Chapter 9 - Trouble in Paradise

 “I need to go over this dossier, Molly,” Jim said as she flopped into his lap, red hair lapping over her face as they both sunk deeper into the giant overstuffed armchair in the study. Jim covered his screen with his hand, halting the 3D projections of landscapes, people of interest, and mini-maps floating over the text on the datapad.

“Hmph,” Molly grunted as she crossed her arms in her lap, face still drowned in a sea of fiery curls. She angled her lower lip over her upper and temporarily blew a strand out of her face, revealing the subtle upturning of the corners of her mouth.

Jim balanced the datapad on his knee and reached around to brush the hair from her face, a white toothy smile hiding beneath it. He ran the back of his fingers along the soft subtle line of her cheekbone and rested his palm on her chest just below her throat. “I deploy on my first real mission tomorrow. I want to make sure I didn't miss anything in the material,” Jim leaned down and kissed her deeply.

“I know,” she said after they broke apart, “that's why I want you to stop locking yourself in this damn study and spend time with me. You've been going over that file every night for, like, ever! You're starting to recite lines in your sleep. I won't get to see you for two whole weeks. Can't you come into the other room? I was digging through some old internet documents and found a movie called 'Casablanca.' It's one of the first movies ever made in the old world. It doesn't even have color. I wanted to watch it with you before you left.” She wiggled in Jim's lap and reached up, placing her hand over his. “I'm going to miss you.”

“I'm going to miss you, too, my love. I'll meet you in the other room, just give me a second to close out my stuff.” Jim reached down and began to fidget with the datapad single-handedly.

Molly wiggled her butt into Jim's now-tingling lap, “I'm not going anywhere without you.” She re-crossed her arms and made a grumpy face, freckled brow furrowed, lips smooshed together and pushed outward.

“Fine, be difficult, then,” Jim said as he lifted his hand off of her chest to help close out his datapad.

“No,” Molly said in a childish voice and grabbed his hand, pulling it into her lap and clinging to it like a koala.

“What?” Jim chuckled as a wry grin pushed against his eye and eyebrow.

“Mine,” she said, with the same death-grip a baby would have when trying to pull away their rattle.

“If that's how you want to play it,” Jim said as he put the datapad down on the arm of the chair near the back, behind Molly's legs, “so be it.” Jim leaned forward again and kissed her ferociously. When he felt her grip loosen, in one deft motion, he scooped his arm underneath her legs, and with a sharp pelvic thrust and heave of his upper torso forward, catapulted himself out of the chair.

Molly let out a high-pitched wail at the surprise, reaching her arms out, hands twisted into scared claws. When she realized Jim had her secure in his arms, the shocked look on her face softened into a brow-furrowed smirk as she languished her arms around his neck. “Now that, mister, was pretty damned smooth,” she said as her eyes slowly closed, the green circles collapsing to reveal the sky-blue eye shadow lightly powdered over her top lids. She pushed her fingers into Jim's thick, short-cut hair, pulling his face to hers, and kissed him with an electric depth. It felt as though a wire had been run from both of their hearts to their lips, the closed circuit sending out a lightning surge of emotion.

Jim whisked Molly into the main living room, sashaying from side to side dodging the various end-tables and furniture obstacles, winging her to and fro in a rhythmic dance before unceremoniously hucking her onto the long leather sofa in front of a bare white wall. Jim pounced on top of her before she could recover, hair mussed in front of her face again. Jim, propped up on his elbows, shifted his weight to the arm near the back of the couch and brushed the hair away to see her face, an impish grin creasing her cheeks.

Molly used Jim's precarious balance to her advantage and bucked forward, pushing Jim's shoulder with her own, pulling on the arm Jim was balanced on, and grabbing his other wrist as she flipped him onto his back, hands pinned behind his head, her pelvis pressed firmly against his. A ravenous gaze penetrated Jim briefly, her hair framing her devious visage. She hungrily began kissing Jim's neck and collar bone, his already-casually-unbuttoned shirt wide open, exposing his bare chest.

“That,” Jim started as he strained to stay focused, “was pretty damned smo...ugh” he started before an uncontrollable moan burst forth when Molly began to playfully nibble his ear, casually flipping her tongue along the cuff between sensual gnaws. “ Smooth,” he said, with another breathy moan, “pretty damned smooth.”

“I know,” Molly cooed into his ear as she ground her pelvis into his, tingling waves rushing through his lower body. She let go of Jim's hands and kissed him passionately, another gyration sending pulsing vibrations through Jim. She rolled Jim onto his side, his back pressed firmly against the backrest of the couch, and abruptly broke contact. She spun around, snuggling herself deeply into Jim, and nestled herself beneath his large frame. She snapped her fingers, and the white wall they were now facing filled with her computer's desktop, a long text document she had been reading behind a black frame. She snapped again, and the black box expanded to fullscreen and a big “Warner Brothers Presents” logo splashed across the wall. She placed her bottom hand beneath her head and pulled Jim's top arm around her.

“Ok, then,” Jim said as he shook his head, knocking himself into the world Molly decided she wanted them to be in. He freed his face from the mass of hair it was now burried in, and with his free hand, pulled a couch cushion underneath his head. He threaded his arm underneath Molly's head and re-positioned his other around her neck and chest, wresting his palm on her rib beneath her breast.

“I love you, Jim,” she said as she looked, mousy green eyes wide, eyelashes fluttering relentlessly.

“I love you too, Molly,” Jim craned his neck to meet her gaze. A pang sunk his chest and he was again assaulted with a barrage of intense emotion. He leaned down and kissed her gently on the forehead.

Molly responded by wiggling her hips into Jim and snuggling tight. “It's about to start,” she said as she patted Jim on the forearm and a globe enshrouded in mist began spinning on the screen.

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“Alpha-five take point, Charlie-three, keep cover. Zulu-seven, guard the flank. Zulu-nine, you're with me,” echoed Marion's voice through Jim's flight helmet. It was as though she was directly next to him as she spoke.

“Roger, Gold-one,” Jim spoke aloud. Adrian was to the group's left, piloting Annie Oakley, covered in brush and dirt sighting down a long-barrel mass driver covered in it's own leaf-woven netting. Tomah, in Heimdall, was crouched next to him, a rapid-fire energy rifle butted against what could be considered his core's shoulder.

“Taking point,” Blaize's low voice boomed through Jim's headset, reminding him of Deka's deep bass, but with a much less sonorous timbre. Blaize's voice was buttery in it's own right, but had a thick gravel behind it, making him sound a generation older than he actually was. “Keep tight on me.” Blaize's Hermes-class Core, Enlil, was tall and slender. It had a special-tuned sensor stalk that sat like a hat atop the head-like structure and a piece of armor extending from what would be the Core's chin, similar to a beard, used to protect it's neck-actuators. It wore a long flowing shift made of Chameleon Cloth. It wasn't turned on so it looked white-ish. It's feet were tiny, almost like hooves, and were reverse-jointed, allowing him to bound effortlessly over the bumpy and incongruous terrain in front of him in near-silence, inertial sinks absorbing most all of the energetic shockwaves such a monolithic machine would normally create.

Jim and Marion struggled to keep up with Enlil and maintain form. Jim was in Cúchulainn following Marion in her Cowboy-class core, named Simo Hayha, and was strafing backward so he could cover her six while she scoped forward down her precision energy rifle on their objective. The mission was simple: Blaize had a backpack full of high explosives. There was an an enclave of terrorists inside a cave-carved bunker being funded by a small republic outside of Great Union jurisdiction. They had infiltrated a pre-Collapse server cache the Southern Union had been excavating, and after tragically eliminating some of the SU's greatest minds, they were now holding the site hostage. A Great Union covert team had already infiltrated the server cache and was in the process of extracting the data cores and hijacking the explosive rig the terrorists had set up to hold the server farm hostage. The GU traced activity back to this fortress and it was their job to set explosive charges, dismantle their mobile platforms, and eliminate the terrorist threat before they could expand operations.

“I have a fix on the combatants,” Blaize's voice again came through the intercom in Jim's flight rig. It was hard to tell if the crackling of the speakers in his earpiece was the gravel in his voice or the tone causing the speakers to clip heavily. “I have engaged stealth. I will attempt to strafe them and position myself behind the target.”

“Copy that Alpha-five. Once you are in position, obscure yourself as best as possible and disable stealth to preserve energy levels,” Marion's orders were crisp and concise.

“Copy that.”

“Charlie-three, do we have a visual?”

“Roger that, Gold-one, I am unable to detect Alpha-five on visual sensors and I have three Mobile-10's in sight. Gold-one and Zulu-nine are showing circumambulatory motion across the theater. There appears to be several meatsacks in proximity, none carrying heavy weaponry,” Adrian's crisp voice was a well-enunciated baritone. Unmistakable against Blaize's booming bass, Tomah's brassy and lethargic tenor, and Marion's feminine alto. A soprano and some talent and they could form a barbershop sextet.

“I can confirm,” Blaize boomed through the comlink. “I am in position. I have a visual on the enclave and am currently obscured by a rock face above the objective.”

In the meantime, Marion and Jim had caught up with Blaize and were positioned in a wild outgrowth of forest just below the ramped path leading to the cave mouth. Marion laid Simo prone and set up her energy rifle's stand,training it on the middle 100-ft-long mobile platform directly in front of the ramp. These were serious mobile platforms. Three or four stories tall, and twice to three times as long, this was an anti-siege platform outfitted with large missile batteries and high-caliber energy turrets. Though they moved slowly on levitation engines, in a stationary situation such as their current positioning, they could halt entire armies in their place. “Zulu-nine,” Marion sang through the intercom, “I want you to rush Mobile-three in front of us. I am fixed on Mobile-two. I want you trained on Mobile-one, Charlie-three.”

“Roger that, trained on Mobile-one,” Adrian's calm voice spoke through.

“Roger that,” Jim said, feeling his skin prickle into goose flesh and his eyes go blackish. It reminded him of his first kiss, the rush of adrenaline.

“Alpha-five, when all three targets are confirmed as immobilized, drop down from your position and place the explosive payload. Execute a high-speed scramble and we will detonate when we have reconnoitered at Charlie-three. On my mark. Zulu-nine, begin your advance,” Marion's voice was imminent but not excited. Cool.

Jim launched from a crouched position and bolted through the tall, old growth of the wilds, trees twice as high as his massive Core. He emerged in a small clearing where Mobile-three had been put into a defensive stance. Resembling a small mountain, the triangular missile pods were aimed forward, turrets on either side of the parked levitation platform - eight in all - indicating this was an anti-ground unit. Cúchulainn's lumbering sprint covered vast distance, and before long, was within gunning range. “Engaging the enemy,” a crack in his voice punctuating an otherwise calm-sounding declaration.

The energy rifle butted against Cúchulainn's shoulder made loud “fwamp” noises as the trigger was pulled, missiles moving at the speed of light, a muzzle flash the only indication a pulse was volleyed. Each blast caused a huge red spot to appear on the side of the battery as the metal super-heated from each blast. Using this as tracking, Jim trained his weapon on the four turrets facing him. Within seconds of Jim's exposure and assault, the turrets returned in kind, lobbing mass-driver bullets in Jim's general direction. Woefully inaccurate at such distance, even with advanced computer tracking and telemetry calculation, the large rounds caused the earth to spurt upward in an earthen geyser, the occasional errant bullet splintering wood off of a tree and ripping through underbrush in a dusty cloud.

Jim danced Cúchulainn through the onslaught, kilt flapping up and down with each rapid knee-raise, the muzzle of his weapon flashing as he raced against the turrets to dial in his accuracy before they did. After a few misplaced pulses, Jim's sighting struck pay-dirt. A bright red flash erupted on the turret battery, causing the structure to shine bright red. The overheating internal inertial drivers caused a spectacular chain reaction, culminating in a shockwave of explosion that shook the forest around them. With his accuracy now fixated, Jim rolled Cúchulainn forward into a somersault, ending in a crouch, elbow rested on one knee. Jim quickly invoked his tracking sub-routines on Cúchulainn's inner computer and arrayed his visual sensors onto the objective targets. The systems then deftly swiveled his gun at small set intervals. Three trigger-pulls later and each installment was bursting in explosion in rapid succession.

“We're getting activity on Mobile-one,” Adrian cooed through.

“I am getting the beginning of a rotation maneuver on Mobile-two,” Marion's smooth voice rung in Jim's ear. “Give'em hell, Charlie-three.”

“Roger that, Gold-one. Initiating counter maneuvers.”

Almost in unison, Mobile-two and Mobile-three erupted into catastrophic explosion, the shockwave was so immense it actually knocked Jim's core sideways, forcing him to execute a rolling procedure in order to continue his forward sprint toward the missile battery. If there were any foot-soldiers not ensconced in the fortress, they were no doubt dead from the internal damage caused by such an immense pressure wave. Thankfully, the Plug in which the pilots operated the cores from were all heavily inertial dampened, so Jim was mostly safe from the devastating ripple, even if he was unable to counteract the tremors resonating through the ground below him. No sooner had Jim recovered than did the soundwave from the rifles arrive, a deafening “bwooooowhmp.”

"Reloading. Newtonian Syncs at 80% force capacity and dissipating," Adrian reported, the heavy thud of his old-school physical weapon's next mass driver round dropping into the railgun accelerators overwhelmed his microphone's ambient noise filters, nearly muting him over the intercom. Adrian was very old school all around, preferring to use environmental audio sensors and loudspeakers over headsets and heuristic audio computations, as well.

“Sniper rifle charging. 10% and climbing,”Marion's voice declared after a large shimmering energy cylinder was shucked from the rifle's chamber. “Get a charge into a missile tube if you can, Zulu-nine,” she said as she collected her spent charge, and began her retreat.

“Already in progress, Gold-one,” Jim said as he continued his barrel forward to the front of the Core. Once he had himself in position, he began peppering one of the missile doors with energy shots. A small hole began to burn through the metal of the sliding door protecting the missile tube. When the hole was big enough, Jim locked the internal targeting computers onto the opening, and used the trajectory calculator to perfectly lob a high-charge grenade into the hole, like a basketball player hitting nothing-but-net on a 3-point shot. No sooner had the charge left the core's hand than did Jim begin his fevered run back to Adrian and Tomah's position. “Charge out,” Jim yelled as he pushed through his fevered sprint. “Detonating in three.”

When Jim had cleared the red-zone, he initiated the blast sequence. The warhead of the missile in the tube set off the missile in the other tubes, and soon a shower of shrapnel and a massive pressure wave was pushing Cúchulainn to the ground. Jim kept him flat down as the shower of metal and forest rained around him.

“Mobile-three eliminated. Alpha-five, begin objective completion,” Marion ordered Blaize as she herself began retreating.

Jim engaged sonar detection and put the Core on autopilot as he craned the sensor stalk of Cúchulainn behind him and watched Blaize as he dropped down onto the huge ramp leading to the giant cave mouth, a satchel containing about a ton of explosives in hand. While in mid-air, he winged the bag between his legs and into the cave opening, blocking off the entry point like a giant boulder. He began sprinting at full-speed once he landed, quickly passing Jim and Marion as he returned to the rendezvous point.

“Might wanna cover your ears for this,” Blaize came through on the intercom as Jim finally pulled in last at the waypoint. “Satchel charge detonating in three...two...one...” A huge plume of rubble burst up from the mountain wall followed by a visible shockwave, rippling the atmosphere around it, brought with it a violent tremor in the earth, an ear-shattering boom tailing in its wake.

"Holding for confirmation," Marion said once everyone had regained composure and the dust-cloud had cleared.

"Satellite imaging shows no traditional life signatures in the current theater of operation beyond our own. Charged-particle and Long-Wave Sonar imaging show the tunnel network has collapsed. Visual inspection confirms," Adrian detailed.

The entire side of the mountain had collapsed in on the now-destroyed network of caves and tunnels. Marion came over the intercom, “Objective complete. Preparing for extraction, come and get us Valiant."

After a short period of time, a gigantic airship, almost the size of a city, appeared. Jim and his crew sprinted up the now-lowered ramp and slotted their cores into their respective docking bays as giant cranes extracted the pilot Plugs.

**********************************************************************************************************************

“I'm proud of you Jim,” The Commander elbow-checked Jim as they walked abreast down the hallway to the debriefing room. The other four were walking abreast themselves, a few paces ahead of them. “Marion gave you the harder position and you handled it well.”

“Was a hell of a run, Commander, especially for a first mission,” Jim looked down at his boots. His grey flight suit and flight harness were light and a bit loose, but still fit snuggly. There were huge sweat rings around his armpits and on his back. He could feel the cold, still air in the airship through the wet spot between his suit's neckline and the top of his black harness. His hair clung together in tight rivulets to his head, itself salty and drenched.

“You were supposed to be on rear guard. Tomah was on linear assault duty. They switched up on the fly,” the Commander took a few steps faster than Jim and broke off as they all entered into the debreifing room. Just like Jim's dorm, this too was a black slate and white grout deal with digital whiteboards and projectors everywhere. There were a few chairs unceremoniously occupying the center of the room.

Standish, in a purple-red shimmering suit with a black top-hat, a long gaudy red feather held on with a skull-shaped clasp in it's purple ribbon, was leaning against the wall in a corner behind a transparent digital screen. He had on a black mandarin-collared shirt with a white skull button at his neck, and his medal of rank tucked into his blazer, the horizontal zig-zags on the ribbon resembling teeth. He looked far more intimidating than usual, his white-blue eyes beaming through a skull-shaped insignia, contouring his face from the screen he was behind. “Good job, guys,” he said as he kicked himself off the wall. The silver ball on his black walking stick had been replaced with an ornamental skull. It slipped from his uncrossing arms and landed peg-straight, floating for just a second before as he put his hand to rest on top it. The group took seat in the chairs in the center as, Standish strutted his way to the center of the stage area in front, the group's shuffling occasionally punctuated by the clicks of his cane on the floor.

“Very morbid,” Carol said as she gave Standish an up-and-down glance. She crossed her arms and stared penetratingly over her glasses at him, hip cocked out and a toe pointed at him in a T-stance. “What's with the skull motif?”

Standish, his left leg crossed over his right and resting on the toe of his pointy black shoe, head tipped down, leaned heavily on his cane, both hands covering the top. “Hey mon,” he said in a stereotypical, movie-accurate creole-cajun accent, “dis be a day of death.” He straightened out and touched his scepter to the brim of his hat, revealing to Carol a broad, white-toothed smile.

“You and your movies,” Carol shifted her glance to the crowd as she scoffed in disgust.

“Watching movies is very different when you can get them piped right into your head,” Standish said, touching his index and ring fingers to the side of his face, a devilish glare creasing the corners of his eyes.

“You're not supposed to use them like that,” Blaize interrupted smugly from the peanut gallery, “It screws up your brain's reality perception.”

Standish's face went from glaring to grim as he stared him down, “Don't lecture me. You don't even understand half the power residing within you,” his brow furrowed down as his white eyes began to glow, his gaze penetrating into Blaize.

Blaize turned sheet-white as Standish's eyes glowed brighter and brighter. His face contorted and he slammed his eyes shut as the yellow began to glow from beneath the white, in contrast to Standish' equally-shimmering blue.

“Eli!” Carol hit him on the back hard, knocking his hat to the floor. He fell to a knee, one hand resting on the head of his walking stick, the other quickly slamming over his own eyes as he winced in agony, the muscles in his neck forcing his head to twitch sideways for a few ticks. He shook it away and then snatched up his hat, returning it to his freshly-shaven pate and hoisting himself up with the assistance of his cane.

“What did you do!” Blaize yelled questioningly as he snapped out of his trance, darting to a stand, knocking the chair over as he stumbled backward, his own hand snatching across his face.

“Wouldn't you like to know,” Standish casually snarked as he looked down over himself, far more concerned with straightening his suit and adjusting the hat to sit on his head just so.

“Sit down, Blaize,” the Commander said as she turned her attention to him, “And you, Standish, are going to have a little conversation with Tyler and I after this.”

Standish looked sufficiently spooked as he turned to the group. Blaize seemed sufficiently satisfied as well with the reprimand. He re-positioned his chair, flipping it in reverse, and sat on it a cowboy-style, resting his arms and chin on the back of it. “So how did we do,” he said after he regained his composure.

“Well,” the Commander started, as she slowly panned away from Standish, who was looking very grumpy and a little bit scared, and met Blaize's yellow-white eyes, “Marion went a little off-script,” she reprimanded as she panned her gaze across the room.

“We felt,” Marion began as she brushed away the wire for her headgear which was draped over her shoulder, “that with Jim's exemplary graduation performance and previous qualifying talents, that he could handle a hands-on combat position and would not need previous combat experience to operate at a high-functioning level, Sir.” Marion suppressed a snicker as she glanced side-to-side at her co-conspirators.

“They were trying to fuck with the new kid,” Standish spoke loudly from the corner of his mouth around the back of his hand.

“I know,” She said as she swatted him across the chest, causing him to turn his face into a squinty pucker, arch his back and pull his chest away, and comically complain onomatopoetically. “That was stupid and dangerous. Jim is an untested pilot who has never been in an unstable combat situation. You could have jeopardized the entire operation if Jim did not 'operate at a high-functioning level,'” she made air quotes. “What would you have done if something went wrong?”

“We had multiple contingency plans,” Marion replied, again stifling a chuckle. “Many, many contingency plans. Yes. Tons, even. Yes,” she couldn't restrain a snatch of laughter.

“Come on. Lighten up Carol, they did fine. No need to delve into hypotheticals,” Standish said quietly to her from over her shoulder. “But nothing did go wrong,” he said as he walked forward to stand in front of Carol. He snapped his fingers and a digital whiteboard sprung into action, displaying a large area map, several columns of text and graphics on one side, a checklist flanking the other, a large legend blocked off in the corner denoting what the various lines and icons represented. “Our current campaign has us at about here,” he tapped the silver cap at the bottom of his walking stick to the map on the wall behind him. The map zoomed out, a flashing dot indicating their position on it, closely located to the end of Standish's cane.

“As of now, we currently have the terrorists routed along this skirt here,” the Commander proscribed a squiggling arc that lead to a blinking dot on the screen, the path nestled between mountains and dense forest and other various geographical features indicated in the legend. “As you know, this mission was commissioned by the IA as a service to the Southern Union. The group we hit is believed to be funded by a small unaffiliated city-state named Gotoma. The SU has been excavating this site for the last thirteen months. After tracing the enemy's movements, imaging shows they were following this path here to reach the fortress.” A line traced along her finger as the map zoomed in to show the theater of operation they were just pulled out of. “Our job was to neutralize the enemy enclave while our covert unit extracted the data cores and destroyed the server facility. With both threats neutralized, we can now formally indict Gotoma and the SU can return to its data analysis operations. That concludes the debriefing, we'll go over the next leg of the campaign at briefing tomorrow, 0900. Dismissed.”

Everyone slid their chairs back and started to weave their way between seats to get out. Jim, who was sitting in the back-corner next to the door, stayed seated and waited for everyone to file out before he stood. As they all passed by his chair as they left, Adrian slapped Jim on the shoulder. “You did good out there, kid,” he said as he gave him an approving smile and thumbs up over his shoulder.

“Yeah, nice job, mate,” Tomah said, as he passed by with a sidelong glance.

“Impressed,” Blaize said with a smirk and a wink as he sauntered by.

“Me too,” Marion said with a smile and chuckle.

Jim craned his head as they filed by. “Thanks,” he said with a wave. Once they'd all gone, Jim stood and made his way to the front. The commander was deeply and very animatedly involved in conversation with Standish, not noticing Jim's approach. “No, I have not been having any issues with this,” he heard Standish say, with a theatrical tap of his head from his cane.

“Commander,” Jim said before they thought he was eavesdropping.

“Jim, yes,” she said as they both spun around to hear where it came from.

“I have no idea where I'm going. I was loaded on from the bay. Where can I change out of this,” Jim said as he held up his arms and looked down at his suit and harness.

“Standish and I,” she held his hand out horizontally in presentation, “can show you to your quarters. The Valiant is pretty big, we wouldn't want you getting lost, now would we?” The commander said as she turned her head and smiled cattily at Standish.

“No, not our precious Jim,” he said with a sneer and a smirk.

The commander swatted Standish across the back. He darted forward, his hat shifting weight to the front. He knocked it back with the skull of his walking stick and followed the commander as she lead them out of the room and back into the large hallway. “The Valiant is our mobile combat base. It's about twice as large as a luxury cruise ship, and as such, has a large retinue of support staff. Due to aerodynamic designing, there are only about 26 floors that aren't hangers, storage space or critical system like inertial dampeners and atmospheric dispersers and the like. We're on the main floor now, just above the hanger. Each floor is mapped out with 4 major blocks connected by 6 major hallways. Each hall has signs and maps to let you know where you are, but loosely speaking, major operations are on this floor. The mess hall and most other support operations take place on the floor above us. The rest are bunks. The Valiant can host an entire regiment of soldiers.” The commander pulled something out of her pocket and handed it to Jim. It projected a 3D rendering of the boat, a blinking red dot indicating current location. “You're on floor 26 in the individual quarters, room 26600.” A blue dot took Jim to a turbolift and then proscribed a path to his quarters. The map shrank in size as a bar bumped in from the side listing turn-by-turn directions on how to get there. “Get showered up and look around the ship. There's a crew's lounge on the 2nd floor. Standish and I need to go over tomorrow's campaign with Dyman.” She gave Standish a penetrating sidelong glance as they all halted in front a set of sliding doors.

Jim boarded and hit the button for his floor as the Commander and Standish departed in the opposite direction. The map route was relatively simple and Jim found his room toward the end of a seemingly-infinite row of doors. Jim's rank and position afforded him a nice room on the base. Medium sized, with it's own private bathroom and a full bed, not just a cot. There was a dresser against the back wall, and a computer terminal against the right. Jim plopped down on the foot of his bed as he began to undo his flight harness. He stepped out of it and hung it from a hook on the wall next to his bed, shucking his soaked flight-suit and undergarments. “Shower,” he said after snapping his fingers, a "whoosh" indicating the sound of running water going off in the bathroom.