Character Perspective: Plum

“Grounds!” I exclaimed as we stepped through a pair of automatic doors and onto the large bridge.

The bridge looked like any number of old media depiction of spacecraft and was far roomier than anything ancient rockets could have ever even dreamed of. The room was easily the size of a small studio apartment, shaped in a long pointed triangle with monitors and various pieces of equipment dotting the walls everywhere my eyes fell on. Had I not been brought here in an elevator, I would have assumed I somehow just stepped onto the bridge of an actual spaceship.

Two large chairs were facing us, clearly on swivels and Curtis wasted no time moving up to the larger of the two on the right hand side and looking down to it. I looked to the others who had followed us in and gave them a nod, finding my composure as I remembered this wasn’t just some tour.

“Crew! To your stations now!” I yelled out and double timed my way to the chair next to Curtis. The crew was quick, each finding a chair positioned at a different set of screens, or in Novarod’s case, a cockpit like section at the point of the Bridge. “The bridge is yours Captain,” I said once I noted everyone standing by.

“Simulation is now in motion” A robotic voice echoed through the chamber and Curtis nodded curtly, taking his seat and swiveling the chair to face the simulated window.

“Bridge, take flight,” he commanded, and we all took our seats.

As I swiveled my chair around, a large touch screen star chart opened ahead of my seat, and I tapped a radio icon flashing in the bottom corner. Around a triangle that was marked with our hull name, a white circle pulsed outward, and I swore under my breathe, lucky that the pulse revealed nothing that might have picked up the accidental trigger.

“Captain, no ships are in out immediate vicinity, radio pulse is also showing no immediate debris in a five kilometer range,” I said. The problem with a radio pulse, is that if someone was nearby, they would have been alerted to our scan. For the time being, and given the large field we were in, an accidental click on our close range scanner.

“Get our bearings Plum, we need to know what the star system is and the possible orbital path of this planetary body. Novarod, let the ship drift and keep an eye on what our own orbital velocity is, we don’t need to be going against the current if the planet is ahead of us. Sullivan, I need you and Spacefly to try and reconfigure our radio signal, I want us to go undetected as long as possible, but we still need to be able to do invisible long range pulses,” Curtis was firing off the instructions as if he was already prepared.

To be fair, I had to assume as soon as the trial was announced he had begun planning, it was what the Captains did and why I was fine operating on the finer level, but the complete surety in which Curtis spoke already made me trust him.

“Doc, head to Weapons with Ty, wait for my orders but in the event that we are struck, Ty has command while you are in that room. Orders understood, Bridge?” Curtis asked and in a chorus we all called back.

“Understood, Captain!”

My fingers darted over the navigation screen as I tried to orient the map. The biggest problem with reading maps in space was that there was simply no “true north” so the best you could ever do was find the stars. But without knowing the distance the planet we were searching for was orbiting, it was frankly impossible to know unless we turned the ship in every direction and just looked for the sun out the window.

“Neutrino, activate solar reflectors on Bridge Window! Novarod, leave the engines off but start swiveling the ship, we need eyes on the star for this system so we can get proper scaling,” I commanded and Novarod held a thumb up over his head.

“Confirmed,” The robotic AI intercom around us answered and the front windows seemed to tint the already dark space outside of it.

“Did they not even include the sun on the preprogrammed star map? Are they treating this entire region like an uncharted star?” Curtis asked, his voice lowered to hold the conversation between us. “What’s your take on this Plum?”

“Vicky, please,” I replied almost automatically.

“Sorry, habits.”

“Understood, just don’t want to get stuck like Spacefly over there,” I said gesturing to Sera who was already underneath a set of controls that appeared to be radio equipment.

“I really don’t like that name!” She hollered back.

“We can talk about it later, we need to send those pulses out ASAP,” Curtis shot back to her.

“Five minutes Captain,” Sullivan called before Sera could raise any further objection. The scientist was grabbing a few additional tools that I neither recognized, nor knew exactly what they were for before he turned back to Sera and started speaking quickly under his breath.

“So Pl- er- Vicky, what’s your take?” Curtis asked again, his eyes still on the windows as we seemed to sweep past a vast blackness of space.

“It’s a calibration test,” I replied, “Obviously we wouldn’t have gotten here without knowing how to orient ourselves in space or adjust our comm network, but I think it’s the wrench that they are testing.”

“The wrench?” Curtis questioned and I just gave him a nod.

“The Parasitum. I don’t think it makes sense that they wouldn’t have told us about it before going into this test because it feels like knowing about them is the test, if that makes any sense,” I answered back, the barest bits of light starting to seep into the starboard side windows.

“Binary Star System, location is at 234X, -053Y, -140Z if the Neutrino is at Triple Zero,” Novarod called back, and I immediately began putting the coordinates into my navigation map. “Captain, we are drifting at roughly 54,000 meters per second counterclockwise through the system.”

“Higher than Terra orbit,” I muttered to myself as I tried to use this info to further expand our uncharted map. The controls were advanced, far more than any Navigation panel I had operated while groundside, but that didn’t make it difficult to control either and the fluidity they provided made working with it a literal breeze. A few quick taps displayed the suns and our projected orbital path around the binary system. “We need to figure out where the orbital body is before we make our next move,” I said without looking over.

“Novarod, follow drift path at thirty meters, we don’t want to get ahead of the planet too far if we are in front of it, but we need to be proactive and my gut says we are lagging behind,” Curtis commanded.

“Long Range Pulse Dampener has been activated and is operating at 100% range,” Sera called out as she emerged from the compartment she seemed to be halfway crawled into.

“Fire it up, send out pulses in forty-five second intervals with all reports being sent to my console,” I ordered looking over to Curtis.

Finding a rhythm with a Captain was something that was drilled into us in Second courses. Your job was never to step on their toes, never overrule their command, but to never let these rules stop you from inputting when you knew the right answer. Captains weren’t infallible, we were taught that extensively to keep from putting them up on a pedestal and waiting for them to fall.

“Forty-Five?” Curtis asked me with an eyebrow raised. “I think some would call that an odd choice,” he said.

“Are you a part of that some?” I mused instead of explaining myself and he let out a laugh.

“No. No I am not,” he said. “Most scanning signals open for discovery on thirty and sixty second intervals and hold open longer. It’s impossible not to be seen eventually even with dampeners but spacing it that way gives us enough time to hide from at least the first round when we hit other ships. Smart move Second.”

I nodded, unable to help myself from feeling pleased with my decision, though it was far from the moment to start celebrating. “How’s it looking Sera?” I called over to her.

“Pulses have begun, we are getting interference North-Starboard from a small object, possibly a ship about five thousand kilometers away?” Sera called over her shoulder.

“That might be one of the other ships, it would be risky to try and contact any of them at this point, right?” I looked to Curtis who seemed to be contemplating the same thing, a hand resting on his chin.

“Captain, if you’re open to a little experimentation this early on, I have an idea that might help,” Sullivan said, stepping away from the console Sera was still hunched over.

“Better to have it blow up during calibration than during a trial down the line,” Curtis murmured before giving the scientist a quick nod. “Let’s see what you got Sullivan, no sense beating around the bush.”