Redemption

Rude Awakenings (Old Version)

The call came in at about twelve in the evening with the request that some of our officers especially those qualified in Marine Surveying, at least two, come out to Dry Dock 5 and investigate a ship that had been damaged and needed repairs at around four.

They also stated something along the lines of it having been a while since it's last survey so they wanted us to conduct a routine but thorough search of anything other than the typical battle scars from an encounter with the enemy, things such as rust, tin whiskers, faulty machinery, so on.

But from the way they informed us of our task with a little bit of confusion and uncertainty, I though it fair to say that the person on the call didn't exactly take notes and forgot most of the message along the way.

Which is probably why they called on the two of us to do the job, I had the most experience with this type of work, it was practically all that I did these days now that I was deemed unfit from naval service because of certain health issues, but the as for the other guy, he was a bit of a trouble-maker constantly boasting about his skills and showing himself off to others and causing the fights that subsequently followed.

I'll give it to him, he definitely knew what he was doing but he could certainly do with a lesson on modesty, they most likely sent me with him to keep him in check and make sure he didn't get himself sent to the brig.

But at the same time it was very hard not to encourage that behavior just to get him away for five seconds because the kid would just not stop talking.

Throughout the whole trip from the base to the docks, not one speck of it was spent in silence because Remy had decided that his day was so interesting that I just had to every little bit of it, from how great his hair looked to how amazing his lunch was, even told me that he just found fifty dollars lying in the gutter when we left.

Yeah right, like I was going to listen to any of that, instead of focusing on any of the actual words pouring out of her mouth I turned my attention outside the window and looked at the world passing by outside, eager to tune him out.

While the day had started off a little rough with the fog and everything, the weather had since the cleared up and revealed a bright blue sky and a shining sun, the rays reflecting off of the dew on the trees and grass making millions of tiny sparkling stars as we drove by and in the distance you could see troops of soldiers jogging along a wet dirt track, undoubtedly singing cadence in time with their instructor.

God, am I so glad that I don't have to do that anymore.

"So what do you think?"

'Huh' I looked back at him for the first time in fifteen minutes, obviously the kid had just asked a question but I missed it because of my effort to block out any word that came out of his mouth.

"I'm sorry. Could you say that again, I wasn't listening."

"Ha! Need to clean out your ears old man?" He responded mockingly. 'The absolute nerve of this guy!'

He sat himself up in his seat and said: "I asked you what your ideas were in regards to the type of vessel we're going to be working on."

"Well they only sent the two of us," I answered as bluntly as possible; "so I don't think that it's going to be very big, whatever it is."

"Personally, I think that it's going something important, some type of new vessel that they damaged in her trail run and now they asked of us to fix her."

"And why do you think that would be?" I asked him.

"Well right off the bat, they didn't tell us much on the type of vessel we would be working, which to me makes it seem like they're trying to keep it a secret, and the obviously only had us sent in order to keep the secret as quiet as possible."