Chapter 8: Chapter 5 Bis: Calm Your Nerves

--Before Commander Lauren Davis’s speech-- 

 

When I woke up I took a nice hot shower and brushed my teeth with this great minty toothpaste. I've loved using it since I arrived on Earth. Something about the fresh sensation in my mouth made me feel even more awake than usual. Talking about sleep, I somehow slept amazingly well, maybe because I’d given the shark plushie the Commander gave to me, a place in my bed. It had been very cosy and soft to cuddle up with at night. 

But now it was time to get serious as I put on my dress uniform. The Commander would be holding her speech soon and as her second in command it was highly expected of me to be there for the ceremony. I had just finished buttoning up my uniform’s jacket when I heard voices coming from behind my door, followed by a knock. 

-Must be the Commander… I wonder how she’s doing, she looked pretty rough yesterday evening.- 

When I got closer to the door, I could hear the Commander’s voice together with two others I’d not heard before. However, one of them sent shivers down my spine as the voice quite clearly came from the ceiling.

-A-a-an AI!!?? W-wait, what!? This ship has an AI!? I didn’t read anything about that in the manual! What if it saw me gather intel and send it to Kt??? Did I just screw over the mission?- 

My mind raced and went all over the place, my heartbeat started thumping in my head. 

“Okay, calm yourself, Luna.” I whispered to myself. “They probably would’ve arrested me already if they knew…” I closed my fists and calmed my breathing for a couple of seconds before I opened the door.

However, my refound confidence immediately took a plunge the moment I saw the Commander’s smile. I stiffly saluted her. “S-sorry for the wait. I was brushing my teeth.”

After some conversation I found out the other woman who was with the Commander was the ship’s doctor, Lieutenant Eva Winter, who was mentioned in the Commander’s files. She was about the same height as me. Her black hair was tied up behind her head in a neat braided knot. 

As this was the first longer conversation I’d had with the Commander, I was surprised at how casual it was. Both her and the Doctor were asking me questions about the plushie she’d given to me. Quite honestly, it stressed me out a bit, so I was pretty happy once that part was over. Even though I definitely appreciated the gift. 

I decided to turn the conversation to something more related to the ship itself, as it would be easier for me to talk about it. It helped calm my nerves quite a bit. 

At least, until the Commander turned back to me after we exited the elevator. “How did your inspection go, by the way?” 

My eyes went wide and my heartbeat shot through the roof. -Did the AI tell her I was sending information off-ship!!? Or is she merely asking because I told her I was going to do an inspection!?- 

My training kicked in and I replied. “F-f-fine… n-nothing out of the ordinary.” Though the stutter made it incredibly obvious I was freaking out.

Luckily the timing played in my favour as both the Commander and the Doctor thought it had to do with the launch ceremony. But I did take the doctor up on her offer to get me some anti-stress pills. Maybe it would at least help to keep me calm.

 

I walked along with the Doctor through the ship’s hallways towards the medical ward.

“Do you have a lot of issues with stress?” She asked to break the silence that had formed between us.

“I-it’s just a very stressful time lately…” 

She nodded. “I can understand that, but it’s important you tell me things like that, so I can keep it in mind. I’m also somewhat like the crew’s psychologist.” Doctor Winter smiled at me. 

“Thank you…” 

“And what do you think of our new crewmember?” 

“W-who?” 

“I think she is referring to me, Lieutenant-Commander.” The AI spoke from the ceiling.

“Exactly.” Doctor Winter nodded. 

“U-u-uh… I’ve not really talked with a lot of AIs before…”

“Please call me Ellie.” 

“It was definitely a surprise when I heard her, too, must’ve been a last-minute addition to the ship.”

“Don’t worry, I can not enter your private chambers without consent or take over the ship.” Ellie explained. 

-Phew, that’s good to hear.- I sighed a breath of relief.

“Were you that worried?” The doctor giggled. 

“N-n-not really!” 

“Hmmm.” She smirked. “Anyhow, welcome to my office.” Doctor Winter opened the door to the medical ward and asked Ellie to turn on the lights. She guided me over to a bunch of cabinets on the right side of the room and took out a bottle with dark green pills. “Take one of these with some water, it should help you out a bit for a couple of hours.” 

I nodded as the Doctor filled up a glass of water for me. The size of the pill was small enough that I had little issues swallowing it in one go. 

What I didn’t expect was the almost immediate effect it had on me. I wobbled a bit as my adrenaline dropped like a rock. And apparently, the Doctor didn’t expect it either.

“Wow, these pills shouldn’t be that strong at all.” She looked at the back of the bottle. “That’s even considered a light dosage…” Doctor Winter steadied me by the arm so I didn’t fall on my face.

-Oh no, my alien physiology….- 

 

I couldn’t really focus through the next couple of hours thanks to the pill I’d taken. My mind was all over the place and forming coherent sentences was incredibly hard. Luckily Doctor Winter helped me through the ceremony by keeping me upright and doing most of the talking to others for me. But I have to say, even though it worked very debilitating, I’d never felt calmer in my entire life.

By the time the pill’s effect had expired, it was already time to launch. Doctor Winter went back to the medical ward as that was her station. She did promise me to look at some even lighter versions of the pills, just for future reference. I was quite lucky that me being an alien was such an absurd hop in logic that she didn’t even think about that as an option.

The bridge officers had all gathered and were listening to Commander Davis as she was handing out orders. I was standing behind her, looking at my holostick to keep my eye on the docking systems.

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“D-docking ports disengaged.” I reported. -How can one human be this intimidating that I start stuttering almost every time I speak with her?- I kept staring at the tablet, swapping through all the systems while the ship rose above the moon’s surface. I looked up at the Commander as she opened the ship’s communication. She seemed so confident and self-assured as she spoke to the entire crew. But maybe I should’ve spent a bit more time listening to what she was actually saying instead of just staring at her. 

Commander Davis suddenly grabbed me close to her, squeezing me tight against her chest. I could clearly smell the shower gel she’d used to shower with in the morning.

“Eep!” I yelped after which I felt the ship accelerate intensely. If the Commander hadn’t grabbed me I’d surely have fallen from the steps behind us. 

The Commander held me close for a couple more seconds after the worst acceleration was over which made me incredibly self-conscious about the situation.

When she finally released me I immediately took a bit of distance from her. 

“I told everyone to brace, didn’t I?” Her voice was stern but still really friendly and caring. 

“S-sorry… I-I was spacing out a little…” -And for what it’s worth, the ships I was used to had FTL dampeners so…- 

“LC, you really need to pay attention at times like this. I don’t want you to get hurt.” 

Her comment made me feel very warm inside but at the same time it also made my heart race quite a bit. “I-I  will do better, C-Commander…” The dastardly stutter remained. 

When the Commander left the bridge to me I was relieved, as I could finally relax a little since there wasn’t a lot to do. FTL travel either goes completely fine, or horribly wrong. And when it goes wrong in 99.9% of the cases it’s because of combat-related problems. So I felt incredibly at ease. A lot of the crewmembers did look very excited but that was to be expected. After a couple of days they would also sink into the monotony of FTL travel. 

 As the Commander came back from her tour some time later, she gave me a break which I gladly took. I still had a room to decorate after all.  

 

--A week later, the 13th of January 2205-- 

  

Decorating my room took a long time, especially with all the plushies I’d taken with me. I needed to figure out which colour combination worked best in my room, where my desk would fit best and which wall-decorations I wanted where. This made it so that, over the course of a week, I’d rearranged my room a couple of times before I found the perfect arrangement. 

“Yes, this, this is perfection.” I looked at my room in glee. The shark plushie, now with the Federation’s beret sitting cosily on its head, was happily looking at me from its usual spot in my bed.  

Just in time as I was expected back at the bridge in a couple of minutes. 

 

When I arrived I immediately took my spot next to the Commander.

“Okay, people, next jump will be to system Chi-Zeta 4601. It’s a relatively short jump as Lieutenant Zu told me.” 

“Yes, ma’am! Approximately 54 minutes!” Lieutenant Zu from the Navigational team reported. 

Commander Davis nodded. “Chi-Zeta 4601 contains a planet that was flagged as a potential colony world by the UFCC. It’ll be our job to investigate and potentially confirm this status with a ground-team. I’ll be personally leading the marine detachment.” 

-A colonizable world? This close to Earth?- I started to wonder. 

When I was on break during the FTL jump I opened up my silence bubble in my room and looked up something in my encrypted datafiles on my holostick. 

“Hmm… there’s not any planet listed here as being habitable, but then again, most of the star systems in the galaxy are unmapped, even for the Conglomerate...” However, a couple of alerts were attached to this general region of space. These reports were ancient compared to when the files on the humans started, but they did warn of some sort of dangerous alien lifeforms present in this sector. Space intel was hard to gather; one of the only reasons we found out about the Humans was because they sent out radio signals into space for centuries which got picked up by our sensors. For everything else we had to count on exploration missions, not unlike this one. However, if an alert exists for this region, there must be a good reason for it. Maybe one exploration team ran into issues here, but the specific reason for the warning was apparently not attached, probably because someone forgot. “Tch… the failings of bureaucracy.” 

I put everything away again and made ready to head back to the bridge. What bugged me most of all, was that I couldn’t even warn them.

 

“What’s with the sad expression, LC? Aren’t you excited we are going to set foot on another planet?” Commander Davis had put her hand on my shoulder. She’d almost immediately noticed my annoyance. 

“U-uh… it’s not that…” 

“What’s wrong then?”

“I-it’s just… j-just be safe, okay?”

She smiled. “I always am.” The Commander then looked to the bridge. “What do the scanners say about the planet?” 

“No-lifeforms, or at least not warm-blooded, Commander, but plenty of plantlife.” The pilot replied.

“Hmm.”

Both me and the Commander stared out of the window in front of us as the planet we were approaching became bigger and bigger. 

“It definitely looks Earthlike.” 

The Commander wasn’t wrong. The only thing it missed were cities, pollution and space debris in the atmosphere. Otherwise it looked like the blue ball with green continents all of the Humans here were used to. 

“Well, I’m going to get ready, do you have the bridge, XO?” 

I nodded and saluted her. “Yes, Commander. P-please do keep in contact at all times.” 

“I will.” She saluted back with a wink.

Although I was a bit worried, her calm and confident demeanor made me feel a bit better and that wink… That made me feel something else entirely...

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