M.T. Decker

40-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the Stars

February 9th, 2552 Trio of Terrors
Shuttle pilot/Lab Rat/mechanic in training – Katherine ‘Kat’ James Reporting

You’d think with how busy we are and how much work we have to do in order to survive long enough to do our mission— people would be focused on that. Well, most reasonable, well-balanced people were focused on that.

Unfortunately, there were some people who’d begun to rethink the whole ‘let’s get stranded a couple of billion light-years away from the earth and try to survive long enough to send the information back.’ The fact that the folks back on earth won’t know where we are for over 13 billion years did kind of put a damper on the whole thing, but we’re here to learn and who knows, we may find a way to get back with the research.

Even more unfortunately several of the conscriptees were grumbling a lot louder than the others. That seemed to be all the trio of ‘protectors’ needed to try and run roughshod over me.

Fortunately, our work schedules meant that they only had a limited window of when they could ‘watch’ me. They could watch me in the commissary while I cleaned up in the kitchen, and they could watch me from 21:00-22:00 while I worked on the Franen-ship. But the presence of another mechanic and the fact that he made a big show of setting security on the deck as we left meant that they couldn’t do more than loom.

As I headed back to the dorm, Mac stopped me.

“Don’t worry about them, kid,” he said. “You just keep doin’ yer job and keep your nose clean.”

I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but something in Mac’s tone told me that sometimes Karma had help.