I felt like I had been put through the wringer when I woke up. The soreness of the workout Wildcat had proscribed joined with the wool that filled my head from having my sleep-schedule violently disrupted to make me miserable. But I had slept reasonably well and with my shift right around the corner, I would have to manage.

After a quick stop in the mess, I walked into the fighter-area, getting there just as Wildcat was arriving as well. She looked tired but gave me a friendly smile and approached.

“Just to make sure you know what to expect. The shift will be about the most boring thing you can imagine, right until it is not. The Captain decided that part of our engineering-team will go over to the Lucky Break, to help them repair the damage they have taken from that single fighter’s attack, so that they can get underway. It would be bad form to leave them here, while they are a sitting duck. Some of those freighters, especially the old ones, are only held together by tape and hope, so getting shot at is bad. It doesn’t help that, once the freighter was sold a few times, they crew them with only the bare minimum, in an attempt to save cost. It’s stupid, but it is what it is.” Wildcat explained and I realised that she was rambling. It was a habit of hers, at times she simply rambled on and on, I still remembered the enthusiasm with which she had lectured me for almost an hour about the different types of ammunition and how well they worked in the needle-pistol she had gifted to me.

“And our job is to make sure that nothing sneaks up on us while the ship is undermanned?” I asked, to bring her back to the original point, what would most likely happen during our shift.

“Well, yes. Oh, just so you know, you’ll be sharing your Starfighter with Carmine 6, once she’s out of the infirmary. I’m sure Commodore Ryker will tell you the same at some point, but for now, you drew the short stick. At least until you get yourself to the next higher ranking in the squadron, you are not far off.” she added, a grin on her face.

At that, my face fell. I could see the reasoning behind it, but that didn’t meant I had to like it. Putting the best pilots into Starfighters was just the smart thing to do, so deciding who would be sharing their Starfighter according to the performance-ranking in the simulators was reasonable. That meant that, when I was on shift, I would use my Starfighter and Lieutenant Caruth, Carmine 6, would use the one normally used by Cadet Trezt with him staying behind but while I was off-shift, I would have to stay behind, not getting out to fly if something happened.

“Glorious.” I grumbled, causing Wildcat to chuckle under her breath.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m sure that Commodore Ryker will come up with something useful for you to do, even if there’s no Starfighter for you. Maybe some cross-training, the Fleet likes to put Starfighter-pilots at the helm of some of their small ships for particularly dicey missions.” she explained.

“What do you mean?!” I asked, not quite sure where she was going with that. Cross-Training, that I could get behind, maybe being assigned to the maintenance teams that took care of our Starfighters or to a damage-control team, that I could understand. But she strongly hinted at something akin to bridge-duty which was a whole different pony.

“Normally, a ship like the Merathorn is helmed by its navigator, with the computer doing most of the flying. That’s what Fleet-pilots are trained to do, which is why the Starfleet likes to lend Starfighter-Pilots for their small ships, their Frigates and Corvettes, sometimes even for a Destroyer, just in case there are dogfights to be had. Wouldn’t you want to dogfight in a ship the size of the Merathorn?” she asked, grinning like a loon. Just from the mental image, the massive, ponderous Merathron twisting and weaving like a Starfigther, pushing her inertial dampening to the brink and beyond, caused me to chuckle, it was just too funny.

“So, I better get the manuals to take a look?” I asked, still not sure if she was just joking with me or not. It would be interesting, and likely challenging, to expand my portfolio as pilot like that. And not too far out of the ordinary, at the Academy we had been trained to fly the Starfighters commonly used by the Starfleet, all-purpose Raptors, Nova-Bombers and Rapier-Interceptors but we also had been rated at a few different shuttle-types, not that the systems differed all that much. Sure, most shuttles didn’t have the systems needed to connect with a pilot’s headware but other than that, they were relatively simple, thankfully.

So, why not learn how to fly something bigger, I had once heard that bigger was better.

“Sure, why not. If you check with Commodore Ryker and ask in the computer-center, you can even get the simulator-software loaded for your perusal.” Wildcat encouraged me, maybe noticing the interest in my eyes.

“I’ll ask after the shift.” I decided and we walked into the briefing-room to officially hear what fun we would be up to during our shift.

The briefing was about what I expected, one group of Starfighters would be outside, loitering nearby and the other group would be in the launch-tubes, ready to launch at a moment’s notice. It was about as much power a ship like the Merathorn could project over more than one shift but the schedule would wear out the Starfighters and us pilots quite fast. While we wouldn’t be on shift longer than usual, the constant tension, the constant vigilance required to ride a Starfighter out in the void, would cause us to make mistakes if the pattern was kept too long.

Just how hard the new pattern was on the equipment was demonstrated after the briefing. While we, Carmine Group 3, were climbing into our Starfighters, some of which still had visible marks of recent battle.damage, the remaining three Starfighters of Carmine Group 2 were pulled out of the launch-tubes and moved into their maintenance-bays and we were put into the tubes and quickly launched. Once we were out and started to take up positions, Carmine Group 1 was able to return to the Merathorn while I listened on the squadron-channel as Carmine Group 4 was moved into the tubes. There was little room for error, adding to the pressure everyone was feeling. But we had a job to do and I doubted anyone wanted to be seen as the weakest link.

As Manta and I were slowly drifting amongst the stars, we talked about options for me. He had informed me that I would be sharing my Starfighter, just as Wildcat had said, and while he would have preferred to give me the full experience of my Summer Cruise, it was just not to be. But there were other things I could do and learn aboard the Merathorn, even if the likelihood of another combat-sortie had been cut in half.

Somehow, I wasn’t too broken up about that, maybe the fighting on the day before had curbed some of the desire to experience real Space-Combat, to compare it to my experiences in the simulator. The knowledge that I had successfully flown a combat-sortie, that I had shot down an enemy Starfighter, that was something I now had and no longer needed to chase after. It was a sobering bit of reality that the elation I had expected had failed to manifest.

Nonetheless, he promised that he would talk to the captain, maybe giving me an opportunity to get an observer-posting on the Bridge if there was a call for general quarters while the Merathron was a fighter short and I would just sit in the fighter-area without anything to do. I was quite grateful for the potential opportunity, just to have the experience under my belt.

The rest of the shift was about as boring as actually flying a Starfighter could be. For the first three hours, we drifted in the black, our computers making sure that nothing was coming our way. After that, it got worse.

The next three hours, we were on the Merathorn, sitting in the launch-tubes after a quick check from the maintenance-technicians. There, our job was to simply sit at the ready, without much to do. I regretted that I hadn’t mastered the skill of falling asleep on command, from the chatter on our Group-channel that was what the others did, simply take a nap. Knowing that I would be groggy right after waking up, not necessarily the state you wanted to be in if a combat-launch was necessary, I kept myself entertained by looking at the information I had on the various Federation-Spacecrafts, their performance-rating and what might be possible flying them. It was idle, busy-work but it helped me to pass the time.

That pattern, three hours floating in the void followed by three hours in the launch-tubes repeated and then it was time to go off-shift, something I was quite grateful for, just to fall into my bed as soon as possible.