The private directed me to see the XO in her office, and I made my way onto the ship, my new home for the foreseeable future. Somehow, knowing that made it awe-inspiring in a way that I hadn’t experienced on the training ship.

  When I reached the XO’s office, I knocked on the door and waited. A few seconds later, she invited me to enter.

  I entered the small office and saluted the junior commander behind the desk. She was an elf, dark skinned with dark blue hair. “At ease, ensign. Take a seat.”

  I sat in the chair in front of the desk and waited while she assessed me.

  “Dax Juniper. Doctorate in astrophysics, high performance at the academy, though not top of your class. Welcome to the Bluejay. You’ll be working the second shift with me. Generally, the captain takes the first shift from 0800 to 1600, then we’ll work the second shift with Lieutenant Rokloth from 1600 to 2400, then the third shift will work from then until 0800. Being a scout ship, we have limited crew, so there’s only the captain or me plus a senior and a junior bridge officer. You’ll of course be the junior bridge officer on second shift, reporting to Lieutenant Rokloth. She’s got shore leave right now, so she’s not on board at the moment.

  “In the meantime, here’s your room assignment. As a junior bridge officer, you do get your own room, albeit a tiny one. Bathroom is attached, though don’t expect much. We set sail at 1200 tomorrow, so spend the next day familiarizing yourself with the ship and meeting whomever you can. I’d recommend being on the bridge come 1200 even though you won’t be on duty at the time—you only set sail for your first time once. Regardless, though, you’ll be expected for your 1600 shift starting tomorrow. Any questions?”

  “No, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Good. Now go get set up. Dismissed.”

  I stood up and gave her a quick salute before heading out to find my room, which didn’t take long. She wasn’t kidding when she said it was tiny. There was a small bed with a chest of drawers at the foot, and a desk that folded down from the wall opposite the bed, requiring you to sit on the bed to use it. Against the wall by the head of the bed was a pocket door leading into a tiny bathroom with a toilet, sink, small storage cabinet, and shower barely big enough to stand in. Fortunately, modern manatech meant that water reclamation and purification was excellent, so there wasn’t significant rationing, though I’d probably get a stern lecture if I spent half an hour showering.

  I placed my things in the drawers before testing out the bed. Noting that the door had a lock, I tried shifting to see how it felt to sleep in my true form. It was a bit small, but I felt it was still more comfortable as a dragon than an elf, so I was glad of that.

  Shifting back, I decided I was done in the room and left to explore. The ship was mostly empty, the majority of the crew either loading supplies or on shore leave. I did encounter one of the enlisted engineering techs, though.

  She saluted me as I entered, then relaxed after I returned it.

  “You must be the new ensign. Welcome, ma’am. I am Senior Specialist Isa Delgado, engineering.”

  “It’s good to meet you, specialist. I am Dax Juniper, junior ensign and new second shift junior bridge officer.”

  “We’re glad to have you. We’ve been short on bridge officers for a few weeks, since the lieutenant was promoted and reassigned.”

  “I’m glad to be here. Anything I should know about engineering?”

  “Ship’s in tip-top shape, ma’am. Lieutenant Coresonia does excellent work.”

  “I look forward to meeting them. And I’m sure you techs do excellent work as well.”

  “We try our best.”

  “I’ll let you get back to it, then. Have a good day.”

  “You too, ma’am.”

  I continued exploring the ship, finding the mess, where the cook was out. They had left a pile of prepackaged meals for those of us on the ship to eat. In the mess was posted a meal schedule. I noted a few things. First, being a small ship, there was only one mess—officers sat with enlisted. Second, food stasis was used to allow people to eat at any time—the cook would prepare three meals a day, putting them in short-term stasis, then anyone could dish up when they wanted. Much better than being stuck with prepackaged meals all the time like on our training cruises.

  Stasis, of course, wasn’t the right word, though it was commonly called that. Technically, it worked by maintaining the food’s temperature and inhibiting microbial growth, keeping the food fresh and ready to eat. Since it wasn’t perfect, that form could only be used short-term. For longer term raw ingredient storage, slightly different devices were used that could inhibit microbial growth for longer when combined with cold storage.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Nearby, I found some lounge areas and the gym. The gym wasn’t particularly large, but it had weights and treadmills, as well as partially adjustable localized gravity, though you had to supplement the mana for that yourself.

  Finally, I made it to the bridge. There was no one on the bridge at the time, so I took a look around. Unlike the large room on the training ship, this was relatively compact, though the design was similar. There was a central station for the captain or XO, then six duty stations around the room that could each be used for any purpose, though the only time all six would be in use would be during general quarters.

  I brushed my hand across the smooth leather of the captain’s chair as I walked past. Someday, maybe. I thought, before heading back out into the rest of the ship.

  I found the medical bay, though our medic was also out. I had been checked repeatedly during the academy and received all my inoculations and other obligatory medical treatments, though I was sure the ship’s medic would want to review everything when they returned.

  After exploring the rest of the ship, I returned to my room and pulled up the information about the ship’s crew to start memorizing names and histories. A couple hours later, I took a break to grab one of the prepackaged meals. When I reached the mess hall, I saw the two marines who had been guarding the loading bay earlier.

  Both were female, one human, the other sidhe. I was surprised by how many members of the crew were women, but I figured it was probably a coincidence. Grabbing one of the meals, I heated it up before approaching the two marines.

  “May I join you?” I asked.

  The sidhe nodded, her mouth full of food, so I took a seat.

  She swallowed. “Senior Private Alvana Votonia. This is Junior Private Jara Eskivon. You’re Ensign Dax Juniper, correct?”

  “Yes, I’m Dax. It’s nice to meet you two.”

  “I’m sure the pleasure will be ours. It’ll be good to have a full complement of bridge crew again.”

  I laughed. “That’s the same thing Specialist Delgado said.”

  “Oh, you met Isa?”

  “Yeah, briefly.”

  “She’s a hoot,” interjected Private Eskivon.”

  “Oh?” I asked.

  “Yeah. But never play cards against her if you want to keep your money.”

  Private Votonia grimaced at that comment, and I chuckled. “I’ll try to avoid it.”

  “If you haven’t noticed, we’re a pretty close crew, being on such a small ship and all. Especially with the shared mess, there’s a lot more intermingling between enlisted and officers than on bigger ships. Hope that doesn’t bother you.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sure it will be fine. Well, in the interests of crew bonding, feel free to call me Dax off-duty.”

  “Jara,” the human private said with a nod.

  “You can call me Vana—everyone does.”

  “Well, Jara, Vana, it’s nice to meet you.”

  Just then, the engineering tech in question walked into the room.

  “Isa! We were just talking about you!”

  “Vana, I see you’re making friends with our new ensign.” She turned to me and gave a small bow. “You may call me Isa.”

  “I’m Dax, at least off-duty.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’m going to grab one of these delicious meals.” The sarcasm positively dripped out of her at that.

  “Eh,” Jara shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

  All three of us turned to face her at the same time. I had a raised eyebrow, though I couldn’t see what looks the others were giving her.

  “What? I have. My mom is a terrible cook.”

  I chuckled along with the others and finished up my food, glad I wouldn’t be eating those meals regularly. They actually weren’t terrible, but they were far from delicious.

  “So,” Isa asked as I ate my last bite, “tell us more about Dax.”

  I swallowed, giving me a few seconds to decide on my answer.

  “Well, I studied astrophysics at university, getting my doctorate before joining NOTA. I’m not close with my family, though I spent time with my roommate’s family over breaks. I like gardens, especially flowers. Probably the thing I’ll miss most being in space. What else do you want to know?”

  “What made you join the navy?”

  I paused, deciding how much to reveal of my “backstory.” “Like many of us, I liked the idea of traveling the stars, and the navy was one path to that. Joining the military also gave me a good reason to distance myself from my family since, as I mentioned, we’re not close.”

  Isa leaned closer, an inquisitive look in her eye. “But what’s the real story?”

  It took all I had not to show any hint that I was hiding something as big as my secret. “That is the story. I wanted to get away from my family, and the military seemed like a good way to do that.”

  She kept staring for an interminable moment before relaxing and leaning back. “That makes sense. So, astrophysics, eh?”

  Jarred by the change in mood, I froze for a second in confusion before shaking it off. “Yeah. I studied aether currents and the patterns of change they exhibit.”

  She nodded. “Probably somewhat useful for a bridge officer.”

  I waggled my hand back and forth. “Eh, not really? A lot of what I studied was large-scale statistical data, so it doesn’t really apply to the sorts of individual day-to-day or minute-to-minute changes that affect typical navigation. The information would be more useful in a long-term planning sense for predicting the degrees of change we can expect and how that will impact operations.”

  “That makes sense, at least at a high level. Though I doubt these two bone-brains care about statistical models.” She said that last part while nudging Vana and winked at Jara.

  “Hey, I’ll have you know I appreciate all sorts of models! Tall ones, short ones, round ones, slim ones,” Jara joked, eliciting a laugh from the rest of us.

  We chatted a bit more, then separated. I spent some time in the gym before heading back to my room to continue studying the information available on the ship and its crew. I forced myself to stay awake later than I was used to in order to sync my sleep cycle to where it would need to be for my shift, but thanks to my improved body, it wasn’t too difficult.

  As I finally drifted off, I looked forward to my first interstellar voyage the next day.