Starship pilot who’s been running this route for 20 years now and isn’t stopping any time soon
"Hey, uh not to backseat drive, Lieutenant, but is that buzzer supposed to be going off so goddamn loud?"
"No, General, in fact actually: that means we're about to get hit by a missile, probably gonna die. This crate doesn't have that kind of counter measure suite, no thanks to the tax payers."
"Well, evade it or something!"
"Sir, not to be that guy, but there's no evading a CRACK-3 in this crate, at this distance, in this stretch of the belt. The way decompressions go, I'd rather be vaporized by the payload. Make your peace, it's a damn privilege to die behind the stick."
The sounds of a scuffle fill the receiver, the data-log indicating the craft jerked to and fro, clearly a result of all three in the cabin trading blows. The battle between the pilot and co-pilot with their back-seat driver began intensifying as the computerized voice speaks over the altercation.
[Collision Warning: Extreme Proximity, Impact in 10 seconds. Brace, Brace, Brace.]
A third voice chimed in, young and quivering.
"Y-YOU DUMBASS! SIT DOWN AND LET HIM FOCUS!"
The sound of someone's service blaster discharging at incredibly close range is the climax.
The black box recording cuts abruptly 9.89 seconds later. On screen synced up was a debug read-out indicating that cabin pressure, all crew vital signs, and telemetry logging all suddenly ended at the exact same moment. The Internal Affairs officer looked up at the two junior officers that'd come to her with the flight data and recordings. She was awestruck at the request, slack-jawed at the audacity, and cocking an annoyed, twitchy eyebrow. Their request, Orders from someone who has yet to be named over in the Command and Control team, put an icy chill into the air around Melinda's office. Her office-mate quietly excused himself to fetch more coffee, knowing the signals a mother of four radiates before laying the verbal smack-down on her kids for misbehaving.
But despite her characteristic hailstorm rage, Melinda somehow found it in herself to maintain her steely composure. The anger within her would have to be stockpiled and rationed for the slow-burn coming ahead. Months, maybe years of work had fallen into her lap in particular, and she wasn't about to let the issue go unanswered considering what it meant to her family that Mark was now space dust.
"So, to answer your question sergeant: no I can't cover this one up for you and even if I could I wouldn't for Mark's sake. It's clearly not an act of god, not a malfunction, and not operator error, not by our definitions. Nothing under our rulebook's conditions permits us a living relative pay-out to keep quiet an incident of friendly fire. You're not going to get away with pinning this on the vendor, and before you ask there was clearly no fault recorded in the Black Box or footage of the shoot down which says 'faulty seals' somehow caused this. One way or another, compensation's coming out of the Corps' coffers, and I'll bet the C.O. will be court martialed by next rotation. Whichever jackass assigned you idiots to this case is almost certainly going to hang for it all, I hope they don't have plans for a career in politics. If you know any better, you'll hand this off to people with brown noses."
The present incident cost the Corps one of the most seasoned long-haul emergency transit pilots in their history, Mark "Cabby" Icarus, and a ranking General of the Federation's ground forces who will likely have his name redacted. Also included was roughly 3.8 Million Credits in lost equipment, 20 seasoned marines, and the second-week-of-service rookie Co-pilot. In response to her dismissal, the two military officers shot each other pale, sweat-dripping glances of panic. They'd have to interrogate the Engineering Deck as to why the IFF system locked onto such a low priority and friendly target, plus warn their boss of bad news. The two junior officers were clearly handed this case by their superiors because it was going to blow up in their hands. An old Navy saying feels apt: 'let the record know that you were admiral last when the vessel sank', maritime traditions die hard even in space. She was furious, but not at them, and what sliver of human compassion remained for her fellow draftees rippled through but for a moment before her demeanor frosted over again.
"Alright kids listen. I'll uh, go speak with my seniors over in Staffing proper. Get your case report put in the right hands. You kids run along, find out which idiot pulled the trigger on this week's blue on blue, and I'll make sure you don't hang along with the C.O. trying to bury this. Deal?"
The two fresh-faced officers nodded and swallowed lumps in their throats so thick you'd be forgiven for thinking they weren't women, but rather the massive bugs they'd been signed up to help fight. The duo saluted, departing shortly after. Melinda sipped passively at her room-temperature cup of instant coffee, watching the 100x Optical Zoom Recording of the shoot down on her monitor. She listened to the audio in-time with the recording, tears finding purchase in her hardened, determined gaze as Mark's recorded voice calmly informed his crew of their impending demise. He'd been in countless scrapes, but in his age he also had seen so many friends die from various hostiles on countless sorties. Mark was the kind of guy who was always the lucky one, the Squadron Survivor, the calm nose-to-the-mill fella, a turtle in a world full of hares, and a damn good father. She sent a request through the system AI to declassify the footage for a civilian investigation, which was promptly denied by the Admiral, meaning it would go to her Husband's desk, where he would pass it to a Senator or three and they would over-rule the limp-dick fucks begging not to be tagged with this negligent homicide.
She grinned with the idle and reserved rage of a professional woman scorned, her tears felt frozen to her cheeks as she forwarded a request for notice be sent to to her step-father, and began arranging for the Corps to pay out a hefty blue-on-blue compensation package to her sister-in-law and Mark's three kids. It wasn't on the records that she and Mark were half-siblings, and the only thing more bitter than the god-awful instant coffee was the awareness that she would have to bear this pain on her own until at least next year when it could finally get out. She thought about Mark's patience, how he was often in her current shoes, choking down tears quietly over the debris of his buddies. How often she sat with him on those nights. No talking, just quietly drinking in the cantina, just soaking his stoicism and pain like a sponge. It was hard not to feel guilty, the man never let it get to be more than tears and whiskey. Once the first draft of report was done, the day had long already come to a close. She swore she wouldn't let Mark's attitude die with him, she bided her time, bit her tongue, swallowed her pride, and kept to work.
There was one problem: she fucking hated whiskey. Maybe tonight, she'd find a taste for it.
