Meet-Cute

“To be in the public eye is to be constantly scrutinized. You will be asked to justify your actions, and people will find fault with everything you do or do not do. Make your decisions with this in mind, but do not be unduly bent by criticism that you know is wrong. Weak leaders bow unduly to the possibility of public pressure, and therefore can never make decisions that challenge the way things are. You are going to be seen. You should make it worth the public’s effort to look at you.”

-from Realtalk: A Governor Speaks Out, by Raj Calai

Sid barged into Sandreas's office the next morning, brushing past Kino in his enthusiasm to get inside. She glared daggers at him as his shoulder whacked hers, and she caught the heavy wooden door before it slammed shut on her face. Sid was unusually energetic, considering that he had been up almost the entire night before. The previous night’s meeting had been exciting. He was lucky that Sandreas hadn't slapped him because he had been running his mouth, but sometimes he just needed to say things.

Sid skidded to a stop on the carpeted floor in front of Sandreas's desk. Sandreas was ignoring him, as was usual until he was actually ready to talk, and Halen was lurking by the wall (also typical). Sid didn't want to waste any time. He hadn't been able to make his request last night, even though he had wanted to, because Sandreas had left the room before Sid had even finished processing the information he had gotten. Sid had formulated the perfect request during the night.

He blurted it out with his usual candor. "Let me go deal with the illegal station."

Sandreas didn't look up from his tablet.

"No." Halen said from the back. How did Halen even know about this? It was annoying how well informed he was. And why was he still objecting? After all, wasn't it just going after pirates in particular that was the problem?

"What station?" Kino asked, sitting down on the couch. Sid ignored her, tapping his foot as he waited for Aymon to give the answer that he wanted.

"Kino, last night Vaswani Parks, the head of intelligence on the Guild, let us know about a new discovery of a supership the Guild is building, and the location of the station that's constructing it. You should have a written report on it," Halen explained. Kino pulled her phone out from her pocket and started looking through her inbox to find the report. Her eyes flicked back and forth with alarming speed as she read it.

Sid was still waiting impatiently for Sandreas to acknowledge him. Unfortunately, it didn't seem like being bossy to his boss was about to pay off anytime soon, so he relented and went to sit on the couch next to Kino. He watched over her shoulder as she scrolled through the report. He couldn't believe how fast she was reading it, or how detailed it was. There were way more specifics on how all this was found, suggestions for dealing with it, and details about the construction of the ship than there had been last night. It was a lot.

Sandreas finally looked up. Sid seized the opportunity.

"There's precedent for sending Fleet ships out to stop the Guild from building stations," Sid said. "I looked it up. Think about, uh–' He blanked on the name.

"Malstaire?" Kino said.

"Yeah, that's the one."

"Just because there is precedent doesn't mean that I am going to allow you to do something dangerous or foolish," Sandreas said.

"It wouldn't be dangerous," Sid pleaded. "And you said you'd think about me going after pirates, and this is way better."

Sandreas slammed his fist down on his desk. The little round paperweights that he had jiggled. "I would consider you going out to deal with pirates because there's was a hope, a chance, a tiny sliver of something, that it would help find Yan. But I see what you're really after is a fun jaunt and command."

His face was red. Was he like this just because he hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before? Sid leaned back onto the couch.

"Let me go, then," Kino said. Sid stared at her in shock. "Someone needs to do it. You'll want a representative to negotiate with the people on the station."

"Why are you volunteering?" Halen asked.

Kino twiddled a rubber band around her fingers. "Sid has had independent jobs. I want to prove that I can handle one, too."

Sid fumed at her silently. If she got to go off on a ship and he had to stay on Emerri, that would burn. Kino looked at him calmly. Her face was so flat and inexpressive that he couldn't tell what she was trying to communicate.

"You think you would be able to handle a mission that involves negotiation?" Sandreas asked.

"I can't believe you're considering this. I mean just look at her!" Sid couldn't help himself.

"Yes, look at me. I've gotten better." It was an undeniable fact that Kino had spent the past two months working on her 'people skills' by going to party after event after meeting after social hour with the members of the Imperial council. She hated it, but she had avoided making any real social flubs recently. Sid had to admit that counted for something when it came to negotiation. "And I've been on Fleet ships before. I know how they run."

Sandreas's face was returning to its normal color, and he seemed to be judging the situation rationally now.

"I haven't even decided what I'm going to do about it," Sandreas said. "I could just let it continue."

"It's a whole illegal mine and manufacturing center. They're building a supership," Sid said. "You can't just ignore that."

"I can pretend to not know about it until it is strategic to reveal my hand," Sandreas said. "And Sid, arguing with me on every point is not winning you any trips off planet."

Sid scowled at his lap. At least Sandreas warning him about his behavior was less bad than the angry 'no' that he had been given just moments before. That man could go from one extreme to another in an instant. Sid didn't appreciate having furniture be used as a punching bag, though.

"I don't like the idea of either of you going off planet," Halen said.

"Why not?" Kino asked. "It would be a Fleet ship. There's no safer place to be."

"The station is probably armed. It could turn violent," Halen said.

"I have experience in space battles," Sid countered. "It would be fine."

"I've seen the recordings of your pirate encounter. You weren't calling the shots." Halen's face was impassive.

"There were recordings?"

"You didn't come in the day we looked at them. We used the simulation room," Kino said. "It was interesting."

That must have been one of the days where he was holed up in his apartment, feeling sorry for himself and withdrawing from Vena. It had severely sucked. He didn't like to think about that, but he was also quite glad to have missed out on whatever blow by blow dissection had happened in the simulation room. Apparently all the following drama made everyone forget that they needed to go over strategy with him. Either that or they had decided not to bother. It was probably the second one. Yan had done most of the strategy, anyway. What little of it there was.

"I wouldn't be in charge on a Fleet ship, anyway," Sid countered. "There would be whoever was in command telling me what to do."

"Like you have such a great track record for respecting authority," Sandreas said. Sid snapped his head up to look at him, biting his tongue hard to stop himself from saying something else inflammatory. He really wanted to go, and he apparently wasn't going to get there by trading quips with Sandreas.

"We could go together," Kino said. "There would be less danger that way."

"And risk losing both of you at once?" Halen asked. "I don't think so."

"We're in just as much danger here as we are there. More, maybe," Sid said. "I mean, everyone knows where we are, and we could get assassinated at any time."

"That's not funny," Sandreas said. "You don't understand what it's like to face assassination attempts. Don't joke about it."

"I know our security is your priority," Sid said. "But you can't keep handling us with baby gloves on. We're supposed to be useful."

"You're useful here," Sandreas said. "And the purpose of an apprenticeship is to learn."

"It's also to do. If they just wanted us learning, we'd stay in school until we rotted."

"I want to go," Kino said. "Sid wants to go. Please let us take a chance." Sid couldn't hear, and her face was so flat, but the words flashing across his glasses were so forlorn looking. Was Kino serious about helping him? He almost felt sorry for having talked down to her. Almost.

"You can't keep us here forever," Sid said. "We have to go out sometime."

"If something happened to you because I let you go, it would be my fault," Aymon said. "I don't think there's anything to be gained from letting you do dangerous things."

"It's really not as dangerous as you think it is. You're only having a fit about us going off planet because of Yan," Sid said. "There's danger everywhere, and you said yourself that what happened to Yan was aimed at you."

"Do you really think you have the skills necessary to avoid being killed or kidnapped, if someone was coming after you?" Halen asked. "Be honest."

"It depends on the situation," Kino said.

Sid looked at Kino, willing to throw his support behind her just this once. "I think after everything we've both been through, we have proven that we're resilient and capable. That should be enough."

"If that were enough, Yan would be here right now," Halen said.

"You're going to have to send someone," Kino said. "You're not going to let this go unchallenged."

"I have people whose job it is to go out and do my bidding," Aymon said, quirking his lips up slightly. Was he amused?

"Yeah, us," Sid said. "That's our job."

"I'm not completely opposed to it," Aymon said. "Just like I wasn't completely opposed to you going after pirates. But I am opposed to you dictating policy to me. And I'm also unhappy that you're dismissing my concerns for your safety out of hand." They weren't really Aymon's concerns. It seemed like Halen was more worried about their safety than he was. But of course the two of them were joined at the hip, so one's opinion was probably the other's opinion as well.

"I'm opposed to it," Halen said.

"Yeah, we got that," Sid grumbled.

"There's no guarantee of safety anywhere," Kino said. How many times would they have to make that point?

"Here you're surrounded by people whose job it is to keep you safe," Halen said. "People who have all the resources and support that they need."

"And if we went, we'd be on a Fleet ship with people who are literally incapable of betraying us," Sid said. He knew all about how the Fleet operated. "It's not at all like what happened to Yan. Just because it would be on a ship doesn't mean it would turn out the same."

Sandreas looked conflicted. He looked between his two apprentices, and Sid was sure that he was mentally reaching for Halen. Sid couldn't imagine the type of lover's quarrel they would have if Sandreas went against Halen's suggestions. It seemed like Sandreas almost always took Halen's advice; they both trusted each other so completely. It almost made Sid jealous to look at them, but then he remembered the fact that they hid their relationship, and the fact that they were like, a hundred years old, and he stopped being quite so weird about it. The only other relationship he could compare theirs to was his parents', and that wasn't much of a comparison at all. Sid's mother was domineering and controlling, and his father was creative and a bit of a recluse. Them being the only two deaf people at the school they attended probably was the only reason they ended up together. Of course, Halen and Sandreas had been thrown together by an even stranger twist of fate, so Sid couldn't really say if chance meetings were a good or bad footing for a relationship.

Halen stood as still and stiff as a board in the back of the room.

"It's true that I can't keep you here forever. It's true that this would probably be a relatively safe task. It's true that it something that needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later. You would get good experience from it, and that you need experience to be capable leaders. But I still don't like the idea of sending you away. Either one of you or both of you," Sandreas said. "Part of it is my fear. I can admit that. And part of me thinks that I was pushing you too far, too fast. You've both performed well, but this isn't something that I would have been able to take on at your age."

"Then send someone with us to coach us," Sid said. "Like on Olar."

"I would do that even if you had five more years of experience behind you. I put quite a lot of stock in the people who tell me what the best course of action is."

"Then have those people tell you to send us," Sid said, crossing his arms. When he was arguing he always wanted to add in signs, put an extra layer into the conversation. The only person who would understand him would be Halen, though, and Halen was even more dead set against him going than Sandreas was. And Halen's sign was serviceable at best.

"The person I trust most in matters concerning my apprentices is telling me, very firmly, that I should not send you." Sandreas glanced behind himself at Halen, whose lips twitched in an unusual break from his typical stoicism.

Sid could always tell how Halen was going to act based on where in the room he positioned himself in respect to Sandreas. If he was standing against the wall, he was in his professional mode– impersonal and distant. It let him fade into the background of the room and not distract from whatever conversation or business Sandreas was conducting. If he was shoulder to shoulder with him, or right behind him, he was making an explicit statement that Sandreas was being protected. In the office with just the apprentices, it usually depended on how much Halen was planning on contributing to the conversation. If he was going to be really invested in it, he would come closer, or even sit on the couch next to Sandreas.

Sid was always making a mental catalog of how people were behaving. If there was one thing he didn't get from his glasses, it was tone of voice, so he had to rely than other people on body language and behavior. Granted, signing made him want to pay attention to those types of things anyway, but spoken speech lacked any of the depth and richness of expression that sign had. Sure, Sandreas could pound his desk all he wanted, but he was never going to throw his whole body into something he was talking about, or restrain himself with stiff, measured movements when he was angry. Or say that he was going to slap you and reach out and do it in the same movement.

Was it selfish of him to miss Yan simply because she was someone to sign with?

There was a long moment of silence as Sandreas contemplated the problem. From the length of time he was spending thinking about it, Sid felt certain that at least one of them would be allowed to go. He would be so intensely angry if it was Kino who got the job.

"When you were an apprentice, and your coworkers died, did First Herrault stop sending you out?" Kino asked, breaking the silence.

"The first time. For a little while," Sandreas said. He actually leaned his head on his hand, tucking his fist underneath his hand. As his head moved into the light, Sid could see much more clearly the wrinkles and tightness around his eyes, and the white streaking through his hair. Sandreas wasn't that old, but the past few months had aged him.

"What happened the second time?" Kino asked.

"I was immediately sent out to finish the job," Sandreas said. "It was… a different time. And I was much older than you are now."

"Not to be crass, but only one of us can actually succeed you," Sid said. He immediately knew he shouldn't have said that. Sandreas jerked his head up and glared at him.

"There's a difference," Sandreas said, the words flashing across Sid's glasses on at a time. "Between not taking my place and dying."

"Sorry," Sid said.

"You should apologize to Kino," Sandreas said.

"What for?"

"You just insinuated that she would have to die. I assume you weren't thinking about your own death," Sandreas said.

"I could die too," Sid said, raising his arms helplessly. He had just been trying to be frank about the dangers of their position. It wasn't as though he wanted Kino to die, or Yan to get kidnapped.

"Apologize anyway," Sandreas said.

"You're not my mother," Sid snapped back.

"And I thank God every day that I'm not." Sandreas's knuckles were white.

"Sorry, Kino," Sid said. He had several other comments, but he decided not to push his luck and bit his tongue to keep his mouth shut.

"It's fine." Kino seemed unaffected by the entire situation, still twisting her rubber band.

"What is it worth to you, going out on this mission?" Sandreas asked. "Why do you want it so much that you're fighting me over it?"

There was a long stretch of silence.

"I want to do something," Sid said, seeing that Kino wasn't going to answer. "I sit around here and I learn things from other people, and I watch decisions get made, and sometimes someone asks me for advice or to do something for them. That's not leadership, and I want to go out and learn how to lead."

"Leadership involves a lot of sitting around and taking advice from other people. It's not often thrilling, and you notice that I almost never end up spearheading any operations."

"That's not true, we were on Jenjin," Kino said.

"Jenjin was the exception, and I was there for political reasons rather than military ones. The operation would have gone the same without our input," Sandreas said.

"Then I want to get that experience in now, before I'm tied to a desk and have to send lackeys and my own apprentices out to do it for me," Sid said. "You got to."

"I got to, and I almost got killed on several occasions. If you're too eager you will end up hurting yourself."

"Okay, then I'm only moderately eager."

"And you, Kino?"

"I've been with you this whole time. I want to go out like Sid has." There was an awkward pause after 'like'. Sid waited for the words to appear on his glasses. Kino was avoiding mentioning Yan. "And I want to get away from the Council."

"Any negotiations you get into will be much harder than dealing with Council members," Sandreas cautioned. "This isn't a lowball mission. This would be real work, with real consequences. I don't think you understand what the consequences might be."

"What do you mean?" Sid asked. "All we have to do is stop the Guild from using a station that they've built."

"And if they refuse to stop?" Sandreas asked. "What do you think the Fleet ship you're on will have to do?"

"Blockade it?" That had been the strategy the Guild used on Olar.

"We'd have to destroy it," Kino said. "It's not public information, and we couldn't risk it getting out there, or having Guild ships come to break the blockade."

"Malstaire ended without violence," Sandreas said. "But that was when Ungarti was in charge. He was a more rational man than his successor is."

"You mean we'd have to kill Guild members?" Sid asked.

"Yes," Sandreas said. "There's a possibility that you would have to do that, if the negotiations failed. And you would be in charge of the negotiations. This station doesn't have an ansible, obviously. There would be no way for you to contact help if things went wrong. Everything that happens to this station would be on your head, if you went out to it. Are you actually prepared for that responsibility?"

"There's only one way to find out," Sid said.

Sandreas pressed his hand over his eyes. "This is different than killing pirates in self defense."

"And you didn't have a good time doing that," Kino said, then paused. "I will make sure that the negotiations don't go wrong."

"I'm sure you’ll try," Sandreas said. "But there's nothing sure, especially in this type of negotiation."

"What do you mean by this type?"

"The type of negotiation that is conducted in secret and in an understanding that both parties are holding eachother at gunpoint."

"They're holding us at gunpoint?" Sid asked.

"I'm sure the station is armed. But even if it weren't, the existence of the supership they're building is a threat." Sid was a little skeptical of that. Sure, big fast ships were bad, and the Guild trying to flex its own muscles out from under the Empire's watch was concerning, but it wasn't anything that would cause an immediate collapse of society. Sandreas was probably just being overdramatic.

"I still think that I, or we, could do it. You should let us go," Sid said. "I know you have good reasons for not wanting it, but our reasons for going are just as strong." He was trying to convince, rather than further antagonize.

"I'll think about it," Sandreas said.

"That's what you said before, and you thought about it and never got back to me. You can make a decision now. This is time sensitive."

"Don't push me, Sid."

"But–"

"I said don't." Sandreas tapped his pen on his desk. Sid watched it bob up and down.

"Maybe it would be better if we went," Kino said. "You could probably use a break from us."

That was maybe the funniest thing that Kino had ever said in her life. Sid smiled a little. Apparently Kino was serious, though.

"What? No, I don't need a break from you."

"Are you sure? Because I'm driving you crazy," Sid said.

"I want you to stop. That doesn't mean I want to send you out somewhere to die."

"We won't die." Kino seemed calm and assured.

"You could ask the Emperor to watch us," Sid said. "Farsight and everything."

"The Emperor has much better things to do than watch my apprentices."

Kino, who still hadn't met the Emperor, ignored these comments, or stashed them away to ask about later. Either way, she didn't ask about the Emperor, even though Sid thought she should have. He couldn't believe that he was the only one who had been there. It was such a weird experience. Weird and bad. And he had gone twice! Why had he put himself through that? Because Sandreas forced him to the first time, and because he needed something the second time. And he hadn't gotten what he needed. He wanted to go find Yan. He obviously wouldn't admit this to Sandreas, but one of the reasons he wanted to go on this trip was that he thought that, once he was aboard a Fleet ship, he could extend his trip by finding more and more things to do. Perhaps going to hunt black stations or pirate ships. He was prepared for a a "better to ask for forgiveness" type situation.

"I'll tell you what," Sandreas said after a long moment. "I need to consult with Guild experts, find a Fleet ship that I can pull to go out there, and come up with a plan. I'll float your names and see if people would be able to tolerate having you on board. And once I have all that information, then I will make a decision."

"We're not that bad to be around," Sid said.

"Yes, you are."

Sid smiled broadly. Sandreas could say all he wanted, but at least that was a concession. Sid had done his best to avoid pissing off the Fleet leadership on Emerri. He had been spending a lot of time with them, and he didn't know for sure, but suspected that he was making a positive impression. As for Kino with the council, well, no one could say she wasn't trying.

"Now, I need you to get out so that I can think straight."

"What tasks did you even call us in here to assign?" Sid asked. "I guess I sidetracked you."

"Out," Sandreas said. "You know what you're supposed to be doing. Go do it."

Well, if Sandreas wasn't going to give him explicit instructions, Sid was going to start doing some research on what exactly had happened on Malstaire.

And so it went that Sid and Kino ended up together on a Fleet ship, less than two weeks later. They drifted out of the connecting tunnel between Emerri station and the ship, named the Impulse, and were greeted by the captain. Sid and Kino were both dressed in their most professional but least ostentatious uniforms: black cassock and deep red capes without any ornamentation aside from the gleaming silver buttons. Although they were trying to blend in with the Fleet soldiers around them, they didn't succeed; all the Fleet were dressed in dark blue suits. As always, the cassock called them out as sensitives.

The captain and all his accompanying soldiers, about ten lined up in two rows, saluted them. It was a little impressive how orderly everyone managed to be, even without gravity in this part of the ship. The salute was a quick motion where the person dragged their right hand down their face and ended with their hand in a fist over their heart. It was still awkward for Sid whenever anyone did that. He felt perpetually unsure of how to respond. No one had ever told him that he should salute back, so he usually just smiled and nodded as he did now. Kino followed his lead and did the same.

"Welcome aboard the Impulse, Apprentice Mejia, Apprentice Welslak," the captain said. He shook hands with both of them. "I'm Captain Wen, and this is my first officer, Commander Saito." Wen was probably in his late forties and had a neatly trimmed grey beard.

"Pleasure to meet you," Sid said with a nod. The commander, a stocky older woman, smiled and nodded back but didn't offer her hand.

"It'll be a long way to get to the station," Captain Wen said. "I look forward to getting to know you both over the trip."

"Of course," Sid said. "I'm excited to be on a Fleet ship. I've only ever traveled on Guild ships before."

"There's no comparison there," Wen said. "You'll find that the Impulse is quite a different beast than any trading ship."

"That's a good thing, then," Sid said. "When are we jumping out?"

"As soon as everything is aboard. Would you care to watch from the bridge?"

"Oh, yes," Sid said. He tried to make his excitement sound less childlike, but the thrill of being around big machines was one he had since tinkering with his family's tractors as a child. A starship was the biggest machine of them all.

"And what about you, Apprentice Mejia? Would you care to join us on the bridge?"

"Yes," Kino said. "I'm happy to join you." The words crawled across Sid's glasses with almost agonizing slowness. This didn't bode well for their upcoming negotiations, but at least Kino wasn't picking apart the sleeves of her cassock or anything.

"Great," Wen said. "Crewman Borgess, please help the rest of the group get situated. Saito, with me. Everyone else is dismissed." The crewmembers who had been standing around in the honor guard all scattered as soon as the command was given. Sid and Kino followed the two Fleet officers through the halls of the Impulse, leaving behind the rest of their cohort. It took a minute for Sid to remember his "space legs" and how to navigate the long hallways without gravity.

The Impulse was, as the captain had said, nothing like the Guild ships that Sid had been on, though they were constructed out of roughly the same materials. In a Guild ship, everything showed signs of the people who made the ship their home. People decorated the walls with art or photos, and even where there weren't any decorations, there were indications that it was a home rather than an institution. On the Fleet ship, there was none of that. Everything had a place, and a label, and all of the hallways were straight and narrow. Even within the hallways, everything was scrubbed to a shine, every door was labeled and locked, and everything moved with a precision that Guild ships probably could never match.

And then there were the people. The Impulse was a small ship, by Fleet standards. It wasn't carrying enough of a crew to do a full planetary invasion. It was a lighter ship designed to fight solely in the air. It carried in its berths hundreds of dogfighters that could scatter out to attack an enemy ship. Even though it couldn't field a landing force, there were still an absurd number of people crammed aboard. Everywhere they drifted (or when they got to the spinning rings of the ship, walked), there were people who would stand to the side and salute as they passed. The captain acknowledged them with just a nod, but Sid could only assume that there were so many the captain had no idea who most of them were. On a Guild ship, it would have been supremely embarrassing for the captain to not know the names of all of the crew. They were family, after all. But there were about ten times as many people aboard this ship as there were aboard any Guild vessel. Sid wondered what they could possibly do all day, or how they were all fed. He knew there were several spinning rings on this ship. Maybe one of them was devoted entirely to greenhouses, and everyone had a shift there.

After all, when these ships went out into enemy territory, there would be very few resupply runs to pick up food. These ships were universes unto themselves, with everything they could need to survive. Where Guild ships were mostly self sufficient for economic reasons, these ships had to be in order to sustain themselves and perform their missions.

The bridge of the Impulse was high tech. Sid wanted to wander around and explore every area, to see what everyone was doing. His fingers itched for it. But he stayed still, right next to Kino, and looked around at the controlled chaos. People were walking between different stations, comparing notes and projections, or checking to make sure that various systems were all working in harmony. Because they were about to jump away, they were coordinating the unhooking of the docking tube that connected the Impulse to Emerri station. It was apparently a trickier maneuver than Sid suspected. He watched on the big screen in the front of the room as the tube pulled itself away from the station and settled back into position against the side of the ship. Two suited figures jetted passed the camera and inspected the dock, fastening a few things down by hand, then zoomed away back to the airlock.

Captain Wen sat down on his chair at the front of the room. Commander Saito went to converse with some of the people around the room. Sid could tell it was a chaotic environment, because words flashed past on his glasses faster than he could read, and the different conversations filled the whole of the lenses, to the point where he wouldn't have been able to tell if someone was addressing him in particular.

In fact, someone was trying to talk to him. Kino tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to Captain Wen.

"Hunh? Oh, sorry." Sid looked intently at the captain. It had been a long time since he had been forced to rely on reading lips.

"…Oh anythi… ou.. ssaatrifss?" The captain's mouth was failing to resolve into anything comprehensible, but from what he could see of it and the snatches he could make out from his glasses as all the conversations on the bridge whizzed past, Sid guessed he was saying something about stardrives.

"No, I'm not familiar with stardrives. Not anything beyond the basics, anyway."

"Too pat. Kut thik thool tosnt oh ether." Reading lips was a mystery game. He got that Thule was mentioned. Names tended to jump out from the jumble on his glasses. He made a guess.

"If Thule knew how to make stardrives, we'd be in much deeper than we are now."

He must have said the right thing, because Wen laughed, his eyes crinkling up.

"Roo, fare roo."

"How long until we jump out?" Sid asked. At least the answer to that question wouldn't be anything he had to respond to over the hubbub off the bridge.

"Soon as afreewans ansid. Tan minoods." The ship must have a very efficient system for getting the docking gear stowed away and everyone back inside. Really, the Impulse ran with precision that was rarely matched even in the brusque halls of Stonecourt. Perhaps on a ship it was more important that everything ran on time and together than anything on a planet, where there was the luxury of a whole support system.

"Oooht zhu lit ah our?" Wen asked. Sid could tell it was a question because of the slight raise to his eyebrows, and the way he looked in Sid's direction. He didn't seem to know how much Sid was struggling with the conversation. He desperately wished that Kino would take the reins, but she had less interest in talking than he did. Normally, it wouldn't be a problem, but there were too many people, and too many things happening at once.

Sid nodded to answer the question, hoping that was enough. It apparently was. Captain Wen looked out into the room and waved over one of the many uniformed people who were bustling about. He was a young man, perhaps a few years older than Sid, and he carried a tablet on which he was marking down various inscrutable things about the proceedings. He was handsome, in an uptight sort of way. Sid could see it in the way that his neck seemed to have a knot in it. He looked like a particularly ungainly bird. The name sewn onto the lapel of his uniform read "Lt. Cesper".

"This is lootanan sesber," Captain Wen said. "E will kif zhu ah our. I neet oh steb oud, eksos me." The captain stood from the chair he had only gotten to inhabit for a moment, nodded to everyone, and slipped out of the room.

"Pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant Cesper," Sid said, reaching out to shake his hand.

The Lieutenant's hand was cold and sweaty, and he had to juggle his tablet awkwardly as they shook. Since he was so much closer than the seated captain had been, the lieutenant's words showed up larger on his glasses. Volume increased font size, to give Sid more of an indication of what was happening around him, and it spared Cesper's words getting lost in the shuffle of all the conversations on the bridge. Just so long as he stayed right next to him.

"Likewise, Apprentice Welslak," Cesper said. "Pleasure to meet you, Apprentice Mejia."

"Nice to meet you," Kino said.

Sid didn't know if it was too early to get into the 'you can just call me Sid' song and dance with this man. They were on the crowded bridge, so it probably would have been pushing the bounds of acceptable "apprentice to First Sandreas behavior". Perhaps if they ended up at some sort of officer's dinner together, Sid could dispense with the formalities. They almost certainly would be invited to participate in such things. There was no knowing how long exactly they would be aboard the Impulse. It was going to be a long trip to the station.

"If you'll follow me, I'll show you around the bridge," Cesper said. Sid stuck close by him, but Kino dragged behind. Both of them paid close attention to all of the stations that Cesper pointed out, and Sid even felt like he was able to ask a couple intelligent sounding questions to the people sitting at each of the stations. Maybe he was actually coming off as ignorant, but no one was impolite enough to tell him that, so he felt perfectly content to continue asking questions and learning the answers. Just so long as he stood quite close to everyone who was talking to him, and he angled his face so that the tiny microphone on his glasses had unimpeded access to their voice, then everything was completely fine. Even when it wasn't fine, smiling and nodding politely was usually enough to put most people off his track. Sid did his best to remember the growing litany of names and faces of people aboard this ship. Names were easy, at least, because everyone wore them emblazoned on their chests. Faces were more difficult, but he felt confident that by the end of the tour he would recognize more than half of the bridge crew who were on duty at this time.

There were probably uncountable numbers of officers hidden within the bowels of the ship. It was so huge, and there were so many people, it astounded him. He asked Cesper if he could see some sort of diagram of the whole ship, just to get a sense of the scale of it, and Cesper obliged, pulling the model up on his tablet. The ship had four rotating rings. One, he was told, was exclusively used to grow food to feed the crew. Cesper commented something that may have been intended to be funny about plowshares and an army being their own supply train, but Sid wasn't versed enough in the lingo of the ship to understand it.

Kino was particularly interested in comparing the Impulse to the other Fleet ships she had been on: the Telescope and the God's Engine. They were both different from the relatively sleek and quick Impulse. The Telescope was, more than anything, a transport ship, meant to run supplies and people back and forth from the front. The God's Engine was a ship that carried a landing force, capable of taking a planet from the ground. The Impulse aimed for superiority in the space around any planet. There weren't currently any warzones where space superiority was necessary, so the Impulse was free to be deployed for tasks around the Empire, which included the dealing with of the rogue station.

Sid couldn't tell what the feeling of the bridge crew was toward their mission. He tried to casually ask Cesper about the makeup of the crew, and found that the majority of them had just returned from an exploratory mission in far distant reaches of the galaxy. The Impulse could serve as a scout ship, because it could be trusted to get itself out of any trouble it found itself in. As Cesper related it, they were lucky that they ran into no problems and made several promising discoveries of potentially terraformable planets, but the crew were somewhat stir crazy after a year of exploration. This mission was the last thing a lot of the crew were going to do before they were debriefed and sent home.

Sid couldn't imagine being away from civilization for that long. Certainly he couldn't imagine being on a Fleet ship and being forced to keep its secrets after returning home. Even if this ship saw no combat, there were plenty of secrets to hide from the general public anyway. For example, it wasn't good to say exactly how many promising new planets had been found, because then people would start clambering all over each other in rampant speculation, trying to get their own colony proposal pushed through. It was best to deliver that kind of information slowly, in a nice drip feed. That was Sandreas's view on it, anyway, and for once, Sid wasn't compelled to argue.

"How do you feel about going home?" Sid asked Cesper, after their tour had concluded and they were standing around, watching the big screen for the moment of the jump.

"I might take a few months off, visit some family," Cesper said. "But my career in the Fleet is just beginning, so I'll be back."

"Isn't that true for most people aboard the ship?" Sid asked.

"Oh, no. Lots of people do their one tour and then go home. It's safer, and there's plenty of employment opportunities for people who did a tour. You need to learn a skill when you're with us."

"But not if you're an officer?"

"Officers learn leadership and organization. But if you're an officer, you're deciding that this will be your career," Cesper explained.

"How did you become one?" Sid asked. "Sorry if this is a personal question."

"It's not. I went to the officer's training school on Emerri after I finished my degree."

"What was your degree in?" Sid asked, curious. That was one thing that being an Academy graduate made somewhat strange. Everyone else's schooling didn't quite line up with his. Though he had a focus while in the Academy, and it was probably equivalent to a degree, the expectation off going into an apprenticeship was completely different.

"Mathematics," Cesper said.

"And why did you choose to go to officer training once you were done?" They were both looking out over the action of the bridge. Kino was off investigating things still, probably making everyone whose shoulder she hovered over nervous. Everyone else was ignoring Sid and Cesper, focused on the minute countdown that would signal the jump of the ship.

"I decided I liked strategy more than I liked pure math," Cesper said.

The countdown ended and the ship jumped away from Emerri station, leaving behind the glow of the planet and the brilliance of the star, replacing all of that with black space. It took a moment for the cameras outside the ship that were displaying on the big screen to adjust to the new lighting conditions, and stars slowly faded in against the black backdrop, like dewdrops on a newly sprouting field.

"Do you like being on a ship?" Sid asked. "Sorry if this is too personal." He kept repeating himself out of awkwardness, but Cesper didn't comment on it.

"I like it well enough. I'm hopeful that my next posting will be on the ground, though."

"You don't get to pick?"

"Hah, no. I serve at the pleasure of the Empire," Cesper said. His words scrolled across Sid's glasses at a steady pace. Sid wasn't sure if he was speaking slowly and deliberately for Sid's benefit, or if that was just the way he spoke. "At the end of the tour, we will all put in our letters of intent. So people will declare if they're leaving the Fleet or if they're staying, and that's the time to request any change in posting. Everyone's commanding officer will also write an assessment of how you performed, and that will be used to decide promotions and future postings."

"Makes sense," Sid said. The world of the Fleet was entirely foreign to him. "Do you know where Captain Wen went?"

"He probably had business to attend to," Cesper said. He couldn't have said anything more enigmatic. Maybe he was being self absorbed, but it seemed to him that having important guests aboard and jumping the ship would be cause for the captain to stay on the bridge, but maybe there were more important things for him to be doing.

"Do you think he wants us to stay here until he gets back?" Sid asked.

"Oh, certainly not," Cesper said. "Unless you had some sort of meeting planned?"

"No, I think we're going to meet to discuss the whole thing formally tomorrow."

"Ah. I'm sure he'll have you for dinner in his stateroom before then." Cesper looked down at his tablet to check the time. "That won't be for a few hours yet, though."

Dinner. That would be a nice thing to have.

"Is there anywhere I can get a bite to eat before then? Unfortunately, I missed lunch on the elevator ride." It had been less of a miss and more of a pass on lunch on the elevator. The constant, slow shifting of gravity made him nauseous. It wasn't like the abrupt transitions between weight and weightlessness on a ship; those were fine. It was the feeling that, ever so slowly, his own body was getting lighter and stretching toward the sky. It was distinctly uncomfortable. He would have hated the elevator completely if it wasn't for the ease of travel it provided, and the view of Emerri (or any other planet) slowly receding beneath him. That was always spectacular.

"Of course. Do you want me to show you to the officer's mess?"

"Yes, thank you," Sid said with genuine gratitude and a bright smile. He turned toward Kino, who was off on the other side of the bridge, still lurking over someone's instruments. He reached out in the power to get her attention, a difficult task when she was so invisible. Trying to prod her with the power was like trying to balance a drop of water on a duck's feather. He got her attention, though, and she trotted over, almost crashing into one of the many people walking around the bridge.

"Do you want to go to the officer's mess?" Sid asked. "I'm going to get lunch."

Kino shook her head. "I’ll stay," she signed shakily. Sid grinned at her, his face feeling stretched from the width of his smile. She had been practicing, and he appreciated it. Cesper watched the exchange curiously, but didn't comment on it. Did he know any sign? Sid would think that anyone in the Fleet would need to know at least the very basics to get suit certified, but maybe not everyone got suit certified? There were certainly enough people aboard a ship that they could train a few specialists on doing EVA tasks, rather than having a whole crew of generalists as on Guild ships.

"Great. Contact me if anything comes up, okay?"

"Will do," Kino signed.

Sid turned and followed Cesper out of the bridge. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Kino return to her snooping. He wondered what she found so interesting about the instrument displays. She had never shown that much interest in mechanical things before.

It was an immediate relief to escape the noise of the bridge. While Sid couldn't hear it, the constant flashing of different conversations across his glasses was giving him a headache. Every time he needed to "listen" to someone, he had to focus his eyes on the close glass, and pick out the thread of what was going on. If there was too much going on at once, it was likely to give him a headache more than any real understanding of the conversation. He wondered what it felt like to people who could hear. He didn't know if that would be better or worse. Cesper seemed to relax slightly once they were off the bridge, so perhaps he disliked the noise as much as Sid did.

It was a long walk to the Officer's mess, and the hallways of the Impulse, though well labeled, were all the same. Sid had no idea of how long they had been walking along the slightly curved hallways. For the most part, people ignored them as they walked by. It was the captain who had demanded respect earlier, not the visitors to the ship. There were so many people passing by in either direction that it wasn't feasible for people to stop and give even the shortened salute, just a hand clasped to the chest, to anyone they passed on the way.

Cesper stopped in front of a room labeled the Junior Officers Mess. Sid came up short, almost running into him.

"Wait, sorry, Lieutenant Cesper, were you allowed to leave the bridge? I should have asked before if you're supposed to be here during your shift."

Cesper laughed. "Oh, I should have explained it earlier. Captain Wen has me marked down as your liaison while you're aboard. I can go wherever you need me to go."

"Kino's too?"

"For both you and Apprentice Mejia, yes."

"Excellent," Sid said. "Is this it?"

"Yes. Though, sorry, I'm sure the Senior Officers Mess is much nicer, but even with you I don't believe I have access to it." Cesper slid the door open and let Sid pass by him. Their arms brushed as Sid entered the room. Sid's face twitched in a tiny smile.

The room was mostly empty. There was a buffet style serving area, and round tables with chairs. The whole place was brightly lit and clean, but rather severe. Sid took some food. Everything available was vegetarian, so Sid scooped up some tomato soup and slices of bread. The necessity of growing all their own food on the ship probably made meat a limited resource, even if it did come in vats. Those vats took up a lot of energy, space, and material input. If, most of the time, all the crew could get their nutrition from vegetables, it probably was more efficient in the long run. Guild ships, with their abundance of space and relatively little crew, could afford a more balanced diet. At least, that was what he assumed, since he had plenty of meat while aboard other ships.

Cesper nodded to the other group of people who were sitting at one of the tables, but since they looked like they were getting ready to leave, didn't sit down with them. Anyone here was having a late lunch, early dinner, or some unquantifiable other meal. Time aboard a ship stretched and strained with the changing shifts, but the dining areas emptied and filled in predictable ways as shifts began and ended. Cesper had only grabbed a few pieces of fruit: an apple and an orange. It surprised Sid that the Impulse had fruit trees in the greenhouses, since they didn't have larger meat vats.

Sid ate his soup without talking for a few minutes, half watching Cesper peel the orange. He had long fingers, and he peeled it so that it came off in one piece.

"I like to imagine I'm inventing new map projections," Cesper said as he flattened the orange peel onto his tray. It tore on the edges. It wasn't like any map projection Sid had ever seen, but he was willing to go along with it.

"What planet is it?" Sid asked.

Cesper pulled a pen out of his pocket. Sid watched, fascinated, as Cesper sketched out lines on the stretched out orange peel. They didn't look like anything, but then Cesper picked up the peel, and shaped it delicately back into a hollow sphere. Miraculously, the lines formed the familiar shapes of the continents and oceans on Emerri.

"Wow, nice," Sid said, genuinely impressed.

"I have a good brain for figures," Cesper said. "It makes a neat party trick, anyway." He dropped the peel back onto his tray and started eating the orange. Sid could smell it.

"Do you go to many parties?"

"Not in particular," Cesper said. "You?"

Sid laughed. "I don't tend to get much out of them."

"That makes two of us, then."

"Do you have a first name, Lieutenant Cesper?"

"Ervantes," Cesper said. "But everyone calls me Ervan."

Seeing the name come up on his glasses, Sid could only guess at its pronunciation. "Air-van-tess?"

Cesper stared at him, nonplussed. "Ervantes." He pronounced it again, slowly. "Her, Vaughn, Tees." Sid got the pronunciation then, as it flashed across his eyes as separate words. There was a standard lexicon of names built in to the dictionary of his glasses, but Sid never encountered most of those names, and when one had a non obvious pronunciation, he was easily lost.

"Sorry," Sid said. "I'm not trying to make fun of you or anything. I'm deaf."

"What?" Cesper asked.

"Deaf. I can't hear you," Sid explained, as patiently as he could, though probably some of his irritation came through on his face. "Didn't you get some sort of information packet about me?"

"No, just your name and your mission," Cesper said. "I didn't really know what to expect of you."

"I guess you have been completely out of range of all communications for basically an entire year," Sid said. "I'll forgive you for not watching all of Imperial politics closely. I'm Sid, by the way. If we're going to be working together, you might as well call me that rather than my mouthful of a last name."

"It's only two syllables," Cesper said. "Not that much of a mouthful."

"Whatever plows your field." Sid resumed eating his soup.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"You just did, but sure."

"What's it like, working with First Sandreas?" Cesper leaned forward.

"Why, you think you're going to work with him someday?"

It was the wrong thing to say. Cesper's face turned beet red and he looked down at his fruit. "No, I'm just curious," he said.

"Sorry, I didn't mean anything by that. I let my mouth get away from me sometimes."

"It's okay," Cesper said, picking at his orange peel with one of his long fingers. "I'm at the beginning of my career, I don't have any long term plans." That was clearly a lie, but Sid let Cesper continue without interrupting him. "I just can't help be curious about the leader of the entire Empire. He leads the Fleet, in an indirect way. It's worth it for me to be informed about him." He was rambling.

"I don't know. He's… He can be hard to work with, but he's a good leader," Sid said diplomatically. "He has this magnetic personality. Everyone's eyes are on him all the time."

"Not just because he's always the highest ranking person in the room?"

"That's part of it, but, I don't know. He just draws people to him. I thought at first I wouldn't like him, but he just…" Sid shrugged helplessly. "He can be scary when he wants to be, and he can be friendly and funny when he wants to be. Underneath all that, I think he's caring, but calculating."

"You've just described exactly the way he comes across on every broadcast I've ever watched. It barely sounds like you know him at all."

"Maybe he's just a really genuine person, and the same in public and in private," Sid said. That definitely wasn't true, and he knew it wasn't true, but he didn't feel particularly inclined to start divulging the intricacies of Sandreas's personal life to this man he had just met.

"Really, there's nothing you can say that would give me a different view of the man than just watching old broadcasts?"

"I'm not going to talk shit about my boss," Sid said. "That would be incredibly stupid of me."

"I won't tell," Cesper said.

"Oh, I'm sure you think that, but the urge to gossip is always strong."

"So there is gossip." Cesper grinned. "How juicy."

"There's gossip about anyone," Sid said. "My precious mother has gossip about her, I'm sure, and she never even leaves her house." That wasn't strictly true. His whole family went into town about once a week to grocery shop and attend worship.

"Well that's just inviting gossip right there," Cesper said. "There's nothing more alluring than a shut-in."

"First Sandreas is not a shut-in, so then you shouldn't need to gossip about him."

"Celebrities are second to shut-ins on the gossip scale," Cesper said.

"First Sandreas isn't a celebrity, he's a politician."

"Politicians are celebrities. In any event, people are interested in the details of their lives. People always want to know what's hiding behind a facade. Be that the house of a shut-in, or the cultivated image of a celebrity."

"First Sandreas is extremely concerned about his public image, so I don't think he'd ever let anything slip through that he didn't want to," Sid said.

"That's why I'm asking you. Maybe you'll let something slip through."

"Doubt it. Besides, I really don't think it's that fascinating. Wait." Sid paused for a moment, thinking. "Is there gossip about me?"

"Probably. I've been away from civilization for a year, so I wouldn't know. Too bad we can't look it up over the ansible right now."

"I don't think I'd want to know." The more Sid thought about it, the more he was sure that there was gossip about him. Of course there was the whole thing with the pirates, but Cesper was right: people did love to talk about celebrities. A sick thought came over him as he considered what the whole arc of his apprenticeship would look like to an outside observer. Most of the gossip would probably be about Yan. Cesper probably didn't even know Yan existed. Sid didn't know if that was a relief or an additional burden.

"Do you get along with Apprentice Mejia?" Cesper asked, unintentionally bringing up the subject through the absence of Yan's name.

"We didn't used to, but we've been working together a lot more recently. We've gotten better together, I guess."

"What made you two not like each other originally?"

"I tend to take an initial impression of a person and then hold them to it. It's a flaw of mine."

"And what was the initial impression that you didn't like?"

"Boy, you sure do love the personal questions," Sid said dryly, dipping his bread in his soup. "I don't know. She didn't know sign, so that was an automatic downgrade, and she's quiet where I'm argumentative, and her twitchiness annoyed me, and… We're just different people."

"What's your initial impression of me, if you don't mind me asking?"

"You're cute," Sid said immediately, without thinking. Foot, meet mouth. His face heated up a little, but he plowed on. "You're nosy and a little awkward, but friendly." He stirred the remainder of his soup.

Cesper didn't seem to mind his awkward comment. In fact, there was a hint of a smile on his face. "I'm glad I didn't make a bad first impression."