No matter where you go in Sycamore, from a pastoral scene to the hustle and bustle of the city, you can smell the freshness in the air. As the universe's first fully terraformed planet, it's hard not to feel an inkling of pride for it – the hard work of all the great-great-grandfathers of the human race. If they didn't build it, then they bled or starved for it, which is, to some, a contribution in itself. Everyone believes they deserve a slice of the pie that is Sycamore, its fields and pine forests, its sun-cycles and its drizzle, its agriculture and fledgeling nature reserves... Beauty and peace has been sewn into the planet's very structure.
And yet, there are more individual military bases on Sycamore alone than in many star systems out on the Rim. Frontiers, they were all called, numbering from 50 to 60 (with a few covert, unnamed ones hidden in the mountains and such). Each marks a battlefield of a short, bloody civil war that everyone – UNES, the Defective Alliance and civilians alike – is inclined to forget.
Frontier 60 is a military base of concrete walls and plastic windows, tucked away from the public eye. If anyone saw the warping of the metal framework or the holes in the structure patched with concrete, they'd be most uncertain as to the future of the rebellion. Despite what its derelict condition may suggest, however, it is the newest of military bases, only seven years old. Not counting the history of the re-purposed building, which started off as a temporary boarding house for the earliest of colonists – a prefab meant to last a few decades, not centuries. After that it was a hospital, a field hospital tending to the mess of the war only a short hike from its doorstep. And after that... nobody wants to remember its short-lived stint as an asylum, especially not if they're living and working there.
Those pine forests that are oh so common on Sycamore surround the base, standing straight and gloomy as they protect the front entrance and the dirt track that meandered off the motorway to reach it. The deep gouges left in the earth by tires squelching into the grass to park have made a muddy soup of the land but – nobody cares about the front!
The Medusa's resting 'round the back!
Caelum C. Jameson
Head on the table in a draughty cafeteria that overlooked the entrance to Frontier 60, Caelum groaned. It had taken every centimetre of military training she possessed to drag herself out of bed at such an ungodly time of day – only 0600 hours – and in her mind she couldn't be faulted for imagining the brutal death of the whistling chef on the other side of the room.
A seemingly endless number of brown folders of the classified sort lay scattered around her, empty cups of contraband herbal tea on top of them. At the mere thought of the paperwork, Caelum groaned again. When she'd asked Admiral Tennyson for information on her future crew, she was not expecting huge stacks of paper with every shred of information meticulously blacked out. She had names – for most of them – and the positions they were likely to fill, and on the first page of each goddamn one of them there was a post-it note that read 'Sorry, C.'
What if the new captain fought her for control of the ship? What if the doctor couldn't cure star-sickness, or couldn't quarantine the Pox? What if they were pirates, hoping to turn her baby, her Medusa into a raiding vessel... or smugglers, or slavers? What one of them was a... was a crazy man-eating psychopath who would wait until reaching the black and then turn on the crew?
Caelum tugged on her hair, taking a deep, relaxing breath. Deja vu. She recalled the wait for her first mission, back when she was just a teenager, and the nonsense questions she had asked herself then. Perhaps going back to The Medusa wasn't a good idea after all – it would only conjure up further feelings of nostalgia, surely, and if the crew were any bit similar to her last...
That would be the worst possible outcome, she admitted to herself, the worst 'what if'. History was doomed to repeat itself, if one didn't learn from it.
Staring despondently out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the rain, she knew both instinctively and intellectually that she would never let the opportunity slip through her fingers, no matter what the crew was like. She would give her left arm to fly The Medusa again, and her right... and her toes, too, but that was getting a bit too morbid even for her. The worst part of it was knowing that her ship was just outside, resting as she was checked once more to see if she was ready to face the universe, and she wasn't allowed to see her.. Not until her crew were present.
Where was everyone, anyway? Was she early, or were the others late? She'd sent the message on her communicator almost ten minutes ago! Then again, she was the only one of them who actually lived at Frontier 60. She would have to factor in travel time and weather and public transport and–
Somewhere in her (entirely mental) tirade, she began to curse out every god she knew of – prompting a strange look from the chef – begging them to please, please speed her crew along.