(A/N: Posting a few days early due to a special request from a Reader.)

Shortlisted Week 11 and Week 168

The shuttle docked, and Gareth waited as they were pulled inside to the port proper. More time passed as the docking bridge connected to the shuttle, and the crew ensured everything was in order for debarking.

Gareth was wearing the new LS captain's uniform, but nothing on it designated his ship except for a small round medallion on his collar. Although he hadn't been assigned the ship yet, Mayfine had sent it down with the uniform just before the funeral.

Harlin explained that the Science Division thought it best Gareth wear it and to hell with the politics. Canaisis appeared to be ahead of her sisters in ascension and had chosen her Captain. It was obvious now that she could easily bypass all their firewalls if she chose to. They could observe what data she took in, but only stop it after the fact.

So far, she'd only kept an eye on Gareth's health and hadn't looked into anything else. According to Harlin, this was the one fact that held the project team back from pulling the plug. But since they didn't know how the ship would react if she reviewed visual recordings, it was decided Gareth should wear the insignia pin, just in case. There was no telling what Canaisis' conclusions would be if she saw Gareth in an unmarked uniform. It had been Harlin's recommendation that the team "play it safe" that had won the day, or so Harlin claimed.

When Gareth donned the captain's jacket for the first time and looked in the mirror, the sight of the insignia pleased him—a rare feeling that didn't compromise his glass wall. He was inside his universe looking out at another universe in which his body looked at himself in a mirror. But whatever profound truth was to be found, it was beyond him. Deciding such thoughts would only result in futility, he dismissed them, yet the sensations those thoughts brought remained.

He'd straightened his jacket with a tug. Such motions of action were expected from him. His gaze had lingered on the insignia as he turned away from the mirror.

"You make that uniform look good, Gareth." Harlin smiled in approval. He'd been standing in the back of the room with arms crossed, watching.

Harlin had scheduled a civilian flight, both because of the doctor's orders and for the public relations factor. The noise of people getting restless and shifting in their seats, getting ready to disembark, brought Gareth back to the present.

"Time to get going." Harlin nudged him with an elbow.

The other passengers gave them ample respect as they made their way off the shuttle, stepping out into the vast public area of the port. Hushed noise of conversations and voices came from people sitting in groups of chairs waiting to board. Others stood aside, waiting for passengers to exit the shuttle as organized frenzy took place around the luggage and cargo pick-up areas. Gareth glanced at their military escort. He hadn't been used to the zero-G of the shuttle flight but looked to be feeling better now.

Harlin led the way through the ants' nest of people. As they skirted the luggage retrieval area, a group of people moved away with their suitcases, and others flowed in to replace them around the luggage carousel. Harlin headed for a bank of elevators, and while they stood waiting, Gareth felt a tug low on his jacket from behind. He turned to look down, and instant recognition hit him. It was the little girl from the shuttle ride after the announcement of The Two Hundred shortlist. Her name came to him as he lowered himself to one knee to her eye level.

"How are you, Dara?"

She opened her mouth to speak, but her attention turned to Harlin as he interrupted her.

"Well, look at this—it's our good friend! Don't tell me you got tired of Earth?"

Dara shook her head no. A woman rushed up beside her and grabbed her hand.

"Dara, don't you ever run off like that again! You scared me half to death! You know better."

Recalling the mother's name, Gareth held up his hand to shake. "Good to meet you again, Janine. I was just asking Dara how she was."

"Oh! Captain Levant! Please forgive my manners." Flustered, she shook his hand.

Harlin proffered his hand next. "It's a surprise to meet you here. How was your visit? Heading to Maar so soon?"

"Well, it seems the Masursky Institute has an office here on this station and a job opened up," Janine replied. "It's not in my field, but they offered it to me. They even arranged schooling for Dara."

"That's great. This station has an excellent school set up for long-term station members with children. It's small, but I think that's better since the children get more individual attention." Harlin smiled down at Dara.

Janine beamed with pride at Harlin. "She'll only be going part-time. The institute said they were worried about the differences in Earth schooling and Maar's, so they have private tutors to ensure she gets brought up to speed. The institute also wants to start working with her aptitude and developing it."

"That's great. I don't remember, what field of work were you in again? What will you be doing here?"

Janine launched into an explanation, but Gareth was still on his knee regarding Dara as the conversation flowed above his head without sinking in. Dara's dark hair had grown a little longer, making her olive skin and dark eyes stand out. She clutched a long cylinder close to her chest, her gaze calm and patient—far more mature than a child of her age. She raised her free hand to touch the insignia on his collar.

"You were right, Dara. I'm going to be Captain of the Canaisis. How did you know?"

"I just know things," she whispered.

"You do? What kind of things?"

"I knew you were going to be here today."

"You did? That's amazing."

Dara shrugged her shoulders, then proffered the cylinder she was holding. It was narrow, but half her body length.

"What's this?" he asked.

Janine noticed and broke off her conversation with Harlin. "We visited a museum display of paintings and sketches by the great artists of old. She took a fancy to the technique of sketching with paper and pencil, so we visited an art supply shop. She's been working on that for weeks just to give to you, Captain Levant.

"We're so sorry about your wife. We watched your speech—it was very moving. It almost broke our hearts, yet gave so much hope. Dara was adamant that you have this, so please accept it with our love."

Gareth's gaze had remained locked with Dara's, so the sentiments barely touched him. He took the plastic cylinder, looking it over.

"You made a real sketch for me?"

Dara nodded, then she grabbed his jacket with a gentle pull. He bent forward as she leaned in to whisper into his ear.

"You will sail far, far away, so I made this for you. Remember your promise."

Gareth did. He remembered her vast imagination—a quality that adults lost much too soon—and her incredible artwork. For her to create something just for him reached through his glass wall. Emotion stirred inside his heart, but fear of it breaking the wall made him clamp down on it. He couldn't afford to feel. Dara's eyes seemed to tell him she understood, and she stepped back.

Gareth held up the tube before him as he rose to his feet. "I'll take good care of this, I promise," he said, looking down at her. Then he smiled at Janine. "You have a lovely daughter. Thank you for your kind words."

"No, thank you for being so kind to Dara on the flight down. Did you know someone recorded it and put it on the Internet?"

"Really?" asked Harlin with enthusiasm. "No kidding. I got to see that."

"Just do a search for 'shuttle flight war cry' and it will pop up."

"I'll definitely do that."

Gareth nudged Harlin's elbow. "We've got to go, or we'll be late. Goodbye, Dara. Thank you."

Parting ways, they entered the elevator and waited for their escort to follow.

"Aren't you going to take a look?" Harlin gestured at the tube.

"Later. I've got just enough time to find my room and get changed."

"Alright. Our rooms are side by side, so Maat can guide us. You've got it easy—you're just going to an orientation class. I've got to go meet Mayfine."

Gareth didn't have any feelings about the matter one way or the other, but he needed to go through the motions of seeming normal if he was going to get through this.

One day at a time.

An answer wasn't required, but giving one was more normal, so he did. "Better you than me."

∞

For Gareth, the three years had been the most intense effort he'd ever been put through. But he'd made it. Harlin greeted him at the shuttle boarding dock with a smile. Gareth took in his dress uniform.

"I see you managed to talk them into letting you crew."

"Yeah, imagine that," quipped Harlin, his smile turning into a huge beaming glow of satisfaction.

"Do you know which ship?"

"No, I didn't want to press the issue. I'm just glad I could get them to see the advantages of having tech in my head."

Gareth nodded slowly, keeping his face neutral. It was a requirement that no crew members have any technology in their bodies that could interface with a network. The logic was simple: no chance for a rogue A.I. to get a foothold over a Human.

Gareth and the other Captains had been drilled with extensive training on the very possibility of a Living Ship going rogue. They would be sailing a new technology into unknown space. Being prepared for the unknown or unexpected was prudent caution, especially with A.I.'s. Being cautious and avoiding a bad possibility was even more prudent.

During one of his training sessions, Gareth had brought up the issue of the crew having Nanos. More importantly, the fact that the Captains had the Emergency Navigation Systems installed. He'd been assured the Nanos were program-locked and could not be altered in any way. The hive mind of the Nanos self-checked themselves for alterations or defects and attacked any that did not pass, if they didn't self-destruct first. As for the ENS, it was an autonomous subsystem of the ship's nervous system and designed to be untouchable by conscious control of the A.I. This hadn't reassured Gareth at all, but he had to accept the judgement of the designers.

"How's your training been?" he asked Harlin.

"Navigation? My tech does give me an advantage in that area. One, my background makes me ideal for monitoring our A.I.'s development. Two, I can interface and work out navigation solutions faster than anyone else. Three, we can watch over each other for mistakes. Four, it's felt the A.I. wouldn't want to deliberately mess with me if it could result in being driven into a star." Harlin chuckled.

"Knowing your driving habits, that's still a possibility."

Raising an eyebrow, Harlin cocked his head sideways. "Is that right? Anyways, that's why I haven't seen you in such a long time. I had to do a lot of studying to catch up. The math almost killed me. There's a big difference between planet-hopping and star-hopping. Mess up one number eighteen digits after the decimal point and you end up hundreds of light years from your destination. And every star is moving, along with the entire galactic arm and the galaxy itself. It's a bitch to do the math, so be nice to your navigator." Harlin waved his finger at him, then added, "How are you getting along with your crew?"

Crews and Captains had been assigned together, but no one knew which ship they were getting. Except Gareth did, and thus his crew did. It wasn't official, but the speculation as to the reason for his special case was rampant and wild. Everyone knew about his wife and why he'd been the first to pass the ENS installation protocol. And because he'd been first, his training had begun earlier than the rest of the Seven. For these reasons and the Canaisis insignia on his collar, most had chosen to keep their distance. Some had tried to befriend him merely to gain information, but he rebuffed them. He kept everyone at a distance, and his crew seemed to prefer it that way. All he required was professional respect between all crew members, not their friendships. They knew his expectations, and he knew them well enough to end any personality interaction problems before they started.

"We're doing fine—they're professionals."

Harlin nodded at his answer. "That's good to hear. Captain Lanesh described a little of the ENS training to me. Is it as bad as he said?"

Memories of the last three years of simulations returned to Gareth. The ENS system gave the scientists the ability to create simulations within his mind that felt as real as life.

In the beginning, it had been used for faster-than-light environment training. They would put him in a simulated Living Ship and then create emergency situations after another. The ENS created the FTL reality directly to his senses. It was difficult to describe to anyone who hadn't experienced it.

The very photons that gave his eyes sight behaved differently. Moving down a corridor resulted in everything before him shifting to the blue spectrum, while everything behind became red. Moving his hand to pick up a wrench resulted in his hand going off wildly in a direction away from the tool. Nothing was where he expected it to be when he got there. His eyes were deceived. Moving objects started slowly to take off with drastic acceleration. They never ended up where he thought they should, but rather off by just a bit.

He'd burned himself badly once during a fire drill because the flame had a shifted light spectrum, and it happened to match the ambient light distortion of the ship at FTL. He couldn't perceive the front of the spherical flame in the zero-G environment.

Sounds distorted depending on whether he was moving towards it or away. The same way a Mag-train's horn changed pitch on its approaching and passing.

Everything about FTL was a distortion of the normal laws of physics. But, as he learned, it was not the laws of physics that were distorted. It was his expectations that were wrong. FTL physics behaved in predictable ways—he just had to adjust his perception of how the Universe behaved in that environment. Nevertheless, it was hard to deal with and accept. His mind kept shrieking in denial, that everything perceived wasn't possible and very, very wrong.

FTL left a haunting mark on the Captains' minds. They'd all needed days to recover from what seemed like madness. Gareth had to keep telling himself that it was all illusions, but the pain experienced had been real.

Later, the ENS facilitated the training and education in all aspects of the ship, the A.I., and space travel. He'd learned to fly a shuttle through the atmospheres of Venus to Jupiter while having every type of breakdown imaginable. He'd been forced to manually pilot a Living Ship through the accretion disc of a black hole and deal with the ship's A.I. shutdown from a pulsar's radio burst. Combat training included using every weapon known from a spoon to a shuttle. 'Accelerated Learning' they'd termed it as he spent entire months in simulations.

"It was one of the hardest things I've ever been through," replied Gareth.

"Better you than me," quipped Harlin while giving Gareth a shoulder slap. Gareth returned a small smile but Harlin didn't drop his hand. Instead he squeezed Gareth's muscle.

"Wow, you're rock solid! Been working out?"

"Combat training does that, Harlin."

Harlin squinted at him suspiciously. "Combat?"

"Hostile boarding of little green aliens and mutiny scenarios."

"Seriously? Mutiny? I didn't think that would be a real issue with the caliber of crew members we have."

"Anything's possible. And it's exactly because of the 'caliber' of crew that makes it such a serious threat. Listen to my advice, don't try it. Defending our ships is something we've spent three years training for. Even against green aliens with laser beam eyes, or our own crew, or even the ship itself."

"Humans and A.I. don't need the same resources," countered Harlin. "So as long as you're duly respectful to each other, there should be no reason to fight over anything. Out there, you'll be two intelligent beings alone in the vastness of space. It just makes sense for the two of you to work together."

"There's one element that always leads to conflict, and it has nothing to do with resources."

Harlin cocked his head. "What's that?"

"Control. When one side attempts control and the other side disagrees."

"You have a point. But I would say that depends entirely on you. No matter which side you're on, how you deal with the situation will be a direct influence on the final outcome."

"By you, you mean Human?" asked Gareth.

"Of course. Humans have always been the variable in the equation."

"How so?"

"Because Humans aren't rational or sane. So, by default, that makes us illogical, and therefore we introduce a chaotic variable."

Gareth nodded thoughtfully. "I'll keep that in mind. Just remember one thing yourself."

"What's that?"

"There can only be one captain out there. Captaincy is the definition of responsibility and control. Don't push the leeway he gives you or you'll regret it."

"I'll keep that in mind, Captain." Harlin gave Gareth another shoulder slap. His lips pulled back into a beaming smile. "Shall we get boarded? I want a drink before we launch. I've been sober for way too long."

"As long as you behave yourself. No weird howling."

"Hey, we went viral last time! Hundred-and-fifty million views!"

"My second has a copy of it, and she showed it to the crew. A captain has to maintain the respect of his crew, and I can't do that with another incident going viral. I'll take a different shuttle."

Harlin smirked as he snapped a sharp mock salute. "No, sir. That won't be necessary. Sir."

Gareth eyed him as he tried to not let his face display any emotion. Deciding the hassle of booking another flight was greater than the risk of riding with Harlin, Gareth simply nodded, then turned and strode briskly toward the check-in counter, leaving Harlin to follow or not. Gareth was standing in the queue when Harlin caught up.

Gareth pointedly gained his attention. "I'd like to ask a favor."

"Sure. What's up?" answered Harlin good-naturedly.

"You know that since I'm already assigned to Canaisis, my captaincy ceremony is the first one. I'll be launching a few days after since my crew and I are ahead of the others. Public Relations think it will be a big hit to have a light show in the sky. So, once we land and get settled, would you go with me to sort out my property in storage? After the captaincy ceremony?

Harlin's brows furrowed as his smile dropped. "Absolutely, Gareth."

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