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Jane Hartman had a dozen things she should have been doing. Rivers's patrol report perched atop her desk like some small predatory animal, competing with overdue personnel files for attention. Two transports in 108 squadron were scheduled for refit, and she didn't have ships to spare replacing them. Lakewood was recovering from combat damage, the Hellfire Legion were active in Cortez again, and her social life had more holes in it than a block of Swiss cheese on a firing range.

And all of it meant as much to her as a drop of water meant to the ocean. Ellington had found Normandie.

Hartman refreshed the screen on her desk for what must have been the twentieth time that evening. There was still no word from Pine Ridge, Ellington's carrier. It was understandable. Pine Ridge undertook long deployments and restocking, even at a well-supplied shipyard, was no small undertaking. It didn't make the waiting any easier.

So, she busied herself with the small things.

She paced to the other side of the office, eyed the petty officer manning the desk outside. Petty Officer Molloy was a tall man, build like a rabbit and with the same air of constant surprise. When she was first appointed to flag rank Hartman had loathed the idea of an aide. Couldn't see the point in dragging a perfectly capable sailor away from duty to do her paperwork for her. Six weeks of doing it alone had quickly changed her perspective.

Hartman coughed to avoid startling him, and immediately felt like an idiot for it. "Any sign of Commander Valentine?"

"Nothing I've heard, ma'am." Molloy tapped his keyboard. Personnel reports flashed onto the screen alongside security checkpoints, pulsing a gentle amber. "No, still nothing since you last asked."

"How long ago was that?" It felt like hours.

"About three minutes, ma'am." Molloy said, deadpan. "Do you want me to check again in another sixty seconds?"

"No-one likes a smart-ass." Hartman turned back for the office. ""Lieutenant Commander Lewis?"

"Still waiting, ma'am." Molloy didn't bother calling Lewis' name up. Chances were that it wouldn't show up anyway, not without Morse or Davie's authentication codes. She'd already tried. "I'll let you know when they're here."

"Appreciate it, Petty Officer." Hartman sealed the door behind her and returned to Rivers's report. Thirty seconds later, Molloy’s voice crackled over her intercom.

"Still no sign of Valentine, ma’am." Molloy’s grin didn’t show on the intercom, but Hartman could see it all the same. She rolled her eyes skyward and killed the connection.

OOC: | Hullo folks. Post order for this one’ll be Hartman, Lewis, Valentine. It's set on the same evening as the patrol into Bretonia. |

Lewis pushed himself away from the Console, looking around in faint satisfaction. In front of him and around him, men and women had strapped into chairs bolted to the ground, and had placed gray Helmet-like structures on their heads. Each one of those was hooked up via thin, almost invisible wires to a central hub, under the platform on which Lewis stood. This was IPEC-ONE. Both the name for the building and the training exercise, it stood for Intra-PlanEtary Combat. These men and women were being run through Command simulations, being presented with situations that to all observers would seem very real. It was not a test of Combat Proficiency, the soldiers merely had to make decisions based on the situations presented to them, pitting all their wits and all they knew against a Thinking Computer that had both the sum total of all that House Liberty had faced in this regard, as well as hypothetical scenarios.

Truth be told, Lewis didn't have to do much, merely take judgement on what this current batch could handle and set the simulation's parameters accordingly. It was refreshing to be on the other end, he'd put one of those 'Nightmare Simulators' as Spec Ops had nicknamed them too often to count. He stepped down and walked through the ranks of the quietly seated, making sure that everything was in Order.

"Simulation's Green, Carter,"He said.

A raspy voice answered him. "So they'll come out in about two hours, looking like someone nearly beat them to death."Carter was a relatively new acquaintance, one he had met after his induction into SEAL a couple of months ago. He was currently at IPEC-2, doing the same thing.

"Yeah, pretty much. I tried to go easy this time though. No Gaia Simulations, at least."

There was a derisive snort on the other end. "If that's your definition of easy....

Lewis shook his head in wry amusement. Carter was one of the worst slave drivers that he knew of, and he also had the cheek to be hypocritical about it. "Anyways, Carter. Can you take over observation for me? I have another assignment I need to go to.

"You didn't mention that before. What's up?

"Admiral's Orders. Just a Disciplinary Hearing I need to be a witness at."

There was a whistle on the other end, and Carter's voice went low, almost conspiratorial. "Who and Who?"He said, asking about both the Admiral and the one on the receiving end of their ire. Lewis laughed. "You'll have to wait for your gossip, Carter. You know I can't talk about it until a decision is made public."

"It's a long way to walk, Lewis...What's in it for me?

Lewis had anticipated that one coming. "Calico, in a couple of days. I'll call you." Carter made no response, apart from the distinctive click of a line being disconnected. That was Carter's way of agreeing.

As he left IPEC-ONE, a sudden thought struck him. While it was unheard of for a person to ignore a calls to a Disciplinary Meeting...Valentine was a special case, and Lewis had no intention of wasting time. He looked up her contact details and placed a call. After forty seconds of a song which made Lewis raise both eyebrows in disbelief, it went to Voicemail. Lewis kept it brief and as neutral as he could manage, putting no particular emphasis on anything except she had to be in Hartman's Office now.

With that sorted, Lewis started making his own way from Fort Bragg to Long Island Station.

A few hours later, he found himself facing a very lanky man, who didn't look like he was expecting anyone. Lewis decided to take charge immediately, cutting over the man's mumbled questions with authority.

"Lieutenant Commander Lewis. I'm expected, Disciplinary Hearing for Lieutenant Commander Zoe Valentine."

The mention of his name seemed to make the aide feel better, as he looked significantly less spooked.

"Ah, Yes. I'm Petty Officer Molloy. She mentioned you..."

Lewis folded his arms and waited, his posture a mental prod to the indecisive man in front of him. Molloy opened up the intercom, seeking confirmation which was given very quickly.

"Go ahead. She's expecting you." Lewis merely nodded and went past, the sealed doors opening themselves after a moment's pause. Lewis stopped for a moment, then strode in.

The world was a mess. Particularly, the small part of the world that Hartman had control over.

One of Hartman's uncles had been a bear of a man, descended from some long-forgotten island chain where evolution had built human beings like mountains. Once a month, when Hartman visited his Vermont property, he would come home from church and drag an agricultural drone from beneath the house. The battered cream chassis, carefully polished and buffed over years, still gleamed in her memory. Every Sunday he would pull the drone out, and he would work on it, cradling it in his arms like an ill child. Occasionally, Hartman would pass him tools.

From the time she first walked down his driveway to the day she left for Carolina, he worked on that drone. It was never an obsession. An hour each weekend, no more, and no less. She never saw the drone work. Years later, when she returned to Vermont on leave, it was a shock to see it gone, the space under the house vacant.

Hartman had asked him about it, and he'd just gave a shrug like a creeping glacier. "It ain't that it refused to work. It refused to try." And that had been the end of it. Her uncle had found some other project to fill his time and Hartman had caught a shuttle back to the 4th on Pittsburgh feeling like she'd lost something she couldn't quite name.

Slowly, inexorably, the feeling that she knew exactly what he had been talking about was creeping up on her. She glanced at the clock on her display. Another five minutes. It wasn't that Valentine was just refusing to improve. She hadn't turned up. She was refusing to try.

The door slid open. Hartman closed Rivers's report, squared her shoulders and stood-

"Evenin' Lewis." She relaxed a fraction. Not Valentine. Disappointing, but not unexpected. Hartman waved him in, and Molloy closed the door behind him. "Glad to see someone in this organisation can still read a damn watch."

She gestured to a second seat alongside her own, both facing towards the door. The office had been Graham's - would be again soon, when she got around to signing the transfer paperwork - and being there still felt like squatting in someone else's house. "Appreciate you making yourself available on such short notice. Hopefully this ain't going to eat up too much of your time." But there's a good chance it will. "Trust you already know what all this rubbish is about?” Minor insubordination was hardly an offence worthy of court martial. But she couldn’t well sit there and let it pass, not from a Commander. Hell, not from a Recruit. So, she found herself sitting on her hands, waiting to yell at someone and wanting to yell at everyone at the sheer ludicrousness of it.

“Didn't happen to see Commander Valentine on the way in, did you?"

Molloy glanced up at Valentine as though she were a ghost. He stood and raised a hand in salute, and for a moment he looked as though he were about to offer her a last cigarette. Instead, he tapped the intercom on the desk.

"Commander Valentine's here to see you, ma'am." He must have got a response, because the wiry Petty Officer gave a nod and killed the connection. He returned his attention to Valentine with put-upon air that was universal among sailors dealing with officers. "The Admiral's waiting for you, ma'am. Lieutenant Commander Lewis arrived a few minutes ago." Molloy stood and opened the door. He paused for a murmured "Good luck, ma'am. Might want to kill that phone." before he shut the door behind her.

*

"Nice of you to join us, Commander." Hartman and Lewis sat on the same side of a desk, facing the door. Hartman stood when Valentine entered, returned the junior officer's salute with one sharp enough to cut air. Hartman didn't tell her to relax.

Valentine couldn't have been far past twenty. Young for a Lieutenant, let alone a full commander. That was war for you. It ate experienced officers like an MG chewed through cells. Valentine's flight suit was still creased from duty, and Hartman knew that if she checked the station log she'd find Valentine's fighter on one of the decks.

Hartman exhaled.

"What, exactly, Commander were you playing at back there on patrol?" Hartman's fists balled tighter by her sides, but her voice was as flat as a knife blade. "I've got a transport that's come under hostile fire. I'm briefing a patrol, your patrol, to fly into a zone occupied not only by whatever mental patients have taken it upon themselves to attack a naval ship, but by the Gallic Royal Navy. An organised, efficient, and above all competent foreign military that have already put the Bretonian's balls through the bloody blender."

Hartman didn't move. If she started she wouldn't stop. She remained at attention, one fist clenched at her side, and one flat hand pointed at Valentine. "That's the least of what we're going up against. I'm going to make an Olympic leap of faith here and assume you've read the standing orders and, Lord help me, that you're at least vaguely aware of what we're fighting?" Hartman paused a moment. "Am I mistaken in that assumption, Commander?"

Another breath.

"Those threats aren't something to be tossed aside lightly. And yet, Commander, I find you interrupting my briefing, in front of three junior officers, with something to the effect of 'who cares?'" Hartman's voice was ice. "I hold that an officer shouldn't be disciplined in front of her troops, Valentine. But try that again, and I swear to the Almighty, I will break you in front of your squadron. You're a Commander. A mid-command officer. Your job, the sole reason you have those bars on your shoulders, is to get the boys and girls under your command through whatever mess fate is generous enough to spare you.'"

"Who cares?" Hartman let her arm drop to her side. "I care, Commander. And if you want to keep that uniform when you leave this room, I strongly suggest you start caring right now. Maybe you know everything I'm going to say in that brief. Maybe you're that hot that you don't need to listen to me. But don't you dare disrupt the other officers in that briefing with that infantile rubbish about your lunch again. I wouldn't expect that self-centered bollocks from a Recruit, let alone a full Commander.

They're your troops. You look after them. You keep them alive. You make sure they get the information they need to do their jobs, no matter how damn well you know it. If you don't feel you can do that, there's a bathroom down the hall. I'll have a set of civies sent up, and you can leave this office as Ms Valentine." Hartman waved toward the intercom to drive the offer home. "Have I made myself inescapably clear?"

Lewis was content to let the senior Officer take charge of this hearing. There was not much to say for him which Hartman hadn't already drilled into the cowering Valentine. He watched on impassively as Hartman railed at Valentine, and made no gesture when Valentine stammered out a response. Indeed, he made very little sign at all that he was listening, or that he was even alive, and not a Statue masquerading as an Officer. When Zoe finally finished, wringing her hands and for all intents and purposes looking genuinely distressed...He glanced at Hartman, who nodded briefly.

"Normally, insubordination and lack of respect towards a Commanding Officer, particularly an Admiral...would be grounds for suspension and possibly Court-Martial."

He glanced at the datapad set in front of him, letting the implications of that sink in.

"Furthermore, I don't think you really understand the seriousness of what's going on, Miss Valentine." More implications. Valentine was probably too distressed to really pick them up, but Lewis knew that she'd understand...eventually.

"See. What the Admiral is trying to make-" He was cut off by another voice, someone he recognized instantly. It was the Fleet Admiral. Each word hit him with powerful waves of Deja Vu. He had been here before...Nearly Twenty years ago. Davies spoke briefly, but the damage had been done. Lewis had fervently hoped against all odds that this day would not come.

"That's what they say about hoping..." He muttered to himself. He had often been mocked as the Old Man of the Navy, but at this moment....he felt old as death. He glanced at Hartman, but she remained impassive.

Of course. She knew already.

Hartman caught his glance, and nodded briefly to confirm his suspicions. There was nothing to be done, except grimly bear it through, and there was a task before him that needed to be completed immediately.

"Seems like a Court-Martial would actually be doing you a service now, Valentine."

He glanced at Hartman again.

"An adequate punishment now would be to report back to your Squadron leader. We wouldn't dream of taking away your chance to die for god and country. If Admiral Hartman agrees, of course."

He hunched up his shoulders, wanting to be done with it.

Hartman nodded, glanced at Lewis, expressionless as slate."Dismissed, Commander. Let's not have this conversation again."

After Valentine had practically scampered out, Lewis turned his chair towards Hartman and asked the obvious question.

"You knew."

Hartman grimaced, rubbing her eyes. "Of course. We have to do this, Lewis."

Lewis leaned back in his chair, nodding absently. "Reminds me of things I don't really want to remember."

They sat in silence for a few moments. Soon, this station and every Naval Base in Liberty would explode in a flurry of activity as orders filtered in. It was the brief calm before the unending storm.

"You want to take a moment? I may have a few things for Veteran Campaigners stashed back on 'Hattan...."

Manhattan’s sun was setting, angry flares of red marking its final moments in the sky. Lewis and Hartman sat on the bonnet of a skycar, gazing at the sunset in quiet thought. Behind them, an empty bottle rolled off a seat. It had been her idea, of course. How Hartman knew of this relatively quiet overlook gazing at the sea, he didn’t know. And now that he’d seen it, he didn’t really care.

“So here we are, Jane.” Lewis said finally. It was almost a shame to break the gentle peace. Hartman looked at him, and now that she’d cut loose a bit…Worn was the word. She was worn out by what she’d already seen, and what was to come.

“You know, Lewis, I ain’t sure this was the best idea.” Hartman said.

“What do you mean?”

Hartman gestured at the sight in front of them, waves lapping at the distant shores. “This…This is worse than all the death. All the grief we’re about to dive right into, and this is still here. All this peace. It doesn’t feel like we’ve got the right, you know….”

“And knowing that it’s out of our grasp.” Lewis finished. “This is what we need to fight towards, Jane. At least, I believed it when I joined… It seems so out of reach now.”

He stood up and walked a few steps, remembering what it was like twenty years ago. A fresh-faced Lewis had been amongst the thousands that had marched off to what would eventually be called the Nomad war. After a few months, it had all abruptly ended. But by then a lot of his friends had already died.

Tobias, Reeves, Parkinson….It’s been a while since I thought of you.

He felt guilt, could feel it crushing him along with the realization that this was all going to happen again.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. Hartman was looking at him with an expression equal parts empathy and sadness. “You alright, Lewis?”

Not really.

All Lewis could think of was that how many of the people he knew and admired would join the ranks of the faceless, nameless dead at the Tomb of the Fallen Soldier. Morse, Ashfield, Baker… Hartman. He shook his head.

You’re not thinking straight.

Even as he said that to himself, he felt a certain urgency, a sense of doom. Thoughts that he had long submerged came swimming back to the surface.

“You know… A lot of us aren’t gonna make it out.” He said finally.

Hartman nodded, her mouth a grim line. “That’s war. We’ll do our damndest, Lewis. You know that.”

Lewis turned towards her. “Best to prepare for the worst, as we’ve always been taught. I’d like to go to this war with a clean slate.”

He took hold of her arms with his hands. “We’ve always backed each other up. At war, and during politics. You’ve almost gotten me killed over crazy shit more times than I care to remember… And yet I keep returning. It’s a bad habit.”

Lewis looked away. He’d never been good at conversations not governed by military code and regulation. “I’m just saying… That if…. When we return from this war, I’d like to carry on that tradition. In a more official capacity.”

There, he’d said it.

It took Hartman a moment to register those words, and then she looked away. There was a tinge of red to her scarred cheeks.

“That’s the most roundabout wa-“ She bit her lip and grimaced. “I can’t, Lewis. Not now.”

Lewis let go of her. “I understand. But I needed to say it. I’m not going to march to another war with regrets of what could’ve been.”

Hartman rubbed her eye, struggling to regain her composure. After a few minutes, she succeeded enough to look at him again. I’d like to say yes, Lewis… You know that. But I can’t. Not now, not with this war hanging on our heads, not with-.” She glanced at her shoulder and seemed surprised to see a civilian jacket in place of her slides.

Lewis nodded. “Just promise me an answer when this is over, Jane.”

Hartman laughed. A real, sincere laugh that seemed to drift from up from her toes. “I think you know what it’ll be… Being a Lieutenant Commander again’ll be odd, though.”

“Among other things.” Lewis agreed, grasping her hand and turning to look at the sunset once more.