The medical bay is actually somewhat crowded with things, but is otherwise still that cold clinical nightmare that I am far too used by now. My music player is back to normal though. This genre is new to me; I wonder how much is in here that I am unaware of? A terabyte of music isn’t that much really. I wonder what Texas Red actually did? I welcome the distraction regardless. I am happy that things are a bit normalized for me. It does not take long before two massive cyborgs came in and waited patiently near me. Their uniforms identify them as Privates Davis and Rodriguez; I hope I am not putting forward a bad appearance by being here as soon as I got on the ship. I am sure my nakedness, yuck, and the equipment stuck on my are not helping the experience for any of us.

I just sit here quietly and wait. The two privates do as well initially, but Rodriguez cannot help but look at my body from time to time. I send a message to Sergeant Jacobs about it and hope that he can give me advice. After a few minutes I am starting to feel uncomfortable and have no clue what to do; I guess it is time to take a chance and act all in charge. “Private, what are you doing?”

Private Rodriguez immediately snaps to attention. “Sorry Sergeant! I have never seen a body like yours.” He is a bit loud responding. Habit I presume.

“Quiet down Private before you bring some angry medic on our heads.” He starts an apology but I cut it off with a small gesture. “None of us want to be here but let’s not make this any worse than it needs to be.” I adjust myself slightly trying to disguise my discomfort at being observed with a need to lay down differently. “This body is a government test-type. I worked for the corps and got out by volunteering to be a test pilot for this. The gilding and and other decorative embellishments are new. I suppose they want their new piece of hardware to be as striking as possible. All that matters to me if that I do my job and don’t die at the hands of some manufacturing error. Got it Privates?” They respond with a chorus of “Yes, Sergeant,” but quietly. “Good. Why don’t you tell me about yourselves. If we are going to work together we should get to know each other.

We spend the next few hours getting to know each other, Sergeant Jacobs does get back to me in that time, so I end up juggling two conversations with three different people; I am actually vaguely surprised at how well I do it. Rodriguez comes from a poor family but the thought of brotherhood drew him to the Marines; supposedly his scores were good enough to get could of the juicier enlisted positions in the Navy but he had his heart set and worked heard to join the shock troopers. Davis was the opposite in many ways; he is from wealthy family with his whole life ahead of him just chock full of opportunities, but he hated the fact that his parents had everything planned out for him, all those opportunities wasted. One day he snuck out his house and enlisted. Once his parents found out they set about trying to muck with this too through government connections but once he qualified for shock trooper they apparently wrote him off but he could not be happier. He says he finally as a family that supports him and works with him so really he’s doing better than he ever did at him. It seems odd to me at first the idea that freedom could be found somewhere like here but didn’t that one guy with the arms and wings mention freedom? I almost wonder if they are connected, but I am first wanting to know why the heck they keep showing me an ocean.

As for the conversation with Sergeant Jacobs he is offering me advice on how to engage with my troops while maintaining my air of leadership in between friendly tidbits as well as a reminder not to punch the corpsman. I am not sure if that is a joke or a warning; his deadpan via text is simply amazing. I fire off a half-hearted jab in response so I’m not so much on the losing end of a battle of wits. His only response is an exasperated face; I need, need, I cannot emphasize the need enough, to learn as much I can about Frank. I am not going to lose this battle of wits. I do have an ulterior motive; I secretly hope I can eventually trust him enough to tell him about these weird dreams, if that is what they are. The fact no one finds any record of them ever makes me wonder what exactly is going on here.

I keep an eye on the Privates as they talk to each other quietly. Not interjecting means I can keep and a close eye on them while still talking to them. As they move subtly, we don’t need to but habit means if we tend to mill about ever so slightly if we don’t need to hold still, I begin to notice little patterns. Private Rodriquez likes to shift his weight onto his left foot slightly, then balance it out, then back to his left; he never puts all of his weight on his right leg. Private Davis in turn keeps his legs just beyond shoulder width apart and bends his knees very gently over and over again, straightening them out slightly in between; I doubt he lowers more than a millimeter, maybe two, each pass. I share my observations with Sergeant Jacobs and he confirms what I am seeing but warns me that identifiers like that are useless in most situations; it is better for telling you what experiences they have had rather than helping you tell them apart normally. He does tell me that he will help me figure out why they do that as well as look for other patterns and also see if I can figure out those as well.

Eventually the Privates conversation turns to an old topic among mariners of any strip: fearsome creatures that dwell within the unknown dark. Private Davis swear he knows a guy who say a real school of dugong, beautiful women who fly through the interstellar medium and will sing despite the void, but you can only hear the song if you catch their gaze. Private Rodriguez counters that those are nothing compared to dhampir, ghosts of forgotten sailors lost in shipwrecks who float through the darkness and, if you stray too far from any star, will hunt down the vessel, phase through the hull, and devour the sailors inside, making them dhampir as well. Only a legendary bell tolling on their remembrance can put a dhampir to its final rest. I chuckle a bit as I have heard both these stories as well as people drunkly claim they knew someone who had run into these as well as other such creatures. They look at me, their bodies betraying their annoyance. “Privates these stories are older than me and I heard them all the time during corps work when some fool would get drunk.”

“The stories people only tell when sober, that is what you have to fear and I have heard two, the black ship and the white beast. The ship is said only to appear to those who a state of true despair and burning desire and even when they can see it clearly no one else can at all. Thing is, seeing it is a bad description; it can only really be detected by the stars it blots out and the feeling of absolute dread that comes with realizing you can have the one thing your heart desire above all. No restrictions, no tricks, just a single wish your heart makes. I only met one man who claimed to see that ship and he shook to even mention it but he said he was so afraid of what he might ask for he closed his eyes for a moment and the ship vanished forever.” The Privates seem mesmerized by the tale, as is normal with people new to long space voyages.

“Why would he be afraid of what he would wish for,” questions Private Rodriguez. “I mean, he could just ask for money, buy a lottery ticket, and boom right?”

“No,” I respond quietly. “You gain what you desire most even if that desire is blind to you. That is what he said. He knew he would gain something but simply did not know what and turned away.”

“That seems odd,” continues Rodriguez. “How could you not know what you want?”

“No clue, Private. I was not the one who saw the ship.” I tried to add a note of finality to my voice so I could continue on with my other story.

“Now, as for the tale of the white beast. Supposedly it is a massive creature of terrifying power. I met two men who said they were on a ship that was destroyed in a matter of moments by it. No good descriptions either. One was on the bridge and the other was working nearby, supposedly they were the only ones who got to an escape pod. The guy on the bridge said there was no warning; it literally breached out of FTL, twice as big as their vessel easily, he said his was five hundred thousand tons, and rammed them, ripping the ship in half like it was paper. It swung back a few times and continued to batter their vessel relentlessly as they fought to escape, ensuring that no one had a chance of fleeing to safety. The sound was awful too, once they were close enough to hear it, like a hundred voices snarling in terrible rage while at the same time roaring like the biggest rocket engine. They don’t know why they were lucky enough to get to a pod, but once they were away from the dying vessel they said they looked as the best caught sight of its terrible red eyes, hundreds of them, seething with hatred. Then it vanished into speed as quickly as it came, taking its fury with it. It took days before a ship rescued them, they were on a moderately used shipping lane, and they tried to swear of space forever, but could never find jobs elsewhere. Apparently it spooked them so badly they kept off the bottle for the rest of their lives though, or at least as long as it took me to meet them.” The story was true and I admit that one scared me whenever I went anywhere. It was tempting to buy some kitschy good luck charm off a peddler on exceptionally long voyages as a desperate attempt to ward off disaster.

Davis snorts, “that is obviously not real. Ships don’t just die suddenly and no one knows how. I’ve heard of sailors going missing, ships going missing, but not a pile of debris being found with no one knowing where it comes from.”

I point at the Private as best I can without disturbing some censor. “I thought the same until my corp, a shipping company as you probably have guessed, lost a super-carrier. Those things are over ten million tonnage and so large with extra systems that it is often piloted outside a solar system and uses smaller on board ships to ferry goods. So I my ship was sent to help hunt it down along its intended path. It was a little used route since it is a lot slower, but is fairly safe and good for particularly massive ships. We found it, in the deep, smashed to pieces. Over the months it took us to salvage and catalog everything I was told it was discovered very little was missing and literally none of that was important. It was like someone got angry, smashed the ship to pieces, and left. I have idea what actually happened since the corp took the black box but I do know they never named another vessel the Mary Celeste again.”

Davis seems a bit more nervous after hearing my personal account. “Is the naming thing important?”

I look a bit at both of them, “do you not know much about sailing? There are a lot of old traditions and beliefs that govern what you do and do not do so as to avoid a mysterious and terrible fate.” Davis confirmed that he had hopped around before, but it was only on small ships. This was going to be his first major voyage and his first major action. Rodriguez had been in the Titan War, so he has been on ships like these but always kept to himself so did not learn much beyond what he overheard older marines talking about. “Well, if we have time I can fill you in on details, but a big thing is to make sure your ship has a good name and to never impugn or swear upon it. If you upset the spirit that guards your ship your are more likely to suffer disaster.” It is actually nice that my background provides some use beyond making me incompetent at being a Sergeant. They don’t seem overeager to learn more about sailing superstitions though. “I can tell you more once we are underway.”

They spend a bit being quiet, probably nervous, while I discuss the conversation with Sergeant Jacobs. I was so focused on the stories I forgot to tell him what was going on and he seemed to get worried when I went quiet for a bit. I countered that he had gone quiet for longer but I had no defense against his “I am working and you are on a bed in the infirmary” assault. He is bemused by my telling of old mariner’s tales, but wants me to make sure I don’t scare the daylights out of my marines before we set out for a voyage by filling their heads with stories of the fantastical. I cannot help but notice that Private Rodriguez is barely moving while he digests the story, but Private Davis seems to be bending more aggressively and even hunching his back ever so slightly. Sergeant Jacobs promises he will fill me in but that is a conversation for a more private setting.

We chat more generally for a bit as Davis and Rodriguez start talking again about more general and less spooky topics. All of our conversations are ultimately interrupted by the doctor coming over, another piece of meat-folk. I am not sure why they are so opposed to having cyborg doctors around. “So I was reviewing the heart reports and what data we could from before the accident. It seems as though the initial guess was correct; your unique sensor net accidentally was set to one hundred percent and overloaded due to a slight programming error caused by the download protocol and the sensor protocol interacting. You are doing well for now so I will release you after a few more hours of observation, provided nothing else occurs, with orders not to go anywheres near those nodes until a patch comes out to prevent the interaction.” His voice is smooth and practiced without being cold; I like this doctor a lot more than a bunch of the recent ones I encountered.

I give the good news to Sergeant Jacobs and he says that he is glad to hear it and will help me when I get back to bunk tonight. The time passes quietly with conversations being had amongst the four, well three and two really, of us. We all keep to pretty benign topics, aside from the gossip about superiors officers that Sergeant Jacobs assures me happens and will happen about us too. I am released as was stated and manage to get back to bunk around 0943, so there is little time to talk before I need to power sleep for tomorrow. Frank is already under the covers and is just waiting for me before he goes asleep. It is a bit of an misadventure getting me ready for bed but in the end I manage to get to sleep at 1000 on the dot, perfect for a solid four hours.