Bridgebuilder

Keystone

With the Shipmaster - Carbon now, Alex supposed - gone, and nothing to do but sit in a dim room while pinned to the mediboard, listening to his body breathe without his input... Alex didn't find sleep quickly. Presumably whatever the crash protocols injected him with was still in his system, keeping him functional. Which if there were pirates or an actual crash, would be useful. Right now, it was keeping him staring at the ceiling for hours, only able to turn his eye far enough to see the clock on the wall. When he did finally find sleep, the dream came almost immediately.

He pushed himself up out the the cockpit of the simulator, blinking in the bright lights of the sim bay as the shroud retracted from his pod. He had a stupid sort of grin on his face, an enthusiasm that permeated the whole of his being. "If that's what the next generation of Waverider drives is going... I can't wait to get my hands on the real thing."

There was a little hiccup in his dream here. Something interjected a curious sense of superiority, maybe smug satisfaction. There was a word for it, he just couldn't remember. It wasn't his word.

"I think everybody is interested in that right now, Pilot Sorenson." Ed Brzezinski reached down and helped him up out of the sim pod. A massive, bald man who was his trainer in the scoutship program, an old pro who'd been out in the black a dozen times. Ed had never called him Pilot Sorenson.

"Are they going to have these ready for my ship?" He was eager to know when he would finally get his assignment. He had spent years getting ready for this assignment, even doing three months at a Navy boot camp for zero-g training. They should have put him on one by now. "You know I've been getting kind of... restless seeing other scouts deploy while I get held back again and again. But if the trade off was the new engines? I guess the wait will have been worth it."

"As a matter of fact, they will. Your charge will be ready in just about another month." Ed looked... Alex wasn't sure. Sad, tense, hopeful and worried, all at the same time, boiling just below the surface. He had never seen Ed as anything less than confident, so quick with a smile he could have been an actor playing a role the entire time Alex had known him. There was more happening than he was letting on.

Another hitch, a flicker of an emotion that wasn't his, this time pleased at his insight into someone else's emotions.

"That's great! Is it new? Will I get to name it?" First pilot always got to name a new ship. He felt like a kid in a candy store at the prospect, his mind running down the top three names he had prepped-

Ed cleared his throat, bringing Alex out of his reverie. "No, it's already named."

"I guess that makes sense." It wasn't unusual for ships with the first run of new technology to already be named, particularly when it came to engines. Everybody involved wanted their fingerprints on it. "What's it called?"

"Kshlav'o. Bridge builder."

"I don't recognize that language."

"It's Tsla'o." Ed paused, hesitated, glancing around before continuing with an unusual amount of caution in his voice. "Your engineer is going to be one of theirs. A Lan, a Shipmaster."

"Tsla'o? They're putting me on a ship with a fucking dog?" His voice practically cracked, starting to make a scene in the quiet hum of the sim bay. He didn't have any particular problems with the Tsla'o. Hadn't even met any. That didn't mean he wanted to have to deal with one of them, let alone get stuck with one in a scoutship.

Raw, utterly visceral disappointment.

"Watch your mouth." Ed's face twisted with anger for a moment before he caught himself and his voice dropped an octave, eyes gleaming with a hard edge as he leaned in to Alex. "Come to my office. You need to see something."