FTL-5 … Faster Than Life.

Chapter 5

………………. Six months later.

“Easy peezy it’s going to be just a short trip. Recruit Stone; please feed me the nav-vectors so we’re know where we’re going. Alright Takari run your checks and take us out.”

“Yes, sir.” was my reply as I streamed (transmitted/e-mail…slang for data-stream.) the 3-d vectors and measurement to Akira Takari. I had to adjust for the singularity curve from the core. It gives of G’s that influence flight when you’re out in space. I’m in Shuttle training or Skiff flight and while it’s not my turn behind the controls I am being trained in what is my job as a Navigation officer. Yes officer, I’ll be a bridge officer eventually.

Tak short for Takari was doing pretty good. Me I’m still fighting trans-vector vertigo. That’s when you’re moving in space doing zero gravity maneuvers and the inertial dampeners and artificial gravity systems keep you from being turned to goop at a slow eight thousand mph. about Mach 12 or medium low thrust for a shuttle. TVV is that feeling where what you see through the window translates into some really ugh feelings for some people especially when the shuttle moves in one way and your brain is telling your body to expect different. TVV immunity levels are marked and the highest scores are the ones who make it through to be pilots.

I can handle about a stress level of about four, four and a half is pushing it, five and I’m getting sick. We’re getting close to a five. I try to keep from blowing chunks. I knew there might be a five + on this run, but they encourage you to sigh onto these training runs. That’s the fleet for you, getting you to push and push until things that you thought were extraordinary are the ordinary.

“Alright Tak, spin it around and bring us back, back, back and stop.” I look to the captain and breathe once we’re sitting still. He get’s on the comlink and get’s us tethered to tow. Yes we’re literally flying a tug.

We get tethered to this huge cargo bunker that was dropped off in orbit around a gas giant with only one moon. These things have great obits we can use for drop off points reducing the time it takes to stop and re-supply for general goods and stuff. Specific orders are one of those things that either come on a docking supply ship or a resupply station.

You’d be surprised at the sheer number of what amounts to flying warehouses out in space. Or maybe not.

We get tethered up and the captain goes to check all the mooring lines and we can here him swearing at one of the greener kids that we picked up. Yeah I’m fifty and according the rule of general principal you’re a kid as long as you’re a recruit.

I’m piped the vectors, more slang okay it’s just another downloading slang and I’m given the size and mass specs on the cargo pod and we start pulling out of the orbital path. I take another deep breath saying as we get underway. “Okay Akira, take this vector and approach and we should come up on the dorsal bays just keep it around a thousand miles per hour.”

We or rather I still use miles per hour, in fact we use metric too and several others. In the colonies one way to distinguish your culture that you’ve created is to use a unique system of measurements.

Home was one of the NCC worlds in The Union, and that stands for The United-Christian-Colonies a very old American based culture. That was a nation on Earth. A lot of Colonies before and even after the formation of the Colonial Union government was formed are based off of the cultures of Earth.

Why is it when things go wrong it’s when everything is going good? I know we pulled a five and I didn’t hurl. It was a good day until the mass specs started to shift on the cargo pod, not just me being off but they were shifting.

“Captain I’ve got a problem. The mass-specs on the package is shifting.” I call out.

He turns looking between pissed and scared. “Tak, cut that thing loose now.”

Tak looks at him and goes to cut the tethers and there’s a flash to my implant of a fusion reaction kicking up and a spike a huge spike in the packages EM readings. It happen so fast that I can only remember it in slow motion. There were these pale blue streaks of light coming past us and red mist sprays out of Tak, and the Captain’s left arm just snaps off half way down his forearm and I get hit by the arm chunk and the jagged bone slices my face.

Then it was fast too fast as the Captain yelled at me. “Stone!, Stone! Get the heat shields down!” That’s the tinted glass-steel thing that slides over the window. Akira’s still in the seat dead as it get’s and it happened so fast I’m getting sprayed by his still pumping blood as I hit the buttons…it’s a good thing the Captain told me. My wet hair’s getting pulled at the spider webbing holes in our window. We’re venting…we’ve been shot….

The Captain is hitting the blast doors between the flight compartment and the back half of the shuttle. There’s stressed metal sounds as there’s fist sized dents in the dozens forming it the blast doors…. “Stone! Get your butt in that seat and get us out of here!” I sit and try to get us out of there, there’s blood all over the controls.

I blast us out of there and there’s this hard thump and the sound of metal tearing in back of the shuttle. The Captain is spraying quit clot bandage foam over his forearm stump. “Stone get us into the hangar, closest one ASAP!”

I’m trying and we’re swerving and swaying with me fucking up the pitch and yaw something bad. My heart’s in my throat as there’s another metallic scream and that horrible venting wind sound. I hear the Captain’s gun discharging and we hit the ship hull twice bouncing before we hit the hangar and the emergency catch nets.

The metal sound get’s worse and I turn to see this thing ripping it’s way through the blast doors. It’s huge, kind of hunchbacked made of metal and robotics and looks between humanoid and modular four lethal big arms are coming out of it’s torso and there’s some kind of mini-gun with a heavy flat armored cable coming from it.

But the most horrible thing is the eyes, the eyes are human or were…the eyes are flesh the pupils are not. It laughs as it’s forcing it’s way inside.

[Union scum, I shall show you the final reckoning you luddites deserve….and when the light of reason came to the people, we were shown the true way, we cast off the trappings of flesh that denied to us the wonders the creator meant for us to know, no more were man nor woman, father, mother, child all washed away as we were shown the one true way.] it’s voice was deep and terrible and synthetic as it quoted some Kind of scripture at us.

“Yeah your mother was a shit cycler (Slang for solid waste re-cycler.) Technark scumbag!”

The Captain’s yelling as he pops round after round into the thing. I pull my side arm and I’m firing too trying to keep calm as I can but the alloy 10mm rounds are just knocking the thing around…barely. It’s the first time I’ve ever fired it off the ranges.

The Borg thing…It lets out this electronic scream of anger from getting pounded by our guns and from behind it flips a pod up from a shoulder plate and there’s a thwip-pop sound of it firing a laser at me. It makes a sound from the literal cooking of the air as it fires not the light…I guess it doesn’t matter as it burns through the seat beside me and cuts my seat it half and kept going out of the shuttle. I barely get out of the way. It cut’s the poor Captain in half.

He falls in two cauterized halves screaming and still firing shots until the fact that he’s dead catches up with him.

A hail of weapons fire from behind it makes it turn from me and I hear the whine of a electromagnetic driver, the gun on it’s arm…Oh god, that’s…that’s a rail gun. It’s what it hit us with. The Borg thing turns from me I’m not a threat my gun’s doing nothing to it’s armor.

It’s firing on the others, it’s laughing again. I should be wetting myself or freaking out but I’m just seeing what it did to poor Akira and picture my friends, Bunkie’s, my new family getting hurt. I kneel and pop the floor panel off and grab the one thing that might do something the main power cords.

Mind you I’m no engineer but between it’s EM driver and it’s laser I’ve got a good idea of where it’s power systems are. I take two of the cables and step on the ends of their jacks and pull stripping them off and sparks fly, I’m not electrocuted…yet. The Technark thing is laughing again and firing and I take both exposed cables and scream as I shove them as close to the things power source and there’s a flare of light like welder’s flash that hurts and the thing screams. There’s something more organic in the scream but unfortunately it’s more almost bug like instead of human.

The light’s in the shuttle die. I feel my hands burn. But…but…I hear the rail gun grind to an un-powered stop. It turns and hits me with a hydraulic punch and sends me flying into the hull. I’m hurting, burned, stunned and it hurts to breathe and I can’t see.

I hear the gunfire and there’s the sound of more combat. I black out until I feel lips? Lips on mine and I can’t help the coughing. I hear. “We got her! She’s alive!” It’s hard to try to do anything. I hear voices around me. “Corneal burns!”

“Rads at 9 and a half she’s hot!”

“Broken ribs, punctured lung!”

I’m lifted and even though I got through the rating 5 maneuver getting lifted…I’m assuming on a stretcher makes me blow chunks. Then things fade to black.

***

I was out for a long time.

Waking in the rejuve tanks is a strange way to wake up and floating in the nutrient fluid while the stuff and the nanites work is kind of….well it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

First one’s in aside from the medics is Corporal Stillwater. She walks up and I feel the flicker of my On Body Computer linking up to the ship and then we’re in a comlink situation. She smiles at me. “I’ve no Idea where you got your guts from Stone but I’m damn glad that you did.”

“That thing, that…cyborg thing…what was it?”

“That was a Technarchy hunter killer unit. It cut and resealed the pod to set an ambush for us.”

“Us but we’re cadets?”

“Not a problem to them, we think it’s part of a spread offensive.”

“Spread offensive?”

“Tekker’s don’t need to live or breathe the same as we do so they send out suicide borgs out for their cause. They hitch rides in cargo pods and anywhere the can hide in order to ambush ships. This could have just as easily been one of our merchant ships.”

“But we got hit instead.”

“Yeah but you were on a training run, your Captain should have had you guys scan the pod as procedure and you might have caught the thing in there before what happened happened.”

“I knew the regs too Corporal I should have scanned it.”

“Yeah, you should have but you’re a recruit mistakes happen. He was your mission C.O. He was supposed to know better”

“How many did we lose?”

“Sixteen in the cargo bay, there was no one there ready for that rail gun. There would have been a lot more if you never did what you did.”

“I was desperate and playing it by ear.”

“That’s the way it goes in a real fight, adapt, overcome or die.”

“Yeah but I nearly died.”

“You did kid, you stopped breathing in there for awhile, you had to be revived.”

“I think I remember that.”

“Good, thank your medics when they pop you.”

“Yes Corporal.”

She walks up to my tank and puts her fist against it. It takes me a minute to swim there, I’m not used to this but once there I do the same.

“You did good Erin, I’m damn proud of you.” She gives me a curt nod then leaves. I’m choked up and it’s hard to cry with the mask on but I do a little.

I’ve wanted, needed to hear words like that all my life. Home I think the term is latch key or used to be but once you’re old enough where you’re learning and can do most things for yourself you pretty much get left alone. I mean after all…praise equals vanity and the rest of that rot. But I think a lot of that was my family too. Some of the recruits from home I’ve talked to had close families, some are even good with the ones that changed like me. Some even get mail.

Some, my family is directly in the middle of the herd of sheep and that’s what they like.

But I’ve never really had much praise. I’ve never had it said with my real name attached to it.

The Apollo’s Commander came in after that. I was still basking in the glow of Stillwater’s praise when he came in with his aids. I got a ping to my implant from one of them to warn me. It’s hard to salute in this stuff. He links up.

“At ease recruit. I’m glad you’re still with us Stone. It’s not everyday we get a non-combatant MOS (Military Operational Specialty…basically your job in the corps.) being a hero in a heavy combat situation. Hell of a job woman, hell of a job.”

“Thank you Commander sir.”

“I’ve put you in for several commendations, you deserved them.”

“But sir, all I did was get lucky.”

“You kept your head and followed order Stone in confined combat conditions and still had it in you to improvise a solution that save a lot of lives. You did the job that we’ve trained you for and then some Stone. Here in the fleet we actually reward those who do that. This was what it was Erin.”

I look at him and he looks at me. He’s an older man, bald but with a mustache and a van dyke beard that goes good with his mocha colored skin, built too he’s a handsome guy and even through the tank I can feel his presence, charisma.

“I’ve fought those things myself. I’ve lost friends too because of them. I’ve seen heavy combat troops lose their calm facing down the Tekker’s Erin. You deserve this and you’ll take the medals when they come through and that’s an order.”

“Yes sir.”

He does the fist to the tank thing with me too and he’s gone to see the other wounded.
I’m left in a little bit of a “Command me, Command me fantasy about the man for a few hours before I realize I’m still network connected.

I could just slip into my old habits of all the VR stuff and useless messing around. My VR mail box is full and between the recording of well wishes from friends and other’s here I don’t really know I’m crying again in my mask and I’ve never felt so…real, loved, acknowledged…it’s not the fame of it but there’s hundreds of people that know Erin Stone and not my old self so it’s this rush of really stepping into my life. I end up talking to a lot of people in VR windows and my Bunkie’s too Heck even Sergeant Svenko VR massaged me from her recovery tube and told me that I did good. She was in the response team that came in to deal with the Tekker.

Over the next ten days it really saves my sanity. I sleep a lot, have more than a few nightmares of the stuff that went down on that training run. With everything hooked up and my neural spike from my nightmares triggers an alert and has me talking with Caitlyn…she’s The Companion assigned to me for my therapy, Sunshine is with her a lot of the time it helped having them there and I’m pulled into full Sim-sense when that happens being with both of them in a feels next best thing to real being hugged and rocked and comforted by one of my friends and by a woman who becomes a friend and after talking about the action she’s seen. A woman I respect.

Caitlyn’s my first lesbian experience too. Not sex but after a real hellish nightmare were the Tekker was dissecting me and rebuilding me into one of them I freaked, I freaked really badly. Like I said it wasn’t sex but Cait, held me in a special way and she kissed me calm, kissed my away from that mental cliff I was heading for and it was Sim…but it was kiss, talk and cry for a long, long time. All of that, plus her experience and being trained helps more than and purely clinical shrink ever could.

It’s different in Fleet. Fleet is family, More and more I’m seeing that.

Even Anna thawed a little. She contacted me late at night and woke me. She looked like she’d been crying, her eyes were red and she glared at me. “I’m glad you weren’t stupid enough to get yourself killed Erin. You had to be the fucking glory hog though didn’t you? Well….If…If you got your fucking self killed I’d have never have forgiven you.” Then she clicked off. I know it wasn’t really friendly buy Anna, crying over it and bothering in the first place was a big thing.

It was day twelve when it happened. I was getting out in the morning and it was the middle of the night when Patrick Mako came in. I was up going over study materials through the link when he came in and he talked to my medic at the controls who nodded and got up and left…

I watched as he walked over like a predator peeling out of his clothes….as he got closer and closer. Until he was naked…

Patrick’s body is amazing, a professional soldier and swimmer with this muscles defined by the pressure from the depths he can handle. Six foot two, about two hundred ponds of lean muscle and that exotic skin with that merman like scales as part of his skin…the look is even more exotic when he’s naked. And with that dark hair loose and the way his eyes just seem to shimmer in the dim lighting and he really, really has a nice hard…well.

“Patrick?” I send to him through the link.

“Erin…I can’t wait, I can’t it’s too much.”

“What…?”

“I like you, I’ve liked you since I first seen you get in from conversion. I liked you when we connected in the gun range and there’s chemistry there….beside’s the scuttlebutt from your bunkmates says you’re into me too.”

“I…oh…nosey bitches.”

He laughs, it’s a nice laugh.

“Erin?”

“Yes Patrick?”

“Can I come in?”

“Please…”

He sinks into the tank and there’s an awkward moment as we get together and he takes my breathing mask off and he kisses me…then there’s something else as he breathes…he breathes for both of us and we never really end up breaking the kiss the entire time we make love.

Losing my virginity hurt. But it was a fulfilling hurt and the blood set off a few alarms that sent two medics in to check and seeing us making love in the tank they let us have our time together. It was up against the glass, it was floating while…it was being vocal in our link up while he breathed for me, while he kissed me. I’m not going to get into too much details but it changes you. If you’re like me or born like I was I should say. It was romantic though and one of the best nights ever. And it was nothing, nothing like any fantasy I could have had myself.

He stayed…even after he stayed and spooned with me even though I had to put the mask back on. But there was something so…

Falling asleep drifting in this place him spooned against me and feeling his body heat, his hard body and muscles against my back, his arms around me and his chin, head resting on my shoulder as I drifted off.