***Before…

Command track, private bunks for each of us and it’s literally us walking in through this archway and we see not cots but like these crafted cubicles that are open with no roof to them but like a four foot privacy wall and there are other cadets there hanging out.
Well hanging out or waiting.
There’s more people watching, even coming over to watch as we’re getting assigned and taking our bunks by the numbers.
I hear them say hushedly. “The Apollo.”
And I can feel eyes on me.
Not just us but on me.
And people whispering. “It’s her.”
Oh dammit.
People know who I am?
It doesn’t help when Corporal McVarden says. “Bunk out here you’ll find instructions on the basics on your On Body Computers. There will be orders at various points during your stay but this is going to be your last R and R before you all hit Grail.”
He moves to leave. “Stone!”
I say. “Yes Corporal!”
“Good call, you're the only one today that shared that with their unit.”
He walks out and someone pulls up on this long, long hover scooter thing and he hangs onto their shoulder while stepping on and it speeds off.
Okay, as bad as it feels with everyone staring at me from other places, those that showed up here with me are giving me a few smiles and thankful looks.

***And Now….

I look around, take it all in, take them all in.

I take a few big breaths, one to help catch my breath and to calm myself.

“Should have thought there’d be gossip about us.”

I look for my bunk assignment and head over and start unpacking and I’m still getting some looks even with others doing the same and being busy.

I get a few thanks about the pack thing and say. “That was just me making it easier on me. It seemed to work so why keep it a secret gear jogging technique.”

We spent the rest of the time getting our things stowed and the place cleaned. We cleaned first because it was easier to do that before all of our things were in the way.

R & R is pretty much just loosely a given here, McFadden meant honestly to Check our OBC’s and to see what is here plus what is being “Offered” and what things are at what schedule times.

There are several tactical ship to ship lectures, there is times available for the holo-sims and these have some pretty important things on them like simmmed out time on Bridge simulations.

There’s touristy stuff too and loads of that we can access but no.

I just have this feeling that this is them looking at us in a different way that our choices are part work ethic and psyche eval.

It’s what I would do because we’ll be off for Grail after this and that is where we’ll hit the actual academy and go through basic and then our advanced track classes.

It will be a balanced and set schedule then and getting there from here will be a time for rest.

Actually I log into the transport log and see about the transit times from here to Grail in standard transport FTL and if things hold then yes, it’ll be enough time to rest.

I mull things over after going around the guest barracks and our section of the base looking things over and there are scan links that I can spin up to for the different floors with maps and sections and things going on.

I check crew and troop recommendations and head to the “PX level” where Union approved mini-shops and food hawkers are set up if we want to pay for things instead of eating at the mess.

I wander and windowshopped and look around and I get an expensive real soil grown coffee as a treat with all the fixings and I get some gum that has a decent flavour and cleanser in it and a nice student Union military store satchel/shoulder bag that I can carry a free things inside of.

Ration chews in a fudge flavour, bandage tape, utility tape, a pack of good digi-pens with ink, folded survival blanket, a compressed suit of thermal hose, a mini-med-kit and a few other odds and ends like a brush and comb and lint brush/roller and military deodorant.

Given what’s happened it’s an extra.

Kind of like a Go bag.

I try some of the smaller food hawkers trying things with good lines that look like something I might like to eat and stick to some finger food type of things or on a stick. My fave pretty much being this seafood flavoured crab stick coated with rice and served in a cup of soup. It’s all vat food and all of that but I like soup and the flavour and it’s just enough.

I go around and get a feeling for the place and make my plans while I’m here.

I finish snacking and my tour and I go and get changed and use the cadet gym here and go and work out for quite awhile burning off the food but also so I can sleep better in an unfamiliar space.

Treadmill and cycle plus light weights and callisthenics and then some boxing and martial training on the dummies and finishing with a swim.

I crash early compared to some of them and tired enough to sleep good and I get enough sleep to be awake by reveille and there is of course teachers and command personnel going through doing morning inspection before we go and do PT and then hit the mess and then showers and freetime.

Some poor people thought that we were getting unrestricted full time off R&R while we’re still on base.

A few others saw me getting up first and getting ready and they quickly shook off their sleep and followed suit and that was a little different.

Mess here is good, really good toasted soymilk and you can get it hot. Some people might baulk about that stuff but it's nutty and like a creamy hot drink so like dessert soup.

Add in some things to dip in it or to put into it and it’s good.

Everything here is better because they have actual full classed kitchens and food labshere so your vat grown cafeteria heating trays full of vat grown eggs are really fresh.

Then for me it’s going off to sword training classes they have offered and bringing my sword with me which has lots of looks but at the same time once i’m at those training halls for the sword I’m not alone.

There are a lot of people with the same award as I have and then there are some with like cultural Union things with swords like actually from their colony or society and ethnics.

It’s fascinating and imposing and I’m tested for my sabre and I’m placed still in the beginners ranks and I’m fine with that.

I’m still really serious and like doing this.

It’s also very social with talking, instruction and there is some degree of formal introductions before classes and training matches.

Then I’m off and taking some lectures and then it’s lunch and then a stint at the gun range and the motorpool where we are invited to test out how certain land and hover units drive and work.

The last part of my afternoon is trying the bridge sims.

It is immediately hard.

You’re in command.

Even simulated you have people asking you and wanting things and needing things from you all the time and you’re getting tons of OBC sensor linked info as well from your ship.

That’s not even counting the tasks.

And they start you with basic manoeuvres and runs to pick things up and drop things off and things like docking or piloting through an orbital queue.

And I fail in most of the sims in one way or another.

It’s frustrating.

I’ve never been an ambitious person really but I don’t like my scores.

And I take my breaks in the food court and then take out my frustrations in the gym.

It’s weird having others doing it too, failing as well.

We talk about it over snacks and food and while working out.

Again it’s strange having people doing the same things as me or some of the same things as me because they think I’m someone that has a plan.

I barely have a plan.

Actually my plan is don’t fail,don’t wash out and end up back home with my family and those looks of I told you so.

Especially over my transition/Transformation.

To them people like me could have been “fixed” in other ways.

I don’t try to convince the other recruits to do things other than what they told us and they’re not that bad but there’s a lot of gawking and getting caught up in not just a major system planet but the size of the city how available stuff is here compared to some of the “Milk run colonies.”

I mean a lot of us on this trip are picked up as recruits out of all these little backwater colonies that are likely very nice places but small towns are small towns even in space and the same for big cities.

Add it it’s exciting right now even to watch as we’re in a really big military base and there is all of this other traffic in the skies, their is loads of civilian stuff sure but here we see actual Union ships from skiffs and shuttles to lighter cruisers and other specialty vehicles to actual combat ships like corvettes and interceptor ships and that’s not counting we routinely have areo-space fighters going off on two manned patrols and training.

Honestly if I was less scared and paranoid about doing stuff wrong I’d be watching more but the biggest point in my brain is the fact this is a stopover, we’re meeting all the other cadets from all of the other ships and then we’ll be sent off to the training planet and system.

So this is honestly, smartly where I or others take every bit of training and simulation time as we can get so I’m that much more ready for what follows.

I get lots of sleep and I don’t really do the social life thing here instead getting as many hours rated in piloting and as soon as I clear for one thing I apply to train for another related unit and logging hours so shuttles and space military tugs and loaders and anti-gravity rafts for floating cargo and hover bikes and land cruisers which covers most cars and trucks and jeeps and I actually test out for my basic driving licences and was awarded them right off and that was cool and while most people have them I didn’t need them growing up much but now it’s nice to have.

I even take things online that they offer and some of it is dressing and etiquette and deportment and there multiple slices and sims where I try and find out things that are wrong and I really try and run through that several times again because I’m socially awkward and paranoid of making mistakes and I like feeling that at least I can dress and act the part on duty.

I noticed more people arriving and our building getting filled up on all the different student and cadet levels and still even with the other bodies there might be a dozen of us really putting the drive on in command track and we’re the smaller colony recruits so we’re like me and surprised to been picked for command or they want it.

I mean I get it, and I think that commanding a starship would be a great career.

Though I keep hearing that the fleet's long term families are different and that we really haven’t seen anything yet because some of them even unenhanced are a whole other breed.

And so I don’t find myself caught off guard. I keep my On-body-computer tuned to the incoming com traffic with incoming ships because what we leave on will be a big ship and we’re students so it’s probably an older ship of the line and something close to being retired but not yet.

I actually wrote a bit of programming to look up make and models and to alert me to anything that’s actually fit what I’m expecting and when I am pretty sure I have a day where we’re not shipping out then I do go into the city and I go for clothes mostly as I really don’t have enough civilian clothes and I don’t really have a personal clothing style or a go-to.

I see missing ship names daily and they’re not coming back and when I got too curious I looked and they’re all gone.

We’re being hammered by these machine tekker bastards.

But my idea works. I notice a shift in the staff and it looks like people are getting shifts organised for a lot of loading and in comes The FDR a big, big old ship that was used as a star carrier for shuttles and infantry ship drops and fighters.

Now I’m sure it’s here to pick us all up.