AN: A big thanks to my beta reader AuroraBlix, you are awesome! Also, go read her stories; they totally rock!
Disclaimer: Red vs. Blue belongs to Rooster Teeth, not me. I make no profit from this, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Chapter Five
Sister looked around, drinking in the details of the old Albatross. She was vintage all right – a real bucket of rust. But Sister thought Brennan was right. This ship just needed love, and a lot of elbow grease, and Sister thought she was just the person to provide it. She turned to watch as a forklift brought in the cargo Brennan had secured while she'd been getting her things.
"All right Sister, we're good to go." Brennan grinned at her and then turned to wave off the forklift. He looked as if he had washed and shaved while she was gone as well.
"Good," Sister thought. "I was hoping he wouldn't try to fly drunk. I'll give the guy the benefit of the doubt that he was just having a bad day."
"Come on," Brennan called to her, "I'll show you the bunks." He led the way up from the cargo area into the rest of the ship. "This ship can service a crew of six," Brennan said. "Sorry there's only the one crew quarters, but this was a military ship after all." Brennan motioned at the door and Sister looked into the tiny room containing nothing but six skinny bunks built into two walls.
"It's okay; I'm used to small spaces. I've been sharing a two bedroom apartment with a dozen people."
"Wow," Brennan looked incredulous. "The bathroom's across the hall. You familiar with water rationing on ships?"
"I've read about it. I've only ever been on the shuttle from Earth to the Moon though."
"You are just full of surprises, Little Bit. You sure seem comfortable around ships for never having been on one."
"I've always wanted to go into space!" Sister said jovially. She just wished it was under more pleasant circumstances.
"Well, we'll see how much you like it after you've lived in it a while," Brennan chuckled. "It's not a particularly glamorous place."
Sister grinned at him. "I'm not a particularly glamorous girl." Brennan laughed.
"Well, drop your stuff kid, and come up to the bridge while we take off. A shuttle from Earth to the Moon doesn't count as a girl's first time, not by a long shot."
Sister laughed at his innuendo and followed him. She bounced a little on the balls of her feet with excitement as Brennan motioned for her to take the co-pilot's seat.
"Let's see here … " Brennan began muttering to himself as he hit some switches and buttons. Sister never took her eyes off him, trying to memorize what he was doing. Brennan called flight control over the radio and received permission to take off. Sister closed her eyes for a moment and reveled in the sound and feel of the engines firing up, but opened her eyes again so she could watch Brennan maneuver carefully out of the hangar.
"I hate landing on rocks without any atmo. Maneuvering in and out of these doors is a bitch in a ship this big...much easier to just set down on the ground and be done with it," Brennan muttered. Sister didn't reply, just stared at her first truly unobstructed view of the stars as they lifted away from the Moon.
"What's her name?" Sister asked finally.
"What's that?" Brennan glanced over at her.
"You used the ship's I.D. Number when you radioed for takeoff, but what's her name?
"Ah, I didn't ever rename her after I got her, so I guess she's still registered under the name the USNC gave her. I just call her Albatross."
"Every great ship needs a great name – like Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon or Serenity!" Sister said, eyes bright. Brennan just snorted at her.
"Yeah, you have a much too romantic notion of space if you're basing it on all those ancient cult shows."
"Hey, don't knock 'em. That stuff is classic." Sister stuck her tongue out at Brennan.
"Yeah, but real life isn't pretty and romantic. There's a war on kid. There's fire and death and loss and betrayal. There's loneliness and guilt and lies. There's just scraping by some days and wondering why we're even here."
"Clearly you haven't watched any of the classic sci-fi shows," Sister said, unimpressed. Brennan's face was unreadable as he stared out into the black and Sister considered him for a few moments. "Well, yeah, that's life," she continued, "but only part of it. There's also adventure and fun and love and friendship and family!" Sister thought the look on Brennan's face shifted for a moment and showed...guilt? Sorrow?
"You're young yet, Sister. The world breaks us all. Then again … " he smirked, glancing at her, all trace of unpleasantness gone. "You seem pretty bouncy. The world may not be able to break you."
%
Grif sat on a troop dropship, frowning. He'd had a week of crash course flight training – a week – and now he was being taken to join his new squad. A squad of experienced ODSTs. It should have been anyone but him. And he'd had one mind blowing night with Volleyball, and highly suspected she wouldn't be contacting him again. He thought she might only have done it because she fully expected him to die within a month. Wouldn't that be rich? He died by the time his friends finished basic training in a few weeks time.
"Oh shit, even better, it's going to be Sister's birthday soon, and I've got nothing for her. No war trophies or post cards from an exotic planet, nothing." He still hadn't been writing much, and was kicking himself for that. "I bet its that damn indoctrination stuff!" he thought. "They get us so focused on the fight that we forget everything else – even home. Well, I guess that's one good thing about boot camp being cut short. That stuff won't take as well. Lucky I slept through a lot of it – who knows what kind of zombie I'd be otherwise. Jesus, I shudder to think of myself blindly following orders, ever! I'm a rebel, man! I gotta keep doing my best to get kicked out. It's just gonna be a lot harder now, since I'm gonna be trying not to die as well. Come to think of it, when was the last time I heard from Sister? These bastards had better not be blocking my messages!"
"Hey over there!"
Grif looked up. They had landed while he was deep in thought, and the pilot was motioning for him to get a move on. He picked up his gear and exited into the frigate that would be his new home, looking around for where he was supposed to go.
"You there! Are you my new pilot?" Grif faced the voice and stared at the most stereotypical looking sergeant he'd ever seen – a short, overly muscled, middle aged man with a white flattop buzz cut stared at him in what Grif supposed was meant to be an intimidating manner.
"Uh, yes sir. Private Dexter Grif reporting for duty."
"All right, get your keester movin' mister! We ain't got time for lolly-gaggin'. Stow your stuff in the bunks down that hall, two lefts and then a right. We're 42nd platoon," he pointed vaguely and Grif realized he'd have to ask directions from someone else immediately. "Then meet back in the hangar. We've got Covies to kill!" Grif fervently hoped the sergeant was kidding about killing aliens right now as he watched the man stalk off, shouting at someone as he went, "Somebody get me a strawberry Yoohoo!"
Grif's hope was in vain though. He dutifully found his bunk after asking directions several times (It was a frigate after all; they weren't small), dropped his stuff, and headed back to the hangar. When he reported back a fully outfitted ODST team was filing into their pods.
"Grif, get over here! Here's your armor. Get suited up, on the double!" Grif did as he was told as another soldier jogged up.
"Sarge, is this my new co-pilot?" he asked in an Australian accent.
"Surely is Russel. Them damn yuppies at Command sent him. Ain't even finished basic and only had a week of flight training. 'Gifted' is the word they used for his supposed abilities." Sarge glared at Grif as he quickly finished putting on his armor.
"Well, we did request someone in a rush, Sarge," the sandy haired, freckle faced pilot replied.
"Well, if that idiot Hulme hadn't gotten killed, we wouldn't need them damn hippies at Command to send us someone they felt like makin' feel special!"
"Hey, I didn't ask for this job!" Grif said angrily. Sarge glared.
"Enough backtalk soldier! Russel, you better not get dead, or all the rest of us will too, if this rookie's got to fly us anywhere!" He stomped away onto the nearby SOEIVs.
"Don't worry about Sarge. He's still just pretty torn up about losing Hulme. He was the first we've lost in this squad. We were shot down on the way back form our last mission. I've been in recovery for about a month myself. I'm Nathan Russel by the way, and don't worry, we all learn as we go on this job. You just went through the basics faster is all. I think people learn better under pressure, don't you? Come on then, let's go kill some Covies," he grinned.
Grif just stared in horror as Russel headed toward a shiny new Pelican. He tried not to think about what must have happened to the last one. Finally, he made his way to the front of the ship and sat down in the co-pilot seat. It was the ship he had been taught to fly the week before, so that wouldn't be a problem. He supposed they had done that purposefully. He hoped so anyway. Grif shuddered to think what it would have been like if he had shown up not actually knowing how to fly his own squad's ship.
"So, what's the plan here? They're ODSTs. They drop from the sky. What do we do?" Grif asked as he buckled in.
"It's pretty simple really. After they hit the ground they either clear a safe area for us to land and bring them any supplies or vehicles they need, or they complete their mission, then clear a safe area for us to come pick them up when they need extraction."
"That's it?"
"Yeah."
"So, drop shit off, pick people up, try not to die."
"You got it rookie."
"How did you crash last time?" Grif asked nervously.
"Covies shot us right out of the sky. We had just taken off though, so it wasn't a long fall as much as an awkward glide and skid … into the side of a building, which is how we lost Hulme and I ended up in hospital for a month." Russel said all of this as he fired up the ship, and Grif tried not to make the expression "shaking in his boots" completely true.
Russel opened the radio channel, "This is Sierra-42, requesting permission for takeoff."
A voice replied over the radio, "We read you Sierra-42. You are cleared for takeoff. Good hunting."
"I don't really know if I should be coming," Grif's voice wavered. "I mean, I literally just got here twenty minutes ago. Shouldn't I at least get mission briefings or something first?" Grif begged.
"Too late now rookie," Russel chuckled. "We're on our way."
%
The next morning, Grif and his new squad dragged into the hangar, a bit worse for wear, but all alive and accounted for. The men slowly headed for their bunks, a bit of joking and celebrating between them.
"Man, I thought we were dead for sure when they hit us this time. No way we'd get lucky twice in a row."
"That wasn't luck Williams, that was the rookie," Russel said. "I don't know what we got hit with, but the CDS was on the fritz bad. We lost power to half our thrusters and life support as well."
"Is that why there was the spinning and the falling and the screaming for a while?"
"Yeah, the crazy kid just told me to take over on guns and pulled a panel right off the console and started rewiring things. He rerouted power and got everything rebooted in like a minute and a half."
"Just so you know Russel, it felt like longer than a minute and a half. It felt like a lifetime." Williams glowered.
"Did you say life support was out too? Oh man, I'm glad I didn't know that at the time," another soldier said.
"Seriously, Lee? You fall out of the sky on fire and slam into the earth with nothing to protect you but that metal box, and you're worried that life support was on the fritz for two minutes?" Russel ragged on him.
"Hey, I want to go out with a bang, not slowly suffocating and freezing to death."
"Well, we were being shot at at the time. If guns had gone offline as well we would have died in a fiery explosion, just like you wanted," Russell said, annoyed.
"Say Grif, that was pretty quick thinking back there. How did you know to rewire the system like that?" Williams asked.
"Huh?" Grif was holding his helmet tightly with both hands, staring into space. "Ah, I just used to work at an auto shop. You just pick up things like that over time. These rich retired guys would bring in their small ships. Basically like RVs, but space shuttles you know? Ones they would take to Mars or Europa on vacation. Granted, I've never worked on a ship this big before. Hell I've barely worked on ships at all, mostly cars – so I could have killed us …." The rest of the crew laughed and slapped him on the back as they exited the ship and headed for some well deserved rest. They didn't seem to notice Grif's anxiety.
"Russel, you lied to me," he said, his voice cracking with stress.
"What's that?" Russel turned to face him in surprise.
"You said, drop stuff off, pick people up, try not to die," Grif's voice rose and he sounded a bit desperate. "You did not say we would fly into enemy held territory in the middle of a fire fight! You did not say I would have to shoot at bad guys and that they would shoot back! I learned to fly, not to shoot! You did not say I would have to repair a ship mid-crash because for some reason we don't have a crew chief like they said we would in the week of training I got!"
"Well, yeah, but that was all sort of implied in the try not to die part," Russel just shrugged.
"I was not prepared for this! Everyone said it would be fine! Everyone lied to me! Who is running this god damn army?" Grif stared wildly and ran his fingers over his head, belatedly remembering he had no more long dreads to run his fingers though. "Russel, I shouldn't even be here," Grif insisted.
"We would have been dead in the water if you weren't, rookie," Sarge growled. Grif turned in surprise. He hadn't realized his sergeant was still standing in the pelican behind him.
"There's no shame in bein' scared your first time out, Private Grif. You did good. We'll make a man out of you soon enough." Sarge spat on the ground in a particularly manly fashion and pulled out a cigar and a matchbook. For some reason, Grif calmed as he watched Sarge puff on the cigar, bringing it to life with a warm red glow.
"A pilot and crew chief in one," Sarge said thoughtfully, "now that's useful! I expect this ship to be ship-shape by the end of tomorrow, you two. We can't kill Covies with a busted ship, and all those wires going every which way is dangerous. Now, get some rest. I can't have you flying on nothing but caffeine and will power. Gotta stay fit!" Grif gawked as Sarge strode away whistling, a spring in his step.
"He was just on a battle field for like 12 hours. How the hell is he not completely exhausted?" Grif asked.
Russell just shrugged, "He seems to subsist on the blood of his enemies and those strawberry drinks."