9.120 - The Vanguards: Rapture

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

How long had it been since he'd slept?

Cirr blinked, sitting a bit straighter in his seat, snapping out of a mental lapse as he blinked the relentless urge out of his heavy eyes. Quickly, he chased down the last few gulps of caf in his mug, now cold and unpleasantly alkaline. Still, the stimulants within began their work, and he could at least think again.

His desk was a stack of datapads. Duty rosters. Orders from Dac. Inventory of spoils from an Imperial freighter they'd sacked two days ago. Tech manuals. Theory textbooks. A Koensayr-Meorrrei catalog. Fleet charts. He made a half-hearted attempt to sort them and stack them off to the side. Immediately in front of him was his desktop computer, and a message draft he'd been putting together to send to his mother:

Mama,

I thought about trying you on the holo. I'll talk to you later, but I wanted to write you. Not sure if I'd be able to really say this, and I'm sure we'd talk for a while about other things anyway.

I'm scared. Every day. I don't even know why most of the time. I'm still getting used to the idea of two hundred people looking at me and thinking I know what I'm doing. I know how to make things work, but those things are engines, power plants, machines. Those things. People aren't machines. They ask questions, tough questions. They worry. Then they look at me. How do you get behind that? You lead thousands of people and act like its nothing at all to you. I'd kill to have your poise. I run drills, I make people turn in reports. I expect improvement. We can always do better. Everybody works hard, and I've got an amazing crew, but it feels like there's something I should be saying and I'm not able to say it. I'm scared they'll find out how scared I am_

Cirr stared at the opening of the letter blankly, watching the cursor blink at the end of the last sentence he typed. Blink. Blink. Blink.

He hit enter a few times, and added more text.

This letter is shit. Complete shit. Grow up you big baby_

Blink. Blink. Blink.

"Captain Raurrssatta?"

The bridge chime. Mallin. Cirr looked at his chrono. Always too late. He closed his eyes, thinking about the bed in his quarters. The blankets drawn tight and the pillows arranged like military habit. Pristine and unused.

He looked back at his shitty rough draft, and saved it. Incomplete. To unfuck with later. Only after removing that eyesore from his sight did he answer the comm.

"Rreporrt."

He'd reached an undestanding with his comms Lieutenant. This wasn't a trivial interruption. Mallin had as much interest in seeing Cirr get a full night's sleep as he did. Neither of them were getting their wish right now.

"Picking up a distress signal from the Gordian frontier. Imperial territory. Quality's in the tank, but you might want to hear this."

He was already on his feet.