Chapter 5. Good China Policy
Chapter 5. Good China Policy
If one is lucky, one enters—once or twice in life—a stretch of three or four weeks where everything falls into perfect alignment and everyone is happy. Not one fly in the ointment. Tom and Joanni were existing in this state right now on the Eridanus: after all the trials and tribulations, absences and doubt, they had both settled on a life of mutually satisfying work. Joanni had found her calling and the captain had ceased fighting his situation; rather he now accepted it as a gift to be viewed at full value.
The great galaxyship and its crew were now traveling through a vast void in space without sign of alien life. The hardworking crew used this boring stretch of days as onboard R&R: sleeping, reading, hitting the gym, catching up on maintenance (for those OCD-afflicted). Playing pinochle with Head Librarian Ruthie McKaye and the gossip gang. Captain Chipman and Lt. Neiswender were able to spend time together without interruption. He felt secure enough about the affairs of his ship during this uneventful period that he often stayed overnight in Joanni’s bed next door. She made him breakfast in the morning and served him coffee in bed, using a standard ISEA valex coffee cup. But if the night had been particularly satisfactory, she served his morning coffee to him in her cherished 20th-century china cup with its pink and red painted peonies.
“Here you go. You were so good last night, you’re getting your coffee in a proper cup, not a cheap valex cup.” And so it went.
Of course, this was not destined to continue. There had been a worrisome increase in briefings and ISEA communications lately to which Joanni was not privy, but she was too professional (and too proud) to ask why. Then one day, the High Command Shuttlecraft II approached the Eridanus and landed on the hangar deck. Captain Chipman was summoned to the hangar without explanation and departed with the vessel. Without explanation. First Officer Samuel did not seem concerned, but no one could or would tell her what was going on. Chipman was gone for almost a week and a half. What she did not know was that Chipman had been summoned to a command briefing on ISEA’s strategic response to an imminent Parsygian attack on Oreana.
Just as Joanni was almost getting used to the captain’s strange absence, he suddenly appeared by her side one afternoon as she walked down the corridor toward her window office. He hustled her into his quarters and enfolded her in his arms, giving her a deep kiss.
“What the hell is going on!” she barked at him, breaking away from his grasp. “Where were you?”
“You tell me,” he said.
“Really? It could be top secret, maybe, but also, I think you think, ‘I’m the captain of this goddamn ship, and I’ll go anywhere anytime as I please without permission, especially from a chit of a girlfriend.’ Something like that?”
“You know, your scolding turns me on.”
But his eyes and expression did not mirror his teasing tone. There was a sadness there as he realized he would have to inform her of the mission assignment he had just received to advance on Oreana to investigate the cataclysmic signs of attacks that were happening on that planet, and to verify whether it had not already been destroyed, along with the Oreanians, their vouronium, and their culture.
Image: Cup of coffee; cup of milk and honey. Source: “Beautiful Cup of Tea With Flowers 10,” Chenspec, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Edited by J. Weigley