Amir, although initially annoyed and confused to be dragged out of his bed to attend the quarterdeck, had found the whole scene of Chloe nervously trying to order some very aggrieved looking Lieutenants highly amusing. After that, he had found excuses to come and observe her whenever she was Officer of the Watch.
This had been going on for several weeks. During this time the flight deck had been installed and Sparrow was now a regular sight on the quarterdeck as they continued their short dives into the slip. Chloe’s confidence was definitely growing as she settled into the role and some of the Officers were clearly starting to realise she was more competent and knowledgeable than them and actually paying attention to her advice as well as her orders.
Sparrow wasn’t fairing as well. The only people he’d seen engage her in conversation were Chloe, the Captain, himself and sometimes Desai (although in his case he was probably acting out of a sense of duty rather than genuine interest in getting to know her). Still her performance had definitely improved in the slip again and although it wasn’t as good as it had been in the pod Chloe assured him that she was back in compliance with the assessment recommended performance levels. Still she had, if not friends, friendly acquaintances with a number of her fellow warrants and ratings although there was still some open hostility to her, but he wasn’t really worried about it now. His marines now knew who the main trouble makers were and his sergeant was having quiet words about what exactly would happen to anyone who threatened the pilot - he had heard these chats focused heavily on airlocks and how common safety failsafes malfunctioned in them.
What worried him about Sparrow was that he had it on good authority that Harriet was spending most of her sleep shifts out of her dorm according to Chloe - where she was going was pretty obvious - their relationship was now a subject of hushed gossip amongst the crew now, or so his Marines told him with knowing smirks on their faces. It still bemused him that despite homosexuality being legalised over a thousand years ago people still didn’t see it as quite normal. People were, as he often concluded, pretty fucking stupid right up to the point they suddenly weren’t - after all it had taken thousands of years to get to the point that religion had become a matter of personal conscience rather than an excuse to disembowel each other.
Anyway, it wasn’t that which was worrying him about the two girls it was more the fact they were essentially two very fucked up kids entering into their first relationship. The complete disaster scenario flag was waving very clearly in Amir’s head - after all he’d done just that aged seventeen and he hadn’t been stuck in a closed environment at the time. Still, there was nothing he could do about it - and nor did he really want to; this was something the girls had to go through he guessed. Hopefully they’d come out right on the other side, maybe it was even true love, and if it wasn’t it was then Amir, Chloe and the Captain would intervene to pick up the pieces. Thank Allah, he thought, he had no plans to have kids someday.
Not that it was really an option now anyway. The more Amir thought about the ridiculous situation they had gotten themselves in, the only way he could think of saving all their hides was to turn mercenary and find employment somewhere in the wild west of humanity’s fringe settlements. He doubted the Captain or the crew would go for it but he had nearly five years to work on them.
He wandered over to Chloe who was busy reading diagnostic reports on her tablet. “Fancy a drink after your watch ends?”
“Probably more than one,” grinned the Warrant, before adding under her breath, “you know I still can’t get used to this - it’s not where I’m meant to be.”
“Ah you’re doing yourself down, this is exactly where you’re meant to be - I feel much more comfortable with you sitting here than a tenth lieutenant.”
“Thanks I guess,” she sighed.
“Oh come on, you know an essential part of marine officer training is only to offer faint praise to non-marines,” he grinned.
“You know it’s part of naval warrant officer training to insist that any officer who asks you to have a drink with them pays for the drinks all evening?”
“I thought that was just your policy?”
“I forget,” she smiled, “I’m pretty sure there’s something like that in there.”
“I’ll take it on trust then Ms Liu,” Amir grinned back. “Right, this is fucking boring so I’m off - you know where to find me if you need me.”
“Just get out of here before you accidentally sit on something and cause another disaster.”
“Oh so I shouldn’t have been pressing random buttons for the last hour?” he teased.
“Just get out of here before I have to throw you out.”
“Yes sir,” he mocked.
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Two hours later Chloe’s tablet flashed out an alert that it was time for Sparrow’s mid-shift break.
“Take us out Ms Sparrow, time for a break I think,” she called over to the girl on the new flight deck. She was pretty proud of that - she’d upgraded a five hundred year old design back to modern standards and so far it looked like it was working quite well.
“Yes Sir,” Sparrow replied, “transitioning to real space.” She hit the control panel to disengage the slip drive and suddenly they were back in real space. Chloe never got over the fact it wasn’t some sort of dramatic jolt or lightshow but it was always the same one second they were in the slip the next they reappeared in real space without any real indication that anything had changed. Even the lights dimming was something that was programmed into the ship’s systems so the crew knew they were entering or exiting the slip.
Sparrow was already busy filling in her report of their most recent dive for the Captain. “When you’ve finished that go get yourself a meal Ms Sparrow,” she called over.
“Thank you sir,” she smiled back, turning around to face Chloe, “I’m starving.”
“Great - just remember if hunger is distracting you just disengage the slip drive and go get something to eat,” she cautioned.
“Understood, I’ll do that if it ever happens, Sir.”
“Very good.”
She was only vaguely aware a few minutes later of Sparrow exiting the Quarterdeck. She was lost in thought reading through her diagnostic reports, that was safe ground unlike the stack of reports she had to read that were outside her comfort zone. I mean really how did anyone expect her to understand if the Weapons Techs and Operators were prepared or anything - before Captain Hernandez had handed her this poisoned chalice she’d never had any involvement in their systems. The personnel reports were worse - mainly revealing that there were a lot of people on this boat who she had no clue what they were actually doing. She was learning but it was a slow process and being unprepared was not something Chloe usually indulged in.
She should have had years of command training before she ever got anywhere near this chair. She was painfully aware that, in the unlikely event of an attack, all she would really know was to order the shields raised and weapons armed. She had no idea about the tactical manoeuvres she should be engaging in if they came under attack. In fact she’d probably just order Sparrow to dive into the slip - better not be any attacks during the girl’s breaks then whilst she was on shift.
She had been surprised after the Captain had dumped all this on her that she hadn’t really checked in with her since, she guessed the Captain had even more going on than her though. Much to her surprise it had been Lieutenant Commander Desai who had taken her aside after her third watch.
“You’re doing alright you know,” he had stopped her seemingly at random in a corridor.
“Really,” she said, taken aback - Desai wasn’t the sort of man who usually offered reassurance.
“Aye,” he said, “Look, the first few months of sitting in that chair everyone is shitting themselves, there’s nothing that can really prepare you for it until you’re made to do it. Everyone’s out of their depth, even the Captain. You’ve just got to learn to accept that and commit to doing your best.”
“Um - thanks,” she replied, still surprised at these words of encouragement.
“Fact is, you wouldn't be sat there if the Captain and I didn’t think you could handle it. So keep worrying but remember that’s alright.”
“Thanks Commander, I’ll try and remember that,” she paused, before adding, “I didn’t think you were the advice giving type?”
“I’m not really,” he chuckled, something else Chloe had never seen the man do before, “these are strange times though. Maybe it’s time I turned over a new leaf. You know I’m from a fallen house - happened just after I got made Lieutenant, they lost everything. Father committed suicide, mother’s in an institution, my siblings slipped into obscurity, and me - well I’m aware enough my personality leaves a lot to desire but I also know I’m a more than competent officer and should have been promoted a long time ago - I’ve been bitter a long time but somehow this whole situation we’re in, well it just pales into insignificance doesn’t it.”
“Yeah, it really does,” she agreed. “Let’s grab a drink sometime soon, if you’d like I mean.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Sure,” Desai shrugged, clearly his standoffish-ness was something he would take time to cast off, but then he added, “that would be nice.”
Much to Chloe’s surprise a couple of evenings later they had that drink and it had been an actually enjoyable couple of hours. It turned out Desai had squirelled away an incredible amount of knowledge, somehow he knew about the lives of about ninety per cent of the crew, and had a much deeper insight into the ship’s systems than she had given him credit for and a private respect for the Captain she had never known him to hold before. Clearly he took his XO job very seriously - he must be using all his free time boning up on all this. Chloe could respect that, she’d be the same if she didn’t choose to spend too much time propping up the bar in the warrant’s mess. Enjoying an evening with Desai, she thought, better not let Amir know, I’ll never hear the end of it.
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Sparrow finished her meal, sent a message to Harri’s tablet seeing how her day was going, waited a few minutes for Harri to reply, smiling to herself as she read the expletive filled missive Harri sent back, and then started to walk back to the Quarterdeck. She was happy, she’d always been happy she guessed, but now she felt she had reasons to be: actually being free to be herself, walking places - that was still a novelty, what she’d found with Harri. It didn’t matter that most of the crew still were awkward around her, she would be too, she thought, if the situation was reversed.
She made her way back to the quarterdeck, refreshed now for the next dive into the slip. Piloting outside the pod, even the simulation that Ms Liu had rigged up or from the shuttle cockpit. She was relying on only what she could see in the vast screen projections on the quarterdeck which spanned only a narrow three hundred and sixty degree perspective; there was no view above or below and instead she relied entirely on sensor data processed by the ship’s AI and fed straight into a HUD display projected onto contact screens she inserted to float on the surface of her eyes at the start of every shift. It was such a different sensory experience from the pod but one she was growing increasingly used to. She relied on her twitch reaction speeds a lot more, things were a lot more close cut, the margin of error much reduced, but somehow she felt more confident in her abilities to pilot the ship now than she had at any point since she’d left the pod.
She settled down into her chair behind the flight console, and checked all the systems and sensor arrays were functioning normally and her HUD was interfacing correctly with her eye contact screens, just as Ms Liu had shown her, before calling across to Ms Liu that she was all set.
“Whenever you're ready Ms Sparrow,” Ms Liu replied.
“Engaging slip drive in five, four, three two, one, diving,” Sparrow counted down for the benefit of the other crew on the deck. Behind her she heard Ms Liu announce the imminent return to the slip over the general tannoy as she pushed the controls to initiate the dive.
Instantly the view in the great screens all around the quarter deck narrowed as only the limited range of the ship’s running lights penetrated the absolute darkness of the slip; sensor array projections came online, identifying obstacles that weren’t visible in visible light and picking out more distant threats. Immediately, Sparrow felt herself unconsciously picking out a safe path, pulling in the additional data from her eye contact screens. Although her programming was no longer controlling her thoughts and actions she was still able to utilise it to do what she generally denied - for this one particular purpose, of wayfinding through the slip - she was able to do: analyse the information she was receiving far quicker than any human, perhaps at the same speed as the ship’s main AI.
Combined with her incredible twitch reactions she was able to thread the Whittington through the gaps through the debris that littered the slip with, not ease, but with a confidence that she had always had when in the pod but had been lacking previously in the outside world. In the very back of her mind she could hear the voices and sounds of the other crew - something she had never had before but which was strangely comforting to her; connecting her with them in a way she had never experienced before. It anchored her, reminding her that she held their lives in her hands. Logically she thought, or rather the tiny part of her brain that contained what she now thought of as ‘her’ was now sheltering in thought, that responsibility should cripple her, yet strangely she found it more grounding than anything else. She knew what she was here to do and why she was doing it.
Her thoughts turned to Harri, she wondered what she was doing, hopefully tinkering with some part of the water filtration system as she had been ordered to this morning. Thinking about Harri, too much was a bit dangerous, she was a very distracting thought if Sparrow was honest with herself. When not in the slip her thoughts were full of her, her smile, her voice, and especially the feel of her touch and what it felt like to touch her. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced before, or ever believed she would experience, it made her giddy and joyful.
Mentally shaking herself she made sure she was concentrating again on navigating the slip. Once her mind was clear she returned to the kind of trance-like state that best let her process and respond to all the information she was receiving. In that state she lost track of time, minutes raced by into hours, as she converted sensor information into thruster bursts; braking and accelerating, spinning and turning the great battleship through the narrow paths of safety.
As such, she had no idea how long they had been in the slip when it happened. Suddenly her sensors were full of something that shouldn’t be there; something moving towards them with seeming intent; these weren’t objects caught up in the currents of the slip but something else moving under power.
“Anomaly detected,” she heard herself shout. Moving her hand to disengage the slip drive even before she heard Ms Liu shout the order. Nothing happened, she hit the control again, and still nothing happened, the slip engine was not disengaging.
----------------------------------------------------------------
“I can’t disengage the engine, the controls aren’t responding,” Chloe heard a frantic Sparrow shout.
“Emergency power down of engineering,” Chloe barked as loud as she could, “and someone get the Captain up here!”
“Sir,” a voice came from across the bridge, “engineering is saying they can’t disengage the power, even the manual overrides aren’t functioning.”
“Shit,” Chloe cried; this was surely it - none of them would make it out of this. “Someone get me a visual.”
“Working on it,” shouted back one of the sub-lieutenants commanding the sensor arrays. Suddenly the view in the great screens was enhanced and Chloe saw, tendrils reaching out from the maelstrom of the slip and racing towards them and then ahead of them the same tunnel-like structure their sensors had identified had flung them across the galaxy in the first place. “Alien,” Chloe muttered under her breath.
“Sparrow,” she screamed, “don’t let those things touch us.”
“No clear route,” the girl screamed back; as panicked as she was.
There was a hideous vibration as the first of the tendrils made contact with the Whittington’s hull. Instantly Sparrow let out a pained scream and collapsed into her flight deck controls. ‘What the fuck is happening,’ Chloe thought before bellowing “Someone get the med-techs to the Quarterdeck now!” Just in time to see Captain Hernandez run onto the Quarterdeck.
“What the fuck is going on,” she heard Olivia scream.
“Alien technology,” Chloe shouted back, as she felt the impacts of more and more tendrils latching onto the ship, “it’s got us and somehow taken out Sparrow.”
They could all only watch in mounting horror as the tendrils started to drag them into the main structure of the anomaly. Chloe then saw Sparrow pushing herself back up from the control deck, she looked weak and was bleeding profusely from her nose.
“It’s sending us home,” she mumbled before collapsing back into her chair, “we shouldn’t be here.”
“What do you mean,” the Captain roared back, somehow having heard her over the chaos permeating the deck.
Sparrow, still clearly groggy with whatever had affected her, continued. “So much data, too much to process but there’s intent. It doesn’t want to harm us I think but it doesn’t want us here.”
“Who doesn’t want us here,” Chloe cried.
“I don’t know,” Sparrow said before slumping back into unconsciousness on her chair.
The other crew on the quarterdeck could only look on helplessly as the tendrils drew them closer and closer to the great maw-like entrance to the tunnel structure they were rapidly advancing on. All around them they could now see other tendrils crashing into debris and knocking it out of their flight path with an ease far beyond anything they had ever thought possible.
“I don’t believe it,” the Captain said stunned, “it’s clearing our path for us.”
“Maybe they truly aren’t trying to harm us,” Chloe replied, equally as confused.
No sooner had she said that they were dragged into the tunnel and something that should have been impossible happened, everyone was thrown off their feet as the ship accelerated - there was no inertia in the slip Chloe remembered thinking later, as she was pressed into her chair with such force she didn’t have time to think anything else before she redded out.
When she came to, she realised they were back in normal space. “Damage report,” she muttered groggily. The Captain hadn’t formally relieved her yet, she was still in command.
“Slip drive down, extensive but minor structural damage to the outer hulls. Extensive casualty reports from all divisions - that acceleration knocked a lot of people about, sir!” one of the Lieutenants replied from where he stood leaning heavily on his command console, bleeding profusely from a head wound.
“I have the ship,” she heard the Captain say much to her relief. Struggling to her feet she pushed herself out of the chair before replying, “You have the Ship Captain.”
“Where are we,” Chloe heard the Captain say as she slumped down onto the floor by the Captain’s chair even as the Captain fell into it.
“The AI is analysing now,” called the Lieutenant in charge of sensors, pulling himself upright again at the same time.
“I don’t think we need to wait,” Chloe heard one of the ratings mumble from where he lay on the floor staring at the screens. Ahead of them, shining as clear as day was Battersea Without, the gigantic habitat that was both the Corporation Navy’s biggest shipyard and their largest non-planetary settlement, right in the heart of Corporation Space.
“Comms,” the Captain said slowly, “get me a max security line to the Admiralty.”
“Right away,” cried a sub-lieutenant, moving what was possibly the corpse of the Lieutenant who had been in charge of comms off the console. “Connection established, sir.”
Chloe heard the Captain take a deep breath before announcing into the Comms channel. “To Naval Command, Priority Alpha. This is Commander Olivia Hernandez, Master of the PLANS Whittington. We have encountered a Code 511 event. I say again, we have encountered a Code 511 event. Current position, proximity to Battersea Without.”
Minutes drifted by before an audit message pinged back.
“Commander Hernandez, a recorded message played. This is Naval Command. You are ordered to immediately power down all drives, shields and weapons systems and prepare for evacuation of your vessel. All crew, marines and officers to be assembled at muster stations within two hours. No personal weapons to be deployed. I repeat, prepare for immediate evacuation.”
Chloe’s heart sank. There was no way this was ending well.