I awoke around 0600. Yawning, I checked my tablet. I had my test at 0700 with Chief Petty Officer Rokundo in Engineering, then I was to report to the bridge at 0830 to prepare for departure from the station. A note was attached to that item on my schedule.
It’s tradition, every new member of the crew is on the bridge during their first push off and jump into slipspace. You’ll be monitoring sublight propulsion from a slaved terminal on the bridge. - Miguel
After that, at 1100 I - finally - would have my meeting with the captain. I honestly couldn’t blame her. She had a whole pile of business to take care of the previous day, not in the least being all the paperwork necessary to offload my predecessor and meetings with the MPs. But still. It felt kind of weird that I had been on the ship for almost a day and hadn’t seen Captain Amanda Bell’s face even once.
Regardless, I was awake now, and beyond that, I was hungry. I disengaged my privacy screen, then rolled out of my bunk and stumbled over to my locker to grab my second service uniform. John sat at the table looking at his tablet, and glanced up as I passed
“Hey Damien,” he greeted as I passed. I looked at him, my eyes bleary. “You see that hatch over there?” he asked, gesturing to a panel in the wall. I grunted in response. “Throw your suit from yesterday in there, it’ll go to the automated laundry and be sent back to your locker.”
I complied, taking the uniform piled at the bottom of my locker and tossing it down the indicated hatch, while taking the clean uniform with me to the showers. After hanging up the uniform outside of my stall, I decided to take a cold shower this morning. There was a test in an hour, and I had to be on the bridge during push off this morning. I wanted to be awake, as much as possible.
After finishing my shower and using that beautiful, beautiful drying function, I pulled on my uniform and stepped out of the showers. John had left while I was taking my shower and all other bunks in the berth were either empty or had their privacy screens up, so I made my way out of the berth to go to the mess hall.
The mess was bustling, with most of the crew except those currently on duty getting their breakfast. Seamus’s assistant was at the counter, handing out piles of fake eggs, bacon, sausages and potatoes to everyone who came to him, not that anyone could tell they were fake. It was at this moment that I noticed the holy grail, the beautiful, indispensable fountain of youth that I had missed the previous night. The line of two coffee dispensers and one tea dispenser set into the wall past the counter, along with a rack of mugs. I grabbed a tray and walked to the counter where Seamus’s assistant was waiting for me with piles of eggs and a smile.
“Hey,” he said, piling food onto my tray. “We didn’t really get a chance to meet yesterday. CS3 Arnold Fischbach.”
“EN3 Damien Manelis,” I replied, my eyes still on the mugs and the dispensers. “How’s the coffee here?”
“Oh that’s a point of pride for me,” said Arnold, grinning like a madman. “Seamus can make anything taste good, even the blocks of rock hard organic material that Command calls ‘supplies’, but the caffeine?” He looked downright manic at this point. “That’s my doing. Coffee, tea, even those taurine filled monstrosities that people call energy drinks. You give me a reconstitution matrix and I can make it with just some water and a pile of dirt.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” I said, somewhat eager to get out of this conversation. It seemed almost like I had touched Pandora’s Box, and I had best retreat before I got more than I asked for. I left the line and grabbed a mug, filling it to the brim with coffee and balancing it on my tray. It sure smelled good. So far, Arnold’s claims were solid. Scanning the room, I located Mitch, who I had seen heading to his bunk last night.
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“Hey,” he said, glancing up from the tablet beside his tray as I sat down.
“Sup,” I responded before taking a deep drink from my mug. It was good. Scratch that it was fucking fantastic. How the hell Arnold made coffee this good out of our food supplies, I would never know. I dug into my meal, both Mitch and I mostly silent as we ate. From what I had gathered last night, I figured that Mitch preferred to not have somebody chattering in his ear, and I respected that. After I finished eating, I continued to review the material I had been sent regarding the secondary reactor. One can never be sure they’ll pass a test, I learned that when I took biology in high school.
—
At some point Mitch left, saying something about a workout. I made noises of acknowledgement and kept reviewing, always keeping an eye on the clock to make sure I was on time. At 0645 I rose from my seat and deposited my tray and mug with Arnold who looked positively giddy.
“So?” he asked.
“It was great, thank you,” I said honestly. I excused myself and left the mess hall, making my way down to engineering. There, I was met by a man with ebony skin and sharp eyes gazing at me.
“I am Chief Petty Officer Emmanuel Rokundo,” he said authoritatively. “You are EN3 Manelis, correct?”
“Yes Chief,” I said.
“Come with me,” he said, leading me into a side room with a holodisplay and a couple of chairs. I sat in the chair before the holodisplay while he took the seat off to the side and I began the test. Easy. Simple. Right?
Fuck no, this shit was hard. They weren’t just testing my knowledge on some reactor modifications, they were testing me on quantum physics, particle sciences, even slipspace/realspace interactions. My head hurt after the first fifteen minutes! I was just finishing a particularly difficult problem regarding stray particles hitching a ride into slipspace when Chief called time.
I looked at him, aghast. I had only gotten half way through. Hell, I’d spent a whole ten minutes on that last problem and I was pretty sure I had gotten it wrong. Chief had a wry smile on his face.
“I apologize for the distress Damien, it was necessary,” he said, looking genuinely apologetic. “Only the first two questions are technically necessary to pass the test. All other questions come from several different final exams for the Centauri Institute of Technology. The first two assess whether you have what we need while the rest assess whether you can resolve novel problems that aren’t typically covered in your training.”
“So… I passed? Chief?” I hesitated.
“Yes Damien, you passed,” he reassured me. “No one told you because we need you to be unprepared. This is a small crew and when genuine problems arise we can never be truly prepared, and we can’t just pop back to the nearest station to fix them. We need to be able to solve critical issues with no support and with only the resources that we have on hand. Rest assured Damien, you did very well.”
I took a breath. The last hour had been hellish, but I had made it. “So Chief…,” I ventured. “How did Carmichael do on this test?”
Chief laughed. “You need to stop comparing yourself to him, Damien,” he said. “Not only is it unhealthy, but to be honest, you’re always going to come out on top. But to answer your question, he got through the first two questions, and when he couldn’t solve any others he turned away from the display and stared at me for the next half hour.”
“He was really that bad?”
“Yes.”
“So why was he even allowed to stay aboard to begin with Chief?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Chief Rokundo. “The captain said something about ‘giving the boy a chance to adjust’, but in my opinion, if he couldn’t get his shit together in the first month he wasn’t ever going to do so.”
“Alright Chief,” I conceded. “I’ll try to stop thinking about him. It’s just that he seems to have made such an impact on the ship, everyone’s talking about him.”
“Because he punched Doc in the face,” Chief said, laughing. “Not to mention he managed to piss off every member of the crew in his time aboard. Everyone’s just happy that he’s gone. Don’t worry, he’ll fade out of everybody’s minds soon enough.”
“I understand Chief,” I said.
“Now,” He said, checking the time on his tablet. “It is now 0810. You are expected to be on the bridge by 0830. I think now would be a good time to be making a good impression on the captain, wouldn’t you say?”
I was in the passageway moments after he spoke.