The pre-dawn light filtered in through the windows of Michi's small assigned room aboard the Terra. In the dimness and vague shadows, only one thing moved with purpose – Michi herself, moving fluidly through the motions of her morning limbering-up exercises. The deep thrum of the engines came up through the deckplates and hummed in her bones, a constant reminder of where she was and what they were doing.
That thought caused a small frown to crease her forehead and her almost dancelike routine to stumble, just for a moment – because she didn't know what they were doing, not really. Only that Captain Dawn had received orders to make best speed for Regalis, where further orders pertaining to – rumour had it – the deployment of Michi and the others in her unit would be promulgated from the UNF General Staff. None of which told her what they would be doing or how they would be used – would they be window-dressing for the latest round of speeches and posturing from Parliament, the polished future face of warfare – sorry, defence – or would it be a humanitarian crisis, their vast suits put to use relieving the beleagured populace from some disaster or other?
Or maybe, just maybe, there was the chance of an actual engagement. Some well-entrenched terrorists, perhaps, too tenacious and too well-fortified to be broken easily or quickly by conventional forces.
A nasty little smile cut across Michi's face at the thought – the Kaiserin's guns could pound even the mightiest of fortresses into rubble in short order, and from what she'd seen of the others' Valkinai, they were just as deadly too.
The blonde lieutenant finished her stretches and dressed quickly, moving with the studied, fluid grace of most of Priscus' nobility. The skill born on the social battlefield of Priscus' balls and parties had been honed during military training for entirely different purposes, and now Michi moved with an elegant economy of motion, buttoning the black-and-gold uniform at her throat with one hand even as she moved from the cool dimness of her room and out into the brightly-lit corridor, heading unerringly for the mess hall.
Her Valkinai needed final checks, of course – the engineers had been at work on her all through the graveyard shift, checking the thousands upon thousands of systems which kept the vast construct moving and fighting, but as the one who would actually be piloting the thing, she wanted her own eyes to have a last look.
Before that, though, she needed to tend to herself. Food, drink, the fuel of the body – as essential as the liquefied fusion premix for the reactor which burned brightly at the heart of the Kaiserin. Happily, the Terra's commissary never slept, and hot food aplenty was always available. Michi's hand hovered over her earbuds as she left, undecided for a split-second. On the one hand, the music would chase away any lingering clouds of sleep, but on the other there was the possibility that she might miss the greeting of a superior officer, even at such an uncongenial hour.
That would never do – she pocketed the tiny transmitters instead, moving briskly through the near-deserted corridors of the vast ship and into the mess hall itself, a long, low-ceilinged room filled with the smell of food and acres of tables and chairs, the few people about and eating dwarfed into comedic irrelevance.
A faint smile touched Michi's lips even as she collected a tray and placed her order – grapefruit and lime juice, a piping hot cup of black tea, and a fistful of high-energy chocolate bars. For later.
No sense in loading down on heavy food; she always got nervous before a deployment, or potential deployment, and the butterflies in her stomach never reacted well to a hearty breakfast so beloved of so many. No, give her grapefruit and lime instead, light food that didn't sit in the stomach like a leaden bowling ball.
She murmured her thanks to the catering staff and turned to survey the hall, Gregory's imposing form catching her eye as she did so. A taciturn man, by all accounts, mangled in one of the early experiments with the Valkinai suits, if she recalled correctly. Also a superior officer in the UNF, a captain - which perhaps explained some of the offputting iconography he wore. Winged skulls? That was decidedly not part of standard dress – but then again, the UNF was unofficially known to tolerate harmless peccadilloes, always providing the soldier in question was sufficiently useful.
“Captain Fietmaal,” she murmured as she drew close, her voice clear and precise. “Are you well?” she asked, to be polite, even as she set down her tray and picked up a spoon, delicately and with impeccable manners carving a crescent of flesh out of her fruit.
