Character Perspective: Curtis

Okay, Novarod had the flight plans for the start of the trial and Sullivan should be getting the drone’s preprogrammed flight paths recorded.

With the Commander’s blessing, Ty is retrofitting the underside of the NEUTRINO’s simulation with a rear dome mount. The one surprised me though, I thought it would have been as simple as just submitting some paper work but the simulation’s rooms themselves had to be reconfigured to include the second mount, meaning Ty had to install and configure it into our existing systems.

Sera would help her of course, but I needed her to focus on learning as much as she could about our shielding systems as possible. I had read once of a way that the outer shield could be reconfigured for a variety of other uses, but only if you know how to play with the energy that makes up the external energy.

It was all coming togeth-

“Whoa there fresh meat,” A familiar voice said, catching me at my shoulders before I could walk directly into him.

“Sorry Trent, got a bit hyper focused on plans, you know how it goes,” I said and let out a sigh, my hand dropping my planning folder down to my side. “Actually, how’d your flight do on the first few trials?” I asked.

“Did okay on the first, none of us asked about the Parasitum so when a ship opened fire on us my guys on flight control and weapons saved our asses, though that was what started the GREAT OAKS rivalry with us… they got caught in the crossfire and Keshia never forgave me,” Trent said with a laugh and shake of his head. “Our second was probably different than yours, they tend to shuffle the order and parameters of the trials for each class,” he added.

“Suppose that makes sense,” I said. “Though I’d also guess that there are some striking similarities between everything… how did you handle the, well, overall truth of it all?” I added as I finally had someone I could talk to. Obviously the rest of the bridge deserved to know the full scope of what the Commander had told me, but I needed time to fully process it before I let rampant speculation take over our ship.

Trent was a Captain though, so his Commander had to have brought him just as up to speed as I was, maybe even more so with how much further in his training he was. “Honestly kinda freaked me out. I had come up here to explore space, not fight in a war that may or may not even really be happening, but a lot of it is still theoretical and speculative, so it’s easier to approach it as real-ish,” he said after taking an honest moment to think about it.

“Speculative how? The images all look pretty substantial,” I said and walked over to the side of the pathway as another flight group went hustling by in matching PT gear.

“Yeah, but that’s it. You can ask your Commander about it, but there’s no evidence of what happened to the crews or why they succumbed. Every destruction has always resulted in no biological evaluation changes to their systems for the few that have been recovered and studied,” he explained, hiking a bag further up onto his shoulder as he looked up at the sky. “Once you kinda realize we are still barely pieces in this massive puzzle, you can let some of that weight go,” he added.

“Well maybe not all the weight. We screwed up our first trial, so I’d rather not fail two in a row,” I said, gripping my folders tighter.

“Ah yeah, that would do it,” Trent said as he eyed his watch. “For what it’s worth, my crew failed four trials in a row last year and we didn’t get booted or anything, just meant we had to work harder. And up here a failure isn’t really a bad thing as long as you’re not failing the same way every time. Get what I’m saying?”

“Hmm, yeah, I think so?” I said and looked to my own watch. “Crap, okay I got to run. My commander promised something new in the Free Float Arena for our bridge today, gotta go get the briefing on it before the rest of the crew gets there.”

“Should be about Grav-ball,” Trent said before I could take a step away and I lifted a brow.

“Grav-ball?” I asked curiously.

“Gravity Ball is what the staff calls it. Basically the only “sport” we really do up here though. It’s like soccer and basketball had a baby with zero-g. The inter-year league for this class cycle should be starting up in a few weeks so your commander is going to want to give you guys a briefing on it,” he explained.

I felt as if a pile of new information was dumped on me and a barely intelligible, “Wait, what?” escaped my lips before I shook the confusion away. “You’re telling me that while they have us training to fly spaceships, they also expect us to compete against each other in a sport?” I asked almost in disbelief, “I owe Mendez an apology, this place is a damn college…”

“All work and no play does not make for good moral, fresh meat,” Trent said with a wink and turned his back. “We will try to go easy on y’all when you eventually get to play us,” he said with a laugh.

“You- I- Um-…”

“Ha, yeah that was pretty much my response too when I learned that we played the upperclassmen! Your Commander’s gonna be pissed someone spoiled the secret for you,” he said as he started to walk away but stopped and looked back. “Normally we don’t tell the new Captain’s till they’ve been here for a semester, but if you ever feel overwhelmed, the Seventh year Captains hold a bi-weekly Captain’s Council where all the Captains from the various years can meet and talk shop, Goodin over in the Jobs building it is hosting it this weekend. If you let the other Captain’s know, I don’t think anyone would complain if y’all should up,” he said before he rubbed his stomach. “Now I need to get some food before the mess closes. Later bud!”

“Thanks Trent!” I called after him and looked back to my plans. It would be good to talk to the other Captains, and if I let the others in our year know then maybe we could start to form a better baseline here early on. But, before all that I needed to drop these plans off and get back across the campus. If the Commander was introducing us to another new thing, I needed to get there early. But who knows, maybe Grav-ball would be a nice change of pace.