Chapter Perspective: Waverly

“I’m honestly pretty surprised that the Commander didn’t even put up a fight,” Novarod said as he helped Killian put out a long table that had been stored in one of the supply closets off of the main common room.

​We had reassembled in the Kirk building rather quickly, Doc and Ty entering the building last with several cases of what was very clearly labeled as beer. Curtis hadn’t seemed surprised as they hauled it into the canteen and began shoving it into the meager fridge we had, instead focusing on the TV and trying to find something to put on.

“He definitely didn’t seem thrilled about it when we knocked on his door,” Vicky said, finding a sheet to throw over the newly setup table. “But it was definitely a resigned approval, like he knew it was coming sooner rather than later.”

“Well, my medical mentor, Jackson, seemed to indicate that it was an inevitability that we’d find out about the Exchange allotment that we could request,” Doc added with an exaggerated shrug as he walked into the room with an unlabeled can in hand. “I wonder if they brew this stuff up here or if it’s something from the surface that they just don’t want to actually associate with the station,” he mused aloud before taking a sip.

“I think it was a bit of all of it. The exchange literally called him as we were talking to him so he kind of realized that we already had all the pieces in place. Then he got a call from Station command summoning him to something and he just said screw it since he wasn’t going to be around for the evening,” Curtis explained, falling down onto the couch after selecting a classics movie channel and looking up at the clock that was only listing just past seven on station time.

“Yeah, Killian and I saw a bunch of officers running toward admin when he was talking with Layla to invite the DRAKE over, what the heck is going on that all the command staff is getting called up?” I asked curiously, fiddling with my datapad as I tried to connect into the sound system that the common room was apparently set up with.

For how long we had been here so far, we really had done surprisingly little more than just worry about our training and trials. In the back of my head I knew that it made sense of course, we had botched the first trial and wanted nothing more than to redeem ourselves and thus we had all gone into overdrive mode to correct, but there had to be a balance otherwise I knew at the very least I’d burn out and I had to assume the others felt the same way.

“Dios Mio, they’d alert the whole station if like, we were falling out of the sky or something right?” Doc asked and although I was used to his joking tone, this question seemed genuine. While the others were busy with their various tasks, I noticed as Curtis seemed to shift uncomfortably in his seat, his eyes meeting mine only for a second before he immediately looked back to the television.

“The station is equipped with defensive features as well as alarms, if something bad was happening, I’d assume those would be going off instead of just having the Command staff summoned. It’s probably just some new protocol or switchover that we don’t have to be aware of,” Ty said with a heavy shrug. “Do we have enough cups that we could play beer pong or flip cup?” she asked and Novarod looked at her confused.

“Those are drinking games right?” he asked.

“Duh, how sheltered were you Nova?” Ty laughed.

“I wasn’t sheltered I was-“

“You were busy training, yeah yeah, we know,” she cut him off before Novarod could give the same excuse he always did. “We are up here now bud, you can start to pull back on your sim time and start getting integrated with the crew and life up here, y’know that right?”

“Cut the man some slack, I’ve seen his bridge scores for the trials, he’s killing it,” Vicky added in before finally taking a seat on the couch near Curtis. “I think we are good to go here, do we actually think the other crews are going to show up?”

“Kaylee said she was going to try and get the MEGALODON over here so that they didn’t sit around wallowing, but her Captain, for the minute I even really saw him, seems kind of like he has a stick up his ass,” Novarod said, dropping into one of the armchairs.

“Yeah, I haven’t really gotten to talk with the other Captain’s but Armstrong definitely seems standoffish,” Curtis added, taking the can that Doc had seemingly materialized with behind him as he started handing drinks out. “Shouldn’t we wait for the other folks to get here?” he asked looking over his shoulder as we each received a drink.

“Ay ay ay, Captain,” Mendez said as he circled back around, the rest of his haul distributed. “We should but I figured now would be as good a time as any for a toast, that way we aren’t doing this one in front of the other crews,” he explained.

“This one?” I asked, looking first at the unlabeled can and then back up to our Doc as the others gathered around.

“The one to celebrate us of course!” Mendez explained, holding his can high into the air. “We got an S- ranking, which I have to assume is pretty much nearly as perfect as we can get. Obviously we can still go higher, and I don’t see us slowing down any time soon, but we kicked some ass and I think that’s due for a toast,” he explained before he started to bring the can to his lips, only stopping as Curtis raised a hand.

“Come on Doc, if you’re going to do a toast, you gotta make it one actually worth cheering over,” he said, standing up from his seat and moving over to Mendez’s position, casually throwing an arm over the Doc’s shoulders as he held his can high into the air. “We’ve been here for several weeks now, we’ve had a failure that I think left us all with a sour taste in our mouths and I know we have all been working overboard to correct that. As the Captain of the NEUTRINO, I for one have to say how proud I am of our performance and more importantly, how grateful I am to each of you for trusting in my plan, even if some of you were a bit more vocal about how “stupid” you thought certain aspects of it were.”

“Hey I retracted that complaint,” Novarod said, fiddling with the still unopened can in his hands.

“Crack that thing open Nova,” Curtis ordered to which our pilot sighed but did so, “Now, just because we are celebrating tonight, doesn’t mean that we can let up. I want our ship to be one of the best to come out of Star Launch and the victory we achieved today is only the start. Each and every one of you has proven just how capable to are now, so I am going to continue to expect that moving forward,” he continued.

“Come on Cap, starting to sound less like a toast and more like a lecture here…” Vicky murmured, patiently waiting to take a sip from her own drink.“Sorry… habit,” he replied with a chuckle. “Here’s to the NEUTRINO, we are still learning, both the ship and each other, but here’s to our ship and our crew, no… here’s to our Space Family. Let’s have some fun.”

And in a near unison that we might not have been able to do if we had planned it, we all quickly yelled, “Cheers!”