----------------------------------------------------------- - The Ta’ainvel - – By Khan – ----------------------------------------------------------- 12. One day, the seventh of the voyage, he ate his lunch with Jonas in the kitchen where he had found him the last time and spent the hour talking to him about his training and his adaptation to Ta’ainvel life. When his shift was over at four p.m. he went to see the other Humans where they trained or worked. Michael and Freddie he found in the combat training room of the Security Headquarters wrestling with some of the other trainees. He spent a few minutes watching, then left. Thomas and Marie were up in the forward domed garden and he walked by the day-care centre to check in on Elisabeth on his way there. Thomas and Marie were currently on duty and he found them working in a field of potatoes, testing the soil. He talked to them for a few minutes about the work and how they got along with the other Ta’ainvel. Finally he went to see Anna, who still was Charlotte’s private nurse. He found her in Charlotte’s room and they both fell silent as he entered the room. Anna gave Charlotte a look, then left with a smile for Jante. ”Hey Jante,” Charlotte said as he sat in the chair in the corner. ”Hey. I’ve been visiting the others and they seem to be getting along well with it all,” he said by way of reply. ”Yeah, I’ve heard that from Anna. Listen-” ”Listen-” They both stopped and Charlotte looked down to where her hands were fiddling in her lap. ”You go first,” she said. ”Its not so important, you go ahead.” ”If its not that important, Jante, you go first. What I want to tell you is very important.” ”Alright. Well, I’ve talked to Jonas a lot about you and-” ”About me? Did he tell you something horrible and nasty?” she asked letting a bit of mirth into her voice. ”No, no, on the contrary. We spoke about you as an aviator. He said you flew with him in the 56th and that you flew helicopters as well. I believe you also piloted air- carriers once.” ”Yes, that’s right, I did. Once. I could never get a job after the wars, when the men decided it was their world again.” She gave him a fierce look, then looked away. ”Right, well. I have a proposition for you Charlie. I don’t know how to say this anyway fancy but I would like you to become a pilot again.” ”A pilot again? And do what, fly those black fighters?” ”No, not at all. Of course, you’ll be trained in the fighter craft as well but I was thinking bigger.” ”Right, freighters on Arathur?” ”Bigger. Starship class. Interstellar class in fact, the biggest there is.” She only stared at him. ”You don’t have to do it. I just thought that you might want the choice.” ”I…Oh.” She frowned and looked back to her hands. ”And I want you as close to me as possible,” Jante said softly as he walked over and sat beside her on the bed. She seemed to be hesitating and then looked up at him as if she had made up her mind. ”Yes. I’ll be a pilot. I’ll fly whatever you want, as long as you repeat those words to me every day of our lives.” He smiled and kissed her. ”Now, what did you want to tell me?” ”Oh, it can wait. It wasn’t that important after all,” she said. He spent that evening talking to her about being a starship pilot, what responsibilities it meant. She interrupted him once, saying ”But doesn’t this ship already have all the pilots it needs? I mean, First, Second and commander.” ”The commander isn’t really a pilot like me and Ayshala. Sure, she can fly the ship but its not her job. Her job is to set directives for us to follow. There are two standard pilot seats, left and right of the central command stations. There is also an auxiliary pilot station that is behind the central. I was thinking like this,” and then he explained that he would give up his seat for Charlotte and that he would take the auxiliary station and make it more or less permanent. ”Its only called auxiliary because it is not used, not because it is any less functional. I’ve talked to the commander about all this and she agrees. She even told me to think up a new title for her when you have become Second pilot. Ayshala will become First pilot and I will be Commander. Now, don’t be fooled by these ranks, on the bridge the pilots disregard them. We have virtually the same force of command, its only the responsibilities that differ.” He continued explaining that her training would be conducted in one of the large training bays along with other pilots training to be fighters. She would also train with the larger crafts reserved for the pilots and the commander of the starship. ”In eight years we have enough time to build another.” All in all they talked for nearly five hours, until Anna entered the room and said that even if Charlotte had been recovering for eight days now, she still wasn’t completely healed and needed to sleep. ”So you better leave her alone now,” she said with a wink for Jante. He did leave her alone, to return to his quarters. He hadn’t slept there since he last commanded the ship, many years ago. Now he decided to clean the place as Anna had said that Charlotte would be discharged tomorrow. The rooms were ample and were meant to support the family of one of the pilots. Entering through the main doors a small hallway led out into a large dayroom with large windows on the far wall that showed the green expanses of the Sanctum beneath. In the centre of the room two sofas and armchairs stood around a low table. Four broad openings led out into other rooms. Two of those rooms lay to the far right and left of the dayroom and also had windows opening up into the Sanctum. These were bedrooms but Jante had refurbished one of them to be a study and library. The bedroom held a simple twin bed and not much else. He liked it that way and didn’t need any more furniture. Charlotte on the other hand needed more he thought, and moved a dresser out of the third room into the bedroom. The third room was a large closet with lots of space for clothes and other things you might want to store in a closet. There was a door between the closet and the bedroom and one of the four openings led into the closet as well. The fourth opening had a door and opened up into a bathroom. There was a large tub as well as a shower. Contrary to their smaller cousins the cats, the Ta’ainvel didn’t have anything against water and bathed regularly. He had Charlotte’s small bag brought to his rooms and placed them beside the dresser in the bedroom, then quickly replaced the old sheets in the bed with freshly washed ones. That night he slept in his own bed for the first time in ten years and dreamt of having Charlotte beside him.