“Navigation.” Weston paused and then chastised himself mentally: Use their names, Eric. “Lieutenant Daniels, plot a course to bring us on a close flyby of the Demos station and the Jovian research platforms. I want to say hello to an old friend.”

Weston heard the young lieutenant at navigation acknowledge the order and, a few moments later, felt the shudder run through the ship as it realigned along its new course. The Odyssey was now reaching a quarter the speed of light and still accelerating as it roared along toward the ship repair facility in the Mars orbit.

As the ship approached the “Red Planet,” an officer behind Weston called out, “Incoming call, sir. It’s from Commodore Wolfe at Demos base.”

“How close are we now?” Weston asked.

“About two light-minutes, sir.”

“Acknowledge audio only. Inform them of our ETA and tell the commodore that we’ll have visual in seven minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Excuse me, Chief…” Lieutenant Bermont said as he stepped up close to a squat and solidly built woman wearing the uniform of a chief petty officer.

She glanced up from where she had popped open a conduit panel and was checking diagnostics, her eyes falling to the bars on his uniform.

“Corrin, sir,” she saluted.

Bermont returned the salute. “I’m looking for the rec deck, Chief Corrin. ’Fraid I got turned around.” He had always felt more at home in the field than in this synthetic environment. Once he got out of the city, he never looked back, finding that he loved the rawness of nature more than anything. Pavement and concrete stopped being his home when he first discovered jungles and swamps, so Sean became sniper certified with the Canadian Joint Task Force 2 (JTF2) and spent as much of his time away from cities as he could.

She gave him a sour look and jerked her head over her shoulder. “Down the hall you’ll find a tube. Take it back to Hab Two, lower decks.”

“Thanks, Chief.” Bermont nodded and started off. From behind, he heard a muffled “groundhog” coming from Corrin.

The seven minutes flew by as Weston carefully watched the officers under his command, keeping track of their reactions to the multitude of minor crises that were part of the type of shakedown mission they were on.

“Captain, Commodore Wolfe for you on visual.”

Weston looked up from the terminal he was working on at the gruff face looking back at him from the screen. “Hello, Jeff, good to see you again.”

“You’re telling me! This is about the last place I expected you to turn up. I should’ve known that it would take something like that heap to pull you away from the Angels.” The commodore’s gruff words were belied by the grin on his face.

“Who said I left the Angels? Got ’em stored tight and secure on our flight deck.”