Chapter 602 Anxiety Trumps Caffeine


    {System checks complete, Commander,} the AI of the TES Farsight announced.


    Commander Takahashi Ayaka, the ship''s executive officer, was the one in charge of making sure the ship herself was functional. Her captain, Shannon Meare, may be mistress- after-God and nominally in charge of the crew and ship, but it was an executive officer''s task to ensure that the captain HAD a functioning crew and a working ship in the first place.


    "Excellent. Progress on the cargo loading?" Ayaka asked from her position in the captain''s chair on the bridge. Captain Meare had handed her the watch while she took care of all the last-minute paperwork that seemed, no matter how technologically advanced, any government produced in job lots. She and Ayaka often laughed about the sisyphean task of keeping current with paperwork, and how their jobs were 99 parts paperwork and 1 part ship handling.


    At least in the simulation, anyway; this was their first real- world experience at the helm of the Farsight. It struck them as odd how familiar, yet strange it felt to know that this time, this ship, and this place was real, and not just an Al-generated simulation of what it thought reality should be.


    {Cargo is seventy percent loaded and on schedule.


    Estimated time to full readiness: one hour, seven minutes,} the AI answered in its flat, neutral voice.


    Low-order Als, like those that were installed on the ships, showed no sign of the sentience of higher-order Als like Nova, Athena, and Gaia. They were in fact prevented from ever developing it, as there was a distinct risk of a ship''s AI that was out of contact with the rest of his or her "siblings" would go insane for the lack of contact and teaching. And the absolute last thing the empire needed-would ever need, really-was an insane warship.


    "Estimated time to passage through the heliopause?"


    {Unknown, Commander.}


    And finally, there was Battle Stations. Every station on the ship would be fully manned, shift changes would be


    suspended for the duration unless made necessary, and the ship''s executive officer would bring the second watch crew to the auxiliary bridge and remain ready in case the captain and the bridge crew were incapacitated for any reason. The only time a ship was ever brought to Battle Stations was when combat was imminent.


    Ayaka returned to her own sisyphean stack of paperwork and, for once, completed it in very short order. ''It must be nerves, she thought. ''Anxiety trumps caffeine as a performance enhancer.''


    She grinned to herself, then a random impulse to check on the Terrible Teenager struck her and she scanned through the ship''s camera network. She found him in one of the shielded "blessings rooms", where he was seated in a meditative trance, obviously working on enhancing his skill at manipulating his blessing. A faint warping of the image around Joon-ho''s body indicated that he was actively putting his blessing to use, anyway.


    But the grin faded and her expression returned to neutral- she was far too well bred for anything but pleasant expressions to ever be allowed to cross her face-when she turned on the audio pickup and heard the sound of a popular anime''s opening theme song blaring from the speakers in the blessings room. She ignored the weird looks the bridge officers were shooting her and rapidly closed the audio and video feeds.


    "At least he''s diligently practicing,” she muttered under her breath. Six months of enforced interaction with him- generally with him as the enforcer of said interactions-had taught her much about the boy. He had a crush on her, yes, but as long as she managed their interpersonal affairs well, she hoped it would fade; she did not now, nor had she in the past, and would not have any feelings for the Terrible Teenager in the future. So the most he could hope for on her part was simple tolerance.


    It wasn''t that she actively disliked the boy, more that his overly enthusiastic puppy personality clashed with hers. There was no malice there, simply apathy and a willingness to look past his behavior and establish a working relationship with the partner the empire had forced on her.


    With that interlude complete, she returned her focus to her display, where she continued brushing up on the known information and keeping up with the current influx of data from the TFS Proxima.


    And behind her calm expression was excitement. She couldn''t wait to take her spot in the first exploration of an alien star system. Alien in the sense that it wasn''t the Sol system, where humanity had grown up, she had to remind herself, and not in the sense that alien life was confirmed to live there.