Chapter Text
09:37 GLOBAL EARTH TIME, 2367 SOLS
BRANCH SHIPYARD, GAIA ORBITER
TIMESTAMP H.E.L.L. CERTIFIED. FLY FAR.
When Sergeant Aimsey, newly promoted, stepped onto the ship that would be their home for the next three months, their eyes shot to the captain's chair. Could it be considered a captain’s chair, on a ship meant for one? They didn’t know. It didn’t matter. Aimsey would sit there, and look out into deep space, and their ship ( theirs!!! their own ship!) would lumber along, rolling and twisting, controlled by Aimsey’s every movement while in that chair.
They can’t help themselves. They walk over to the chair, mag boots thudding on the ground. Aimsey places their gloved hand on the armrest of the seat, and even through their suit they feel the powerful, constant thrum of electricity, darting around the passages of the ship like a nervous system, like its veins. They shiver. All that. They’re going to control all that.
Behind them, their brother takes a step onto the ship and places a hand against the wall. Scott is a few years older, and a few ranks higher, and has not let Aimsey forget it since the moment they understood what he was saying. Eventually, they learned to bite their tongue and take the belittlement through twelve years of flight training school.
This is what it’s all been leading up to. This is Aimsey’s big break. Away from H.E.L.L. CORP, away from their family, and away from this shitty planet and off into the cosmos.
“I hope you are adequately prepared,” Scott remarks, and Aimsey’s neck tingles uncomfortably at the thought of him on this ship, leaving his presence here, watching and whispering commentary as they fly. “It would not do well to have an accident of incompetence. This ship is outfitted with the latest technology we have.”
Yeah, their brother was always going to end up working for H.E.L.L. They share the same mindset of cold-blooded progress, innovation at the cost of destruction.
“Speaking of,” Scott continues, thankfully staying where he is, “you should meet the computer.”
Aimsey turns.
And the ceiling lights up around the edges, blue, shifting like the waves of an ocean.
“Hello,” says a voice, robotic but varied. For a computer, its voice is strangely soft. “I am the Guidance Universal Quotient system. You may call me GUQ. Registering new captain?”
“Yes,” Scott answers. “New captain: recognize Aimsey Cross.” The lights spin for a second.
“Registered,” the voice says. “Welcome AIMSEY CROSS, captain on board the Thrush.”
Aimsey has been waiting to hear that their entire life.
And the Thrush is a beautiful ship, too. Just out of production, with the panels fit together seamlessly and the slightly gratuitous window in front of Command clear, rounded and unobscured. Not too light, not too harsh on the eyes, with the plant growth and recycling systems encased in the walls of the corridors, blocked off by glass. Aimsey can see the leaves shudder with the hum of the reactor, watch the water droplets as they’re pulled down and towards the soil of the slowly moving centrifuge. It’s certainly nicer than the Academy training ships, which tended to wail when reaching anything even slightly fast, and had dull, plastic-plated corridors with grey ridged floors and crowded cockpits. They haven’t seen the quarters yet, but they have high hopes.
Scott watches them closely as they inspect the panels, running their hands lightly over the controls. Oh. That feeling of electricity is absolutely everywhere, with their hands on the ship. The heartbeat of power. Aimsey attempts to calm their own pounding heart, which is thudding relentlessly, reaching for the rhythm of the ship. Straining, out of their chest and into the depths of the hull, to dance and twirl and dive with the surge of electrons. They try to still their shaking hands.
“Right,” Scott says slowly, after Aimsey passes some kind of invisible test. “I’ll leave you to it.” And he turns to leave, and Aimsey is almost relaxing their posture and feeling the beginnings of a surge of euphoria before he turns back, swiftly. “And Aimsey?”
His eyes bore into theirs. He holds them there with his gaze, pinned up by the neck, and Aimsey does not breathe at all.
“Don’t fuck it up.”
The door closes down behind him. And, for the first time in many years, Aimsey turns and faces a ship that is completely their own. It feels like a spacewalk. It feels like a drop in their stomach, when the zero-gravity sim kicks in. It feels like freedom.
They’re still on a mission for H.E.L.L. They are still a cog in the corporate machine, grinding along dutifully as they join the hundreds of ships flooding out of this dock, a symphony of fish out of water. Ants to the spiral. Moths to the light. Flitting into the current as the reactor fires up beneath their feet. Aimsey doesn’t care. They are finally, blissfully alone.
“Course plotted: Gaia Orbiter to Outer Rings Base Gamma, 4.5 billion kilometers estimate, five light jumps stored,” GUQ says cooly, and Aimsey jumps, hard.
“ Fuck,” they hiss, spooked. Which is not something a captain should be saying. “Sorry.” GUQ doesn’t respond, the lights above twirling in rings.
Almost alone. Alone with an AI.
But that hardly counts, right?