War Angel: part five

“I am so completely bored,” Ben Drake complained to no one. Drake sat alone on the ship’s bridge, an earpiece seemingly stuck to the right side of his head as he monitored radio frequencies. “This is the absolute worst way to spend a school break humanly possible. How the hell did this happen to me?”

A voice from behind startled him. “Because you’ve screwed around and done a proper botch job on your classes and this is your last chance to pass.”

Drake whipped around from his station to find Captain Albert Morrison settling into the ship’s helm. “Yes sir. You’re right sir.”

“Ease it up, son. I’m not here to pick on you. Anything good coming across the wire?” Morrison leaned forward and slid his jacket off, revealing heavily tattooed arms and broad shoulders. The man charged with shepherding the students’ excursion to Pluto wasn’t much older than his charges, having just turned thirty-five. For him, service was a question of having nowhere else to go. His parents had died in the final offensive by the Omegans during the Second Period, and he had found himself an orphan.

Orphans served the public. That’s what Albert Morrison discovered. The rebuilding society had no room for someone unwilling to contribute something to the greater good.

The young student working the radio scanned through the standard frequencies for Earth traffic. “Not much happening. Standard stuff. Some shipping maneuvers, some media traffic.”

“How about on the hyperfrequencies? What are our fellow EAD members saying?”

Ben busied himself with the communications screens. “Ahh… umm… basic comm chatter from what I can tell. Satellite checks, ship check-ins…”

“Very good, Mr. Drake. Or would you prefer to go by your call sign while on the duty here.”

Drake straightened up and smiled. “’Sounder’ does have a nice sound to it, Captain.”

Morrison stood and grabbed his jacket. “Very good, Sounder. Keep an ear to the ground.”

“Aye, Captain.” Ben returned his focus towards listening to the radio chatter throughout the solar system. “If this is what it takes to pass,” he thought, “then I’ll do what it takes to pass.” His thoughts derailed for a moment. “Of course, the fact that everyone on the ship except for Morrison hates me does make it a bit difficult than I had thought it might be.”

“I!” Kate Stinson landed a right hook into the midsection of the exercise droid. “Really!” she continued with a left uppercut. “Fucking hate!” as a roundhouse kick caught the droid’s head. “Ben fucking Drake!” a series of punches to the midsection shut down the droid and sent it crumpling to the floor. Kate took a series of deep breaths, hoping to calm herself.

Then she kicked the downed droid one more time for good measure.

Standing outside of the exercise box was Dr. Wilma Gray, the ship’s medical technician. “You know, when I suggested working off a little steam about the situation with Ben, I don’t quite think this was what I was imagining.”

Kate began unwrapping the athletic tape from her hands. “What precisely were you expecting me to do, Doc? Take up knitting?”

Dr. Gray shook her head and laughed. “No, I suppose not. I was figuring you might go for a run, maybe dial up the gravity in here and go for a heavy-G run.”

“Hmm. Doc, I like the way you think. Next time I fight an exercise droid, I think I’ll do it in Venus gravity. That’s a great idea. Might even make it a fair fight.”

The older woman threw up her hands in exasperation. “I give up. You got me.”

Stinson threw her head back and laughed. “Nice! I made the old lady speechless! I win!”

Wilma cocked an eyebrow at her student charge. “Kiss my ass, ‘old lady’. I’m barely forty.” Gray pulled her lab coat tight to herself, suddenly self-conscious about her body, wondering if Stinson truly pictured her as an aged person. The younger woman walked to a pile of clothes and towels, picking up the material she had brought with her to the ship’s “gym.” The doctor observed the catlike grace Kate exhibited, her jet-black hair sliding along her back as she grabbed her things. This young astrobiologist was unusual, of that there was no doubt. She seen it in action; Kate’s instincts to fight were almost as strong as her instincts to learn. Perhaps more so.

Kate strode next to the doctor, stopping to throw an arm around her shoulder, guiding her towards the exit. “Fair enough, doc. But you know… my mom just turned forty, so…”

“I’m going to poison your food, Stinson, I swear. Right after we go pick up Ms. Almond.”

Project: War Angel had begun, as so many things do, accidentally.

Jack had been watching media while trying to get to sleep on one winter’s night during his freshman year, when a governmental program announced the finding of a First Period battlecruiser that had been downed on the Sea of Tranquility on Earth’s moon. Teams had been sent in to retrieve the bodies of the crew, and EAD staff had downloaded all of the ship’s logs and comm records. But final disposal of the ship had yet to be decided. Jack, suddenly intrigued, grabbed a pAd.d and began furiously writing.

“That is a seriously stupid idea,” Sarah told him the next day at lunch. “One of your worst, really.”

“What?” Jack replied. “When have I ever had a bad idea before?” She shook her head at the classmate she considered most likely to implode mentally.

“Most of them, really,” she told him. “This one is just dumber than most.” He started to interrupt her. “Number one, there is no way they will let us touch that ship. Number two, it crashed into the damned moon. There’s not likely to be much about it that’s salvageable. And number three… number three…”

Jack stared at her intently. “Yes?”

“I don’t have a number three. But I don’t need one. This is just a bad idea.”

He shifted in his chair. “Look, I know it’s a long shot. But it could be one worth taking for a few of us, really. We both have ideas for shields projects, and we need a practical place to put them into action. Frankly, getting some freighter company to allow us to play with one of their ships isn’t going to be easy. Richard Park has some killer ideas about engine performance and design. Kate Stinson wants to do some xenobiological work that can’t be done in a terrestrial atmosphere.”

“Ha!” Sarah said. “That’s if she hasn’t punched out a professor or dean and gotten tossed in the brig by the time her work is ready to test.”

Jack ran his fingers through his hair. “Granted, she’s a bit of a loose cannon, which, considering my own behavioral… issues… is saying something. Which is why,” he went in for the kill, “you should be the lead name on the project proposal.”

Sarah’s eyes shot open. “You have got to be kidding me. Now you want me to manage this insane idea?”

“Everyone loves you. You’re smart, level-headed, respected… all qualities that the officers respond to. With your name at the top, we have a much larger chance of a successful ‘go’.”

“That I want no part of and think is a bad idea.”

“But,” Jack grinned wickedly, “if your name is at the top and we get it accepted, you can learn to love it.”

A month later, as Sarah, Jack, Kate and Richard sat in front of the Projects Hearing Board, Sarah almost sounded like she did love it. But she was convincing enough.