NAVAL STATION CHARON, CHARON

POV: Speinfoent, Malgeir Federation Navy (Rank: Beta Leader)

Speinfoent gently knocked on the thin aluminum door labeled “Kowalczyk / Mazur”. His sensitive hearing detected the movement of paws— feet inside the room.

“You forgot your backpack again Aleksy?” Kaja’s voice came from inside.

Speinfoent shuffled his paws, nervously shifting his balance from one to another. “No, it’s me, Speinfoent.”

There was an awkward silence, then she unlocked the door, peeking out with her head, her hair wet from what smelled like a recent shower. “Do you need something?”

“I’m just checking up on my wingmate. See if something’s wrong. Since we missed you at breakfast in the mess. Again.”

“No— no, nothing is wrong.”

“Good,” Speinfoent said. “Can I come in?”

“Sure,” she said, sighing deeply and opening the door wider to let him in.

The room was dimly lit, with a smattering of personal items neatly piled on the sparse shelving. The walls were decorated with posters of various Earth landscapes: azure oceans, lush forests, and sprawling mountain ranges, a stark contrast to the single wall-screen displaying an external camera view of the icy Charon landscape outside.

Kaja sat down on the edge of her bunk bed, drying her damp hair with a towel.

Speinfoent, meanwhile, tried to make himself comfortable on a nearby stool, its design obviously not meant for someone with his tail anatomy.

He took a deep breath and cleared his throat. “I just want to talk to you about your ahem… side business. In our Navy, there is… widespread tolerance for various activities that are technically prohibited by regulation. I understand that your authorities take these violations a lot more seriously, but as your wingmate, it’s not my duty to expose or report your activities, so you don’t have to feel a need to hide them from me.”

Kaja only looked confused. “What? What side business?”

He continued to reassure her. “Don’t worry. I will not demand a cut of your profits either. I can’t spend Terran credits freely anyway.”

“Profits? What are you talking about?”

“Your smuggling operation,” he reminded her kindly.

“My— my smuggling operation?” she asked, bewildered. “I— what?”

“Is that not why you have been missing meals?” he asked, doubt creeping into his previously confident conclusion.

“N— no.”

Speinfoent was confused. “But why? And you’ve repeatedly missed lunch, the most important meal of the day.”

“I—” Kaja started to say.

There was a noise at the doorway. Another woman walked in, carrying a brown paper bag.

“Hey Kaja, I got your—” the new woman stopped, staring at the alien sitting in her room. “It’s Speinfoent right? I’ve heard all about you. Nice to meet you.” She held out her hand, which Speinfoent dutifully shook.

“Thanks Aleksy. You can leave it on the table,” Kaja replied, giving her a meaningful look.

Aleksy looked at them both, left the paper bag next to Kaja, and headed out the door. “Understood. I’ll see you in class later.” She gave Speinfoent a wink as she left.

He looked suspiciously at the paper bag. “Your roommate is part of your scheme too?”

“There is no scheme!” Kaja insisted. “It’s… not what you think.”

Speinfoent’s snout started sniffing the air next to him. There was a rich aroma coming from the bag, one he could only describe as warm, with a hint of sweetness. “What is that… I smell bread — grain bread — and something else…” He continued to sniff.

“It’s a peanut butter sandwich,” she said, pulling it out of the bag.

Recognizing the not at all rare nor luxurious breakfast item, Speinfoent stopped sniffing. “So why have it delivered here? Why not eat with us at the mess? Do you not like us?”

Kaja looked at him weirdly for a minute but said nothing.

Disappointed at the lack of an answer, he said, “It’s okay, Kaja, if that is true. I just care about your well-being, and if you change your mind, I’m sure we are happy to have lunch—”

Suddenly, she blurted out, “I’m a vegetarian!”

“Sorry, what?”

“Vegetarian. I eat vegetables.”

“Yes, I know. You are a Grass Eater,” Speinfoent said, frustrated. “We all knew that Terrans are like that when we came here—”

“No,” she said quietly. “I voluntarily and exclusively eat vegetables. I don’t eat meat at all.”

“Oh…” he said. After a brief moment, he asked, “Do you… dislike us for not being like you?”

“No! Not at all! It’s not like that!”

Neither of them said anything for a while.

“Speinfoent, I heard them talk about your parents and how the Grass Eaters took over their planet… I’m sorry.”

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His confusion compounded. He asked, “Wait a second, is this why you have been avoiding us, the three of us? Afraid that we’ll hold your choice of… breakfast against you?”

“Um… well… yes. I didn’t want to—”

It was like a fog cleared up in his brain. He halted for a second, and then started chuckling.

Kaja looked half offended and half scared.

“Look, Kaja, my parents’ planet fell to the Znosians, not your people. Their diet — and your diet — it’s strange, but that doesn’t make you responsible. We wouldn’t blame you — that would be ridiculous! We are not bigots, well — a few of us are, but I am not. And neither are Uintrei or Durnio, I assure you.”

“I didn’t mean to say—”

“No, I know you meant well,” he said, more gently, putting his paw around her shoulders to comfort her. “The important thing is: what you choose to eat, or not eat, does not make me think any less of you. And again, I’m sure Uintrei and Durnio feel the exact same way.”

He added, “In fact, since being acquainted with Terran cuisine, I have recently taken to eating vegetables too.”

To emphasize his point, he snatched the sandwich out of her hands, and unhesitatingly took a large bite out of it, spraying bits of bread everywhere and smearing peanut butter over his snout. He said in between chews, “See? Mmmm… it’s delicious.”

Kaja visually relaxed, as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders, then froze and said, “Wait, but that’s my breakfast.”

“Grab… mmm… grab your things… mmm… You don’t have to hide from us in your room to eat… Let’s go get you another sandwich from the mess…”

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“Vampire! Vampire twelve o’clock!” Kurt screamed unnecessarily — and probably intentionally to add to his anxiety — into the cockpit radio as the beeps in his radar warning receiver went from a sporadic drip of beeps into a steady stream of them, and a circle with a letter ‘M’ appeared on the sensor board straight in front of him.

“I don’t see them! Where are they firing from?” Speinfoent shouted back, as he commanded the ST-6 into an automatically generated evasive pattern away from the missile, dumping a burst of speed into the engines. Chaffs automatically launched from the spacecraft in every direction. Feeding false information to the incoming missile, hoping to fool it for just the few more milliseconds than they’d need to force it to waste its last few liters of fuel.

There was no answer from the back seat as he desperately operated the sensors, aiming the ST-6’s radar at the region of space that marked where the spacecraft computer first detected the lock signals of the hostile missile.

“Narrow band radar search in the first known location of Threat Alpha,” he commanded into the microphone, his paws busy tapping away to monitor the defensive measures.

Unable, the computer returned. Nose radar unable to lock vector to our rear.

On the threats board, he sighed in relief as he saw the incoming missile run out of fuel and go ballistic about a hundred kilometers away, veering quickly away from his still accelerating spacecraft. The radar warning receiver’s quick beeps went back to a series of beeps at one second intervals.

He pointed the nose of the spacecraft back towards its rear, towards where it had first seen the missile.

“Run the radar search now.”

No targets found in area.

“Run a wide search.”

No targets found in area.

Kurt warned him, “You might want to hurry: we’re still being painted.”

“I know!” Speinfoent replied, putting his thoughts into words. “But I don’t think they locked us with their onboard radar last time. We only got the warning when the missile went pitbull. We still need to find the enemy ship.”

A moment later, Kurt’s warning proved prescient. The sensors went into panic mode again as they catalogued another incoming missile, this time closer than when they detected the last.

“Vampire, vampire! Two o’clock,” Kurt reported.

“Radar search towards vector of missile,” Speinfoent ordered the computer.

1 target found. Signature unknown, likely spacecraft.

“Lock them up!”

Unable. Sensor returns not accurate enough for a missile lock.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Kurt cautioned.

“Dammit!” Speinfoent swore again as he put the spacecraft into an evasive maneuver again, pointing the nose away from the weak signal of the enemy spacecraft and dumping power into its engines, once again attempting to waste as much of the hostile missile’s fuel as he could to minimize its probability of kill.

A moment later, the missile passed them just a dozen kilometers away, so close he could see the engine bloom vanish as it ran out of fuel right as it got near his ship. The rapid beeping of the threat board slowed to one second intervals once again.

They are getting too close.

Speinfoent turned the ship around to face the general direction of the enemy, and before he could determine the parameters for another radar search, the threat board went ballistic again, showing a new missile threat, this time only hundreds of kilometers away.

“Vampire incoming, eleven o’clock!”

It was too close to try to find the enemy. He immediately aborted the turn maneuver, forcing the ship back into an evasive pattern and this time dumping all remaining energy from the ship into the drive, hoping he’d have enough to survive another.

His prayers were answered just seconds later, the missile overshooting his spacecraft. It tried to reverse its trajectory to get back to him, but it had burnt too much fuel in the initial maneuvers. It passed his ship just five kilometers away, its self-destruction dumping shrapnel in his general vicinity, but with a small dose of luck, none of them hit his spacecraft.

And before the threat board even dismissed that threat, a new missile showed up again, this time distinctively on the infrared sensors just dozens of kilometers away.

Speinfoent’s paw stabbed towards the dazzlers and flares, but as they activated, a loud, crashing sound filled the cabin, and the lights turned on.

Mission failed.

He groaned in frustration.

“Not even a lock on him this time!” he shouted towards the back of the cockpit, a little too loudly.

“Hold onto that thought,” Kurt replied calmly. “We’ll get to it in the debrief.”

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“So… how was training?” Kaja asked. She sounded almost excited to discuss it with him.

Speinfoent sighed. “Didn’t even see the enemy parasite fighter before it roasted me.”

“Which one?”

“A heavily modified SF-27 this time.”

Kaja thought for a second.

“Ah, must be the low observability variant,” she speculated. “Very popular with some of the better funded Red Zone operators back in the day. I think I know that training scenario. If you just try to fight it head-on with a ST-6, it’ll just shoot missiles at you to keep you evasive, looking the wrong way, while it pushes you.”

“Yup, that’s what Kurt said in the debrief.”

“When you evade on parasite fighters, you limit your situational awareness,” Kaja pointed out.

“That’s what the debrief said too. Apparently how to counter that next time was an exercise left to me. I have no idea how to start if I can’t even see the enemy before it gets a lock on me!”

“Isn’t that in your reading?”

“More reading? Ugh, why is there so much reading to do?!”

She looked at him almost smugly, “Do you want the answer?”

“There is an answer?! I thought this was just some Kab— Kobashu Maru or whatever. Some kind of character test to see if we can control our fear in the face of death or something.”

Kaja giggled. “You’ve been watching too much TV. This is the Republic Navy — we’re not a bunch of space explorers in a show written by a pacifist. Fear of death is good. It keeps you alive. And only losers accept failure.”

“So I’m actually supposed to figure out how to kill an enemy I can’t see? Is there even a practical lesson here?”

“Loads,” Kaja sniffed. “For one, it’s good for learning to kill pirates in stealth configuration. It is a realistic scenario, after all.”

“Okay, that’s a good point,” he admitted.

“For another, the Buns will figure out how to do it to our stealth ships, and what better way to counter a tactic than to train against it?”

Speinfoent relented. “Fine, so what’s the answer? How do you do it?”

“I’ll show you after we get dinner. I have a block of sim time reserved… tonight.”

“Well, well, look who’s gracing us with her grass-eating presence at dinner tonight!” he teased.

Kaja blushed and rolled her eyes. “Keep mocking me now. We’ll see if you can keep that energy later in the sims.”