Far Afield
Posted on 06 Apr 2024 @ 5:47pm by Lieutenant Tobias Hirsh & Senior Chief Petty Officer Lex Navine
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: Obsidian Command, CiC
Timeline: MD24 ~1030HRS
1423 words - 2.8 OF Standard Post Measure
The Captain and First Officer left the room first, likely on their way to another departmental update or scheduled item, Tobias thought. Robchambeau, Danzer, and Isuri, the Security and Tactical trio of ladies, began their own informal meeting and further introductions, diving right into the disparate elements of promenade management, station security, and conference organization, and carrying on their conversation as they took their leave of the conference room.
Everyone having filed out, Tobias looked around the cavernous space and heaved a sigh. Collecting himself he came to his feet and began a slow, thoughtful walk back to the operations center, to a bank of adaptable stations where he drew up his holographic access panel and scrolled through the interface, the icons representing the open projects assigned to him rotating on a virtual carousel until he stopped it on the Bay Alpha-Nine marker. It was still colored active. He re-sent the final memoranda to Captain DeHavilland once again, knowing it wouldn’t duplicate the original, only refresh it on the waitlist of things to review.
Tobias knew that there was very much more on the minds of those in charge of such a station, responsible as they were not just for the operation of the base and it’s tens of thousands, but also for the security of the star system and the part the station and her garrison ships played in the surrounding area. He thought all of this again to remind himself not to feel as disappointed as he did in the explanations surrounding the oddities which DeHavilland had offered up. Perhaps, he thought, he really had been raising a disproportionate concern over matters quite inconsequential. He might not have thought Commander Quinn the kind of person to allow a junior officer to run his Engine room when he was in any way capable of doing so himself, but the Commander had just been detained for supposedly trying to steal a runabout. It all seemed so random to Tobias. But then, geniuses could be a little mad. Or, flighty in the case of some. He frowned further, thinking of Elli-Navine and the couple of weeks they had met and shared during her leave from the Potemkin. She would fly from one idea to the next, with little seeming to connect her thoughts, but Tobias knew, thanks to her penchant to sometimes talk out loud when she was thinking, that there was much actually to her own internal logic.
Just because you didn’t know what the connections were, didn’t mean there weren’t any. Just because Elli had stopped talking to him and left so suddenly, didn’t mean they hadn’t shared something. It didn’t mean the relationship was over. It just meant… he didn’t know where they stood right now.
Shutting down his workstation, Tobias plodded around the back of the CiC and then down the stairwell from the upper rear deck to the much more lively and interactive shared workspace of the air traffic controller pit. Although active calls and updates were coming through all around him, Tower Controller SCPO Lex-Navine stood very relaxed at the center astronav display, the old goat occasionally stroking his half gray, half sand colored beard when a reply was truly required of him, considering before answering and, as often as not, posed a clarifying question of his own, his voice graveled and dry with age.
Tobias wondered if Lex-Navine’s twin brother was as mellow and grounded as Lex, and if so, how he’d managed to raise such a ball of nervous energy as his daughter Elli, and what her own twin sister was like by comparison. Maybe it was due to something in her mother’s nature. Tobias had to admit that he knew very little about her or her family in a couple of weeks of chatting, sound engineering, and bar hopping. Maybe if he talked to Senior Chief Lex-Navine, he could get a little insight, some idea at least of how to approach Elli again after her suddenly running out on him for seemingly no reason. Almost no reason. He felt sheepish again over the strange circumstance of their first kiss and Elli completely never responding to him again afterwards.
Tobias found himself staring at Elli’s Uncle Lex as he considered his own family, such-as-it-was. His parents hadn’t known what to do with his energy as a child, and he’d been enrolled in every sport available to him at his age group. He’d never been unhappy with it, but he overheard the talk of Grandames in the upsol, who thought it might be dangerous to the upsol if his aggression wasn’t addressed early enough. The instant he expressed an interest in joining the Grazer Defense Forse when he grew up, he’d been sent away from home to a sleep away camp for junior military training. While he had regular visits with his parents, he had felt more and more distant to them, hurt that they had seemed eager, and even relieved, to send him away from home. He worked very hard to restrain his impulse to push back or to fight, so they might love him more. But it hadn’t changed anything. He was still who he was. The strong stand on the outside, his Unit Commander had said, noticing the young man, like so many of his fellows, had been abandoned to the school, misunderstood and quietly forgotten by the people they cared most about.
Lex looked up and Tobias realized too late that he’d been caught staring. Probably Lex had sensed it sometime ago. But now Tobias knew that the old man knew: there was something more going on.
“Lieutenant Hirsh,” he said in that disarmingly rough tenor voice of his.
Though himself easily two or even three times the size of SCPO Navine, Tobias felt sheepish, like a kid caught staring off during class. He couldn’t turn and walk away now. He approached the Senior Chief so his embarrassment wouldn’t have to be compounded by calling out across the gap between them in the command center. “Senior Chief Navine.” He acknowledged in return once they were in easy speaking range.
“You want something.” Lex said.
Tobias looked confused. He didn’t remember asking for anything from the Tower controller. “Sir?”
Lex didn’t bother with the usual roundabout corrections noncoms had to stave off being called by the formal Sir reserved generally for officers. He had a sense that Tobias was deferring to him as an elder more than affording him a misplaced military honorary. But it would be no use telling the strapping young man that he already had a pretty good idea why Tobias often paused and observed the Tower Controller’s pit on his comings and going. His niece had bent his wife’s ear a fair bit over her excitement at meeting Mister Hirsh in her time visiting, and the news had soon enough reached Lex, who had taken the opportunity to inform his brother, Feldan, of his daughter’s newest interest. It had produced a little bit of a family stir, not least because Tobias went about so blatantly without a horn covering…
Lex had promised his brother he would try and ascertain more about Tobias-Hirsh, should the opportunity arise, and so now he thought he might make good on his promise.
“You are far from field and stream,” Lex said, referencing an old greeting for wanderers.
“I haven’t quenched my thirst on a homestream since I was a kid, Sir.”
“Is that so?”
“It is so.” He shifted his feet and, wanting to somehow explain himself, he felt his mantra rise to his voice. “The strong stand outside.”
At this, Lex looked sympathetic. “Don’t you know, there are springs hidden everywhere you go? The stream makes a way to those who are thirsty. Why don’t you join my family table tonight?”
“You… would have me? At your table?”
“Is there any other way to get to know you, Mister Hirsh?”
Tobias wouldn’t have thought that the peace-devoted Lex-Navine would entertain a man like himself in his own home, among his own children. Had the Tower Controller offered to meet with him at a replimat, Tobias would have been much less caught off guard by the offer to share a meal. “Should I bring anything?”
“Only an appetite.” The old goat chuckled as he turned his attention back to his post.
