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.
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