Character Perspective: Novarod

“And you still getting enough sleep up there? How is the artificial day cycle?”

“It’s fine mom… really. I’m getting enough sleep and I’ve been settling in fine,” I said with a sigh, leaning back into my chair and stretching. I had been talking with Raven but she had to run to some sororiety party and had apparently insisted I call my mom who had been “bothering her to get me to call again”

“What about the food? I don’t know how they expect us to believe you are getting anything fresh up there,” my mom asked, her brow pinched behind a pair of sleek oval glasses.

“Actually they have a bio-dome farm up here. I thought it was just a grow room but I was talking with one of the mess hall attendants the other day and they told me that you can actually see a 24 hour live stream of it,” I said as I reached off to a side panel and found the feed before merging it into the call.

“Oh wow,” she leaned in toward the screen and her forehead started to take up the entire top of the screen.

“You really need new glasses mom,” I sighed.

“Hush Chester,” she replied before pulling back. “I do at least see some healthy stuff in there… I’m sorry hun, just, you know I worry about you…”

“I know mom, just, I’m literally outside of the atmosphere now, there’s not much you really can do other than worry and that’s not really helpful to you at all,” I replied as I started to absentmindedly scratch at the pleather like material of my desk chair.

“It’s a mother thing, I’m always going to worry about you,” my mom said with her own sigh. “Can I at least send a care package up to you? I doubt they have a grow room for the candy and other snacks I know you like.”

“They do send up some of the stuff on shipments, but yeah, they run out of Oreos pretty quickly in the canteen here,” I said quickly. “I think if you contact Mr. Richards at the Ground Command office in the mall, he should be able to give you the right shipping address for small packages. I know Raven was looking into it, though mostly in a joking sense I think.”

“I’ll shoot him an e-mail here soon and follow up in the morning with him,” my mom replied as she looked at a digital clock off to the side that I knew she had. “You mentioned your team had a rough first trial? How is everything going for you now, have you been able to show off all that time you dedicate to the simulator thingy?”

“I wish you wouldn’t call it a thingy…” I muttered and she rolled her eyes.

“But it is a thingy.”

“Well I guess I sort of did, we ran time trials earlier this week and I posted scores that my teacher thought the upperclassmen would be impressed by… though my classmates on the other ships haven’t stopped talking about it apparently…” I rubbed at the back of my head

“That’s my boy,” she said with a satisfied smile. “I might not be thrilled to have you so far away, but I’ve always said if you’re gonna do it-“

“Then do it better than anyone else.” I finished for her. It had been one of Grandpa’s favorite sayings and she drilled it into me from the moment I picked up my first VR flight experience.

A sudden flash on my data pad alerted me to a new set of plans that Curtis had air dropped onto them and I seized the opportunity.

“Hey mom, my Captain just dropped me some stuff for our next trial. I’m going to go through it here and jump in the shower. I’ll call you in a few days,” I said, itching to see what Curtis had sent.

“Sounds good hun, I’ll get that care package in the mail tomorrow afternoon, I love you.”

“Love you too mom,” I said before she blew me a kiss and the screen cut off.

With a few quick clicks, the larger monitor on my wall lit up with a map of the planet we’d be trying to slip past the satellite defenses of. I hadn’t seen the bigger picture as of yet, with only the high orbit sector being included on the initial plans, so seeing the entire map was new. After the map loaded, other features flickered into place.

“Pre-scan data? This is more than they gave us for that first trial…” I muttered to myself as I noted the location of at least a dozen long range equipped satellites. They were positioned almost equi-distance from each other with the exception of two on the dark side of the planet. Following that, a silver ship and several other smaller object lit up on the outskirts of the map with various patterns and lines extending out and intersecting with each other.

I could easily pick out which of them was supposed to be the NEUTRINO, but the others didn’t seem to make much sense outside of one that was labeled with “Doc” that I had to assume was the Drone that I had overheard him talking with Plum about operating during the trial.

As I started to lean forward a knock on my door caused me to hop to my feet, happy I was still at least in half my uniform as I pulled the door open to Curtis in the same matching plaid robe and slippers he always chose to wear at night.

“I figured you’d still be up,” he said as he waited at the door before I waved him in.

“Yeah I was on a vid call with my mom but this gave me a reason to drop before she could start asking me if I was brushing my teeth and all the other stuff that mom’s tend to do,” I answered as he walked over to the screen and crossed his arms. “You realize that those two satellites are only in a blind spot for maybe, twenty seconds? At the speeds those things move it’s probably less than that…”

“First you’re worried about a bad flight plan, now you don’t like a difficult one?” He asked with a raised brow.

“It’s only difficult because you have me hiding behind this drone’s scrambled signal for the approach window, I’m basically relying on Doc to fly perfectly while crawling behind him,” I said, and I could see Curtis react to what must have been a look of disgust on my face.

“Yeah Plum didn’t think you’d like that idea all that much… I was gonna have her try to convince you to run the path but she said it’d be a better idea if I just gave you the rundown myself,” Curtis explained. “She did come up with the back half of this plan though and layered the pattern in for how you’d slip out of the shadowing to hit the blind spot and get through it, so you have her to thank for getting rid of the sling shot plan.”

“That’s well and good but still it kind of misses a few issues,” I explained, trying to find the best way to put it.

“Unless you want to wait until tomorrow when I’m actually in a uniform so it feels more official, I’m all ears now,” he offered

“Well, okay so the main problem is that the drone can only move at, like, a fraction of our starship’s speed meaning any evasive or quick movements are near impossible because our ship would be too big to flip on a dime, though that only matters if we need to make those manuevers happen,” I explained, pointing out the two intersecting paths he had layered in the darkness. “At least you dropped the idea of swinging around the geo-synced satellite but this is only better in the fact that the flight path to slip into that blind spot requires a pilot with a very precise touch.”

“Which by all reports from your simulator time up here and what I’ve seen you do myself, you have that touch. The other Seconds and Captains are already talking about you because their pilots can’t fathom doing what you’re doing apparently, so I have to ask. Are they right to be talking? Am I right to have faith in you here? And most importantly, if we get you that window, can you hit it?”

“I guess it really depends,” I said, scratching my chin as I stared at the flight plans.

It was a bit crazy and I still wasn’t sure why he wanted us to be running such a bad pattern before we made the approach, but it must have been as Vicky had said, there was a bigger picture that I just wasn’t seeing and having at least a bit more of the information now left me slightly more at ease with the initial paths that Curtis had delivered to me.

“On what, Nova?” Curtis asked as he turned his attention fully back toward me.

“I’m gonna need you to order Doc into simulator time with me, an hour before and after dinner each night until the trial. If this is going to work I need to know he’s not going to brake check me or peel off under pressure,” I explained and a content smile spread over Curtis’s face.

“That we can very much do.”