2

“There is no way we can pass her.”

“She has shown much promise.”

“She has shown disobedience to superior officers, disregards the rules, and has shown extreme hostility against other officers.”

“We must do what is best of the fleet. She is too unpredictable.”

“Then we agree.”

“Indeed.”

“Then I believe that this meeting is concluded.”

-Knock knock- Luana was pounding at the door

“Liiiiii! Get up! Today is the big day!” She continued knocking on the door and yelling through it. “Come on Li! You don’t want to be late!”

“Mrrrwa?…” Linnea mumbled as she wakes up.

“Hurry up! We have to be there before they start!”

“Wha-? What?” Linnea said aloud, looking at the clock. “It’s only four in the morning... check your watch again…”

“It’s PM! We have to be there in one hour!”

“What!? Why didn’t you wake me sooner!?” Linnea falls out of bed and quickly gathers her uniform, sprawled across the floor.

“I’ve been trying for over an hour now, you must have really had a bad night!”

“Yesterday was just really stressful. You seem really excited for a day you thought wouldn’t come for you.” She slips on her pants and shirt, and searches for her jacket, which she forgot she left on the chair. “Where is that damn jacket?”

“I think I did really well in the exams yesterday! They said they had never seen anything like it!”

Linnea grabs her jacket and puts it on, and starts to button it while talking. “I’m not sure that’s necessarily a compliment when they are talking about you…”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t worry about it; you seem to think you did well, so let’s hope for the best, right?”

Luana jumps up excitedly. “Yeah! So why don’t you keep your clock set to the military time? That would keep you from being late…”

“I can’t stand it. It was a pain for me to modify that clock too. It’s just easier for me to read.”

“You know the regulations state that-“

“I know all about regulations, I’m one of the last people you need to tell them to. My father practically wrote the majority of them. As long as it isn’t mentioned to anyone, it’s fine.” Linnea finishes buttoning up her jacket and fixes up her hair. “Alright, ready.”

“Let’s get going then; we only have a little while before we need to get there!” Luana spins around quickly and trips over herself, falling into the door. She lets out a loud “Oof!” and brings herself back up. Linnea puts her index and middle finger on her forehead and lets out a sigh.

“You really need to be more careful about watching where you go…” Honestly, she may be brilliant, but I don’t think any captain would ever want her on their ship…

Luana looks back at her and rubs her nose where she got hit. “I know, but I’m just so excited!”

“Let’s get moving before you end up breaking something else.”

“Hehe, sorry, I’ll be more careful!” Both Luana and Linnea left the room, and the automatic light dimmers and door lock engaged. Luana started to run off towards the great hall, leaving Linnea behind. “I swear, that girl has the brain of a half-dead goldfish…” She looks back behind her to see a couple students running to the ceremony as well, and she gives a heavy sigh. I guess I better head down as well.” She starts to jog a bit to get to the lift. The doors were starting to close, and she rushed out to get into it.

“Hold the door!” She called, and one of the men put his arm out to block the door, and she managed to get in. The lift was crowded; about a dozen people were jammed inside, all trying to make it to the ceremony in time. “Thanks for holding the door.” She said to the man.

“No problem.” He replied.

“It’s been getting harder to get to these after they started shutting them down.”

“How many have they done so far?”

“Nearly seventy I’m sure. I know that all of section blue is shut down, so they have to all use the lifts in green. And about half of red’s lifts have been disabled.”

“Not to mention all the ones in the other sections. Some academy, eh?”

Oh great. Linnea thought to herself. Another one of those types of students. “It’s not too bad, just old.”

“I guess your right; they just need to get to fixing all these damn problems.” The lift stopped and a couple more people got on, and it continued going down to the great hall. There are far too many late students here; I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of them didn’t pass.”

“Sure are a lot of late student’s here, aren’t there?” One of the students said aloud.

“It’s the lifts; brown section just went out this morning.” Another student said. “The stairs are all pretty crowded, and there are just far too many students for the lift’s we have left.” The lift finally stopped at the third floor, and the crammed lift was quickly made clear. There were students pouring in from the other lifts, and the stairs.

Linnea found her way to the seating for the graduation, and noticed a vast majority of the students in the elevators and stairs were sitting in the audience, and only about two-hundred students were in the graduation area. All those students cramming just to watch this? It doesn’t seem quite right, these normally don’t get even half this many people out there. She looked over the graduating soldiers and only recognized a handful, and many of the ones that she had trained with weren’t even there. There are so few this year… I’m starting to think the academy is veering towards closing. There are just too few of us graduating to keep this going. She looked around and saw Luana over in on the other side of the graduating class. She saw her frantically waving back at her, and she gave a faint smile and waved slowly back. She always has a smile on her face; I envy her to a point… But sometimes she really needs to tone it down.

Director Khane, a tall and very robust man who is in charge of the academy, came up to the podium and the audience started to clap. He brought up his hands and did a calming motion, and everyone went quiet. He picked up the microphone and adjusted it for his height.

“This year is a very special year. You may have noticed this year that our graduating class is the smallest that has been in the history of this academy. Why is this a good thing you may ask? This is the first class to have been tested to be assigned directly to our naval fleet, without any further training. We have commissioned several new vessels that these students will be crewing, and will be among the first of a fully new generation of our fight against the insectoid scourge, the Cartacus.” He paused, and the entire crowd cheered. He again signaled for them to silence themselves, and he continued. “Let us all first congratulate our graduating ship captains, who in their years of training have shown their excellence in the command of their own sections.” He shuffled through his papers to find the list of the graduating captains, and continued his speech. “The captains this year are… Captain Greg Skent, Captain Nicholas Redford, Captain Maria Sanchez, Captain James Peterson, and finally Captain Linnea von Barkis. All of you please come up here to receive your new command, and await for your new crew.”

Linnea and the other captains got up calmly and walked over to the podium, but her thoughts were anything but calm. It’s about time! I’ve been waiting for years to finally get this. I can’t wait to see my ship! The five captains got up to the podium and wee signaled to bow. After they came back up, the Director continued.

“These five fine captains will each be issued a ship, with their crews in that very same class. While it is a little unorthodox, we hope that the unique abilities of fresh minds will be able to overcome new challenges, and fresh eyes to find ways to improve our fight against the Cartacus. Now all five of you, follow these gentlemen to your ships, and your crew will follow shortly.” They all took another bow, and left with each of their guides to their ships. They went through a separate lift that moved diagonally. As they were going down, they reached a windowed area that showed the docks, with many ships docked there.

“Those ships are magnificent…” Captain Peterson stated. “We finally get to command our own.”

“Well, I assure you, I am getting the Promenade.” Captain Sanchez stated matter-of-factly. The other four captains just shrugged her off. Not much for subtlety, she is definitely the bitch of the group, not that I’m far off. Linnea thought to herself.

The other captains spoke to themselves quietly as they gazed at the ships. The first one to get off was Captain Sanchez, who of course, was put in command of the UNS Promenade, the largest of the issued ships, being a Dreadnaught class. Captain Redford was issued command to the UNS Sentinel, a Frigate class, Captain Skent the UNS Solarium, a frigate class, and Captain Peterson the UNS Boleros, also a frigate. The next ship that was to be seen was the UNS Solaris, another Dreadnaught class. My efforts at the academy have finally paid off… I would have been happy with just a Frigate class to start with, but a Dreadnaught, only the elite of all captains get to command one of these ships. She paused at her thoughts for a moment. I can’t let this get to my head. Not like Sanchez.” The remaining guide gave a smirk to Linnea, and she was puzzled by his action.

“What are you smirking at?” She asked calmly.

“This is not your ship, yours is right behind it.”

She looked out the window as they continued, and past the UNS Solaris was an old Scout class ship, with UNS Stingray poorly hand-painted on the side. Linnea’s expression quickly turned from excitement to disgust as she got closer to what shouldn’t even be called a ship. The outer hull had corrosion from gas leakage, the engines were poorly maintained, and the standard paint was severely chipped off. It was shaped much like an elongated stingray, probably why it was named as such. The ship couldn’t be any newer then fifty years, and looks like it had been out of commission for well over two decades. It was a pitiful site, and couldn’t be able to hold more than a dozen or so crew.

“So, what do you think? A perfect ship for a captain so… unique.” Admiral Keene said, giving Linnea a slight startle. She turned around, and gave a glare that would even freeze the devil.

“Is this what you call a joke?!” She exclaimed, fury in her voice. “This ship shouldn’t even be cleared for service!”

“Lower your tone to a superior officer. After all you have pulled, you should be lucky to even pilot a taxi!”

“All I have pulled? If you weren’t a…” She paused, trying to regain her composure. “Yes sir, I apologize.” She said very forcefully, grinding her teeth at the fact that she had to apologize to Keene. If he thinks he can get rid of me this easily he is sadly mistaken.

“That is what I like to hear. Now after you do your starting inspection, your crew should be here.” He walked around her, glazing his eyes around her. “I expect a full status report on your ship and crew at thirteen hundred hours tomorrow. Then you will receive your mission briefing with the other captains.”

“Yes sir.” She said, holding up a strait posture, obviously restraining herself with great will from causing serious harm to Keene. He gave a smirk as he knew he had her beat yet again, and walked out of the dock. Once she was alone again, she let out a yell and kicked a trash can next to her. “Arg! I know he’s doing this just to piss me off, and he’s doing a damn good job at it!” Calm yourself, anger will not help you here. She kept repeating to herself. I guess I should check out this shit bucket. She walked over to the loading port, and swiped her authorization card.

“Authorization denied.” The computer said, in an old cracked female voice. Linnea looked down at the console and recognized it as an old system that required a manual code entry, as all newer authorization cards were not compatible with the old Dunham systems. She pushed in her twelve digit code and entered the ship. There were faint footprints in the dust that coated the floor of the ship; apparently just from bringing the ship in from whatever museum it served at previously.

“Disgusting. They didn’t even bother to make sure all the lights in this thing work properly.” She ran her index finger across one of the control panels, and thick dark dust piled up upon her glove. “These consoles probably don’t even properly work. At least the captain interface should be the same standards as they are now, I don’t believe they changed them until well over eighty years ago.” She said out loud. She walked over to the bridge, which was not much more than just a captain control console, a navigational system and a weapons system. Nothing more would have been able to fit in the bridge, as the display grid took up a good proportion of the already small bridge.

Linnea heard a noise on the other side of the dock, and went out to see what it was. Luana and eleven other crew members were standing outside of the ship, all standing in anything but in regulation formation.

“I guess I’m your chief engineer Li.” Luana said softly, trying to bear the best grin she could.

“It would appear so.” She said back at her. She looked at the rest of the crew and took a deep breath. “I am your captain, and all of you will address me as Sir, Ma’am, Captain, or Captain von Barkis. You will all stand strait and…” She paused for a minute when she saw two of the soldiers fooling around with each other. “Soldiers!” She snapped, clapping her hands loudly. They both stopped instantly and saluted. “I will not tolerate any unorthodox behavior on my ship! As punishment for all such behavior, You will have to perform 100 pushups…” A student interrupted her snidely.

“One-hundred? We do more than that for warm-ups in training.”

“You soldier, shall be the first.”

“Oh, no problem, SIR!” He got down and started to do his first pushup, but was stopped by Linnea.

“You forgot something solder.”

“And what would that be?” Linnea went into the ship and collected some forty pound rectangular weights, dusted them off, and brought them outside to where the crew was standing. She placed one of the blocks on his back.

“Now you may begin.” She told him sternly, and he started to groan as he attempted to do the pushups. She placed another forty pounds on his back. “And this is for groaning. I want it clear to all of you. I am not as lenient as any of your previous commanders may have been, and by far more strict then any of the commanders at this training facility. You will obey my commands without question, and even the smallest remark will go punished. You are all soldiers of the UNEA Navy, you all have taken oaths to protect and serve all of humanity, at any cost. You all look like the most pathetic bunch of soldiers that have come out of this academy, but you will become the elite, you will become better then the best. Now all of you stand in a line and state your name and rank.”

Linnea lifted the weights off of the soldier and pointed for him to get in line. He swiftly got in the line with the other solders, rubbing his back from the left over pressure from the weights. The solders started their role call.

“Luana Marshal, Chief Engineer!”

“Katherine Young, Navigation.”

“Natasha Volsonov, Weapon Control.”

“Vernon Blake, Engineering.”

“Jeremiah Baker, Communications.”

“Richard Noce, Chief Medical Officer.”

“Todd Klassen, Medical Team.”

“David Heusser, Engineering.”

“Dylan Barnhart, Maintenance and Repair sir!”

“Roberto Balboa, Engineering”

“Klarisa Moir, Advisor and Relations.”

“Guy Conroy, Medical Team.”

Linnea looks over all of the crew, and steps back to address them all. “Now before we are able to do anything of any nature, we need to get this ship ready for service.” Linnea stated. “At thirteen-hundred hours tomorrow I am to report for our first mission. We are being put to a test to our abilities. Admiral Keene is doing everything in his power to remove us from service. He has given me perhaps the most disgraceful crew in the history of the UNEA, but I will expect nothing less but greatness from all of you.” She walked across to the ship and opened the hatch. “This ship is perhaps the single worse ship in the fleet, and they expect it to bring us down.” She turned back to the crew and went back to a strait up position. “Engineering, make sure this ship can fly, medical team, get the sickbay to UNEA standards. Baker, you are to get your station online. The rest of you, work together to get this ship cleaned and operational. Dismissed”

The crew saluted and quickly headed inside the ship, aside from Luana.

“Thanks Li, I know I really screwed up, but you didn’t just get rid of us.”

“You were screwed over just as much as I was.” Linnea turned around and looked back at her, a fake smile on her face. “I just hope I can get them to see we can do this.”

Luana put her hand on the door and slightly turned her head towards Linnea. “If anyone can help us make it, it’s you Li.” She quickly removed her hand and walked into the ship. Linnea turned back to reply, but she had already gone. I really screwed this one up.

Luana walked into the ship and saw the crew working on cleaning. She saw Volsonov working on the weapons platform and a spark flew out.

“Volsonov!” She called out.

“Yes sir!”

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Repairing the weapons console.”

“That wiring isn’t to regulations, what is this?”

“It’s my method of the wiring, I feel it’s more-”

“This isn’t some sort of science project! You are to work as regulations state, and there is dust everywhere. Clean your station before repairs, we don’t need to blow the ship!”

“Yes sir.” Natasha quickly said in annoyance, and went back to cleaning.

“Warning, self destruct initiated, all personnel to escape pods, warning, self destruct initiated, all personnel to escape pods.” Red lights were flashing, and the computer kept repeating the warning.

“Dammit! What the hell is that woman doing?!” Linnea rushed to engineering, and saw Luana and her crew frantically going over consoles and stumbling over each other.

“Benson, shut off the destruct while I try to power down the engines!” Luana yelled over the alarm, to one of the smaller engineers.

“Right away!” Benson replied, and pushed a few buttons on the control console. The alarm went off, and the engines finally cooled.

“What the hell was that marshal?!”

“Sorry Li, the-”

“Address me as captain on duty.”

“Sorry Captain.” Luana gave a somewhat cold look at Linnea. ”We just had a minor glitch in the systems.”

“Make sure it doesn’t happen again! We need all systems operational by tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry captain, but I don’t think that-”

“I don’t take excuses; it will be done by noon tomorrow.”

“Yes captain.” Luana said coldly back at her. Linnea left the room and Luana turned back to her crew. “I don’t understand, she normally isn’t this harsh on anyone. Wonder what’s bothering her.”

“I don’t think she likes us, you could see in her eyes, all she sees in us is a bunch of failures.” Vernon said.

“I couldn’t care less about what she thinks. We aren’t anything more but things to walk on to her.” Blake said, grinding his teeth. Luana turned quickly to him and have him a stern dark look.

“You are not to speak about that captain that way, she’s a good person, and she has to go through a lot here at the academy. She is one of the best there is, and you will show her respect!” She snapped at him.

“I’m sorry, but it’s a bit difficult with what she had us do, those weights have got to some form of torture.”

“You earned that. As long as you show disrespect to her, of course she won’t be nice to you.”

“How about how she treated you? You’re her friend aren’t you? Didn’t you hear her say we are all worthless? She seemed to make it a point to include you in that.”

“Watch what you say, you’re in my command as well. She has to look tough to get anywhere, and as long as you keep fighting her, there won’t be much good to come of this. I may be more lenient then her, but another outburst will get you reported to her.”

“Yes ma’am.” He said coldly.

“And watch the tone.” She finished, and went back to her work on the engines. Blake went back to working on the generators swearing under his breath. Luana turned back to see the others staring, and she quickly glared at them and they got strait back to working.

Linnea walked around the ship inspecting the conditioning of the ship. She went to the living quarters and saw stripped down beds with rusted hinges and springs, the lights were covered in a thick mildew dimming the lights throughout the ship. As she was walking to the engine bays, a soldier came up to her with a note, out of breath.

“Captain Von Barkis?” He asked, with a droplet of sweat running down his cheek.

“Yes?” Linnea responded.

“I have an urgent message from Admiral Keene for you. You are to see him right away.” He said, handing her the note. She read over it, and crumpled it up.

“I will be there shortly. You are free to go.” She growled, intimidating the private.”

“Y-yes Captain.” He stuttered, and left the ship. Once he left, Linnea slammed her fist into the wall just as Luana walked in.

“Li…?”

“Keene… he just doesn’t know when to quit… He now wants to hold a meeting to “Congratulate” me, that I finally have earned my way to a “suitable” ship for my abilities…” She held back tears.

“Li… don’t let him get to you, you can’t let him win!”

“Oh believe me; I have no intention to give up.” Linnea said quietly, with a hint of anger in her tone. “I have no intention to let him get his way at all.”