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                     - The Ta’ainvel -
                             
                        – By Khan –

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   11.
   
   Two  hours  later Anna, now Charlotte’s  private  nurse,
made Jante leave saying Charlotte needed her rest.
   Having  one  hour before his assigned shift  started  he
went  to have a bite to eat. He hadn’t eaten a proper  meal
for  twenty-three hours, only had a cup of Ja'inn  now  and
then,  the  Ta’ainvel  equivalent  of  coffee,  so  he  was
starved.
   Going  past  the kitchens of that floor he picked  up  a
plate  of fried vegetables and roast beef. Sitting down  in
the  cantina he was soon joined by Jonas Moore who  arrived
only minutes after Jante.
   ”Hey Jonas, how goes?”
   ”Quite good actually. I’m due to report back to the  bay
in  an  hour  for  some training. You know,  the  Ta’ainvel
fighter  behaves much like a helicopter, even the  controls
are similar.”
   ”Yes,  I’ve  heard this. Its good that you are  settling
in so fast. How’s Elisabeth doing?”
   ”She’s  fine, and happy with her job. She gets to  watch
Susanna all day, as well as work with the other children.”
   ”Good…Jonas, I need your advice.”
   ”Anything I can do to help, Jante.”
   ”Thanks.  Well, its about Charlie, and where  I’m  going
to put her.”
   ”You  already  have  a place for her  in  the  Fighters,
right?”
   ”Yes,  but  what is her degree of skill, her past  rank.
And what does she want herself?”
   ”Hey,  what she wants, I can’t tell you. Only she  knows
that. I can tell you about her skill as fighter though.
   ”She’s  one  of the damned best pilots I’ve seen,  could
fly  a plane as if it was an extension of her own mind  and
she  ruled the skies when it came to helicopters. She  even
flew one of those air-carriers once.”
   ”Really?  An  air-carrier you say…Those  require  pretty
great  skill at using a lot of controls at the  same  time,
yes?”
   ”That’s right.”
   ”And her rank? If she had any, that is.”
   ”Well,  she was a squadron leader like me in  the  56th,
but  she left the brigade to fly helicopters for a delivery
service.  That’s  how she got the job on  the  air-carrier,
sometimes not even getting off the craft for days in a  row
to deliver and reload as much as possible.”
   ”Stubborn, I’d say.”
   ”Determined is a word that fits her more.”
   They  laughed and finished their meal with talk  of  how
life on the ship would be for the next eight years.
   With  still half an hour of time before their shift they
parted, Jonas saying that he was going to go get some rest.
   Jante  walked along the now dimly lit corridors  towards
the command section and went by his unused quarters to pick
up his heavy green greatcloak.
   Pulling it around him, he took the corridor towards  the
staircase and walked down to the small docking bay. Pulling
on  gloves  and removing his headcap he walked through  the
hatch  into the cold bay. His breath steamed as  he  strode
towards the bay door controls.
   Having  switched on the force field he opened the  hatch
that took up the entire outer wall.
   He  walked to the rim of the floor and looked out at the
lights  streaking by in the darkness. The bay wasn’t heated
like the rest of the starship. Then again, the starship was
cold in many places unfrequented by civilian personnel. All
the  outer docking bays were unheated, as well as  all  the
main hallways and the passages between the three starships.
   He  sat  down on the cold deck, knowing that the  fabric
of  his  cloak and overall would shield him against  frost.
This he had done at least once a week for the ten years  he
had  been pilot of the Handrillian, sitting in the  docking
bay a few minutes before his shift, feeling the cold on his
face  and ears and looking out on the slowly passing stars.
Now they passed in blurs.
   Having  the  tolerance to only sit in the  bay  for  ten
minutes,  he  decided  to  go up into  the  bridge  fifteen
minutes  early. He pressed a button on his bracer  and  the
red  circle  disappearing in the roof  confirmed  that  his
chair would descend soon.
   The  chair had to pass down fully into the floor  before
a  hatch could close on it up in the bridge. It then passed
down, past the open hatch in the ceiling of the bay.
   Jante   jumped  into  the  seat  and  returned  upwards.
Feeling the warmth return to his limbs in the airlock below
the  bridge,  he  rubbed his headcap warm and  put  it  on.
Removing  his  gloves he put a palm on  a  scanner  to  his
right, confirming that the First pilot was in his station.
   His  chair  thudded  into place in  a  relatively  empty
bridge  and his display showed that the time was a  quarter
to six in the morning. He looked out the window for a while
and   then,  as  the  bridge  filled  with  the  day  shift
personnel, he started calling up the shift reports  of  all
sectors.
   The  familiar  routine caught him and he hardly  noticed
when Ayshala entered the room eight hours later, until  she
told him to get the hell out of there. He spent the evening
talking  to Charlotte in her room in the hospital and  then
spent  a long and dreamless night sleeping in the chair  in
the corner.