Ezra's First

Part 3

"Cent-Com, we are ready to launch, copy."

"Readiness received, Brigham you are clear to exit your bay and proceed, safe travels."

Ezra activated the ships vertical thrusters and retracted the ships three large landing feet.

The ship inched forward out of their hangar and into the central shaft, neon lights flashed upwards to indicating the correct way to leave the hangar.

They slowly ascended, their speed limited by the regulations of the facility – the only time they would be permitted to haul it out of their hangar would be in a life or death situation, even during combat conditions the facility's regulations should be observed as to avoid unnecessary incident.

The ship exited the facility, made a 30 degree turn and activated its thrusters. At the current speed, it would take them 30 minutes to exit the controlled military space, to which they could ramp the ship to full thrust and head for Neptune.

It wasn't necessary, given the ships speed, however Ezra calculated that they could shave five hours off of their exit course by using Neptunes gravity, not to mention, he enjoyed sight seeing.

Ezra eyed his co-pilot. The last hour had been very professional, their had been a lot to do and so there hadn't been space for casual conversation, however he could the expectation hanging in the air.

"I'll take first shift, you may go rest and resume duty at 0300."

His co-pilot turned to him and for a second looked like he was going to say something but then thought better of it."

"Yessir." He responded, and headed out of the cockpit.

- - -

For five days, Ezra kept Daniel at arms length. They worked their alternative shifts, they kept to themselves in their recreational time and Ezra provided one word answers to nearly all attempts at communication.

Though his fire began to wain by the fifth day, he could no longer direct his anger at this man. Clearly the years of scout duty had given him ample practice as he did nothing wrong or late, and actually spent most of his time reading quietly (Ezra checked the logs every shift.) not to mention Ezra was beginning to miss normal human interaction.

It was during his shift, he left the con to grab some dinner from the galley where he could see Daniel working out in the cargo hold. While his meal heated up he stood in the door.

"I'm sure you've seen it a dozen times before, but the next star system will give us a really good view of Barnard 33, I've been optimising our route so that I can slow down and take a good look."

Daniel, paused mid pushup, "actually I've never seen it, most of my earlier missions were headed out towards the rim."

"The rim? Don't the Preshk always attacked from the same direction?"

Daniel did a couple more pushups as the question hung in the air, he gathered his breath and responded.

"They never told us exactly why, but my guess was that they wanted to map the back door, in case they ever did attack from that route or to identify further fall back positions. We didn't find much sadly. Though in the early years I wasn't complaining, I'm sure you've read my file, I was happy to be flying away from the conflict."

Daniel continued to do pushups while Ezra stood in the door, a chime from the kitchen informed him his meal was ready.

"Coolies, I'll let you know when we're in the system."

Daniel continued to work out and Ezra grabbed his meal and headed back to his post.

Over the next couple days, things warmed up between the two, Ezra's fire and resentment still present but no longer directed at his co-pilot.

One morning, I.e. Ezra was having breakfast before his shift, Daniel came into the galley to grab a drink.

"So, how are you finding it? This is my twelfth deployment so I'm pretty used to it."

Ezra paused for a moment so he could seperate his anger at the mission from his actual experience.

"It's certainly different, especially from what I thought I was going to be doing."

"Oh yeah, what did you think you were going to be assigned to?"

"Well, I was top of my class, so I assumed I would be placed on one of our offensive fleets, potentially even a flagship. I thought I'd be doing the officer program, where me and a few others are cycled through each department and rapidly learning on the job. Instead, it's been weeks of doing shifts alone, cycling through scanner logs and setting course adjustments."

Daniels face looked like he was torn between wanting to say two things at once, in the end he decided on one, Ezra would later hear the other.

"You do realise we don't have to run our shifts like this?" He continued.

"Regulations specifically exempt scout missions like this from needing to manage watches like you would on a ship, primarily because it would drive most people mad. We can run staggered shifts, or dedicated watch shifts, I even had one CO who had us working the same shift, the difference being we alternated being on call for the night shift and had to sleep in the cockpit. At the end of the day its the CO's call" Daniel gestured at Ezra.

"Oh, well what has worked the best in the past then, seeming you've done this eleven times before?"

"Staggered shifts work best, you both get focus time, but you both get social time and it gives the best coverage."

"Sounds good, lets do that then, I was about to start running out of books to read, and was dreading dipping into the military curated collection in the ships memory."

"I've got some books you could borrow, I'll leave em out in the galley and you can take your pick."