“Plus...?”
“That girl, Chidori Kaname, told me that McAllen’s last words to Nguyen during the Perio incident were ‘Call Weber and the others.’ At the time, the major was off-ship, and you were wounded—I guess the next name that came to mind was Weber’s. I think Senpai might’ve seen something in him.”
Mao remained quiet.
“I don’t like the man, but he has potential, and he cares about his comrades,” Clouseau admitted. “I thought I’d put him through his paces a while and see how he takes to it.”
“Hmm...” Mao hummed, her lips curving up into a smile.
Clouseau answered her pleased expression with a scowl. “What now?” he demanded. Once Clouseau was alone with her, he returned to talking like an NCO.
“Nothing,” she protested innocently. “I was thinking, ‘you’re so responsible.’”
“Get off my back. The major isn’t here most of the time,” Clouseau growled back. “Who’s going to do it if I don’t?”
“Fair enough. We’re all counting on you, Ben.”
“Darn it...” Tucking his file case under his arm with another scowl, Clouseau left the room.
After returning to the SRT duty room, Sousuke opened his laptop and began composing his report. Kurz had gone off to run hostage watch (grumbling all the while about unfairness), and that left the room quieter than usual.
Sousuke was thinking that he would polish off his paperwork, and then, once they surfaced, he’d take a helicopter to Tokyo. There were more than a few members of the crew who didn’t like the idea of an NCO like Sousuke getting this sort of preferential treatment, but he didn’t care. His grades were on the line, and he’d gotten the clause “can charter transport whenever reasonable” added to his contract (though the fuel costs still came out of his paycheck).
His report was about 80% finished when he felt his stomach rumble. If I go to the mess, he thought, I might find something left over.
“Where are you going?” Mao, who was fooling around on her laptop as well, asked him as he stood.
“To eat,” Sousuke answered her shortly.
“Ahh... gotcha. See you later.”
“See you.” As Sousuke left the duty room, he caught a glimpse of Mao reaching quickly for the on-board phone, but he didn’t pay it much mind. Instead, he just climbed the nearby stairway and walked down the passage beyond.
As he made it up to deck two, he ran into the submarine’s captain, Tessa—full name Teletha Testarossa—coming around the corner of an otherwise unoccupied hall.
“Ah... Sagara-san,” Tessa said. She was a petite, slender girl with ash blonde hair done up in a braid. Tessa was about Sousuke’s age, and wore the rank of colonel on the shoulders of her khaki-colored uniform. For some reason, she sounded out of breath.
“Colonel.” Normally, Sousuke would come to attention and salute... but he had recently learned that she hated being treated that way, so he just offered her a casual greeting, instead. “Are you taking a break?” he inquired next.
“Yes, now that we’re underway... I was a little bit hungry, so I left command to Mardukas-san.” Tessa then turned her eyes up to meet his, and said, “Would you like to share a meal with me?”
“In the galley?”
“Yes. Escort me, if you would.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he responded. “I was intending to.”
They walked side-by-side down the corridor and soon arrived at the mess hall, which was pitch black. Nobody was present in the middle of the night, and there didn’t seem to be any food left.
“Please sit there,” Tessa insisted, running into the galley. “I’ll cook.”
Sousuke quickly started, “Colonel, please. Let me—” but managed to stop himself mid-protest.
Tessa was glaring at him reproachfully. “Are you suggesting that I cannot prepare food properly?”
“No, certainly not.”
“You always eat what Kaname-san prepares,” she pointed out, and Sousuke fell silent. While he groped around for an answer, Tessa giggled. “It’s all right,” she said. “But please, try my cooking for once.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’d be happy to.” In the past, nerves and awkwardness would have overtaken him, and he’d have said something like, ‘No, I really should make it myself,’ or ‘allow me to assist you, at least,’ but... Well, maybe it’s not so bad, Sousuke decided, and then sat down at a table.
“It sounds like things were difficult on Badamu Island,” Tessa called out from the galley.
“Not at all,” Sousuke replied. “It was an easy mission.” He heard the refrigerator door open and close, followed by the sound of cooking tools being pulled out and placed back.
“But you used the lambda driver, didn’t you?” Tessa wanted to know.
“My apologies,” he answered. “If I’d been more careful, things wouldn’t have come to that.”
“All’s well that ends well. Are you growing accustomed to the Arbalest, then?”
“Yes. But Al’s turned into a chatterbox, and I don’t know what to do about it,” Sousuke admitted ruefully. “He just says one useless thing after another... I’ve never heard of a control system like it.”
“He’s not a control system,” Tessa clarified.
“What?”
“Didn’t I tell you before? The Arbalest is an extension of you,” she explained. “Al... Al is how you might have turned out, if you had been raised in a different environment.”
“That’s a horrible thing to say,” Sousuke objected with a grimace, then heard the chopping on the cutting board suddenly come to a stop.
“Oh. I’m sorry,” she called back, with a note of surprise.
Sousuke cringed, realizing he’d said something rude in the heat of the moment. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s all right,” Tessa said reassuringly. “After all, you were speaking to me like you would to Melissa and Weber-san.”
“I was?”
“Yes. I found that rather pleasing.” She giggled.
“It feels... strange, for me,” Sousuke admitted.
“And for me as well. Very strange.” Regardless, Tessa sounded delighted.
The food preparation went on for a while. Sousuke heard something get mixed together in a bowl, something
