Parcae

[Soto Terius]

Destiny exploded into being, a sudden shock of white and modest red highlights manifesting within the blink of an eye, obscuring the tiniest portion of the starfield above Jovan. A tiny flare of light pulsed from her triplet engine nacelles as the sublights hummed into action, propelling the dagger-shaped hull of the Arquitens Cruiser towards the looming disc of Jovan Station.

On the bridge - an unceremonious grey box that looked more like the command cabin of a commercial liner than the battle-hardened warship that the Destiny was meant to be - Captain Soto Terius sat in relative silence, his fingertips idly grooming through his beard. The more one contemplated these circumstances, the more absurd the juxtaposition became. An Alliance crew aboard a Republic cruiser, approaching an Imperial station that had been turned into a diplomatic outpost by the Cizerack. This was, to some extent at least, the kind of future that the Alliance to Restore the Republic had striven towards: one of peace and unity between the races, one where the cultural barriers and restrictions put in place by Palpatine and his Empire had finally faded away. Yet, it was an unfamiliar circumstance; an alien environment. For many of those who had joined the rebellion, the Republic was at best a distant memory recalled through the improving lens of hindsight, and at worst a fairy tale ideal spoken of in hushed tones to comfort those buckling beneath the weight of an oppressive regime.

Now that they were here, or at least in some approximation of it, everything was strange and unfamiliar. Worse, it all felt like a charade, like people playing at civilization, their childish attempt at peace and equality little more than a thin and fragile veneer over the impending war and conflict that broiled beneath. They were at peace, and yet the full force of the Alliance military was still on constant alert, trapped in a cruel and unfamiliar limbo: unable to indulge the skills and expertise that the Galactic Civil War had taught, and yet unable to relax and enjoy the benefits of true peace, forced instead into mundane drudgery while at the same time remaining constantly vigilant for the moment that everything crumbled apart. Hard-fought victories and seemingly impossible challenges had been replaced by supply runs and border patrols, Terius' crew of ambush veterans relegated to the simplistic tasks of escorting convoys and ferrying dignitaries. Their victory - or at least, their approximation thereof - over the Empire had rendered them all obsolete, and yet the precarious peace demanded that they become a contingency, gathering rust and dust until fate deigned to make them useful again.

The hiss of the bulkhead door behind him pierced into his thoughts. A quiet rumble of words escaped from his throat, about half a second before the dignitary's insistence that it was unnecessary registered in his mind. "Admiral on deck."