Chapter Text
People seemed to sign up for everything these days, when mouths flew in the canteen or in the dorms, everyone seemed to have their own reason for serving. Some were more honourable than others, fighting for a cause they believed in, or wanting to get revenge on the, that killed their family or friends. Some were less so, looking for money, a place to stay, or just wanting to fly a cool ship. They didn’t mind, the recruiters that is, as long as you could hold a gun, or fly a fighter, they couldn’t give less of a shit why you were doing it.
I don’t know where I sit on that line. Between honourable reasons and dishonourable ones, I don’t really remember why I signed up, it just seemed like the right thing to do. I didn’t want to protect my planet from invasion, it could do with one. I had no comrades to avenge, no need for the adrenaline you get from flying, or the calm from a perfect shot. I guess years of seeing billboards calling your name to recruit made you think that there was only one place right for you.
There was something comforting about being reduced to a number. All the books I’d read as a kid about heroes put in chains, rebelling against their masters for addressing them as a number and not a name. We all had callsigns, numbers, and real names. Callsigns were for comrades, numbers for officers, and real names. Well. You didn’t share your real name.
The lounge rooms were never particularly inviting, a few couches and chairs littered around a room. The Walls white, ceiling white, uniform mostly white, I think I guessed the Armadas favourite colour. Off duty was no less intense than on duty for some, some found it easy to relax. To tell tales of their achievements to the rest of the group, or just go to bed. I found it more difficult, eyes everywhere, ears everywhere, I never felt alone.
You saw the occasional accused spy being dragged through the halls by their shoulders, tears streaming down their face, kicking and screaming about how they didn’t do anything. Only to never be seen again. Some came back, and from their stories, it seems as if there was no line between guilty and innocent in the interrogator’s minds.
Talking was the only outlet you got, a couple of hours per day between duty and sleep. I preferred a quiet conversation between me and someone else. Instead of the large boasting that some preferred to do. Tales of how they did a triple barrel roll before hitting an XI unit directly, all in the vain hope that the beautiful girl on their arm would lean in that little bit closer.
I had my head laid back towards the ceiling, sitting on one of the more isolated chairs in the corner. I’d go to the dorm soon and try to get some sleep soon, I didn’t much see the point in socialising like this. One slip of the tongue could have you reported and gone, one argument gone too far, one too many drinks. It was too much of a risk. There wasn’t a single person here who I felt I could hold a truthful conversation with. All of them except…
“Hi Cass.”
I stood up sharply before realising that he was standing right above me, slamming my head into his jaw. He yelped out in pain before giving me a light smack around the head, waving away attention from the several stares coming from across the room.
“I’m so sorry, does it hurt?” I asked, reaching a hand out towards his jaw.
“It’s all good, don’t worry about it.” He paused slightly before clutching his jaw in pain, a cut had started to open where I caught it with the emblem on my beret.
“Ok, let me take you to the infirmary.” I said taking his arm and leading him out.
He stood his ground, he was stronger than me, and as I yanked at his large frame, I couldn’t get him to budge.
“Come on. It’s getting on your uniform.” I said, pointing to the blood dripping onto his shirt.
“Not until you say hi back.”
“What?”
“I said hi to you, you didn’t reply.”
“Oh, for fucks sake.” I mumbled, “Hello Elis.”
A grin spread onto his face, before he relented and followed me. I led him out of the room, lightly apologising to the conversations we had interrupted, trying to ignore the many prying eyes of my comrades. It was a relief to be out in the halls again.
“How goes it down in the great engine.”
“Hot as always.”
I worked down in the engine room, just doing basic corrections of the ships course, but Elis liked to make everything dramatic. He was an electrician, moved about the ship a lot, just fixing things. Like usual, his hands were covered in oil at the moment, and I refused his offer of a hug until he washed them.
He refused to let me take him to the infirmary, instead going into our room to pick up a couple of plasters. His uniform as well had a few drops of blood on it, and I immediately passed it into the laundry hole, you put it in there and it came back out clean. Who knows how, magic maybe. We sat in silence for a few minutes as we waited for his clothes. He sat in his towel on the bed, flicking through a manual for some new ship they were bringing to the base.
“Good read?” I asked jokingly.
“It is actually, they say it’s the quickest one they’ve developed yet.” He replied without taking his eyes off the page.
“We already have the quickest, it’s a question of whether they can survive one shot, right? Otho went down with a scratch, nothing more.”
Elis made a tiny finger point towards the ceiling and eyed me up, an indication that we were being listened to, and that I should shut up. I got the message and promptly stopped talking.
His clothes swiftly popped out and he slipped back into them, making me face the wall as he did so. These were just his overalls, we both had them for work, why on earth they made us wear the usual white I do not know. I always came back from the engine covered in black oil in splotches, Elis always joked it made me look like a cow.
“In the rooms?” I whispered.
“Apparently, they’re stepping up security on the base. I heard from a friend on the bridge.” Ellis said, scratching his head.
“Christ. We’re a research vessel stationed in the middle of nowhere, and they give a shit what we say in bed?”
“It seems so. Just be glad there’s no cameras in there still, lest they see your push-up form during exercises, I think they might just have you court martialled.”
I punched him lightly on the shoulder. “It’s not that bad!”
“Oh please, your back is bent more than a goddamn pretzel.”
We both laughed, but now he had made me hungry for pretzels.
“Fancy some dinner?” I asked.
“Alright, where do you fancy? I know a great Italian place nearby.”
“I was thinking the canteen?”
“A truly excellent choice.” Elis replied, grinning.
It was a short walk, I had been stationed on larger vessels and stations before, but after recent expansion across the entire Armada, troops were spread out further and further on different ships. They were surprisingly nice at letting you choose to be transferred with someone else, they believed in the comradery that having friends brought. Constantly encouraged us to make brothers and sisters of our crewmates.
The purpose of this specific station, OLS Erasmus (Our lords ship), was to simply float around planet after planet, scanning for any activity. Whether that be rebels, or sheep, was up for us to figure out. With a crew of no more than a hundred, we were stretched pretty thin. Researchers made up maybe thirty members, 10 on the bridge, 10 of us down in the engine, and the remaining 50 worked on the running of the ship. Chefs, electricians, plumbers, etc.
The corridor to the canteen narrowly snaked round the outside of the ship, before going into the centre and opening up into a wider area. You slid your tray along as various unappetising morsels were dropped onto it. It wasn’t so bad, at least we got to eat. You couldn’t say as much for some of the citizens under the reign of The Sovereign.
We had been drilled on it in school, The sovereign, not the specifics of it, just the fact that we’d been at war with them for as long as anyone could remember. Human at least, Arthur remembered, Arthur remembered everything, even from before the space age, when humans still lived exclusively on earth. Nowadays earth was still a major colony, but nothing more.
The two great powers of the galaxy, The Armada, ruled by Arthur, and the Sovereign, whom no one knew the leader of. Trust me, I’d seen my fair share of interrogations, and either every single soldier was so committed to their ruler, they were willing to withhold that information even as their very last fingernail was pulled out, or it was a mystery.
As we sat down, Elis pulled out a little card and made a notching on it. Deliberately in my eyeline, he clearly wanted me to ask what it was, so I obliged.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“My calendar.” he announced proudly, before pulling it out again to show me. “It was a poorly drawn set of squares scratched into a piece of thick paper; he had just crossed out today’s date.
It was a tad disorientating having to continue using earth time, but it was insisted upon by Arthur, who believed that a stable time system across the empire would mean harmony among all of its peoples. Even if that meant waking up as the sun set.
Elis was waiting again for me to continue the conversation, and again, I asked.
“And what exactly are you counting down to.”
“Well, I’m glad you ask, as you know this vessel is currently floating somewhere around the Mu Arae Solar System. We have already covered 3 of the four planets, which means we’ll be moving on soon. That means we’ll be picked up by a transfer ship and dropped off at another system. But because of where we are, we’ll transit at the hub for this sector.”
He said it as if it had been rehearsed many times, there was confidence in his voice, but I could tell he was nervous for what he was about to propose.
“Where are you going with this.”
“Let me get there. I say we make it in 10 days at most, not too bad for a journey that far. At the hub, I say we resign.”
I paused, waiting for a laugh or for him to continue. “I’m sorry?”
“We resign.” He said again, more firmly this time.
“Why the hell would you want to do that.” I said whispering, leaning in closer. We were sat away from the largest groups in the canteen, but I didn’t want to risk it.
“Not just leave, we try out for the academy.”
“Elis what are you talking about, there’s no way we make the academy, if you want to be an officer just bide your time and work up the ranks.” I said, leaning back in my chair again.
“You know that’s never going to happen. Do you really want to spend your life floating around star systems looking for something that isn’t there?”
“Of course not, but I’m saying that the academy isn’t the way to do it.” I said sternly.
I had begun to raise my voice, which was always a bad thing to do, I knew cameras would be focused in on us now.
“Leave it for now, talk about it after dinner, in the engine?” Elis proposed.
I sighed slightly, but agreed. Once Elis set his mind to something, it became extraordinarily difficult to try and convince him not to do that thing. He spent the rest of the meal trying to catch my gaze to gauge my reaction to his suggestion, hoping that I would go along with it.
He was right though, we couldn’t just stay as engineers on a ship in the middle of nowhere forever, wasting our lives away without ever really achieving something. The academy, as it says in the word, is an academy for young soldiers within the Armada who want to achieve more, whether that means becoming an officer, an elite pilot, or even just a really good engineer. If you succeeded within the academy, it came with a pay rise of course, but also a station on a larger ship. Nearer the front. So you could really make a difference.
Arthur said that every young man and woman within the Armada should strive to attend the Academy, that it was the pinnacle of learning within the entire Galaxy. I didn’t entirely believe all of that, but it sure was the way to get yourself up the ladder in the Armada.
We ate the rest of our meal in silence, leaving together once we had finished. I glanced back to see a droid take our trays and dump them into the waste disposal in the corner.
“Look Cass, you’re the smartest person I know, if anyone can get into the academy, you can.”
I hushed him once again. I know it was rude, but I just didn’t want to be caught out.
The engine was dark, and hot, but it was private. There were no cameras down here, believe me, we had checked. We had dragged a sofa down here once, but officers found it and moved it back to the common room, so we sat opposite each other on large pipes.
We sat in silence for a couple of minutes, each of us waiting for the first to start talking.
“Cass look, I’m sorry for asking but I feel…”
“It’s alright, I understand why you want to do this.”
“Just think about it, life on Tranuin, the great games, proper flight training. It’ll be heaven.”
“That’s if we get in, what if we don’t. we lose our jobs, no money to get off Tranuin, wed be trapped to a life of minimum wage jobs for the next ten years to even buy the transfer fee.”
I really wanted to go. I truly did, the Academy had been a dream of mine since I was a child, as it was for most children. But the consequences of failure were just too high at the moment.
“Then we join the troopers.” Elis suggested suddenly.
“You want to become foot soldiers.”
“As a last resort.”
“We’d be fodder for their war, there’s no glory to be found there.”
“Then we just have to get into the Academy. Cass, I’m going, I’m 20 years old, its my last year of entry. If we don’t go now then I’ll be stuck working here for the rest of my life. You see some of the people on this station, they’ve not seen solid ground for 50 years, do you really want that?”
“Elis I was born in space. This is my life.”
“Wouldn’t you change that if you could.”
Elis forced me to make eye contact, lowering his head down to meet mine. This was something he desperately wanted; I could tell.
“It’ll be a hell of a lot of study. And we’d have to beg for the transfer.”
Elis pumped his fist; he knew he had convinced me. He let out a joyous yell and hugged me, picking me up off the floor.
“Elis I’m being serious. We can’t half arse this, if we go for this, we do this for real.”
“I know I know; I was just worried I would have to go alone.” He spoke with genuine relief as he set me down, leaning back against a pillar.
“I won’t leave you.” I said, “I wouldn’t last a day without you, you know that.”
Elis smiled, I don’t know why he could convince me to do everything, but he could. This man was going to be the death of me.