Maintenance Bay
SLS Duty's Fist
Julia watched as the paint dried and ran on the canvas. She was supposed to be producing a piece showing a vast battle, stretching from one horizon to the other with the glorious dead and the heroic living on both sides - the perfect death for so many. But it came out...wrong. Faces were distorted, over-sallow and grimacing dourly, tanks seemed to flow and meld into the ground as if they had been half-melted, mechs were hunched and disfigured looking down on the insectile soldiers which scurried around their cumbersome feet.
Her hands were shaking as she set aside her palette and sank down onto her bed. It always ended like this. Malformed, dysfunctional paintings, hardly holding the high standard which the Corps expected of true art. Less even than a facsimile of the Supreme Commander's glory and ultimate authority, they were...wrong. There was no glory in them, nothing gained, just an endless loss of life stretching as far as the eye could see. That wasn't right - she'd seen it herself, there was more to it than that. There was more. There had to be more - why else could war be so common?
Her fingers brushed against smooth, cold metal and she felt the jitters fading away. It was one bad painting, nothing more. She could do better. She would do better. She would capture glory and death and honour on canvas eventually; she would prove herself as more than just a pilot and-
"All mech pilots please report to the brige, we will be entering real space in a matter of seconds."
Half-jumping, Julia glanced up at the walls before sprinting past the still-drying canvas and out into the corridor. It took her a split-second to recall where the bridge was before she was moving again - a few of her fellows were also stumbling out of their quarters, and after a moment they joined her. Take the left, left, right, present palm for the scanner then continue along the central corridor. Dodge the other crew-members, and then to the last door. Presenting her palm again she watched as the last set of doors slid open to reveal the bridge beyond, filing in with a handful of other pilots before snapping briskly to attention and saluting the Captain as he turned to greet them. There was a stony silence as they awaited instructions.