Chris Shendo

Lieutenant Commander Shendo awoke slowly from his perfectly timed eight hour rest cycle. He had dreamt that he was flying. His flying dreams were suddenly quite rare since he took this mission on, and it always put him in a seemingly perennial good mood when he had them. Or, at least it put him in a good mood until his next sleep cycle.

He unstrapped the Velcro-netting that kept him secured to the wall while he slept. In zero gravity, he'd eventually drift towards the nearest air vent if he wasn't strapped in. Not that it was likely to have any real ill effects if that happened, but his and the Navy's meticulous nature prevented him from having (or being) gear adrift in any compartment, on any ship. Ever.

This particular ship was small; it was practically a super-powered, luxury-suite life-pod. Someone higher-up on the chain of command must have thought that this would be fine on account of LTCDR Shendo's frame being smaller than most everyone else in the Navy, but the fact of the matter remained that he actually needed a lot more space than just about everyone else he had served with. Sometimes that fact could be ignored.

Chris stared out the starboard side window out at the stars. For a brief moment, he felt he wasn't confined to the ship anymore, but that the universe was his, and the expanse of stars was just part of a big pond he floated carelessly on.

"Enough daydreaming", Chris thought.

With a nudge he gently pushed off the bulkhead and drifted toward the computer terminal and strapped himself in. He tabbed the "on" button.

He didn't care for computers much, they were a bit of a hassle to him and he felt he pretty much had to "hunt-and-peck" on them. It was probably assumed by his Japanese sounding last-name that he'd be great with technology. To be fair, that was a safe assumption when taking into account that he did graduate top in his class at the Naval Academy.

But another fact had been overlooked; or, rather, the same fact as previously alluded to had been overlooked.  Lieutenant Commander Chris Shendo isn't Japanese. He's a duck.