Character Perspective: Novarod

“Think you can do it?” Curtis asked.

“Should I be insulted by that question?” I asked, looking over the flight patterns that had been set in front of me. I pushed my lunch tray to the side as I spread the sheets out with a free hand.

“Should I take you not answering the question as a no?” He asked, a brow raised, and he tapped on the table impatiently.

“The answer is no, but not because I can’t do it,” I replied as I looked at the rather badly formed pattern. “I mean, no offense Captain but these are frankly amateur at best and are completely inefficient. Not to mention this turn you’d want me to make past the geo-synched satellite is practically begging to be detected, we’d be discovered before we even made it to upper orbit and I think that you really need to rethink this.”

“I’m not asking for a breakdown of my pattern Novarod, I’m asking if you can do it if that’s the flight path I ordered?“ he said in a tone that made me squirm in my seat slightly. The others were all off at other tables but after an hour in the simulator I liked to eat lunch alone, given that Curtis had just dropped his way in front of me, I was already taken by surprise enough that his intensity was uncomfortable.

“Yeah but-“

“Good,” he said standing back up and stretching as he looked over to the lines for the Italian option in our food hall and sighed, “I really gotta get here earlier. We got training in the arena in an hour, Commander Allen promised something different so make sure you get to Access early.”

Without another word of explanation, he turned and headed off for the line. I scratched my head in confusion and piled the papers back together and into my satchel, ever since the Commander had given Curtis our next trial, he had been acting a bit oddly. But I had just chalked it up to him wanting to actually pass this time around, which I could understand. What I couldn’t get was how close he was keeping his overall plan to himself.

Instead of laying it out when he gave us the rundown of the mission, our Captain had instead been giving us each only bits of information, with new things cropping up almost every other hour. I wasn’t exactly positive, but I could have sworn I had heard him asking Ty to have the Rail-Rifle recalibrated to use EMP shots before lunch yesterday, only to ask her to instead reoutfit the NEUTRINOS swivel seat to get move the rifle in favor of a bigger barrel that could prioritize hydrogen rounds.

The flight patterns were ridiculous though. I couldn’t quite understand why he would want us to knowingly use bad patterns? I had been looking at the star map that Commander Allen had given us for a few days now and I knew exactly the pattern I’d use, there was an obvious hole in the satellite coverage of the planet that could be hit but only if you timed the swing maneuver near perfectly. And I wasn’t the cockiest guy or anything, but I knew how to fly. It was the one thing I had always been good at.

“Mind if I sit here?” A short girl with a spattering of freckles across her face asked, gesturing to the bench on the other side with her tray.

“Oh, uh, sure,” I said, breaking out of the trance I had fallen into and nearly dropping the fork I had picked back up.

“Long day or just lost in thought?” She asked, quickly taking the seat and setting down what looked like a curry over rice dish. She took off her purple-trimmed jacket. “Kaylee McCormick, Second on the MEGALODON,” she said with a wide smile.

“Chester Novarod, Pilot for the NEUTRINO,” I replied.

“Oh I know who you are, our pilot has not shut up about your “perfect speed trial” that you apparently ran the other day,” she said taking a bite and covering her mouth in surprise as she reached for the glass of water she had brought with. “Damn that’s hot!”

I felt my cheeks heat up and dropped my eyes down, “Oh um, no that was nothing. Riley was only at minus fifteen and easily could have made it if he had just ran a swivel pattern and… what?” I stopped as McCormick raised a brow at me with an almost curious looking smile.

“No it’s nothin’ just, I honestly got no idea what your talkin’ about. I’m one of those folks that ain’t allowed behind the flight controls, botched the hell out of those entry exams and never got past the basics,” she replied. “But why so humble? My momma told me you pilots were always big braggy folk.”

“Your mom is in the fleet?” I asked.

“Yahup! I was actually born up here believe it or not, though I guess that’s not necessarily uncommon… still cool though,” she said with a shrug and taking another bite.

“And they didn’t name you something ultra-cliché like, Celeste or Aurora?” I asked as I finally scooped another bite of mac and cheese up.

McCormick let out an actual giggle and covered her mouth to stop any food from coming out. “That’s funny actually,” she said after she finally swallowed.

A cough interrupted us, and I looked over my shoulder to see Vicky looking down at the table. “Kaylee.” She said, her eyes narrowed.

“Plum.”

“Why am I not surprised to see you here?” Vicky asked as she set her tray down and McCormick in a near reverse motion picked up her own tray and standing up.

“It was nice talking Chester, maybe we can do it again some time when you’re not with the Chelsea lover,” McCormick said and before I could even process what was going on she was gone.

“Um… what?” I asked.

“Second Class, she asked me which football club I liked, and I said Chelsea… I don’t even watch football, I just picked the first name I could think of,” Vicky said with a shrug. “That was a fake laugh by the way. My guess is she was trying to pump you for information.”

“Pump me for information? About what? The crappy flight path Curtis gave me here?” I asked gesturing to my satchel. “Feel like if we leaked that information to the other teams, they’d think we were idiots… I mean, no offense but what the hell is he thinking?”

“I’d tell you if I could, the Captain told me he’d give me the full run down before the end of the week but that he wanted to “be absolutely sure” before that. I think he’s just going a bit overboard in trying to control the outcome this time around,” she replied again, biting into a barbeque sauce covered hot dog.

“Great,” I muttered.

“For what it’s worth he does seem like he has a plan,” Vicky’s gaze dropped to the table for a minute before looking back to me with a smile, “At the end of the day, sometimes it’s not our jobs to come up with the plan and if this is how our Captain is going to work, then we gotta respect it… for now at least.”

“I guess, but I still just feel like… if we are going to be doing these crappy patterns, why not just have Doc fly it? He has some flight time and could do it pretty easily, right?” I asked hopefully.

“Woooooow,” She said with an amused look. “Are you too good to do a pattern that you think is too basic?” she asked curiously.

“No, it’s not that I swear just, basically everything in my bones is just outright against flying a pattern that I can feel is the wrong choice just looking at the available space,” I explained. “It’s like, trying to add pickles to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, sure you could probably eat it, but it’s also probably gonna make your stomach turn.”

“But if the flight pattern works as the Captain intends, then is it really the wrong choice? There’s a bigger picture Nova, at the end of the day you do gotta try to remember that,” she shot back.

“I suppose…” I sighed. “Well I’m still gonna draw up what I’d do. After all, we got over a week left, I’m willing to bet Curtis comes to his senses.”