One in Twelve Thousandth Percent

Chapter 2:

"Did you hear about the Intergalactic Cruiser that's supposed to be leaving soon?" Kazumi says as we start walking. "I would love to get in on that one. Unfortunately, they're only allowing Lieutenants and higher to apply for the pilot spot."

"Aww... that sucks. You would totally rock that. Bummer, Kaz." I say.

"Yeah, she tried to appeal it but Zintoris was being rather huffy about it." Annabelle mentioned. "I hate that it is launching so soon. Another week or two and we'll have more test results from the Faster Than Light drive prototype. I think this is too soon to be putting it to the test, but again, Zintoris is adamant that it will be fine."

Misaki, Annabelle and I get into a lift heading down while Kaz gets in one going up. Annabelle gets off first.

We arrive five minutes early and I breathe a sigh of relief.

"Gee and here I was hoping that you would be late again so you could get fired." Hikari's voice sideswiped us as we got into the meeting room.

Misaki again was faster at the comeback than I was. "Gee Hikari, how did you manage to add another 50 people to the notches on your belt and still have time to get to work before us?" People around us snorted. Hikari just huffed and went to the other side of the room. This was common knowledge about Hikari, so Misaki wasn't saying anything that wasn't true. Hikari just hated to hear it, especially from us.

Moments later our unit commander, Mai Pocket, comes in with our assignments. Mai has chestnut eyes, thick straight black hair and china-white skin.

###Stop a second...

Commander Mai. She knew me before and in addition to mom, Misaki and the twins, has been my biggest supporter. She took to my new name and pronouns right away and complimented me on my hair color change. She hasn't told anyone who didn't already know.

She's a true badass.###

Commander Mai also wears the badge designated to the Operations departments, Engineering specifically. But she has three gold dots on hers. Meanwhile as an ensign, Misaki, myself and most of the others in the room only have one gold dot. Anyways, being handy with a wrench, I was often put on console repair duty. Misaki was more of a software girl, so she handled the softer side of things. She was damn good at it too. She's solved issues that leading unit commanders and head engineers were scratching their heads at.

About 45 minutes later, I was sent off to the secondary reactor room. One of the consoles in there shorted after there was some sort of "spill". That was all my report pad said. Odd, I thought as I made my way there. Normally those consoles don't get much use. I wonder what was spilled on it. Maybe I can ask around so I can advise against keeping those kinds of liquids around the consoles.

I got my wish. As I was rounding the corner to the reactor room, two Jr Lieutenants walked past me in the direction I came from. They have one gold and one black dot on their badges.

"Yeah, I totally wasn't expecting her to do that. She completely soaked the entire console. I just hope no one can smell anything in there." One guy said to the other.

"Nah, I've been told that that stuff has no smell, so you should be good."

That was all I heard as we both quickly opened distance from each other.

Oh god, I thought as I walked in. Someone was having sex on the console. No wonder this odd console randomly shorted out. I wonder who he was screwing.

As I moved through the threshold, I got my second answer. I rolled my eyes. Of course.

Hikari was standing there, mopping up the mess. She had this intense 'trying to hide something ridiculously embarrassing' look on her face.