The myriad machines of Washington worked hard. Guardian after Guardian was brought to the fore, opened down to it's smallest elements, fixed, put back together, and then shuffled onto the launchpads, ready to go.
They call it maintaenence. Reginald Lewis, Lieutenant of the liberty navy primary, calls it a "mighty big operation."
His guardian was scheduled for a maintenance, so he was stuck on the shipyard while they got done with it. Normally, a day or two off normal flight patterns isn't too bad, but Washington is foreign territory to him. Virginia being one of the most secure systems in liberty space, it's mostly the posting for home guard and the reserve fleet. Lewis was in neither.
He walked around the vast hangar of the ship, looking around and stretching his legs. Maybe later he'd go to the gym to crunch some hours, but for now, light exercise would do.
As he rounded an opened up Executioner, he saw someone standing around, looking slightly lost. On a closer look, it was Natalie Cahoone. Nat for short.
Looks like her Guardian was on schedule as well.
Now, Lewis didn't know Cahoone that well. He believed in keeping things operational and professional, so as to perform his duties with the minimum of fuss. Forming closer bonds with his wingmen was not really part of the job description, although knowing them a bit better was.
He shrugged. A small talk would help him, and if he was analysing this correctly, her as well. He walked over to her, and tapped her lightly on the shoulder.
Natalie replied while she looked at her Guardian and the engineers, who were working on it. Though it seemed as if her thoughts were somewhere else.
"It's more a waste of my time. I know my ship better than them, I know when she's in need of repairs and when she isn't."
Normally Natalie would walk away now, since she generally avoided talking to other Navy members, it was something she never really wanted, but sometimes it was unavoidable. Lewis actually was one of the few she respected, that's why she smiled at him, instead of having the usual cold look on her face.
"Just stuck on the ground waiting, like you. And Washington is fairly unfamiliar turf for me...don't really know anyone here. So I'm just killing time."
He returned Cahoone's smile with a slight, controlled one of his own. If he was surprised that Cahoone didn't block his attempt at conversation, he did not show it. He turned, looking at her Guardian. The engineers were working on the engines, sparks flying as they worked to fix the small flaws the ship had gathered.
"Sometimes it's best to just let them have a diagnosis. Besides, there are plenty around who don't take care of their ships, and they can't separate them from us."
He shuffled slightly. Talking to a person you didn't know was never easy.
"So...did you have any plans to pass the time while this is going on?"
"I wonder why it had to be Washington, it would've been much easier on Norfolk, but nooo, they have to make it more complicated."
It was something that always made her angry, simply because she never got an answer for why it had to be Washington. She never liked it if people were not giving her the necessary information, even though it wasn't something important.
"Oh well, guess we all have to follow the protocols..."
She said with a sigh, while she kept watching the engineers. Mary, the name she had chosen for her Guardian, had always been reliable, and it would be a shame if some random engineers would break something.
"And no, had no plans. The only thing I do while I wait for something is thinking, sometimes about the past and sometimes about the future."
He considered his options for a moment, before speaking again.
"I was considering a trip to the gym to do my daily routine. Need to stay fit to be any good at our job, right? So...you could join me there if you don't have other work. It's not an amazing way to pass the time, but it works."
He leaned back, folding his arms and waiting for her response.
Natalie simply said, while she looked at her PDA to check if she had received any important messages.
"But it surely would be better than doing nothing, though I'd probably just sit around instead of doing something useful. I hope you won't mind."
The PDA was stored in her pocket again and she had turned around, smiling again, she saw Lewis as a rather motivated person, always ready to try the best. Such an attitude had become rare these days, and even Natalie herself had lost the motivation she once had.
"Staying fit won't be very helpful when your ship blows up...keep that in mind."
"That works for me. And...you're right of course. We'll just have to make sure we don't die then."
The last was said in a slightly sarcastic tone, and then he turned to go for the gym, Natalie in tow.
Fifteen minutes later...
The Liberty navy was short on a few things. Budget was not among them. The gym on washington, like everything really, was vast, and made to service a lot more people than were currently present. Lewis took a short time to change into fatigues, then got on a treadmill and began jogging.
Natalie sat on a chair some meters away from Lewis and watched him, though it more seemed as if she was looking through him. "Why can't I just skip waiting?" She then thought, hearing Lewis' question.
"Uhhhh, not as good as they used to be."
She then said, looking around in the gym, realizing how much she hated that place and hoped that she would soon be out in space again. Flying patrols was so much more entertaining than that.
Stars danced across the sky, rising and falling with alarming regularity through the gym's viewing port. It had been a long day of inactivity, and Jane Hartman figured that if she couldn't be out there flying she could at least set up the treadmill facing the window. The run had become routine for her over the past two days, it was one of the few things she could do to fill in the time since the maintenance crew had turned up one her Liberator's busted capacitors. Now, the Ensign had been running for the best part of two hours, and her fatigues sported a dark layer of sweat. A series of beeps sounded in her headphones, signifying the last hundred meters and she dropped into a sprint, struggling to ignore the heavy sound of her own breathing.
Task completed, the treadmill beeped again, slowing to a more comfortable walk. Hartman slowed with it, cursing whatever deity watched over the gym for her aching muscles. Naval work made you soft. Conversation cut into her hearing as she tugged the headphones loose, a familiar voice in the near-empty gym. Two treadmills down was a figure she hadn't seen in person since her Recruitment interview, nearly six months ago.
"Lewis! What the hell are you doing here, Sir?" Her lungs hadn't quite recovered from the run, and it took another two attempts to get the words out in any coherent order. She gave up on the possibility of a conversation across the gym, and made her way past the intervening machines, stopping just short of the two officers.
Lewis frowned slightly. Conversing with Cahoone was an interesting exercise. Asking direct questions would just get her to run off. But he had been in the navy for a while, and seen most of the types. Knowing her better was essential if they were to operate properly as a team. He jogged, thinking. After a few minutes, he spoke again.
"Hmm, it's kind of the same here. War has slowed down to a crawl, we're mostly on the homefront since the LPI can't do their damn jobs, and the waiting. The endless waiting. You and I know that we'll be on the move soon, but the waiting is killing us, right?"
He heard a sequence of jumbled words from another direction, and turned his head. It took him a moment to relate the face with a name. Jane Hartman, Ensign, former marine. He nodded at himself mentally for the recall, before raising a hand in greeting.
"Morning, Miss Hartman. Nat's guardian and mine are holed up here, being serviced, so we're just stuck here for a little while. You?"
He tried to recall something about the ensign. He recalled her as a good soldier, and competent, but not a lot more. So he just smiled slightly in her direction and and waved her to take a seat.