FTL-16...Faster Than Life.

Chapter 16

There’s some nods and some smiles from all of them and one of them takes out a holo emitter and is OBC’s typing and there’s files coming up of people. The competition I think.

“We get to see their files?”

Stillwater shakes her head. “Not files but fleet bios.”

“Huh?”

“Officers and staff of distinction get bio pages made with general information. Like a general info file.”

“Oh so they get to see ours too?”

“Yeah but the bios only like us.”

I watch and look as they go over the bois of our competition and it lists stuff like open book missions and some of their training and their hobbies and activities as well as a list of stuff like the medals that they have. And that leads to Stillwater and them talking about some of them like they know these people and even what they heard about who got what medal for what.

The breadth of their knowledge of scuttlebutt seems pretty intimidating given this is supposed to be a friendly tournament.

They’re talking and I’m listening and carefully eating with my still squeamish feeling from being hung over it’s actually hard to do any of it. I peel off the bandage on my arm and see a tattoo there of a sword like mine a wakazashi crossed with the Colonial Union flag and two small barcode lines under it. I read them through my On-Body-Computer and one is the date for the Tekker attack I was in and the other was for the ship skirmish with the Balkorvan. Action date bar codes are pretty common but you usually see them on combat personnel.

I carefully peel the bigger one off from my back shoulder and it’s a radar scanner screen and there’s like ten contacts on the screen with targeting lock on them. In tech-font letters under the bottom half of it reads.

Sense-Nav…Lock.

Okay that’s really…well it’s true, without us as eyes in combat the gunners don’t get to see and attack runs for the fighters don’t get plotted.

We’re the eyes and ears of the fleet.

Okay if you said I was going to get inked I would have said that you’re crazy because I never envisioned myself in any of the V-Sim versions of myself that I had played over the years as the whole tough military tattooed woman.

And I kind of like the Sense-nav one it’s quite okay, even maybe stirs up some pro-unit feelings in me but the sword and flag with my action codes on them. I earned those; I lose friends then, shipmates I find myself just staring at it and feeling on the edge of tears.

I look at the others blushing but I only get knowing looks. The flag and the sword…the swords are different but they all have them and some of their action lines those little barcoded strips…are like the length of poems on a page.

It’s humbling actually to see those. I have two, just two lines and the experiences from those have left me forever a different person…I can’t imagine a dozen lines or the thirty or fifty…the sheer fact that they’re here with me and able to talk and smile and act like people is like I said humbling.

We talk about the events and I’m tired just hearing about them all. Hand to hand stage bouts, bouts with practice swords, firearms with hand guns and rifles, and volleyball as well as other events.

No real practice time either with this being an impromptu challenge and a morale thing. I have a day’s grace that day being today before we start things in earnest. They leave me to do what I have to before the big day starts tomorrow and I thank them and I shake hands before heading off to my cabana.

Now I’d be normally be still really upset over Patrick shipping out and the fact that our bed still smells of him but the first thing I end up doing is taking a long shower and then drink a booster shake that we had in our mini fridge and half a big bottle of water and I pass out on our bed and try to sleep off the hangover.

Sleep…sleep is really really good and actually to be able to leisurely sleep as a woman for real? I’ve never slept as good as I do now when I was a man, or rather stuck in that shell. Even rolled over face down’s okay actually that’s the best way right now for me I like the feel of the sheets and the mattress pressed to my breasts. A lot of women don’t but I like the feeling as long as I don’t roll over and squish them.

But it’s sleep and up to use the bathroom then drink some more then sleep some more. Recovering from my sunburn and my hangover. At one point I just tub soak for awhile and that helped a lot with a large helping of a cocoa and shea butter lotion.

It’s just after sundown before I’m feeling better and I head out of my cabana to go and find out where my bunkmates are at and a few of the others. I find myself at a local pier that’s been turned out like one of those native places with a pealed roof of banana leaves supported by pillars and lots of local dancing.

I’m still taking it easy so I stick to thinks that seem light to me. Grilled fish, fruits I don’t care for the papaya there’s very little taste to me but pineapple wedges and passion fruit seem to be to my liking and I’m drinking club soda mixed with lime and coconut water. My OBC highly recommended to coconut water to help me balance out.

I sit with the others and talk a bit but watch the dancers both male and female. The men are exotic and buff and I wish that I could move my hips with that swing sway way these grass skirt girls do.

Well from the conversations with the other girls I’m not the only one even the big amazon augments seem to have the same reaction. I don’t know if it’s messed up or normal that even remade and rebuilt and even augmented beyond baselines we still look at some other women and have that sigh of feeling like if only…

I do notice that there seems to be more about it in the natural born females though than us. Personally I’m very grateful at just getting to be the real me.

But still to be able to move like that…that’d be nice. And It makes me wonder how these women are with their men in bed…I mean if they can move like that then…I’m sipping a ginger beer over lots of ice and actually picking at some of the crispy pork skin off the roast pigs while having my own little fantasy about what I could do in bed if I could move like that.

I don’t really intend to take someone home and do that but it’s actually kind of fun just to actually have the fantasy and even get a little turned on by it.

It’s not a quiet night but it’s an easy one. I drink but no alcohol and nibble most of the night and dance a little after the shows and once the band comes out. I just relax and have fun and though I wasn’t intending to have a bed partner Carrington comes back to my cabana with me and we settle in together.

No sex but we do share a bath together and snuggle into each others arms.

Sometimes it’s just enough to be held by someone that you care for. For me this was just right.

I’ll admit to some pretty strong lesbian urges in the morning. Or not…it was just waking up with her in bed with me and she’s so beautiful especially while she’d sleeping that I had really strong desires to kiss her awake and maybe more.

I’m not sure if she’d have welcomed the advances thought even if ….well. being with someone once doesn’t mean you’re given an open invite.
But she’s a bunkmate and my friend and apparently I’m selectively bisexual which is really another thing I’m still playing over in my mind. I was very certain that I was straight, as a woman I was hetero but it’s that I’m mostly hetero but some people.

I get ready and make some soy-caff and that wakes her up and we share a cup before heading off to these games that I’m competing in.

I follow the directions to the game/contest area it’s a beach on the bases compound and I’m surprised at the gathering crowds including at a glance our “visitors.” I wonder what they’re going to make out of all of this.

Heck I’m still wondering what to make of all of this. With the band that’s there and the announcers with this whole press stand on scaffolding it’s almost like a party complete with people cooking foods.

Disc football is the first event that we play. It’s called Frisbee? By some of the announcers and it’s like the run and carry game only with flags to pull from your clothes instead of being full contact.

And I’m next to useless, I can catch the thing and I can run but well…I throw like a girl. And I’ll admit right now that running barefoot on sand is harder than it looks.

From that and after a break we get into volleyball? Apparently a beach side shore leave staple and a tradition and it’s really challenging. Also something else to get my bum kicked at as the other ship has played this before. Heck everyone but me has played this before and I am the only cadet here in the whole thing.

That does get me noticed because I’m a sword, and I’ve two action lines to my bio and that seems to make me stand out.

But that doesn’t help me from getting spiked.

Oh I’ve brainloaded the rules and stuff to know how to play but playing something you only know the theory on is different than actually playing it. And spiking the ball is legal but it’s also not illegal to aim that spike at an opposing player. Sucks for them if someone can return or volley the ball but really sucks for me because I’m their prime target for this fun. I end up with three whacks to my head and one to my breasts…ow…maybe I should have worn armor to this and my fingers and forearms are getting bruised too.

I’m beat just after this even with the daily jogging we do and the swimming I just was never, ever athletic in my old life and these are all new sports to me. I’m drinking water to stay hydrated and some coconut water too but it’s really hard stuff.

Oh so far we lost the Disc football game but we won the volleyball game mostly because Stillwater is really tough and really good at that game and she’s able to use those long amazon legs of hers to jump a meter plus in height heck maybe even a hundred and thirty centimeters up and she has this almost demonic jump serve where she throws the ball into the air and just drives it towards the other team. That and her spikes are deadly.

The water part is next and that’s a plain race out to the buoy and back in a relay where I really hold my own in that thanks to all the time with Patrick in the water here or on ship. I beat my opponent in getting in and passing the baton…actually a combat knife. And that gives us the edge in that.

Then there’s the firearms section of the contest with targets for pistols and the rifles out on the water for us to shoot magnetic tracked ceramic rounds at the holo targets.

I slowly take aim at the targets taking into account the bobbing and swaying that their doing and adding it all up in my head like vectors…just treat the waves like gravity sheer like in the sensor drone drills on ship. Time it out breath and pull…pull not squeeze exhale and pull. I do it with the pistol and again for the assault rifle and try to keep myself in that zone, like the times that Patrick had coached me.

Like he said… “Take it easier Erin, you’re not in combat. You have all the time in the world to get the how down.”

“And when I’m in a fight?” I asked him.

“Same thing, getting outside of your calm will only make things worse, get you or someone else killed.”

“So….?”

“Make your shots like you have all the time in the world even if you don’t.”

“Oh thanks a lot, that’s some of that asian hoodoo.”

He laughed but eventually it made sense. It’s the whole reason behind training to make this familiar enough to do the things you need to do like nailing a moving target as just all one act instead of all the little actions that it actually entails.

A woman from the other ship is firing against me and there’s only so many targets out there at a time and its first come first serve in terms of scoring. By the time we’re done I’m kind of looking up and blinking from the near sort of trance that I was in and she’s scowling at me.

“Good shooting?”

“Hrmph, you’re a cadet?”

“Yes.”

“You shoot better than you ought to.”

“Sorry?”

She looks at me and she has this look I’ve seen before not a lot on our ship but I’ve seen it before and that’s the look that sometimes a combat MOS gives a non-combat MOS. There’s some disdain there like what we do isn’t important.

When one has ones head that far up her…

She give’s me this shoulder shove as she takes her rifle back to the event table. “I guess I’ll be seeing you in the ring then.”

Oh hell why do I feel like she’s going to turn this into a grudge match over four lousy rounds?

My unsettledness doesn’t last though and I’m getting cheered on by my teammates and my ship mates for the good scores that I got doing this round. It’s actually pretty nice to get the support and the cheers while I’m not doing something that requires me drinking way too much alcohol. I do a bit of a wave to my bunkmates and yearmates before sitting down and taking a break and getting rehydrated.

We win just by my four little rounds on the firearms section of the competition and that seems to set me apart again especially with the people from the other ship. I notice the pushy one pointing me out to her team mates and there’s a few looks like they want a piece of me.

Lucky for me I get a break as we get to watch the Iron-man competition they have set up and I’m not part of thankfully. But it’s great to watch and our main competitor is The Commander himself.

Of course he’s a sword.

And I’m experiencing that crush again with the man as I see him for the first time without his uniform and he’s….Well a civilian might find his combat scars hard to take but to me it’s proof that he’s survived and that he’s capable and oh my…

He’s an older man with the whole thing that men have when they get that great salt and pepper look to their hair and he’s decently tanned too, not too much just right but he’s tall and he has these really broad shoulders with a lot of hard bodied muscles…not the augmented type either where he’s a monster of muscle but this body from years and years of hard work even if he’s in command. Now just have him in flex cloth running shoes and dark navy blue flex cloth shorts that come down to just above his knees and sexually…he’s a Man with a capitol M.

My those shorts do not hide much.

Master Chief Armstrong’s there too as well as Stillwater and they take off running first down the beach and then through a military old styled confidence course where they go from that down the beach some more until they get to the end of the compound and run down this tarmac pier and dive off of that and swim all the way back to us at our spot on the compound beach and then they have to get on a stationary bike and pedal until they get in ten kilometers before it unlocks the next set of equipment which is a set of weights where they have to rep lift out a total of three thousand kilograms and then they have to do all of that twice more.

I’m aching just thinking of the strain they’re putting themselves through but at the same time The Commander is certainly very good to watch. He’s not doing the best and neither is Commander Jackson of the other team compared to the younger competitors but still watch him move and watch him lifting weights…

I’m so having the thought’s of I’d be so small and dainty and he’d be so strong and so commanding in the way that he’d hold me and then there’s all that endurance…that he could use on me for hours.

And I so have to get a cold bottle of water and set it between my legs. It’s a little embarrassing and yet it’s good too. Honestly the fact this is where my mind goes sometimes is really right feeling about me being me. I even chuckle to myself because it’s so kind of like me being glad that I get turned on by men like the commander is oddly as strange and funny as an old man getting happy because he woke up with a boner.

It really is kind of make you laugh stuff if you’re a person like me.

In the end Lt. Collin’s from the other ship comes in first and she’s…he’s…oddly attractive. Tall and slender with this almost androgynous look that’s very pretty in this blended sexuality way. Reshaped I’d guess but to an androgyne? Too pretty to be a male, too built to be a girl, not muscled like an augment and from their tank suit their wearing and the subtle sway they have they chose female genitalia.

I’m not really sure of the right pronouns for them either?

But their gender presentation aside they’re an exceptional athlete and they gave one hell of a showing here. You can almost see the determination in their eyes too as they were competing.

It’s not long after the Iron-man event that I get signaled by OBC to head to the sparring ring. The others are there waiting for me and I’m getting into my sparing gear being the lowest ranking and the least experienced of the fighters on our side I’m first.

Great nothing like getting the beating over with as fast as possible right?

And the shoulder bumper is getting ready on the other side of the ring. She’s smiling as her teammates are strapping her feet with tape?

“Careful Erin, Corporal Anderson’s a Muay-thai fighter.” The Commander says as he’s suddenly fixing my padded fighting gloves into place.

“Moo-tie sir?”

“She’s a kickboxer Stone.”

“Oh…lovely…”