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ENSIGN LENA PURVES looked down at her new naval jumpsuit. It was a rather nice dark blue and had a cloth badge with her name on it where a left breast pocket would’ve been. She sat in Jenny’s room with Maggot, a massive bowl of popcorn between them all. They were celebrating.
“It still feels weird,” said Lena.
“Weird how?” said Betty.
“Well, I feel like I’m part of your group, but not? Does that make sense?”
“Och, everyone feels like that hen. Very cliquey, yer sailors.”
“It’s terribly unproductive,” Betty stuffed a handful of popcorn into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully.
“You’ve earned that Lena.” Jenny pointed at the name badge.
“I’ve not trained like you though or got degrees up to the eyeballs like Maggot.”
Maggot huffed and tried to smile through her popcorn, looking every inch the published scientist.
“You’ve flown this ship more than I have though.” Jenny fished into the bottom of the bowl for a few unpopped kernels. Then, satisfied, she placed one between her teeth.
“I don’t feel like a pilot,” said Lena.
“I hope you do,” said Betty.
“Aye,” said Jenny between crunches. “No bugger else is flying this barge!”
“I mean I don’t feel like— I’m not explaining this very well, I don’t feel like you do.”
“I’d be surprised if you did henny, there’s scarce ten years to ya!”
“I mean, the way you guys work? The captain gives you orders, and you all go about your job and you report back when you’ve done it.”
“And isn’t that what’s happening now?” said Betty.
“Well, right now, no,” said Lena. She carefully picked up a single puff of corn and examined it. Freshly made, how on earth had they managed to do that aboard ship? “Right now. The captain tells the pilot what the course is, the pilot tells me, and the ship does what it wants to.”
“Not totally true,” said Betty, “if I understand it right? The ship is trying to get us to the lost colony, correct?”
“She says she is,” said Lena.
“And do you think she’s wrong?” The science officer stared fixedly into Lena’s eyes. Betty could outstare a lizard.
“Not likely,” said Lena. “Too smart.”
“Trying to deceive us then?”
“As far as I can tell, no. The whole idea of not being honest is a bit, well alien, to her really. She doesn’t understand what being dishonest would gain anyone. Especially a crew like ours.”
“She should ask that wee bastard Fazar. Maybe he could enlighten her.”
“I think letting those two talk would be a very bad plan indeed,” said Betty.
“Yeah,” said Lena. “She hates him because he’s unkind to me. I keep having to stop her from ejecting him into space.” Lena regretted it the second she’d said it. She really hoped these two were her friends and wouldn’t tell tales or her life could get really complicated, really quickly. More complicated.
Betty was sniggering into the popcorn bowl. Jenny saw and said, “Aye well, worse things happen at sea, eh?”
At the very least they had no love for Fazar and seemed to like her, and that for now would have to do. Lena sighed heavily.
Jenny reached over and roughed her hair, “Aww henny, you’ve had a rough old time of this, you being barely a bairn an all.”
Lena rolled her eyes at that.
“You know what we mean though,” Betty chipped in. “What with your mother leaving you to our tender mercies, well us and your slightly ineffectual uncle.” Jenny kicked Betty at that, “What?”
“This has gotta be hard for you kid,” said Jenny. “And I don’t think anyone else really acknowledges that?”
“That’s not true!” said Lena, suddenly feeling tears well up, “Dr Fuller’s lovely, and the captain cares and the marines aren’t all that bad and Uncle Richie is lovely when you get to know him and...and...a...”
Jenny shuffled closer to Lena and pulled her into a hug. Lena let the sobs come. Betty stared from the other side of the bed with her knees pulled up to her chest, periodically pecking at the popcorn.
Lena had so much in her head to tell them, but when she opened her mouth all she could do was sob. She’d felt so grown up when she put on the proper Navy uniform but now it had a great wet patch down the front. For that matter, so had Jenny’s now. Lena kept going to break their hug, to explain, realising all she could do was cry and letting Jenny hug her back in again and run her hands down her slightly crazy hair down to her shoulders.
“This is a proper pickle,” said Betty. She was right of course.
Lena thought back to the fraught navigation meeting where the captain had been properly rattled for the first time that Lena had seen, and Fazar was just angry, all the time, even when he wasn’t shouting. It had seemed to take hours, with everybody cross-examining Lena at length one at a time, sometimes all at once until the captain had brought them back under order by banging the butt of a well-loved antique service revolver on the conference table.
Part of Lena spent every bang of that most unusual gavel, hoping it wasn’t still loaded, which was clearly the captain’s intention as even Fazar stared at it when it banged the table and went quiet. Another part of Lena hoped it would go off and shoot the foul bully, and that scared her. She’d never felt that way about another person before. Was that what this ship was making of her? Mother would’ve been horrified. She may not have lavished her with hugs when she was growing up, but at least she’d brought her up to be moral. The feelings in her head were far from that.
“Every time you were asked where the ship was taking us.” Betty’s brow was furrowed, tight, “you said ‘To the colony’. What did you mean?”
Lena opened her mouth, realised her nose was running, panicked and then found a linen handkerchief pressed into her hand. She looked up at Jenny, who was waving her away with the hanky.
“Keep it, hen.”
“But it’s beautiful,” said Lena, wiping her nose. Linen that had that beautiful, beetled sheen to it was so rare these days.
“Aye it is, but now it’s beautiful wi’ your snot all over it. So keep it!”
“But it must be, valuable?”
“Aye, it prolly is these days an’ all. It was ma granny’s. She gave it to me when I was a young wide-eyed girl on her first trip out. A little piece of home, y’know? And now I’m giving it to you.”
“Thank you,” Lena tucked it into the front pocket of her overalls. It was the first personal thing she’d put in there.
“The colony?” prompted Betty. Jenny kicked her again. Betty mouthed “what?” back at her.
“That’s where she’s taking us.”
“You’re sure?”
“As I can be, yeah.”
“So why is she not taking us to Sirius Four?” said Betty, looking forlornly into the empty bowl, like some failed crystal ball.
This had been the main contention of the navigation conference. Up till that point in their journey, the course they thought they were on and were instructing the ship to take them, agreed nicely. Now, at tiny fractions of arc-seconds they were diverging.
“And where the hell is she taking us?”
