Susan swung her feet out into space and hopped down from her bunk. “Who is it?” she called to the hatch.
“Azevedo, mum,” her Brazilian XO answered.
“Miguel, you do know it’s…” Susan glanced at the chrono in her augmented reality retinal display. “… 0350, right?”
“Yes, mum. It’s important.”
Susan sighed. “Isn’t it always? Just a minute. Unless you insist on seeing your captain in her undies?”
“Not if you paid me a bonus, mum.”
“I’m not actually sure how to take that, Miguel.”
“Anytime there’s a question, default to respect, mum.”
Susan smiled. “You’re a smart kid; I’ll just be a moment.” She moved from the bed to her closet, which took all of two and a half steps. Compared to any other ship’s quarters she’d ever occupied, the captain’s suite aboard Ansari was palatial. But compared to any dirtside apartment she’d ever rented, it didn’t even rank as a studio.
But it was hers alone: she had a bathroom with a door, a genuine water shower, and a kitchenette with the only supply of genuine Darjeeling tea to be found within four light-years of their current position. A gift from Miguel, as it happened.
And a steward for my laundry. She smiled as she pulled an immaculately cleaned and pressed duty uniform off the rack. She fell into the clothes from muscle memory alone, then went to the vanity in her bathroom to straighten her hair. It was longer now than strictly permitted by regulations, but seeing as she was the ranking officer for at least two parsecs in any direction, there really wasn’t anyone to call her on it until the tour was over. Besides, Susan felt she’d earned the silver in her hair just as much as she’d earned the gold on her shoulder patches, and displayed both with equal pride. She donned the gold beret top cover with black trim of a warship commander in the commission of the Combined Corporate Defense Fleet, gave it the five-degree tilt to the left she fancied would draw attention to her good side, then touched her forehead and chest in offering to the two small statues of Durga and Shiva in the cubby above her bed she’d long set aside as a shrine. They were hollow porcelain instead of traditional solid marble, owing to personal mass allotment aboard a warship, but Susan assumed the Gods understood the sacrifices of military service.
Susan took the three steps to the hatch, spun the wheel until the toothed bolts hit the end of their tracks, then pulled the handle toward her. Her XO stood across the threshold, waiting patiently.
“Commander,” she said playfully. “What brings you to my door at this hour?”
“We lost another recon drone, mum.”
“Another?” Her mind recoiled at the thought. “A second meteoroid strike?”
“Scopes doesn’t think so, mum.”
“We’re going to the CIC,” she said firmly. “Warm it up.”
“Yes, mum.”
“And call everyone out of those stupid VR chairs. We have real work to do.” Susan pushed past him across the hallway and called the lift. The captain’s quarters sat deep inside the Ansari’s forward hull, safely behind many meters of armor, structural material, and other compartments, and directly adjacent to the main elevators to give her ready and rapid access to the rest of the ship. The Command Information Center was only two decks above, but the elevator was still the quickest way to get there.
The decks, all thirty-five of them in the forward hull, were stacked vertically along the ship’s keel like the floors of a skyscraper turned on its side, instead of layered horizontally like the decks of an oceangoing vessel.
The Ansari was a class ship, the first and namesake of the CCDF’s new generation of long-endurance, system-defense cruisers, and Susan was a plank-owner. Not as captain, but as a greenhorn ensign on her first assignment as a commissioned officer after her snotty cruise aboard the fast frigate Halcyon. The Ansari was seventeen years old now, and the paint had worn off her sharper edges, but the edges themselves hadn’t been rounded down yet, and she was fresh out of the first of three planned midlife refits. It had been during that stretch in drydock that Susan had been reunited with her old ship.
The elevator stopped and slid open onto deck twelve and the home of the CIC, possibly the only spot on the ship buried underneath more armor and composite than the captain’s quarters. Save for the antimatter confinement tanks, of course. One of the ship’s marines stood watch just outside the main hatch to the CIC, polished, resolute, and bright blue in the face.
Susan buried a smile as she approached the young man. “Private Culligan, have you been holding your breath?”
His shoulders squared to parade-ground attention. “No, mum.”
“Then why is your face blue?”
“Someone put microfracture test dye in my shampoo, mum.”
“As revenge for?”
He began to blush, turning his cheeks purple. “I’m sure I wouldn’t know, mum.”
“Mmhmm. I hope it’s not a permanent lesson?”
“Doc says a week for the skin to grow out.”
“I see. Permission to enter the CIC?”
“Of course, mum.” The azure private spun open the hatch and, standing on tradition, leaned inside to announce “Captain on deck!” to an empty compartment.
“Thank you, as you were.” Susan stepped over the lip of the hatch into the Ansari’s heart. Or more accurately, its brain. The compartment was still cool, but Susan could feel the air processors working overtime to warm it up to a more comfortable level. No one had been inside for weeks except to run system integrity tests and a drill or two.
Most of the bridge preferred to pull their shifts in the VR environment, as had become customary across much of the fleet over the last fifteen years. It held several advantages, not the least of
