“They sent out the assignments for the summer cruise.” Airah told me, just after I walked into our room. For a moment, I considered instantly checking where I was going to be, if my certainty was justified and I was going to be posted in an actual ship but just as quick as the idea came, I pushed it from my mind. While I wanted to know, the results wouldn’t change, so taking a shower was a more pressing issue.

“Curious. I’ll take a look in a moment.” I responded, starting to strip off my uniform. While I wasn’t as pickled as I was after a day in the simulator, I felt quite well marinated, ready to be put on a grill. It felt glorious, to simply stand there for a moment without the ship-suit, just feeling the air on my skin. But it felt even better to stand in the shower, letting the sonics gently vibrate my body while warm air helped to carry away the grime and dirt shaken loose. I still preferred and would always prefer a water-shower but that was a luxury not found on any ship or orbital installation. It was mostly a question of volume, carrying enough water to allow regular showers was problematic, even if purifying it was relatively easy using vacuum distillation.

Once I felt clean, I walked back out, putting on a ship-suit so I didn’t give Airah too much of a show, not that she was watching, but it had been drilled into us to wear a ship-suit any time possible. Mostly by having emergency drills at all times, especially in the middle of the night.

Their drills consisted of giving everyone a few seconds of warning with the pressure-emergency sirens before they started to add an aerosol causing similar symptoms to pepper spray to the air conditioning. If you didn’t manage to get a helmet on within those seconds, you were in for a bad time, the stuff had been burning on skin and, from what I’ve heard, the experience of having your intimate bits exposed to it was bad enough that people had quit over it. So, you had the choice to run out of your room in whatever you used to sleep, which they made you remove, telling you that corpses had no need for clothes, or to sleep in your ship-suit. It made me wonder just who had come up with the hand-book for our drills, they had to be a serious sadist. But the various drills had managed to cure everyone of such silly notions like body-shyness, personal space and privacy.

Now, dressed in a ship-suit, I flopped down on my bed and grabbed my tablet, starting to navigate the menu to get to my mailbox. I froze when I felt the bed dip on both sides of me and felt warm breath near my ears.

“Continue, I want to see where you’ll be, roomie.” Airah’s voice fluttered in my ears, coming from very close by. She had literally climbed atop of me, in a quest to see my assignment as soon as possible. We had had our moments of closeness, the four years of academy-life had posed enough challenges that both of us had needed a friend, someone to hug or even someone to tuck you in after the instructors had wrung you dry and roommates were the one to provide that emotional support. At least between Airah and me it had worked out that way, I wasn’t sure if it was the normal situation but we had become close friends and I hoped that we always would be. Even if it sent a flutter into my stomach having her climb atop of me but I didn’t want to make things awkward between us by showing it, so I simply sighed and continued.

It only took a few more moments to open my mailbox and there was the message from the Academy, subject heading, duty-station during the mandatory summer training period. I stared at the screen for a moment, a sudden fear gripping my gut and twisting, what if I had mucked up in one of my tests, what if I was stuck on some stinking orbital for the summer?

“Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get a good patrol.” Airah assured me, still whispering into my ear. I ruthlessly pushed any feelings of lust caused by her casual closeness down, hiding them deep enough in my mind that even a psion wouldn’t be able to find them, and opened the message.

The text was the usual bureaucracy-speak, telling me that I wasn’t allowed to give out information that might disclose privileged information and all that jazz until I got to the important part. My marching orders.

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I was supposed to report to Commodore Ming of the Carmine-Squad, shipping out with the Cruiser Merathorn.

I let out an explosive breath that I hadn’t been aware I had been holding. I now had it black on white, the official message that assured me my efforts hadn’t been in vain. I was recognised as one of the best in my class, one of those who would always have a little more time in grade and deployed time than their counterparts, with all other things being equal. It was one of the ways the Academy rewarded the top students.

“Congratulations.” Airah giggled from behind me, giving me a short, full-body squeeze before hopping off from the bed in an unusual display of childishness.

“Thank you.” I managed to get out, before sitting up. “Where are you going to be?”

She turned back, still smiling like a loon.

“I’ll be on the Heavy Cruiser Menerab, as a Bridge Officer. It’ll be interesting, that’s for sure.” she xplained while I focused back on my tablet, logging into the database we had access to. I wanted to know what kind of Cruiser the Merathorn was, there were quite a few different designs that were in the cruise-class, which mostly referred to a ship with a volume between 500.000 and 1.000.000 cubic meters. It was one of the smallest ship-types in service, the smallest that was carrying a starfighter-squadron.

It turned out that the Merathorn wasn’t the newest ship in service, having been commissioned a few years before I had been born but that was true for at least half the fleet. There simply hadn’t been a major war to cause the de- and subsequent re-commissioning of ships in the last few years. An ancient toast, reputedly going back to one of the wet navies of the old earth, “To bloody wars and dread diseases”, held true and with the introduction of modern medical care and the use of nanites to perform diagnostics and even treatment, one of those was mostly out of the picture.

I continued to read and the characteristics other than age, the Merathorn seemed to be an average cruiser, patrolling between systems, hunting pirates and generally keeping the peace. About what I had expected, it would give me some experience in the so-called real world, which I was looking forward to. It was one thing to cruise around in the Celraph-system, one of the safest and most secure places in the Federation but a whole different pony to go out into the void to show flag.

“Did you already look up the Menerab?” I asked Airah, who was moving around the room almost as if she was dancing. I had to smile at that, she was normally so reserved and serious, it was a totally different woman I was looking at today.

“No, want to take a look?” she asked and moved back over, sitting next to me and looking at the screen. I quickly pulled up the sheet for the Menerab and, again, wasn’t too surprised what I was reading. She was a little younger than the Merathorn, only twenty-two years in service, and quite a bit larger, which was to be expected, given that she was classified as a heavy cruiser. The classification was a little arbitrary, at least in my opinion, with some overlap, but the 1.250.000 cubic meters of the Menerab made her on the small side, for a heavy cruiser. She only had a single squadron of starfighters, like a cruiser, but most likely the weaponry of the ship itself would be a lot stronger.

“Sounds interesting.” I said after reading the information.

“Yeah, I’m looking forward to be back in space.” Airah admitted, almost sighing, as if lost in memory.

“I’m not sure if I hope that it’ll be interesting or if I should hope that it will be boring.” I admitted, smiling to myself. An interesting patrol would mean deadly risks, each and every time I would be sent out in my starfighter, I would be risking my life. There was no such thing as risk-free Starfighter-deployment but on the other hand, would I want to, essentially, be super-cargo, only shipped around on a cruiser?

“Don’t worry about it. Whatever happens out there, will happen.” Airah spoke, breaking my stream of thought. “Just do your best and I’m sure you’ll be fine. And once we are both back at the Academy, we can go out celebrating our Graduation.” she continued.

“Wouldn’t that be a little premature?” I asked, grinning at the idea.

“Not really. We’d have to completely muck up the final exams, so why not celebrate that we came back from deployment?” she assured me.

“Sure, we can do that.” I agreed, already looking forward to it.

I’d just have to survive the two months on the Merathorn.