Ex — Roleplayer Guild

Jane lay on her bed and stared up at the bulkhead. It was a sculpted mass of metal alloy, probably centuries old at this point. It was unscathed and perfectly smooth, except for one dark spot in the upper corner where some accident must have occurred. The spot had been there for as long as Jane had been on Second Sun, which meant it was probably there before Eckhart saved it from the scrapyard. She wondered, occasionally, what had caused it. This had been a battleship, once, the pride and joy of some military captain - or so Jane liked to imagine. She preferred to think of it as a relic of some fallen glory, something that had been great once, even if it was just so much cantankerous wiring and ancient hardware now.

Her quarters had thin gray carpet and were maybe twelve feet by ten feet. A bed was jammed lengthwise against the wall in front of the door. Next to it, a metadesk, currently idling on the Second Sun's master systems display. There was an ailing beanbag chair next to the desk, and beside it a small dresser. Next to the door on the other side was a larger closet. The doorway and walls were high but narrow, probably constructed for whatever species had originally occupied this room. Jane had installed shelving at or above her eye level wherever she could along the walls. The shelves were populated with various worthless tchotchkes - trinkets, statuettes, little rotating discs and shapes with no discernible function, all held in place by tiny grav generators on the underside of the units. Most of them could be activated and used to make some kind of noise, but usually, they were silent.

Jane regarded the knicknacks most immediately visible to her - a tiny china doll holding two cymbals in her painted hands, a small rotating pyramid that glowed a faint yellow in the artificial light, and a stationary black sphere that was flat at the bottom, for display. All of them were silent, which Jane considered to be a good sign, but she regarded them with suspicion nonetheless. The metadesk blithely emitted a bright chiming noise; Jane swiveled her head to look at it. Five minutes before she had to make her way to the mess.

She tried to think for a moment about what she was going to say. She realized she had absolutely no idea, and likely wouldn't until she was standing there, in front of the crew, all of them waiting for her to speak. That was fine. She'd wing it. She was good at winging it. Besides, it wasn't like any of the crew were in any position to judge her, not after the previous captain. And they knew what to expect. All she had to do was maintain her reputation, and everything would be fine. Jane pulled herself up off the bed, buttoned up her dark jacket, and stepped out of her room to stride briskly down the empty corridor.

The mess was a long, lower-cielinged room at the far end of the deck (Second Sun's dimensions were unusually schizophrenic for a battleship, like it had been cobbled together by a variety of races at a variety of times). Its doors, like most of the doors on the ship, were of thick, solid metal affairs, so that each room could be totally sealed from every other room as necessary. Jane took a moment to straighten her jacket and collect herself while the door slid open, then stepped into the room.

The long tables and benches (all made of cheap, off-white plastic and metal) had been pushed back to form a crescent shape around the edges of the room, leaving the front and center empty. The effort was probably unnecessary; there weren't really enough crew for anyone's line of sight to be obscured, but Eckhart always insisted that the introduction of a new captain should have some kind of small ceremony. Jane had tried to remind him that she was hardly new, and had already basically been the captain several times before, but he'd have none of it, so there they were. She took three steps forward and took a long look around the room, arms hanging loosely by her sides.

Her eyes swept across the crew, all gathered on the peripheries of the room. The ones she recognized (the ones who had been around a while) looked bored, expectant. Glyx, the medic, "rested" (or, at least, remained mostly stable in his brainpod) nearest to her; she nodded to him smartly. He had done his best for the last captain, even though it was the man's own stupidity which had necessitated a medic's services, but it had been futile. Carnus, the reptilian "delivery specialist" - still half-asleep, as far as Jane could tell - and, in the corner, the silent Janitor, Harriet. The older woman's gaze was always just a little disconcerting, but Jane had gotten used to it. There were others. Newer faces, ones she hadn't seen before. These, she tried to glance over without focusing. Didn't want to give anyone the wrong impression.

Jane cleared her throat.

"Okay." she said.

She stared hard at the back wall, pursing her lips, letting her mind turn over. She knew what to say.

"Okay, look: Some of you know me. A lot of you don't. I'm gonna guess those of you who don't have already been filled in, to an extent. I won't guess as to what was said; doesn't matter." She nodded, to punctuate her point. "I'll keep the introduction short. I'm Jane Pepper, and I'm your new captain. For those of you who remember the last four, those words probably don't inspire any confidence, and I don't blame you for that... but maybe these will: I don't fuck around. I don't mind being your friend, but I don't need to be, either. What we need from each other is our work, that's it. I'll do my job - I'll make the plans, I'll give the orders, I'll take care of it when things inevitably go wrong and plans totally blow up. I'll save all your asses. In return, each of you is will give me whatever you've got. When you're on a shift, you'll do your job right. You won't screw up, and neither will I, but when we both do, when it eventually happens, we'll have each others' backs. That's all I'm asking, that's it. Help me, and I'll help you."

She took one final glance around the room. "Sound okay to all of you?"

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