Borrowed from the Interwebs
“Ledbetter, Presby. Fresh meat incoming.” The nonce glanced around the triple-berth in a split-second inspection. “It’ll do,” he banged the ‘lock edge in approval before he swam down the corridor to inform the other understaffed berths of new pilots arriving. They had been under zero g maneuvers for the last hour to match paths with the incoming staff-and-stuff ships.
“Time to roll out. Why don’t you go first?” offered Ledbetter to his wingman, while he tucked a picture into his quick-dress under vest.
Presby rolled out of his hammock-like bunk where they had been ordered to out of the way of the real sailors working the zero-g maneuvers. The sprawl of limbs to stop twists and torques, his brace to open his steamer, and his adorning of quick-dress took a simple handful of minutes. By unmodified human standards, Presby executed an elegant ballet of movement within microgravity, showing skills developed over three relative-years in space
Once Presby was dressed, Ledbetter did the same maneuvers in a quarter of the time, with Presby in the same space attempting to secure his bunk against the wall. Every rotation Presby needed to control, Ledbetter used to his advantage. A quick flick from Ledbetter’s foot pressed the bunk’s rail hard enough for Presby to twist the knob into place; Ledbetter let the push off from the rail to tuck his legs for positioning the hem loops under the boots which kept the pant lines of the quick-dress pants regulation straight. He landed by the airlock between their berth room and the corridor waiting for their nonce to return.
“Fish, I hate you,” Presby said, hanging sidewise to their one egress in the middle of the room.
Ledbetter smiled, “Come on unmod, bossman says we got fresh meat to tenderize.” He watched as Presby grasped one of the handles and pulled himself in the regulation up-down the regular unmods needed for orientation.
Presby had been broken of that three-dimensional limitation the first month of pilot training. Those that didn’t stop vomiting washed out and became simple sailors stuck inside the big belly beasts. Then Presby had passed muster for fighter training, something only one in a hundred pilots qualified for. He was as close to three-dimensional situational awareness as an unmodified human could get.
“Four relative-months setting up for them. They better be worth it,” Presby said.
“Nonce let me look through the profiles. One for red side is a birdman.”
“Of course red is getting that one.”
“You guys got me. It’s only fair.”
“Can you imagine a triple of natural three-D thinkers?” Presby got a far away look in his eyes. “If only they could drop the mod in after birth.”
“Modify to the planet, not to war.” Ledbetter quoted one of the Tenets of the Human Unity.
“And draft them all come war.” Presby snarked back the solider corollary, one of the several perverted adages the front-line men had developed from the high-brow political Tenets humanity had crafted since jumping to the stars.
Nonce Curtis swam back their way while the other two berths prepped for the receiving presentation. “Belay that chatter boys,” he ordered.
Kempler, the furthest away, who had been running simulations when zero-G had been announced, fell out into the corridor in his flight suit, with the blue strip of their squadron along the legs and arms of the suit. Pilots got a regulation exception, with flight suits treated as equal to quick-dress or anything less than full dress, and sometimes the brass let the fighter pilots have flight suits count as full dress if they at least tossed on their rank jacket with patches.
Elrod and D’Aunno came out of the middle berth. Each triple berth had room for the primary three of a triple flight, an alternate, and two trainees. Ledbetter was the First for his triple unit, D’Aunno was First for his, and Kempler was First by default for the last group, but nonce flew when they were understaffed and therefore was acting first. Kempler spent a lot of time in simulations trying to be worthy of being wingman to Twenty-Clash Curtis. Blue Wing at full staffing had twenty members. Nonce and his second, plus the full squad with alternatives and trainees. They had six.
Ledbetter knew the staff-and-stuff drop was about to double their numbers to twelve. Red, Yellow, and Green Wings after the last year’s battle had been equally stripped, and were about to be equally re-staffed. They would have two relative-months to get the new guys seaworthy as the Determination returned to the front lines. Ledbetter had been through fifteen cycles of picking up fresh meat, train, going to the front lines, getting blown to bits, and returning when the ship had bled out all the air, people, and replacement parts.
He touched his vest where the picture of him kissing his girl rested against his heart. Nearly nine relative-years in battle since leaving home. The draft demanding regular tribute from the mermaids of his planet. The perfect three-dimensional thinkers made perfect fighter pilots. Those below the surface tossed their throwbacks to the Unity draft, the ones whose modifications had failed, the ones lacking fins and gills like him, stuck between sky and sea. He, like an open clam, had dove at the Duty and Honor to keep the Galactic Incursion from crossing the line into humanity’s colonies.
And, most importantly, to swim among the stars like his brain had been built to do within a sea.
He didn’t know how many years had passed at home since he left. Misty’s last letter had caught up with him toward the end of his first relative-year; it had been bundled together with all her other letters in his first staff-and-stuff drop when he had returned from the front, the sole survivor of his Wing.
She had been dying at a hundred and fifteen; she had never received a single letter he had written her but had written him every year on his birthday faithful to him through two husbands and nine children, two of them his, born from the required donation so his home world wouldn’t lose his genetic diversity. They tweaked his kids enough they swam true.
He remembered Presby’s shock at discovering his “five-year contract” had been five relative-years and what it meant. He wondered how many of the new Fresh Meat would suffer a similar shock.
That the speed ship out, a quick five relative-days for them translated to fifteen years for most of the Unity.
That this Duty and Honor was a one-way trip.
That the front lines drafted until death do us part.
(words 1,104; first written 2/23/2026)
This was a Writer’s Group assignment: “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.” Write a 1,000 word story based on a randomly drawn picture. I got the above. Now I can’t ever do anything the easy way, so even though it is February and I had already decided to do a romance for whatever I drew, once I had that picture in hand it had to be anything EXCEPT for a romance. The story in my head was much more complicated with, space battles and the Fresh Meat guy discovering exactly what he had signed up for instead of me just telling what happened with Presby. But when I hit 500 words, I sped things up, and when I hit 940 words I did it again. Beside it is 10:30 pm and the group meets tomorrow. Today was it. Write or die. It is written – now I sleep.
