Destinations And Captain's Choice

by F P Adriani

  “I told Simmons to get us as far away as possible from that graveyard,” Jerry said on a frown. “He’s set course toward the southwest corner of this layer. The carrier should reach us within the hour.”

  *

  When the carrier arrived, Jerry briefly greeted the ship’s captain over the viewscreens of both of their ships; then Jerry transferred the data about the incident with the creature-machine over to the carrier; then he asked that the repair crew get to work as soon as possible: he was hoping to still get Andreyev to Martoon in time for her conference—though he knew that she might decide to leave on the carrier ship….

  He was sighing as he went into his cabin to take a quick shower and change into a clean white uniform. He’d had to talk to the carrier’s captain while looking like an unprofessional wreck, and he didn’t want to have to do that a second time.

  When he was done in his cabin, he went back onto his bridge. On the front viewscreen, a large, gray, rectangular Space Force repair extension was sliding from the white carrier toward the starboard side of the Spacebender. Silver corascite panels were strapped onto the inside frame of the partially covered extension, and several suited-up SF crew were also inside there, working the controls to electromagnetically attach the extension to the Spacebender at the built-in repair junctions on the ship’s frame.

  Standing by his black captain’s chair, Jerry listened while Matt from down in engineering gave and received technical instructions from the carrier; moments later, the platform finally detached from there, and the repair crew inside the extension began sealing and pressurizing the box, so they could at least work on the Spacebender’s hull without so much risk to their lives….

  Jerry’s eyes were suddenly burning; in his bathroom mirror before, he’d seen how bloodshot his eyes were. Yet he had more work to do now, in his office.

  His bloodshot eyes fell on Simmons in his silver chair on the left of the bridge platform. Jerry walked up to him now and said, “I’ll be in my office if you need me; in other words, if any other disasters come up.”

  Simmons laughed lightly. “Got it, Captain.”

  *

  Within only a few minutes after Jerry had sat down behind his silver desk and begun doing some paperwork, he was feeling sorry he had bothered.

  He was having difficulty focusing; his mind kept falling on the past—though not as much on this past day as on all the days over the past several weeks. He had been so worried about the future of his lackluster career, he’d forgotten that the literal future of his life in space was far more important.

  Still, he was pushing forty, and it seemed his time had come and gone. He’d joined the Space Force much later than people normally joined, and he saw now that he was probably stuck with the results of being a late Space Force bloomer.

  He had been born and raised on Earth and had learned to fly in the atmosphere there when he was quite young. He didn’t get an itch to leave the planet till he was well into his twenties.

  When he joined the SF several years later, he had no connections inside it; all alone and within only five years, he had worked his way up to the captain’s position on the Spacebender. For years he’d felt proud of and satisfied with his career trajectory—until he passed thirty-five. He saw now how much power mortality had over the decisions people made and over whether those decisions would wind up being good ones.

  He frowned as he thought of that—as he thought of many things now, some of them unpleasant….

  “…Captain Jones, are you all right?”

  He snapped to an alert state—to see Andreyev standing like a quiet column inside his office. As he had just done, she must have gotten washed up; her straight brown hair was darker with damp now and sitting loose against her shoulders, and she was wearing a white admiral’s uniform.

  Quickly now, he nodded his head at her and said, “I’m sorry, Admiral. My mind was elsewhere.”

  She closed the silver office door behind her as she said, “May I ask where?”

  He blew out a shaky breath, his eyes sliding up toward hers. “I’ll be very honest: I’m feeling like this trip has turned into a disaster for me and my crew and our status with the SF.” He watched Andreyev’s brown eyebrows shoot up. But he kept talking: “My ship’s damaged and it’s no-doubt costing the SF money to repair, which will probably be taken out of the Spacebender’s budget allowance and will probably also limit the jobs we’re assigned to do in the near future even more.

  “At the same time, I don’t care that much. I’ve been so worried, frankly, about doing the right thing on here with you around. But I see now that none of that really matters. Being alive does. I apologize if I’ve insulted you.”

  To his shock, Andreyev laughed, quite loudly too.

  He couldn’t help smiling at the first sign of real emotion from her. He saw now that she had a slight dimple in her right cheek, and it made her look much more approachable.

  He said fast now, “I should have asked you before the carrier got here, but do you want to continue on to Martoon with us? You can leave on the carrier….”

  “I know I can,” she said. “But I won’t be leaving with them.”

  He nodded, slowly, his hands absentmindedly pushing a piece of paper in front of him across his desk. Then, he kind of mumbled, “I’m glad you won’t be.”

  “For my sake or yours?” she asked fast.

  Raising his head, he smiled up at her. “It’s been tough, I admit. We’ve never had an admiral aboard. I’ve been, well, worried about my performance. Maybe you’ve noticed that I zone-out sometimes—I’m not too fast on the draw. Some of that probably caused what happened today—” He stopped abruptly when he saw her frown.

  “On the bridge, you mean—with the creature?” she asked in an even voice through her frown.

  “Yeah. I should have left the moment I saw I couldn’t do anything for the ships that were there. And I honestly saw that early on.”

  She seemed to straighten up more as she came closer to his desk. “Captain Jones—Jerry, if I may—that you don’t make knee-jerk decisions is one of your strengths. I must say, for the record—and I will put this in my record—I’ve been impressed with not only that but with your nontraditional approach to captaining a Space Force ship. The relaxed nature of the interactions of your crew are particularly noteworthy; they do their jobs and usually look like they enjoy doing them. In the Space Force we can be far too concerned with final results rather than with the process of what we’re doing. Too many people leave the Force after only a few years. The rigidity of the structure may be one reason why. This has actually come up in my conference circuit, and being on here has helped me clarify my opinion on this.

  “And I must also point out that had you knee-jerk left this zone at the first sign of a problem, there would be no record of that dangerous machine’s lair here—and that might have led to the destruction of yet another ship. The damage to this ship is now being repaired. No one in the SF Admiralty expects one-hundred percent intact ships in the work we’re meant to do in the galaxy. We have the means to cover the materials and expense of many disasters. I consider what happened here today on your ship a success, not a failure.”

  “Oh—oh,” Jerry said, a big smile growing on his face. “Well, that’s certainly good to hear.” He couldn’t help laughing now, in a deep, throaty way. “I seem to have gotten things turned backwards as to what they are, huh?”

  “Yes,” she said, and there was a slight smile on her face now—not quite enough to make that dimple visible again. But, he suddenly noticed, she had moved a bit closer to his desk.

  He went back to playing with his papers again. He was feeling a little too hot in the face, and he was hoping she wasn’t noticing his state. Being around women had always made him feel a little embarrassed, what with him not really being a smooth kind of guy. And when the women were his bosses, he really didn’t want to screw up. He felt very pleased that he actually hadn’t done that on this trip—pleased an
d relieved. If he could have, he would have rushed to the ship’s dining room for a celebratory drink. But, he couldn’t do that at the moment, and now he sighed….

  “Maybe I should let you get back to your work,” Andreyev said then. And he nodded at her, but slowly. “Again,” she continued, “for the record, I think you should keep doing what you’ve been doing, and I’ll add that in my report about my journey with you.”

  “Great,” he said then, and on a grin that he hoped looked as good as it felt.

  Her gray eyes were right on him, but her head was tilted to the side a bit. “In the SF, we have our share of hotshots, but in recent years I’ve realized that we need fewer of those.” Her gaze shifted slightly away from him, seeming to turn hazy now, more inward. “Believe it or not, even I had my hotshot moments when I was a captain, though that was several years before you were even a part of the SF.”

  Standing up, he looked at her more directly now. “I know. I’ve read your Space Force bio many times.” His face was flushing again. He went on quickly: “If you don’t mind my saying, you’ve reached a pinnacle in your career. You’re so well-respected in the SF that, quite frankly, I was shocked when you chose my ship to transport you. I’m so used to being assigned miscellaneous work. I’ll be forty next year….”

  “And you feel as if you haven’t gotten anywhere in the SF.”

  His nod was fast. “And my time’s running out for improving my status, especially after today.”

  “Jerry,” Andreyev said then on a light laugh as she moved even closer to the side of his desk, the expression in her eyes suddenly softening so much that his mouth dropped open.

  She was right beside him staring directly into his face when she finally said, “I’m still wondering why you still think you can’t improve your status with the SF. I’ve never seen a captain or a man work so hard on impressing someone. At times it made me feel so uncomfortable for you that I almost told you to stop. But then I found myself enjoying the attention….”

  She slowly raised one of her hands to tentatively touch the front of his neck, but her warm hand soon curled around the back of his neck as her smiling face finally came closer to his grinning face.

  About F. P. Adriani

  I have an academic background in engineering and science, and a degree in space science in part. For years I worked as a scientific copy editor for a nonfiction publishing house, but now I spend my days—and too many late nights—trying to solve fictional “what if” problems. I’ve been writing for 25 years.

  Destinations and Captain’s Choice are part of my Diamond Universe. Some other DU works are: Backflow, Firestone, Omnivelocity, Hellscape, and Diamond On Your Radar.