@kclibri
When Commander Hayden summons him into his office, the topic sends a surge of ominous nostalgia lancing through him. It hasn't been long at all, since receiving the white noise and crackled transmissions from his missing sister, Valentina. Already, this mission will test his resolve -- but he has to push forward. For Valentina.
"For the past week, Base Command has been picking up frayed transmissions," Hayden begins, fists folded neatly behind his back and steel eyes focusing on him. "Helios, I want you to investigate lone vessel it is coming from. Based on your record and how you handled the situation in the Derelict spacecraft, I feel you're best suited for this task. It's not a large space craft, as far as we can tell. It's not Colteron, and may not even be alien. The language appears to be Russian." Hayden doesn't need to bring up the fact that Helios comes from the Colonies. It can be a rough, militant place -- a lot of Fighters come from there. But a majority of the people there are Russian.
"Yesir. I'll get Selene, and--"
"Your partner will have to stay here, I'm afraid. We're short on Navigators--we have most of them decoding the alien script recovered from the Derelict. Selene is the only one available to work on the grounded starfighters.Your Edifice is in working condition, however. I wouldn't send you by yourself if I didn't feel you could handle it."
Shit. This means if he pilots the Edifice, he won't be able to do much except the simple driving mechanisms. He won't even have access to the weapons because it's normally his job to man the guns.
“I think you're putting too much faith in me, sir. You're -- absolutely certain I won't need a Navigator.” Hayden seems to know what he's doing. He hasn't led the team astray yet, even for being a new Commander to this crew.
"This pod isn't far from our spacecraft. You'll have backup if you need it."
At least the Commander has faith in him. He doesn't want to know what it's like to lose his respect, he seems like a stern man. He has to be, anyway. While suiting up, the fighter's idle thoughts linger on the ominous, frazzled transmissions received from Valentina. And then there's the mission he and a portion of the crew just came back from. For a moment, he's on the Derelict spacecraft again. Just the sound of the hiss of dead air in the abandoned alien spacecraft, and then the power, for whatever reason, started going haywire and managed to damage most of the crew in some way. Selene's eyes wide in shock as Helios registers the warm, tickling sensation as blood running down his jaw from a damaged ear.
It won't do him any good to linger on the past missions. It's only about ten minutes later before Selene is checking on their starfighter and showing him some of the controls. He leaves the cockpit without any trouble, and soon, he's eyeing the radar and tuning into the channel Hayden instructed him to. He's already pinpointed where the strange signal is coming from, now he just needs to tune in and see if he can communicate.
"Privet? Hello? Ya prisoyedinen k al'yansu. I'm with the Alliance."
