Hotaru no Haka

[Eppy]

Hotaru sat down at the five-man circular table, centerpiece of the Kisaragi's dark, cramped kitchen/meeting space. Her father was directly to her left; from there on were the other three shift workers, Hachi, Hiro, and Akito. She began to nurse a bottle of some orange-ish carbonated stuff Yoko had gotten her hooked on as her father began to talk.

"Right, now that we're all here, I'll begin. Kruger's Leipzig operation doesn't want more gas for another four days. So, we're going to haul eight new fishing trawlers out to Shikoku instead. They're being loaded now. Okay, who gets what shift?"

The four crewers remained tactfully silent.

"...in that case, let me get the straws." he slid up and finessed his way over to the cupboards, sliding open the one farthest over and pulling out a set of four straws of varying length. The ritual was performed; Hotaru got the short one. The late shift.

"Mishima-san?" A voice crackled over the comm. "we've got those trawlers loaded in about thirty seconds." Sure enough, over the course of the next minute eight large *THUNKs* were hears as the angling vessels dropped onto the Train cars.

Oh well. She could do that nasty piece of European Lit homework she'd been putting off; stupid Charles Dickens.

*****

Tanto woke up at exactly 2:00 AM, ship's time. There was no alarm, no warning. It just happened. He could do that kind of thing. Everybody should be asleep except the on-duty shiftsman. Time to get to work.

*****

Hotaru sighed as she stretched herself out in the chair and turned up her music slightly. The Trade Lane to Junyo was down for repairs, so she'd set it to fly at a relatively constant distance off the side of the superluminal capapults. She'd stop it when they got within the outskirts of Junyo's gravitational well.

She heard a sudden clunking and a muffled *umph* that sounded like Hachi. Best go check it out and make sure he hadn't gone sleepwalking into the kitchen again.

//Critique me! Critique me!\\

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Quick comment - we thought that Panzer was the Leader, Swift. -Agmen

Which Dreadnought was that?

One of your nine.