I Would Become A Constellation (To Be Next To You), 1/6
Title: I Would Become A Constellation (To Be Next To You)
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Ninomiya Kazunari/Sakurai Sho
Summary: Shuttle mechanic Ninomiya Kazunari has just been assigned to a new ship. It’s all going well until the Captain announces a special project that will test everyone aboard in unexpected ways. And it doesn’t help that Nino’s partner for this project is someone he can’t stand…
Notes/Warnings: A sci-fi slice of life romance!! All of the space/sci-fi jargon and terminology are borrowed from/inspired by Battlestar Galactica, but you don’t need to know that series AT ALL to read this. Title from this translation of Hitomi no Naka no Galaxy.
He was still getting used to the carpet.
It still smelled new, an artificially fresh scent that he knew couldn’t possibly last forever. Everyone from the captain down to the lowliest crewman wore the same fleet-issued black boots. Though Nino doubted the captain would ever dirty the new carpets, the men and women doing the real work around here were going to tromp oil and grease from the flight deck into it in no time.
Ninomiya Kazunari considered himself one of those people.
Every ship of the line he’d been aboard in the last fifteen years had been built for efficiency, not comfort. His most recent posting on the Hakutaka was not what you’d call cozy. It was a sleek vessel built for combat and maneuverability, just like all of the exploratory ships that had ventured out into deep space.
The Hakutaka had been one of a dozen JSA ships that patrolled the edges of the system, always in search of a new planet or planetoid where a new colony could be established or resources could be mined. It was rare that the Hakutaka had to even open fire now that most of the pirate fleets had been neutralized, but she was always ready to keep the peace or make sure vessels from other Earth nations didn’t try to steal from or sneak around in JSA territory.
But things had changed. Expansion was no longer the highest priority. The Japanese population, both the millions still on Earth and the millions scattered across Japan Space Authority planets and space stations, had reached a comfortable number. It wasn’t growing exponentially each year like the populations of their Nigerian neighbors just one star system over. Japan was done growing for a while, and the need for so many exploratory ships had dropped.
Nino hadn’t exactly expected the Hakutaka to be decommissioned though. It hadn’t even been the oldest of her class, but then again, they’d had one of the larger crews, the second to highest number of Kitsune fighters aboard. The Hakutaka had apparently been quite the money suck for the JSA, so the decision had been made to decommission her, to reassign the crew to other vessels or to let them leave the fleet entirely for civilian opportunities.
Nino’s first assignment had been on a fuel freighter straight out of high school, save for a few months of basic training at JSA Mechanic School at Japan’s Mars colony. As one of the most senior enlisted crew on the Hakutaka’s flight deck, he’d been given his pick of assignments. He hadn’t even considered going back to civilian life. JSA paid too well, even if you weren’t an officer.
So now he’d found himself here, dirtying up the carpet aboard the JSA’s newest “brilliant idea.” For decades, the JSA had focused more on growth and expansion, mapping the star system that had been authorized centuries ago solely for Japanese exploration and settlement. Once the JSA had founded a new colony or a space station, it had been left to private contractors to get civilians moved throughout the system to populate those places.
Nino’s first trip to Mars for basic training had been aboard a clunky old ship run by a sleazy corporation called the Zip to Mars! Company. The exclamation mark should have been the first red flag. He’d been shoved in a room with twenty other people and all their belongings. Zip to Mars! wasn’t big on transporting cargo and people separately, as Nino had discovered when a woman’s great heap of suitcases fell on him when he was asleep one night, scaring him half to death.
And that had just been the Earth to Mars trip. JSA had colonies scattered throughout their assigned star system, several light years from Earth. Private contractors, even though they were known price gougers, rarely had the funds to install a Faster-than-Light drive to jump their ships those extraordinary distances. And the ones that did have FTL drives couldn’t jump very far. A person leaving Earth for a distant colony would have to make several stops along the way, and with prices rising, fewer people found leaving Earth to be the best solution.
So here Nino was, just finishing up his first month aboard the “brilliant idea.” His new posting was here on JSA-409, the Suzaku. Like the Hakutaka, the Suzaku had been an exploratory ship, but she was just about finished with her retrofit. Instead of being decommissioned, the JSA had turned the Suzaku into a transport ship. With her state-of-the-art FTL drive and massive size, the Suzaku would be able to safely transport civilians from Earth to even the furthest JSA colony within a few weeks rather than a year and with cost savings to those traveling.
The problem for people like Nino, used to the spartan accommodations of a battleship, was going to be all those damn people.
He’d known it when he’d agreed to be posted here, known that in addition to officers and crew that there’d be families aboard, but he hadn’t expected there to be so much…intermingling.
Nino’s crew quarters were on deck 8, port, but there were newly outfitted family quarters on deck 8, starboard. There were new family-friendly facilities for passengers like swimming pools, cafeterias and restaurants, a movie theater, even a park that had been created out of what had been the Suzaku’s training area for war games. He could already envision little kids zipping through the corridors, getting in the way. There’d be kids sneaking around in off limits areas, kids messing around with the computer panels on the wall. Nino just knew these things would happen. He’d been a kid before.
The Suzaku was currently en route to Earth from the New Miyagi Shipyards, a journey of about two weeks at standard sublight speed. Then they’d be leaving Earth with their first batch of civilians, with stops at Japan’s Mars colony, a couple stations in the asteroid belt, and then a jump out to the Kuiper Belt to one of Japan’s oldest colonies on the dwarf planet Haumea, New Hokkaido. After this “test run” that was mostly confined to the solar system, they’d head back to Earth and start going further afield.
He felt the squishy new carpet under his boots as he headed for the lift to take him down to his shift on the flight deck. For now the decks of the Suzaku were still full of the usual quiet. Officers and crew moving to and fro, coming off duty or heading for their own shifts. The ever-present hum of airflow and the gentle throb from the engineering decks. No screaming, no crying. And no stinky diapers.
Things were about to change.
-
But at least he had the Noris.
Emerging from the lift on deck 20, Nino pulled his yellow jumpsuit up from where he’d left it undone to the waist, jamming his arms into the sleeves and zipping it up properly to report for his shift. He pressed his palm against the computer panel, the computer greeting him in its soothing voice.
“Good morning, Petty Officer First Class, Crewman Specialist Ninomiya Kazunari.”
“Just call me Nino already,” he chided the computer, knowing it was a useless exercise.
The doors whooshed open, granting Nino the beautiful view. The flight deck was massive, five decks high and running the entire length of the ship. Toward the bow end of the flight deck were the two dozen Kit launch tubes, where in the past the Suzaku’s Kitsune fighter vessels would be propelled out into space to meet a threat or head out for standard patrols. With the retrofit and its more “peaceful” mission, the Suzaku only had a bare bones complement of Kits, six that worked in a three-shift rotation, one Kit flying alongside the Suzaku on either side at all times unless they were preparing for an FTL jump. Most of the tubes sat empty now.
The aft end of the flight deck was home to the Noris. The Norimono shuttles were really Nino’s second home. On exploratory missions, the Noris would serve as scouts or would transport crew planetside. Though the Suzaku had lost so many Kits, the number of Noris had doubled with its new mission. There were now fifty Norimono shuttles, some designed to carry civilian passengers aboard and the rest outfitted for their luggage and whatever belongings they were taking to their final destinations.
On the Hakutaka Nino had started out as a Nori mechanic. He liked them, even when others liked to disparage them as being nothing but “clunky school buses.” Nino always cheered for the underdog. They were reliable, their problems easy to diagnose. Nino felt that he was fluent in Norimono, that he could understand exactly what was wrong with them. After more than a decade of practice, Nino could perform a full inspection of a Nori, every single safety checkpoint, in about 20 minutes.
Even though he could inspect a Kitsune with his eyes closed, their language never spoke to him. It probably had more to do with their pilots than anything. Kit pilots were some of the most arrogant people in the entire JSA fleet. They were elites and they’d undergone rigorous training to pilot them. So they believed that they were the only ones who really knew how their precious fighter vessels worked. Tell a Kit pilot that he’s leaking coolant and be ready for war.
Nori pilots trusted the flight deck crew to keep their shuttles in top condition. Kit pilots were overly possessive since their stupid names were etched onto their personal vessel, their name and rank and their dumb ass callsigns. And they sure as hell didn’t respect the deck crew, who’d only been to Mechanic School, not Flight School. Nino would start a Kit inspection and spend half the time arguing with its pilot. It was not an efficient way to work, but bridge officers tended to not like it when a mere Crewman Specialist told a Kit pilot to “get the fuck off my flight deck or I’ll take your head off with my wrench.”
So Nino usually just held his tongue these days, doing as much of his inspection as he could when the pilots were off duty.
Taking the metal steps down to the flight deck itself, he felt at ease surrounded by all the other yellow jumpsuits. He couldn’t see any of the sleek black flight suits anywhere, the ones denoting a Kitsune pilot. He strolled over to the assignment board where his new senior officer, Crew Chief Okada, had laid out the day’s work.
Chief Okada’s handwriting left something to be desired, but he was happy to find the names “Ninomiya” and “Ohno” side by side again, assigned to a tune-up of Nori 17 and regular inspections of Noris 28-36. Nino was also glad to see Yamada was on Kit duty today, smirking when he saw it. Yamada was fresh out of Mechanic School, and much as Nino liked the kid, it was a rite of passage for all of them to work on the Kits and get through it without threatening to punt a pilot out the airlock.
He headed for the Deck Crew locker room, heading for his small locker and pressing his palm to the panel. It slid open with a gentle whoosh, and he tugged out his tool belt, settling it around his hips. Closing up his locker, he was unsurprised to find his new partner by the wall of lockers on the other side, snoring.
Until recently, Ohno Satoshi had been a third-shift mechanic, serving on the Suzaku for over ten years. He was still adjusting to his new call time. Even though they’d known each other barely a month, Chief Okada had already figured out that they made for a good team. On the Hakutaka, crew rotations were a common occurrence. Nino had worked with different people every day on the flight deck, and it made things a bit challenging. One day he’d be on a long-term assignment repairing a Kit, the next he’d be pulled off to help some juniors on the fueling crew fix broken hoses and nozzles. It kept him on his toes, but he hadn’t much liked the uncertainty, the problems with communication, having to rely only on the notes of the crewperson who’d been on that job the day before.
Already Nino found Okada’s leadership to be the polar opposite. While he still rotated assignments, he tended to put the same people together for longer stretches of time, figuring out who worked best with someone else rather than just jumbling things up day after day. Ohno said it was mostly because Okada “hated coming up with assignments anyhow,” but Nino found consistency to be the sign of a good mechanic.
Ohno was a Crewman Specialist, similar in rank to Nino. He was a few years older and with his years of experience he could have been a Crew Chief anywhere in the fleet. He’d even joined JSA before Chief Okada had, but he wasn’t much for being in charge, preferring to just do his job and stay under the radar. That lack of ego meshed well with Nino’s. They already had to be patient with the Kit pilots and with the pending influx of civilians. Having a jackass inspecting Noris with you all day would be tiresome.
Nino nudged Ohno’s boot with his own. “Oi, wake up.”
Ohno mumbled under his breath, putting a hand through his messy black hair. He was a little smaller than Nino was, with the personality of a grumpy uncle and the face of a bored child. And yet Ohno Satoshi knew his Noris and his Kits. Sleepy in the locker room, Ohno was quick thinking on the flight deck, his hands deft with repairs and his comments and orders succinct but clear. He tolerated Nino’s tendency for sarcasm, even laughed at his jokes here and there. And if Nino’s diagnosis was wrong, Ohno called him on it without acting superior.
Ohno looked up at him. “28 through 36 first, then?”
“Sounds good.”
Nino held out a hand, pulling Ohno to his feet. They left the locker room behind, Nino waving to a few other arrivals for first shift. The Nori shuttles lined the massive flight deck, half in their berths along the port side and the other half in berths along the starboard side. Shuttles departing the ship headed right up the middle, flying out the double set of airlock doors at the stern.
The Nori pilots had been in and out the last several days on short test runs, preparing for their eventual flights planetside when they arrived on Earth. The flight deck was bustling like always in preparation, mechanic teams running safety checks, performing inspections, keeping the shuttles fueled up. Chief Okada was far down at the end of the line, a small figure off in the distance standing beside Crewman Specialist Kojima, the woman who was responsible for operating the stern airlock doors during first shift.
Berths 1-25 were along the port side of the ship, 26-50 along the starboard side. Nino stepped over a fuel hose being tugged by some junior crewmen as he and Ohno approached Berth 28. Though they’d only been paired a few weeks, he and Ohno divided up the work evenly without having to really discuss it. For the first Norimono, Nino performed the physical checks, every single normal point of their inspection, while Ohno jotted things down on their crew tablet. Then they’d switch off, Ohno doing physical checks and going over every inch of space inside the next Norimono with efficiency while Nino kept a log of their work.
Nino let the flight deck noise become nothing more than a buzz in the background. Even the noisy airlock alarm, a sign that a Nori was in flight and heading out the first set of airlock doors and awaiting departure clearance out the second and final set of doors, didn’t bother him. He checked the computer systems, the wiring, the life support, all of his usual checks inside while Ohno backed him up with a visual inspection. Then he exited the shuttle, performing external checks, looking for weaknesses in the hull, missing components, any leaks.
Soon enough it was time for lunch, and he and Ohno had gotten through their first five inspections. Washing his hands and unzipping his jumpsuit, Nino settled it around his waist again to enjoy the cool flight deck air against his bare arms. He was clad as usual under his jumpsuit in his standard issue gray tank top, happy for a break from the heavier jumpsuit. He followed Ohno to the flight deck cafeteria where poor Crewman Yamada was unable to touch his food since he was getting an earful from a Kit pilot.
“You smeared grease all over my instruments, Yamada!” the Kit pilot was hollering, standing there in his black flight jacket and slacks, even though Nino knew quite well that he wasn’t flying patrol until second shift started in a few hours. “They’re extremely delicate, and you should very well know that if I can’t read through your damn smudge it puts me at risk out there!”
“I…I was going to wipe it!” Yamada pleaded.
“Are you talking back to me? I should make you lick it clean with your tongue!” the pilot screeched.
Ohno elbowed Nino and snickered gently. “Okadacchi isn’t very nice, giving Yama-chan his first Kit inspection with him.”
“Him” being Lieutenant Matsumoto Jun, a Kitsune pilot with nearly ten years of flight experience and one of the best of the best. And he wanted to make sure you knew it, especially if you were a lowly mechanic with grease on your fingers. He’d served on the Hakutaka with Nino the last seven years, and Nino had a lot of respect for him. Matsumoto had seen a great deal of combat, was known throughout the fleet for his finesse in the cockpit. But he had a real stick up his ass, and he didn’t much appreciate it when Nino reminded him of it.
While Ohno headed for the food line, Nino walked up, trying not to laugh when he saw the tears of embarrassment in poor Yamada’s eyes. “Jun-kun,” he said pointedly, putting his hand on the pilot’s shoulder and offering a gentle squeeze.
Matsumoto was the textbook definition of hotshot pilot, the kind who would have been at home on a JSA recruitment poster. “Join us and you can be as awesome as this guy!” He was infuriatingly good looking, broad shouldered and solidly built from all the muscle training he had to do to stay qualified to fly. It took a toll on your body if you weren’t prepared. Even on the Hakutaka, a tightly-run ship, most people had cleared the way if Lieutenant Matsumoto was coming through. His piloting callsign was just as obnoxious as he was, the nameplate on his Kit saying “Lieutenant Matsumoto Jun - Mr. Perfect.”
It was a nickname he’d earned in Flight School, having achieved the highest scores in his class. The only person who saw through it all, at least on the Hakutaka, had been Nino. Nino who’d almost gotten himself a court-martial for a practical joke, swapping out Jun’s nameplate one day for one that said “Lieutenant Matsumoto Jun - Mr. Average.”
Jun wasn’t perfect. But he was a perfectionist, and even if it had always made Nino’s job more difficult, trying to tune up his Kitsune to his extraordinary standards, it had led to them becoming friends. Sort of. Jun preferred it if the flight deck crew was afraid of him, simply because he thought it would make them work just as hard as him.
Nino had never found him all that scary. Jun was just big on ceremony - everyone called him Lieutenant or by his stupid callsign. Even off duty, he was usually Lieutenant or Matsumoto. Nino suspected only Jun’s girlfriend, his mother, and Nino himself called him by his given name.
Jun finally stopped yelling at Yamada, shoving Nino’s hand off of him. “Don’t you have some child safety seats to install?” Jun barked at him. Once a Kit pilot, always a Kit pilot. He disparaged the “lesser” Norimono shuttles any chance he got, including their retrofitting progress.
Nino smiled. Jun was just being Jun. The interruption helped Ohno to wave over Yamada to safety at his table, and the young crewman scampered off, nearly knocking his cup of milk off of his lunch tray as he fled. Nino pushed on Jun’s shoulders, shoving him onto the cafeteria bench. “What brings you to our humble flight deck today, Lieutenant?” Nino asked.
Since most people had steered clear once Jun started yelling, he was able to speak with Nino in a more relaxed fashion. He was still in a bad mood though. “I have a patrol coming up…”
“…in, like, four hours,” Nino teased, sitting across from Jun and helping himself to the leftovers from Yamada’s tray. “Even if Yama-chan is new to Kits, it’s not going to take him four hours to clear you to fly. And he’s got Yoshitaka working with him. She’s been checking Kits for five years.”
“He’s gonna move something. He’s gonna break something.”
Nino did everything in his power not to roll his eyes. Years back Jun had had the same worries about him, but before they’d left the Hakutaka, Jun had admitted he didn’t trust anyone with his precious Kit more than he trusted Nino. But then, Nino had always liked the Noris better, and he’d barely given Matsumoto’s Kitsune a second look since the reassignment.
But Nino could read Jun just about as well as he could read a Nori with a malfunctioning fuel line. Something else was wrong. Nino pushed Yamada’s tray a bit, letting Jun help himself to one of the onigiri Yamada had abandoned. Jun took it without so much as a thank you.
Since the reassignment, Jun had been a real mess. In transferring from the Hakutaka, as one of the most skilled pilots in the fleet and likely one of the best on the ship, he’d taken the Suzaku assignment because he’d expected to be promoted to Flight Commander, to coordinate patrols for himself and the other five Kit pilots, to be entirely responsible for the Suzaku’s first line of defense.
He’d been passed over in favor of someone younger, mostly because she’d already been on the Suzaku at the time. Now Flight Commander, Eikura Nana was Jun’s superior officer, even though he had hundreds of hours more flight experience. Then again, she’d definitely earned her callsign, Upstart, in flight school, where she’d graduated almost a full year early. She was an incredible pilot, and Jun had finally admitted to being impressed with her leadership and skills.
So if it wasn’t his lingering grudge over Upstart’s promotion, then what was up his ass today?
“You’re being more of a tool than usual today,” Nino said, catching the dark flash in Jun’s eyes in warning. “Don’t tell me, they downgraded you to Nori pilot?”
Jun rolled his eyes. “If any other enlisted crewman talked to me the way I let you…”
Nino leaned forward, grinning. “Jun-kun, I like Yama-chan and I don’t want you frightening him off into some dreadful job for a private contractor. Talk to me.”
“Only the senior officers know this right now,” Jun said, lowering his voice, “but apparently Captain Inohara’s going to call a ship-wide meeting in the next few days. Flight deck’s the only place where they can hold all of us, that’s why I know about it. Upstart told me in confidence.”
“A ship-wide meeting?” Nino repeated, a bit shocked.
The last ship-wide meeting Nino had attended had been aboard the Hakutaka when Captain Higashiyama had announced the ship’s decommissioning. And before that, it had only been for memorial services or major itinerary changes. Everyone attended these meetings, from the Captain all the way down to the crew members responsible for cleaning out quarters and the ship’s common areas.
“Upstart didn’t know,” Jun admitted. “She’s the Kit Flight Commander and she doesn’t even know what it’s about.”
“It’s serious then,” Nino decided. “Can’t be a declaration of war or it would have been on the Net.”
“And we’d have been flying faster for Earth or out to some colonial patrol if that was the case,” Jun said.
“Have you met him before? The captain?”
Jun nodded. As a ranking officer, Jun had probably met the man when he’d first reported for duty. Enlisted crew didn’t get those kind of invites. The captain, the people on the bridge of the ship, they had little to do with Nino’s day-to-day work. Even Chief Okada reported in to people in Engineering rather than a bridge officer.
Inohara Yoshihiko was a younger captain, had seen combat here aboard the Suzaku against pirates from the Lithuanian and Latvian colonies a few systems over. He was well-respected in the JSA fleet. He wouldn’t call a ship-wide meeting for no reason.
“Just has me worried, that’s all,” Jun admitted. After all the efforts made to retrofit the Suzaku, had plans suddenly changed? What could he have to say that every member of the crew had to hear all together in one place? “Obviously you can’t tell anyone about this.”
“I won’t,” Nino promised, much as he loved to gossip. He didn’t want to get Jun in trouble, because then Jun would probably toss him out an airlock, friends or no. “Okay, now do your worst so everyone knows what a big tough guy you are.”
Jun got up from the table in a rage, Nino biting the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. “And you, Ninomiya, as Yamada’s senpai, you ought to teach him something as simple as cleaning up his greasy hands before he smears up my entire instrument panel. You got it?”
“Yes, Lieutenant, loud and clear,” Nino replied, offering a half-assed salute before Jun went stomping off to uphold his nasty reputation.
When Jun was gone, Nino headed over to where Ohno and Yamada were sitting. Ohno shook his head. “What’s he always so angry about?”
Yamada inclined his head, halfway to hopping off the bench so he could kneel down before Nino. “If you said something to Lieutenant Matsumoto on my behalf, thank you so much. Thank you, Ninomiya-san, thank you!”
Nino tried not to think about the upcoming crew meeting, the secret he had to keep, and instead just patted Yama-chan on the head, hoping Jun would eventually lay off him. “Just do your best, alright?”
While Yamada thanked him over and over, Ohno grinned, sharing the rest of his lunch with Nino.
-
When he and Ohno got to Nori 36, Nino paused. The shuttle door at the rear of the craft was wide open. “Ohno-san, does the log say anything about the aft exit hatch being open?”
Ohno looked down at the tablet in his hand, shaking his head. “Third shift finished their visual inspection, and I have it here that the aft exit hatch and the emergency hatches were all closed.”
Nino looked around. There were always people in and out of the flight deck, both Nori pilots and deck crew, but records were records for a reason. He stared at the open hatch. “Has Lieutenant Kitagawa been down here?”
Of all his Nori pilots, Kitagawa was the least likely to leave a damn hatch open, and as expected, Ohno shook his head. “No, she hasn’t logged flight time on 36 since yesterday. She’s supposed to be here in an hour for a test.”
“Alrighty, let’s see who our culprit is,” Nino said, walking up the shuttle’s short metal ramp. It only opened up and unfolded when the rear hatch was open. Nori 36 had been refitted as a civilian shuttle, the individual flight chairs that had been used for crew had been replaced with four rows of seats capable of seating twenty passengers for a short trip between a planet or colony and the Suzaku. He headed up the aisle, seeing that the thinner interior door that separated the passengers from the cockpit had also been opened.
Nobody was inside, but Nino frowned upon seeing that the computer panels were all lit up. The shuttle was empty but someone had left the lights on. Even if the ship’s main engine was off, it was still wasting energy.
“Nino!” came Ohno’s voice from outside, “someone just came out of 38!”
Nino turned around, running out of the shuttle. Ohno was still there, holding the crew tablet in confusion. In the next berth over, Nino finally noticed that Nori 37’s aft hatch was open as well. It wasn’t on their assignment list, but it was equally suspicious.
“Go into 36,” Nino said, “jot down everything the way it is. We’ll perform our inspection after noting down all the irregularities.”
“You got it,” Ohno said, already typing up his comments.
Nino headed around the rear of the berths along the bulkhead wall, seeing that their mysterious guest had left open 36, 37, and 38 in the same fashion and had apparently just gone into Nori 39. If Nino wanted to pretend he was in an adventure story, he’d take one of his wrenches from his tool belt, hold it up to protect himself. A thief, a murderer, a stowaway! Ah, but nobody could get onto the flight deck without clearance. It just meant someone wasn’t in the mood for following proper protocols today.
He headed up 39’s ramp, bypassing the rows of seats to find that someone had just sat down in the pilot’s seat inside the cockpit. The person, male, was clearly in his own world - he was just about to plug an external memory chip into the control panel when Nino cleared his throat.
“And what do you think you’re doing?”
Since the guy hadn’t managed to turn on the interior shuttle lights yet, Nino had been under the assumption that it was just another member of the flight deck crew. He was shocked when the man in the pilot’s chair pressed a switch on the panel, flipping on the cockpit lights and turning around.
Nino gulped when the man stood up, looking at him with a rather stern expression. He was in the standard dark blue crew uniform, a double-breasted jacket with silver buttons going down the right side, tucked in to the matching belted slacks, and wearing the same standard issue black boots Nino himself wore. The insignia at his collar was similar to Jun’s, the same rank, but instead of the little wings pin Jun wore just above the breast pocket of his flight suit, this man had a silver star.
This was a bridge officer.
Shit.
“What I’m doing,” the man said, his voice deep and serious, “is updating the star charts on these computers.”
Unlike Nino’s kind of sloppy mop of dark hair, this man, this Lieutenant rather, had his neatly trimmed and parted on the side, wispy black fringe covering his forehead. He was a little taller than Nino, his face round and his eyes tired. He’d be handsome if he didn’t look so angry right now.
Nino stood his ground. Bridge officer or no, this man was breaking protocols. Who would be updating a star chart on the Norimono shuttles? On the Hakutaka, the ship’s Chief Navigator usually just sent instructions along to the flight deck, had the crew install and update the charts. Of the Suzaku’s bridge crew, the Chief Navigator was…
“Lieutenant Sakurai,” the man introduced himself before Nino could remember. “I’m the Suzaku’s Navigator.”
“Crewman Specialist Ninomiya,” he said in reply, putting his hands on his hips. “When a shuttle door is opened, it has to be noted in the log. Any changes to the shuttles have to be noted in the log.”
“I always note it in the log upon completion.”
“Do you note it in our log, Lieutenant? The flight deck log?” Nino asked, trying not to sound as annoyed as he felt. Officers were this way sometimes, noting things in their own personal crew logs or in the logs for their departments. It was up to the deck crew to figure out everything that had been done behind their backs, to keep their own records up to speed.
At this, Sakurai looked irritated. “I send the updates from the Navigation log to Chief Okada upon completion. What he does with them is his business.” The man shoved the memory chip into his pants pocket, stepping away from the console. “I update the star charts in every Norimono and every Kitsune myself when they come in. For consistency’s sake.”
“That’s very dutiful of you,” Nino said. “And how often is that?”
“Every six weeks,” Sakurai snitted. “Crewman Specialist, will you let me do my job, please?”
Nino bit the inside of his cheek. No wonder he didn’t know what was going on. And with Ohno having worked third shift until recently, he probably hadn’t known either. “I’m a transfer. From the Hakutaka. I started four weeks ago.”
“Welcome aboard,” Sakurai said, scratching his cheek and not giving off very welcoming body language anyhow. “And now that you know what I’m doing, you are dismissed. Return to your duties.”
If Nino was smart, he’d do just that. He shouldn’t mouth off to a bridge officer no matter how lazy the asshole was about flight deck protocol. And no matter how much the guy seemed to like the sound of his own voice as he gave orders. Nino imagined that this guy and Jun would either get along tremendously or murder one another in five minutes trying to pull rank on each other.
Sakurai was just sitting back down in the pilot’s seat when Nino interrupted him again.
“If you don’t mind me asking off the record, sir, why did you start with Norimono number 36?”
Sakurai turned, glaring at him. “You’ve been dismissed. And you have to ask permission to speak with me off the record.”
“I think it’s a perfectly reasonable question, sir. Someone as obviously methodical as yourself, who personally updates every star chart on the Kits and Noris, would logically start in berth 1 and move up and down the line. I’ve been tasked with inspections for Norimonos 28 through 36 today and clearly you haven’t been in 28 through 35 or you’d have also needlessly left the hatch open and the lights on in those shuttles too…”
“Crewman Specialist.”
“Ninomiya, sir. It’s Ninomiya. I just thought it was an odd method of working, and since, like you, I like to keep good log records, I want to make sure I understood your reasoning…”
“Ninomiya.”
“…so that in six weeks when you come back and fuck around with my shuttles like this again, I’ll at least know about it and can make sure my records and the shuttles I’m responsible for are in order.”
Sakurai gaped at him.
Nino knew he’d crossed the line now, but he couldn’t help it. He inclined his head. “Sir.”
Sakurai sat back in the pilot’s seat, and from the reddened look to his face, he seemed to be holding back an outburst of what might be volcanic proportions. If only Jun was here to be impressed by it. Sakurai shut his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“You’re right.”
Nino blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re right,” Sakurai said, exhaling. He still seemed rather angry, but since he hadn’t yet stormed out of the cockpit to call a security team to have Nino thrown in the brig, Nino figured he wasn’t in as much trouble as he ought to be. “You’re right about it being strange for me to start at 36. You’re also right about me not properly logging my updates with the flight deck. It was laziness on my part, to notify Okada after the fact. He’s my friend, he never said it was a problem…”
“My apologies, sir. I’ve only been here a month. On my previous ship, such a thing was unacceptable.”
“You said you’re from the Hakutaka. Yeah, I’m not surprised.” Sakurai nodded a few times, as if gathering his thoughts. Nino watched him, stared at him in profile as he turned in the pilot’s seat, staring at the wall. “36 is Lieutenant Kitagawa’s shuttle. She used to be on the Navigation team with me. We worked together, she’s a good officer. When she switched over to Nori piloting, she asked for me to always install her star charts first so she could see what’s been updated. We’re a bit nerdy, those of us with stellar cartography as a hobby. It’s a habit I’ve stuck with, even if it’s a little silly.”
“Favoritism?”
“Friendship,” Sakurai shot back. “I can have them all updated in an afternoon, so updating hers first doesn’t really put her at too much of an advantage over her other pilots.”
“That’s cute, sir.” Nino smiled. “Off the record, of course, sir.”
Sakurai cleared his throat. “Not that I owed you any sort of explanation, but there it is. Now if you don’t leave this time, I will make a note of your insubordination in your personnel file.” Sakurai’s smile was a bit spooky this time, not at all as charming as he’d been while explaining his geeky friendship with the Nori pilot. “I’m very good about updating those sorts of records, Ninomiya.”
“Of course, sir. I’ll check in with Chief Okada to make sure that the flight deck logs reflect your efforts this afternoon.”
And before Sakurai could say anything else, Nino turned on his heel and left, realizing only now how hard he was breathing, how nervous he’d been. He had a big mouth, and sometimes he had trouble keeping it shut.
He found Ohno already halfway through the inspection on shuttle 36. Ohno’s eyes widened at the sight of him. “What the hell happened? You were gone so long! Who was it, a stowaway?”
Trust Ohno Satoshi to long for the same adventure on the flight deck that Nino had. “Worse,” Nino admitted. “A superior officer.”
Ohno clucked his tongue. “They do as they please, don’t they?”
This one especially, Nino thought, still feeling Sakurai’s angry glare on him, as though it was Nino’s fault for wanting his crew to have accurate records and for nobody to tamper with the god damn shuttles. Luckily the guy only came down to the flight deck every six weeks. Maybe Nino could switch shifts, avoid the guy in future. He certainly wasn’t eager to cross paths with him again.
At the conclusion of his shift, Nino pulled Chief Okada aside, explained the gaffes he’d made in dealing with Lieutenant Sakurai. Unexpectedly, Okada had laughed. “I’d yell at Sho-kun myself,” he said, describing the ship’s Navigator so casually, “but since he’s the one who jumps the ship and makes sure we don’t jump into the Sun, I guess I can’t stay angry with him, you know?”
Nino supposed the man had a point.
-
The message had gone out the previous afternoon, a memo to the entire crew straight from the bridge. It was just as Jun had told him the other day, that Captain Inohara wanted to hold a ship-wide meeting on the flight deck. It was scheduled for that evening at 1900 hours, and only a skeleton crew would keep the Suzaku flying, a handful on the bridge and the chief of engineering and some of her crew.
Nino wasn’t used to going down to the flight deck in his off-duty fatigues, the blue khaki jacket over his gray tank, the matching blue khaki trousers. Much as he liked his work, he preferred to keep it separate from his personal time. He found Ohno waiting for him at the lifts, his jacket unbuttoned and his fingers playing with the silver dog tag on the chain around his neck. Self-consciously, Nino pressed his fingers to the middle of his own chest, feeling the cool metal against his skin underneath his shirt.
“I wanted to check out the new pond they’ve got in the deck 12 park tonight,” Ohno complained as they waited for an available lift back down to the flight deck. “They said they were gonna stock it with fish.”
“Fishing. In space, Ohno-san?”
“Why not?” Ohno shot back, scratching an itch on the side of his nose. “I don’t care if the fish are synthetic or mechanical or whatever. Fishing is relaxing. I’d rather give it a go now before the you-know-whos come aboard.”
Nino grinned. Ohno was just as excited about the civilian passengers as Nino was. The flight deck was an especially dangerous place for an unauthorized visitor, and over the next several days Okada was having the Suzaku’s security team install extensive countermeasures at all flight deck entrances. Since the deck was so massive, there were plenty of places for little ones to try and sneak in, to dodge around crew reporting for duty.
Finally a lift arrived and they joined a few other scattered crew members inside. Once on deck 20, the usual secured entrance doors were wide open. Nobody had to scan in with their palmprint on the screen. Instead members of the security team with their stun pistols stood guard.
Nino and Ohno slipped around some of the other crewpeople, who didn’t know the deck like they did. A platform had been set up sometime after Nino and Ohno’s shift that afternoon, and Captain Inohara would address them all from the center of the flight deck facing aft. They found Yama-chan partway down the starboard side, sitting on top of Nori 43. Ohno headed up the stepladder Yamada had propped outside the shuttle, Nino following close behind. The Norimono’s pilot, Lieutenant Junior Grade Arimura, had only recently earned her wings and in gratitude for being assigned to the Suzaku straight out of Flight School, she’d been rather friendly to the crew who kept her shuttle in good order. Arimura waved as they joined her on top of Nori 43.
It was a much better view up here, Nino decided as soon as he and Ohno had sat down next to Arimura and Yama-chan. Most of the crew never came down here, and they all huddled in the center of the flight deck. Thankfully everything had been cleaned up nicely, and Nino took a little pride in that. He’d had to scold a few of his juniors earlier that day for spilling a tub of slippery coolant. At least they’d gotten the place clean again for the Captain’s announcement.
There were murmurs all around, from the crew in the center of the deck to the chatter happening on the top of other Norimono shuttles around them. Nobody knew what this meeting was about. Even Chief Okada, who’d had to help coordinate the event with the security team, was in the dark about it.
Was there a problem at the Japan Space Authority? Were more ships being decommissioned? Had there been an attack on one of the colonies or any other kinds of troubles? The Suzaku had remained on its steady course back to Earth with no discernible changes to its flightpath.
A few minutes later, the sound of the JSA anthem echoed throughout the flight deck. All crew members standing on deck stood at attention. Nino hurriedly pulled Ohno to his feet and along with Arimura and Yamada, they stood at attention as well.
He looked a lot friendlier in person than he had in his bio in the ship’s personnel database. The Suzaku’s captain, Inohara, stood on the platform, flanked on his left by his second in command, Executive Officer Nakai. To the captain’s right was someone Nino didn’t recognize, a woman in the same duty blue uniform as the captain and his XO. From this distance, Nino couldn’t see her insignia, but she didn’t seem to be a regular member of the bridge crew.
The JSA anthem quieted down, and Inohara’s voice boomed across the deck. “Thank you. At ease.”
Everyone relaxed, and once they saw crew on the other shuttles sit down, they did the same. And once Nino was seated, he had a feeling that this meeting was not about any attacks on colonies or decommissionings. For one, Captain Inohara was smiling brightly. Even Nakai the XO, notorious throughout the ship for being a ruthless practical joker, seemed to have a polite, genuine smile as well.
“You may be wondering why you’re all here today,” Inohara said.
“Obviously,” Nino mumbled, and Ohno elbowed him with a low chuckle.
“The Suzaku’s upcoming mission is not a normal one. Or as XO Nakai likes to say, those damn kids are coming.”
The crowd cracked up at that one. Nino was glad to know he wasn’t alone in being wary about it. Even the ship’s second-in-command was.
Inohara continued, his voice jovial and yet firm. “In less than two weeks, we’ll be in Earth’s orbit once again. We’ll then spend the next three to four days ensuring that one thousand, three hundred and thirty-eight Japanese citizens board this vessel safely. And then once we’re underway, we won’t be rid of them all again for another two weeks.” More chuckles in the crowd, but Inohara continued. “You’re not used to this. I’m not used to this.”
“Liar,” XO Nakai said audibly beside him, and there was more laughter.
Unlike most career officers, Captain Inohara was a married man. His wife was a professor at the JSA Academy in Tokyo, and together they had two small children. With the Suzaku’s new mission, Inohara’s family would actually be joining him on board, his wife planning to work remotely. If the first civilian passenger transports went well, JSA was said to be considering expansion of the program to allow family members of other officers to come aboard.
It was all a slippery slope, Nino thought bitterly. The more kids and clueless civilians aboard, the more risk. Traveling through space wasn’t as dangerous as it used to be, but there were still risks. External considerations like debris from an asteroid field or the rare but still possible pirate attack. Internal worries like radiation leaks, computer problems, hiccups in the life support systems. These first few voyages would have a huge impact on the future of Japanese space travel.
“I’ve heard your complaints and I’ve heard your concerns. How will these passengers affect my duties? How will these passengers affect my day-to-day experience aboard the Suzaku? How easy will it be for me to avoid them entirely? Do you notice a common thread here? My duties. My off time. This is how we’re thinking, and I’m not saying it’s right or wrong.”
“How will these passengers know that the milk bread in the crew cafeteria on deck 8 is off limits to them?” Nino asked aloud, hearing Ohno snicker.
Inohara held up his hands. “What we’re not thinking, Suzaku, is what it’s like for them. We’re academy graduates or we’re enlisted crew and all we’ve known since the day we were recruited is what ship life is like. We know our routines, we know our jobs. We know our expectations. But put yourself in their shoes. You’re a mother whose company has just re-assigned you to Amaterasu Station. You’ve got three children, and this new assignment is a five year contract. You’re not leaving your children. They have to go with you.”
Nino wondered what the hell Inohara was talking about, when he was going to get to the point.
“You have a long journey ahead of you to Amaterasu. It’s so far from Earth that the distance doesn’t even make logical sense. You want the safest journey for your children, the fastest journey because you’ve never left the Earth and the vacuum of space is scary as hell. You also don’t want to bankrupt yourself in the process. So you choose the Suzaku. It’s a good ship. But you know the crew doesn’t want you there. You’re a burden. You and your precious children are nothing more than human cargo to be transported. That’s what this mother would feel if she was here today. If she was here listening to the same complaints I’m overhearing.”
Ah, Nino realized. Don’t be jerks to the passengers was the theme of the meeting. Couldn’t the captain have just written this in his ship-wide memo? Why were they all here for this when the message was rather obvious?
“Today I’ve called you all here to get you thinking more like that mother en route to Amaterasu and less like grouchy JSA lifers.” Inohara gestured for the woman behind him to step forward. “I’d like to introduce you all to the newest senior officer aboard. She’s a clinical psychologist from JSA Medical, and starting today she will be serving with the rank of Lieutenant Commander in charge of Civilian Passenger Welfare. I know it’s a mouthful, but let’s warmly welcome Matsushima Nanako-sensei!”
There was applause amidst the confusion as Inohara stepped aside and Matsushima-sensei stepped forward.
“Try not to fall in love, Ohno-san,” Nino said, noticing how his friend was gaping at the attractive older woman. “She’s your senior officer.”
Ohno did his best to keep his mouth closed, to not drool all over Arimura’s shuttle.
“Good evening, Suzaku. I am grateful for both your patience and attention. Those of you assigned to Cargo Bay 5 may have noticed several new crates on your manifest labeled as JSA Medical supplies that were not to be opened or scanned. I thank you for keeping your curiosity at bay,” Matsushima said, her voice light and calm. “With both the permission of JSA Command and Captain Inohara, I am here tonight to introduce you all to a pilot program. A program designed first and foremost to put you into the shoes of that mother Captain Inohara was talking about.”
“Who is this mother and what has she done?” Nino wondered aloud, his ears perking up nervously at the idea of a “pilot program.”
“Executive Officer Nakai, if you’d be so kind?”
The entire flight deck started quietly murmuring as XO Nakai departed the platform, moving to a standard silver cargo crate a few feet away that Nino hadn’t even noticed was there. From their vantage point on top of Arimura’s Nori, they were able to watch Nakai open the crate and haul out…a bag of rice?
It seemed about the same size as a 10 kilogram bag of rice, but whatever material the bag was made of seemed much stronger, sturdier. It was a silvery material, and as Nakai carried the bag back to the platform, Nino saw that someone had earnestly drawn a face on it. Well, they’d drawn eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
“Your artistic stylings leave something to be desired, Nakai-san,” Inohara teased, chuckling merrily as Nakai stood there awkwardly with the rice bag.
Matsushima-sensei raised her hand for quiet, and the confused whispers finally stopped. “This program will be ship-wide. I don’t care if you’re the XO or the crewman who fuels up a Kitsune. Everyone will be required to participate. Without further ado, I would like to introduce you to Project Papa-Mama, an initiative of JSA Medical’s Family Psychology Institute.”
“Is she on drugs?” Ohno mumbled, obviously no longer in love with the Lieutenant Commander. Project Papa-Mama?!
“Assignments have been randomized,” Matsushima explained. “You will be paired with another member of the Suzaku crew. The only exception is that someone will not be assigned to their direct superior. That means, for example, that I will not be paired with Captain Inohara, since I report directly to him. For the next month…”
The murmuring rose in volume and intensity, and Nino saw Matsushima offer a knowing smile on the platform. She hadn’t expected this to go over well, had she? Finally Captain Inohara himself had to order everyone to quiet down.
“For the next month,” Matsushima continued, “you and your crew partner will take part in a parenting simulation. Your child may look like a sack of rice, but JSA Medical in conjunction with some of our best scientific minds have placed a sophisticated batch of sensors inside each sim-child. You and your crew partner will be expected to tend to the sim-child’s needs, logging your progress continuously. I know it seems a bit silly and I know very well that you all work very hard and have important duties here aboard the Suzaku…”
“Sim-child?” Ohno said, scratching his head. “I have to carry a bag of rice around like a baby?”
“…but this pilot program is designed to place you in the shoes of a parent. To better understand their needs and concerns, since this ship will soon be full of families. It is my hope that Project Papa-Mama will be both a fun and challenging exercise in empathy as well as a method of building friendships throughout the ship. Interacting with your crewmates in this manner will strengthen your bonds. The Suzaku will become a welcoming environment for the people who are completely uprooting their lives, moving across the system. Thank you very much for your time.”
And then the uproar began, shouts and complaints from one end of the flight deck to the other. Nino was still more confused and alarmed than angry. A month? They’d have to endure this nonsense for a month on top of their existing duties? On top of having to board and settle in more than a thousand civilians in less than two weeks?
Beside him Ohno was repeating the word “sim-child” over again, still not seeming to make the connection. To Ohno’s other side, Yamada seemed to be in shock while Arimura was just laughing at the chaos.
“Something funny, Lieutenant?” Nino asked her.
Arimura leaned over so she could meet his eyes. “We did a simulation like this in junior high school. But then, it really was just a bag of rice.”
Before the crew could complain anymore, XO Nakai called for quiet. Even with the strange sack of rice baby in his arms, his voice carried out decisively. Captain Inohara stepped forward once more.
“I know you’re all thinking this will be a waste of time, but if even one of you, if just one of you takes this program to heart and becomes a better person, a more understanding and kind individual, then I think that’s a good thing.” The captain straightened up. “Assignments have already been sent to you while this meeting was taking place. These assignments will let you know who you’ve been partnered with and where you can report to pick up your…”
Inohara looked back at Matsushima, who just winked at him. Inohara turned back around to face them.
“…where you can both pick up your sim-child to get started. Further directions will also be in your assignment messages. This program is one hundred percent mandatory. Lack of participation will result in an official reprimand in your personnel file. Dismissed!”
Part Two
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Ninomiya Kazunari/Sakurai Sho
Summary: Shuttle mechanic Ninomiya Kazunari has just been assigned to a new ship. It’s all going well until the Captain announces a special project that will test everyone aboard in unexpected ways. And it doesn’t help that Nino’s partner for this project is someone he can’t stand…
Notes/Warnings: A sci-fi slice of life romance!! All of the space/sci-fi jargon and terminology are borrowed from/inspired by Battlestar Galactica, but you don’t need to know that series AT ALL to read this. Title from this translation of Hitomi no Naka no Galaxy.
He was still getting used to the carpet.
It still smelled new, an artificially fresh scent that he knew couldn’t possibly last forever. Everyone from the captain down to the lowliest crewman wore the same fleet-issued black boots. Though Nino doubted the captain would ever dirty the new carpets, the men and women doing the real work around here were going to tromp oil and grease from the flight deck into it in no time.
Ninomiya Kazunari considered himself one of those people.
Every ship of the line he’d been aboard in the last fifteen years had been built for efficiency, not comfort. His most recent posting on the Hakutaka was not what you’d call cozy. It was a sleek vessel built for combat and maneuverability, just like all of the exploratory ships that had ventured out into deep space.
The Hakutaka had been one of a dozen JSA ships that patrolled the edges of the system, always in search of a new planet or planetoid where a new colony could be established or resources could be mined. It was rare that the Hakutaka had to even open fire now that most of the pirate fleets had been neutralized, but she was always ready to keep the peace or make sure vessels from other Earth nations didn’t try to steal from or sneak around in JSA territory.
But things had changed. Expansion was no longer the highest priority. The Japanese population, both the millions still on Earth and the millions scattered across Japan Space Authority planets and space stations, had reached a comfortable number. It wasn’t growing exponentially each year like the populations of their Nigerian neighbors just one star system over. Japan was done growing for a while, and the need for so many exploratory ships had dropped.
Nino hadn’t exactly expected the Hakutaka to be decommissioned though. It hadn’t even been the oldest of her class, but then again, they’d had one of the larger crews, the second to highest number of Kitsune fighters aboard. The Hakutaka had apparently been quite the money suck for the JSA, so the decision had been made to decommission her, to reassign the crew to other vessels or to let them leave the fleet entirely for civilian opportunities.
Nino’s first assignment had been on a fuel freighter straight out of high school, save for a few months of basic training at JSA Mechanic School at Japan’s Mars colony. As one of the most senior enlisted crew on the Hakutaka’s flight deck, he’d been given his pick of assignments. He hadn’t even considered going back to civilian life. JSA paid too well, even if you weren’t an officer.
So now he’d found himself here, dirtying up the carpet aboard the JSA’s newest “brilliant idea.” For decades, the JSA had focused more on growth and expansion, mapping the star system that had been authorized centuries ago solely for Japanese exploration and settlement. Once the JSA had founded a new colony or a space station, it had been left to private contractors to get civilians moved throughout the system to populate those places.
Nino’s first trip to Mars for basic training had been aboard a clunky old ship run by a sleazy corporation called the Zip to Mars! Company. The exclamation mark should have been the first red flag. He’d been shoved in a room with twenty other people and all their belongings. Zip to Mars! wasn’t big on transporting cargo and people separately, as Nino had discovered when a woman’s great heap of suitcases fell on him when he was asleep one night, scaring him half to death.
And that had just been the Earth to Mars trip. JSA had colonies scattered throughout their assigned star system, several light years from Earth. Private contractors, even though they were known price gougers, rarely had the funds to install a Faster-than-Light drive to jump their ships those extraordinary distances. And the ones that did have FTL drives couldn’t jump very far. A person leaving Earth for a distant colony would have to make several stops along the way, and with prices rising, fewer people found leaving Earth to be the best solution.
So here Nino was, just finishing up his first month aboard the “brilliant idea.” His new posting was here on JSA-409, the Suzaku. Like the Hakutaka, the Suzaku had been an exploratory ship, but she was just about finished with her retrofit. Instead of being decommissioned, the JSA had turned the Suzaku into a transport ship. With her state-of-the-art FTL drive and massive size, the Suzaku would be able to safely transport civilians from Earth to even the furthest JSA colony within a few weeks rather than a year and with cost savings to those traveling.
The problem for people like Nino, used to the spartan accommodations of a battleship, was going to be all those damn people.
He’d known it when he’d agreed to be posted here, known that in addition to officers and crew that there’d be families aboard, but he hadn’t expected there to be so much…intermingling.
Nino’s crew quarters were on deck 8, port, but there were newly outfitted family quarters on deck 8, starboard. There were new family-friendly facilities for passengers like swimming pools, cafeterias and restaurants, a movie theater, even a park that had been created out of what had been the Suzaku’s training area for war games. He could already envision little kids zipping through the corridors, getting in the way. There’d be kids sneaking around in off limits areas, kids messing around with the computer panels on the wall. Nino just knew these things would happen. He’d been a kid before.
The Suzaku was currently en route to Earth from the New Miyagi Shipyards, a journey of about two weeks at standard sublight speed. Then they’d be leaving Earth with their first batch of civilians, with stops at Japan’s Mars colony, a couple stations in the asteroid belt, and then a jump out to the Kuiper Belt to one of Japan’s oldest colonies on the dwarf planet Haumea, New Hokkaido. After this “test run” that was mostly confined to the solar system, they’d head back to Earth and start going further afield.
He felt the squishy new carpet under his boots as he headed for the lift to take him down to his shift on the flight deck. For now the decks of the Suzaku were still full of the usual quiet. Officers and crew moving to and fro, coming off duty or heading for their own shifts. The ever-present hum of airflow and the gentle throb from the engineering decks. No screaming, no crying. And no stinky diapers.
Things were about to change.
-
But at least he had the Noris.
Emerging from the lift on deck 20, Nino pulled his yellow jumpsuit up from where he’d left it undone to the waist, jamming his arms into the sleeves and zipping it up properly to report for his shift. He pressed his palm against the computer panel, the computer greeting him in its soothing voice.
“Good morning, Petty Officer First Class, Crewman Specialist Ninomiya Kazunari.”
“Just call me Nino already,” he chided the computer, knowing it was a useless exercise.
The doors whooshed open, granting Nino the beautiful view. The flight deck was massive, five decks high and running the entire length of the ship. Toward the bow end of the flight deck were the two dozen Kit launch tubes, where in the past the Suzaku’s Kitsune fighter vessels would be propelled out into space to meet a threat or head out for standard patrols. With the retrofit and its more “peaceful” mission, the Suzaku only had a bare bones complement of Kits, six that worked in a three-shift rotation, one Kit flying alongside the Suzaku on either side at all times unless they were preparing for an FTL jump. Most of the tubes sat empty now.
The aft end of the flight deck was home to the Noris. The Norimono shuttles were really Nino’s second home. On exploratory missions, the Noris would serve as scouts or would transport crew planetside. Though the Suzaku had lost so many Kits, the number of Noris had doubled with its new mission. There were now fifty Norimono shuttles, some designed to carry civilian passengers aboard and the rest outfitted for their luggage and whatever belongings they were taking to their final destinations.
On the Hakutaka Nino had started out as a Nori mechanic. He liked them, even when others liked to disparage them as being nothing but “clunky school buses.” Nino always cheered for the underdog. They were reliable, their problems easy to diagnose. Nino felt that he was fluent in Norimono, that he could understand exactly what was wrong with them. After more than a decade of practice, Nino could perform a full inspection of a Nori, every single safety checkpoint, in about 20 minutes.
Even though he could inspect a Kitsune with his eyes closed, their language never spoke to him. It probably had more to do with their pilots than anything. Kit pilots were some of the most arrogant people in the entire JSA fleet. They were elites and they’d undergone rigorous training to pilot them. So they believed that they were the only ones who really knew how their precious fighter vessels worked. Tell a Kit pilot that he’s leaking coolant and be ready for war.
Nori pilots trusted the flight deck crew to keep their shuttles in top condition. Kit pilots were overly possessive since their stupid names were etched onto their personal vessel, their name and rank and their dumb ass callsigns. And they sure as hell didn’t respect the deck crew, who’d only been to Mechanic School, not Flight School. Nino would start a Kit inspection and spend half the time arguing with its pilot. It was not an efficient way to work, but bridge officers tended to not like it when a mere Crewman Specialist told a Kit pilot to “get the fuck off my flight deck or I’ll take your head off with my wrench.”
So Nino usually just held his tongue these days, doing as much of his inspection as he could when the pilots were off duty.
Taking the metal steps down to the flight deck itself, he felt at ease surrounded by all the other yellow jumpsuits. He couldn’t see any of the sleek black flight suits anywhere, the ones denoting a Kitsune pilot. He strolled over to the assignment board where his new senior officer, Crew Chief Okada, had laid out the day’s work.
Chief Okada’s handwriting left something to be desired, but he was happy to find the names “Ninomiya” and “Ohno” side by side again, assigned to a tune-up of Nori 17 and regular inspections of Noris 28-36. Nino was also glad to see Yamada was on Kit duty today, smirking when he saw it. Yamada was fresh out of Mechanic School, and much as Nino liked the kid, it was a rite of passage for all of them to work on the Kits and get through it without threatening to punt a pilot out the airlock.
He headed for the Deck Crew locker room, heading for his small locker and pressing his palm to the panel. It slid open with a gentle whoosh, and he tugged out his tool belt, settling it around his hips. Closing up his locker, he was unsurprised to find his new partner by the wall of lockers on the other side, snoring.
Until recently, Ohno Satoshi had been a third-shift mechanic, serving on the Suzaku for over ten years. He was still adjusting to his new call time. Even though they’d known each other barely a month, Chief Okada had already figured out that they made for a good team. On the Hakutaka, crew rotations were a common occurrence. Nino had worked with different people every day on the flight deck, and it made things a bit challenging. One day he’d be on a long-term assignment repairing a Kit, the next he’d be pulled off to help some juniors on the fueling crew fix broken hoses and nozzles. It kept him on his toes, but he hadn’t much liked the uncertainty, the problems with communication, having to rely only on the notes of the crewperson who’d been on that job the day before.
Already Nino found Okada’s leadership to be the polar opposite. While he still rotated assignments, he tended to put the same people together for longer stretches of time, figuring out who worked best with someone else rather than just jumbling things up day after day. Ohno said it was mostly because Okada “hated coming up with assignments anyhow,” but Nino found consistency to be the sign of a good mechanic.
Ohno was a Crewman Specialist, similar in rank to Nino. He was a few years older and with his years of experience he could have been a Crew Chief anywhere in the fleet. He’d even joined JSA before Chief Okada had, but he wasn’t much for being in charge, preferring to just do his job and stay under the radar. That lack of ego meshed well with Nino’s. They already had to be patient with the Kit pilots and with the pending influx of civilians. Having a jackass inspecting Noris with you all day would be tiresome.
Nino nudged Ohno’s boot with his own. “Oi, wake up.”
Ohno mumbled under his breath, putting a hand through his messy black hair. He was a little smaller than Nino was, with the personality of a grumpy uncle and the face of a bored child. And yet Ohno Satoshi knew his Noris and his Kits. Sleepy in the locker room, Ohno was quick thinking on the flight deck, his hands deft with repairs and his comments and orders succinct but clear. He tolerated Nino’s tendency for sarcasm, even laughed at his jokes here and there. And if Nino’s diagnosis was wrong, Ohno called him on it without acting superior.
Ohno looked up at him. “28 through 36 first, then?”
“Sounds good.”
Nino held out a hand, pulling Ohno to his feet. They left the locker room behind, Nino waving to a few other arrivals for first shift. The Nori shuttles lined the massive flight deck, half in their berths along the port side and the other half in berths along the starboard side. Shuttles departing the ship headed right up the middle, flying out the double set of airlock doors at the stern.
The Nori pilots had been in and out the last several days on short test runs, preparing for their eventual flights planetside when they arrived on Earth. The flight deck was bustling like always in preparation, mechanic teams running safety checks, performing inspections, keeping the shuttles fueled up. Chief Okada was far down at the end of the line, a small figure off in the distance standing beside Crewman Specialist Kojima, the woman who was responsible for operating the stern airlock doors during first shift.
Berths 1-25 were along the port side of the ship, 26-50 along the starboard side. Nino stepped over a fuel hose being tugged by some junior crewmen as he and Ohno approached Berth 28. Though they’d only been paired a few weeks, he and Ohno divided up the work evenly without having to really discuss it. For the first Norimono, Nino performed the physical checks, every single normal point of their inspection, while Ohno jotted things down on their crew tablet. Then they’d switch off, Ohno doing physical checks and going over every inch of space inside the next Norimono with efficiency while Nino kept a log of their work.
Nino let the flight deck noise become nothing more than a buzz in the background. Even the noisy airlock alarm, a sign that a Nori was in flight and heading out the first set of airlock doors and awaiting departure clearance out the second and final set of doors, didn’t bother him. He checked the computer systems, the wiring, the life support, all of his usual checks inside while Ohno backed him up with a visual inspection. Then he exited the shuttle, performing external checks, looking for weaknesses in the hull, missing components, any leaks.
Soon enough it was time for lunch, and he and Ohno had gotten through their first five inspections. Washing his hands and unzipping his jumpsuit, Nino settled it around his waist again to enjoy the cool flight deck air against his bare arms. He was clad as usual under his jumpsuit in his standard issue gray tank top, happy for a break from the heavier jumpsuit. He followed Ohno to the flight deck cafeteria where poor Crewman Yamada was unable to touch his food since he was getting an earful from a Kit pilot.
“You smeared grease all over my instruments, Yamada!” the Kit pilot was hollering, standing there in his black flight jacket and slacks, even though Nino knew quite well that he wasn’t flying patrol until second shift started in a few hours. “They’re extremely delicate, and you should very well know that if I can’t read through your damn smudge it puts me at risk out there!”
“I…I was going to wipe it!” Yamada pleaded.
“Are you talking back to me? I should make you lick it clean with your tongue!” the pilot screeched.
Ohno elbowed Nino and snickered gently. “Okadacchi isn’t very nice, giving Yama-chan his first Kit inspection with him.”
“Him” being Lieutenant Matsumoto Jun, a Kitsune pilot with nearly ten years of flight experience and one of the best of the best. And he wanted to make sure you knew it, especially if you were a lowly mechanic with grease on your fingers. He’d served on the Hakutaka with Nino the last seven years, and Nino had a lot of respect for him. Matsumoto had seen a great deal of combat, was known throughout the fleet for his finesse in the cockpit. But he had a real stick up his ass, and he didn’t much appreciate it when Nino reminded him of it.
While Ohno headed for the food line, Nino walked up, trying not to laugh when he saw the tears of embarrassment in poor Yamada’s eyes. “Jun-kun,” he said pointedly, putting his hand on the pilot’s shoulder and offering a gentle squeeze.
Matsumoto was the textbook definition of hotshot pilot, the kind who would have been at home on a JSA recruitment poster. “Join us and you can be as awesome as this guy!” He was infuriatingly good looking, broad shouldered and solidly built from all the muscle training he had to do to stay qualified to fly. It took a toll on your body if you weren’t prepared. Even on the Hakutaka, a tightly-run ship, most people had cleared the way if Lieutenant Matsumoto was coming through. His piloting callsign was just as obnoxious as he was, the nameplate on his Kit saying “Lieutenant Matsumoto Jun - Mr. Perfect.”
It was a nickname he’d earned in Flight School, having achieved the highest scores in his class. The only person who saw through it all, at least on the Hakutaka, had been Nino. Nino who’d almost gotten himself a court-martial for a practical joke, swapping out Jun’s nameplate one day for one that said “Lieutenant Matsumoto Jun - Mr. Average.”
Jun wasn’t perfect. But he was a perfectionist, and even if it had always made Nino’s job more difficult, trying to tune up his Kitsune to his extraordinary standards, it had led to them becoming friends. Sort of. Jun preferred it if the flight deck crew was afraid of him, simply because he thought it would make them work just as hard as him.
Nino had never found him all that scary. Jun was just big on ceremony - everyone called him Lieutenant or by his stupid callsign. Even off duty, he was usually Lieutenant or Matsumoto. Nino suspected only Jun’s girlfriend, his mother, and Nino himself called him by his given name.
Jun finally stopped yelling at Yamada, shoving Nino’s hand off of him. “Don’t you have some child safety seats to install?” Jun barked at him. Once a Kit pilot, always a Kit pilot. He disparaged the “lesser” Norimono shuttles any chance he got, including their retrofitting progress.
Nino smiled. Jun was just being Jun. The interruption helped Ohno to wave over Yamada to safety at his table, and the young crewman scampered off, nearly knocking his cup of milk off of his lunch tray as he fled. Nino pushed on Jun’s shoulders, shoving him onto the cafeteria bench. “What brings you to our humble flight deck today, Lieutenant?” Nino asked.
Since most people had steered clear once Jun started yelling, he was able to speak with Nino in a more relaxed fashion. He was still in a bad mood though. “I have a patrol coming up…”
“…in, like, four hours,” Nino teased, sitting across from Jun and helping himself to the leftovers from Yamada’s tray. “Even if Yama-chan is new to Kits, it’s not going to take him four hours to clear you to fly. And he’s got Yoshitaka working with him. She’s been checking Kits for five years.”
“He’s gonna move something. He’s gonna break something.”
Nino did everything in his power not to roll his eyes. Years back Jun had had the same worries about him, but before they’d left the Hakutaka, Jun had admitted he didn’t trust anyone with his precious Kit more than he trusted Nino. But then, Nino had always liked the Noris better, and he’d barely given Matsumoto’s Kitsune a second look since the reassignment.
But Nino could read Jun just about as well as he could read a Nori with a malfunctioning fuel line. Something else was wrong. Nino pushed Yamada’s tray a bit, letting Jun help himself to one of the onigiri Yamada had abandoned. Jun took it without so much as a thank you.
Since the reassignment, Jun had been a real mess. In transferring from the Hakutaka, as one of the most skilled pilots in the fleet and likely one of the best on the ship, he’d taken the Suzaku assignment because he’d expected to be promoted to Flight Commander, to coordinate patrols for himself and the other five Kit pilots, to be entirely responsible for the Suzaku’s first line of defense.
He’d been passed over in favor of someone younger, mostly because she’d already been on the Suzaku at the time. Now Flight Commander, Eikura Nana was Jun’s superior officer, even though he had hundreds of hours more flight experience. Then again, she’d definitely earned her callsign, Upstart, in flight school, where she’d graduated almost a full year early. She was an incredible pilot, and Jun had finally admitted to being impressed with her leadership and skills.
So if it wasn’t his lingering grudge over Upstart’s promotion, then what was up his ass today?
“You’re being more of a tool than usual today,” Nino said, catching the dark flash in Jun’s eyes in warning. “Don’t tell me, they downgraded you to Nori pilot?”
Jun rolled his eyes. “If any other enlisted crewman talked to me the way I let you…”
Nino leaned forward, grinning. “Jun-kun, I like Yama-chan and I don’t want you frightening him off into some dreadful job for a private contractor. Talk to me.”
“Only the senior officers know this right now,” Jun said, lowering his voice, “but apparently Captain Inohara’s going to call a ship-wide meeting in the next few days. Flight deck’s the only place where they can hold all of us, that’s why I know about it. Upstart told me in confidence.”
“A ship-wide meeting?” Nino repeated, a bit shocked.
The last ship-wide meeting Nino had attended had been aboard the Hakutaka when Captain Higashiyama had announced the ship’s decommissioning. And before that, it had only been for memorial services or major itinerary changes. Everyone attended these meetings, from the Captain all the way down to the crew members responsible for cleaning out quarters and the ship’s common areas.
“Upstart didn’t know,” Jun admitted. “She’s the Kit Flight Commander and she doesn’t even know what it’s about.”
“It’s serious then,” Nino decided. “Can’t be a declaration of war or it would have been on the Net.”
“And we’d have been flying faster for Earth or out to some colonial patrol if that was the case,” Jun said.
“Have you met him before? The captain?”
Jun nodded. As a ranking officer, Jun had probably met the man when he’d first reported for duty. Enlisted crew didn’t get those kind of invites. The captain, the people on the bridge of the ship, they had little to do with Nino’s day-to-day work. Even Chief Okada reported in to people in Engineering rather than a bridge officer.
Inohara Yoshihiko was a younger captain, had seen combat here aboard the Suzaku against pirates from the Lithuanian and Latvian colonies a few systems over. He was well-respected in the JSA fleet. He wouldn’t call a ship-wide meeting for no reason.
“Just has me worried, that’s all,” Jun admitted. After all the efforts made to retrofit the Suzaku, had plans suddenly changed? What could he have to say that every member of the crew had to hear all together in one place? “Obviously you can’t tell anyone about this.”
“I won’t,” Nino promised, much as he loved to gossip. He didn’t want to get Jun in trouble, because then Jun would probably toss him out an airlock, friends or no. “Okay, now do your worst so everyone knows what a big tough guy you are.”
Jun got up from the table in a rage, Nino biting the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. “And you, Ninomiya, as Yamada’s senpai, you ought to teach him something as simple as cleaning up his greasy hands before he smears up my entire instrument panel. You got it?”
“Yes, Lieutenant, loud and clear,” Nino replied, offering a half-assed salute before Jun went stomping off to uphold his nasty reputation.
When Jun was gone, Nino headed over to where Ohno and Yamada were sitting. Ohno shook his head. “What’s he always so angry about?”
Yamada inclined his head, halfway to hopping off the bench so he could kneel down before Nino. “If you said something to Lieutenant Matsumoto on my behalf, thank you so much. Thank you, Ninomiya-san, thank you!”
Nino tried not to think about the upcoming crew meeting, the secret he had to keep, and instead just patted Yama-chan on the head, hoping Jun would eventually lay off him. “Just do your best, alright?”
While Yamada thanked him over and over, Ohno grinned, sharing the rest of his lunch with Nino.
-
When he and Ohno got to Nori 36, Nino paused. The shuttle door at the rear of the craft was wide open. “Ohno-san, does the log say anything about the aft exit hatch being open?”
Ohno looked down at the tablet in his hand, shaking his head. “Third shift finished their visual inspection, and I have it here that the aft exit hatch and the emergency hatches were all closed.”
Nino looked around. There were always people in and out of the flight deck, both Nori pilots and deck crew, but records were records for a reason. He stared at the open hatch. “Has Lieutenant Kitagawa been down here?”
Of all his Nori pilots, Kitagawa was the least likely to leave a damn hatch open, and as expected, Ohno shook his head. “No, she hasn’t logged flight time on 36 since yesterday. She’s supposed to be here in an hour for a test.”
“Alrighty, let’s see who our culprit is,” Nino said, walking up the shuttle’s short metal ramp. It only opened up and unfolded when the rear hatch was open. Nori 36 had been refitted as a civilian shuttle, the individual flight chairs that had been used for crew had been replaced with four rows of seats capable of seating twenty passengers for a short trip between a planet or colony and the Suzaku. He headed up the aisle, seeing that the thinner interior door that separated the passengers from the cockpit had also been opened.
Nobody was inside, but Nino frowned upon seeing that the computer panels were all lit up. The shuttle was empty but someone had left the lights on. Even if the ship’s main engine was off, it was still wasting energy.
“Nino!” came Ohno’s voice from outside, “someone just came out of 38!”
Nino turned around, running out of the shuttle. Ohno was still there, holding the crew tablet in confusion. In the next berth over, Nino finally noticed that Nori 37’s aft hatch was open as well. It wasn’t on their assignment list, but it was equally suspicious.
“Go into 36,” Nino said, “jot down everything the way it is. We’ll perform our inspection after noting down all the irregularities.”
“You got it,” Ohno said, already typing up his comments.
Nino headed around the rear of the berths along the bulkhead wall, seeing that their mysterious guest had left open 36, 37, and 38 in the same fashion and had apparently just gone into Nori 39. If Nino wanted to pretend he was in an adventure story, he’d take one of his wrenches from his tool belt, hold it up to protect himself. A thief, a murderer, a stowaway! Ah, but nobody could get onto the flight deck without clearance. It just meant someone wasn’t in the mood for following proper protocols today.
He headed up 39’s ramp, bypassing the rows of seats to find that someone had just sat down in the pilot’s seat inside the cockpit. The person, male, was clearly in his own world - he was just about to plug an external memory chip into the control panel when Nino cleared his throat.
“And what do you think you’re doing?”
Since the guy hadn’t managed to turn on the interior shuttle lights yet, Nino had been under the assumption that it was just another member of the flight deck crew. He was shocked when the man in the pilot’s chair pressed a switch on the panel, flipping on the cockpit lights and turning around.
Nino gulped when the man stood up, looking at him with a rather stern expression. He was in the standard dark blue crew uniform, a double-breasted jacket with silver buttons going down the right side, tucked in to the matching belted slacks, and wearing the same standard issue black boots Nino himself wore. The insignia at his collar was similar to Jun’s, the same rank, but instead of the little wings pin Jun wore just above the breast pocket of his flight suit, this man had a silver star.
This was a bridge officer.
Shit.
“What I’m doing,” the man said, his voice deep and serious, “is updating the star charts on these computers.”
Unlike Nino’s kind of sloppy mop of dark hair, this man, this Lieutenant rather, had his neatly trimmed and parted on the side, wispy black fringe covering his forehead. He was a little taller than Nino, his face round and his eyes tired. He’d be handsome if he didn’t look so angry right now.
Nino stood his ground. Bridge officer or no, this man was breaking protocols. Who would be updating a star chart on the Norimono shuttles? On the Hakutaka, the ship’s Chief Navigator usually just sent instructions along to the flight deck, had the crew install and update the charts. Of the Suzaku’s bridge crew, the Chief Navigator was…
“Lieutenant Sakurai,” the man introduced himself before Nino could remember. “I’m the Suzaku’s Navigator.”
“Crewman Specialist Ninomiya,” he said in reply, putting his hands on his hips. “When a shuttle door is opened, it has to be noted in the log. Any changes to the shuttles have to be noted in the log.”
“I always note it in the log upon completion.”
“Do you note it in our log, Lieutenant? The flight deck log?” Nino asked, trying not to sound as annoyed as he felt. Officers were this way sometimes, noting things in their own personal crew logs or in the logs for their departments. It was up to the deck crew to figure out everything that had been done behind their backs, to keep their own records up to speed.
At this, Sakurai looked irritated. “I send the updates from the Navigation log to Chief Okada upon completion. What he does with them is his business.” The man shoved the memory chip into his pants pocket, stepping away from the console. “I update the star charts in every Norimono and every Kitsune myself when they come in. For consistency’s sake.”
“That’s very dutiful of you,” Nino said. “And how often is that?”
“Every six weeks,” Sakurai snitted. “Crewman Specialist, will you let me do my job, please?”
Nino bit the inside of his cheek. No wonder he didn’t know what was going on. And with Ohno having worked third shift until recently, he probably hadn’t known either. “I’m a transfer. From the Hakutaka. I started four weeks ago.”
“Welcome aboard,” Sakurai said, scratching his cheek and not giving off very welcoming body language anyhow. “And now that you know what I’m doing, you are dismissed. Return to your duties.”
If Nino was smart, he’d do just that. He shouldn’t mouth off to a bridge officer no matter how lazy the asshole was about flight deck protocol. And no matter how much the guy seemed to like the sound of his own voice as he gave orders. Nino imagined that this guy and Jun would either get along tremendously or murder one another in five minutes trying to pull rank on each other.
Sakurai was just sitting back down in the pilot’s seat when Nino interrupted him again.
“If you don’t mind me asking off the record, sir, why did you start with Norimono number 36?”
Sakurai turned, glaring at him. “You’ve been dismissed. And you have to ask permission to speak with me off the record.”
“I think it’s a perfectly reasonable question, sir. Someone as obviously methodical as yourself, who personally updates every star chart on the Kits and Noris, would logically start in berth 1 and move up and down the line. I’ve been tasked with inspections for Norimonos 28 through 36 today and clearly you haven’t been in 28 through 35 or you’d have also needlessly left the hatch open and the lights on in those shuttles too…”
“Crewman Specialist.”
“Ninomiya, sir. It’s Ninomiya. I just thought it was an odd method of working, and since, like you, I like to keep good log records, I want to make sure I understood your reasoning…”
“Ninomiya.”
“…so that in six weeks when you come back and fuck around with my shuttles like this again, I’ll at least know about it and can make sure my records and the shuttles I’m responsible for are in order.”
Sakurai gaped at him.
Nino knew he’d crossed the line now, but he couldn’t help it. He inclined his head. “Sir.”
Sakurai sat back in the pilot’s seat, and from the reddened look to his face, he seemed to be holding back an outburst of what might be volcanic proportions. If only Jun was here to be impressed by it. Sakurai shut his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“You’re right.”
Nino blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re right,” Sakurai said, exhaling. He still seemed rather angry, but since he hadn’t yet stormed out of the cockpit to call a security team to have Nino thrown in the brig, Nino figured he wasn’t in as much trouble as he ought to be. “You’re right about it being strange for me to start at 36. You’re also right about me not properly logging my updates with the flight deck. It was laziness on my part, to notify Okada after the fact. He’s my friend, he never said it was a problem…”
“My apologies, sir. I’ve only been here a month. On my previous ship, such a thing was unacceptable.”
“You said you’re from the Hakutaka. Yeah, I’m not surprised.” Sakurai nodded a few times, as if gathering his thoughts. Nino watched him, stared at him in profile as he turned in the pilot’s seat, staring at the wall. “36 is Lieutenant Kitagawa’s shuttle. She used to be on the Navigation team with me. We worked together, she’s a good officer. When she switched over to Nori piloting, she asked for me to always install her star charts first so she could see what’s been updated. We’re a bit nerdy, those of us with stellar cartography as a hobby. It’s a habit I’ve stuck with, even if it’s a little silly.”
“Favoritism?”
“Friendship,” Sakurai shot back. “I can have them all updated in an afternoon, so updating hers first doesn’t really put her at too much of an advantage over her other pilots.”
“That’s cute, sir.” Nino smiled. “Off the record, of course, sir.”
Sakurai cleared his throat. “Not that I owed you any sort of explanation, but there it is. Now if you don’t leave this time, I will make a note of your insubordination in your personnel file.” Sakurai’s smile was a bit spooky this time, not at all as charming as he’d been while explaining his geeky friendship with the Nori pilot. “I’m very good about updating those sorts of records, Ninomiya.”
“Of course, sir. I’ll check in with Chief Okada to make sure that the flight deck logs reflect your efforts this afternoon.”
And before Sakurai could say anything else, Nino turned on his heel and left, realizing only now how hard he was breathing, how nervous he’d been. He had a big mouth, and sometimes he had trouble keeping it shut.
He found Ohno already halfway through the inspection on shuttle 36. Ohno’s eyes widened at the sight of him. “What the hell happened? You were gone so long! Who was it, a stowaway?”
Trust Ohno Satoshi to long for the same adventure on the flight deck that Nino had. “Worse,” Nino admitted. “A superior officer.”
Ohno clucked his tongue. “They do as they please, don’t they?”
This one especially, Nino thought, still feeling Sakurai’s angry glare on him, as though it was Nino’s fault for wanting his crew to have accurate records and for nobody to tamper with the god damn shuttles. Luckily the guy only came down to the flight deck every six weeks. Maybe Nino could switch shifts, avoid the guy in future. He certainly wasn’t eager to cross paths with him again.
At the conclusion of his shift, Nino pulled Chief Okada aside, explained the gaffes he’d made in dealing with Lieutenant Sakurai. Unexpectedly, Okada had laughed. “I’d yell at Sho-kun myself,” he said, describing the ship’s Navigator so casually, “but since he’s the one who jumps the ship and makes sure we don’t jump into the Sun, I guess I can’t stay angry with him, you know?”
Nino supposed the man had a point.
-
The message had gone out the previous afternoon, a memo to the entire crew straight from the bridge. It was just as Jun had told him the other day, that Captain Inohara wanted to hold a ship-wide meeting on the flight deck. It was scheduled for that evening at 1900 hours, and only a skeleton crew would keep the Suzaku flying, a handful on the bridge and the chief of engineering and some of her crew.
Nino wasn’t used to going down to the flight deck in his off-duty fatigues, the blue khaki jacket over his gray tank, the matching blue khaki trousers. Much as he liked his work, he preferred to keep it separate from his personal time. He found Ohno waiting for him at the lifts, his jacket unbuttoned and his fingers playing with the silver dog tag on the chain around his neck. Self-consciously, Nino pressed his fingers to the middle of his own chest, feeling the cool metal against his skin underneath his shirt.
“I wanted to check out the new pond they’ve got in the deck 12 park tonight,” Ohno complained as they waited for an available lift back down to the flight deck. “They said they were gonna stock it with fish.”
“Fishing. In space, Ohno-san?”
“Why not?” Ohno shot back, scratching an itch on the side of his nose. “I don’t care if the fish are synthetic or mechanical or whatever. Fishing is relaxing. I’d rather give it a go now before the you-know-whos come aboard.”
Nino grinned. Ohno was just as excited about the civilian passengers as Nino was. The flight deck was an especially dangerous place for an unauthorized visitor, and over the next several days Okada was having the Suzaku’s security team install extensive countermeasures at all flight deck entrances. Since the deck was so massive, there were plenty of places for little ones to try and sneak in, to dodge around crew reporting for duty.
Finally a lift arrived and they joined a few other scattered crew members inside. Once on deck 20, the usual secured entrance doors were wide open. Nobody had to scan in with their palmprint on the screen. Instead members of the security team with their stun pistols stood guard.
Nino and Ohno slipped around some of the other crewpeople, who didn’t know the deck like they did. A platform had been set up sometime after Nino and Ohno’s shift that afternoon, and Captain Inohara would address them all from the center of the flight deck facing aft. They found Yama-chan partway down the starboard side, sitting on top of Nori 43. Ohno headed up the stepladder Yamada had propped outside the shuttle, Nino following close behind. The Norimono’s pilot, Lieutenant Junior Grade Arimura, had only recently earned her wings and in gratitude for being assigned to the Suzaku straight out of Flight School, she’d been rather friendly to the crew who kept her shuttle in good order. Arimura waved as they joined her on top of Nori 43.
It was a much better view up here, Nino decided as soon as he and Ohno had sat down next to Arimura and Yama-chan. Most of the crew never came down here, and they all huddled in the center of the flight deck. Thankfully everything had been cleaned up nicely, and Nino took a little pride in that. He’d had to scold a few of his juniors earlier that day for spilling a tub of slippery coolant. At least they’d gotten the place clean again for the Captain’s announcement.
There were murmurs all around, from the crew in the center of the deck to the chatter happening on the top of other Norimono shuttles around them. Nobody knew what this meeting was about. Even Chief Okada, who’d had to help coordinate the event with the security team, was in the dark about it.
Was there a problem at the Japan Space Authority? Were more ships being decommissioned? Had there been an attack on one of the colonies or any other kinds of troubles? The Suzaku had remained on its steady course back to Earth with no discernible changes to its flightpath.
A few minutes later, the sound of the JSA anthem echoed throughout the flight deck. All crew members standing on deck stood at attention. Nino hurriedly pulled Ohno to his feet and along with Arimura and Yamada, they stood at attention as well.
He looked a lot friendlier in person than he had in his bio in the ship’s personnel database. The Suzaku’s captain, Inohara, stood on the platform, flanked on his left by his second in command, Executive Officer Nakai. To the captain’s right was someone Nino didn’t recognize, a woman in the same duty blue uniform as the captain and his XO. From this distance, Nino couldn’t see her insignia, but she didn’t seem to be a regular member of the bridge crew.
The JSA anthem quieted down, and Inohara’s voice boomed across the deck. “Thank you. At ease.”
Everyone relaxed, and once they saw crew on the other shuttles sit down, they did the same. And once Nino was seated, he had a feeling that this meeting was not about any attacks on colonies or decommissionings. For one, Captain Inohara was smiling brightly. Even Nakai the XO, notorious throughout the ship for being a ruthless practical joker, seemed to have a polite, genuine smile as well.
“You may be wondering why you’re all here today,” Inohara said.
“Obviously,” Nino mumbled, and Ohno elbowed him with a low chuckle.
“The Suzaku’s upcoming mission is not a normal one. Or as XO Nakai likes to say, those damn kids are coming.”
The crowd cracked up at that one. Nino was glad to know he wasn’t alone in being wary about it. Even the ship’s second-in-command was.
Inohara continued, his voice jovial and yet firm. “In less than two weeks, we’ll be in Earth’s orbit once again. We’ll then spend the next three to four days ensuring that one thousand, three hundred and thirty-eight Japanese citizens board this vessel safely. And then once we’re underway, we won’t be rid of them all again for another two weeks.” More chuckles in the crowd, but Inohara continued. “You’re not used to this. I’m not used to this.”
“Liar,” XO Nakai said audibly beside him, and there was more laughter.
Unlike most career officers, Captain Inohara was a married man. His wife was a professor at the JSA Academy in Tokyo, and together they had two small children. With the Suzaku’s new mission, Inohara’s family would actually be joining him on board, his wife planning to work remotely. If the first civilian passenger transports went well, JSA was said to be considering expansion of the program to allow family members of other officers to come aboard.
It was all a slippery slope, Nino thought bitterly. The more kids and clueless civilians aboard, the more risk. Traveling through space wasn’t as dangerous as it used to be, but there were still risks. External considerations like debris from an asteroid field or the rare but still possible pirate attack. Internal worries like radiation leaks, computer problems, hiccups in the life support systems. These first few voyages would have a huge impact on the future of Japanese space travel.
“I’ve heard your complaints and I’ve heard your concerns. How will these passengers affect my duties? How will these passengers affect my day-to-day experience aboard the Suzaku? How easy will it be for me to avoid them entirely? Do you notice a common thread here? My duties. My off time. This is how we’re thinking, and I’m not saying it’s right or wrong.”
“How will these passengers know that the milk bread in the crew cafeteria on deck 8 is off limits to them?” Nino asked aloud, hearing Ohno snicker.
Inohara held up his hands. “What we’re not thinking, Suzaku, is what it’s like for them. We’re academy graduates or we’re enlisted crew and all we’ve known since the day we were recruited is what ship life is like. We know our routines, we know our jobs. We know our expectations. But put yourself in their shoes. You’re a mother whose company has just re-assigned you to Amaterasu Station. You’ve got three children, and this new assignment is a five year contract. You’re not leaving your children. They have to go with you.”
Nino wondered what the hell Inohara was talking about, when he was going to get to the point.
“You have a long journey ahead of you to Amaterasu. It’s so far from Earth that the distance doesn’t even make logical sense. You want the safest journey for your children, the fastest journey because you’ve never left the Earth and the vacuum of space is scary as hell. You also don’t want to bankrupt yourself in the process. So you choose the Suzaku. It’s a good ship. But you know the crew doesn’t want you there. You’re a burden. You and your precious children are nothing more than human cargo to be transported. That’s what this mother would feel if she was here today. If she was here listening to the same complaints I’m overhearing.”
Ah, Nino realized. Don’t be jerks to the passengers was the theme of the meeting. Couldn’t the captain have just written this in his ship-wide memo? Why were they all here for this when the message was rather obvious?
“Today I’ve called you all here to get you thinking more like that mother en route to Amaterasu and less like grouchy JSA lifers.” Inohara gestured for the woman behind him to step forward. “I’d like to introduce you all to the newest senior officer aboard. She’s a clinical psychologist from JSA Medical, and starting today she will be serving with the rank of Lieutenant Commander in charge of Civilian Passenger Welfare. I know it’s a mouthful, but let’s warmly welcome Matsushima Nanako-sensei!”
There was applause amidst the confusion as Inohara stepped aside and Matsushima-sensei stepped forward.
“Try not to fall in love, Ohno-san,” Nino said, noticing how his friend was gaping at the attractive older woman. “She’s your senior officer.”
Ohno did his best to keep his mouth closed, to not drool all over Arimura’s shuttle.
“Good evening, Suzaku. I am grateful for both your patience and attention. Those of you assigned to Cargo Bay 5 may have noticed several new crates on your manifest labeled as JSA Medical supplies that were not to be opened or scanned. I thank you for keeping your curiosity at bay,” Matsushima said, her voice light and calm. “With both the permission of JSA Command and Captain Inohara, I am here tonight to introduce you all to a pilot program. A program designed first and foremost to put you into the shoes of that mother Captain Inohara was talking about.”
“Who is this mother and what has she done?” Nino wondered aloud, his ears perking up nervously at the idea of a “pilot program.”
“Executive Officer Nakai, if you’d be so kind?”
The entire flight deck started quietly murmuring as XO Nakai departed the platform, moving to a standard silver cargo crate a few feet away that Nino hadn’t even noticed was there. From their vantage point on top of Arimura’s Nori, they were able to watch Nakai open the crate and haul out…a bag of rice?
It seemed about the same size as a 10 kilogram bag of rice, but whatever material the bag was made of seemed much stronger, sturdier. It was a silvery material, and as Nakai carried the bag back to the platform, Nino saw that someone had earnestly drawn a face on it. Well, they’d drawn eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
“Your artistic stylings leave something to be desired, Nakai-san,” Inohara teased, chuckling merrily as Nakai stood there awkwardly with the rice bag.
Matsushima-sensei raised her hand for quiet, and the confused whispers finally stopped. “This program will be ship-wide. I don’t care if you’re the XO or the crewman who fuels up a Kitsune. Everyone will be required to participate. Without further ado, I would like to introduce you to Project Papa-Mama, an initiative of JSA Medical’s Family Psychology Institute.”
“Is she on drugs?” Ohno mumbled, obviously no longer in love with the Lieutenant Commander. Project Papa-Mama?!
“Assignments have been randomized,” Matsushima explained. “You will be paired with another member of the Suzaku crew. The only exception is that someone will not be assigned to their direct superior. That means, for example, that I will not be paired with Captain Inohara, since I report directly to him. For the next month…”
The murmuring rose in volume and intensity, and Nino saw Matsushima offer a knowing smile on the platform. She hadn’t expected this to go over well, had she? Finally Captain Inohara himself had to order everyone to quiet down.
“For the next month,” Matsushima continued, “you and your crew partner will take part in a parenting simulation. Your child may look like a sack of rice, but JSA Medical in conjunction with some of our best scientific minds have placed a sophisticated batch of sensors inside each sim-child. You and your crew partner will be expected to tend to the sim-child’s needs, logging your progress continuously. I know it seems a bit silly and I know very well that you all work very hard and have important duties here aboard the Suzaku…”
“Sim-child?” Ohno said, scratching his head. “I have to carry a bag of rice around like a baby?”
“…but this pilot program is designed to place you in the shoes of a parent. To better understand their needs and concerns, since this ship will soon be full of families. It is my hope that Project Papa-Mama will be both a fun and challenging exercise in empathy as well as a method of building friendships throughout the ship. Interacting with your crewmates in this manner will strengthen your bonds. The Suzaku will become a welcoming environment for the people who are completely uprooting their lives, moving across the system. Thank you very much for your time.”
And then the uproar began, shouts and complaints from one end of the flight deck to the other. Nino was still more confused and alarmed than angry. A month? They’d have to endure this nonsense for a month on top of their existing duties? On top of having to board and settle in more than a thousand civilians in less than two weeks?
Beside him Ohno was repeating the word “sim-child” over again, still not seeming to make the connection. To Ohno’s other side, Yamada seemed to be in shock while Arimura was just laughing at the chaos.
“Something funny, Lieutenant?” Nino asked her.
Arimura leaned over so she could meet his eyes. “We did a simulation like this in junior high school. But then, it really was just a bag of rice.”
Before the crew could complain anymore, XO Nakai called for quiet. Even with the strange sack of rice baby in his arms, his voice carried out decisively. Captain Inohara stepped forward once more.
“I know you’re all thinking this will be a waste of time, but if even one of you, if just one of you takes this program to heart and becomes a better person, a more understanding and kind individual, then I think that’s a good thing.” The captain straightened up. “Assignments have already been sent to you while this meeting was taking place. These assignments will let you know who you’ve been partnered with and where you can report to pick up your…”
Inohara looked back at Matsushima, who just winked at him. Inohara turned back around to face them.
“…where you can both pick up your sim-child to get started. Further directions will also be in your assignment messages. This program is one hundred percent mandatory. Lack of participation will result in an official reprimand in your personnel file. Dismissed!”
Part Two