Christy's - Fine Tea and Delicious Pastries

[Melanie Tyler]

Tyler nodded, biting back the sudden urge to laugh. Here they were, sitting around with a plate of pastries, discussing universities, all the while with the Gallics almost on the doorstep. It sounded like something out of a horrible joke. Tension slid off her as Page talked. It was such a trivial thing, just to sit down and talk, and yet she'd almost forgotten just how important the seemingly trivial could be. So, she sat and listened intently, occasionally taking another sip from her mug. Mathematics and the BPA. It wasn't exactly a match made in heaven, but she couldn't deny Page's reasons for enlisting were honorable. Moreso then hers had been, at any rate.

"Oh, Ravenswood doesn't have keys. She's an old girl, you have to wind her." It was an atrocious joke, but not too far off the truth. From what she'd seen of the fleet records, the Ravenswood had been in service a long time, even by Liberty's standards. Not that it stalled her affection for the warship one ounce. "There was some training. I started off flying atmospheric fighters down on Houston before the Air Force thought about going into space. You know how expensive learning to fly is. A friend and I hoped that we could convince the Defense Ministry to pay for it." Tyler grinned wryly, remembering scores of applications and countless interviews. Officer selection board had been the most stressful two hours of her life. She'd never expected anything to hold a torch to it. Then again, she hadn't expected to end up in a carrier group either.

"We wanted to get into the airlines afterward. She added. "Long story short, I made it into he LAF and he didn't. We sort-of lost contact when I went into basic. When that finished and I got back in contact with everyone, I heard that he'd elbowed his way into a cadetship with one of the airlines. Determined guy.

Anyway, a few months after training finished up the C.O put up the call for volunteers for the space scrap- Sorry, space combat wing - And I put my hand up. I'm still not sure why. It was one of those things that just seemed like a good idea at the time, and we were bored of sitting around on Houston waiting for the Rheinlanders to hit us. They ran with the applications, and a few of us got assigned the United.States when it was still an operational warship. I was just a Lieutenant back then, and I managed to scrap my Executioner on the way up from the airstrip. I'm not sure if he heard about it, but someone told me that General Winters was pretty pissed. Since I didn't have a ship, the biggest thing I ended up doing for a couple of months was organizing dinners." Tyler poked the cake on her plate as though it were personally responsible for her catering skills. "Once they did get a ship in for me, we were just about ready to go to Bretonia. There were a lot of people talking about riding in on the white horse to save you guys, you know, playing the hero. It ended up being stalled for some reason or another, and we got stuck on patrols close to home. Probably for the best in the end, since you know what happened when we finally did move. I was a Captain by that point." The shuttle convoy carrying Air Force Command had all bit disappeared, escorts and all. Tyler had been through basic with one of Guardian pilots, though remembering her didn't hurt as much as it once had. Now it was more of a sense of resignation then one of mourning.

"There were a lot of promotions after that. Colonel Comstock and I sort of ended up on the Ravenswood as a matter of course. Not that I had any idea what on Earth I was doing." The memory of the early days commanding the carrier tugged her lips into a grin. If there was one thing Junior Officers learnt, it was how to look like you knew what was going on. When you pulled that off convincingly enough, it was amazing what you actually picked up. "I'm still not sure if Comstock had any more idea then I did. If he didn't, he did a better job of hiding it. Guess that's why he's the C.O. Let's say that Ravenswood's Navy personnel worked overtime for a while."

Tyler stopped for a moment, suddenly aware that the cake in front of her was still untouched, and her coffee cooling in its mug. Across the table, Sergeant Page was still listening politely, even as she talked. She felt a momentary pang of guilt for having rambled on as she had. It really wasn't professional in the slightest, a senior military officer raving on about her life story in the middle of a public club. Teahouse. Whatever the Bretonians called them. Some of it must have shown in her face, because she found herself staring at a panel on the wall slightly above and to the left of Thomas rather then watching him directly.

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