06-12-2025, 11:34 PM
messed with the first bit a little, nothing major.
He gets confirmation of the last check in just as the running lights on the ceiling dim, pulse three times and flick to prep yellow. Second shift is accounted for even if parts of it are likely still in their civvies and beach sandals and running for their lock down positions but it’s at least one thing he can mark off. He’s going nearly as fast himself to keep up to his Commander, who’s moving as if the scurrying bodies in his way are going to get out of his way.
Which, of course, they do.
Three fast checkpoints later, including the last one that his Commander just hauls him past by dint of grabbing him by his bad arm and a gruff ‘he’s with me’, he’s stepping on to the command deck for the first and hopefully last time in his life.
He gulps and then immediately regrets it as he swallows wrong.
The circular space feels cavernous, the largest holoproj he’s ever seen outside of a concert on a dias right in the center, currently showing planetary curve and numbers moving too fast to be more than a blur from his position. Bridge crew are strapped into their chairs, fingers twitching as relays interpret command and syntax and pattern to throw nearly coherent light onto the black walls in displays a blind man could read from Chansia.
The Colonel is standing in front of the ‘proj, dwarfed by it with his arms crossed and his unmoving face awash with the frantic fireworks going off around him. His… whatever she is… is still at his elbow and her face at least looks like he feels. More than a little overwhelmed and trying to stare at nothing and everything all at the same time.
He plows into his Commander’s back who’s stopped at the bottom of the first stair upwards.
“Sorry!” he yelps, bouncing back. “Sorry, uh, sorry, sir.”
“Record everything,” the Commander snaps over his shoulder. “When this goes down, and it’s going to go down, I want enough data to hang party streamers from here to Linkon.”
“Sir, yes’sir. Recording.” He fumbles with his datapad, tapping out the shaky sequences. He has no idea if this is even going to work; at least one of the checkpoints on the way back out could probably fry him from fifty paces, let alone the circuitry he’s carrying.
When he looks up again, the Colonel is staring down at them.
“Get out.” The Colonel’s voice bounces off the hard walls, echoing like there’s more of him than there actually is. “Bridge crew only during escape sequence.”
“Not this time, Xia. When you fry the engines from this idiocy and turn this Fleetship into so much commemorative scrap, I want to stand at your court martial and tell them how you did it.”
One finger taps on his uniform sleeve. “Careful. You are one sentence away from an insubordination charge.”
“Won’t stick if we’re all dead, will it.”
There’s a long minute where the two of them just stare at each other. The Colonel is the one to flick his gaze away first. “Don’t interfere. And I suggest you find something to hold onto.”
He turns back to the holoprojection as if that settles the matter and it probably does. Looks like they’re not going to get kicked off the deck after all. The bridge crew haven’t even looked over from their cribs, still doing whatever it is they need to do to prep the ship for flight. The Commander takes that as some sort of permission to walk up the steps to the holo, the bulk of his shoulders cutting off some of the light streaming from it. After a second, he opts to stay here he is, at the bottom of the dias and hopefully out of line of sight of anybody important.
The girl at the Colonel’s side is looking a little pale and she shoots a glance up nervously, before her gaze sidles over behind the Colonel’s back to look at him instead. She smiles at him tentatively and her fingers at her side give a half wave before her expression falls away into an odd grimace. He understands and bobs his head to say so. Just us, he thinks as hard as he can. Trying not to be noticed. It’ll be okay.
She ducks her head as if she heard him. Her face is a nearly perfect heart and her eyes are refracting the lights in the room like she’s some sort of cotton candy display herself. Xia’s not bad looking if he’s going to be fair, but she seems a little out of his class. Maybe she’s rented by the hour? But if that’s the case, why is she on the command deck and in uniform on a fighting Fleetship? Unless it's one of those hidden in plain sight fictions that the brass chains turn a blind eye to. Some lowly sub-lieutenant who found a golden ticket to a better pay bracket.
Minutes tick by and he shifts from foot to foot, occasionally checking to make sure his data recordings haven’t cut off out of nowhere. The Colonel doesn’t so much as breathe as far as he can tell, just watching the light projections as they update.
Out of nowhere, the deck lights dim to half strength and one of the wall screens washes to a flat black with only a green CONFIRMATION on it and a string of numbers and letters that read like gibberish to him. Like a cascading waterfall, the rest of the bridge crew wipe their displays and its CONFIRMATION everywhere.
Colonel Xia drops his hands, fingers spread wide.
Every screen flashes red and COMMAND TRANSFERRED spreads like an inexorable wave before fading out into nothing. In front of him a series of inputs draw themselves in rainbow light. The running lights flip to launch orange.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” the Commander barks with a sudden note of panic, nearly lost in the semi dark. “Command transferred?”
Fleetship engines are silent, powered by energy so pure it's more cautionary than real. But the ship is metal and alloy and latticed connection joints and it shudders as the drives come online. The holoproj clears and redraws itself to show the intended path from ground to orbit, numbers flickering bright and clear.
Xia doesn’t even look over, eyes trained on the digital controls. Circles contract and spin, locking in. Numbers shift and shift again, flicking blue to purple to violet. One of his hands comes up, fingers flexing.
“Xia.”
Two wall displays flicker up again. Numbers, letters, a percentage. Xia looks and then looks away. “Recalibrate.” The bridge crew touch nothing, hands flickering in the air as one number climbs, the other drops and the display hovering around Xia’s face cascades into a new formation. “Recalibrate,” Xia says again as his other hand rises. One of the wall displays flashes green and disappears. The other hovers then divides itself into information and a wireform of something that is not in the least recognizable.
“Xia, shut it down.”
“If I shut it down, we’re going to make the very large hole you’re so worried about.”
The remaining wall display fades out then, not even leaving an afterimage.
“Colonel,” says one of the bridge crew, impossible to tell who in the gloom. “We are holding stable at P-12. Ready for launch.”
“Ready to see the stars now?” Xia says, his voice impossibly light.
It’s a non-sequitur and it takes longer than it should before he realizes the question was for the woman at his shoulder. She hesitates, staring up at the side of his face but then steps forward as one of her hands creeps up to lock itself under his elbow. She leans then against his side suddenly, all but merging with his long black coat. Her head rests on his shoulder.
“Yeah. Yeah, Caleb. Let’s go.”
The smile that flashes across the Colonel’s face is crooked as lightning and nearly as fast. The visual display goes completely orange.
He’s never been on the command deck before, normally spends his launch minutes strapped into something that’s cushioned, conformed and much more stable than he is. He’s suddenly on his back, one with the floor as the hand of heaven impersonally puts him there. He scrabbles weakly on the slick black decking, feeling his organs rearrange.
The Commander is faring better, still on his feet and clutching the projector console but even as his eyesight blurs from the strain, he sees the man slowly go down on one knee.
He coughs and then inhales desperately, trying to get air into his lungs. He’s been through some rough launches and descents, but it’s never been anywhere close to this crushing before. An entire ocean is pressing down on him, implacable and inescapable.
The Colonel hasn’t shifted an inch. The holoprojector shows trajectory and the dot that must be them rising swiftly through the plot points. Something flashes red, a string of numbers hovering on the right, larger than the rest.
The Colonel frowns and his hands flex. On the floor, he wheezes as another heavy link of chain is added onto his chest.
“Recalibrate,” the Colonel snaps out. The numbers wobble orange, green and then fade out.
The Commander struggles to rise, gripping the sleek metal. The Colonel flicks his gaze over, a spark of blue light catching in his eye and he watches as the Commander slips again to his knee with a faint groan.
It’s him, he suddenly realizes. He’s doing it to us.
The woman seems to figure it out at the same time that he does.
“Caleb,” she hisses.
He makes a questioning noise, face forward as if his eyes are locked on the trajectory image.
“Caleb, stop it.” She tugs on his sleeve like a child.
He realizes then that she’s still standing as well, completely unaffected by the pull of home as they leave it.
The pressure eases to something bearable. He can only be grateful for a beautiful, breathable moment. So. So much better. He awkwardly sprawls to his side, fumbling for his dropped datapad.
“What the fuck do you think you’re playing at, Xia?” The Commander is red in the face, lurching back to his feet, having given up probably on any appearance of grace.
“Apologies, Commander Grist. There is a reason only bridge crew are on deck for launch while I am in command. I did,” Xia points out blandly after a moment, “warn you to brace.”
The Colonel must trigger something that he has no chance to see, as the tactical display swarms back to life. “Launch successful. Returning command to bridge.” The large wall displays come back up again in front of each of the crew, tracking unknown information. The holoprojector shows the ship dot in a chipper shade of green, small numbers flowing steadily.
“Command accepted,” comes the acknowledgement.
“Confirm clear."
“Clear confirmed.”
“C’mon,” the Colonel says, turning easily on his heel, tugging the woman around at the same time. His arm drapes over her shoulders as if there’s no other way they should be standing together, both of them taking the dias steps down to the floor. “Rec lounge has the best outside views.”
He gets confirmation of the last check in just as the running lights on the ceiling dim, pulse three times and flick to prep yellow. Second shift is accounted for even if parts of it are likely still in their civvies and beach sandals and running for their lock down positions but it’s at least one thing he can mark off. He’s going nearly as fast himself to keep up to his Commander, who’s moving as if the scurrying bodies in his way are going to get out of his way.
Which, of course, they do.
Three fast checkpoints later, including the last one that his Commander just hauls him past by dint of grabbing him by his bad arm and a gruff ‘he’s with me’, he’s stepping on to the command deck for the first and hopefully last time in his life.
He gulps and then immediately regrets it as he swallows wrong.
The circular space feels cavernous, the largest holoproj he’s ever seen outside of a concert on a dias right in the center, currently showing planetary curve and numbers moving too fast to be more than a blur from his position. Bridge crew are strapped into their chairs, fingers twitching as relays interpret command and syntax and pattern to throw nearly coherent light onto the black walls in displays a blind man could read from Chansia.
The Colonel is standing in front of the ‘proj, dwarfed by it with his arms crossed and his unmoving face awash with the frantic fireworks going off around him. His… whatever she is… is still at his elbow and her face at least looks like he feels. More than a little overwhelmed and trying to stare at nothing and everything all at the same time.
He plows into his Commander’s back who’s stopped at the bottom of the first stair upwards.
“Sorry!” he yelps, bouncing back. “Sorry, uh, sorry, sir.”
“Record everything,” the Commander snaps over his shoulder. “When this goes down, and it’s going to go down, I want enough data to hang party streamers from here to Linkon.”
“Sir, yes’sir. Recording.” He fumbles with his datapad, tapping out the shaky sequences. He has no idea if this is even going to work; at least one of the checkpoints on the way back out could probably fry him from fifty paces, let alone the circuitry he’s carrying.
When he looks up again, the Colonel is staring down at them.
“Get out.” The Colonel’s voice bounces off the hard walls, echoing like there’s more of him than there actually is. “Bridge crew only during escape sequence.”
“Not this time, Xia. When you fry the engines from this idiocy and turn this Fleetship into so much commemorative scrap, I want to stand at your court martial and tell them how you did it.”
One finger taps on his uniform sleeve. “Careful. You are one sentence away from an insubordination charge.”
“Won’t stick if we’re all dead, will it.”
There’s a long minute where the two of them just stare at each other. The Colonel is the one to flick his gaze away first. “Don’t interfere. And I suggest you find something to hold onto.”
He turns back to the holoprojection as if that settles the matter and it probably does. Looks like they’re not going to get kicked off the deck after all. The bridge crew haven’t even looked over from their cribs, still doing whatever it is they need to do to prep the ship for flight. The Commander takes that as some sort of permission to walk up the steps to the holo, the bulk of his shoulders cutting off some of the light streaming from it. After a second, he opts to stay here he is, at the bottom of the dias and hopefully out of line of sight of anybody important.
The girl at the Colonel’s side is looking a little pale and she shoots a glance up nervously, before her gaze sidles over behind the Colonel’s back to look at him instead. She smiles at him tentatively and her fingers at her side give a half wave before her expression falls away into an odd grimace. He understands and bobs his head to say so. Just us, he thinks as hard as he can. Trying not to be noticed. It’ll be okay.
She ducks her head as if she heard him. Her face is a nearly perfect heart and her eyes are refracting the lights in the room like she’s some sort of cotton candy display herself. Xia’s not bad looking if he’s going to be fair, but she seems a little out of his class. Maybe she’s rented by the hour? But if that’s the case, why is she on the command deck and in uniform on a fighting Fleetship? Unless it's one of those hidden in plain sight fictions that the brass chains turn a blind eye to. Some lowly sub-lieutenant who found a golden ticket to a better pay bracket.
Minutes tick by and he shifts from foot to foot, occasionally checking to make sure his data recordings haven’t cut off out of nowhere. The Colonel doesn’t so much as breathe as far as he can tell, just watching the light projections as they update.
Out of nowhere, the deck lights dim to half strength and one of the wall screens washes to a flat black with only a green CONFIRMATION on it and a string of numbers and letters that read like gibberish to him. Like a cascading waterfall, the rest of the bridge crew wipe their displays and its CONFIRMATION everywhere.
Colonel Xia drops his hands, fingers spread wide.
Every screen flashes red and COMMAND TRANSFERRED spreads like an inexorable wave before fading out into nothing. In front of him a series of inputs draw themselves in rainbow light. The running lights flip to launch orange.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” the Commander barks with a sudden note of panic, nearly lost in the semi dark. “Command transferred?”
Fleetship engines are silent, powered by energy so pure it's more cautionary than real. But the ship is metal and alloy and latticed connection joints and it shudders as the drives come online. The holoproj clears and redraws itself to show the intended path from ground to orbit, numbers flickering bright and clear.
Xia doesn’t even look over, eyes trained on the digital controls. Circles contract and spin, locking in. Numbers shift and shift again, flicking blue to purple to violet. One of his hands comes up, fingers flexing.
“Xia.”
Two wall displays flicker up again. Numbers, letters, a percentage. Xia looks and then looks away. “Recalibrate.” The bridge crew touch nothing, hands flickering in the air as one number climbs, the other drops and the display hovering around Xia’s face cascades into a new formation. “Recalibrate,” Xia says again as his other hand rises. One of the wall displays flashes green and disappears. The other hovers then divides itself into information and a wireform of something that is not in the least recognizable.
“Xia, shut it down.”
“If I shut it down, we’re going to make the very large hole you’re so worried about.”
The remaining wall display fades out then, not even leaving an afterimage.
“Colonel,” says one of the bridge crew, impossible to tell who in the gloom. “We are holding stable at P-12. Ready for launch.”
“Ready to see the stars now?” Xia says, his voice impossibly light.
It’s a non-sequitur and it takes longer than it should before he realizes the question was for the woman at his shoulder. She hesitates, staring up at the side of his face but then steps forward as one of her hands creeps up to lock itself under his elbow. She leans then against his side suddenly, all but merging with his long black coat. Her head rests on his shoulder.
“Yeah. Yeah, Caleb. Let’s go.”
The smile that flashes across the Colonel’s face is crooked as lightning and nearly as fast. The visual display goes completely orange.
He’s never been on the command deck before, normally spends his launch minutes strapped into something that’s cushioned, conformed and much more stable than he is. He’s suddenly on his back, one with the floor as the hand of heaven impersonally puts him there. He scrabbles weakly on the slick black decking, feeling his organs rearrange.
The Commander is faring better, still on his feet and clutching the projector console but even as his eyesight blurs from the strain, he sees the man slowly go down on one knee.
He coughs and then inhales desperately, trying to get air into his lungs. He’s been through some rough launches and descents, but it’s never been anywhere close to this crushing before. An entire ocean is pressing down on him, implacable and inescapable.
The Colonel hasn’t shifted an inch. The holoprojector shows trajectory and the dot that must be them rising swiftly through the plot points. Something flashes red, a string of numbers hovering on the right, larger than the rest.
The Colonel frowns and his hands flex. On the floor, he wheezes as another heavy link of chain is added onto his chest.
“Recalibrate,” the Colonel snaps out. The numbers wobble orange, green and then fade out.
The Commander struggles to rise, gripping the sleek metal. The Colonel flicks his gaze over, a spark of blue light catching in his eye and he watches as the Commander slips again to his knee with a faint groan.
It’s him, he suddenly realizes. He’s doing it to us.
The woman seems to figure it out at the same time that he does.
“Caleb,” she hisses.
He makes a questioning noise, face forward as if his eyes are locked on the trajectory image.
“Caleb, stop it.” She tugs on his sleeve like a child.
He realizes then that she’s still standing as well, completely unaffected by the pull of home as they leave it.
The pressure eases to something bearable. He can only be grateful for a beautiful, breathable moment. So. So much better. He awkwardly sprawls to his side, fumbling for his dropped datapad.
“What the fuck do you think you’re playing at, Xia?” The Commander is red in the face, lurching back to his feet, having given up probably on any appearance of grace.
“Apologies, Commander Grist. There is a reason only bridge crew are on deck for launch while I am in command. I did,” Xia points out blandly after a moment, “warn you to brace.”
The Colonel must trigger something that he has no chance to see, as the tactical display swarms back to life. “Launch successful. Returning command to bridge.” The large wall displays come back up again in front of each of the crew, tracking unknown information. The holoprojector shows the ship dot in a chipper shade of green, small numbers flowing steadily.
“Command accepted,” comes the acknowledgement.
“Confirm clear."
“Clear confirmed.”
“C’mon,” the Colonel says, turning easily on his heel, tugging the woman around at the same time. His arm drapes over her shoulders as if there’s no other way they should be standing together, both of them taking the dias steps down to the floor. “Rec lounge has the best outside views.”
