Character Perspective: Mendez

“Sabas, you keep asking me to hang out with you in the evenings and I might just think you got a thing for me, bella dama,” I said as Kara approached the bench I had occupied.

“Well, hola guapo,” she said in return with wide smile, dimples on either cheek.

“Oh, muy bien,” I returned, clapping my hands together and standing to my feet. She immediately stepped in to give me a quick hug, “How was your day?”

“Long,” she said pulling back and looking up at me as her face actually dropped and she fell onto the bench. “I’m sure Curtis is knees deep in his own shit as well I’d assume, not that I care to ask or snoop, you guys are gonna wish you could post our scores,” she smirked.

“It’s just one trial so far, don’t count us out yet,” I said and stuck my tongue out at her, sitting back down and throwing an arm across the bench. “Besides, we’re middle of the pack right now, the MEGALODON is sitting in last if we are just basing it off the first trial.”

“Yeah but given how they got there…” Kara trailed off and rolled her eyes as she scooted in next to me and leaned her head back, ostensibly to look at the large surface area of the separated Asian continents of Eastasia and Asian West that were covered in darkness and strings of lights creating the city masses.

“Hey don’t shoot the Doc,” I said, raising my free hand in mock defense. I saw her roll her eyes and suppress a laugh.

“How did that work anyway? Is your Engineer a red hat hack specialist?” She mused curiously and leaned her head ever so casually against me.

“I didn’t even realize Engineers had different specialties,” I said, dodging the question. It had been a game we were playing, or maybe I just wanted to see it as a game. Even if we both insisted we could spend time together as we had, and even if we didn’t say we wanted to know what the others crew was up to, espionage and investigation was a natural part of our job. To that end, we’d each try and get the other to give away details, and as far as I could tell Kill’s fumbling had stayed primarily within our group, so I wasn’t about to give away just what he was working on.

“You’ll let it slip eventually,” she said with a half grin that I caught before she hid her face from me.

“Doubt it, bella dama,” I replied back.

I really did like Kara, but it was still early in our training, and those embers of competition that the Dean had stoked were making it hard for us to really progress past just getting close and flirting, which was intensely annoying.

“Did you know the Asian Continents used to be one whole land mass?” I said as I looked back up toward the sky… or ground… Honestly it was still a bit mind bending to thinking about.

“Seems unlikely with how big the Indian Canal Rift is,” She replied as she looked back up toward the the planet. “But I guess it does make sense, hadn’t all of the continents been a single one at one point? They called it Pan something?”

“Pangaea actually,” I said with a smile as I used the opportunity to squeeze her shoulder and pull her in just a bit closer. “But yeah, there was a major earthquake in 2163 along the tectonic plates along the Everest Mountains, though some Old Earth Historians think that is history pushed to overwrite the last great war between the countries that used to exist in that region.”

“My babushya always used to talk about how the wars of our ancestors scarred and destroyed our planet so I can believe that’s what it was,” Kara said, unmoving from her position except to pull the hair from the side of her head and throwing it over my arm as she used it as a pillow.

“Babushya? Would that be like mi abuela? Your grandma that is?” I asked curiously. “What language is that?”

“Ukrainian, it’s where I grew up with my dad and Babushya while my mom was deployed up here,” she said, almost wistfully. “She still insists we speak the old language even though I had always told her I wanted to follow Mom and Grandpa up to the Academy and into Space which meant I had to make Common English my primary language.”

“Same thing sorta happened with me. Grew up in South Mex-Tex where everyone spoke Espanol, spoke it as my primary until I started getting interested in Star Launch. Mi Abuelo wasn’t a fan of speaking English but my dad traveled enough that he was fluent and could help me get there,” I said back, looking away from the Earth as I noticed what must have been a few upperclassmen wandering by on the large sidewalk.

Most of them were out of their uniforms at this point and some were even walking with partners, holding hands or just generally being playful in a way that made me feel a bit more at ease sitting there with Kara. I talked a big game, because that was the only way I knew how to live life, but even then I wasn’t immune to the nerves that came with the start of, well whatever this was.

“I’ve been thinking about that. You had said your family had a clinic, what did draw you up here? I mean, the doctors that go on the ships generally don’t have the most responsibility or ability to really advance their knowledge that much,” she said as she finally pulled slightly away from me to get a better look at my face.

“Hard to say. I think there’s part of that desire to explore that a lot of us that come up here have,” I started. Sure, I had heard this question a thousand times while going through every ground screening and pre-program application, but the generic answer just didn’t ever feel exactly right either. “But honestly I think it’s because I spent my entire life kinda just doing my folks thing. I’m a pretty decent Doc, not that I’ve had a ton of “official” operations that I can point to in order to prove that, but it was still what my family wanted for me. Being up here means I get to use that training, but depending on a lot of things I’ll also get to really explore and experience other things and jobs that I might also be good at, if that makes sense.”

“When you put it that way it makes damn good sense to me,” Kara replied with a nod. “Are there any of the fields that are really calling to you?”

“Piloting a bit. Kinda sucks that my general jokester demeanor means the rest of my crew listened to Kill when he made his joke about my simulator time, but hey, I got time to work up here. At least I’m getting to fly some drones for-“ I started before I stopped myself realizing how close I had gotten to revealing a part of the Captain’s plan.

“Drones huh? Those are probably easier to pilot than the ship itself, though I hear your pilot is pretty damn good, at least that’s what my guy has been going on and on about ever since he ran some perfect speed trial or something like that,” she said, choosing to either ignore my near slipup or just move past it as she resettled into her spot next to me.

“Nova is a weird dude but yeah, from what I’ve seen he handles those controls with a crazy amount of precision. I think he said he had something like, 6500 hours in the simulator before he even got up here,” I said and she immediately pulled back away from me with her big blue eyes widened in clear shock.

“Did he do anything but that?!”

“Not as far as any of us can tell,” I said with a laugh and pulled her back over to me. “Dude barely hangs out with anyone up here either, just classes, food and then back to his room.”

“My weapons guy is kind of like that, I think it’s just nerves and being up here. Kind of the ultimate separation anxiety from being away from home if you think about it,” Kara sighed, “I know I miss my family, but I’ve also only been video calling them every few days since…” she trailed off as her head seemed to move in my shoulder just a bit.

“I guess, still kinda crazy to hide away in there when he could be having alone time anywhere up here on the quad and get a good view to boot,” I said with a shrug.

“Maybe he’s got someone special back home he likes to talk to in private,” she offered.

I thought about that for a moment. Novarod hadn’t mentioned anyone like that but then again, I hadn’t asked him either. There was a part of me that realized that yeah, he had every right to want to be by himself, but none of us had really pushed him either to really be a bigger part of the group as a whole. And sure, the Free Float Arena was great for teamwork, but it didn’t do a whole lot for making us feel closer.

Silence overtook us, not that I minded as the artificial sounds of crickets and other animals seemed to fill the courtyard. It was apparently some sort of psychological trick the engineers employed to help those of us in training stay in a set routine and I appreciated it as I felt a yawn come over me. It was definitely getting late, at least for us up here, and I’d enjoy a few more minutes here. But at the same time my mind was already moving because I finally realized just how I could help out crew while I continued to expand my shipboard repertoire.

It might just be old fashioned, but there was nothing quite like a good old board game night for making people open up. And there were some that were so ridiculous even someone like Novarod was bound to break down his walls, even if it was just a bit.