The Captain's Walk
The coffee was black and too hot and exactly what he needed. 0300 ship time. Marcus Rivera sat on the edge of his bunk and drank it in three long swallows. The cabin was twelve square meters of institutional gray, the standard captain’s berth on a Vanguard-class cruiser. A desk. A bunk. A dispenser that had produced bad coffee for three days running. He had not slept. He had not expected to.
He set the cup down and looked at his hands. They were steady. They had been steady for three hours now. That was longer than yesterday.
The walk began at 0310.
He moved through the ship in a pattern he had not consciously designed. Deck three, port side, past the enlisted berthing. The night-watch rotation had cycled an hour ago. Two crewmen in the corridor straightened when he appeared. He nodded and said their names. Nguyen. Power systems. Watanabe. Sensor maintenance. He had made it a point to learn every name in two days. He was good at that.
“Captain.” Nguyen looked tired but not unhappy. “You are up early. Or late.”
“Depends on the watch.” Marcus kept walking.
Deck four was the mess. Empty at this hour, the lights dimmed to standby amber. The smell of industrial cleaning solution and yesterday’s protein base. He did not stop. The mess was too many seats. Too much open space. His mind filled those seats without asking permission, and the faces he put in them were not the faces of his crew.
The ladder to deck five was narrow and vertical and required both hands. He took it instead of the lift. He always took the ladder. It gave his body something to do.
Deck five was engineering. The hum of the Cascade Reactor was louder here, a low constant vibration that ran through the deck plates and into his boots. The night-watch engineer was a woman named Jankowski. Polish. Fifteen years in Fleet engineering. She was running a routine thermal diagnostic on the number-two coolant loop and looked up when he entered. She did not seem surprised.
“Captain.”
“Lieutenant. How is the reactor tonight?”
“Bored.” She tapped the readout. “Thirty percent. I could get more heat out of a campfire.”
“Let it stay bored.”
She gave him a small nod. She had been on ships before. She knew what a bored reactor meant. She also knew what kind of captain walked the ship at 0330. He did not stay long. Engineering was safe ground. He could feel the reactor through his boots. He could read the status indicators from across the room. The systems made sense. The systems did what he told them to do.
The corridor he avoided was on deck three, starboard side.
He did not decide to avoid it. His feet turned left at the junction before his mind registered the choice. He had walked the ship five times in three days, and every time his feet turned left at the same junction. The corridor to the right led past the bridge tactical station. The corridor to the right led past sickbay. He was not ready for either.
He walked the starboard observation deck instead. The viewport was four meters of reinforced glass looking out into the patrol lane. Stars slid past in the void, slow and patient and utterly indifferent. He stood at the port and counted. Seven stars brighter than first magnitude. Sixteen sensor returns from the patrol screen. Four minutes until he moved again.
He counted something every time he stopped walking. It helped.
At 0445, his brother found him.
David appeared at the far end of the observation deck. He was in his duty uniform. Coffee in one hand. A data pad in the other. He did not ask why Marcus was standing in the dark at four forty-five in the morning. He did not ask anything. He fell into step beside him and walked.
They covered the last loop together. Deck two, past the marine quarters. No sound from inside. Ashford ran his squad hard enough that they slept through anything. Deck one, past the forward sensor array maintenance access. Back toward the command deck. The ship was quiet around them, the hum of the reactor the only sound, the Defiant running her third day of patrol and every system holding.
David said nothing. Marcus said nothing. The silence was not uncomfortable. It was the only kind of conversation Marcus could handle at this hour, and David knew that. David had known that for years.
At 0500 they reached the captain’s cabin. David stopped at the hatch. Marcus turned.
“Coffee at 0630,” David said. “Briefing room. I will have the watch reports.”
“I will be there.”
David held his eyes for a moment longer than the exchange required. Then he walked toward the XO’s cabin. The hatch closed behind Marcus with the soft hiss of a seal cycling.
The cabin was twelve square meters. It was smaller at 0500 than at 0300. The coffee was cold. The framed photo on his desk showed the three captains on the observation deck at Prometheus. Shaw in the center, holding the Vanguard’s colors. Himself on the left. Tanaka on the right. The photo was three days old. The man in it already looked like someone he used to know.
He sat at the desk. He looked at the photo. His hands were still steady.
I can do this. I do not have to like it. I just have to do it.
The reactor hummed beneath his boots. The ship was alive and running and full of people who needed him to be the man in that photograph. He did not know if he was that man. He knew he was going to try.
He stood. He poured the cold coffee into the recycler. He opened the morning watch checklist.
The walk would be there tomorrow.
If you enjoyed this story, you can follow the main story arc in The Exodus Rush, the first book in The Vethrak Requiem series.