The salute was sharp, eyes locked straight ahead as the passengers disembarked. The good admiral followed by members of his command staff, in turn trailed by the the boot captain whom was hopefully to be his ticket out of obscure posts and into the field.
Hand down, turn on a heel and dismiss the crew to their affairs. Simple job wearing a bar on your shoulders sometimes; no fuel lines to connect, minimal paperwork to concern with, no hours of post flight work after the O's had strolled back into the warm.
He chuckled then, guess he was one now. One of the O's.
There was a desire to walk over and talk shop, find what was broken and turn a wrench again, to do something with his hands. Feel like something was being accomplished. There had been more times than not when all of the effort to move into space seemed like a waste, down here he could have been something while up there it was a struggle to even get a chance to move forward let alone excel.
Also, it was effing cold out here. Whatever the trainers may have said about space being cold had nothing on spending two hours doing an inspection in a Toledo winter. With a precision born of experience he absent mindedly rolled a cigarette, using his body to protect the tobacco and flimsy paper from the wind. Stepping away from the grounded craft crawling with maintenance personnel he lit up the cigarette.
Nothing to do now but wait. The rest of his life would be back shortly.
