Tides of Change

[Caedes]

Marcus walked through the corridors of the Deviator toward one of several briefing rooms, he and a few of other pilots had been summoned for a briefing by Captain Cauthon himself.

After being notified of his promotion to Lieutenant, Marcus felt quite proud of himself and now that he was an officer, he felt the need to look the part. He walked straighter and tried to give off the sense of importance and urgency. He gave up within five minutes. He was still happy about the promotion. Not for the pay or the small amount of respect that you got as an officer, but simply because he was now technically in a leadership role, which had been a goal of his from a young age, to command a ship of his own.

Marcus stopped at the door and took a moment to straighten his uniform out.

The door opened and Marcus walked through, there were only three other pilots so they were all sat at the front, just chatting quietly, they all stopped and looked up at Marcus, expecting the Captain to walk through at any point. After realising it was just another Lieutenant, they continued talking.

Marcus sat down on the front row with the others, but as he did not know any of them, he didn't really talk to them, just said 'hello' and sat down, patiently waiting for Captain Cauthon to come in.

Appearing almost exactly on the time specified, Captain Cauthon entered and made his way to the front of the room. As soon as he entered the room, Marcus and the others all sat up, braced to attention.

"Relax." He said, as he looked through some of the paperwork that one of his assistants must have put on the desk earlier.

"Ok.. As you all know I am Captain Matrim Cauthon, the CO of this ship. I will also be your primary reporting officer, so I'm going to make some things clear for you now."

Marcus and the other pilots braced up slightly, they had all heard about Captain Cauthon; he was a good, competent Captain but he was firm and difficult to read at some times. He was one officer that no one wanted to get on the bad side of.

He continued speaking.
"First of all, congratulations to you four for reaching the rank of Lieutenant, you would not be here if you hadn't shown the various qualities expected of an officer in The Order. With this rank, you are given more freedom than the more junior ranks, but also more responsibilities, not only for yourselves, but for the personnel under you. Secondly, as your reporting officer, I am responsible for you. Don't screw up. Thirdly, while going through the ridiculous amounts of paper work involved in promoting someone, I noticed a couple of you are behind on your stats. Lieutenants Johnson and Vadi, you both need to clock up four hours of patrol time. You either haven't done the time required or you forgot to submit your patrol reports. Do you have any questions for me?"

No one raised their hand.

"Good. There are some forms for each of you on the desk, in it are the files on each person who will report to you. Have fun."

While the Captain walked toward the door, the Lieutenants all sat up.

"Thank you, relax."

Marcus went and grabbed his file to read back in his room, smiling to himself as he heard Lieutenant Johnson complaining about having to do four hours of patrol.