Character Perspective: Plum

“Five minutes until Simulation begins,” the simulated voice of the NEUTRINO announced as we stepped onto the bridge. The front window display was already turned on to the vast openness of space with the exception of a single purple and green looking marble sized planet in the distance.

“Get to your stations,” Curtis ordered as he marched forward and took his spot in the Captain’s chair. Nobody hesitated and Novarod led the pack as he hustled around the bridge and slid into his cockpit seat, the entire assembly lowering into the floor and revealing more of the front monitors. “I want the drone ready to launch before those five minutes are up. Sullivan, go with Doc and setup your monitoring station, we need paths 4, 9, and 12 ready to launch in the first wave.”

“Aye Captain,” Sullivan called back, following Doc out the rear door.

“Flight power online,” Novarod called over his shoulder. “Controls are locked pending the simulation opening.”

“Heard,” I called back, taking my seat in the Second’s chair next to Curtis. I pulled my Navigation and Monitoring screens over, tapping on several additional windows, pulling up the live camera feed to our ship and seeing Doc and Sullivan moving at a good pace through the halls.

“Shield power is online Captain, are we starting in standardized?” Sera asked, swivelling in a chair at a large station on the port side of our bridge.

“Wait for the simulation to launch, once Doc launchs the drone, mimic the pattern, also prepare the short range comms, we need to start scrambling the drone’s signal once we fall in to the approach window,” Curtis ordered.

He was getting more confident, and I could see the pieces of his puzzle already falling into place.

“Which mount do you want me to spin up?” Ty asked.

“Power them both up and set them to defensive response, then monitor from weapons,” Curtis replied quickly. “Not to jinx us but I’m hopeful we can slip by without firing a single shot.”

“Aye Captain,” Ty said and turned on a dime before heading for the exit.

“And then there were four,” I said under my breath as I saw the door to Drones slide open for the two approaching, “They’ve reached Drones, Captain, we still have three minutes until simulation.”

“Good,” Curtis said, his lips pressing into a line before he let out a measured sigh of relief. “Feel like I’ve got pins pricking all over my skin,” he added, though this time much lower and I could see neither Sera nor Novarod seemed to notice.

“Don’t overthink it, Captain, you’re on the right level of edge for this,” I said, moving the camera feed to a smaller monitor off to the side of my chair and pulling up the star map of the area. Like our ship, nothing else was moving just yet and a small timer at the top left of the screen indicated the time until the trial started.

“I’m going to be on edge until this trial is over,” he replied honestly.

“Are you expecting something unexpected?” I asked, “Like with the Parasitum?”

Curtis shook his head quickly. “No, I don’t think they’d resort to such a cheap tactic twice in a row… or at least I’d hope they wouldn’t, it wouldn’t be a really great learning opportunity. Not to mention during our first actual class captain’s gathering, Captain Reed seemed to indicate that the DRAKE captain was right when she suggested this trial was all about what we do when we have time to prepare.”

“Then shouldn’t you be able to take a breath? I mean, you’ve planned, listened to alternatives, even come up with fail-safes… I think we’re gonna be good,” I said, hesitating at first but then reaching over and placing a hand on his shoulder as reassuringly as I could. “We got this, we just need to know that you believe it too,” I said, trying to catch his deep brown eyes and holding them as I tried to push my confidence toward him.

“Right,” he said, meeting my gaze and I watched as his expression hardened. “You’re right, I can’t let my own nerves get in the way.”

“One minute Captain, want to say anything to the crew?” I asked, nodding to his intercom before I returned my attention to the screens and continued organizing the monitors.

Curtis pushed the intercom down and took a deep breath in, audible over the crackling monitors before I muted the bridge speakers to prevent the echo. “We bunked that first trial up pretty hard… That’s on some of us more than others and I won’t downplay it because it’s important for us to remember. That said, this is a new day. A new trial. The enemy are guarding this planet for a reason and we are going to find out why. You each have your orders and I want constant communication, make using that intercom second nature and report everything. We are not going to miss something just because we don’t talk, especially if something goes wrong. I want each of you to forget what happened last time, because after we wipe the floor with this trial, that’s all anyone else is going to remember.”

“Hell yeah Captain,” Novarod called over his shoulder.

“Stick to the plan, we’ve been preparing for this all week, no sense ruining that now,” Curtis continued and I felt a smile creeping over my lips. He had gotten into his flow now and I could see a shine of determination on his face. “I believe in us. I believe in our ship. So let’s do this,” he said and pulled his finger from the intercom.

“Let’s do this?” I asked with a raised brow? “We need to workshop a better sign off line for you…”

“I was winging it…” he muttered in response as the intercom crackled back to life.

“Simulation has begun,” the NEUTRINO announced and several extra motors and generators seemed to kick on within the bridge. Though our screens had already been on, the ship’s simulation itself seemed to be in a holding pattern until this moment.

“Wanna give it one more shot?” I offered, nodding over to the intercom again and Curtis visibily rolled his eyes.

“How about we hear what you got?” He suggested instead and I smiled broadly.

“It’s not gonna but much better Captain, but I sure as heck won’t turn it down,” I said as I quickly hit my own intercom before he could change his mind. “NEUTRINO, time to kick some ass.”