Date Point: 7y 1w AV
London, England, Earth
Charlotte Gilroy
“You’re back!” Charlotte was a huggy person anyway, but she especially liked hugging Ava—Ava always reacted first with a little awkwardness and then with genuine delight, as if she wasn’t really used to being hugged but really enjoyed it when it happened.
She took a step back after giving her friend an especially big squeeze, and examined Ava with an expert eye. “You had sex!”
Ava laughed. She must have been exhausted, flying from Vancouver and then catching the tube across town with a big suitcase in tow, but there was no mistaking that satisfied glow.
“Okay, how did you know?” She demanded. “Do I smell or something?”
“Nope! You’re just…relaxed.” And how. Ava wasn’t tightly-wound or anything, but she did have a kind of sadness about her that was totally gone right now. She was so pretty when she smiled, too. It was nice to see.
Ava shoved her suitcase into her room, while Charlotte bounced on her toe-tips, eager to hear all about Cimbrean and Adam.
“What?”
“So, come on! Deets!”
“Charlotte, I’m not telling you everything about-”
Charlotte deployed her best pout, the one that Ava had never been able to resist, and Ava sighed, rolling her eyes. “It was…once he remembered I was there, it was great.” she confessed.
Charlotte inclined her head. “Once he remembered?”
Ava nodded. “Oh the…big idiot tried to keep up his training regime. I barely saw him the first week. I had to…” she paused and scratched at her upper arm, absently and awkwardly. “You know what, it’s in the past, he apologised, and yeah, the second week was amazing.”
Charlotte watched all that relaxation and happiness just flicker and die, like the time she’d gone camping with her parents and Dad’s firewood had been too wet. He’d been able to get it burning, but it was never long before the flames crawling over the wood became little, desperate domes of fire before giving up their ghosts in streams of white smoke.
”…cup of tea?” she asked. Cups of tea were Charlotte’s way of trying to make things better, and she knew that Ava knew it.
”…Please.”
She threw together a mug of tea so strong and full of sugar that by all rights the spoon should have got stuck, and presented it to Ava, who was looking increasingly troubled.
“So…?”
Ava looked up from inhaling the steam and shrugged. “It started off great. Met each other, checked into the hotel and…wow.”
Charlotte giggled.
”…Then in the morning he snuck off to the gym, got back late, fell straight to sleep, snuck off to the gym again…”
“What a-!” Charlotte began.
“No.” Ava interrupted, surprisingly vociferous. “No, I understand. I got real mad at him, but…I mean, he’s right. He’s committed to this, he needs to keep at it. I can’t ask him to…I won’t ask him to stop, even if I could.”
“Darling, you’ve got to have a good relationship with him though!” Charlotte told her.
“Well, I got his head round it.” Ava said. “Made him see what he was doing and he…scaled it back. We had a great time in the end. He got up later, we went to the gym together, we ate together…it wasn’t exactly what I’d planned, but I gotta say, I kinda like being bench-pressed by my boyfriend.”
“Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
Ava snickered, and sipped her tea, which was still much too hot for Charlotte’s taste, but she seemed to like it that way. “So…yeah. I actually had a great time, after that. You said it yourself, I came back all relaxed and stuff, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but…”
“Well then.”
Ava seemed to think that settled the matter, but Charlotte knew better. Ava had only ever dated one boy after all, she probably didn’t know something that Charlotte had learned at the age of fourteen, which was that boys might give you a week or a month of improved behaviour when they got in trouble…but it took a lot more than that to permanently fix them, if it was even possible.
“Darling…what if he’s not really learned?” She asked, after a delicate interval.
“Then I’ll…” Ava tailed off, then shrugged. “Then maybe I need to learn.”
“Learn what?”
“How to…to…”
Charlotte gave her time to think, until their drinks were finished and Ava sat back, looking away, looking defeated.
“Is he worth this?” Charlotte asked her.
She’d known Ava was tough, but this time, when Ava looked her dead in the eye, she really saw the steel in there. “Worth what?” Ava demanded. “Worth a few tears? Worth feeling like I’m less important than his mission? Less important than saving lives? Less important than stopping what happened to our home from happening somewhere else? Happening here?”
She surged forward and flung her arm out to punctuate her conviction. “Well…he’s right! I AM less important than that!”
“Maybe he is, but do you need to be doing this to yourself to make that mission happen?” Charlotte persisted.
Ava deflated. “…I think I do, yeah. I think he needs me.”
“Are you sure?”
Ava didn’t answer.
Date Point: 7y 2w AV
Huntsville Alabama, USA, Earth
Adam Arés
“Now there’s something you don’t see every day…” Vandenberg was musing. Adam had to agree. There was just something…unique about an oil drum tumbling lazily in place, perfectly in the three-dimensional centre of the room fifteen meters up in the air.
The variable-gravity training room had been overhauled, in a somewhat makeshift way. The walls had been covered in freeclimb handholds, the ceiling layered in recessed monkey bars, and the floor covered in shin-deep beach sand, lit by colored projections into a gradient—light to dark—of blue at one end of the room, and red at the other.
Clearly some kind of game or sport was going on here, but what the hell a floating oil drum had to do with it was beyond Adam’s ability to guess.
Major Powell was wearing the subtle little almost-smile that indicated he was pleased with himself. “This, lads, is gravityball.” he said. “It’s a training tool Cavendish and I worked out, and he thinks we’ve now got the basics of moving in variable gravity down and it’s time to start putting us through our paces.”
“How’s it played?” Sikes asked.
“All the best bits of rugby, hockey, wrestling, parkour, beach volleyball and strongman competitions in one package.” Cavendish replied, and tossed a red impact-ball to Sikes, and a blue one to Akiyama. “The objective is to get the red ball into the blue zone, and vice versa. The deeper in you go, the stronger the gravity gets, but the more rapidly your score increases. Winning team’s the one with the highest score at the half hour mark, or the first one to double the other team’s score once you’re both past three hundred.”
“And the oil drum?”
“That’s the goal.” Powell said. “But: the goal only WORKS if it’s inside the scoring circle in your team’s target endzone. So if you’re the blue team, you need to carry that thing deep into red territory, get it in the circle, and get either ball into it, and that ball has to start in the blue half of the field or else it’s offside and doesn’t count. Scoring is worth twenty points, but if you can score and then get the goal back to the home circle in YOUR endzone, then you get a permanent score multiplier.”
“Sir…how do we get the goal in the first place?” BASEBALL asked.
Cavendish grinned. “You have to climb, gentlemen. Oh, one small point—most of the room’s in microgravity, it’s just the two meters at the floor and ceiling that aren’t, and if the goal’s being held up in the scoring circle, then the gravity at the ceiling turns off.”
The team looked back and forth at one another, trying to take all of that in. Cavendish just smiled even wider.
“Alright, Arés, Burgess, you two are the Protectors.” he said. “Your job is to carry and protect that goal. Stevenson, Akiyama, Sikes and Vandenberg are the Defenders, your job is to defend the Protector and your zone. Finally, Jones, Price, Murray, Blaczynski, Firth and Major Powell are Aggressors, your job is to steal the ball, score the goals, raid into enemy territory and all that. One Protector, two Defenders and three Aggressors per team. Alright? And I’m your referee and coach.”
Adam raised his hand. “Sir…what’s legal with, like, tackles and stuff?”
“No punching, kicking, or biting.” Powell told them. “Otherwise, fookin’ anything goes. Sikes, Akiyama, you’re team captains. go ahead and pick. Line up, lads!”
Everyone hustled to the wall.
“You know we need to stick some Feet on that goal, right?” Adam muttered to BASEBALL.
“Yup.”
Green feet were a Pararescue tradition dating back to Vietnam and the CH-3E “Jolly Green Giant” helicopter. As unit legend had it, saved air crews had taken temporary green feet tattoos on their buttocks to symbolize the PJs ‘saving their asses’. Whatever their origins, the Feet had become a badge of pride among Pararescumen and the preferred emblem for any kind of prank, especially ones where the PJs claimed ownership of something.
SOR or not, Adam and BASEBALL were still PJs, and if it fell to them to move that goal, then goddammit, that goal was going to have green feet on it. No power on Earth or any other planet could stop that.
“Uh…Burgess.” Sikes said, making his first team selection. Adam took the initiative and joined Akiyama, who picked Vandenberg, leaving Stevenson to join the red team. Three more votes, and the blue team were joined by Legsy and Price, leaving Murray to grumble about being picked last as he joined Major Powell on the red team.
“Everyone got all those rules, right?” Adam asked
“I did.” Vandenberg said. “Just go up the wall, monkey along the ceiling. Burgess should be doing the same, so try and knock him off. Grab the goal and bring it back down to earth, and we’ll just try and scrum straight up the middle. Okay?”
“Thought I was the captain?” Akiyama joked, clearly not annoyed.
“Still a good plan.” Vandenberg protested.
“Yeah, but I reckon you can go help Arés up on the ceiling.”
”…Yeah, okay.”
They put their fists together, grunted a “HOOAH!” and, at Cavendish’s direction, set up in their midzone. Sikes’ team set up opposite, there was a moment’s waiting, and then the whistle blew.
Adam darted sideways with Rebar, and together they swarmed as fast as they dared up the free-climb wall. It wasn’t hard going, and the transition onto the ceiling would have been easy…except that nobody had mentioned it was set to 1.2G. Adam very nearly lost his grip, but together they managed to grab onto the ceiling bars and began to manoeuvre—slowly—across the ceiling, circling around Burgess who’d been sent aloft alone and clearly looked like he wanted to swear about it.
“Go for the drum, I’ve got BASEBALL.” Vandenberg said.
Adam made a grunt that was supposed to be confirmation, and angled for the spot directly above the goal drum. Burgess and Vandenberg collided, resulting in the Delta man hanging off BASEBALL, gripping his legs. It didn’t seem to actually make a difference.
“I can take both your asses!” Burgess was calling defiantly, though the extra weight was slowing him down. But Adam saw an opportunity.
“Rebar! Go for the drum!”
Vandenberg looked down, grinned, and swung off BASEBALL’s leg. He dropped out of the ceiling’s gravity zone instantly with a cry of “heads up!!” for anyone below, and stopped accelerating as he entered the microgravity volume, drifting at a comparatively slow speed. He actually landed on the drum and jumped off it, kicking it down into the sandy arena floor and himself back up towards the ceiling as if he’d been playing this game all his life rather than for only a minute and forty seconds.
By the time he hit the ceiling gravity field again, Adam and Burgess were wrestling, each holding themselves aloft by one hand. Adam had got his legs around BASEBALL’s waist and was trying to pry open his friend’s grip, an attempt hindered by BASEBALL’s long arms.
In the end, BASEBALL’s boast about being able to take them both was proven false. Rebar had just enough speed on re-entering the gravity field to latch on to his ankles, and their combined weight was more than his grip strength could handle.
Unfortunately, that jolt was also more than Adam could handle, and the three of them fell twenty meters together, separating in mid air to make little craters in the soft sand. They hardly felt a thing and were soon up, trying to wrest control of the now-grounded oil drum and get it safely behind a pair of Defenders to try and move it up.
“Oi! Lads!”
Everyone ducked involuntarily as Legsy vaulted them, actually using Stevenson’s shoulder as a stepping stone, and leapt up above the gravity field and into the weightless volume, where he coasted out above the red zone, carrying the blue ball. He’d judged his trajectory beautifully, and latched onto a handhold on the back wall, from which he dropped down onto the sand and began to score a point every two seconds for the blue team.
The blues took advantage of the distraction, shoving and forcing the opposition aside and sending them spinning away helplessly in the microgravity of no-man’s land. Holding on to the wall and each other for leverage, they were able to force the drum into the gravity field, and Adam hoisted it, groaning at the weight, and staggered into a run that only got harder as he transitioned from galactic standard, to Earth standard, to 2G in the far endzone. he was grateful to finally be able to drop it into the scoring circle, high-fiving Legsy as he dropped the ball triumphantly into the goal.
Nothing happened. They were still staring at Cavendish who was watching them patiently and expectantly when Powell burst in among them like an artillery strike, coming down from the ceiling with the red ball and delivered a ringing slam-dunk.
Cavendish blew the whistle. “Red scores twenty points, no multiplier!” he declared
“Offside rule, lads.” Powell explained. “Your ball needed to start on that side of the line AFTER the goal was in the circle, to be eligible to score.”
The team deflated, muttering things like ‘right, yeah…’ or “oh…derp.‘
“Reset the goal!” Cavendish ordered.
“Hey, other than that…” Akiyama commented “…we did great. We’ll get ‘em.”
“You’re damn right.” Adam grinned, hoisting the drum and carrying it back toward the middle. “Payback time.”
Drew Cavendish
“Gentlemen, I’ve got to hand it to you. That was the most brutal thing I’ve ever seen.”
The whole SOR was pretty badly beaten up, and the whole SOR was grinning and riding on an adrenaline tsunami. High-fives were exchanged as they waited for the final score.
Drew smirked. “So, the winners, with four hundred and seventy-six points, versus their opposition’s score of four hundred and eleven is…the red team!”
The blues groaned, and were commiserated with by the reds, after a round of hugs and high-fives. “Standout plays for my money-” Drew continued “-were Vandenberg jumping off the drum to catch Burgess. Really good awareness of relative mass, there. Legsy vaulting the team and jumping the length of the playing area above the gravity field, excellent spacial awareness. Burgess, that throw from the ceiling to the red endzone was superb, and so was that bit where you threw Arés at the ceiling slowly enough that he was out of play for more than a minute. That was well done.”
Burgess grinned, and Powell stepped forward. “Learning point there lads.” he said. “You have to be aware of your mates drifting out of handhold range of anything, and if you can, help them get back. Usually the Protector’s job, I know, but if your Protector’s in trouble himself, then see to him.”
“Yes sir.”
“Right.” Powell nodded .“Take a shower, slap on a crue patch and grab lunch, and we’ll meet in the lecture room at fourteen hundred to continue our briefing on the Hierarchy. Go on.”
The lads jogged out, beaming and playfully insulting one another. Powell took a cleansing breath and then turned back to get his instructor’s opinion.
“Any further thoughts?”
Drew licked his teeth thoughtfully as he checked his tablet. “The only one whose performance I’d call merely ‘acceptable’ rather than excellent was Arés, but he’s got a significant handicap: He’s much shorter than the others. He could have saved himself from that throw Burgess got him with if he had longer arms.”
“There’s nowt we can do about his arms, Mr. Cavendish.”
“Oh I know.” Drew conceded. “And in fact that same handicap may prove to be an asset when they play this wearing the spacesuits. He’s the strongest on the team, no doubt about it. He should find the suit more comfortable than the others.”
“We’ll have to weigh him down more, then.” Powell said. “I want them ALL to be doing merely ‘acceptably’. Acceptable means they’re on their limit, and learning.”
“Right. This is training, not a sport.”
Powell chuckled. “You sound like you’ve got plans to turn it into one.”
Drew smiled wryly at how well he’d been skewered there. “We’ve got spaceships, forcefields, holograms and I used to be a mining foreman on an asteroid base.” he said. “We should have a scifi sport to go with the…I dunno, the hoverboards and whatnot.”
Powell nodded absently, rolled his shoulder and examined a nasty bruise on his upper arm. “Bloody hell, I’ve got to hand it to them. I wouldn’t have smacked my CO as hard in training.”
“Is that a good thing?”
Powell shrugged. “On one hand, it means they like me and feel comfortable wi’ me. On t’other, there’s such a thing as too close and personal. I’m not sure where the right balance between those two is, myself.”
“Why’s there such a thing?” Drew asked, curious.
Powell thought about it. “the lads…look, this may sound bloody obvious, but they’re military, right? They’re operators.”
“Right…?”
“Operators get killed. They wouldn’t BE operators if they weren’t doing a job which carried that risk. You do everything you can to keep them alive of course, but the whole point of the service is that you see a job that needs doing and you put good, honest, innocent young men in harm’s way to get it done, because fookin’ evil as that is, that job’ll make the world even worse for not being done.”
Drew was always serious and sombre—his expression became more so as he listened, and he nodded. “You’re worried about tipping too far either way, between caring for them as people, and being able to do the right thing?”
Powell shrugged the question off. “It’s my problem to worry about, Mr. Cavendish, and I’ve been dealing with it for years now.” he said.
“Fair enough.” Drew nodded, not surprised that Powell wasn’t the kind to just open up. In any case, they had other things to discuss as they left the gravity room and hung up their helmets. “In that case, has there been any word about my idea?”
“Fitting an emergency recall jump drive to the EV-MASS? We had a strategy review about it…” Powell’s tone of voice didn’t sound promising. “it’s a bloody good idea, and I’ll be welcoming of it…but.”
“There’s always a ‘but’. It’ll save lives, Major.”
“If only it were that cut and dried.” Powell wrinkled his nose, and fished a Crue-D patch from his pocket. He peeled the back off and stuck it to his shoulder, right over the bruise. “Like I was saying, the job’s got to come first. Sometimes a man’s life is worth less than that, and those suppressors they’ve got to keep the jump from popping out like a flare on sensors aren’t small enough to fit on the suit, are they?”
“No.” Drew conceded.
“Right, well there’s your sticking point.” Powell said. “You put that thing on a suit, the temptation’s always going to be there to use it, and if you’ve got a way to evac a dying man and you don’t take it…that’ll just be too hard, if not for the commander then certainly for that man’s mates. But if that’d give away your position and scupper the mission…”
“It won’t ALWAYS scupper the mission will it?” Drew pushed.
“Not always.” Powell agreed. “In fact it creates possible mission plans, so we’ll be using it, no doubt. But it’s going to be optional-use, as needed, not something that’s on there as standard.”
He waited as Drew scowled thoughtfully.
“I can see the logic…” Drew finally admitted. “It just seems, morally…”
“Moral? Mate, you yourself were used as a puppet by an alien organisation bent on nuking us out of existence. We’re dealing with cannibals and mind control here.”
“All the more reason to keep the moral high ground.”
“You think we wouldn’t be?” Powell asked. “The hard truth is, we can’t save everyone. There’s no moral damage done in sacrificing one man to save ten.”
“Why not save all eleven?”
“There’s no such thing as a free lunch, that’s why.” Powell shook his head. “You only go all or nothing when there’s no alternative. Otherwise, you’ve got to know when to take your winnings and leave the table.”
Drew sighed, went silent and scowled at his shoes. “I feel like there’s a counter-argument there somewhere, but I don’t know what it is.” he confessed.
Powell smiled grimly, clapped him on the shoulder, and headed off towards the showers. “You ever figure it out, mate, let me know. I’ve been wanting one for years.” he said.
Date Point: 7y 3m AV
London, England, Earth
Ava Rios
“BBC News, today’s headlines this lunchtime: The unthinkable ship: Four hundred million kilometers from Earth, the first of the new V-class spaceborne destroyers is launched, but opposition MPs say that the cost of the new fleet harms Britain’s domestic security…Dominic Hill has confirmed that he’ll be stepping down as leader of the Awareness Party after he was filmed using an obscene and sexist term to describe the deputy prime minister…The Port Authority of San Diego votes to end its charter, ending years of uncertainty and sinking any hopes that the city might be rebuilt…and from riches to rags, how the declining price of oil threatens to bankrupt the Saudi royal family. “
“Good evening. The Prince of Wales has launched the first of the Royal Navy’s new starships, HMS Valiant.”
“In a naming ceremony on the dwarf planet Ceres, Prince William dedicated the vessel to the memory of his late grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Second, and declared that the ship marked the beginning of a new age not just for Britain, but for all of mankind. Our extraterrestrial affairs correspondent, Dariusz Jagoda, was on Ceres to watch the ceremony…“
Charlotte sighed and wriggled in her chair a bit, folding her legs under her more comfortably. “ZF moment.”
“Hmm?” Ava hadn’t been paying attention. Running her website, keeping her blog updated and basically doing everything she could to push her photography on social media was nearly a full-time job in its own right, that she squeezed in around her lectures, coursework and social life. She hadn’t been watching the TV at all.
Fortunately, Charlotte didn’t mind. She was eating a mixing bowl full of Shreddies and chasing it down with a bucket of coffee, all while wearing her favourite anime pyjama bottoms and no bra, nor makeup. It was that kind of lazy afternoon. “ZF moment!” she repeated, waving at the screen.
“A wha-?” Ava shook her head, confused.
“ZF Moment!” Charlotte insisted. “It’s like…that feeling you get when you realise you’re living in the future?”
Ava put her phone down. “I’ve not heard that one before.”
“It’s from some German word everyone was using for a while. Zukuf…Sukun… something.”
Ava picked up her phone again and Googled the term. “Zukunftsgefühl?” she asked.
Charlotte nodded. “That’s the one. Come on, Wills just launched a star destroyer, that’s a total ZF moment!”
As her housemate scarfed down the last of her cereal, Ava examined the footage of the balding future king speaking on a podium alongside the starship’s hull, under the huge letters “HMS Valiant”. The V-class destroyer’s size was hard to judge on a TV screen, right up until the moment when the report cut to a wider-angle camera from the back of the crowd, and that podium and its royal occupant became little more than a colourful speck in relation to the huge dark grey chunk of metal.
Valiant didn’t look much like a spaceship. In fact it looked most like a submarine, albeit more angular and studded with surprisingly small guns. There were no running lights, no glowing bits, nothing to hint that this thing was cutting edge technology. Just lots and lots of matte-dark painted metal that should be invisible once it was out in open space.
The crawl along the bottom of the screen shared some facts about the new ship: Its approximate mass (ten thousand short tons, whatever they were) length (a hundred and sixty meters) crew compliment (up to two hundred and sixty) and maximum speeds (four Gs of sublight acceleration, and a cruising speed at FTL of one hundred and twenty kilolights).
“It fits.” she agreed.
On screen, the prince’s speech was still playing out. “…Together with our friends and allies, creating a fleet that will be greater than any one nation’s contribution, and able to defend not only human lives and interests, but those of any innocent person regardless of creed, race, or species.”
Charlotte stifled a burp. “What do you think he meant by that?”
“Who knows?” Ava shrugged. “Maybe the USA’s got something in the works too? It just wouldn’t be like us to let you take all the glory.”
The news moved on to the segment about some politician or another in whom Ava had zero interest, so she returned her attention to her phone. She was just composing a careful reply to a positive comment on her profile when the phone hummed in her hand and, with a twinkly little noise, informed her that she had a message.
She had to read it three times before she began to believe it.
“Uh…Charlotte?”
Charlotte pulled a strand of hair out of her mouth. She was prone to chewing on it when thinking. “Yeah?”
“I just got an email via my website. Somebody from Cimbrean Agri-Urban Development’s marketing division wants to buy all the pictures I took over Christmas! Exclusive!”
“Wh- really?!” Charlotte scrambled out of her seat and across the floor to get a look at the message, fetching up with her elbows on the arm of Ava’s chair.
“Yeah, look! They’re offering me three hundred pounds for sole use and ownership, with full image credits to me.”
Charlotte frowned “Is that good?” she asked. “That’s not a lot of money…”
“It’s amazing!” Ava enthused. “CAUD’s the group responsible for building Cimbrean’s infrastructure—you know, the water, the power lines, the sewerage, all that stuff. This is huge!”
“They could be offering you more, then.” Charlotte suggested.
“Darling, this is huge!” Ava said. “Forget the money, my name’s going to be all over the civil engineering project posters and websites and stuff, right where people can see it! This is…People are going to notice!”
Charlotte hugged her. “Don’t forget us little people when you’re doing royal portraits.” She requested.
Ava hugged her back. “Of course not.”
“The interim Port Authority for the city of San Diego has voted to close the port’s charter, putting an end to years of ambiguity over current and future shipping contracts, but also damaging hopes that the city might one day be rebuilt. Our American correspondent, Dean Savage, has more…”
Date Point: 7y 5m AV
Huntsville Alabama, USA, Earth.
Adam Arés
Technical Sergeant Martina Kovač was…distracting, for all the wrong reasons.
For starters, she was intimidatingly intelligent and skilled, having excelled at technical courses Adam would have flunked. For another, she was an athletic powerhouse, lean and strong as an MMA fighter under her ABU, which was not normally a flattering garment. For third, she was gorgeous, with a diamond face and Slavic genes.
Adam would usually have not even noticed these facts about her. Loyalty to Ava aside, Kovač was a fellow NCO and, he knew, had an academic education on top of her military training that put most rocket scientists to shame. He had nothing but the utmost respect for her, professionally.
But the fact was, she was about to measure his junk, and at moments like that, certain thoughts became…insistent.
She had, admittedly, a very good reason for doing so. It was part of the necessary plumbing for his EV-MASS undersuit unless he wanted to use a catheter which…no thanks.
But it was pretty hard not to chicken out and go with the catheter, in the face of the mischief dancing around in those blue eyes.
“Do we not…isn’t there a male technician who can do this?” he asked, fidgeting. Skinny-dipping as a teenager and the many indignities of military life had robbed him of most of his hangups about nudity or general undress, and his fellows weren’t far behind, but this was different. He’d regularly been called on to pee into a bottle under close scrutiny for routine tests throughout his career, but he’d never done so under the scrutiny of somebody pretty before.
“None of them are qualified.” Kovač shrugged. “Relax, staff sergeant. I’m a professional.”
“That’s…I guess that’s comforting.”
Kovač finished assembling her tools—a cloth tape measure, a clipboard and pen, and disposable gloves—and knelt on a cushion. “Come on, sooner they’re down, sooner I’m done.” she told him.
Adam squeezed his eyes shut for a second, stepped forward, and unzipped.
To her credit, Kovač was entirely as businesslike and professional as promised, securing quick, neat measurements without comment.
He was just thinking that hadn’t been so bad when she nodded. “Okay. And now erect.”
“What?!”
“Gotta make sure the, ah…receptacle we’re making for you fits in all circumstances.” Kovač said.
Adam rubbed his face and looked around for something to distract him, or convince him this was just a weird dream. “Me cago en la leche…” he muttered.
“Language.” she chided. “Come on, sooner it’s up, sooner I’m done!”
“You’re seriously kidding me, right?”
“Nope. This thing has to fit properly no matter what.” Kovač grinned up at him and winked, which from that angle was just downright sinful. “Need some help?”
Adam swallowed involuntarily, feeling his heart jump up three gears at once. Okay, sure, fraternizing between NCOs who weren’t in the chain of command was perfectly fine, but she couldn’t seriously be suggesting-?
She tilted her head sideways to point with her eyebrows at the tablet, the tissues and the bottle of lube sitting on the table to his left. “I was talking about the porn.”
“Oh! Oh, right!” Fuck his face for going so red, fuck it, fuck fuck FUCK his face.
Kovač just glanced down at…him…and smiled with a devilish little lip-bite. “Maybe once I’m off-duty though…”
The mental image finally sunk in, and did its work. He couldn’t have stopped himself from hitting full mast if he’d plunged it into ice water.
“Woop! There we go…”
Adam jerked as clever gloved fingers quickly and efficiently lassoed him with the tape measure and…that was it. Measured.
He was still processing what had happened when she stood up and got rid of the gloves into a bin. “Thanks, staff sergeant. You want me to leave you alone for a bit while you compose yourself?”
“I, ah…” Adam got his brain back on track with a head-shake mental reset and hurriedly (and painfully) tucked himself back in. “You enjoyed that way too much.”
Kovač laughed. “Yep!”
“I could…I’ll sort myself out elsewhere.” Adam cleared his throat.
“Hey…if it makes you feel any better, the others couldn’t wait to whip it out.” Kovač told him. “You’ve got that going for you. I appreciate it.”
“Thanks, I…think…”
“No problem. So, uh…interested?”
“Wait, you were serious?” Adam blinked at her.
“Hey, you’re cute and you were respectful and…let’s face it, I just spent an afternoon staring at dicks, this wasn’t exactly easy for me either.” Kovač shrugged, a little embarrassment finally showing under that flirtatious demeanour. “Interested?”
“Oh, uh…I’m…kinda taken.”
“Damn.” Kovač shrugged. “Good for her.”
“Uh…sorry.”
She laughed. “Don’t be! You’re a nice guy Arés, that’s why I offered.”
”…Thanks.” Adam had already subsided enough that he could adjust himself and retreat to his room. “I’ll uh…see you around, Kovač.”
“Have fun!” she winked at him again.
He let himself out and managed to make it back to his room without anybody smirking at him.
Ten minutes later, after using an ancient technique to purge the mental image of a blonde head bobbing back and forth level with his belt buckle, he guiltily decided that his next letter to Ava would definitely not be mentioning today’s events.
Date Point: 7y 6m AV
Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, Earth.
Moses Byron
”…It was hard for me to reconcile the knowledge that the men and women who ran those businesses could be so intelligent, and yet so stupid at the same time. I looked at years of…factories dumping their waste into rivers and lakes because it was cheaper to pay the pollution fines than to properly dispose of their byproduct. Minimum wages that could only support ONE person if they worked a fifteen hour day, let alone a young family. Thereby laying the burden of looking after that family on the state. I would always look at such businesses and ask myself—‘can’t they see that they’re making less profit by keeping their own employees poor?’”
“That was the foundation of my business dream. The idea that a company did not have to be, uh, selfish in order…to… ah dammit, how’s that go again?”
“Cruel.”
“That a company did not have to be cruel in order to be self-interested. That a successful business could…” Moses paused and sighed. “Dang it all, I need a break.”
His secretary stood up. “Coffee?”
“You’re an angel, Rachael.” Moses rubbed his eyes and stretched, pacing the half of the jet that was his private flying office. “Anything different come in to distract me for a minute or two?”
“Trevor Cardwell asked for you to call him first chance you get.” Rachael told him.
“Perfect!”
She connected the call, handed him the tablet then disappeared through the rear door into the staff half of the plane.
Moses threw himself onto the couch as it rang, and greeted Cardwell with his best smile, not that it needed faking. “Trevor! How goes the testing?”
“We have a working prototype.” Cardwell announced, looking pleased with himself. “We sent Levaughn our test image, he sent back a selfie of himself WITH the test image. Burst communication between Earth and Cimbrean.”
Byron laughed. “Outstanding work.”
“Not without some caveats, boss.”
“As always.” Moses agreed. “Fire away.”
“Power requirements are huge. That’s not a design flaw, it’s just how the damn thing works, so your hopes of developing a light version for ships…” Cardwell shrugged “Sorry Moses. Not happening. Not unless you wanna make the ships twice as big and fill all that space with capacitors.”
Cardwell was one of the few people who used Moses’ given name. It was refreshingly straightforward, and he never strayed over the line into disrespect.
“Oh well.” Moses looked up as Rachael returned with his coffee, accepted it with a silent thankyou, and sipped it. “Can you take the principles and work towards something smaller?”
“We could, yeah. How much smaller are you thinking?”
“How much information would you need to send to be able to schedule jump exchanges and synchronise clocks?”
Cardwell raised an eyebrow. “Moses, you’ve been doing your homework!” he said.
“I was kind of expecting this.” Moses agreed, and sipped his coffee again. “How much?”
“Not much. And if we do that, there’s nothing stopping us sending bulk data through a jump array on a hard drive or something. Wouldn’t be real-time, but it’d sure be close enough for your news network idea.”
“Good enough for me.” Moses nodded. “I’ll leave you to work out the technical specifics. I have a feeling the hiring is going to need a personal touch.”
“Will do, boss. I’ll be in touch.”
“Thanks, Trevor.”
The call ended. Moses drank the rest of his coffee, set it aside and looked to Rachael. “Where were we?”
Your speech to the graduates. Foundation of your business dream.”
“Mm. The idea that a company did not have to be cruel in order to be self-interested. That a successful business could also be a selfless one. That an enlightened business leader is one who welcomes and nurtures their competition and their colleagues equally…”