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Chapter 1 - Welcome to the Caravel - Part 1
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“Name, age, rank, position and service ID?” says the woman across the table from me rather dryly while twirling a lock of her poorly dyed hair.
“Ah umm, Crewmen Kris, seventeen, junior mechanic. My ID is 07200419,” I reply after realising the question was addressed to me and not the person next to me.
The purple-haired, sleepy-eyed interviewer sighs before pointing a finger in my direction, “Your full name?” She adds with a look both disappointed and equally disinterested.
“Oh right, sorry ma’am, Crewmen Kris Misdinar– Sorry, the system probably has it as Kris, ahem, Umanu.”
My second answer causes her to raise an eyebrow momentarily. I really wish it hadn’t. My surname is pretty darn common, and the person associated with it isn’t particularly famous, yet her expression implies she has drawn her own conclusions. Thankfully, she doesn’t pursue them, turning to the man sitting next to me to ask him the same question, “And you? Full name the first time, please.”
My fellow rescue is a shrewd man, not a very impressive-looking fellow. He has a hooknose, a borderline ugly face, and a terrible fashion sense for his moppy blond hair. His build has some muscle to it, but he still somehow manages to look lanky. Aside from a little small talk, we haven't said much to each other, but he doesn't seem like a bad sort. I think if he was a character in a movie, he'd be the swindler type, if that makes any sense.
“Petty Officer Birgit Kazats, eighteen as of two weeks ago. I’m a pilot! Service Number is, ah, 03199116… I think.”
The interviewer looks downright perplexed now, either by how poorly this Birgit guy remembers his own details or perhaps at his occupation, “You’re a pilot? What, like a reserved one?” She asks plainly.
“No, an active one, started today. You guys brought aboard my mech when you rescued us.”
“That hunk of scrap with no legs? I thought those were just spare parts. Man, you must have been seriously lucky to still be alive inside all that. Fair play, I guess?” She muses, looking genuinely surprised and causing poor Mr Birgit to hang his head in embarrassment.
Before the conversation can go any further, the sound of voices reaches us from the corridor outside this rather small meeting room; “An entire battleship sunk on its first day out of port! What morons let that thing fly without a proper escort?!” Bellows the voice of a rather rotund man, who can best be described as 'gruff' from head to toe.
“They were travelling a mere two hours from North Port up to the home fleet. Fifteen minutes more, and they would have been safe,” replies a tall, slender man with a heavy sigh.
“It's not for us to worry about. Our arrival stopped the ship's total destruction, even if it will need extensive refits,” adds an imposing, rather tall woman with a cocksure grin on her lips. They speak as they enter the room I'd been in for the last hour. A fourth member behind them, an older man with massive broad shoulders and long silver-grey hair, hands a digital tablet to the slender-looking man.
“Master Templar would like to remind us that not only did our actions lead to all sixteen enemy mechs being destroyed, the capture of their ships and the avoidance of our side's battleship being entirely crippled – We also allowed enough time for almost the entire crew of said ship to evacuate, except those within the hangar bay of course. The master would add that we of Remembrance have, as always, a great abundance of material goods and supplies. It is the loss of people that can not be so easily forgiven. I am inclined to agree with this assessment.”
The short, obese man grunts unhappily, the tall woman nods her agreement. Their conversation comes to an end, and the door closes behind them. These four are no ordinary soldiers. They are in fact the commanding officers of the rapid-assault corvette 'Caravel'.
The slender man in the sharp suit is 2nd Lieutenant Vitka, the grumpy grizzled man in overalls with a flask poking out of his pocket is Chief Mechanic Gros, the lady with the long hair and the proudly held prosthetic arm is Captain Katherine. And finally the fourth man, seven foot tall, with those broad shoulders that look like they could carry anything, long hair falling as low as the nape of his neck and piercing red eyes – The ace pilot known as Templar.
I find myself sitting in abject awe of such people. Templar, of course, who, since coming aboard this ship, I've learned is unable to talk, his vocal cords having been injured long ago, as I understand it. Also there is Chief Gros, Templar's personal mechanic and probably one of the most famous people in my line of work. Plus, Captain Katherine is a war hero in her own right, to put it lightly.
I haven't heard of the other fellow, Lt.Vitka, before, but he is apparently Templar and the Captain's assistant, so he must be plenty impressive in his own right!
Believe it or not, it has only been a couple of hours since my brief near-death experience. Thanks to Templar's quick acting, the enemy mechs were busted, and their four mother ships were soon surrounded by the fleet our battleship was meant to be meeting with. The battleship itself had taken massive damage when that squad of mechs that came into the hangar started firing off randomly. One shot had travelled deep into the warship and damaged its generator, among other faults.
The bulk of its crew had evacuated on lifeboats, and the now abandoned ship would be floated back down to the planet beneath for serious repair – However, there had been two exceptions to this. Just two of us had survived from those in the hangar bay of the battleship – Myself, of course, and one of the pilots in a thoroughly battered mech, Mr Birgit.
Our rescuer had picked us up and brought us aboard Templar's personal warship.
“Sorry to keep you so long. A lot of paperwork and reports come up every time we dive in unannounced to save the day,” the Captain grins.
“N-no problem, Ma'am!” I squeak in response, then blush and cringe all at once. I hadn't meant to sound so pathetic! I guess being surrounded by three famous people will do that to you.
“Ha! How very polite of you. On this ship, it's easy to forget how formal you cadets are. Well Sue, they check out?” She asks, turning to our purple-haired interviewer. ‘Sue’ somewhat lazily stands and salutes; “Aye, Captain, they match the pictures and know their numbers… Just about,” she says with a stray glare at Mr Birgit.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Great, you’re dismissed, Sue. Now as for you two, well, let's see if we can't accommodate each other a bit more, eh? The rest of our stranded comrades have been picked up by the home fleet, but you two are stuck here. Now I could waste fuel and time moving the Caravel over to the fleet, drop you two off, fill in a copious amount more paperwork – Or, you two could just stay on here.”
“Here? Is that allowed?” Says Mr Birgit from beside me. His voice is somewhat nasally, not at all the voice of a mighty mech piloting warrior.
“Indeed! This ship has room for two mechs, and it just so happens we brought yours onboard when we rescued you, Petty Officer Birgit. It will need considerable repairs, but that can be handled. And with a second Vijaik abroad again, Chief Gros here will have plenty of use for an extra apprentice like you, Crewmen Kris,” the Captain beams.
I’m at a loss, 'Kris', my name, they want me? The people who had saved me from certain death want a rank amateur like me to work on mechs like the gleaming knight that saved me?!
Well, the Captain sure does anyway. The person who is to be my new boss is frowning all the while, but I don’t mind that. The chance to work for Templar, the opportunity to apprentice with Chief Gros, probably the best mechanic of our time.
My mouth moves before I even properly consider it.
I mean, just hours ago, my first-ever deployment ended with me staring down the barrel of a mech's rifle, moments from death. Now I’m gonna join an elite unit on a whim? It should be a bigger decision, a more thought-out, considered decision, but instead, I speak without hesitation, “I'd be honoured to join you all!”
That earns me some raised eyebrows, a ‘hmph’ from Chief Gros and, unless I am purely imagining it, a small smile on the stoic face of Templar.
The Captain beckons at the junior pilot beside me, and he shrugs, “I mean, after that declaration, I can hardly say no, huh? Sure, I’m in. If a big old vessel like that battleship can go down so easily, then maybe a really small one like this will turn out much safer!”
****
“And this is the hangar,” Sue states unenthusiastically. Despite her lacklustre tone and posture, I’m feeling positively elated. We’ve been taken on a short tour of the ship by our sleepy-eyed senior. I haven’t seen every room yet, just those on the ground floor, but we were shown a picture of the exterior. The Caravel reminded me of an old type of waterborne vessel I saw on TV once, a ‘clipper-ship’ or something like that – Effectively a sailboat with a large raised part to the rear and designed to move through the water exceptionally fast for its time period.
The Caravel, of course, has guns in the place of sails and is made of metal, not wood… Perhaps saying it is shaped like a boot would be more apt? Oh, and now I’m daydreaming again…
Shaking my head, I return to taking in the space around me. The hangar bay is the largest place on the ship, with a ceiling over twenty-two metres tall. Metal lines every surface, and two massive doors are covering the entire far wall, ready to swing out whenever Templar launches into space in his mech ‘The Crusade’.
Said mech is here, standing along a wall parallel to the doors. Its knightley aesthetic doesn’t even have a scratch on it from the battle only a few hours ago. In contrast, the remains of Birgit’s mech, a ‘Type-C’ model, are less impressive.
Type-Cs have slim limbs and rectangular heads with a large circular camera for an eye, all giving them something of an insect look. Birgit’s, however, is in pieces, with dents and bent metal all over, its legs completely missing.
It’s not just mechs that fill the space; the Caravel is a small ship with only fifty-six people for her crew, but of that, a great many work here in the hangar. From engineers monitoring the ship's systems, to my new fellow mechanics and even more simply moving supplies around the large space - there are so many names and faces that I fear it will take me a while to learn them all - alongside the mechs to one wall, dozens of crates and supplies against the other – It feels almost crowded and is a bit overwhelming in a way that the large open spaces of the battleship never did.
“This way, please,” says Sue, beckoning me and Mr Birgit towards a particular circle of overall-wearing folk.
I’ve learned that Sue typically works on the ship's bridge, which is a couple of floors up. She wears a sleeveless jacket with several pockets, standard-issue military trousers and a rather stylish beret atop her hand of brown hair that has seemingly been dyed a gritty purple. I’d never met someone who worked on a warship’s bridge before, not to mention the bridge of Templar’s personal ship, but Su does not exactly match what I had pictured. Her uninterested attitude and lax demeanour feel more like those of some teenage rebel than a member of a proud military organisation like ours.
Meeting my new colleagues, however, would show me just how out of the box the Caravel’s crew are.
“Hey, nice to meet ya!”
“Haven't had a new kid in ages.”
“New kid and a new pilot, St. Aardig’s day came early.”
One by one, the group of mechanics swarm around Mr Birgit and me. Collectively, they all have the standard grey overalls of people in our line of work, but individually, they make for quite the motley crew. Chief Gros is as gruff and, honestly, intimidating as he was back in the meeting room. He stays behind the others, grumbling while taking a swing from what looks like a flask of alcohol…
The others are their own mix of unique: A tomboyish blond girl called Johnny, a couple of very buff and over-excited men called Evin and Davy, and someone named Leea who introduces herself in a singsong voice. Eleven in total greet me, the last being a rather tall man, probably in his thirties, though his face is rather youthful.
“Nice to meet you, Kris. My name’s Shane. I’m sort of the second in command of this lot,” he says politely, offering me his hand to shake. His tone is calmer than the others, and with good posture, he seems to be the most regular ‘military person’ here. That is if you ignore the scabbarded sword hanging from his hip! I do my best not to focus on that and smile politely as I take the handshake offered.
Honestly, I’ve never met more hyper and eccentric soldiers in my life, certainly not this many at once.
The parades back home were always spiffy and proper. All the cadets in the academy were expected to have pristine uniforms and snappy salutes. In my short tour around this ship, not one person has saluted, nor have I seen anyone who isn’t breaking the dress code in one way or another. No doubt this is just the surface of these people, whose many names and quirks it could take my whole career to learn all about, and yet;
Beside me, the others have now moved on to introducing themselves to Mr Birgit. He has quite a bright smile that fits right in with them. To my side, Mr Shane and Sue have stepped away slightly and are chatting quietly, Sue finally looking interested in something.
Before long, Chief Gros gets bored of waiting and ushers us all to get back to work, including me!
Maybe they are a bit weird, certainly not what I expected, but I think I might just be all right around here. I sure hope so anyway.
****