Changes

So I've made some changes. I'm going to try to come back to this. In the mean time, have an excerpt from my other story "Color Blind"

Day 1

Jazz music filled the room. It surrounded me in a warmth blanket of comfort as I worked the paintbrush across the canvas, streaking it with shadow gray. I flicked my hazel eyes up to the xeroxed photo of Monet's Boulevard des Capucines and I squinted at it then the canvas. It still needed a touch of green. I moved the brush in my left hand to the blob of teal blue on my palette and brought it up to the canvas. I focused on light flicks of my wrist, catching the gray I'd just put there to create the right shadow tone for the trees.

    The phone rang.

    I straightened up and stared at the phone that was hung on the wall. I glanced at my watch and slowly turned my head back to the phone. It was far too late for Christina to be calling me and there was nobody else it could be. Nobody had that number. Panic started to hit me and I could do nothing but stare. I did not want to find out who was on the other end of the line.

    But the phone wouldn't stop ringing and something inside me told me that it would only carry on until I picked up. With goosebumps sending shivers throughout my body I bent down to settle the palette and brush onto the newspapers that covered the floor. Not once did I peel my eyes away from the phone, not even when it stopped ringing briefly. I shuffled in the vague direction of the radio to turn the music down when it started again.

    I bit my tongue, made sure the music was nothing but a dull lullaby in the background and took measured steps towards the phone. I stopped in front of it and just stared, my breath caught in my throat. All I had to do was lift my hand, a few inches, grab the phone and lift that just a little more.

I didn't want to. I was afraid to. My heart pounded and I swallowed back my fear and grabbed the phone. The ringing stopped when I lifted it off the cradle and I hesitated a second before I pushed the receiver to my ear. Forced confidence leaked into my voice as I said, “Hello?”

    “Laura?” My mind did a quick mental assessment before I could help it: Male, American with a hint of roughness to his voice.

    “No,” I managed after a pause and I pressed my free hand against the wall to stop my shaking nerves, “sorry. You've got the wrong number.”

    “Oh.” He paused. “Did a Laura used to live there?”

    “No. Sorry.”

    “My fault Ma'am,” and he hung up.

    The seconds ticked by before I pushed the receiver back in its place, my heart painfully thumping in my chest. It drowned out what little music I should be able to hear and my legs felt as though they were ready to give way. Did somebody know? Had somebody said something? But to get this number and to ask for Laura. That was the worst part. She wasn't a topic of conversation, anywhere. At least, she wasn't supposed to be.  

Still behind...

Yeah, story of my life. ANYWAY, this is different.

I'll just go ahead and leave an extract here, let you guys mull on what's going on, what's going to happen and such. I will say this, the next 600 ish words happens over a space of about 30 seconds:

His gun swung up the stairs and she moved to the door. It was locked. “Locked,” she whispered. McCallister nodded and Charlie joined him at the bottom of the stairs. “I’ll lead?”

            “No problem,” he said.

            “You can always go first.”

            A single laugh filled the room and Charlie set her foot on the bottom step as McCallister said, “I’ll let you get shot first.”

            “Thanks Lieutenant.”

            “You’re welcome Captain.”

            She shook her head and continued up the stairs. A lot passed within the next few short seconds. The first thing that registered in her mind was the sound of something tumbling along the floor. By the time she’d looked down the stun grenade had already gone off. Her eyes burnt and her ears were ringing. She couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t see past the bright lights that danced in her vision and fell to her knees from the shock. Before she felt the effects begin to wear off she felt a foot connect with her stomach. The air was forced from her lungs and she fell flat to the floor. She managed to avoid smashing the goggles into the floor and her face, but she couldn’t stop the foot that slammed itself down on the side of her face.

            Black spots danced through the fading white dots and she could hear somebody kick somebody else somewhere behind her. Somewhere in her dazed mind she could hear a tiny voice shouting, “Captain? Captain!”

            There was another flash and bang and Charlie winced, pinched her eyes shut and groaned. She tried to open her mouth, tried to tell Hunter to back up, to be careful, but her voice was having trouble. Gun shots rang out, their echoes painful stabs to the back of her head and Charlie squeezed her eyes shut.

            She stretched a hand out, trying to find her misplaced weapon. Her hand patted nothing but cool metal and she deviated her hand towards her thigh holster. As her fingers brushed the warm metal of the handle, she felt somebody hover close above her. The goggles were ripped away and in the pervading dark she couldn’t see much except for a pair of bright whites staring down at her.

            There was another flash and another echoed bang that rattled inside of her skull. The eyes were still above her and she focused on them as she slipped her hand further down the grip of her gun.

            Then the eyes turned and she caught the faint outline of a person looking down at her leg. Charlie pulled on her handgun, managed to gather it in her hand and swing her arm towards the person before a hand slapped hers down and pinned it to the floor. Charlie went with it, rolling her body into the person and collapsing above them in a heap. An elbow was driven into her face and connected with her chin. Her teeth chattered against each other and her head throbbed that little bit more.

            Somebody shoved her body back and her dazed mind couldn’t catch up with the action. Her head fell against the floor with another knock and the black spots grew larger in her vision. She tried to pull herself back up, but there was a foot on her chest and some mumbled voices.

            She found her own voice again and managed to get out a, “Hunter?” before a foot slammed itself into the side of her head again. This time, the darkness took over her vision and she gave in to the pain, letting herself sink into unconscious bliss.

7000 words done, a lot more to go

So yeah, things are changing. Garrison for starters now has a bigger role in the story, which is what I needed otherwise it would'v been the axe for him. There are ideas churning aroud in my head for him that I didn't have before....

Anyway, as I said in the title, I am at 7,000 words. My aim today is to get to at least 10,000. But hopefully a couple thousand more. But 10k is my minimum for today. In the meantime, I promised you an extract right? Well, here you go, 179 words of msytery and implications (hopefully):

Zach slumped in his seat, sleep begging for him to succumb to it. But there was a crew meeting after breakfast and his stomach begged for the warm food in front of him. In front of him Torres was battling the same fatigue and the smaller man held his head in one hand. Zach moved his foot underneath the table and nudged Torres’ leg. He shifted his eyes to him with blurred concentration. “Chin up sparky.”

            Torres frowned and straightened his back. He said, “I just want to get in bed.”

            “Join the club.”

            Eliot took a seat next to Torres and said, “Soon you can sleep for however long you wish.”

            Torres snorted, “I wouldn’t count on it.”

            Eliot frowned and Zach ducked his eyes. Their discovery last night would have to be reported which meant that they would have to investigate simply because they were the ones who found it. “Rules and regulations,” Zach said.

            Eliot sighed and Zach lifted his eyes to see the man’s shoulders slump, “I hate the rules.”

            “Don’t we all,” Torres said. 

Happy Writing!

It's July!

Which means............ CAMP NANOWRIMO.

Yes. I am taking part.
Yes. I do plan to finish it this time (April was a busy ALL OF THE ESSAYS DUE time)
Yes. Expect more extracts.
Yes. It is Redux. I know I've kept saying that I'll finish the second draft (I should be a paid procrastinator) but I WILL complete it this month.
Yes. The crew still act like children. They will never grow up.

For now, have an edited 600 word extract from the first chapter:

A blue light flashed in urgency and she jumped down onto the lower deck with another sigh. Underneath the blue light was a button and she pressed it, listening to the speakers on the bridge channel nothing but static for several seconds. She sighed and dropped her eyes to the floor. That made it the seventh glitch in three days.

            Then there was another sound. Her head snapped up and she listened closely, “…ch…el… z…as” More static filled the small space of the bridge.

            “Eerie.”

            She snapped her head up to see Warrant Officer Class 1 Zachary Chamberlin, his blonde hair mused more than usual. Tired green eyes stared down at her and she caught the dredged look in his appearance. She shook her head. Some days she wondered how he’d managed to get this far into the military with his lack of care for his appearance. “I thought I ordered you to bed.”

            Zach pressed himself against the railing that ran the length of the room, overlooking the lower level. One of his boots was settled against one of the lower rails whilst one of his arms propped him up. His other hand held firmly only to the cup of steaming coffee in his hand. “No offense Captain but I’d feel better if it were me on the bridge.” He shrugged one lazy shoulder and straightened himself up with a hand over his face, “Besides, I convinced Soko to stay in bed.”

            “What a gentleman,” another voice interrupted. A taller and dark skinned man entered the room, making the already cramped space even smaller. Charlie lifted one brow at the plastic glass in his hands. Sergeant Wes Eliot let out a chuckle and tilted the glass in her direction with a grin, “In celebration.”

            Zach snorted. Charlie watched Zach climb down one handed to her level without spilling a drop of coffee. “It’s about time we were going home.”

            “Ain’t that the truth,” Eliot said.

            “You know,” Charlie said, the corner of her mouth caught in the start of a smile, “one of these days you guys’ll listen to my orders and actually follow them.”

            Zach dropped himself into the pilots seat, his cup propped dangerously close to a few live circuits and open wires, his hands darting across the controls with expert ease. “Yeah, and on that day we’ll be dying with pigs flying telling us that they told us so.”

            Eliot snorted above her and Charlie shook her head. She folded her arms and pressed them against the head of the co-pilot’s seat. “Do I need to call Torres?”

            “Is it not just another glitch?”

            She looked up at the Kenyan man and shrugged her shoulders, “And that’s exactly why I’m wondering whether or not to let the man sleep. Which is something both of you should be doing.”

            “Yeah, yeah,” Zach said before he grabbed his cup and kicked his feet up and onto the control panel. “My opinion, get him out of bed. If I’m up he can be up.”

            Charlie arched a brow at that. “What’d he do?”

            Zach gave her a sidelong look before he shook his head. “He changed the temperature controls in the shower. Instead of hot, I got cold. Freezing cold.”

            “And you did what exactly?”

            “Nothing.”

            “Zach,” she said, her voice tired. She wondered sometimes how any of her crew managed to stay within the military so long.

            Zach gave her another look before he grumbled something. When she asked him to repeat himself he said, “I may or may not have covered his pants in itching powder.”

Excerpt

As promised, I said there would be an excerpt at some point. Well, here's a little something. Enjoy:

When they reached thirty yards Charlie felt somebody close in on her left and she turned her head to see the faint outline of Rhodes. The Doctor made a point of taking out her ear bud and Charlie did the same. Rhodes’ voice was low when she said, “Trouble?”

        She fixed her gaze on Eliot’s form in front of them, following him around the edge of the room and towards a large ship. Aries was bigger than Redux and newer too. It looked more appealing than hers with smoother edges and a cleaner feel to it. But Charlie would take her old girl over the newer models any day of the week.

        “Maybe. I’m not sure.” She lowered her rifle and let the strap hold the gun to her chest as she let go. She pulled her handgun free and pressed the button that released the magazine. Charlie could feel Rhodes staring at her, but chose to ignore it as she pushed the newly released clip into a pocket on her vest and replaced it with a magazine that had a red dot. “Just to be safe,” she said back as she pushed her gun back into its slot and reclaimed her rifle.

        “You’re not filling me with confidence.”

        “You’ll be fine.”

        “That’s not what I mean.”

        Charlie glanced over to see a determined expression set into the woman’s features. Rhodes didn’t look at her and the Captain turned her attention back to the looming doorway that was open. “Whatever this is, we’ll get through it.” She took a quick step forward and laid a hand on Eliot’s shoulder. The man stopped and Charlie approached the door first. She swung her rifle into the doorway and eyed the sights on her gun. 

Happy Writing. 

I think I did it.

Finally, after sitting and staring, thinking, re-starting, muttering, cursing, sighing, wincing, pulling faces and internally crying, I think I managed a new start to Redux. Aries. 

As I said, I wanted to get a new start going before March ended and it's only the 16th. So I have succeeded. I also said that I would show you the new start, so, here ya' go. The fourth/fifth attempt at starting Redux: 

Charlie focused her blue eyes on the vastness of empty space before her and tried not to think about the lack of coffee in her cup. Despite the fact that it was nearing one in the morning and she’d be warned by Rhodes, their on board head Doctor, not to drink caffeine at such irregular intervals. But Charlie loved the dark substance too much.

            And they would be back on solid ground in less than three days anyway. A smile curled her lips as she sunk further into the pilot’s seat. Her feet were crossed at the ankles and propped on the control panel, a bad habit she’d picked up from Zach, her pilot, and let her close for a brief moment. She let the light hum of the ships engines lull through her, settle deep and low in the depths of her bones and provide a comfort to her. It wasn’t anything noticeable, but once you’d been flying in space, deep space for years, a person started to feel it.

            She opened her eyes again and looked at the screens in front of her. The entire wall before her was a slight with four large screens that showed the view to each side of her ship Redux. Once they were back in flight the views would change to the front of the ship across all four screens. The stars winked at her. They spoke of untold secrets waiting to be discovered. But the stark contrast of the pervading black turned her stomach with an uneasy jump. The black went on forever.

            Those thoughts were shook from her head and replaced with the idea of fresh oxygen, rather than the recycled air the crew were forced to breathe so far away from Earth. Fresh food rather than the re-heated food packages. And Arreton lake. It had double in size over the years and Charlie loved to spend her time off in the quiet areas of Hale Common. The small area had withstood time and despite the fact that it was quiet and almost deserted at the best of times, it was one of the few places she could keep to herself.

            The cup that sat in her hands, cradled against her chest to trap some of the warmth inside, was brought to her lips. She pushed a loose strand of blonde hair behind her ear and eyed the little clock in the corner of the bottom right screen. Twelve fifty three. Usually one of her pilots would be on duty, but both had been pulling awkward shifts that she hadn’t authorised. The first few days back on Earth were always spent with them sorting out their sleeping and Charlie would often shoo them to their rooms. Her sleep cycle could be sacrificed. Theirs couldn’t. 

            She sipped at the last dregs of warm coffee and pulled the still warm cup to her chest with pursed lips. 

Happy Writing. 

100!

This is post #100 and to make it feel a little more special I'm gonna put up here a scene I've just added. It'll sit right at the start of the story, and I want to ask you a question. Do you, as the reader, want to see if he makes a connection? Or should I clear it up later? I know for a fact it will be referenced later on but I'm wondering if adding an extra scene to show who McCallister is calling is warrented.

Enjoy:

McCallister walked the length of the ship. Everybody else was in bed and asleep, or at least he hoped they were. He’d been having trouble getting there and his body was too wired. Excitement about being home circled his body with joy. Redux had had to pull a double shift straight after a triple delivery job to some of the stations out here. Sixteen weeks of pirate duty had followed ten weeks of deliveries. A little over six months, with a few days off here and there, had been grating on him. He needed to be home.

            He’d already walked from his quarters to the end of the ship when he got an urge to call home. With a sigh he moved to the Captain’s quarters and knocked. Whenever that urge arose the Captain had always let him use her quarters and transmission signal to call home. He was a private person and he frowned on the day the crew found out. No answer greeted him and he knocked again. With a frown in place he pushed open the door an inch and stopped. She was already up, somewhere on the ship.

            He closed the door and turned, forcing his combat boots to lightly tread over the metal flooring. There was one place in mind and he moved down the corridors and down a flight of stairs until the gym came into view. The sound of jingling metal, the sign of weights being lifted, caught his ear and he pushed the door open.

            On one weight bench, the furthest from the door, sat the Captain with a hefty amount added to the silver pole. Silently he crossed the room and stood at the head of the bench. Her eyes met his and she pushed on the metal bar, pushing that and the weights up into the air with straight arms. “Yes Lieutenant?”

            “You need a spotter.”

            “I’m fine.”

            She brought the bar back down to her chest and pushed. “As your Second in Command I feel I should remind you that you tell us to train in pairs.”

            “And you should know that as the Captain I break my own rules.”

            A smile lifted the corners of his mouth. The Captain pushed the bar straight back up. Mentally he checked how much weight she was benching, 80 kg, and nodded. “Zach and Soko still on the bridge?”

            “Soko is. I’ve ordered Zach to get some sleep. We’ll be home in two days and he needs to fix his sleeping before then.” He nodded. Zach had a bad habit of breaking the basic rules of life. More often than not he became a night owl. Nothing but the sound of metal pushing against metal filled the room for several minutes. “Add five for me?”

            He nodded and grabbed two 2.5kg weights, adding one to each side. He watched in silence as she pulled the bar down and struggled to lift it back up. If anybody else was pulling the same stunt he knew the Captain would have them, he would too. But this was a normal occurrence aboard Redux. “I was wondering if I could call home,” he said.

            She pushed the bar up and nodded. “Go ahead.” He nodded and continued to stand there, hands by his side in case he needed to move and fast. She didn’t move. Just lifted her eyes up to him. “What are you waiting for?”

            “I want to make sure you’re not going to crush yourself Captain.”

            She laughed and the weights wobbled in her grasp. His hand came up but she shook her head and put the bar back where it belonged with a relieved sigh. “I’m done for the night.”

            He nodded and took a step back, waiting. The Captain pulled herself up and threw a towel over her shoulder. After a few moments of silence she sighed and rolled her eyes. “It’s almost one in the morning. Go make your call before it gets to be too late.”

            “Yes Ma’am. Just don’t let me find you back here.”

            “I’ll take a walk. Relax my muscles.”

            He let a smile loose and moved off back through the ship until he came to the Captain’s quarters and pushed on the door. It was closed again and he turned the screen on. It took a few seconds to load but he tapped on the ‘call’ button, dialled up the number from mind and waited. 

Sneak Peek

Hey guys, who wants a sneak peek into what happened to Captain Dixon and his crew? Who wants to see what their mission was and get a sneaky look at what they've been doing? You do? Let me know what you guys think, here ya go:

“Where were you?” McCallister said, “And what the hell happened?”

            Dixon sighed and pushed his chair back. “Hell’s one word for it.” He moved behind the counter that separated the cooking area from the dining area and a cupboard below his knees. “Four months back we were called in to deliver a bunch of prisoners to some new off planet prison facility that had just been built. A half full bottle of amber liquid hit the counter and he opened another cupboard above his head. The sound of clinking glass lifted the corner of Charlie’s mouth. Four glasses were pulled down. “Top secret facility and mission. It was need to know.”

            Rhodes pointed to the glasses and bottle, “I don’t approve of you drinking Captain. I don’t care if you out rank me, but if you take one sip of that stuff and I will cuff you to a bed in Medical.”

            Charlie chuckled and watched as Dixon didn’t mess with orders, shoving one glass back into the cupboard above him. “It was supposed to be a simple job, we escort the prisoners, hand them off, make sure they’re secured, take a quick look at the security of the place and come back out again.”

            “Something went wrong,” McCallister said.

            Dixon nodded and brought back the three glasses that held an inch of amber liquid in each one. He sat them down in front of the three crew members of Valhalla and retook his seat. “The scientists wanted us to hang around and head of security doubled this opinion. Command authorised us to hang around an extra couple of weeks.”

            There was a tone to his voice that had Charlie frowning. “Two weeks to help with security.”

            The other Captain gave a nod, “My thoughts exactly.” He tilted his head to one side with a sigh. Charlie picked up her glass and sipped. Rhodes pushed hers away and McCallister took his with a wry smile. “But we stuck around, thing was the scientists wouldn’t let us go anywhere. Their security could come and go where and whenever they pleased. But us?” he shook his head and picked up Rhodes’ glass, taking a sip before the woman could say anything. She just glared and Charlie tried to refrain from laughing. Dixon liked to push the buttons on Doctors. He smirked as he put the glass down and let it sit for a few seconds before the smile disappeared. “We did our job though. We stuck around, bored, getting more bored with each passing day. Before you know it two weeks pass and we ready to depart. Only our ship wouldn’t work.”

            Silence surrounded them with a company of frowns. Charlie was the one to speak after gently setting her glass down on the table, “What happened?”

            Dixon’s eyes fell to the glass he’d claimed and he sighed. “Johnson and Hill were in engineering, looking over the engine when something happened. We’d locked up the ship, standard protocol, but they were talking missing valves and pulled wires when they went silent.” Charlie just cocked her head and waited for him to continue. “I grabbed my side arm, told Carter, my First Officer to come with me and my Second Officer, Hickman, to be wary. Something was off, we could all feel it.” A pause and Charlie caught the odd look McCallister was giving her. There was a slight narrowed look to his eyes and the deep look let her know that he was thinking that something weird was going on, that nothing but trouble awaited them. “Then the lights went out. Emergency lighting came on,” he passed a look about the room, “much like it is now, and we hurried up. We got to engineering to find Johnson and Hill unconscious. Then the doors closed and we were locked in. The next thing we hear is gunshots, firing all about the ship. Capello’s voice comes over the comms, telling us there’s a couple of people on board trying to get into the bridge. Hickman had sealed it off and she was shouting, there was banging, a burst of bullets and then silence.”

Happy Writing

Have a sneak peek

I may have mentioned that I've been re-writing Aries (of course I've mentioned this) but also that a lot of it has changed from the first draft. With that in mind I'm going to give you a scene or two that did not exist up until now.

Tell me what you think:

Her gaze was fixed on the holo-picture that hung on the wall. A group of young fresh faced recruits grinned at the camera with naïve innocence. A faint smile pulled on the corners of Charlie’s mouth and she let green eyes take in every joyous grin and the twinkle in every pair of eyes. A little over fifteen years ago that picture had been taken. Dixon’s face was young, clean of any blemishes the Third War had left. All of those faces she could put a name to and had even made an effort to search out after the fallout of the war. Not including herself and Dixon there was only another two, out of the fifteen in the holo-picture, that made it out alive. One of those survivors hadn’t made it past the Psych ward in UNC’s medical ward.

            The lighting flickered and Charlie pulled her gaze away from the holo-picture to stare at the single red light in the room. It pulsed twice and shut down, encompassing the Captain in a swill of dark. She sighed. Losing power completely had been inevitable. She had hoped that they had a little longer, perhaps a day or two, before it ran out. For a moment she closed her eyes.

When she opened them again they found the holo-picture once more. Third from the right, one arm slung over Dixon’s yet to be defined shoulders, with a full toothed grin was her. They’d met in training, had been shoved into the same group. Then the war came, they were separated and it took years for them to reconnect.

She pushed herself to her feet, grabbed her rifle and let it hang in her fingers by her side, the torch on, as she moved to Medical. Rhodes would scold her but she needed to catch up. If her watch was accurate she’d been alone in the Captain’s room, Dixon’s room, for a good ninety minutes. That was more than enough time by her books. When she entered Rhodes and Nelson were busy checking on Murphy and Dixon and Charlie noted Hunter stood nearby with the torch of her rifle lighting up the working space for the two Doctors. “You okay Hunter?”

The woman turned and nodded. “Yeah, they’re just keeping an eye on me.”

Charlie nodded once and stepped through the room until she came to the side of Dixon’s bed. Nelson was overlooking him and offered the Captain a glance. “He’ll live. At least he won’t be needing the machines.”

She turned her eyes onto the other Captain and sighed. “Thanks. Mind if I talk to him?”

“Give me a minute to wake him up.” Nelson turned to a tray of equipment, including some vials and he selected one, thanks to the light coming off Hunter’s rifle, and turned back to the bed. “Rhodes mentioned you’d want to talk to him at some point.”

“Yeah.”

The needle, once filled from the small vial, was pushed into Dixon’s arm. “Okay, give it a short while and he should be awake.”

Charlie nodded, drew the curtains and sat the rifle on the end of the bed. It illuminated the small space just enough for her to catch the bruises and cuts that dotted the bare skin of Dixon that she could see. She winced at the thought of what was underneath. She settled her hands on the edge of the bed, eyes fixed on the closed lids.

She tried to recall the last time they’d spoken, or met. Drinks, seven months ago. In a bar in the back streets of the city, where nobody cared where anybody came from or what they did. Everybody to their own. His crew had finished a patrol and were taking a few months leave before they were pushed into another job for the long haul. Command pointed you jumped. That was the way the UNC worked. “What about you?” he said.

“Ah,” she put her glass of beer back onto the table and nodded. “We’ve got a few courier jobs to do before we go out for patrol. Bit of a break then patrol once more.”

“Double booked?”

She smirked. “We may have missed our last patrol. Hunter and Nelson may have had an accident and our engine may have stopped working mysteriously.”

Dixon laughed bright blue eyes, the corners creasing with humour. “Of course. And you wonder why Command demoted you.”

“I never questioned that.”

“Bullshit. Three times they did that and each time you became cranky and a hard ass.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, the smirk giving away to the tone. “Three times. Nobody gets demoted three times.”

He gave a single laugh and finished off the last dregs of his beer. “You do. It’s a miracle you’re still in the UNC.”

A loud smack attracted their attention and Charlie found the source, two men were starting a fist fight. She picked up her glass and leaned back in her seat. Dixon did the same and the guy who had instigated the fight fell onto their table. “Some days I ask myself the same question.”

He frowned at her then. “You want to get kicked out?”

The men struggled on top of the table for a few moments before the two Captains looked at each other, rolled their eyes and grabbed the side of their table, forcing it away from themselves. The two men rolled onto the floor with a  thump and they pulled themselves back into place. “You haven’t noticed?”

His frown didn’t leave. “Noticed what?”

She sighed. “Hunter has these theories.”

“She’s the one who nobody wanted right?”

Charlie nodded. Hunter was a lot to handle and she could handle the other woman. “And now, I’m starting to wonder about those theories too.”

There was a pause and the only sounds to fill the room were idle conversations from other patrons and the bawling couple. Those two had managed to get themselves kicked out of the door at that point. “What’s Hunter doing in UNC if she thinks all of this?”

“She’s a good soldier. Would put a lot of the older men to shame.”

Blue eyes flickered precariously open and Charlie shoved that conversation out of her mind. She missed that bar. Nobody from the UNC ever made it that far into the city’s underbelly, leaving it free to talk about whatever one wanted. It had been their recluse when the job had pissed them off. “Am I seeing things?”

She laughed. “No. It’s me. How you doing Mark?”

He groaned and pinched his eyes shut. “What do you think?” She couldn’t help the chuckle she released and let it subside into nothing but a smile. “Where’s the lights?”

The smile disappeared and Charlie ducked her eyes. “We performed an emergency docking with Aries. We did the standard sweeps and next thing I know somebody’s on Valhalla ripping it away from Aries and I’ve got three unconscious crew dumped in a pile.”

Dixon snapped his eyes open. She waited, letting the quiet voices of Rhodes, Nelson and Hunter fill in for them. “They ripped it away?”

“Docking with another ship is going to be a problem.”

“Fuck,” he moved to sit up, winces following his every movement and Charlie stepped back as he swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Murphy. How’s Murphy?”

“She’s fine. I’ve got Rhodes taking good care of her.” He simply nodded, his eyes staring off into the dark. “Dixon?”

“Yeah?” he moved his head but his eyes were fixed on their spot on the curtain.

“What happened?”

Charlie opened her mouth to speak when Hunter’s voice called, “He did what?”

            The Captain sighed, turned away from Dixon and drew back the curtain. Eliot stood in the doorway to Medical, the light on his rifle pointed at the floor. The engineer spotted her and nodded his head. “Captain.”

            “Who’s done what?”

            It was Hunter who spoke, “Torres went and used the last of our power to hack UNC. Not fix the ship but hack Command. That idiot!”

            “Calm down,” Charlie said and she turned to Eliot, “is he still in engineering?”

            Eliot nodded. “McCallister is with him. Told me to scram.”

            She frowned and started to move around the Kenyan. Rhodes voice stopped her two feet from the door and Charlie turned to see Dixon and Rhodes standing off. “Doc?”

            Rhodes turned with a glare, “Tell him to get back to bed.”

            Charlie lifted her eyes to Dixon. He just raised his brows and Charlie sighed. “Dixon’s with me, Rhodes come with us. The rest of you stay here.” She moved down the corridor and ducked her head into engineering.

            “All you had to do was get us moving!” McCallister.

            “I know that!” Torres.

            Charlie narrowed her eyes and stepped into the room to see the taller Lieutenant towering over the smaller Sergeant and neither were going to back off. She waited as they stood off against the other. When they refused to notice her she cleared her throat. McCallister turned his head first, uttering a single, “Captain,” which made Torres turn and take a step back.

            “Why’d you do it Torres?”

            The shorter man set a firm expression on his features and stepped forward, an electronic tablet held out in front of him. “Because I hoped that we could let them know our situation. Turns out we’re not in any situation.” She frowned and Torres sighed. “According to any official reports we’re still on patrol. There is no distress beacon and we haven’t contacted Command. Hunter was right. Something is up.”

            “That can’t be right,” Dixon said.

            “Did you read it right?” Rhodes said.

            “I know how to read Rhodes! Fact remains Command have no idea about what we were ordered to do. There’s no record of us going off track to investigate Aries and no record of us contacting Command. As far as everybody is concerned we’re still on patrol.”

            “Alright,” Charlie said and she snatched the tablet out of Torres’ hands. Her eyes fell to the tablet. “Is this what you found?”

            “Every bit of it. It’s all there.”

            She nodded and took three slow, idle steps about the room, her eyes turning down the tablet in the dim light of the torch on her rifle. The more she read the more she frowned and felt the worry turn her stomach. “Charlie?” Dixon’s voice lifted her head to face him, “Is he serious?”

            Charlie sagged and held out the small tablet to the other Captain. He took it, brought his own torch up and started reading. “I don’t know why,” she said, “but Command have no knowledge of Aries being in trouble and us being ordered to assist you.”

            McCallister said, “Admiral Matthias?”

            She shrugged, thoughts itching at the back of her mind. “I don’t know. Maybe he knows something, maybe he doesn’t. Perhaps the information hasn’t entered the system yet or maybe it’s a glitch. For now,” she turned to Torres, “let’s work on getting some power back online.”

            Torres shook his head. “I can’t."

Happy Writing.