, then the two straps are hooked together, and should keep everyone in place, from Yahiko to Sano. The seats that you and I are sitting in are for Taketsu-san and Dom-kun. According to Dom-kun, Taketsu-san is the pilot, and Dom-kun handles weapons, but both of them know the basics of the ship, and that's what I spent most of the time learning."
Kenshin nodded. I had a feeling that he was a bright man, in a way. He was definitely not all brawns and no brains. Besides being so wise though, he had a lot of intelligence to him, and given the opportunity, such as now, he could be a precocious and learned individual.
"Okay, so for starters I should show you the parts of the ship. This ship has a wide consol, and so each of our chairs can slide back and forth through our respective halves. You're sitting in the weapons' chair. The right side of the consol has all the controls for firing weapons, and I have all the controls for piloting. We each have our own set of controls for basic functions. There are-"
Just as I was about to tell him about the small button on the side of his armrest on both sides of his chair, he discovered them, and like a child with a new toy, he started to slide left and right repeatedly. "KENSHIN!"
He looked up and stopped moving around, "Oh… gomen de gozaru."
I huffed and tried to remember where I was while Kenshin looked ashamedly at his fidgeting digits. "So… as you have discovered," I said through bare teeth with a meaningful look, "you can move back and forth by using those buttons. In order to use separate consols we'd have to be on opposite sides of the ship, so why don't you just watch me first?"We wouldn't have been more than a dozen feet away, but Kenshin got up and stood behind my chair, which gave me a ticklish feeling, like my skin had suddenly become more sensitive. I shook it out of my mind, I was supposed to be teaching here, just where did I get off getting warm fuzzy feelings in the middle of a lesson? That just wouldn't do. Kenshin and I hung out a lot like friends more than anything else, and I don't ever… feel… I trailed off realizing that I had been ignoring Kenshin.
"In order to bring up a map of the ship, inwards or outwards, you press this. From the general ship map, you can specify a map or the interior, or exterior of the ship, as well as specific parts to the ship." The ship's ceiling near the consol was arched because of the smooth bullet shaped front. Kenshin and I were all the way to the left of the ship, and the way that the map came out was that it either slid up from the consol, or slid down from the bent ceiling. Once the ceiling was flat there was another slit for a holodisplay to come down, and they were the right size and distance apart so as not to obstruct the operator's view.
I tapped the holodisplay that I had called up from the consol. "This is called a 'ha-lo-di-shplei', which means it displays things as if they were right in front of you out of this small flat picture." In my mind I had not taken to calling it a halodishplei, but instead just used Nihongo (Japanese) words to describe it, but the name needed to be recognizable to me because Dom-kun used it frequently. I did the same with the word 'suri-di', which just meant three-dimensional in Nihongo anyway.
About that time the exterior of the ship shown up on the holodisplay, and Kenshin commented on what I was thinking, "It shows three dimensions like the one we saw at the dojo de gozaru."
I nodded, "It's emulated by advanced sonar. Light gets shot out from this," I indicated an antenna near the front of the ship sticking up from the top; it had two cones in it, one was smaller and narrower, and the other was large, and stretched out so it was almost flat, currently it was rotating and turned down at the ship, "and is caught in the larger cone. It's pointed at the ship because that's what we want to see, and it's rotating to get full view of the ship. There's another one on the bottom, and two more, one next to each one in case you want to see two different things at once."
I went on explaining about how you could lock that one into place and bring up the second one to look around you, but there was nothing but stars so I continued to explain other parts of the ship.
Almost an hour later, "And these are the engines…" I trailed off and let my attention wander from the display, to space outside, which I could actually see with my own two eyes. Kenshin didn't seem to mind, and joined me at looking at the billions of shooting stars, just within the view of that one window. There were so many that it made the mind boggle that our planet had just been revolving around one of these stars, out of billions of billions, and we were just one race of people out of that many more. I sighed with the weight of it all, and noticed in my peripheral vision that Kenshin had looked down at me.
"I'm sorry de gozaru."
"It's fine," I had tilted my head up to look back at him.
"I guess I just miss looking at nature de gozaru." He was referring to the stars; I could tell because I felt the same way, even if they were shooting around us at a fairly fast rate.
"I understand." He was leaning on the back of my chair and I could feel his hand under my shoulder. As little as it was, it was very comforting, so I continued. "I used to think that I appreciated nature quite a lot, even though I'm no tree hugger and I did know I took advantage of it to a certain extent. Now that I'm here, and everything I see except the stars in anything but natural, I realize how much I took it for granted…" I had settled my vision back on the stars, and felt Kenshin smile rather than saw him.
It was hard not to see the stars whipping past our ship as we raced on in compressed mode, and once again I was reminded of technology overcoming nature, and I realized that we had strayed off track and got a hyper urge to get us back on it. "Technology is nice too- so back to what we were doing!"
I explained as much as I could about the engines, Dom-kun had been careful not to teach too much, he had no intention of letting anyone but Taketsu-san fly the ship yet, and I guessed that the best way he figured he could hold out against mutiny was that ignorant mutineers were safe ones. So I didn't know much yet about the engines, and I knew nothing about the weapons, and after I had explained the parts of the ship, I started to teach Kenshin the functions I had learned.
We switched seats, so now I was letting him handle the consol, just like Dom-kun had done for me. I didn't think Dom-kun was a bad teacher, but he wasn't concentrating, and he was acting as a bad teacher at the time. Kenshin was a compliant student, or at least he was for me. He sat there and learned quietly, except for when I talked to him, or when he asked soft questions. The exact opposite of Yahiko, I thought angrily. It had been a while since we had gotten the chance to do something together alone (albeit four people were a few people behind us, some of which were cheering loudly), and I enjoyed being able to watch the way that Kenshin was.
"So there are three types of scans. I already showed you one of them, the exterior of the ship. The other two scan what's out there," I pointed out the window. "There's short range, and long range. They both scan for things like electricity, heat, radio signals, engine trails ect.." Engine trails are the trails of particles left behind by engines, they can be picked up by light scans, and can tell you what course the ship is on as well as where it has been. The particles fade after a while and the trail disperses. "In order to bring up the scanning you have to hit these five buttons in sequence." I put my hand down there to indicate where they were, and then lifted it up for Kenshin to put his hand there. Then, as Dom-kun had had to do for me, I put my hand over his and led his fingers in the right sequence without pressing on them. "Do you get that?"
He nodded and I kept my hand there to show it to him again, only faster. Rarely did Kenshin need to ask questions, because I usually answered most of them before he could, but he asked, "Why is it like that de gozaru ka?"
I tried to get some sort of feeling from him before I did so, but somehow felt a sense of confidence from him and got the courage to leave my hand over his while I explained. "Once this action is carried out large scanning dishes cover the ship, in a battle or a crisis this would cripple the ship's other functions, so it's made so that it's hard to open by accident." He nodded once and I continued to help him practice on opening the dishes before I took my hand back and let him do it on his own.
He succeeded and I showed him how to change the level to short-range scan. "A short range scan searches the area around the ship of about seven kilometers in all directions. It searches for all the qualities I told you-"
I stopped when Kenshin gave me a very cute, confused look and listed them off on my fingers, "Electricity, heat, radio signals, engine trails ect… Well, on low power it searches for all these things within this range of seven kilometers, no further. On high power, which takes more energy from the power cells, the scan searches that area, plus another seven kilometers less specifically. For example, a meteor not visible by the naked eye could be mistaken for a drifting ship, because there is no search for radio signals or electricity. Only the heat from the engines is picked up."
"So," Kenshin looked up into my eyes and drew a bright conclusion, "if a ship wanted to hide from short range, high power scans, all they would have to do is let their engines cool and drift de gozaru ka?"
I smiled and nodded at him, trying not to show how impressed I was by his conclusion, because right then I was acting as a teacher. "Yes, in fact, Dom-kun told me that the most common scan was the short range high power. Low power is used in docking mostly, and long range is only used if you see or find something interesting. Here: I'll show you how to do short range scan."
I was feeling more relaxed around Kenshin physically than ever before. Maybe it was because Kenshin was a comforting figure in the midst of all the new chaos I had been thrown into, or the fact that his presence was always comforting and now more so because I was acting as his teacher, and so it made it easier for me to be close to him. I was getting bolder with every experiment of flirtation, even though as I was teaching I avoided thinking of it that way. Over the time Kenshin and I had been living together I was getting more confident in general about being relaxed around him as time went on. Now, as I explained how to perform the scan, I felt comfortable about leaning over him and pointing out the right buttons to push, and leaned on his shoulder without a second thought. I didn't notice until later that the time alone on the Alexandria had brought us much closer than a whole month back at the dojo.
Under my instruction he flipped the switch next to the scan button for low range and entered the instruction with a command. The scan began with an outward spherical spiral, and the holo image shown up for a visual, with the statistics at its side. I pointed out the different types of material shown in the scan, and explained how all matter shows up in a scan but not all of it was identifiable. I felt as if I might have been loading him down with too much information to absorb at once, and so I gave him the exercise of picking different statistics and trying to identify what they were. Sometimes he would get them right recognizably, and sometimes (since I'm no expert either) we would discuss the stats and consider the possibilities.
"You should see how Dom-dun does it, he's so fast at picking up what's usable energy particles and what's space junk it makes my head spin. He can look at a coordinate's locus value and tell you what planet a rock is from, or whether it's an old mine left over from wars. It's amazing to watch." Kenshin gave no reply, which confused me but I let it go without much thought. As he moved around into another quadrant I gave him a few more tips. "Don't forget that you can assume that when something has either a vapor trail, engine trail, or dust trail that you can calculate the course of the object if you want. You can always tell if there's a trail by the presence of matter, but you can only tell what kind of trail within the low power range."
Kenshin was staring hard at one of the stats on the screen, and kept glancing back to the visual projection. "Kaoru-dono, am I wrong, or is this very, very large in comparison to other things in the scan, to be outside of an asteroid belt and all de gozaru ka?"
"Huh? Lemme see," I pushed in to see on equal level with Kenshin and looked it over several times. "I'm not sure, but it is pretty large, and it does have a matter trail here, see?" I pointed. "What a perfect opportunity! This is what long range scans are for, to see in detail something that you catch with the short range." I switched the scanning switch back to low power and explained that for training purposes it would be a waste of energy otherwise.
Kenshin performed the scan himself this time, and we zoned in to the area where the comet was. Only, apparently, it wasn't a comet, but another ship. The trail was an engine trail, and the ship was emanating heat, radio signals and electricity. Kenshin and I, I imagine, were feeling pretty impressed with our skills at detecting the ship and using what we had learned, so of course we ended up taking it a step farther.
"So how does one calculate courses, de gozaru ka?"
To his surprise I shrugged, but continued unexpectedly, "To calculate it yourself takes really incredible math skills, it has something to do with the equation and slope of a line running through a tri-axis graph of x, y, and z. However, personally I have no idea what that means, and I think it would take me years to understand, and so, that is why there are programs that do it for you! ^.^" I smiled warmly at Kenshin and showed him how to bring up the input program window. "All you really have to do is look at the stats, and pick two coordinates, one on the ship in the estimated center, and the other in the estimated center of the trail. The computer will do the rest, and it will come up on the visual."
Kenshin nodded and did as I told him slowly as he chose coordinates and input them. He did it so carefully and slowly that I noticed one of his pet peeves was to be a perfectionist. The knowledge made me smile because no one's perfect, not even (and especially not) Kenshin. His own will to be perfect at the things he learned and practiced must have been what drove him to become the best swordsman in Japan. He finally got the coordinates he wanted, and put them in with an interesting result.
The screen flashed red and signed something in English which neither of us could read, but, as I had learned from Dom-kun, and Kenshin had learned from me, it meant: WARNING.
The rest of the warning was in English, and I couldn't read it, but once the sign stopped flashing I could tell what the problem was. Underneath the sign was the visual of the course, and according to the computer, we were on a direct crash course with the alien craft in about ten minutes.
There was a pause before Kenshin and I slowly turned to look at each other. Although I knew perfectly well that there was a chance that the ship would change its course, I saw in Kenshin's eyes my deeper fears and feelings reflected. I had a bad feeling about this.

It haunted me late into the night, and all of the next day throughout my lesson with Kaoru. Damn Tackets! He implanted something in my mind that seemed to bag at every thought, and jar itself into everything I said and did. So now I was working on insignificant amounts of sleep, around the very thing that plagued my thoughts, and turned my normal concerns into mind-eating obsessions.
"You're vulnerable."
"You're vulnerable."
"You're vulnerable."
I heard Tackets' exact tome repeating it all throughout the day. It raised two new layers of questions, one that just required deep thought, and reflection of the soul, and some more deep thought. The other, I could not figure out. I could have an opinion, I could invent scenarios in my head to act out my different theories, but there was no true answer to me. The answer did not exist, and so, it haunted me.
The first question was whether or not; in my time away from Roxanne after our fight I had become unfaithful, because, in my mind, that is what it would be, unfaithful. We hadn't broken up, and I thought about her almost every couple of hours, and tried to suppress my feeling of guilt and self-doubt thereof. Was I flirting with Kaoru too much? Did I start to turn to her in my loneliness, in my longing for Roxanne, in my pain at loosing a friend, because I was vulnerable, and not because I was trying to be her friend? Was I using her as an escape from my problems? All of these possibilities were morally wrong in my eyes, and so I turned a very stern eye on myself and kept watch over my every reaction to find the answer.
I may be a scientist of sorts, but in a way, and in a matter of the heart, I couldn't help but to manipulate the data somewhat. My conclusion that I was not doing those things that had bothered me was based on how I had observed myself acting during Kaoru's lesson (or Yahiko's lesson, if you can call it that). Under my own scrupulous observance I was distant, quiet, and shy towards Kaoru, thereby proving I was not turning to her in my vulnerability, but having been provoked by the knowledge that I might be doing so, I wasn't sure it counted. However, it could never count, because every time I conscientiously evaluated myself, I would forever more be what I wanted to be at that time. I had to let my mind rest with that question though, because there was another more important one to be had.
My second haunting dilemma was the fact that I had always considered myself a strong willed person. Whenever I wanted to do something I could do it, whenever I wanted to change the person I was, I would, whenever I wanted to know something I would learn it and memorized it meticulously, whenever I wanted to explain something I spoke with perfection of tone and emotion, trying to afflict my listener to their very core with what I was saying. I wasn't perfect, but if I wanted to I could act with perfect tact, perfect manners, perfect cleanliness, lack of impediment of mind, perfect charm, conviction, passion, romance, authority, and cooperation. I could do all these things, and yet I was vulnerable?
I suppose I could have let everything go except for the simple impossible problem that I associated vulnerability with weakness. Someone that lacked weakness could not be vulnerable. I didn't lack weakness; I just didn't know what it was. Was it Roxanne? Was it women? Did I lack something that others had? I didn't lack experience, secrecy, openness, kindness, and anger, some level of fragility… I went through every possible characteristic in my mind, but I couldn't find anything that was a weakness. I didn't let my feelings for Roxanne hinder my work, so it couldn't be her that was causing to be vulnerable, she didn't make me weak. The same went for Varn. Why would Tackets say that with suck serious severity? I couldn't figure it out at all. The best thing I could do was to try not to be vulnerable, if that was possible, which it like trying to completely lack weakness isn't it? Which, in my opinion, isn't possible.
The only thing I could think to do was to get the opinion of someone else, someone whom I trusted to know that I had a weakness (and therefore- no one on the ship besides Tackets, and certainly not Tackets because… he was Tackets, cold unfeeling bastard of all the worlds) and now that Varn was dead, there was only one person in my life to turn to, which was sad, because that meant I had only two people in the universe whom I trusted (or was that a strength?).
I wrote the letter to Roxanne several times. Each time I erased what I had written before because it seemed too weak or too offensive, given the current situation of our relationship. So I finally came up with the basest thing I could manage:
Roxanne-
I know you're probably not talking to me, but in case you are, I was just wondering… -Are weakness and vulnerability the same thing?- And, I look forward to seeing you again.
-Dominic

I was surprised that the writing of the letter made me nervous. I was nervous about her reply, and about her reaction to my even writing her. I had no idea what the consequences of her anger were, because she had never before been angry at me like before I left. Perhaps she had forgiven me… but, being such a passionate person as she was, and without the ability to just let life pass her by idly, she might have harbored the angry feelings with reverence, there was no way of knowing.
Right after I had finished the letter, and sent it, with my nerves on end already, was about the time that I heard a feverish knock on my door.
"Open" I said to the voice receiver that would open the door. "Taihenda!" (Emergency!) Reached my ears before I could see Kaoru and Kenshin spill into the room. I was surprised that they managed not to fall.
My oversensitive nerves sprang to attention and had me on my feet in an instant. "What happened?" I said freely in English, with no remembrance for Japanese at the time, but they had on translators so it was fine.
"We were running a scan… I was teaching Kenshin how to run a scan when we discovered that there is a ship, like this one, on course to hit the Alexandria soon." Kaoru urged me to follow herself and Kenshin to the bridge, which I did. My shyness of Kaoru was gone with my sense of duty and concern for our well being.
We jogged to the bridge and they cleared the way for me to work with the computer. I didn't notice it then, but all of my deep reflective thoughts had been pushed aside in the name of nerves and duty. My hands flew over the keyboard to double check their findings, and then take the scanners back into the ship so that I would be free to hail the ship, and be ready for battle stations if necessary. Windows flashed and flitted in front of my eyes, I only needed one look before I closed it and opened another. The other ship's velocity and estimated weight imprinted in my mind, almost as they had been imprinted in the ship's memory when it had taken a high power long range scan.
I traced the communications line to the other ship, and found that it's serial number had been wiped clean and it was not registered with the trade route government, a very unusual and suspicious occurrence. I hailed and waited for the line to be connected or rejected. After a few tense seconds there was a window that displayed results that flashed red for 'rejected'.
Following protocol with a heavy sinking feeling I hailed again to check for errors. The hail was rejected again. I couldn't assume the worst from that just yet, because there could be other reasons for that, including the other ship having extreme technical difficulties.
I turned and without effort directly addressed Kaoru with the most authoritative and imperative voice I could. "Remember how I showed you to strap people into the emergency seats?" She nodded with a worried look, "Show everyone how to do that, the both of you," I regarded Kenshin, "and strap in yourselves as well, the ship will be maneuvering and it's not safe otherwise. This isn't yet a cause for alarm, but I hope we'll avoid any complications this way." Good, this gets them out of my way, I couldn't help but think. I turned back to the bridge and turned on the alert switch, throwing the ship into a different mode in which yellow lights blinked near the ceiling and the ship started to power up.
Kaoru and Kenshin disappeared from my sights in a flash, and were soon replaced with Tackets, all business. "What do we have?" He asked before he even reached the bridge. I took my seat on the right side of the consol, with the weapons, and began to strap in while briefing Tackets.
"During a scan there was a ship on course to intercept ours directly at (155, 67, 9300). We would have crashed, so I hailed, and they rejected the hail twice." I awaited my order after that, as Tackets mulled it over a little and buckled himself in. He was technically of higher rank than me, even though it was my ship. The authority was given to him, unless it was a really serious situation, in which case he would probably have handed command over to the owner of the ship, me.
"Easy, we move out of the way, we'll have to come out of compression, which is a bitch, but oh well. If they follow us through and go after us… well, then, that's how we know whether or not they're friendlies. You'd better get the weapons charged and ready for when we come out of compression."
I nodded and started at my work, activating the weapons with a release password, warming them up and charging them, as well as putting out the holodisplay scan (which served for aiming while in battle instead of the huge scan disks that covered and hindered the ship) and putting on an aiming headset. The headset allowed me to look out of the ship's front window and zoom in on areas so that I could choose more specific areas to aim. I held the firing joystick and watched the steaming holodisplay of our surroundings. "Ready," said I.
"Check the passengers for me," Tackets continued to do his work. I, on the other hand, pulled up a scan of the interior of the ship and saw that all five passengers were seated and locked in place.
"Ready."
"Decompressing space." Tackets increased the energy output and turned a dial that decompressed space. Star lines reduced into line segments, and then reverted back to their original dots. We went from a full speed pace of passing solar systems by in a second, to a full speed where we seemed to creep along the immense stretch of the universe, never ending.
"Plotting new course." Tackets began the long and mind grueling procedure of finding a safe pathway in space while I did my own job.
"Visually scanning…" I looked onto the holodisplay and searched around the ship, checking some areas more closely with my head set once, and then did the whole sphere again. "We seem to be clear."
"I'm still plotting, continue your scan." I sighed heavily and continued the monotonous and continuous task of visually scanning the whole visible sphere around the ship. The third time, far above and to the front of us appeared a ship. The same ship. "Visual confirmation. (190, 602, 49)"
"Is it approaching?"
"Not as of yet, it could be visually scanning for us," I zoomed in the headset to confirm.
"Or it could be waiting for something, don't bother, arm the charge cannon and the LE guns."
I did as I was told, and had no time to resent the fact that if we survived this, which, with the Alexandria's technology, was inevitable, I would have to recharge the ship in order to compress again.
Two more ships decompressed around us right in the middle of the LE gun software loading, to my surprise, and I realized that this was now a serious battle and a serious emergency.
"Computer log:" Tackets addressed the computers data recorder. "Tackets transferring authority over to the owner and caretaker of the Alexandria, Dominic Sawyer. End log." He then turned to me, "Well captain?"
I accepted the change without much delay, and immediately began planning the battle out in my head. But, as always, policy first, and with the questions that Kenshin brought up about the attempt for peace ringing in my head, I brought up the hailing equipment. "Hailing unidentified ships-"
"Are you insane? 'Unidentified', they're foes, that's clear."
"You've handed command over to me-"
"I wouldn't have if I thought you were so incompetently ready to kill us all!"
I was sick of arguing with Tackets, this was not the time, "I order you to shut up; I think the hail is going through."
The middle part of the bridge's window filled with a gray screen, which was soon replaced by the bridge of another ship, a man stared right back at me, with the same headset on, and probably the same face, before he smiled, "Copenhagen justice. DOWN WITH MANIFEST DESTINY!" His abrupt change in attitude from calm, to sinister, to frantic, was climaxed by the disappearance of the hailing screen. My heart skipped a beat at all the implications that were fixed within that one hailing, but my mind flew back to the space before it and saw as one of the ship's burst forward with an engine thrust and maneuvered to charge us.
I gulped and wet my lips in preparation for my first space battle as a captain. And my first space battle ever. My mind and heart were panicking, but my voice, at least, sounded calm, dependable and in control. "Evade whatever they throw at us. We can't fire until they do."
"I'm regretting handing command over to a greenhorn like you," Tackets commented as he readied the engines and waited for some sort of oncoming attack.
"Too bad, they're civilians, that's how it goes." My hand twitched and waited for the chance to fire, but the ship wasn't firing. It continued to come toward us full speed. The eerie possibility of the truth shot through my mind, "Roll to starboard and then blast forward when I say 'now'." I watched as the ship drew nearer from below us, at full speed there would be an overlapping time of when we would crash, and how long it would take us to barrel roll, unless I timed it just right. After it was too late for the other ship to stop its maneuver, and before the crash was possible. I watched closer with a knot in my throat.
The ship neared, "Now!" I felt my stomach lurch in the artificial gravity as the gravity generator struggled to keep up with the roll. While still on an angle, and just missing the ship from the bottom, we blasted forward quickly.
"Evade! And for the sake of Man turn the gravity generator the hell off!" My heart was beating rapidly and I was sweating in the cool environment. When the grav-gen turned off, I felt lighter all of a sudden and my stomach settled. That's when I finally registered my passengers' screams. Kaoru had screamed anew when the grav-gen offed, and before Megumi, Yahiko, and Sano had at least yelped. I heard Yahiko make a sickened noise, and forced my self to ignore them.
"Okay, now what?" Tackets yelled at me.
"They know that we can't legally shoot at them until they shoot at us, so they aren't going to shoot at us, they're trying to kamikaze ram us."
"What?"
"They're doing suicide runs!" I was exasperated with him, he was supposed to know Japanese, and even if he didn't know 21st century expressions, it was still annoying.
"Okay… so, now what?" He repeated.
"Do you have that course planned out?"
"No."
"Finish it. I want to compress into that course, decompress, and then compress again into our original course." I was trying to make them run out of energy before we did, which, since I was on board giving us an unlimited source of power, we could do by compressing and decompressing several times. Compressing and decompressing took a lot of energy.
"I see. But how am I going to complete the course and fly?"
"Hand the controls over to my side."
"That's possible?" Tackets asked with genuine disbelief. I could have answered him the long way and said that it was, but it was nearly impossible to pilot and handle weapons controls at the same time, unless someone like me, knew my ship so well that… it was barely possible. Instead, I just said, "Yes."
"And if they start shooting?"
"Then the plan gets abandoned, you take flying back, and I shoot their asses down."
"Right then. I'm transferring controls."
My whole display lit up with the extra surge of electricity and information. I knew it would hold for a little while and hoped that Tackets would work faster than ever before. The ship wavered in that one second before I took my hands off of the joystick and weapons stabilizer, and transferred them to steering. I opened up a small window on the consol and displayed speed, slowed us down to make a turn around and see where the enemy was without having to yet take my hands off the controls for holoscanning. When the speed was set I took one hand off of there and used it to pull back on the manual steering control as I used the other now free hand to stabilize the weapons once more and then lock them in place as quickly as possible. Once they were locked I had to use a password to unlock them again if I wanted, so I ran that risk, but once out of the turn I had to switch back to digital steering, which took both hands and both eyes.
Well, usually it would take both eyes, but in my case I had to trust in my knowledge of my ship and look up, leaving my hands alone to steer by memory of where coordinates fell on the window in relation to the ship's window, which I was now looking through with my head piece. I spotted two of the three ships, and cursed. I was hoping to have been able to see all of them and therefore not have to concentrate on both flying and scanning for the ship at the same time. My confidence wavered, but but concentration did not.
Don't get anxious… you'll screw up, breathe. I started breathing again, whereas I had forgotten to do so in the last half-minute. I concentrated fully on my fingertips working the steering as I slowly turned my head to the holodisplay. With a silent prayer I let two fingers cover both steering panels and my hand flew up as fast as possible to zoom in to the back half of the ship, and then back down in an instant to steer again. The ship wavered during this procedure, as if responding to its pilot's emotions. I was half proud of the work that I had just managed, and half scared to death, and I had no time for either.
Luckily, now that I had been steering for a little while, I was able to spot the third ship, memorize its position, and turn my head back to the screen, where two ships were rushing at me as I had been working. The picture imprinted in my brain even as I looked down at the steering to do a half twist downward dive. To my dismay, in addition to the first two ships following through my move, the third one was also now on my tail, and all three gaining. "Tackets, how long?!" A bit of the inner PANIC I had been experiencing escaped through my throat against my will.
Tackets mumbled something, and then, "twenty seconds."
I felt hotness in my face, and in my stomach, as sweat droplets formed along my hairline and slid down my back. Twenty seconds seemed like an eternity of time. At least for my next maneuver I wouldn't have to check where the ships were, I knew because they were right behind me! I looked down and considered several options, rejecting each within a fraction of a second. It occurred to me that the only plans I didn't reject were always the most dangerous.
For my new stunt, I looked down, took the steering with one hand, and used the other to cut my speed. I had to do all my timing by personal calculations, memories and estimates because I couldn't look up. When I estimated that they were only a few meters away from my tail I hit the speed again and at the same time pushed upwards, let go of the speed, and tried to do a half twist to loose them, but when I let go of the speed I had forgotten to lock it, so it went back to moderate, and all three of the ships followed my maneuver easily. I panicked and reached out to correct the speed, and sped up going in a straight line, in which my tails would start gaining on me again when their speed recovered from also being slowed (because no one in their right mind would have pulled the maneuver I had just done at the speed I was trying to do it).
I cursed again and realized we were screwed.
"Its ready!" Tackets, O, blessed Tackets! I loved that man right then.
"GO GO GO GO GO!!!" At which point the coordinates were processed and we compressed. I immediately transferred piloting back to Tackets, and had I been standing, I would have collapsed. I put my arms on my armrest so that Tackets couldn't see them shaking. "Don't decompress until they come after us."
Right on cue the three ships popped up around our own, and I groaned. "Decompressing," Tackets was basically carrying out the plan alone.
"Do the same again, with compressing. Don't compress until they follow. They won't have enough energy to compress again. For that matter, neither will we, but I can refill the tanks with-"
"Sawyer, I know."
"Oh." I felt the aftermath of fight or flight: exhaustion.
"That was pretty cool though. I've never seen anyone ever do that."
"Thanks," and that was the last time he ever complimented me with sincerity. I reveled in the brief moment.
"They followed, compressing."
"I'm going, I'm going." The warning was taken off of the ship, the lights stopped flashing, and I unhooked myself. On my way to the LE Room, I told the others that they were free to take off their straps and such. They seemed to have plenty of questions, but I was too high on adrenaline to care, and the ship needed energy too badly for me to dawdle.



Notes ^.^:
-Important: I can no longer put out chapters as quickly as I used to, I'm not in Junior year and for the first time (possibly in my life) really working very hard. I don't have time to write except of weekends, and I write this fic as well as another, and I'm also working primarily on a novel. However, if you leave a signed review, I will email you when there is a new chapter.
-My website: chapters come out first there, and in addition, I will have scans of my drawings of the characters, as well as scans of the different scenes. (ex. I designed a picture of what Earth looks like in the future.) There will be a guide for the plot, as well as guides to the workings of the ships, and character profiles. Go there at some point; the email group will now hold updates about what's on there.
www.angelfire.com/anime4/marajadeblu0
-Manifest Destiny: In case you haven't studied it in school yet, Manifest Destiny was the belief that many US citizens held that they were destiney to own America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Indian tribes, Mexicans, British, anyone that stood in our way we took over or (except for the British- we just bought them out) killed in wars without mercy. We populated the West, and then took it over by saying that since we lived there it was rightfully ours. That's how 'the west was won'. It also had to do with the desire to spread democracy, and in some ways, it is still going on. Do research if you like, for someone like me, I find it a rather facinating subject.
-MaraJadeblu