FTL-26... Faster Than Life.

*Before…

We actually start to ping back and forth talking about what was sent and the first thing that I do need to do is to give a return thank you to those people for sending those up here to me because it was likely far from cheap.

I stop by the PX and I buy a small sheaf of real paper and an envelope and a pen and I go to my quarters and I start to write a thank you to them and a real letter.

The girls are coming in and I open the figs and the honey for them and they start to check it out too and some are trying the equally as unfamiliar with things as I was with them.

I ping the kitchens too and find out what that’ll cost and they ask what I have and they are going to call me back with a price and recommends.

I still want to do this, other people do this and I kind of want those kinds of memories too before we all are off ship and gone to do our different things.

*And Now…

It’s nice having a duty shift off in the first part of the day since we’re in orbit and essentially I’m waiting for shore leave and just in the queue for it and still being a cadet I’m fairly low on the list.

But it’s still nice to have the day to myself and that actually lets me enjoy some downtime and some of that’s the back and forth from the get-together that I want to have with my friends and other cadets and checking some of the things for it that might be and sound good.

My credits aren’t actually that bad since all I’ve ever spent them on is shore leave so they’re picked up a decent amount and unlike a lot of conversions I haven’t bought whole new wardrobes of things and have been relying mostly on what we get from what we can draw from stores.

Even now I’m not wearing civilian clothes just my R-suit and my boots and my flight/operations jacket so I’m just really dressed down military.

But there’s some things that is getting to be standard and the first thing I did this morning was get up duty shift off or not and joined the other cadets and those training in the rec-gym floor for the calisthenics and then went for my morning run.

Even with everything I have been doing there’s the morning runs even if you’re on nights there’s the morning runs…it’s just those ones as a cadet are set at the start of your duty shifts.

But today I’m off so it’s a nice jogging pace and enjoying it for what it is and enjoying the sensations of just being me.

The sways and the bounces all in this right way, a way that just actually says not wrong or sends all those error things flickering through my consciousness.

And yeas they’re a pain in the bottom sometimes. It’s like my sway is never sexy when I want it to be and I just sort of feel as clumsy as I ever was and then there’s my breasts which are in the way and they’re really sensitive and they are bruise magnets.

I run into things and they hurt, and then there’s the one's where I run into something and I get a bruise and I have no idea of how I did that to myself.

But all of those things are wanted things.

And after my run I go for a swim in the pool.

It’s not like just going swimming, not with the thing with the lanes and everything so there’s not too much just goofing around and all but even since Patrick and him and being with a Triton I want to actually be a good swimmer. It’s a simple matter of vanity really since I wasn’t a good swimmer home because home people just did do a whole lot of physical stuff.

Home was well it was a serious agricultural colony and we made grain and grew vegetables and things like soy and alfalfa and canola. But most of that was done by drones and the really poor people too and if you were middle classed like me you were born into a Co-op that ran those things like a trust while you lived in enough comfort to do whatever you really wanted to do which in my family was design.

Mostly for home goods and furniture and the like but we’d design it and others would make it and that’s actually what my day job used to be was clerking in the data stream for my families design company.

It was a decidedly sedentary lifestyle added to my depression and dysphoria I didn’t really want to do things, anything really not until I decided to move out from home after I rejected the family wanting me to get my head fixed so I wouldn’t feel the feelings that I had felt all my life.

And it’s a sad thing maybe but I honestly don’t miss me family that much or home with all of its conservatism in the everyday life and all.

I’ve taken a big chance at this new life and I’m not regretting a minute of any of it.

Not even the few horrible moments that I’ve had when things have happened and then as they say the shit hit the air-scrubbers.

I actually did some other working out too before getting changed and now I’m just with a large to go soy-caf and sitting on one of the observation decks watching the space scenes and the other ships and well New Ithaca below us. And I’m linked into the network and I’m looking things up there for when I get shore leave.

It’s a Zodiac colony and they’re in general non-moded people here but they have a lot of modified animals and produce here. The colony was a large swamp like planet when it was founded and colonized and the colonists literally have to harvest and create their home ground and they built and used a lot of air and hover vehicles and lives on stilts and such and that’s actually still really common as firm ground is an expensive commodity here.

Aquaculture is really big here and there are all sorts of things they breed here and then grow here and sometimes both.

Chief products include plankton and rice as well shellfish and frogs.

Frogs?

I look that up and I’m not sure if my stomach could go with fried frog’s legs or the second favorite protein here snails.

I’m actually pretty impressed with some of these things that I’m reading about like how they have marshes with shallow depths and raided beds for the things that they grow and just how much is produced and how little of it seems to be done by drone.

I honestly with the name of the colony thought that there would be much more of a Greek and Old Earth sort of thing happening here but apparently that’s not the case and it’s just sort of partially a thing for the systems here even though they all seem to be connected the connections are loose.

But they are sort of loosely considered linked to Pisces and it’s very marine like here in a lot of ways. I can’t really imagine something that is just so…so odd as an ancient belief system like this as a whole basic of the planning and themes like almost a cultural narrative for an entire planet.

And the fact that they’re not just one planet but a system cluster all like this it’s very odd. It’s in a good way odd since that was part of the whole point of everything and all with me joining up and coming out here and everything to see this kind of different up close and everything but it’s still odd seeing as I come from one of those hand of god colonies.

I’m just finished my soy-caf when I see lights changing on our ships and then I can see flight patterns changing as we shift to alert status.

My OBC is pinging me.

[Alert status, alert status all personnel to report to their duty station and auxiliary stations.]

And my soy-caf gets tossed into the nearest garbage recycler chute and I head off to my section to get my emergency kit on and everything.

That’s getting out or my R-flex which is a resistance training body suit and into my K-flex which is the light body armor that is a flexible body suit that hardens to resist kinetic impacts. Then the utility belt and my vacc-collar and comlink and then my side arm and in my case my telescopic blade.

That’s a recent issue, it’s a thin carbon blade that folds in like an antenna on those security batons and mine is a long flat blade quite similar to my awarded blade in my quarters.

Apparently it’s made for my hand with the eight and everything and all of those of us that carry swords have these telescopic blades for use in the field.

I’m logging in to the duty systems and I can’t find anything else so I make my way to Sense-nav and I grab my pack with me and through some of my foodstuffs and some rations in there.

I don’t know why I’m doing that but I’m doing it anyway like a drop pack and I head to the Sense-nav deck.

Lt. Miller is in command when I get there and it’s supposed to be a light duty shift and I see some of the others that were off duty there and we’re busy there directing traffic as there’s ships headed for planet dock and some heading out of system.

I don’t ask what’s going on but instead I go and I make a pot of soy-caff and bring a cup of it fresh to the lieutenant.

He looks at me. “Thanks Stone, never thought about it.”

“You don’t when it’s busy it was like that with those bugs.”

“They’re back.”

“Back?” I look to see if I can see it on screens.

“Not here but out further in the system, one of the long range patrols ran into a freighter cluster coming out of FTL and when they go close we lost them but not before they sent in confirmation of them being infested.”

A freighter cluster is essentially a bridge with a drive and everything else is this huge series of parking racks that hold shipping containers. They are literally flying warehouse yards and some are like close to a full kilometer in length easily and some can be ten times that.

“Infested? That doesn’t sound good.”

“No and as tech obsessed with things as the Tekker’s are they still need to eat and re-supply and the Zodes are right on the edge of Abby space.”

The Zodes are slang for Zodiac Space and Abby’s are what people call Aberrant’s and Aberrant’s are much like the Tekker’s only they are into bio-technical elevation of the human condition.

I nod. “So the Deviant systems are getting squashed in between?”

Deviants are people with bio-engineered body modifications and those usually are outside the generalized norms in society. But they’re not like the Aberrant’s that take it to the extremes.

He nods and takes a drink.

“It’s like a damned holy war really.”

I look out at the screens. “Are we going to be caught up in this sir?”

“Likely, we’re going to be support and help evac’s if needed but we’re not going to be right in the fighting. We’re a teaching flagship not a full on warship.”

“Should I take a position sir?”

“Not yet but stick close I might use you as a floating spotter.”

“Yessir.” I salute and then go to the semi-galley and lockers and stow my things and get a soy-caf and then wait and it’s an hour and some before I switch off with another tech as they’re headed to break.

It’s semi hard on the nerves knowing that all of this is so close and yet it’s happening a long ways from here and we’re only getting bits of information from the actual battle front and other than being on alert status we actually haven’t moved from orbit.

But our warships that were with us have engaged and there is a battle going on out there and I’m not sure exactly what it means in a tactical sense when we pick up three Colonial Union FTL signatures flashing in on the sensor grid out near the edge of the star system here.

There’s two laser classed battleships that just jumped in The Sigil Fire and The Jack of Spades and with them a medical frigate called The Heart of Belrain.

I see them on the link up and they’re heading directly to the combat zone with the medical ship hanging back a good distance from everything and I’m paying attention to the traffic out there at least over the comlink as best as I can and it’s sounding very aggressive out there.

I kind of would have liked to see a laser classed ship in action.

Combat lasers are highly impractical for personal use they take a huge amount of power to get to the point where they’re effective as a weapon.

But on a warship they have huge amounts of power being pushed into them and all of the industrial military levels of cooling and then there’s the size that they can be so it all fits quite well and they literally cut enemy ships into bits with their beam attacks and sweeps.

The one thing that they’re not as effective on is shields because shields have that electro-magnetic barrier that they create that actually soaks up the effect of the beams or something like that.

Which is why those laser classed ships are often armed with torpedoes for EMP attacks that blow huge disrupted holes in a ships shields and if the ship is actually small enough the backlash can actually blow the shield generators.

I used to think that a shield generator was the thing that made the shields but in the real world they’re just separate power systems so when they do blow they don’t take the ships power with them.

I’m actually going to be studying things with shields as part of my classes that I’m going to take at the academy.

I get switched out when the crewman comes back from her break and I wanted to stay and keep linked into the console but I have to move and it’s not long after that from what I can see on the screens that our ships are coming in at cruising speed.

And the alerts are standing down.

Twenty minutes maybe after our battleships have gone out there and we’re done.

I look at the lieutenant and he’s going through all the stuff we need to be doing and should be doing but he has this look on his face.

And it’s making me feel this sort of unease.

He gets this look on his face like he just got an OBC call and he pings me and sets me into temporary brevet command.

I look at him.

“I’ll be in the office Stone in heavy link you run the floor while I’m out.”

“Yessir.”

He heads into the office for the duty officer it’s just a glassed in sort of cubicle that they use to do other work and to do other things when things are running smoothly and when things need to be private.

I sit into his on deck chair and I link into the command computer link and I send two off to break and call two of my other co-cadets in that have been doing the same thing to spot us and then I’m getting orders for a recall of all of our ships personnel and to help direct them with the docking and then there’s orders for us to send out more drones out to our best operational limits and to pass on any oddities on scan to the bridge and to the weapons crews and the flight decks.

There are possible stragglers out there and we’re to keep all “eyes” peeled looking for any that might show up.

I have a bad feeling about all of this and we’re looking like we’re very possibly heading out of the system.

Which that might mean there might be more fighting headed this way.

I look out at space in the direction our combat ships are heading in from and I take a breath.

Those beetle tekker things are short range, no FTL and they took that freighter cluster which just really adds up to me that they have a ship out there.

Or more and that they might be headed this way.