Chapter Perspective: Waverly

“You went to the Zero-G Shipyard!?” I asked, the synthetic burger frozen in place as I stared at Doc.

There wasn’t a rule or anything that said we had to eat lunch without bridge crew, yet as we all started to pour into the Mess Hall after our first round of specialty classes, we all seemed to find ourselves settling around a single oversized round table. Some of the older crews seemed to be more interspersed within each other, but it was easy to see the MEGALODON and DRAKE crews finding their ways to their own tables as well.

“Only from a distance. The guy that was assigned as my mentor only let me float on the outer barrier for a bit before he said we had to keep moving, but I saw one ship that had to be close to finished,” Doc replied shoveling a few fries into his mouth before adding, “I’m surprised they didn’t take you down their though Spacefly, like, ain’t that the whole point of engineering is to see all that stuff?”

“Commander Lochan only gave us a rundown of the work structure down there, apparently before we can get our hands on the actual ships for training, we have to go through like, weeks of prep and paperwork for liability stuff,” I sighed and took a bite.

Ty let out a small bark of a laugh as she arrived at the table, having clearly heard our exchange, “You too? My Lieutenant basically danced around the most basic of the basic stuff. I thought we were past all that,” she complained taking the seat next to me.

“The basics are important,” Curtis said. He had his own plate of food, but he had so far left it untouched as he continued to write in a small notebook, he had had opened from the moment I had arrived at the table. “Had we focused on the basics we might not have flubbed things up so badly yesterday,” he added as if to explain his statement.

“Rough first class Captain?” I asked curiously and he nodded.

“Not so much a class as it was a one on one with Commander Allen as he pointed out the myriad of things I could have done differently,” He said biting at the back of his pen.

“You don’t have like, a Captain’s class?” Vicky asked as she reached for a bottle of barbecue sauce she had brought to the table.

Curtis shook his head, “Nope. Just one on ones with the Commander. Not sure if that will change in the future semesters but according to the Commander that hour is better suited letting me pick his brain and go over different simulated environments.”

“Órale, that sounds tedious as all hell Cap,” Doc said through another mouthful of food.

“Swallow your food Doc, we don’t need you choking,” Curtis said without looking up, his pen back to scribbling rapidly. Finally after another minute passed, he slammed the notebook shut and let out a sigh, “Sorry, I’m gonna go eat out in the quad here guys. The Commander got in my head, and I need a little fresh air. I’ll see you guys at Afternoon Team-Building.”

Without another word, he stood up with his tray of food and wandered off, sliding the tray into a disposal without ever even having touched it. The rest of us were exchanging looks up until he was out the doors when Doc finally let out a nervous laugh.

“Uh, who wants to tell him the air in here is the same as the air out there?” He asked though the look Vicky shot him stopped him from laughing fully.

“We don’t know what he’s going through right now, maybe the Commander left him with a ton of work and he just is fixating on it,” she offered though Sullivan just shook his head as he tried to finish the mouthful of what must have been chicken that he had been eating.

“I overheard the Commander like, really going in on him. Not like yelling or anything but it was uncomfortable to say the least,” Sullivan finally said as he rubbed the back of his dark head of red hair. “I don’t think I was supposed to, but I had to drop off some materials in my lab after my class got dismissed early,” he explained awkwardly.

“Grounds, really?” Vicky asked, her eyes darting from the door back to our scientist. “What about?”

“Me,” Sullivan replied as his shoulders dropped and I felt the urge to reach out a hand in comfort but stopped myself. We weren’t familiar enough yet for something like that, were we? “Even though our failure was my fault, the Captain gave it the go ahead without ever hearing anything about my plan. The Commander did say that Captain was going to see even harsher scoring than the rest of us for that reason, I just didn’t realize it was going to also come with the berating he got.”

“That comes with the job Killian,” I said, finally shaking off my own doubt and resting my hand on his shoulder with a smile that he tried his best to return. “He’s the Captain, any failure is just going to come with a dressing down, right Vicky?” I asked and she nodded.

“It’s why I never wanted to be the one completely in charge to be honest, at least as the Second I have at least a layer of protection from the top of the line, though I guess Curtis is within his rights to take it out on me for not following up better with Sullivan myself,” she explained.

“So we all got some shit to work on, otherwise we are just gonna keep mucking things up and failing when we do our future trials,” Ty said as she looked down to the plate of food that must have cooled somewhat at this point.

The mood around the table had dropped a bit at that and I found my hand dropping from Sullivan’s shoulder as I looked back to my own half eaten food now, my own appetite disappearing.

“Guys, you’re missing the point. He left because he didn’t want us to go down this path of doubt and blame over something that already happened. I don’t think he knew that Sullivan overheard it so we need to let him internalize it for now,” Novarod said, somehow the only one who hadn’t let the drop in the mood affect him. “I’ve crashed a lot of simulated ships and have gotten yelled at by my teachers for years for the dumb moves I’ve made, it sure as hell doesn’t help when the others I was teamed up with piled on,” he explained as we all looked at him with a bit of confusion.

“That’s surprisingly… insightful Novarod… Why did I think you were just a nervous mess?” Vicky asked looking over at him with a brow raised and he just shrugged.

“Because I generally am a nervous mess? I don’t know, my class went pretty well, I just got to have another hour of sim time and I always feel a bit more confident after a good flight session,” he explained.

“Sounds like we need to make sure you get a lot of sim time then,” I said with a laugh, causing the others around the table to join in.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself hombre,” Doc said shoving Novarod almost out of his chair, “You just let your nerves be worn on your sleeve these first few days while the rest of us internalized the hell out of them.”

The change in topic seemed to work, though I noticed Vicky looking toward the door every so often as we continued to eat and as soon as her tray was empty, she pushed away from the table and rose to her feet.

“I’m gonna go see how he’s doing,” she said and looked to an analog watch that she had on her wrist, “We got about a half hour till the Team-Building class, don’t be late or I’m going to make sure we run extra PT before Dinner Mess, got it?”

“Got it Second,” we all seemed to say, though it was staggered instead of a cohesive chorus. With that she nodded and was off.

“Okay, now that the bosses are gone, let’s make an agreement here,” I said, trying to slightly take charge of the table for just a minute. “We are all gonna make mistakes, right?” I asked and the other four nodded their heads, “We are a team, we can’t play this blame game whenever we fail because like Novarod said it’s just going to make us stew in shit.”

“Not quite exactly what I said but I’m not going to say you’re wrong either,” Novarod replied as he leaned back from his own tray.

“What’s your point then Sera?” Sullivan asked, his green eyes catching and holding mine.

“My point is that we are only as strong as our weakest bolt, whenever one of us makes a mistake, the other four can’t be afraid to call us out on it so those two don’t have to,” I explained, “My job is going to be to make sure that the Neutrino is the strongest, most effective ship in the fleet, and that starts with us on the bridge. So let’s grab the strongest wrench we can find and make sure every one of us is as tight as possible so that those two can do their jobs, because at the end of the day, their job is to make sure we do ours. Got it?”