FTL-7…Faster Than Life.

Chapter 7

By the time the second shot is into me Stillwater’s strapping my sword to my hip. I’m not used to drinking and these shots are this stuff called reactor core which doesn’t bode well for me. It burns and kind of sucks the breath out of me.

Home alcohol isn’t a popular choice having gone seriously out of favor with most people since we all started having On-Body-Computers it and most drugs don’t mix well when you live in the networks and stuff so much.

Here though it’s different, there’s a cultural thing with being in the military itself but also there’s all the other colonial cultures where it’s see and used differently. Home it’s a smattering of light beers and a decent amount of wines and very little hard liquor.

This stuff I’m drinking is some kind of hot pepper and agave fermented product from Aztekina colony. I’m not sure why each time we do a shot of it people are yelling “Ole!”

There’s a lot of drinking and a lot of older and higher ranking people telling war stories of their own and I’m being passed a glass of beer between shots fairly regularly.

At first there was a lot of drinking and talking, then that and playing pool or darts. Then there’s a few times those of us who fly are in the simulator games. Booze is a funny thing for people some it turns their TTV to utter shit and others can actually do better while flying smashed.

I do a’right… I didn’t crash the fighter, I didn’t score all that well but I didn’t barf either.

***

I suck at pool and darts.

***

Whoo-hooo! I can drink beer upside-down!

***

“I likes Patrick, I really, really like Patrick….I like how hard he is…(Giggle)…no I mean like…like all musclelly and junk…junk…”

“Yeah….I like his junk too:)”

“I don’t get how much I can like…like…like him and how all like…like… (Hic) how like all muscle yummy good dick he is and not have ever liked the way I wuz born…”

“I mean that just kinda proves I was always a girl right? (Hic) ‘scuse me.”

“Y’know my family thought that I shoulda got my head fixed to make my brain work they way that they though it should have y’know?’

“They SUCK!!!”

“God made me and if he…huh?...gods a she?...oh that makes more sense…what? Sky pixie? Wait… wait you guys what’s the flying spaghetti monster?”

“Okay…anyway that why I’m me and why I’m me and why Patrick’s sooooo hawt.”

“Ooooh! Fries!” “But they taste better when their not mine.”

***

“Ooooh, hey Patrick, C’mon lets dance…”

***

“OH!!!, More!...More!, Harder, Patrick!, Harder!.......Ooooooooooh!!!”

***

……………………………… I wake up and I hurt, everything hurts even my implant hurts. There is this taste in my mouth that…I have no idea what it is or the left over’s of who knows what I did late night but it’s bad…vomit bad…which I can smell pretty well throughout our bunkroom.

The door pops open and there’s Stillwater there in her dress blacks in a garment/dry-cleaning sheath and she’s lighting something about as long as my thumb and three times as thick.

“Morning ladies, time to get up and shave your pussies you’ve got two hours before the funeral detail…Stone you’ve got one.”

With that she leaves and tosses in the firecracker and in our small bunkspace the boom is loud, but hung over it’s pure evil bitchiness. It brought tears to my eyes but poor Bree rolled over and grabbed her pillow and hurled into the pillowcase.

I’ve never had a real hangover in my entire life…no...well I tried a simulated one once. Oh…there’s no comparison.

Sitting and getting up my vagina hurts, and I’m examining myself and finding myself a little sore and raw and bruised with a little remaining semen making it’s way out now that I’m upright.

I get a bit of a flashback in the shower as I’m brushing my teeth of Patrick and I dancing and me trying to dance all sexy whore like bump and grind like the other girls…then there was kissing…and we were just about having sex there on the dance floor and somehow we made it into the storage room for the alcohol and I pulled him down ontop of me.

Hard plastic beer boxes…Okay that explains the bumps and bruises and scratches.

The memory does get me excited though. I’m not a rough sex person, I’m pretty sure of that but there is just something about having a man that you really want ripping your clothes open and taking you when you want it, really want it that’s like this sort of… crazy stamp on being a woman.

But god did it ever satisfy something primal inside of me, and that was something utterly woman.

I know it’s not exactly classy but I uhm rub one out there in the shower replaying that part of last night…it started as getting cleaned up but kind went off on a dirty tangent.

There’s one thing I have to say. It helped my hangover.

Two mild soy-café’s and I’m feeling better, the caffeine helps a lot and the protein in the soy helps with my stomach so by the time I’m in my dress blacks and sword strapped on I’m drinking slowly from a bottle of very cold water.

I’m met in the halls by Stillwater and she looks okay or mostly okay. I think she has a high threshold for hangovers as well as alcohol.

“You look alive Stone.”

“I’ve had better mornings Corporal but given what led us to this here this morning I’ve had a lot worse days too.”

“Good attitude Stone, I do the same anytime life decides to give me a break and I start thinking stupid. I just remember some of the things I’ve seen and late night paperwork doesn’t seem so bad.”

“My thought’s exactly Corporal.”

“Right, now you’re one of the survivors of the attack and the one who took out the Technarch so you’ll be a wreath bearer alright?”

“Yes Corporal will I be shown what to do?”

“Yeah, here you’ve got your sword belted wrong for this kind of thing.”

***

There’s close to seventy of us in the funeral procession into the hangar where they’d been killed and the fight had happened. Everyone who warranted being there was there in attendance in full uniforms.

The ship was at full stop outside of a large blue sun and seeing it and space beyond through the force field was so.

I’m at a funeral and holding this wreath made of black roses and white roses and something called Mistletoe and Holly. And there’s part of me that thinks it’s oddly beautiful? I’m crying just because… just because and were in the lead right behind the standard bearer and ahead of the musical escort.

I match steps with the march as the drums and the pipes start to play this ancient timeless song we play it home at some of our funerals and didn’t think that I’d hear amazing grace played here by a military band.

The Ex-O is giving the commands to the honor guard/pall bearers and it’s mostly them lining up and there is a sort of church like thing like when you sit or stand or kneel or stuff like let us pray from home but here it’s “Attention!” “Salute!” “About face!” and so on.

Once the caskets are laid in order of rank. It begins with the least in rank getting sent off first and as the casket was placed into the tube of the torpedo ship to ship torpedo launcher they use for funerals “at sea.” the Colonial Union flag is folded up as they play starting with drum then the bugle the song called “Butterfield’s lament.” Or as most call it Taps.

I place my wreath into the glass compartment built into the casket’s top where it rests on another flag that’s just for the fallen along with medals they’ve won or were awarded in death. They send other medals with the folded flag to the families if that was in their wishes.

I lay the wreath in the compartment and linger my fingers a moment before saluting the casket personally like the other wreath bearers before returning to the like up.

Taps ends and then the casket is fired into the sun. The path of each comes up on our implants and through a link to astrometrics and several probes that were set up we all get to see them burn up in the blue-white shimmer of the star.

Part of me loves the strange warrior poetry of the whole thing even as there’s tears running down my face. Part of me is just saying I’d rather this than being buried into the deep dark ground.

There’s speeches by some of the officers and the Commander for each one and honestly it takes a long time, close to three hours but no one is short changed their honourable funeral.

***

I’m hung over sore and tired but then so are a lot of people as we work out regular duty shifts but do this rotating attending of the wake. There’s more drinking and I’m off duty so I have a few but spend most of my time in the message booths recording my condolences for the families that will be getting things sent home.

I’m more than ready to crawl into my bunk by the time I’m done.

I’ve got a lot of thinking to do of whom if any in the family that I’d have my things sent to. It hurts thinking that they might not want anything to remember me by. They might have already written me off as dead to them.