Character Perspective: Novarod

“The Simulator was like, absolutely ridiculous, ten times as awesome as any VR setup on the Groundside and even more impressive than the pilot sims I did during my ground school. Like, it was basically like we were on an actual ship,” I explained. On my display was a girl with her hair pulled up into matching buns on either side of her head that made her look almost like a mouse.

Raven had been one of my closest friends for my entire life. We grew up in the same apartment complex and went to school together right up until I signed up for the private academies that would eventually lead me to Star Launch. Even when she received her rejection letter and I got accepted, she never once seemed bitter, instead seeming to choose to live vicariously through me. Luckily even though it was Midnight for us up here, it was only dinner time for her, and she answered my Vid Call on the first ring.

“I am so friggin jealous C, like, beyond jealous,” she exclaimed, lifting what looked like a piece of sushi up and into her mouth. “Don’t get me wrong, I never doubted you would get up there but it’s still ridiculously surreal that you are up there right now,” she said after she quickly swallowed the bite.

“I’m literally up here Raven and I still can’t believe it,” I said stretching back and running a hand through my hair. "So yeah, just a little friggin surreal."

“Touché,” she said through another bite. “So other than the simulator, what else you guys got going on up there? Anything fun you can share?” She probed.

“Not that I can share, confidential stuff and all that, you know how it goes,” I said trying to seem casual as I brushed it off, even if I was bursting from the inside with the secret the upper command had dumped on us. But if we hadn't known and we had been in classes specifically to come up here, then the common people sure as hell didn't need to know either, regardless of how close friends they were to us. “We haven’t gotten into the normal classes or anything yet, I think we are supposed to start those tomorrow. Honestly, we got our asses handed to us in our calibration trial, so I can only imagine we are going to be going pretty hard on the training stuff for a while.”

“Sheesh, and here I thought Orientation week here was crazy, though I hear Rush Week for Delta Sigma is going to be nuts too… in its own way at the very least,” she said with a shrug.

“Grounds, you are gonna rush?” I asked curiously.

“Grounds? Is that some sort of Space Station curse word?” Raven asked, actually covering her mouth this time through the next bite of sushi and an awkward laugh.

“Honestly I have no idea, a couple of the girls on my bridge crew have been using it the last few days all the time and I think it wormed its way into my head,” I laughed. “Heck, had you not pointed it out I might not have even realized I said it… Crazy how quick something like that gets stuck in your head.”

“The curse or the girls?” She shot back with a raised brow and a wry grin.

“The curse,” I said dryly and made a show of rolling my eyes and crossing my arms over my chest. “I gotta work with these people for who knows how long, I sure as hell am not gonna crap where I eat.”

“Smart Play C,” She said, leaning back into her chair as the grin turned into what I could only describe as a pleased looking smile. “So what’s the food like up there? They got any of our favorites?”

“Only had a couple of meals so far in the mess hall. It’s kinda like a cafeteria almost with a few different options you can go to but it’s still pretty limited. I think they have some sort of grow room in the lower levels of the station for fruits and veggies, not to mention some sort of animal nursery, but I haven’t been down into that area yet,” I said, happy to quickly change the subject. “And I know it sounds dumb but that sushi you got there has me super jealous. It hasn’t even been a week and I would love a tuna roll…”

“I’d offer to ship it to you, but I’d imagine the rates would be, dare I say it, astronomical?” Raven was barely even able to get the joke out before she started giggling.

I wanted to let out a sigh and at least pretend to be annoyed by the joke but I found myself laughing before I could stop it from coming and returned with, “I guess you could say the sky is no longer the limit either.”

We traded puns for a little while but soon after I heard a door click open and a girl I didn’t recognize passed by her camera and drew Raven’s attention away from the screen as I saw the mute indicator light up. Her dormmate had apparently returned and wanted to go out to some campus party that others planning to rush a sorority were planning on going to so Raven had to go and start getting dressed for the evening.

As I sat back in my chair, silence starting to take over the room, I found my eyes drifting up to the digital clock that was embedded in the wall above the door to my room. It was just past the point where it was closer to one than it was to midnight, and I knew that I had an early morning, yet I felt my body buzzing but I also wasn’t sure if the campus had a curfew for the main area. I’d have to find some time to ask Commander Allen about that.

Instead of stumbling around, possibly waking up the others, or worse, running into them and having to talk at this hour, I opened my After Action Report again and decided to rescan it.

Overall, I hadn’t actually gotten scored too terribly, an “A” rating for piloting with a note specifically included for my dog fighting run as “particularly impressive”, though what that could mean I just didn’t understand. We still “died”, though that was more the power loss than my piloting, so it was hard for me to want to blame myself, even if that was my first instinct.

I don’t know, maybe I would have just liked to have an equally low score to go with the others as I had to assume there was an average that was taken from all of our scores, but it was also equally likely that my score had brought our overall score up… right?

Or maybe they just did have actual separated scores.

Gah, I wasn’t even sure why I reopened the AAR if it was just going to give me a headache. Instead, I shut the report back down and clicked my e-mail open. Sure, I had passed on how I was doing to Raven, but I was willing to bet my Mom was still worried sick and I had promised her I would send her a message after my first few days, so now was as good a time as any.