It had been three days since Scarlet and Hoki took in Una O' Conchabhair, the Rookie.
Of course that meant it had been 6 days since Junior Navigations Officer, Cally had been discovered dead - And 8 since she had actually died.
They had been very long days...
Scarlet sat now at the table the Vijaik squad always used when in the canteen, across from her sat Una and Hoki - The idea, one of many Scarlet had thought up over the last few days, was that Una might be coaxed into eating a bit more by being in a public part of the ship - And like her many other plans to help the girl, Una's barely touched food was evidence enough this plan too, had failed.
It was disappointing, Scarlet had really hoped this strategy would work, even Hoki had made time to come along with them for breakfast - But to no avail, and it was starting to show - The signs of weight loss, the dimness of her eyes, the complexation of her skin - Una did not look well.
Another of her 'great ideas' was currently plaguing Scarlet's mind - She had decided last night to read Una's files - To use at first her own, then Kolme's credentials to access IAFS files on the girl - She had done so hoping to find some way to help her, some hobby perhaps, or a piece of trivia that might give her a way to communicate better with the Rookie - Scarlet regretted that choice deeply now.
With each layer of security she had entered, her eye had gradually gone wide in disbelief, thoughts of whether the system was wrong, mislabelled - Eventually she had been unable to resist her own morbid curiosity.
7 months ago Scarlet had been known by the alias 'Lt.Commander Bela Grimizan' - Bela no longer existed, but her access codes to the IAFS system had never actually been rescinded, some sort of oversight no doubt - Using them Scarlet had been able to see almost every piece of data available - And it had been alot.
She sat sipping her coffee, staring across at her downcast junior, all that she had learned circling though her mind like a sick joke.
Scarlet had known about Station 5.5, about Una's Mother, Sister and Father's untimely deaths, but soon she learned so much more.
The part of the Conchabhair family that lived on Station 5 was small, first generation immigrants - The rest still lived on Bhaile, to the south of the Western-Continent. Scarlet had read that with a horrible sense of dread, she like any Abhailen soldier, no like anyone alive at the time, remembered November of TA412, the month when the sky had fallen.
A meteor shower meant to pass harmlessly through the solar system, suddenly changing course and colliding with Bhaile's Western continent - Entire countries with-in the southern hemisphere had been wiped off the map over night, the environmental damage, changes to the tides, the atmosphere, all of it had devastating affects across the entire planet - The largest single loss of human life in history it had been labelled - And the Abhailen Goverment had claimed the credit for making it happen.
Among the millions dead, was almost all of Una's extended family, aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins - All dead.
But that was normal, atleast as normal as anything was these days - No one didn't atleast know someone who had died in the course of the First-War, civilian or otherwise - But that wasn't where the story ended, oh how Scarlet wished it was.
For one relative had survived, living on the small family farm just outside of the areas destroyed - Una's Gran-Aunt.
Left all alone, Una's family made the decision to frequently visit this older woman, making the day's long trip from Station 5.5, all the way to rural Western Bhaile - And in that time Una had become something of a favourite granddaughter.
Perhaps some might think her parents choice, to let Una at age 14 make the journey for the first time on her own, a reckless one - But the shuttle flight was with a TSU owned company, the train across the continent a TSU sub-division, and the walk from the station to the little village her Gran-Aunt lived, a short one in a nice neighbourhood.
Perhaps, Scarlet felt, it was providence they had let her go alone....
She imagined Una on those ridiculously long commutes, making all the different stops and transfers along the way, navigated spaceports and train-stations, never complaining about any of it - All just to see some old lady and her dog - It was in Scarlet's opinion a very 'Una thing' to do.
And so it was on the last of these long trips, at age 15 - That station 5.5 had been destroyed from the inside out - Scarlet had known that vaguely before, now she had read the details.
For 18 months a small but vocal group of protestors had been lobbying the station's administration for better pay, wages equal to those of people working on Bhaile. The protests and strikes were frequent, organised and entrenched, 18 months was a long time for neither side to budge and it was starting to harm the Station 5 cluster's commercial output as a whole.
So a somewhat new group were called in, an oversight branch of the military known as TSU-s.
The protests had been peaceful, a bare handful of arrests or altercations had occurred, in almost two years there had been no weapons - TSU-s spoke with the unofficial Union leaders, determined they couldn't give into their demands, less other Nation-States demand similar rights - And gave the leader's two choices;
"Go back to work, or be made an example of."
The Unions thought nothing of it, they might believe they were being treated as second hand citizens, but they still had human rights - The average citizen of Station 5.5, like Una's parents, didn't even know TSU-s were there - And they never would.
In March of TA422 TSU-s would make their mission-statement clear to all those in the know - Testing an experimental nerve gas, they turned the peaceful protestors of Station 5.5 into gas-choked corpses, along with every other person present in the city - A total massacre that Una had only avoided because she had chosen to show her gran-aunt kindness.
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It didn't seem right to Scarlet, to get that unlucky in life, to have your family involved in not one but two of the worst civilian massacres of all history, to lose so many in one lifetime felt too cruel against a girl as kind and gentle as Una.
But the girl had got up once more - She had just lost her parents, her little sister, her childhood home, all her school friends, everything she knew - A girl who hadn't even been given the chance to finish highschool, had joined IAFS, made the long journey to Bannerman and while 16, lying about her age being 17, had entered the fast track programme, to fight to prevent such atrocities from coming to pass again.
Then Scarlet had read the names, and one by one to her horror, read the Fates of each name - She honestly wasn't sure if she could even look Sabban in the eyes again after doing so - The Fates of each and every classmate at the academy alongside Una and Sabban.
Apparently Sabban (and Kolme for that matter) had even watched names like Shasha, Zori, Ennya and Mili die in battle.
There were others like Hikari, or the names of those who had been in Una's own cadet unit.
There were of 20 students total, partially trained by Hoki of all people, just two of whom weren't either confirmed fatalities or MIA & presumed dead - Sabban and Una.
And yet still, even after learning that, even after all that loss - Una had kept fighting, been posted to a base, had her machine stolen, been threated for a time as a criminal - And still she kept going, came here to the Am Fluchtig - The Rookie had preserved through Scarlet's strictest of training regimes, had gone into battle alongside far more experience pilots on three separate sorties and returned alive from each of them, invaluable to the Fluchtig's squad's survival - She had never complained about how unfair or hard it was, if anything the girl had given herself a hard time with anxieties of not being good enough to match the rest of the squad, it made Scarlet want to laugh bitterly,
'Not good enough? She took a shot for Hoki at the battle of the Clover, fought through her own mental hang ups at Station 9, survived and held the line where more advanced pilots died 8 days ago - And to think she's worried she can't keep up?!!'
That was the Una she knew, young, kind and indominable - Maybe not the best at anything, maybe not destined to be 'a hero' or such like, but someone Scarlet had grown deeply fond of these last couple of months they had spent together - But the girl across from her was not that.
As Doctor Hasain had informed her, Cally's death was simply a bridge too far, a loss too many - A switch had flipped inside the girl and now Scarlet didn't know how to help - She could teach, she could fight, but help a young girl out with such trauma as this? It felt impossible.
She knew now alot more of the names Una would cry out for in the night - She deeply regretted that fact...
"Ummm, Scarlet you ok?" Subtlety asked Hoki from the opposite side of the table - She had long since finished her food and emptied her teapot.
Scarlet, finally snapped from her own musing was quick to respond, "What, ah, sorry ya. I'm fine just stuck in my own head I guess."
"I can understand that for sure. Anyway I was thinking we should be going now, its been a while." Hoki added with a small nod in Una's direction - It was clear the girl wasn't going to be eating anything more at this time.
"Ya lets." Scarlet said back, moving her own cup and plate back onto a tray and getting ready to move - Just then the girl's thin lips moved, her voice frail, barely audible - It was the first time Una had spoken in nearly 36 hours by Scarlet's count;
"Miss.Scarlet.... Can I ask....?"
"Huh, eerrr, ya of course anything girl!" Scarlet blurted back, not wanting to let the rare spark of conversation pass.
Una nodded, a hardly perceivable affair at this point, "....What was Cally's name?"
"What do you mean Una?" Hoki asked from beside the girl, her face a picture of concern.
"Scarlet read my files last night right? ..... So do you know her name?"
The older woman's heart fell, guilt swept over her in horrid waves, she hadn't though Una was conscious enough to notice her even reading, never mind to have seen the contents - And then there was her question, 'Cally was her name right? What's she asking exactly?'
"Una I don't think I understand?"
"......Was Cally her first or second name? What was her full name? I....i wanted to ask her but I felt embarrassed for not knowing.... So I never did and now, and now.... now I never can."
The Rookie's voice went from deadpan, all the way to a slow wail as large sloppy tear began to roll down her cheeks.
Scarlet watched as emotion completely grabbed the girl, as her face took on that terrible grimace of pain that it wore during the worst of the night terrors, curling and frowning, hands coming up to hold her own head - Una began to sob violently.
Scarlet didn't know what to do, she didn't know what to think of the by-standers in the canteen watching this, she didn't know what to do with the knowledge she had learned about Una's past - She didn't know how to help her.
Hoki was faster to move, wrapping her arms around Una and embracing the girl against her chest, speaking soothing words of comfort as best she could.
Scarlet sat across from her two embracing juniors, staring at Una's warped, tear lined face.
Why hadn't she researched Cally, that was something she could of done, she could of had the answer ready, she could of done that much for the girl but she hadn't - Once again she had tried to do what she could not and failed to do what she could - And it made her feel so very ashamed...
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