HMS Valediction

Chapter 30.4

I swing in my hammock on my ship, hugging my knees and bitting the tip of my jagged middle-finger nail while staring a hole through Dean's trunk.

Where are my crazy ideas when I need them? They appeared so naturally before, but now, poof. Nothing.

They weren't perfect—not by a longshot—but they were effective. Topside nights with adrenaline pumping, Invader beams scorching the earth inches from my vulnerable flesh, and twenty civilian scavengers screaming in horror somehow always got my brain moving at lightning speed. Now that I need to come up with an idea... any idea on how to get us all out of this mess, my brain spits and fizzles. My capacity to scheme limps off to flounder around in a pathetic, sputtering death somewhere far away from me.

"Are you broken?" Ledi twists around to face me from his reclined spot in the co-pilot's seat.

"Maybe?"

"You have been inactive for nearly twelve sondits—"

"No. No more sondits. No more blips, clyks or whatever. I let five months slip away from me because I had no idea what time was actually passing. Can I switch you to Earth-time mode or something?"

"Moon won't allow it."

"I'm overriding his action."

He smiles and faces the front again. "Yeah, it doesn't work like that."

"Then, Ledi, as a favor, can you calculate it and tell me both the galaxy's time and ARC10's?"

"Sounds like a pain in the ass."

"If you're going to stay Dean and insist on following me around as the nightmare co-pilot shell of my long-lost lover, you owe me."

His chest rises and falls in a heavy sigh. "Fine."

"Great. Let's start now. You said I've been here twelve sondits. What does that mean on ARC10?"

"One hour, thirteen minutes, and six seconds."

"No." I lean back and press my palms into my eyes. "I've got forty-five minutes and no plan."

"Why don't you ask for help?"

"You have a plan?"

Ledi rests his long legs on our console and crosses his feet, casually leaning back in his chair. "Not me. Nuna."

"Do you think she'd help me?"

"Most likely. She would need a few... days... to think through her strategy and then another few... weeks... to run all the possible outcomes through me. When we discover a strategy with at least a fifty-four percent chance of success, we perfect it and implement."

I slip out of the hammock and pad over to my captain's chair. Dropping into it from the side and facing Ledi in his ridiculous leisure, I lean my elbows on my knees and rest my chin on my hands that are clasped tightly together. "So you're the secret sauce."

"Not really. My job is to calculate probabilities. She makes up all the steps herself. Kind of like how it seems like it was your Dean's job to warn you about all possible scenarios in which you could be maimed or murdered. It's like that. The difference is that Nuna listens to me. You didn't seem to ever heed Dean's—"

"That's irrelevant. The point is that I never got maimed or murdered, so it doesn't matter."

Ledi crosses his arms over his chest. "I'm just stating what I've seen."

"So—" I fiddle with a loose cuticle on my thumb. "If I was to have some kind of a beginning of a plan... What is my chance of success if I were to—"

"What's your definition of success?"

My leg bounces as I think. "I guess it's escaping Juno's army with the people of ARC10 and ARC4 surviving."

He nods. "Okay. Go ahead."

"What's my chance of success if I were, I don't know, going to kill Juno and release ARC4?"

"It's a number so low, it's not even worth mentioning."

"So not even one-percent?"

"Pretty far from it."

I gnaw on my thumb nail again. "What if I sneak in and steal ARC4 without Juno noticing?"

"It's worse."

I gaze out the enormous window at my forward, the HMS Valediction still prominently featured in my sights. "Ledi, how many passengers can the HMS Valediction hold?"

"Our maximum capacity is twelve thousand, three-hundred and twenty-six adult bodies."

"Last time we talked, there were about six-thousand, right? So adding two-thousand wouldn't really harm Teeno's ecosystem?"

Ledi shook his head, Dean's mousey hair covering his eyes. "Nope."

"How about the Olympi?"

He sits up and faces me. "What about it?"

"How many can it hold?"

"Nearly twenty-thousand. I'm not entirely sure what its specifications are for maximum capacity, storage, or eco-threshold since—"

I wave away the rest of his comment. "Doesn't matter. How many are aboard right now?"

"Last time Nuna had done some reconnaissance, she reported it was give-or-take six-thousand. And that was nearly nine-hundred clyks ago."

"Which is..."

"A little over two Earth years."

I grin. "Ledi, what do you think the chances of success are if I overthrow Juno with ARC10 and ARC4's military forces and make the Olympic our new home?"

His laugh is soft. "Almost eight percent."

"What if I can convince Moon to help?" I bite my lip.

He laughs again, but this time, it's loud and full of amusement. It's the same unabashed merriment of when Dean knew I was plotting mischief. "Very close to twelve percent."

"That's close enough for me." Leaping from my seat, I step on the ladder and head for the briefing room. I didn't know the nuances of the plan yet—they were forming as I strode through the empty corridors. Somewhere between my shuttle dock and the room where my VIPERs have gathered in anticipation already, John joined me. We burst in together.

"Coodi—" I say, pointing at my second-in-command—"grab your Officer Dress Grays. We're headed out on a diplomatic mission."

Knuckles raises his hands and slaps them loudly against his thighs. "Holy fucking Saint Harriet, woman, you just returned and now you're turning right back around to leave us again?"

"Yep. But this time, I'll be right back. I need to see a space captain about inciting a revolution."

**A/N**

Hello, friends ❤️

Sorry for the delay in these two very short chapters. I'm preparing to start up my new job, so I've been running around all weekend, trying to pull my shit together. 

The best part? I'm going to be working at a fertility clinic. IM GOING TO BE THE HHP *GASP*. 

Not really. As a major softie inside and out, I'm the opposite of the HHP. The most aggressive I can get is to force people to take the cartoon sperm stickers that are lying around the office. I'm obsessed with them and think everyone should have one. 

They're sperm, but they have top hats 🎩

Hope you're enjoying the ride. As always, thank you for coming out to shower this crazy story with stars.